A Clever Young Fellow Named Clinton

The Cortland News, Friday, March 16, 1883.

Fox Chasing.

   The sportsmen of this vicinity have lately enjoyed the pastime of two or three fox chases in the south part of the village.

   Last Saturday afternoon the long race was postponed on account of the weather. For the race of three miles the following entries were made: J. M. Steele, D. A. Kelley, Chas. Clement, Fred Tarbell, Manda Wilcox, Chas. Gallagher, Walter Hookaway, Fred Graham, H. W. Southwick, H. Wilcox, J. W. Cudworth, E. H. Perkins, 2 dogs.

   Fred Graham took the first prize, H. Hookaway the second, H. Wilcox the third. Two shake-purse races were run, for the first of which Messrs. Southwick, Steele, Cudworth, Pratt, Perkins, Tripp, Gallagher and Morris entered dogs, with the following result: Morris 1st, Tripp 2d. For the second race Messrs. Graham, Hookaway, Tarbell, Kelley, Wilcox, Clement, Burdick, Steele, Morris and Gallagher entered dogs, the first prize being won by Morris, second by Hookaway.

CORTLAND AND VICINITY.

   Mr. M. L. Alexander has bought or Mr. M. Rowley for $1,200 a lot on Clayton street on which he will erect a house this season,

   Mr. Geo. J. Mager has rented the Bauder house on Lincoln street, now occupied by Messrs. R. P. and E. A. Barnard, who intend to remove to Binghamton.

   Lazy, shiftless persons and those who have not the fear of the trustees before their eyes are known by the snow and ice on their sidewalks.

   There will be an entertainment given in Taylor Hall, April 6, for the benefit of the village library. Further particulars will be given next week.

   Ex-Sheriff Van Hoesen will remain in the court-house. County Clerk Bourne has rented the house on Grant street lately bought by Mr. Van Hoesen.

   Mrs. F. E. Glover, who has been visiting in Oswego county and elsewhere for three or four weeks past, returned last Friday and on Sunday resumed her duties as organist at the Presbyterian church.

   Snow fell freely hereabouts on Sunday and Monday, accompanied by a lively wind, but in no respect was it a storm of unusual severity. That is as near to Wiggins' storm prediction as the fulfillment came.

   Wiggins is now termed the late professor.

   Messrs. E. A. Fish and C. P. Walrad have purchased of Mrs. Joseph Kinney her premises on Adams street [Homer Avenue],— ten acres in all, through which they will extend Lincoln and Merrick [Maple Avenue] streets, and open the land to purchasers of village lots.

   We publish this week the second letter from Mr. D. Eugene Smith. He has been very ill from sea-sickness, which has precluded his writing other than home and business letters. Hereafter we shall doubtless be able to give something from him nearly every week, until his trip is completed.

   From the Board of Education we have received a communication too long and too late for publication in full. It sets forth as facts that, of the $5,000 appropriated for school-houses, $1,650 were paid for the lots; that the remainder is not sufficient to erect the buildings, which, in view of the rapid increase of population, ought to be of two departments and large enough to accommodate at least one hundred pupils each, especially as the schools are to be graded; and that estimates show that two such school-houses [Owego and Schermerhorn schools—CC editor] can not be built for less than $2,500 each. Therefore, they ask that at the corporation election the tax-payers vote for such purpose the sum of $2,000.

   The Binghamton Democratic Leader in its announcement that the Governor's veto of the bill reducing the fare on the elevated railways from ten to five cents has been sustained in the Assembly, says that Major Bartlett, the Member from Broome county, “voted in favor of low fares, and for the doctrine that the people have some rights as well as railroad corporations.” Dr. Nelson, the Member for Cortland county, voted against the bill and in favor of the Governor's veto.

   Indignation meetings against the excise bill which passed the Assembly two weeks ago, and for which Dr. Nelson voted, are being held in different parts of the State. A large meeting was held at Albany Tuesday night, in which not only leading temperance men took part, but many prominent men who have never been identified with that side also participated. The sweeping changes proposed by the bill in favor of free whisky are waking up all lovers of good order. We should think the Boss [reference to Cortland Standard publisher William Clark—CC editor] would call a meeting.

   Last week we explained Dr. Nelson's vote with the free whisky men on the new excise bill and on the last page of this issue will be further seen how he is representing the people of this county. The Doctor never pretended to be any thing but a strictly partisan Democrat of the aristocratic, Bourbon school. Therefore he is not going back on any pledges or pretensions. The Standard Ring, however, procured his election by hoodwinking the temperance men, the tax-payers and the opposers of monopoly into withholding their votes from Mr. Gage, whose interests and principles were entirely different from Dr. Nelson’s.

Democracy for Monopolies.

   A bill was introduced into the Legislature, reducing the rate of fares on the elevated railroads of New York city from ten cents to five. The bill was a proper one to pass in the interests of all the people, and one which would still leave an immense profit to the companies. That this is so is substantially conceded by the companies in view of the fact that they charge only five cents before eight o'clock in the morning, and sell tickets at that rate at their principal office.

   But there is at all times a large transient population in the city, people from this county and every county in the State as well as from other States, who have not time or means of procuring these tickets, and buy at the stations at the legal rate of ten cents.

   There is a large laboring class living in the cheap houses of the upper part of the city and working in the downtown stores and factories five miles away, whose time during business hours is their employer's. They have to use the elevated roads to get to and from their work. Every train carries from 200 to 800 passengers, and as the trip occupies only three-fourths of an hour, each trip brings an income of from $20 to $80, and each train earns from $400 to $1000 per day, with an expense out of not more than $75 a day for each train. The companies, of course, desire to retain this immense profit, but in the interest of the laboring classes and people generally they can forego half of it and still have a heavy profit. To laboring men earning one dollar a day the additional ten cents a day amounts to over $30 a year and is quite an item.

   This bill passed the Legislature, being supported by a large majority of the

Republicans and a minority of the Democrats, and the Democratic Governor Cleveland vetoed it. Dr. J. C. Nelson, the Assemblyman from Cortland county, was also found on the side of wealthy corporations, and voted against the Bill and to sustain the veto.

   What interest had the Member from this county to vote against the interests of the people of this county and of the laboring classes generally? Perhaps the Boss of the Standard Ring, who was so anxiously calling on anti-monopolists, as well as temperance men, to help defeat the Republican candidate [Gage] for Member last fall, and [who] rejoiced over Dr. Nelson's election, can explain the matter.

Look on this Picture!

   No newspaper in the State did so much last fall to elect a Democratic Legislature and Democratic Governor as the New York Times. Under its lead at least 200,000 Republicans either staid away from the polls or else voted the Democratic ticket. To all such we commend the following article from the N. Y. Times of the 9th inst., merely adding that Dr. J. C. Nelson of this county voted for the fraudulent scheme by which Bliss retained his seat:

   A more disgraceful exhibition of narrow and unscrupulous partisanship has seldom been witnessed in any legislative body than the action of the Democrats in the Assembly, last night, in awarding to Mr. Bliss the seat to which Mr. Sprague was elected by the people of the Thirteenth District of this city. Mr. Bliss got his seat by a shallow piece of trickery in the transposition of the vote of one of the election districts, which was fairly recognized by the majority of a special committee. A minority of two Democrats of that committee reported in favor of Bliss's fraudulent claim to his certificate of election, without assigning any reasons for their action. The majority report set forth the unanswerable grounds on which Mr. Sprague's election rested, and the fairness and honesty of the Assembly was appealed to in support of an act of simple justice. But the majority of the Assembly, including leaders of such pretensions to character and ability as Mr. Benedict and Mr. Erastus Brooks, have deliberately ignored all considerations of fairness, justice, and honesty, lest a single vote should be lost of the two-thirds already at their disposal, and lest Tammany Hall should be alienated by the undoing of a fraud as glaring as any of those practiced by the Election Inspectors of the old Ring. A party capable of action like this is certainly unworthy of the support of any honest man.

Harford.

   We have been studying the result of the late town election in Harford and considering it in the light of the past history of that town, and have come to the conclusion that it teaches a lesson that should not be allowed to pass unnoticed.

   A few years ago Harford was the banner Republican town in this county. It had but four Democratic voters in the entire town. When the Democrats made a special drive at any nominee of the Republican party we were not obliged to wait for an announcement of the result in Harford but were safe in marking down a good round hundred Republican majority before the polls closed and the counts began. The leaders there then were such men as Dr. Knapp, J. W. Rood, P. A. Johnson, F. B. Edmunds, Erving Taintor, and that class of men. They believed in the Republican party and Republican principles and acted accordingly.

   Of late a new set of men have arrogated to themselves the right to leadership. They are ambitious men who are Republicans because they see there the brightest prospects for personal success. When they fail of such success they bolt and go over to the enemy to wreak their vengeance and show the Republican party their importance to its success.

   Last year a clever young fellow named Clinton rode this county over to satisfy the people that he was the only man fitted by education and social standing to be elected as Member of Assembly. It was his second effort in that direction. The people expressed a preference for another and nominated Charles W. Gage, one of the best men ever put in nomination in this county. The duty of young Mr. Clinton was to support his successful competitor. He did no such thing. He joined the sore-headed bolters and became secretary of the bolters' county committee. To keep in favor with the regulars he slyly declared to them that he was put on that committee without his knowledge or consent, but it leaked out that he attended their meetings and was one of the most persistent bolters in the sore-headed brigade. He had been elected supervisor of his town the spring before. He came to the annual meeting of the Board alter election and was the companion of W. H. Clark and that ilk.

   The result of it is the people of good old Harford have set down upon him, to his surprise and the appalling terror of his chums here in Cortland. He now appreciates the saws of which we spoke lately in referring to Hollenbeck's downfall. “History repeats itself." If a man attempts to tear down a party that will not obey his behests he must not grumble if he is "hoist with his own petard."

   The first we ever heard of Mr. A. W. Clinton was when he bolted the nomination of Judge Smith, a stranger to him, in 1877. His last political act was bolting the whole Republican ticket out of spite in 1882, and the fruit of these bolts was harvested by him in the spring of 1883. Pretty quick retribution; but no one can regret it only as his conduct so disgusted the people as to haul down a portion of the Republican ticket with him. He deserved all he got, and the chastisement came none too quick. It should be a warning to all other ambitious young men who are following this Clark off as guerrilla scouts for the Democratic party.

   We have no desire to say anything harsh against Mr. Clinton, but as the party organ it becomes our painful duty now and then to point a moral or teach a lesson by calling attention to bits of history. If by such review anybody is hurt, he must blame the fellow who made the history and not the organ that calls attention to it. Mr. Clinton is young yet, and if he has as much ability as he thinks he has he will see his mistake and avoid its repetition.

An Attack Upon the People.

   Much wisdom has been sought for and many expedients tried during past years, with a view of making our State prisons self-sustaining. That prisoners should be kept at work is conceded on all sides to be best, partly as punishment, partly to teach the prisoners to work at respectable trades so that they may leave confinement with an ability to support themselves at honest labor without resort to crime, and partly as tending to keep their minds occupied, and thus render them more reconciled to their confinement, and prevent plotting and insubordination. This labor should be of a kind that will also help pay expenses and, as much as possible, relieve tax-payers from the support of these great institutions with their scores of officials and thousands of prisoners.

   At last, under Republican management, the State prisons have substantially become self-supporting. Now come forward the monopolists and claim that this utilizing of prison labor is decreasing their profits. They continue their business which shows that it must be profitable still, and they only claim that they could get higher prices and thus make more out of the people who buy their goods, if the men who use this prison labor and pay the State for it did not compete with them. This is an argument that ought to defeat them; for if we are so using convict labor as to relieve tax-payers from the support of the prisons and at the same time keeping down the price of the goods manufactured for the benefit of purchasers, we are killing two birds with one stone and doing a good thing. This prison labor is let out to the highest bidder and these men who complain of it can have it if they offer the most for it.

   The monopolists have combined against the people in this matter, and a bill forbidding the manufacture of hats in State prison has already been before the Legislature. This is the entering wedge and is to be followed by others, which will substantially put the support of the prisons upon the tax-payers,

   Cortland county is a tax-paying county. There are no monopolies in the county, certainly no hat monopolies to be protected. It is the interest of every man in Cortland county to have the State prisons sustain themselves, and to have hats sold as cheaply as may be. Yet Dr. Nelson, the Member of Assembly from Cortland county, voted for this bill to prevent the manufacture of hats in the prisons. How does it happen that his interest is with the hat monopolists who do not live in Cortland county, and against his constituents?

   Perhaps the Standard Ring who brought about his election and rejoiced over it can explain it. Two years ago Hon. A. A. Carley voted against a similar bill, which was defeated. The Standard Ring sought to defeat him and to elect Dr. Nelson at the following election by using Dr. Bolles to draw off Republican votes.

  

1876 Map of Cortland (re: J. Kinney lot, Adams Street): http://www.historicmapworks.com/Map/US/14995/Cortland/