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Show PREPARING CAMPAIGN AMMUNITION. - , The great government printing office at Washington is working work-ing night and day rushing out, under the name "public documents," speeches, pamphlets, etc., by the hundred thousand for the-use of candidates for congress in the campaigns just now coming on. Uncle Sam is supposed to be neutral and he manufactures ammunition ammu-nition for both sides right in the same building; he lets them fire at each other, knowing that it makes diversion for the people, and that no great amount of harm is going to be done. And he even carries it free for them and shoots it into the constituents' mail boxes. Or rather, the people pay for it, and the cost figures that much in the annual postal deficit. This year the Democrats stole a march on tho Republicans in the neatest manner possible. Usually the party in control manages to get the lion's share of the good things, but the Republican managers were caught napping this time. Under the rules of congress a member can secure "leave to print" anything he want3 as a public document, by making it a part of the records of congress, and it then goes through the mails free. Congressman Lloyd, chairman of the Democratic congressional cam- 1 paign committee, therefore had the title-page and introduction for j a "Democratic Campaign Textbook" inserted in the Congressional i Record. I This attracted no attention from the enemy at the time. But later a big book was made up of extracts from the Record in support sup-port of the Democratic side, and now this book is being printed at the government printing-office and sent out broadcast to speakers under the franking privilege, thus saving the Democrats a lot of money. The Republicans feel very sore at being overreached in this way, as they thought they knew all the tricks. No matter what side of any current question you take, you can find convincing reading matter at the government printing office of-fice on that side. This lot of 50,000 speeches is going into Kansas; it proves conclusively that the prosperity of the farmer is due to the tariff. That lot over there is going into the samo state, but it is to be used by the other1 side, and it shows just as clearly that the tariff, the trusts and Cannonism are responsible for all evils, , including even the ''poll-evil." j Then there are lots of special pamphlets for specially hard cases. Some of them have titles which are well-nigh irresistible, such as "Muckrakers of Other Days," "Lest We Forget," etc. In fact they sound like best-seller novels rather than speeches filled chock full of figures that no one understands. One of Champ Clark's speeches is being boomed under this legend: "All the Perfumes of Araby the Blest Cannot Sweeten the Payne-Aldrich Bill to Please the Dainty Nostrils of the People." To offset such long titles the Republican congressional campaign cam-paign committee has fixed on two of its best documents the terse word3 : ' Spike A ' ' and ' ' Spike B. " These sound mysteriously businesslike, busi-nesslike, and a number of Democrats have been converted by merely seeing the title, and not reading the inside at all. |