Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1888-10-24
A DASTA RDLY OUTRAGE


Last week, all of the Republican
dallies of Kansas published what pur-
ported TO be an expose of a secret socie-
~ organized in this state by the Union
Labor party to control the elections at
the expense of even bIood-shed and de-
struction. This expose gave in detail
the secret work and obligations of the
"Vidette." No doubt such an organi-
cation does exist; but thereis nothing
in the expose to show that the Union
Labor party has anything to do with
the "Vidette' or that the interests of
the political party and the secret or
ganization have anything in common.
The expose was prepared by the Win
iield Courier editor who laid his work
before the republican state central
committee and it being approved by
that august body, it was arranged that
the article should appear, simultane-
Ously in every Republican morning pa
per III the state. And it so appeared.
1t was filled with all sorts of theories
and conclusions, all tending to show
that the VidetteS are all Union Labor
people and that therefore all Union
Labor people are Videttes. The idea
was to get out the impression that the
Union Labor party was made up who'll
ly of dynamiters and anarchists. OF
course this is not true and not one
reader out of thousand believes that
it is.
But that was but the beginning of
what now appears to be a most hellish
and damnable plan to prove that Win
field had anarchists as citizens. The
day that the expose of the Videttes
Was published, some scoundrel, no
doubt in theemploy of the Republican
committee or the Winfield Courier,
went to Coffeyville, Kansas, and there
harded to the express company's agent
a box, directed to the chairman of the
Union Labor party of Cowley county,
who lives at Winfield. The same
morning that this express package
should have arrived at Winfield deputy
sheriff from Coffeyville arrived at Win
field and gave it out as his mission that
he was there to intercept box of dyna-
mite that had been expressed to the
Union Labor man. But he was too
fly" for the package did not get to
Winfield. The express agent at COffey-
lille took the package home for safe
keeping, he having been told by the
consignor that it was valuable and
easily broken. He placed it on chair
in his home and his little daughter ac-
cidentally knocked it off, when fear
full explosion occurred. The child and
her mother were so badly injured by
the explosion that they died in few
hours.
Two innocent persons killed that a
political trick might be successfully
carried outl
The Coffeyville deputy sheriff had no
conference with the express agent; and
so how did he know that a package of
any kind had been started to the Union
Labor party chairman? Of course he
must have been told by the shipper,
who. it seems plain, was tool to carry
but the designs of desperate politicians.
If it could be made to appear, just at
the time the expose of the Videttes
was being talked of, that the Union
Labor people were indeed handling dy-
Mantle, then there would have been a
big victory for the exposers.
The plan failed and now some other
iniquity must be Matched up.
In the meantime, the Democrats and
the Union Labor people are daily thin
ming out the ranks of the Republican
party in Kansas until it does appear
that the old party that has controlled
the state for thirty years will be the
minority party after November 9th.