Gloucester County Democrat., 1897-10-07
The constItutional Amendments

The Constitutional Amendments,
Editor Of DEMocRAE-
i The extremely light vote polled on the
proposition to amend the Constitution, Is
likely to discount the shrewd attempt Of
the Republican leaders in this State to
gain partisan advantage from the elec-
tion.
| When, in obedience to Vice President
Hobart's orders. the Republican State Com
mittee made party measure of the anti
race track amendment. it doubtlessly look
ed to them like good pisce of political
strategy.
If the amendments were carried. they
could say, "See what we have done; the
wicked Democrats passed the race track
bill, and we have not only repealed it, but
by changing the Constitution, have forever
made it impossible to enact similar mea-
sure therefore we should be kept in power
because we have redeemed the State from
the gambling curse"
If, on the other hand, the amendment
should meet defeat, they could say, "The
snake is not killed, it is only scotched, and
inasmnch as we have shown our antag-
onism to race tracks by repeating the law
under which they operated, and by sup
porting a Constitutional amendment to
forever prohibit them, we should be kept
in power to prevent the passage Of any
future measure of that nature. /"
In either event they stood to win, and
would be able to use the race track issue
again in this falls campaign.
The fact however, that our last Legisla-
ture had killed off all the proposed amend
ments of any importance, and saddled an
expense of a hundred thousand dollars
upon the State merely for taking vote
upon proposition; firstly, to amend the
Constitution SO as to make it unc0nsti-
tutional to pass law which the Supreme
Court had already declared unconstitution-
al; secondly, to take little of the Cover
nors power away from him and give it to
the Senate; and thirdly, to admit that wo-
man has right at the ballot, and, at the
same time, insult her by assuming that she
is only capable of exercising it at trustee
meetings, seems TO have digusted even the
Republican voters so that they paid very
little more attention to the election than
the Democrats did.
O., ;v.1~ 10 tI,se Oh hrv he
that the O. P. managers will be able to
get very little political capital out Of their
anti-race track scheme.
In this county for instance, with its
nearly five thousand Republican voters,
only little over twenty-three hundred
votes were cast in favor of the amendment;
while in the entire State, that cast over a
hundred and sixty Thousand votes for q
Republican Governor, but seventy thous-
and were cast for the amendment. So
that, even though not solitary Democrat
in the State had voted for it, and every
vote in its favor had been cast by Repub-
lican, the majority of that party must have
failed to support it, Notwithstanding the
order from their State Committee.
No one supposes that there are only
seventy thousand voters in New Jersey
who are opposed to race track gambling;
but every one can see that the people don't
care to be amused by political buncome.
Had there been any necessity for the
amendment, and had the issue been sub
mitted squarely to the people without at
tempting to make it play political pur-
pose, the majority in its favor would have
been overw helming.
As it is, it seems 10 have been carried by
small majority, and it is well, perhaps;
that the matter is disposed of-even
though there is much to condemn in the
method employed. L. N.