The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1891-08-05

IN the hands of the editor not later than
Friday at noon
The Ad ADMINISTRATION Reviewed-Cof
shcpard's Fabrications.
The Nail and Express last Friday
had q severe attack of midsummer
madness. 1t conrted a general rak-
ing up of all the scandals of President
Harrison's Administration by print
ing a three page puff OF its doings.
1t would be difficult to say whether
the positive or the negative form of
dishonesty is In the ascendant in this
remarkable publication. OF a GER
tainty they are both carried to their
utmost limit.
The puffery is divided into several
sections or chapters, to correspond
with the departments of the federal
government, and each chapter is a
neat piece Of journalistic jugglery by
which the reader is made to think he
sees a lot of things which have no real
existence, while the things that he
thought he saw clearly just before
reading, are carefully hidden away
under a mantle of silence.
In addressing himself to the praise
Of the State Departments work the
writer had no easy task to perform.
How to convert its operations into a
Harrisonian boom, leaving Mr.. Blaine
far In the background, was the pro-
blem he had to solve. His method is
of the crudest. He simply ignores
Mr.. Blaine's existence. The PAN
American Congress, surprising to
tell, figures as an idea Of Pres
ident Harrison's. and we learn
that there Is no event in
his administration in which he and
his friends feel greater satisfaction. y
We do not specially love Mr.. Blaine,
nor do we think the Pan-American
Congress was of any particular conse-
quence except for Barnumistic pur-
poses. But we can appreciate, and
sympathize in the bitter wrath of Mr..
Blaine and his hackers at this mean
and dishonest appropriation of his
brainwork for the benefit OF pigmy
and a puppet who never had an origi-
nal idea in his life. Another of Mr..
Blaine's pet hobbies. the reciprocity
idea, is also stolen, wholesale, for Mr..
Harrison's glorification. In short.
one would gather from these articles
that Mr.. Blaine was a mere clerk to
President Harrison, and that the lat
ter had run the State Department
personally since the beginning of his
term.
Perhaps the most extraordinary
feature of all the collection is the
article on the Treasury Depart
ment, in which the claim is boldly
made that the Mckinley tariff
has enormously increased the
MERGE OF the country during
the past year. 1t absolutely required
the stupidity of Elliott f. Shepard to
fall into a blunder OF this degree of
complexity. In the first place, if the
Mckinley bill did permanently in
crease importations into the United
States, what would become of the Re-
publican theory of protection2 That
Is a question that does not trouble
the Colonel. 1t takes ordinary com
mon sense to be worried by
difficulties of that sort. But,
In fact, the increase in
commerce was real enough for the
time being. 1t was caused by the
rush among importers to get all the
goods they could into the country
before the Mckinley law took effect.
Since that law became operative the
receipts from customs duties have
fallen away d~isastrously, showing
that our commerce has been vitality
injured by the tariff. This fact, of
course, the Hail and Express care
fully ~conceals. 1t is equally
silent concerning Secretary Fosters
juggling with the Treasury statement
so as to make it almost impossible to
guage the financial condition Of the
country. Neither has it anything to
say about the way Joel b. Erhardt
has been frozen out of the Collector
ship, or about the shameful delivery
OF the New York Custom House to
the Platt political machine.
Then there is the Post Office De-
partment, and of course John Trade
mark, who is a kindred soul to the
Colonel, is pictured with a golden
aureole about his head His postal
telegraph scheme is doomed in great
style. but not a word is said about the
generally believed story that in his