The advocate and Topeka tribune. [volume], December 28, 1892, Page 4, Image 4

About The advocate and Topeka tribune. [volume] (Topeka, Kan.) 1892-1894

Image provided by: Kansas State Historical Society; Topeka, KS

                
AND TOPEKA TBIBUHE
mowu PAms of run Pbofu's Fabtt
Of KAS8A0.
N. R. P. A.
Published every Wednesday Dy
fE ADVOCATE PUBLISHING CO.
Room! 43 and 48 Knox Building,
TOPEKA. KANSAS.
$1.00 PEi; YEAIl.
ADVERTISING RATES.
Display matter, 20 eeoU per line, agate meas
urement, (i ones to uie men.;
Beading notices, 40 cents per line.
Address aU eonunonicatlons to
TH2 ADVCCATI PUBLISHIX3 CO.,
Topska. Kansas,
Enter! at the post office at Topeka, Kansas, as
ocona cuus mscter.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 28 1201
The Review of Reviews was slightly
previous in publishing the portrait of
a member of the Smith family as
gOTernor-elect of Kansas.
By all means let us encourage the
Nicaragua canal scheme, and m due
course of time we may revel in a na
tional scandal as delightful as that
which France is enjoying now.
It is earnestly to be hoped that
Kansas will soon have a labor com
missioner who will have a, higher
object in view than to distort statis
tics in the interest of a political party.
This has been the work of the present
commissioner and his " had-to-do-it-Leland"
assistant for the past four
years. The reports issued from that
office are not worth the paper they
are printed on.
Spkakino of th) efforts to be made
to reclaim the legislature which the
republican canvassing board has at
tempted to steal, the Capital assumes
an attitude of righteous indignation
and taks loudly of revolutionary
methods. We would remind the Capi
tal that the revolutionary step has al
ready been taken by the Humphrey
Higgins gang of anarchists, in the
attempt to subvert the will of the
people as expressed at the polls, and
the people, in reclaiming their own,
are justified in defeating the infamous
schemes of the revolutionists.
Thxri is something pathetio in the inci
dent at H meetead, where out of 300 chil
dren who wrote to Santa Claus, 250 asked
for fooee and clothing. Most of the mn at
B'imettead were owners of homes of their
own, and when the strike ooourred whioh
left them without employment, the hardship
w8 more serere than it would hare been if
they had been domioiled temporarily. There
ought to be some remedy found for condi
tions that result from a oonoentration of
capital that populates and depopulates vil
lsges at the will of one man. Strikes are
not the remedy. New Totk Journal of
Finanoe.
There is a remedy if the victims of
our vicious legislation ever learn to
apply it. It lies in the rescue of the
government ' from plutocratic, rule
and its restoration to the people. Tne
strike must be at the ba Jot boi. ,
TOO THIH TO WA8H.
The disposition of a few man-worshipers
to relieve Dr. Macune of all
responsibility in the matter of send
ing out the much-talked-about demo
cratic campaign documents as officii!
Alliance literature and saddling it all
on Tillman, will not find many sympa
thizers among those at all familiar
with the facts. If the whole truth
was known, it would be known that
Macune was not only a participant in
the whole scheme but that he is
really the writer of several of the
documents. They bear his earmarks
so unmistakably that any on who has
been at all familiar with his style
need make no mistake about it This
is especially true of the so-called Till
man address which was sent out as a
supplement to the Economist after it
bad been distributed in pamphlet
form. Tillman never wrote a word
of it, as any one knows who knows
anything about him; nor is he capa
ble of writing it.
There are a few men in the Alii
ance who have been in the habit of
looking on Macune as the Alliance,
just as some men in Kansas insisted
upon regarding Senator Ingalls as
the republican party in 1890. The
republican party got badly left in
consequence of their idolatry, and its
fate should furnish a lesson to the
worshipers of Dr. Macune. He has
never been in a national council or a
convention yet that he did not have
to be vindicated from some charge.
He has been a supporter of the Na
tional Union Company and is respon
sible for the victimizing of Alliance
men in different parts of the country
through that rotten concern, for
which he has undoubtedly been well
paid. His record is musty since he
first appeared before the country as a
prominent Alliance man.
There have been many things said
concerning him in the defense which
a few papers have attempted to make,
which are supremely ridiculous to
those conversant with the facts, but
nothi g quite so outrageous as the
plea of a certain Texan paper in which
it is held to be altogether improbable
that he could be guilty of treachery
on the ground that he had been so
long and so intimately known and
trusted by the late lamented Col.
Polk, to whom he is said to have been
a confidential adviser for several
years past. We know this to be un
true, and we know many other men
and women who kno v it to be untrue,
and who will ot hesitate to testify to
its untruth if called upon. As a
matter of fact Col. Folk and Dr. Ma
cune were never on confidential
terms. - Col. Folk never trusted him.
As officers of the Alliance they nec
essarily had to confer together con
cerning official matters, but Dr.
Macune never missed an opportunity
to annoy Col. Polk or render his posi
tion as president of the National
Alliance as unpleasant as possible.
CoL Polk's death may even be, in a
measure, attributed to this annoy
ance, and to the extra labor and
anxiety imposed upon him by this
pretended friend. No more hypo
critical farce was ever enacted than '
that of Dr. Macune standing up at,
I Omaha and at Memphis and pro
nouncing a enlogy upon CoL Folk,
r and this was remarked by many who
heard him and who knew of their
relations before Col.. Folk's d ath.
We do not like to speak of thebe
things now. It is an unpleasant sub
ject upon which to write, but when
the would-be defenders of Dr. Ma
cune undertake to make our honored
leader, whose lips are now forever
sealed, stand up as a witness in his
behalf, knowing whereof we speak, we
must enter a protest. We are not
alone in this knowledge, and un
pleasant as it may be, if this
line of defense is pursued we shall
call out the witnesses. CoL Polk was
a true man and one who was univer
sally loved and trusted. Thote who
are using his name in this defense
know its power and the potency of its
influence; but there were enough
Alliance men who enjoyed his fullest
confidence who will, if necessary,
state what they know concerning the
facts to which we have only briefly
referred. Whatever may be said in
defense of Dr. Macune, we advise his
friends not tc pursue the subject of
his friendship and confidential rela
tions with Col. Folk any further.
THEY MUST GO.
The Waiot December, 1892, pub
lishes a " blacklist" of wht it terms
"obnoxious" employes and attaches
of the Kansas penitentiary who, it
says, should be removed without de
lay by the new administration. The
term obnoxious is a very mild one to
be thus applied, especially if the
statements published in the Waif re
specting the treatment of prisoners
in the pen are correct, and there is no
doubt that they are. Instead of be
ing a reformatory institution, as it
should be, the Kansas pen seems to
be a place where brutal fiends are
groomed and fed upon the fat of the
land, and paid big salaries to practice
the cruelties to which their depraved
nature prompts them upon the help
less victims who are placed under
their care. There are too many in
stances in which, if the prisoner and
his brutal persecutor were to change
places, the ends of justice would be
better served.
But the pen is not the only state
institution in which abuses exist that
demand the attention of the new ad
ministration. The insane asylum,
especially the Topeka asylum, should
be renovated from top to bottom. It
is a well-known fact that institutions
of this character throughout the
country have been prostituted to the
base purpose of imprisoning perfectly
sane people who happened to be in
the way of somebody who was able to
offer inducements for such imprison
ment, and, unless Dame Rumor is
seriously mistaken, the Topeka asy
lum is no exception to this rule. Be
this as it may, cruelties and abuses
are practiced there no less atrocious
than those practiced at the pen.
These things demand investigation
and correction.
There is also another feature of this
institution that demands attention.
An insane asylum is presumably es
tablished to afford facilities for the
scientific treatment of the insane with
a view to their cure, as well as the
proper care of the incurable. Modern
medical science has absolutely dem
onstrated tha many of the cases that
come under proper treatment may be
restored to health, and it is a subject
of common remark that in this re
spect the present management of our
asylam is especially incompetent and
inefficient. 'Even if there were no
higher consideration, a proper regard
for economy should cause the publio
institutions of the state to be placed
in honest and competent hands, and
the boards having supervision of
them should be selected with some
regard to the humane instincts which
influence and govern thir lives. The
new administration will undoubtedly
give these matters the early attention
which their importance demands.
THE AGONY 13 0?E.
President Harrison's great inter
national monetary conference has ad
journed without any action whatever
looking to the settlement of the silver
question. Every man whose eyes
were not absolutely blinded by par
tisan dust knew that this would be
the outcome of the farce from the
beginning. The London Times
stated some months ago that every
one in England knew that the con
ference was only intended to brace
up the republican party in the United
States until after election, and was
never expected to accomplish any
thing more. The English delegates
had the same instructions that- they
had at the Paris conference, and 4
those instructions did not permit them
to even vote pro or con upon any
proposition involving any change in
the monetary policy of Great Britain.
Every person at all informed in re
lation to current events knew this,
and yet the farce has been played,
many people have been fooled by
it, and the actors have probably spent
the $80,000 appropriated to place
the show upon the boards. What
next?
FEAUDULENT USE Of THE MAILS.
During the recent campaign there
were tons of republican campaign
documents sent through the mails by
the republican state central commit
tee of Kansas, in violation of law, in
envelopes franked by United States
senators and members of congress.
This is a matter that demands inves
tigation by the present congress, and
if a few of our friends who received
these documents will forward them to
us with the franked envelopes in
which they were enclosed, we will see
that they go to parties in W ashington
who will ask that such investigation
be instituted.
Whatever the Populists of the
Kansas legislature may do with re
gard to the election of a senator, they
will not bargain their votes away for
money or for any other kind of spoils.
The members who have been re
elected demonstrated two years ago
that they ware made of the right kind
of stuff, and we are not afraid of the
new ones. They will elect whom they
think will best please the people of
Kansas.