The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-01-12
ABOUT HENRY WILLARD.
Lessons Drawn from the Failure of the Greet
P~iI-ay nIaGnouo.

Lessons Drawn from the Failure of the Greet
P~iI-ray rTasn"uo.
New York letter. in Philadelphia Times.
Inever visited but once Mr.. Wizards business
Office in Nassau street, where one of my old en-
ployers, Horace White, was secretary and treas
urer, getting a salary OF $l5, O00 for those two
positions, l understood. Looking around on the
many clerks, seeing how visitors entered, as if
subseryient or impressed, and feeling how these
young men, once newspaper correspondents like
myself, We're building fine houses and accumuiat
ing millions, q moments feeling of inferioritv and
depression seized me: an ~instant's sense. merely.
of having failed in life comparatively, while
these, my once c0mpcerS, We're walking with
princes. But jealousy is such a mean and dog
like quality, especially men. that shook
mine off like a water-dog's mud. and said, men
tally, ! was glad my own tribe thrived so.
To-day the principality Is invaded; the Prince
and Princes wife are sick, and the golden bowl
is broken, and the pitcher at the fountain is held
in vain. The cool water of abundance is fol
lowed by the hot water of wrath. The name
that seemed destined to be stamped upon some
great city is an interjection of rage and indig-
nifty. Willard becomes in his own Interpretation
the vieillard, the poor old spent man of hardly
forty five. With pity and gratitude reflect that
/ was not the unwiseT for my humility and had
never speculated III my life.
Mr.. Willard began to gamble while he was q
political and military correspondent, first in the
news Of internal revenue taxation, by which he
made the basis of his subsequent railroad op-
%eratlOnS. TINS IS so well known at W ~aShIngtOn
that | add nothing to his burdens by mentioning
it. He embarked while a news writer for all the
people in private schemes for fortune. This |
never saw my way clear to do.
conceive that two lessons are drawn from
this failure: First, a weakness of executive
character is to be ascertained sometime in all
hterary-minded people; second, the purist. the
better element, the scientific political thinkers,
have demonstrated that they are no more fit to
govern than men mistaken or instructive.
To the first proposition: Willard accumulated
his power by getting confidence, by address and
persuasion; he lost it by being intrusted with the
business management. His head-strong. willful.
Guizot-like mind would accept no counselors.
He gambled his little Oregon property into con-
troll of the Northern Pacific by a covert scheme
carrying no credit to our business mems intelli-
gence or methods. and the hyphen between the
two properties was as silly as John Laws or
Henry Georges bubbles. The patent handcuff
was made of German silver, and thinly disguised
its merely pinchbeck character.
Yet Mr.. Wizards school was among the men
who calmly criticised mankind as if it occupied
a plane below them and knew nothing of correct
ethics or business. Mr.. Carl Schurz leaped out
of the Evening Post a few days before the col
lapse. Mr.. White says Mr.. Willard was two
years too soon. That is a long time to get to
the depot before the train starts. Perhaps this
school of wellmeaning gentlemen are always
two years too soon. not only in fiscal things, but
concerning the perfectibility of man and them