Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1902-08-15
BRATTLEBOR0 LOCAL
THE DEMOCRATIC RALLY.
Audience Was Large at the Beginning,
but Many Seats Were Vacant at the

Felix w. McGettrick of St Albans,
Democratic nominee for governor, and
Charles II. Davenport of Brattleboro,
Democratic nominee for senator from the
Marlboro probate district, spoke at a
Democratic rally i'm the Auditorium
Wednesday evening, completing a tour of
a number of Windham county towns. At
the beginning there was a good audience,
but at the close whole rows of seats were
vacated. Corruption was the slogan of
the evening, but little that was specific
was said to bear out the assertions Of
the speakers. on the other hand the
speeches abounded in glittering general
tiles which, in the absence of facts to
support them, appealed to the audience
as humorous. The First Regiment band
played for half an hour preceding the
rally. on the town hall balcony.
II. b. Haus, of the Democratic town
committee introduced the speakers pre-
sentng first Mr.. McGettrick, whom he
announced as the next governor of Ver-
mont. Mr., McGettrick said he did not
charge the Republican party with corrup-
ton in its individual composition but
said that corruption had crept into it's
politics, just as it would in the politics of
the Democratic party If that party should
be in control for a long term of years.
The reform. he said. must come through
one or the other of the great political
parties and not through one man who
STANDS alone as the embodiment of po-
litical purity.
This was jab at Clement and for the
next half hour Mr. Clement was ar
raigned in scathing terms. He was call
ed the Moses, the self-constituted leader
of the lsraelitish Republicans, the apos-
tie who would have us look to him for a
correction of the existing evils He
tells us that the prohibitory law is no
longer the leading issue in this campaign.
but that the leading issue is the corrupt
use of money in primaries and elections
He comes with an air of conceit which is
not excusable in sincere man The
speaker then scored Mr.. Clement for pre-
tending that this alleged corruption was
something that had just been discovered,
and said that 1t had been just as famil-
lar to him for years as he claimed it to
be now. He said that six years ago the
state convention was turned by the pur-
chase of two delegates, and that the
checks which they received had been
traced beyond peradventure. He said
that Mr.. Clements ambition was to get
into the United States Senate that he
wanted to use the gubernatorial chair as
a stepping stone to that end. and that it
was his selfish personal ambition that
made him so virtuous.
Il am ashamed to admit, said the
speaker, that Democrats in some parts
of the state have thought best to follow
the Clement banner. The Democratic
platforms IOr tne past oU years nave au-
vocated the repeal of the prohibitory
law Mr. McGettrick then told what he
had done personally toward securing the
repeal of the law, telling, among other
things, how he once edited a Franklin
county edition of a Burlington newspa-
per- in the course of which he investigated
records of liquor prosecutions and found
that one mans name had been entered
regularly month after month for three
years after he was dead as having been
fined for selling liquor and that the con-
viction fees had been pocketed by the
officials His speech was, in the main,
an effort to induce the Clement Repub-
licans to support the regular Democratic
ticket. but the effect of it will tend rather
to influence the Republicans to stand to-
gether.
Mr.. Davenport took up first the cam
paign expenses OF Gen. Mccullough, stat
ing that he did not believe Gen. McCull-
ough sanctioned corrupt use of his mon
ey. He read a statement from A. p.
Childs, which said that f. G. Archibald
who spoke last week, told him that he
thought Gen. Mccullough spent a quarter
of a million dollars. He discussed the
Beatty incident at the state convention,
and characterized the action there as
mob rule to support crime" He under
took to analyZe some of the state ex-
penses, taking up what he has been
pleased to term the Waterbury asylum
folly" now discovered with age, the
county building project, which was drop
ped a week ago, and the old joke about the
railroad commission, whose only impor-
tant action he said was to report, after
several days deliberation, that it was
dangerous to walk on the railroad in front
of moving train.