Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1900-01-03

cratic legislature cOnVened-imn1edtately
after an inventory Of the members-elec
showed the Anaconda wing that Il
lacked the strength to elect a senator o,
it's own c~hoosing-the Standard begar
to advertise the state of Montana as q
rotten borough. with the evident purpose
of intimidating members of the legisla.
ture 10 vote it's way in the impending
conflict. or suffer the imputation that
they were bribed.
To such wholesale charges of crime
against the members Of the legislature,
long before they met in legislative SEES
sion-without the submission of any evil
dence whatsoever to back up the allega-
tions-the Inter Mountain protested-not
in eha'f of the democracy-not in behalf
of either wing of that political party
but in behalf of the good name and repu-
tation of this commonwealth.
To ferrit out and punish crime is one
thing. to advertise this state as a pot
other.
The situation involved more than the
catch-as-catch-can contest between
democratic sore-heads.
1t meant that the Standard was pub
fishing to the world a condition of affairs
that would disgust those who contem-
plated settling in Montana, and would
thus seriously cripple the state by rob-
bling it of business and speculative in
vestments justly it's due.
For months and months, every issue of
the Standard was in effect a warning to
any respectable eastern man who may
have contemplated making his future
home in this beautiful state.
Indeed, there was room for the sus-
picion that the Standard was aiming at
the effect produced, for a larger popula-
ton in Montana would mean the loss of
it's power to control political situations
in this state, through the application of
the lash to the subservient hobo and the
holding of the bread threat over the
heads of respectable working men.
1t was against such methods Of pro-
cedure that the Inter Mountain pro-
tested.
For the good name and reputation Of
this state, charges of bribery should
have been brought against those to
whom the evidence Of guilt unerr;ngly
pointed, to be adjudicated in the courts
not to be heralded in the press under
flaring headlines, without a scintilla of
evidence, to the irreparable damage of
the state, it's people and it's institutions.
1t was along these lines that the Inter
Mountain commended.
There is not an intelligent, right-think-
ing man or woman in this state who will
say that the position taken by this paper
was not the correct one.
Ever ready to condemn crime and
criminals, in whichever wing of the de-
mocracy they may be found, as we'll as
the gilded idiots who to stab an enemy
would kill the state, the Inter Mountain
is steadfast in it's belief tina st. Paul
was right when he m hat
everything should be done decently and
in order.
The tandard complains because the
Inter Mountai has not accepted in good
faith the spewling of it's stool-pigeons,
and the croaking of the cracked con-
sciences which it is pleased to refer to
as evidence of it's own purity of pur-
pose and the degradation of it's party
enemies.
Surrounded by as dirty a gang of polit- !;
ical heelers as ever desecrated the mid
night hour with schemes of plumber. the !
is entitled to no applause when
the courts bring to justice any man
whose linen may be as badly soiled as
it's own.
Everybody knows that had Clark been
defeated in the joint assembly, through
failure to purchase enough votes. and
Conrad elected, not another peep about
bribery would have been incubated in |
the editorial hot-box of the Anaconda
Standard. |
The Standard does not wish to purify
politics in this state, and thus compel
itself to go out of business-it merely
desires the defeat of the accredited
leader of its rival democratic faction.
To this end, it has blighted the reputa-
ton of our fair state abroad, made Mon
tana a by-word of contempt throughout
the land. n turned into other channels
vast amounts of money that would
otherwise have been invested within our