The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1900-09-16
MIsTooK HIS AUDIENCE.
Frank Burke Made n Rabid Calamity
Speech at Anderson.

Special to the indianapolis Journal
ANDERSON, Ind, Sept. 15.-Frank B.
Burke opened the campaign in Anderson
last night for the Democrats The meet
ing was held in the Opera House and the
speaker was presented by Captain w. r.
Myers. Mr.. Burke paid but a passing no.
tice to the money question or tariff. but
labored long and hard to prove there was
no prosperity in the country, in Anderson
or in Madison county. He produced a long
array of figures to show that the people
now were even worse off than when under
the Cleveland administration-but it was
idle talk. 1t fell fiat, and as hundreds
filed out of the house at the close of his
speech there were mutterings of discomfort
and criticism. The hundreds who were
insulted by his speech remember how the
mills closed in Madison county under the
Cleveland administration; they remember
that scores and scores Of houses were I'M
inhabited for months; that business was
stagnant and that poverty stared working
men of this city and this county in the
face. And the same people see the con-
dition now; they recalled it as Mr.. Burke
continued his talk.
He tried to make capital out of the clos
ing of the wire nail mills here, the Union
works at Alexandria, and the rolling mill
at Frankton. Almost everybody in the
house knew that the Union mill at Alex@
andria was down most of the time in
the Cleveland administration and wound up
in the hands of a receiver, and that since
Mckinley has been in power the mill has
been running most of the time at an ad-
vance in wages to the worker. They knew
that the Frankton mill was in very shaky
condition all through the Cleveland times,
and that Immediately after Mckinley
election 1t started up and has run full
time till a few months ago, when the
managers concluded to transfer it to Mum
Gle and consolidate it with a factory there.
The workingmen who heard Burke had
read of the order for the big wire, nail
and rod mills here to resume on Monday
week
Hundreds of his auditors knew that in the
last three years in Madison county the
factory capacity has been expanding and
was fully so per cent. more than under
Cleveland, and that there were fully 300
per cent more workingmen employed and
at better wages than then. He did not
tell the Anderson audience that since the
beginning of the Mckinley administra-
ton the capacity of the tin-plate mills at
Elwood had been increased till now ii is
next to the largest in the world. If not
the largest; that the Alexandria plate glass
works had been doubled: that the same
was true of the Arcade file works in this
city and that the latter company had
erected a large bicycle factory and is oper-
or that the Buckeye manufacturing works,
the Woolley foundry and the Philadelphia
quartz works. of Anderson. all had been
doubled in capacity. He said never a word
about the trebling of the capacity of the
Victor window glass plant, the building of
the new factory of Markey q Jones, nor
the addition of another mill to the Ma
tional tin-plate plant i'm this city. He ig-
nored the resumption after several years of
idleness OF the Elwood box factory and
the Elwood foundry, also of the bottle
works at Frankton the building of a rolling
mill at Elwood by the Wright Shovel Com
pany, of this city, the new factory at
Summitville for the manufacture of flint
glass bottles. He forgot or dared not to
remind his auditors that in Pendleton had
been erected and now is in successful
operation the Century fence post factory,
or the big paper mill at Alexandria, or
the Northwestern scraper works in An
derson, or the Buckeye window shade fac
tory here
The workingmen went out of the opera
house angry, and they will work to defeat
the whole Democratic ticket from top to
bottom. Mr.. Burke endeavored to explain
away his labor record" as outlined
few days ago by the Journal, but at best
he put 1t up TO question of veracity be-
tween himself on the one hand-the Indian
apolis Sentinel and the records of the Leg
islature on the other.