The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1888-04-04

savage dItacK was maze upon me IN tne
Rurdl Vcrm0nter by the editor Of that sheet,
in which | was accused of falsehood and
other kindred misdemeanors, which seemed
to call for some reply from me. | sent a re-
ply, which the editor has refused to pub
! lish, and in the interest of fair play / ask
you to give it place in your columns.
Yours very truly, o. NJ. TINKHAM.
Mr.. Arthur Ropes, General Editor and Man
dger.-In your department of the Rurdl YER
mOnter of January 90 there appeared an art-
Gle entitled Serfage and that Sort of Thing"
which seems to call for some notice from me,
which it would have received earlier ex-
cept for my illness, which prevented my
writing The scurrilous epithets in the ar
ticle, whether of your own application or
| quoted from your private correspondence,
can be answered only in kind, and that |
shall not stoop to do, any more than have
! heretofore noticed the attacks on me in
! your paper of the cowardly aSsassins who
stab in the darkness of insinuations and hid
den behind the mask of a fictitious sigma
! ture.
Your first assertion-that the article in
the WATCHMAN to which you refer was
" evidently all intended for the Yer
monter lis false as you must have seen, for
the article from which you quote began as
! follows We have had occasion several
| times to criticiSe with some sharpness the
! talk of some papers and speakers" etc, and
! the talk of the speakers could not have been in
/ Ienueu 10 apply 10 Jne Y eTHIOHteT. One OF tne
! speakers thus referred to was Mr.. Mortimer
! Whitehead, whose lecture at the Rochester
| board meeting was sharply criticised in the
! WATCHMAN soon after, and whose assertions
were so outrageously untrue that the late
Hon Henry Lane (notoriously a candid and
| fair-minded man, then IN amber of the board
and then present, arose, and interrupting
| him, told him his statements were false.
/ Other speakers in the state | have heard
make the remarks quoted, but being less
public men | will not name them. What |
| did attribute to the RUrdl VermOnter land it
may be found Enthusiastically credited to that
paper in the WATCHMAN of June 90 was
this: "Ther unquestioned purpose is to
reduce the farmers of the state to practical
serfage." You say: our readers very well
know that we have never made use of ex-
pressions of that sort" Your readers do
not know any such thing for you used er-
dctly the language quoted, and you will find
it in the VermOnter of June TO- 1887, on the
second page, third column, forty-second,
forty-third and forty-fourth lines from the
bottom of the page, and correctly quoted in
the WATCHMAN of the Goth. In the same
article Of yours were the following sentences
also, which | did not quote: :" Thus the
farmers are being reduced to state of help
less poverty" sis not this barefaced and
high-handed robbery of the people ?' "must
the farmers of the state he kept under the
heels of the corporations ?" These seem to
me very much like Expressions Of that
! sort. 1Ou call me " cheeky Crltter, yet
can not, with all my attributed cheek, I'M
derstand how you can have the audacity to
so soon deny your printed words
Again you assert, once by inference
and once directly, that l have a pass.
By inference when you say, :" Does the
pass you carry in your pocket" etc, and
directly when you say, Mr.. Tinkham
under pay, both directly and indirectly, by
his passes and his pay as editor of the
alleged agricultural department of a rail
road organ etc. These assertions are false,
as is also the assumption that am a " vim
dictator of monopoly and that | maintain
the cause unfairly and by falsehood, as
in the case in hand" | challenge you
to cite a single article or sentence written
| by me during my connection with the
WATCHMAN defending, apologizing for or
excusing the Central Vermont, against
which and its officers your attacks have
been mainly directed, and since my con-
nection with that paper have neither used,
received or asked for pass from the road
or any of its officers. Can yOu in truth sag
the same? Such are the facts, and yet you
| talk of mn bearing false witness " against
my neighbor, and distinctly charge me
with uttering falsehood.
| consider your general class denunci-
atoms of railroads, corporations and mo-
nopolies directly in the line of the harangues
of the anarchists, differing only in de-
gree, and except that our people are
much less exctable and far more reasonable
than those foreigners it might, carried to a
greater extent, yield here something of the
terrible harvest borne by the gallows in
Chicago. | ask you, in justice to myself and
your readers. to give this reply to your at
tack place in your columns.
Yours, etc, o. NJ. TINKHAM.
North Pomfret, March ., 1883.