The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1900-10-19
business judgment and when saw

business judgment, and when say
''he" mean the institution over there.
He did not use the good business judg
ment that any ordinary business man
would. Every local dealer and every
wholesale dealer in the country could
see, and without any specs on what
ever, to an absolute certainty, that
Irvine was bound to be cheaper. Now,
he agreed to give us Irvine for cost.
Remember, now, and think back five
or six or seven months, when they
fixed the price on Irvine. What did he
tell you this year? That the Irvine is
still there, to be sold to the farmers
direct for cost. In other words, no
profit should be taken off and put into
the state treasury as the Republican
administration had done for years. The
small profit that / have spoken of, in
1897 $4,000, and in 1898 about $4,000,
was to be given direct to the farmer.
1t was heralded all over this state that
there had been a changed method Of
doing business, and that, instead of
that profit going to the state, the
farmer should have the full benefit of
the whole plant. Now, you expected to
get it for cost, did you not? Certainly
you did. And you did get it for just
exactly what it cost them, but the
trouble with the whole business was
that the Irvine cost so much it wasn't
worth the price. 1t was not exactly
the kind of reform you expected in that
institution, but. it is exactly what you
got, and that was the fulfillment Of
one of the promises that were made
two years ago by Gov. Lind.
About Grain Inspection.
There was another promise that he
made, which am going to examine for
few moments now, and that was
that if he was elected governor of this
state he would reform the grain in
spection department. I am willing to
concede that he has reformed it. am
willing to concede everything that he
claimed he would 90 as far as he went,
but he has not quite succeeded in sat
isfying all the people of this state upon
that subject yet. We know that the
inspection is not quite what it ought to
be, and I want to tell you, my friends,
from my experience that It never Will
be quite satisfactory to everybody in
the state. 1t is not like weighing out
wheat. There you can depend upon
mathematical certainty for a result,
but when it comes to inspecting wheat
you have got to depend upon a mans
judgment, upon the eye, upon the
Judgment of human being, and he is
going to make some mistake, and I
don't care how honest and how faithful
the man may be. Now, Gov. Lind and
everybody else that made the charges
two years ago, knew this just as we'll
as / know it, but the farmers of the
state believed that wheat inspection
could be carried on to a mathematical
certainty; that with the right kind of
men in there there would be no further
reason for complaint. Now, Gov. Lind
must have known that this could not
be done, and yet he tried to convey to
your minds that if he was elected gov
ernor of this state that complaint
would be taken away entirely. He
simply promised good deal more than
any other man ever will be able to
accomplish in this day. To say that
there was not cause for complaint two,
four and six years ago, L am not going
to contend. I am not going to defend
all those who were appointed by the
Republicans, by any means. Some of
them were incompetent men, and some
Take some of them that you know;
would you ever pick them out as the
guardian of your interests, out there
especially? You know some of them.
Would you select some of those indi-
viduals that have been appointed in
that department? Men who never
handled a bushel of wheat in their
lives? Yet to-day they are your guar
THAI department, and the consequence
is that the result has been about the
same as ever. The change has been so
imperceptible that many of you have
not been able to see it. But there is
one thing in the administration of the
affairs of that department that we can
all see very plainly,' and that is that it
costs so many dollars to do a certain
kind of business. There are so many
car loads of wheat shipped to Mime
apolis and Duluth every year, and it
costs you so many cents a car load to
have that wheat inspected, and when 1t
comes to the business part of the de-
partment Mr.. Lind has again failed to
come up to your expectations, or his
own, for I haven't any doubt but he
was honest in that part of it, that he
would see to it that none but honest
men were appointed. / presume that
he thinks he has made such appoint
ments. But he has run up abainst the
same difficulty that any governor runs
up aSainst that is he has appointed a
lot of men on the recommendation of
some one else, and some of them have
not turned out to be the class of men
that ever ought to hold Office and
there he has not been any more sue
cessful in this particular branch of the
business than any other governor of
the State of Minnesota.
Republicans Found to be Honest
A great many thought that the Re-
publicans had been in office so long,
having been in power for almost forty
years, that there must necessarily be
something wrong, and it was a good
thing to have a change, that you might
find out just how wrong and how bad
it had been. A great many of you
waited patiently for months-yes, for
years-to hear something about the
rascality of the guardians of some of
those institutions. Have any of you
ever heard thing? Has there been
any exposure of a single dollar stolen
or Incorporated lin either of these
departments? With all the machinery in
his own hands to investigate these in.
situations, not one of those things hap
pened that you expected. 1 simply re-
mind you of these things that you may