St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1880-08-20
Our New York Letter.

WHICH 1.-THE sFUFFING OF THE
sTARvED-sTRIKE oFTHE SMALL BOYS
-MIsHAPs BY LAND AND WATER
HELPING LITTLE HERo-Is he A
MILEsIAN CANDIDATE DECoRUM
DEMANDED FROM PoLICEMEN-THE
WORLDS FAIR OF 1888.
New YORK, August 13, 1880.
To the Editor of the Caledonian:
1t lis an old adage that everything is
fair in love and war. Some add in
practice if not in theory, that every
thing is fair in horse-trade or bust
ness in general. And it is queer how
what some people call enterprise under
some circumstances, becomes a heinous
offence under other conditions. These
remarks are suggested by queer case
that has just come up in Brooklyn. 1t
appears that a successful wirecloth
manufacturer has invented certain i'm
provements by which he has got the
"bugle" over all his rivals. With a
Pioiouuu SOuHlSlioh thdO IL TIC SoeS ulh
methods patented, somebody else will
''invent" some so-called improvement
which would just let in his competitors
and spoil his sales, he has preferred to
take out no patents, but follow the old
secretive style of the manufacturers in
the days before patents. One very
smart and very wealthy man in Cleve-
land determined to find out how this
man (whom l am not going to adver-
tise by name) did his work, and got
one of his smartest workmen to come
down and find out all about it. He
did so, making the acquaintance of the
foreman and introducing himself, when
challenged by the bookkeeper for in
truding, as carpenter looking for a
job; and finally, bribing the foreman,
of the place one night, where even the
foreman was not admitted it appears,
and discovered the secret and even
purloined certain parts of the machin-
cry as patterns.
The men have been arrested for
burglary, and every one is exclaiming
at the meanness of the wealthy man
who tempted them in order to get the
best, unfairly, of smarter man than
| himself. Once upon a time such a
thing was considered good stroke of
luck and address, and it is a positive
fact that the first printed cotton mill
in this country was started by a young
workman who, in precisely the same
way, got admittance within the jealous
ly-guarded portals of some English
mills and brought away drawings OF
the machinery. The house founded by
him now, however, chiefly engaged in
selling and making wooden goods, is the
oldest dry goods firm in the United
States; his memory is held in honor
and the head of the house is esteemed
one of the most distinguished of all the
aristocratic mill-Owners of New En-
gland.
Not tuckered out but tucking in is
the normal condition of Tanner, who
bids fair to win as much notoriety by
his extraordinary feats of stufing as by
his forty days fast. Of course, the
main facts of his breaking his fast and
unexpected rebound on the way to
health after being, according to micro
scopical analysis of his blood, decided
ly more than one foot in the grave,
have already been laid before your
readers, but the interest in his extra
ordinary case still continues. When a
man begins to fatten up at the rate OF
six pounds or SO a day, and fills him
self with anything and everything
good, without any symptoms of harm,
he becomes a remarkable object. Tan
ner has been the greatest perplexity
for the doctors of this generation.
The urchins who, smart and honest
active, clean and bright, are found
night and day on our streets bearing
messages of love or lucre, escorting
timid damsels out shopping or to the
theatres and hundred ways proving
of the greatest use to any one paying
so much year for a district telegraph
instrument and 40 much message
have been on strike. They got 81 9
week-not bad pay for boys, and they
wanted SIS. The uproar was very in
convenient and has now subsidized, mos
OF the truants going back uncondition-
ally. Some, however, bettered them.
selves in private employ. One of these
boys, we'll trained, is mighty handy
sort of thing to have round the house.
Brave Capt. Smith who was SO terri
bly, burned while sticking to his post
on the Seawanhaka has been indicted
for criminal negligence as we'll as all
the other officers, and the owners Of
the Inflated boat. The sensation will
doubtless have the intended effect
The heroes of that one real accident
will shine all the brighter by the con-
trast with other officers of the daily
trafficking and excursion boats, and
much needed reforms will undoubtedly
be inaugurated. The daily collisions
running aground, Sc, are incessant
and we seem to escape some terrible