The Billings gazette. [volume] (Billings, Mont.) 1896-1919, 1902-10-21
DIXON OPENS
LOCAL CAMPAIGN
Continued From First Page.

silver that many of them really anG
seriously believed they would be com
PEELED to walk out of the country
In less than six months after McKin
ley's inauguration the country begar
to prosper once more and instead O,
idle men there was a scarcity of labor
and Montana began to share in the
general prosperity. In 1900 the same
conditions obtained and still obtain
and in the speakers opinion there
was not a business man in the state
who, if he possessed the required
ability to properly conduct his affairs
but was making more money than
ever before and there was net a la.
borer who was not receiving more
pay than he ever got before.
In he opinion of the speaker there
was no power on earth that could
prevent the election of Roosevelt two
years hence. Both of the states sen
ators were democrats, he said, and
being in opposition to the present
administration and because of their
tenure of office would be in opposition
to the next one, it was a matter Of
policy for the state to elect a republi-
can to represent them in the lower
house, no matter though he be of
only ordinary ability. The president
now in the white house was more in
sympathy with the people of the west
than any n that had been there in
the last quarter of a century. If Mon
tana's representative for the next two
years was a republican and in touch
with the administration it was but
reasonable to suppose that he could
accomplish more for the state than
one opposed to it.
Mr.. Dixon spoke Of the corruption
and d%ebauchery that had caused the
name of the state to become a hiss
and a byword throughout the nation
and of the open buying of votes in
the legislature by democrats anxious
for advancement and reminded his
auditors that the men responsible for
the disgrace and shame attaching to
the state were democrats. Recently
the three corporate powers had held
their convention at Bozeman, for it
was they and net the democratic par
ty that met there, said Mr.. Dixon.
The Clark and the Amalgamated dem
nav,ntc foil nrfrU an orNfhovs, voD11yc
and told each other how much they
loved one another and how sorry
they were fer their past misunder-
standings and how they regretted all
the bitter things they had said about
each other, and then threw Heinze
out of the window. Those same cor
porate powers whose interests are in
the hands of two or three men had
blasted the reputation of the state
and yet they were trying to blind
the people and protesting only regard
and friendship for them.
While the Clark and Amalgamated
democrats were declaring that there
was nothing sinister or wrong in their
desire for control of the judiciary,
it was known hat they had spent
thousands of dollars to prevent Gov
ernor Toole from gaining a seat in
the convention. The mere fact that
they had thus used their wealth and
the power it gave them to defeat the
man who for years had been the idol
Of the democratic party CT Montana
vas evidence sufficient to show that
tnere was something wrong. The
democrats of the state were aDso-
lutely without an issue and the only.
reason he had heard any of them ad-
vance why the people should vote for
their candidates had been advanced
recently by one of the men who is
running on that ticket. He said that
the people should vote the democratic
ticket because the state government
had raised the assessment on the rail
roads,, but he had not said that the
governor, the man who had forced
that raise, had been kept out of the
Bozeman convention because of the
enmity he had engendered in the
minds of the men who are in control
of the great corporate interests of
the state.
The pretended friendship of the
democrats for the laboring man and
the alleged hostility of the republicans
we're made the subject of some very
pointed remarks by the speaker. He
said that it had been with the aid OF
votes that the eight hour
law was passed and the company
store bill enacted into law. To show
how the laboring men of the state
were beginning to realize that the
were not the friends they