The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1889-10-03
Republican Cant About Ballot Re-
form.

form.
The Republicans are doing a vast
amount of talk of the boomerang
kind about ballot reform. They are
especially cordial in praising the
workingmen for their advocacy of
this latest political panaeea, and with
bland unconcern they denounce those
Infamous agencies which have rend-
cred reform measures necessary. The
New York Press, al obscure paper,
printed in the interest and with the
money of the Platt ring, is particular
ly virtuous, and this morning had a
most edifying homily upon the cor
ruption of the franchise with money
and the intimidation of poor depend
ent voters by powerful and unscrupu-
lous bosses.
1t will seem to most persons, as it
does to us that the Press and the
other organs are heaping up censure
upon the Republican party and its
allies in using language of this kind.
The labor element in particular is
we'll aware of the fact that the Repub-
lican party is now, and has always
been responsible for six-tenths of the
corruption and nine-tenths of the
intimidation that has degraded
elections in this country in the last
twenty years. To go no further back
than the last campaign, the party
heaped condemnation upon itself in
the persons of Wanamaker, Dudley,
Platt Quay and the hosts of
other corruptionists who raised mil
lions Of dollars, and expended them
directly in the purchase of votes
among the lowest and most ignorant
classes of the community.
The simplest individual in the
State of New Jersey knows that all
the intimidation in the State is used
on the side of Republicanism. The
Democrats have no means of compul-
sion applicable to voters, even if they
were inclined to resort to them. The
great bulldozing agencies of the State
are the rail way companies and
other great corporations. These
~soulless bodies have no care for the
general interests of the State or of the
nation. Their one aim is to roll up
vast profits for themselves, by fair
means or foul, above all by defrand-
ing the public treasury of it's just
dues, and by robbing the people of
lands and franchises at every oppor-
tunity.
The Republican party, embracing
such men as General Sewell, Senator
Gardner, Carrot A. Hobart. Budd
Deacon, ex-senator Griggs, has al
ways been the favorite ally of these
cormorant organizations. They
have made their demands, and
the party has found men INSCRIPTIONS
enough to crafty them. In return,
the corporations have year after year
forced their dependent employees to
bow to the yoke, and march to the
polls as slaves, to keep in power the
party that was aiding their masters to
grind them down and rob them along
with the rest of the citizens.
Only yesterday the machinery OF
compulsion wa put in operation
again. The candidate, Grubb, who
is only the mask behind which SeweIl,
the corporation agent, hides, was
paraded about the ~capjtalistic fac
tories of Newark and exhibited to the
men as the chosen one OF their mas
tiers, for whom they should vote or
take the consequences.
Was there ever anything more
shamelessS In the same minute of
time the Republican papers howl for
ballot reform and the Republican
corporations and bosses pass around
the word that the laboring men whom