New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1872-05-26
Wrong Notions About Mr.. greeley.
From the Golden Age.l

Among the popular fallacies concerning
Horace Greeley are a few which we will
point out and correct.
He is thought to be deficient in business
tact or executive force. On the contrary,
those who have been long and intimately
associated in business with him, know that
he has a staunch and excellent judgment in
all affairs of money and property. His gov
ernanee of the I}'ibt1ee-a great institution
of which he is not only the outward figure.
head but the central sOul-has from the
beginning of its history, and particularly
during the last dozen years, been a signal
executive success. Mr.. Greeley has
always had as much to do with the.
pecuniarv as with the editorial man
agement of his paper. To preside with skill
over such an Observation-Disclosures as
such an Office does, daily control and di-
rection Of hundreds of emplOyes-calls into
exercise the very highest executive and ad
ministrative faculties. No better tribute
can be paid to the success with which Mr..
Greeley gets along with his associates
than the fact that the same men
remain year after year in the same sta
tons, with as little change almost as
among the feudal retainers Of a medieval
lord. The foreman in the pressrOOm-now
a bearded patriarch-is the same man who
helped Mr.. Greeley more than thirty years
ago to get out the first copy of the Tribune.
The foreman in the composing room did the
same. Thus, two heads of departments
have remained at their posts for third of
a century, and both are proprietOrs. Ask
these men whether Mr.. Greeley understands
anything about business. There is not a
paper miller in Manayunck who under
stands the paper market better than the
farmer of Chappaqua. All radicals are con-
sentative somewhere. Mr.. Greeley's con-
servatism is in finance. He is a great be-
lever in thrift, economy, debtpaying and
mOney-saving. He long ago found the
philosophers stOne-'pay as you CO." The
only reason he is not millionaire is be-
cause of his unbridled generosity. He turns
nobody empty away. But he has business
tact and administrative judgment of the
same snrewd kind which characterized Ben
jamin Franklin.
Another current absurdity about him is
| that while he is an honest man himself, he
| is surrounded by coterie of knaves. Mr.
Greeley habitually associates with the best
men and women of his time. Editors law
yers, Senators. Judges, GOvernOrs-frOm all
| parts of the country-these are the people
| who daily seek him, and with whom ne eats
| and drinks. Of course, a newspaper office
| keeps an open gate to all corners, and as
| Mr.. Greeley is the most accessible of men,
| very many schemers and charlatans and
rogues enter with the rest, saluting him,
receiving
| and half recognizing nod. But ANYBODY
| who imagines that Mr.. Greeley has not
| disciplined and penetrating instinct for
| character makes as great a mistake as in
| suppOsing that when he goes to sleep in
| church he does not hear the sermon. We
| have known Mr.. Greeley to sleep through
| long speech, and then. at its close, rise and
| reply to 1t, point for point. In like manner,
| through the same gentle oblivion which
4
| OF men there is a wakefulness OF scrutiny
| which detects the scOundrel at a glance. In
| this sort of insight he reminds us OF A0ra-
| ham Lincoln.
Another Of the fallacies is that he IS given
| to blunders We do not say that MT
| Greeleyis free from blunderlng. Bus IL
must be remembered that the edlVoF o.
| daily paper is necessarily treque4S Dion-
| derer. No matter who the man IS, II he
publicly prints his opinion 365 time year,
he will inevitably be wrong sometimes
nay, often. Another person may wait TIL
| his Judgment of a case ripens, out an editor
must express his Judgment without wait
ing. Accordingly, he says to-day what he
must unsay tomorrow. ms IS the ext
gency of his profession. The foremost man
in if ia NOT free from the law which In
cludes all its votarie5 in this common in
trinity of misiudgment. But put any other
man On such a rOstrum as the Tribune, and
hid him speak six days in the week for
thirty years, and count his blunders during
that time Who could have done better
than Mr.. Greeleyl Nay, who could have
done so well Then, too, even where he
has failed his. 'failings have leaned to vir-
tues side" He has never Numbered into
enriching his private pockets. He has never
stumbled into the public treasury with
grasping and grabbing hands He has
never tripped by happy accident into the
county courthouse, lined with purple car