The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-08-30


for the pleasure seeking Americans ia Paris
to be compelled to take any part in its defense
under present circumstances. The military
government of the city have announced that
it will be defended to the last extremity
(Which all may believe who choose); and
Americans, as we'll as other foreigners who
may be reduced to service IN the t'Home
Guard, will be in danger of being sent for
ward to the ramparts to confront the triumph
ant army Of the Grown Prince. Minister
Washburne might enter his protest, and our
Government would not fail in its duty; but
what, in the mean time, might befall the un-
happy victims of the Home Guard?
CABLE DISPATCHES ES-NEwSPAPER EN-
TERPRISE VS.. NEWSPAPER TRICKERY.
From the NJ Y. Herald. lss1
Nearly all our daily city journals are re-
ceiying more or less, according to their finan-
cial capabilities, cable dispatches touching
the movements and developments in Europe
from day to day, military and political. CON
nected with this gigantic war between France
and the allied German States. Of these des-
patches the Herald specials as records of
facts, we may say, without injustice to our
contemporaries, are more nearly correct and
more comprehensive than any others, be-
cause we have spared no labor or expense to
make them so. The rules of the Associated
Press, of which the Herald is O member re-
quire that the private news dispatches of
every journal concerned shall be shared
among its colleagues, and that every such
despatch when received ''shall be imme-
diately handed over to the agent of the asso-
citation to be copied and delivered to the
several papers of the association in the same
manner as other telegraphic news is delv-
cred" .# F8 t
We have always held this to be an unwise
rule-a check upon individual enterprise and
an advantage only to the negligent, the in
competent and the slow coaches of the asso-
citation, in sharing equally the fruits of the
labor of collecting telegraphic news, which
has chiefly fallen upon the Herald. Having
been forced to accept the rule, we have faith
fully complied with its conditions, carefully
avoiding any evasion, hedging or double
dealing. Not SO is it with that model of all
the virtues and of all proprieties, the Tribune.
That journal, on the contrary, since the CON-
mencement of this European war, has delibe-
rately evaded and violated this law. 1t has ap-
propriated to itself, under the weak devices of
the shoplifter, the property Of the associa-
tion to which it belongs; it has been playing
the game of obtaining credit and money upon
false pretenses Its enterprise is fraud, and
its exclusive news is stolen goods. 1t has de-
prived its associates of news which belonged
to them, while it has been sufficiently adroit
as an ''artful dodger' to hold them to their
full share of the expense. And as ''Robert
Macaire" hourished in triumph the handker-
chief filched from neighbor's pocket so
boasts the Tribune of its achievements in
this dirty business.
We have thus been robbed in the dishonest
perversion of rule of our association which
requires that if any part of despatch to any
member of the league, if even word of it is
used by any other member, the payment
therefor shall be the proportion that abuld be
required for the whole despatch There is
another rule of the association under which
all special dispatches that are received by any
member after one o'clock A. NJ shall be sent
to the Office of the Associated Press instead
of being sent to the paper to which they are
addressed, in order that they may be promptly
copied and distributed to the several papers
concerned To avoid this rule or law of the
association the Irjbunehas had its dispatches,
likely to come in after the hour designated,
addressed to one of its subordinates as an
''outsider," a trick which neatly cuts off the
association from such dispatches until it is
convenient for the Tribune to furnish them
to colleagues ''just in time to be too late" for
its publication in their morning edition, un-
less in a mutilated form, but still in time to
exact from them their full proportion of the
costs. Now, as John Randolph is said once
to have remarked in Congress, referring to
certain individuals of the Barnum school,
'"These men may be very smart, and this, Mr..
Speaker, may be called Yankee enterprise
and Yankee shrewdness; but, sir, according
to our old-fashioned notions, it is Yankee
trickery and Yankee swindling" n
WHAT PERSONAL GOVERNMENT HAS