Dewsroic, Watdman BY P. ORAY MEEK. Ink Slings. —Is GROVER bidding for another presi- dential nomination ? —These nights in- Bellefonte remind pedestrians of the dark ages, that is so far as their knowledge of them goes. —The New York state Legislature has been passing bills at the rate of two a min- |- utes all this session. These are laws, not circus posters. —SCHRODER the healer was here all week and did a good business in touching people. If he didn’t do them good it was his own fault. —When the navy authorities ordered the Philadelphia to Hawaiian ports no time was set for the boat to reach her destination. ‘What a good thing. —Apropos of the fad that so many peo- ple seem to have for getting out of this world by drinking carbolic acid, none of them live to regret it. ~—New York had a right to make a great fuss over the unveiling of the GRANT mon- ument. It took her long enough to get it it condition to be unveiled. —The annual frosting of the peach crop has been announced, the first organ grinder has appeared, ‘‘dot leedle German band’’ is abroad and spring must surely be here to stay. —After all is said and done Turkish army officers have not heen as cruel in their conduct of war as have been the butchers, whorh Spain has sent to put out the spark of liberty that still flickers in Cuba. —During the time that New York was building the GRANT monument Chicago took the World’s fair from her, carried it - through and placed it in history as the greatest achievement of its sort of the age. Chicago has stopped talking about that, but New York will blow on forever. —The ups and downs of Greek fortunes in war were readily traced in the fluctua- @Qtions in the American grain market last week. One day they had dollar wheat in Chicago, and the very next it was down to sixty-nine cents. —President MCKINLEY is beginning to have trouble -with his official family al- ready. CORNELIUS N. BLISS, the new sec- retary of interior, is sick of his job. Possi- bly he is not as sick as he is afraid of pub- lic condemnation for the kite he is attach- ed to. —The latest news from Greece is to the effect that four hundred of the poor Hel- lenes have been slaughtered while retreat- ing from the victorious invasion of the Turks. It was ever thus, a big Turk will " make a pair of bloomers fly every time. —It was certainly not. with a very wholesome respect for the fitness of things that the solemn ceremonies over. the dedi- cation of the GRANT monument, in New York, should be wound up with a grand ball. We Americans are nothing if not original, but such originality smacks dangerously of sacrilege. —Dr. SWALLOW’S latest kick is on the amount of state monev that is spent for towels and soap for the departments at Harrisburg. No one would have any ob- jection to them using twice as much as they do if, by so doing, it would keep their legislative as well as their anatomical be- ings clean. —It was only last fall that CLEVELAND was praising MCKINLEY and SINGERLY was praising CLEVELAND and WATTERSON was concurring with SINGERLY. Now WATTERSON and SINGERLY are concur- ring again but this time they Jare dam- ning CLEVELAND and CLEVELAND is pass- ing it on to MCKINLEY. It will be no- ticed that there is no such dissatisfaction among the Democrats. —The HAMILTON road bill has passed the Senate and second reading in the House. Its fate is still problematical, how- ever, and we can’t understand why, when everyone recognizes the need for some leg- islation along this line, that this bill is not passed as an experiment, if for no other purpose. It doesn’t involve any burden- some features and is certainly the product df a practical man. —The grand jury at the last session of court would have done the county great service had it ignored more bills than it did. There are far too many petty little cases dragged here to’occupy the time of the court and if the justices will encourage such catch-penny litigation, the grand jury should sit down on them effectually. -—The senatorial deadlock in Kentucky, that had lasted through two sessions of the Legislature of that. State, was broken, on Wednesday, by the election of DEBOE. During the great contest in which BLACK- BURN figured so prominently one hundred and twelve ballots were taken and the State lost $100,000. It is doubtful wheth- er the new U. S. Senator will be worth one cent to the Commonwealth that had such trouble in electing him. —The rather discouraging treatment that AL DALE and JIM MCCLURE met at the hands of the grand jury ought to make them good friends again. Misery loves company and it will certainly be misery for them to pay costs. Verily, JIM’S bread, that he cast on the political waters of Bellefonte just prior to that last go he made for overseer, seems to have forgotten all about him, for none of it has come back yet. r country, so repugnant to Democratic senti- Sn STATE RIGHTS AND FEDE RAL UNION. BELLEFONTE, PA., APRIL 30, 1897. _NO. 17. VOL. 42 Mr. Cleveland's Wrong Position. Those who still retain some respect for ex-President CLEVELAND as a political character must regret to see him emerge from his retirement to attack the party which conferred its favor upon him in so unstinted a manner, and publicly reassert those financial and monetary policies which in his endeavor to put into practice while he was President were so injurious to the ment, and so disastrous to his own reputa- tion as a statemen and leader of the Dem- ocracy. The disfavor with which the ex-Presi- dent is regarded by the great majority of Democrats on account of his course on the money question, and his attitude in the last presidential election, is not calculated to be allayed by the part he took at a ban- quet given in New York, last Saturday, by parties interested in gold monometallism and monetary contraction. The address he made on that occasion could have no other interpretation than that the great party which twice elected him President, is false to its principles and inimical to the credit and honor of the country, because it has not accepted the monetary policy which he, as President, endeavored to enforce in the interest of eastern capitalists and for the profit of the Wall street bankers. The great mistake that Mr. CLEVELAND has made was in believing, or, at least, acting as if he believed, that the gold standard involved the duty and demanded the support of the Democratic party, and that therefore when the convention of that party rejected that standard and declared for silver, it departed from Democratic principles, and assumed a revolutionary attitude so menacing to the good order and wellfare of the country as to require him and his immediate followers to antogonize, its platform and oppose its candidates. It should have occurred to Mr. CLEVE- LAND in the contest of last year that the Democratic national convention was the representative body of the party, and that when its majority declared against gold monometallism and for a more liberal monetary policy, its declaration was en- titled to the respect and acquiescence which true Democracy always accords, to the will of the majority. It should have occurred to him that in making that declaration on the money question the convention vio- lated no principles, doctrine or obligation of the party, that in all its past history the Democracy was never committed to the gold standard of value as against a double standard of the two monetary metals ; that it was never one of its tenets that the pub- lic faith, the credit of the government and the national honor were violated by an ad- herence to the double system of currency authorized by the constitution, with silver maintaining its position at its relative value with gold ; in short, that the de- monetization of silver was purely a Repub- lican measure, the support of which placed no obligations upon the Democratic party, and that therefore its national convention committed no fault in declaring for a money policy conforming with the ancient doc- trines and traditions of the party and di- rectly opposite to a system of currency which Republicanism had established for the advantage of millionaire capitalists and Wall street banking interests. It would have been well if Mr. CLEVE- LAND had borne these facts in mind last year, instead of allowing his inordinate self-consciousness to come to the conclusion that because the convention did not as- sume the same position on the money ques- tion to which his plutocratic preference had led him, it was therefore unDemocratic in its action and anarchistic in its design. How much better it would have been for his reputation if he could have overcome his conceit sufficiently to have submitted to the will of the majority, rather than to have pursued the course he did in putting himself at the head of asmall faction that attempted to disrupt the ranks of the Democracy, joining in villification that basely represented the Democratic party as designing to destroy the public credit, violate the national honor, and involve the country in commercial anarchy and finan- ical ruin. The course which Mr. CLEVELAND has taken in his relation to the party which twice elected him President has placed him in a position grossly wrong and great- ly to his discredit. That he adheres to it with characteristic stubbornness is shown by his address at the New York gold-bug banquet in: which, with his usual turgidity of expression, he charges the great Demo- cratic organization in last year’s campaign with having “made an attack upon those national safe guards which party as well as patriotism should at all times defend.” What a pity that Mr. CLEVELAND can see no other safe guards worth defending than those that protect the interest of Wall street and the multi-millionaire plutocracy. ——Next week the WATCHMAN will publish another of Major HASTINGS’ inter- esting letters of travel. The next journey will be from Athens to Jerusalem. Watch for it as it will be particularly inter- esting. The Oppression of the Coal Miners. The committee which the state Legisla- ture has sent out to inquire into the condi- tion of the coal miners in this State has dis- covered a situation which makes it quite evident that the class of workers who do the coal digging have not been benefited by the advent of ‘‘the advance agent of prosperity.” It is presumed to be the purpose of this legislative committee to discover the facts which may serve as a basis for legislation that may improve the condition of that class of workers ; but while little, if any, benefit to the miners is to be expected of a law making body that heretofore has shown more of a dispo- sition to legislate for corporations and capitalists than for their employees. Yet even a committee sent out by such a Leg- islature is forced to report the miners, par- ticularly in the bituminous region, to be in a lamentable condition. Their situation as laborers is reported to be not much bet- ter than slaves, although they labor in an dustry that has always had the full- est advantage of protective tariffs, and which in addition to the past favors shown its operators by the tariff makers, had its agents before the DINGLEY committee de- manding absolutely prohibitive duties on bituminous coal. . The workmen in the mines have been denied any advantage conferred upon the operating interest by this protection, their wages being of the scantiest amount, but the greatest wrong they have to endure is the robbery they are subjected to hy the ‘‘company stores,”’ filching from them the larger part of their meager earnings. It is unnecessary for us to describe to our readers the method by which this ‘‘pluck- me-store’’ method of spoliation is practiced, as most people in this section know how it is done, bat the fact which is of the most interest at this time, when ‘‘the advance agent of prosperity’’ has been on the road for some time, is the discovery of the legis- lative committee that the ‘company stores’’ are doing business in the bituminous region with more than their usual rapacity, and the poor slaves of the mine are allowed of their scant earnings scarcely enough to afford them subsistence. This committee, if it had looked a little farther into the matter, wonld have discovered that this robbery of the poor workmen is practiced with the greatest rapacity by those who are Joudest in yelping for ‘‘Protection to Amer- ican Industry,” and weregthe most persist- ent in demanding from the DINGLEY tariff committee higher duties on coal. But to what purpose and with what avail will this investigating committee learn the deplorable condition of the mine workers ? That they are poorly paid and scandalously robbed by the company store system is a well and long known fact. This has been within the knowledge of Pennsylvania Legislature for years past, but the ingenuity of Legislators, who work in the capitalistic employ, has always managed to pass laws for the benefit of the miners that could be easily evaded. This is the reason why the ‘‘pluck-me” stores are in full blast and the miners are paid with such truck and at such times as may suit their employers. This will continue to be so as long as the party that is in the pay of the capitalists and corporations is allowed to make the laws. A Scheme that Causes Kicking. The manufacturers who are engaged in industries that have thriven under the ad- vantage Jf free raw materials are now great- ly exorcised in consequence of the inten- tion of the DINGLEY tariff mongers to put a heavy duty on those materials. Protests are being vigorously made by such parties against a policy that would have an in- jurious effect upon their business, and greatly hamper an important industry. Among these protesters is Republican sheriff Crow, of Philadelphia, who is largely interested in the manufacture of carpets, who declares that the proposed imposition of ~ duty on carpet wool would be an uncalled for and wanton action of taxation, as that kind of wool is not raised in the United States and no interests in thi country would be protected by such a duty. The woolen manufacturers, gen- erally, who for the past year have exper- ienced the benefit of untariffed wool, pro- test against that material being restored to the dutiable list for the benefit of a limited number of western wool raisers whose ad- vantage from such a duty would be ques- tionable. ' But the biggest kick against the abolish- ment of the free list is being made by the leather and shoe manufacturers, who, since 1877, have had the advantage of untariffed hides, with the consequent result of un- precedented development and prosperity in their line of industry. This advantage is to be stricken down by the DINGLEY hill for the benefit of the Chicago syndicate that controls the hide product and which must be compensated for the contribution it made to the MCKINLEY election fund. But what right have these woolen and ——Subscribe for ‘the! WATCHMAN. a leather manufacturers to object to pro- visions of the newtariff by which their in- terests are affected ? Their approval is freely given to those schedules of the bill that affect other products, and if it is right to tariff woolen clothes and manufactured leather, by which the woolen and leather manufacturers are given an advantage over consumers, how can they he justified in objecting to those features of this general scheme of spoliation that don’t suit their interests ? They expose their selfishness by kicking against one part of it, while they display their. greed in favoring the other. 2 An Unreasonable Complaint. The gold Democrats, who banqueted at the WALDORF, in New York, the other night, at $12 a plate, and assumed to speak for the Democratic party, were unreasonable in their complaint that MCKINLEY and the Republican Congress have ignored the main issue of last year’s campaign and gone back on the money policy for which the Demo- cratic goldites deserted their party and helped to elect the Republican candidate. The leaders who were instrumental in getting up the Indianapolis ticket in op- position to the nominees of the regular Democratic convention, should have heen intelligent enough to know that the chief object of MCKINLEY’S candidacy was to restore the MCKINLEY tariff. They could not possibly have deceived themselves into the belief that the millions which MARK HANNA raised from among the trusts and expectant tariff beneficiaries were intended for any other purpose than to revive the system of tariff spoliation which furnishes monopoly with its profits, and would re- turn the campaign contributions, ten-fold, to those who had given their money to se- cure the election of the champion of pro- tection. Every speaker at the WALDORF dinner, including the ex-President and ex-Secretary of the Treasury, who reviled the present administration for pushing its tariff scheme to the exclusion of gold-bug legislation, or, as Mr. CLEVELAND put it, ‘‘returning to their tariff wallow,” instead of ‘‘reform- ing” the currency, was well aware, during the campaign, that McKINLEY’S election ogitld mean nothing else than ‘‘tariff wal- dow,” and that, in fact, candidate Mc- KINLEY never gave the public to under- stand that it would mean anything else. It does not now become the gold-bug Democratic leaders to denounce the course taken by the MCKINLEY administration and Republican Congress, as that course is but the natural result of a monopoly tariff victory, which they helped to bring about with their eyes open ; nor does it become them, a mere handful of deserters from the Democratic ranks, to presume to direct the action and take control of the more than six million Democrats who made so glorious’ a fight for the party’s principles and can- dida tes. Impending Gold Raids. “To look back to the closing period of Mr. CLEVELAND'S administration, when raids on the government’s gold reserve gave oc- casion for the sale of bonds to raise more gold, is not a pleasant retrospect. .As a consequence of those raids, and of the im- pression in the treasury department that payment in gold was the only way to meet them, loans were resorted to for the pur- pose of maintaining the reserve, until the: bonded indebtedness of the government was increased about - $250,000,000, and the wealth of J. PIERPONT MORGAN and other Wall street gold dealers was enlarged many millions. By such loans the government's stock of gold was raised above what was considered the danger point, where it has since re- mained awaiting the contingencies that may start another succession of raids, threatening the depletion of the reserve and causing an uneasiness in business that may speedily run into a panic. : The gold sharks have restrained them- selves since the election of MCKINLEY, probably f° the reason that they don’t want to creatc a financial disturbance by raiding the gold reserve until after Mc- KINLEY shall have completed his tariff ‘scheme, there being a sort of fraternal feel- ing between the gold jobbers and the tariff robbers, the former being willing to wait until the latter shall get through with their work in Congress. But there are already indications that the raiders are preparing to swoop down on government’s gold. This week a million dollars of it was taken by agents of the Austrian government, to be shipped abroad to supply a deficiency in Austria’s stock of the precious metal. This is merely a starter, and no one need be surprised if before the ead of the first year of the Mc- KINLEY administration there will be ab- stracted from the gold reserve enough to occasion its replenishment by another loan, if secretary GAGE shall adhere to the no- tion that gold payment is the only way of redeeming the legal tenders and other ob- “| ligations of the government... em A Later Day Hero. From the Altoona Tribune. Another man who did his duty in face of deadly peril is Charles Fay, keeper of the Wynadotte county jail, at Kansas City, Kansas. Yesterday two desperate crimi- nals, armed with revolvers which they seem to have had concealed about their persons, made a determined attempt to overpower jailer Fay and escape from the jail. They shot him down, inflicting a dangerous, per- haps a fatal wound. But the brave jailer, who had locked himself in with the prison- ers, managed to get close to a window, whereupon he threw his keys qut. That kept the prisoners in and in due time he was rescued. Itis right and proper that the names of such heroes of the closing days of the nineteenth century should be kept prominently before the country. Before and After. From the Mercer Western Press. Shortly before November 3rd, 1896, the members of the Waltham watch company called its 2,000 employes together and showed an immense number of orders received contingent upon the election of Major McKinley. ‘If McKinley is elect- ed,” said the managers, ‘‘these orders will be filled and that means plenty of work. If Bryan is elected the orders are can- celled.” It was a great object lesson and Waltham went heavily for McKinley. A few days ago fifty finishers were laid off by the factory managers, the works are to be shut down fora time ‘for repairs,” and several hundred workmen have been offici- ally notified that their places are to be fill- ed by girls. : Another Job for Hanna. From-the-York-Gazette: Chairman Mark Hanna should not let slip the golden opportunity presented by the war in the east to carry the next con- gressional elections. All he has got to do 18 to arrange to keep the scrap going until well into the fall of 98. That will keep wheat jumping and the job is done. A man who can buy a general election in a big country like this ought to be equal to a simple task like that. Read the Answer in the Returns. From the Bedford Gazette. Is Bryan a ‘‘back number?” Seek the reply in the grand victory won by one of the most ardent supporters the eloquent Nebraska statesman has, or note the trend toward free silver which was manifested in the other splendid successes scored by the Democrats last week. The Eplgrammatical Bryan. From the Pittsburg Post. ~ Mr. Bryan is happy in his -epigrams. For instance, when discoursing of the great pretensions of the gold Democrats, he says they ‘‘reach their maximums at a banquet and their minimums at the polls,” that they ‘‘are long on platitudes ahd short on performance. ’’ In the Front Ranks. From the Philipsburg Daily Journal. The Easter edition of the Bellefonte WATCHMAN was very pretty, The WATCHMAN may be old in years, but it is young in spirit, and marches along in the front ranks of the modern enterprising journals. Pension News. A new United States pension law has been enacted hearing date March 6th, 1895, which reads as follows : “That whenever a claim for pension under the act of June 27th, 1890, has been, or shall hereafter be, rejected,’ suspended, or dis- missed, and a “new application shall have been, or shall hereafter be, filed, and a pen- sion has been, or shall hereafter be, al- lowed in such claim, such pension shall date from the time of filing the first application, provided the evidence in the case shall show a pensionable disability to have existed, or to tion, anything in any law or ruling of the Jopapbment to the contrary notwithstand- Bg, : ™ This law will be found of interest to every pensioner whose pension was not al- lowed from the date of the filing of the first application. Where such first application was ‘‘rejected, suspended, or dismissed,”’ and subsequently a new application was filed, and pensions dated only from the new that the PENSION SHALL DATE FROM THE TIME OF FILING THE FIRST AP- PLICATION, provided the evidence in the case shall show a pensionable disability to have existed, or to exist, at the time of filing such first application. This fact may be ascertained by carefully reading the law given above in this article. I desire to say, further, that if any ex- soldier, after reading this article, finds this new law fits fiis case and is desirous of ap- plying for the money which this law al- Tows him after proving his right to it, I will undertake to prosecute the claim with promptness and carefulness. The applica- tion fot this ‘‘back pay’’ is made in the same way as for ‘increase of pensions, ete.’’ I have a full supply of blanks of this kind and I will take pleasure in mailing them to all desiring to push such claims. I also have a full supply of blanks for ‘‘widow’s pension’s,’’ ‘applications for increase’’ and *‘original pensions” and will cheerfully send those to persons needing them. I will push all claims promptly and to the best of my ability. Would refer to scores of ex-soldiers in Clearfield county for whom I have worked. Have the blanks filled out before a justice of the peace or notary public, as the blanks themselves in- struct and mail them to MATT SAVAGE, Pension Att'y, Clearfield, Pa. i exist, at the time of filing such first applica-: application, this law distinctly provides Spawls from the Keystone. —Charles Vantassell, of Milford, fell from his wagon and was killed. —Lancaster county Democrats have chosen William R. Brinton as their new chairman. —Lehighton will vote to increase its debt by $1,800 to erect a new borough electric plant. —Jeannette Strickler, the convicted actress bigamist, was sent to Lebanon jail for three months. —Pittsburgers are already arranging to en- tertain the King of Siam when he visits their city in September. ! —The temperature fell about 20 degrees at Bloomsburg Monday, and nearly 30 degrees at Stroudsburg. —Charged with theft from a jewelry store, well-known young William Stubbins was ar- rested at Lebanon. —Dr. E. M. Gingrich, of the Fourth ward of Lebanon, was elected health officer by the board of health. —The Presbyterian women’s foreign mis- sionary society of the United States convened at Altoona Tuesday. —Nearly a score of young men gambling at the roadside near Reading were raided by county detective Banknecht. —A heavy rain early Monday morning checked the forest fires raging on the Blue mountains near Stroudsburg. —Several buildings were wrecked in the Ligonier valley by Sunday night's storm, but the rain stopped forest fires. —In a fit of melancholy Henry Hefferman, of Jugjata, a ‘‘Pennsy’’ track foreman, com- mitte®suicide with laudanum. —For attempting to drown her newly-born babe, which was rescued alive, Jennie Lein- bach was arrested at Lancaster. —Mayor Weidel, of Altoona, has publicly approved the purposes of the local Christian Endeavorers’ good citizenship committee. —Merchant J. J. Gassert, of Ohio, near Lebanon, discovered a man trying to rob his store. His revolver hung fire and the man escaped. —While riding on a freight train near Port Clinton Bernard Winoski, of Mahanoy city, was fatally injured, his head having struck a low bridge. —A correspondent says work in and about Lloydsville is very slack, some of the colliers making less than $2 and none of them over $6 per week. —Lawyer James T. Woodring was only a minute too late to save alive his drowning 3 year-old son John from a trout stream, near his home at Hellertown. —James Bigley, a fugitive highway rob- ber from the McKean county jail, was re- captured while under an assumed name and in a drunken condition, at DuBois. —The Fourth Pennsylvania regiment of the military branch of the Golden Eagles will be largely represented at the State demon- stration in Harrisburg on May 11. —Arrangements were made at Clearfield Monday for the transportation and attend- ance of the Central district firemen at the district convention at Houtzdale in August. —For holding a public church funeral over Mrs. Leonard Simpson, a diphtheria victim, undertaker Frank Burger, of Edwardsville, and Mr. Simpson, the woman’s husband, have been served with warrants of arrest. —Engineers are surveying the balance of the electric road route between Pottsville and Schuylkill Haven. The company’s litiga- tion has been disposed of, and itis expected that this road will be in operation by early fall. —The Berwind-White coal company, which has purchased several thousand acres of coal lands in the vicinity of Scalp Level, has given a contract for twenty double houses, to be erected on its land there for the accommo- dation of its miners. —At Williamsport Saturday during a game of base ball, Mitchell Hooven, a student at Dickinson seminary, was struck on the back of the head with a ball. He fell unconscious suffering from concussion of the brain. He is in a critical condition. —Theannual report of the secretary of in- ternal affairs shows that 50,273,656 tons of bituminous coal were produced in this state last year, a decrease of 1,539,456 tons over the year before. There were 170 fatal acci- dents during the year. —At Jersey Shore Monday evening as J. W. Maguire, a clerk in the Beech Creek shops, was going home on his bicycle, a dog sprang in front of the wheel and threw the rider. The man was rendered unconscious and a cut over the eye was inflicted. The dog was killed. —Some public spirited citizens of near Johnstown will form a co-operative associa- tion for the employment of idle workmen. The persons leading the movement have mineral and timber lands, but no capital, and will share up with those who help to devel- op and operate these lands the proceeds de- rived from the same. The idea is to give un- employed men work. —James Carey, a Newberry lad aged 16 years, left his bed while asleep Saturday night and was found in South Williamsport, a distance of two miles. He was clothed in his shirt, shoes and stockings, and had no recollection of how he had reached that place. The rest of his clothing was found in a plow- ed field, where he had evidently taken them while walking in his sleep. —Summit lodge, No. 312, Free and Accept- , ed Masons, of Ebensburg, occupied their new room in the Barker building last week for the first time, the occasion being a reception, at which a handsome Bible was presented to the lodge by the wives and daughters of the members. Hon. A. A. Barker made the pres- entation speech, which was responded to by Alvin Evans Esa. —Julia Burke, a young girl who went to Johnstown recently from Indiana county, be- came the mother of a child one night last week. The infant was found dead a few hours later. The circumstances aroused sus- picion, but an investigation exonerated the unfortunate woman. ‘1t is thought the child died from neglect, and the helpless mother, ‘| alone in a bare room without fira or food, was unable to save it.