San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1888-07-27
PULLING THE WRONG STRING.

PULLING THE WRONG STRING,
The Dallas Times Herald viewing
the situation in this state is not
wholly satisfied with the record that
the democratic party have been able
to make themselves in untrammeled
Texas. Some one has evidently been
stirring up the pure mind OF the
Herald and asking questions a little
awkward to answer. The Herald
therefore becomes it's own interlocutor
in a spasm of assumed virtue and
putting its own questions answers
as follows:
"Wherein have the affairs of the
state been badly managed by demo-
cratic administrations? There Will be
the old, old worm-eaten answer: 1t
gave to corporations the lands of the
state.n An examination into the be-
ginning of this way of disposing of
the lands will show that every man,
woman and child in the state was
willing to give not only land but their
clothes for railroads or to corporations
that would connect Texas with the
outside world and give the people
markets. The policy was a wrong
one, but it was one the people were
heartily in favor Of"
Passing by the facts, so patent that
all who run may read; that the lack
of a registration law in this
state is due wholly and I'M
mistakably to the democracy
of the state, and consequently
that all the evils arising from an I'M
guarded ballot are fully chargeable
to democratic mismanagement and
misconception of the needs of the
state; passing by the farther fact,
that the lack of any geological sur
vey of the state, which has left the
vast mineral resources of the state UNI
known, is justly chargeable to the
democratic party, and that as conse-
quence they are responsible for the
undevelOped condition of our mining
wealth and all the accretion of in
dustry and commerce that would flow
therefrom; passing by the fact that
they are responsible for the convict
labor laws of the state, which are
disgrace to modern civilization. Pass
ing by all these things, and others of
an equally important character, the
fact to which the Herald voluntarily
alludes and which it seeks to justify,
is the most openly damnable of any
which the democratic party of Texas
have to face. In no state has there
ever been so wasteful squandering
of the public domain, so use
less and unnecessary and reckless
q dissipation of some of the best and
most valuable agricultural lands of
the state. First, in the matter of the
railroad grant to the l. x G. \. road,
in the substitution of the monetary
grant of the republican legislature for
the land grant which entailed upon
the people of Texas a burden they
have not yet recovered from. Second,
in throwing 100000 acres of Pan
handle lands, the finest out of doors,
into the NAV of a greedy Chicago cor
pOratiOn for the purpose of erecting
state house, the contractor for which
has enriched himself by employing
convict labor, and imported pauper Ia
Dor con trary to law. That 3,000,O00
acres grant, which Melted the state
about fifty cents per acre, will ever re-
main a standing monument to the un-
business methods snd wastefulness of
a democratic legislature so Overwhelm-
ingly democratic that a republican OPP
position is an impossible thing. The
Herald is unfortunate in the subject
select ed for apology.