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You can see below, first, an image of the whole article, and then, further below, I've cut the article up into three segments to make everything bigger and more legible.
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1899-10-27: ​tour stops---images---audio---~TRANSCRIPT~---notes---links---site navigation
PROF. C. F. STOKEY AGAINST IMPERIALISM.

AN INTENSE REPUBLICAN SAYS HE WILL VOTE FOR M'LEAN.

Believes It the Duty of Liberty-loving People to Rebuke the Administration -- What One of the Best Known Republicans In the County Says About Imperialism -- Will Deliver an Address on Next Thursday Night.

Probably no man in Stark county is better known than Prof. Charles Stokey, and probably no man in the county has been imbued, in past years, with more intense Republicanism, but this year Mr. Stokey is going to support John R. McLean and the Democratic state ticket.  He does not feel that he is leaving his party to do so, but that his party has left him and has departed, for the time, from the declaration of independence and from the spirit of Republican institutions.  Mr. Stokey has remarked to several friends what he intended to do and his remarks came to the ears of a News-Democrat man, who interviewed him today.  Mr. Stokey had no hesitancy in stating his position.  He did so with a heavy heart, however.  The tenets of his party have been almost a religion with him and it was with profound sorrow that he is compelled to follow the dictates of his conscience and decline to support the administration policies of his neighbor and warm personal friend, President McKinley.  Mr. Stokey is a student and has been one of the foremost educators in Eastern Ohio.  He is a man of deep convictions, possessing the strength to assert them and the courage to follow them.  He believes the policy the administration has adopted is wrong and says so.  He is ready to discuss the issues and intends to let his neighbors and friends know just where he stands and his reasons for taking the position.  He will make an address Thursday evening in the assembly room of the city hall in which he will discuss imperialism, which he considers the most important issue now before the American people.  His address will be well worth the attention of all thinking men.  Mr. Stokey mentioned this meeting in his interview.  The reporter asked:

"Mr. Stokey, it is said that you contemplate making an address at the assembly room in city hall Thursday evening on the subject of imperialism.  Is that true?"

"Yes, I intend to speak on the supreme issue"

"Are you for or against imperialism?"

"I am opposed to imperialism, but not to expansion.  Expansion, properly so called, is growth, and growth is the development not the perversion of the original nature of a thing."

"Do you consider the administration's policy in the Philippines, expansion or imperialism?"

"It has thus far been conducted in the spirit of imperialism.  It is owing to my strong conviction on that point that I am going to speak."

"You have always been a Republican?"

"Yes sir, and I am a Republican now, and I find in the country at large and right here in Canton, that a great many of my Republican friends are with me in my position on the supreme issue -- or rather I am with them."

"You are a personal friend of President McKinley?"

"Yes sir, I have been a personal friend of President McKinley for about 32 years.  I supported him in 1896 and did all that I could possibly do for his election, and I have always thus supported him."

"You have no personal grievances that influence you in the position you have taken?"

None whatever.  I have asked this administration for nothing, expected nothing, and am therefore not disappointed.  If personal feeling entered into the matter at all, it would have a tendancy to influence me in the other direction.  I have always been treated fairly and kindly by my Republican friends, while on the other hand I have been treated most unjustly by some of the Democrats in Canton, particularly by the Democratic school board.  I would be unworthy of American citizenship if I were to allow personal feeling to influence my vote on a question of such vital importance.  I have always had and still have a warm personal regard for Mr. McKinley and it grieves me beyond expression that I cannot endorse his administration in everything."

"How do you propose to vote at the coming election?"

"The Republicans met in state convention first.  They put a plank in their platform endorsing the administrations Philippine policy.  The Democrats met a few weeks later and put a plank in their platform condemning that policy.  Now, by consent of the leaders of both parties, the choice between those planks is the supreme issue the coming election.  The question of protection or free trade and the question of th gold standard or 16 to 1 are comparatively insignificant in this state campaign.  The president, himself, in his recent tour through the west, seems to have accepted the plan of the other party leaders in making his policy in the Philippines the supreme issue.  The issue is clearly defined, and on that same issue I shall not hesitate to vote the Democratic state ticket.  When I voted the Republican ticket last fall I hoped that congress would at the then approaching session, reverse the tendencies that I then saw and settle the Philippine question in harmony with the spirit of our institutions.  But the success of the Republican ticket at the election was taken as an endorsement of the tendencies apparent at that time.  Then, for the first time, I regretted having voted as I had.  It would be inexcusable to make that mistake at this time.  There is no other way provided in which to express my clear and profound convictions than by voting the Democratic state ticket.  It is not a question of men, but of measures."
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1899-10-27: ​​​tour stops---images---audio---transcript---~NOTES~---links---site navigation
1.
Mr. Stokey is going to support John R. McLean and the Democratic state ticket.
Wikipedia says:
John Roll McLean (September 17, 1848 – June 9, 1916) was an American businessman and politician who was the owner and publisher of The Washington Post and The Cincinnati Enquirer, and part owner of two professional baseball teams. He is the namesake of McLean, Virginia.
and
McLean was a long-time delegate to the Democratic National Committee, representing the state of Ohio at Democratic national conventions of 1884, 1888, 1892, 1896, and 1900. He was a candidate for the United States Senate in 1885 and received the Democratic Party's nomination for the Ohio governor's seat in 1899. He lost both elections.

2.
Mr. Stokey has remarked to several friends what he intended to do and his remarks came to the ears of a News-Democrat man, who interviewed him today.
Yeah, right.  All terrifically spontaneous.

3.
Mr. Stokey is a student and has been one of the foremost educators in Eastern Ohio.
So, for whatever reason, Papa Charles no longer has a job in teaching.

4.
He will make an address Thursday evening in the assembly room of the city hall in which he will discuss imperialism, which he considers the most important issue now before the American people.
We have the speech: There was a subsequent speech, but so far I haven't come across is.

5.
"Do you consider the administration's policy in the Philippines, expansion or imperialism?"
"It has thus far been conducted in the spirit of imperialism.  It is owing to my strong conviction on that point that I am going to speak."
The US acquired the Philippines as a result of the Spanish American War, which happened in 1898.  Here's a quote I found about the issue of imperialism in:
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/war
The decision by U.S. policymakers to annex the Philippines was not without domestic controversy. Americans who advocated annexation evinced a variety of motivations: desire for commercial opportunities in Asia, concern that the Filipinos were incapable of self-rule, and fear that if the United States did not take control of the islands, another power (such as Germany or Japan) might do so. Meanwhile, American opposition to U.S. colonial rule of the Philippines came in many forms, ranging from those who thought it morally wrong for the United States to be engaged in colonialism, to those who feared that annexation might eventually permit the non-white Filipinos to have a role in American national government. Others were wholly unconcerned about the moral or racial implications of imperialism and sought only to oppose the policies of President William McKinley’s administration.

I don't know what Papa Charles thought when his oldest son Will, an officer in the Army Corps of engineers, was sent to the Philippines in 1903 for a couple of years.

6.
I have been a personal friend of President McKinley for about 32 years.
So Papa Charles considers the McKinley to be a friend of his, and he met McKinley around 1867.  For McKinley, Wikipedia says:
After the war ended in 1865, McKinley decided on a career in the law and began studying in the office of an attorney in Poland, Ohio. The following year, he continued his studies by attending Albany Law School in New York state. After studying there for less than a year, McKinley returned home and in March 1867 was admitted to the bar in Warren, Ohio.
That same year, he moved to Canton, the county seat of Stark County, and set up a small office.
For Papa Charles, we have in the 1904 biographical compendium Meantime, in 1867, Prof. Stokey began teaching in the public schools of Stark county and after finishing his collegiate course taught one year in the state of Pennsylvania. 
So Papa Charles met McKinley when both of them were just starting out in Canton.  McKinley was almost exactly two years older than Papa Charles.

7.
I have always been treated fairly and kindly by my Republican friends, while on the other hand I have been treated most unjustly by some of the Democrats in Canton, particularly by the Democratic school board.
I wish I knew the circumstances in which Papa Charles parted ways with the Canton public educational system.  He had stomach, bowel, and liver issues, according to his disability pension application in early 1899.  Was he so disabled that he couldn't work a regular job?  Or were there other issues?  We know that he was abusive to Mama Margaret.  Did others feel the effects of his temper as well?  Was it that the physical issues gave the board an excuse to tell a difficult employee, "It's time for you to leave"?  Or was it that Papa Charles made the decision to leave solely due to his physical issues but he thought he should be getting some sort of disability pension from the Canton school system?  Or were there other issues?  I'm keeping my eye out for more information, but I'm not terribly hopeful.

Later note: Papa Charles liked to shift blame from himself to others.  See: That he has written out many confessions and undertaken to compel her to sign them, in which she was to confess that she had been guilty of all the shortcomings of the family, and the cause of all the trouble, and all bad luck, and whatever had gone wrong or between her and her husband was her fault and that he was not to blame in any manner for the same, but that she, alone, was responsible therefore; that he would call the children in and some times his sisters and read the confession or confessions in their presence, and in their presence undertake to compel her to sign the same.

...and also: He avers that the examination to which he was subjected, under his application for increase pension, was not a true and honest examination, or at least that the report of his disabilities was not a true and honest report of said disabilities at that time, and he has reason to believe that the report so made by said Board of Examining Surgeons at Massillon, Ohio, was unjust and prejudicial to him, and the result of personal prejudice conceived against him by one of more of the members of said Board.

8.
The question of protection or free trade and the question of th gold standard or 16 to 1 are comparatively insignificant in this state campaign.
Tariffs were an issue at this time; Republicans were for them and Democrats were against them.  And William Jennings gave his Cross of Gold speech against the gold standard at the Democratic National Convention in 1896:
You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.
(With thanks to Wikipedia.)

9.
I do not know anything more about this stand that Papa Charles took.  The other things that were going on in his life were money issues (he had just gotten a disability pension related to his Civil War service, and was thinking about selling the house that he lived in with Mama Margaret and whatever kids were at home) and the ongoing abuse of Mama Margaret.  His life was by no means a bed of roses, and here he was, riling people up.
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