Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1888-05-24

But could-ah, could you make good bread?
Eyes so deeply, truly tender,
| Clear as water in a pool,
Answer my hearts importuning-
Have you been to cooking school?
-Hele1, ". H-ilslo'r.
DEMOCRATIC STATE PLATFORM
O. S. Journal
The platform adopted ly the Demoe-
racy of Ohio at Dayton has at least one
merit-there is not much of it. 1t may
be said to be a ringing" affair, for it is
hollow rs tin horn. 1t seemingly has
no object except to let the country know
| that the Democratic party of Ohio. which
heretofore masqueraded as a semi-prO-
lection concern, has thrown aside the
diguise and come out openly for Mills,
! Cleveland. free wool and free trade.
This is honest enough, but it is striking
ly like the honesty of the highwayman
who, having pretended to good morals
and respectability, at last openly ac-
knOwledges his character and his trade.
The administration of Cleveland is
| indorsed, without qualification" osten-
sibly, although the Endorsement is i'm
mediately qualified in fact by demand
for ''liberal pensions to soldiers and sail
ors," of which Cleveland has been the
standing, consistent and bitter enemy,
vetOing the only general liberal pen
sion" bill that Congress has passed since
he become President, and making bills
| for individual pensions the subjects for
sneers, for coarse and brutal jeStS and
for repeated and numerous vetoes. Ev-
cry time the leaders of the Democratic
party endorse without qualifications the
administration of Grover Cleveland and
then accompany the endorsement with
an assertion that they favor "liberal pen
sions," they write themselves down as
political knaves and hypocriteS, trying
! to steal the soldiers vote while bowling
in the dust to the one man who, above
all others that ever held authority, has
inSulted and wronged the soldiers and
robbed them of their righteous rewards.
The Mills tariff bill, which places wool
on the free list, removes all duties from
hundreds of classes of American prod
ucts, reduces the tariff upon hundreds
of others below the productive point,
and threatens, like deadly viper, every
interest and every laborer in America,
is fully indorsed by name.
In demanding that government lands
be held for actual settlers, the platform
merely demands that homestead policy
which the Republican party long ago es-
tablished, and which it had to drive the
Democratic party from power before it
could establish.
The demand for economical eXpendi-
lures is illustrated by the party's last
experience in Ohio, which it disgraced
and well nigh bankrupted by extrava-
gance, and has since used the depleted
treasury, which itleft behind, as stand
ing reproach to the Republicans, who
succeed to powerl
The platform demands reduction of
the surplus by reduced taxation in the
same breath that it approves the Mills
bill, which would inevitably increase the
surplus, and indorses Grover Cleveland,
who favors the retention of the only tax
es (sugar and internal revenue) which in
any way burden or oppress the people.
1HO ltiStIlOl1H 1Ol
struggling Ireland" while indorsing
without qualification" an administra-
ton that concocted an extradition treaty
which, had the Senate ratified it, would
have made the whole United States a
hunting ground of British officials for
struggling Irishmen that had fed from
British vengeance.
Again this document "favors such re-
straint on corporate power as will pro-
tect honest labor" while the party can
not point to any State where it has had
control for years whose legislation is not
inimical to the workingman and in which
corporate authority" has any intelligent
restraint at all.
The platform wants the duties repeal
ed affecting all industries combined into
trusts. This would be like |
cutting up by the roots all crops in which |
some noxious weeds have sprung up, or
like burning down every building which |
happens to be infested by vermin.-l
Nothing could better illustrated Democrat |
ic ideas of craftsmanship and political |
economy than this. The trusts are ex-
crescences upon our industries; the prop |
er thing is to lop them off, instead of |
destroying the industries themselves. |
But the Democratic party in power at |
Washington has shown itself utterly in
to deal with this subject as
with every other to which it has turned |
its hand.
That part of the platform denouncing |
the Republican Legislature of this State |
for not making sufficiently large appro-
priations for the Soldiers Home and the
Soldiers Orphans Home, is worthy only
of contempt The appropriations for
those institutions were not perhaps so
large as they would have been, had not a
previousDemocraticState administration
left the treasury empty and helpless; but
even so they were larger than would
have been appropriated by the Demo
cratic party for those purposes had it
been in power with treasury full to
overflowing. If the Democratic party
could have had its way neither of these
Institutions would have been established.
Such, briefly, is resume of the plat
form put forth by the Democracy at
Dayton. We think the reader will agree
with us that but for the necessity Of ac-
its subserviency to free
;rade and Grover Cleveland the Demo-
,ratic party of Ohio would not have con-
'idered it worth while to put forth a
platform this year at all.
THE Woodsfield Spirit Of Democracy
ays Robert Carpenter, farmer in that
yicinity, lost twenty-five valuable sheep