The record-union., 1891-05-07
A MISERABLE BLUNDER.

One of the worst features Of the mis-
management of the entertainment in San
Francisco of the President of the United
States, was the partisan reception by the
Union League Club. When the invita-
ton of that club was put upon the pro-
gramme, a partisan color was given to
the reception of the President in the
metropolis. When the President ac-
cepted the invitation, he ceased to be
President of the United States and be-
came President of the Republican party,
for the club is purely Republican Cr-
ganization.
Now the President came to the coast
as the Chief Executive of the Nation.
His speeches all along the route of his
approach showed that he was making q
tour as President of the Union, not as q
partisan. He frequently referred to the
fact that party division was, and should
be lost sight of in Americanism, and that
he recognized party only as means
to the ascertainment of the wishes of the
people upon certain great questions OF
! policy. The rule of the reception by the
club wasI that no Democrat should be
present; that none but members of the
club should attend, and hence, that no
person of differing politics should be per-
! mitted at the reception, since only Re
publicans can become members of the
organization.
In order that this. partisan and un-
seemly action might be taken whole
| day was consumed by wretched little
party organization that might graciously
have been accorded to Oakland, Stockton
or Sacramento. The President was re
quired to double upon his course, run up
to Sacramento, hasten away on his return
to San Francisco, and dash through Oak
land in order that purely partisan CO.
terie might give him a purely partisan
| reception.
For this piece Of insuferable stupidity
and bad taste Wendell Easton is more di-
rectly responsible than any other person.
| The fortune of club politics has made him
! President of the club, and the egotism
and assurance of the man made him of
| fensively prominent in the general man
agement of the reception by the metrop-
oils The President is not himself to
blame for the affair. He was a stranger
in strange land and had very little op-
portunity indeed to pass in cool judg-
ment upon the propriety Of anything
proposed. He found everything mapped
out for him with an assurance that was
nothing short of stupefying. He was in
afford to make a scene by upsetting any
of the committees programme. But
whether he reflected or not, the action of
the club, to which it was no doubt
moved by Easton, was offensive; that it
should have been proposed at all was in
execrable taste, to put it in the mildest
possible form.
The whole affair was on par with the
San Francisco management of the entire
reception of the President, which ignored
| the interior of the State, was stupidity
oblivious of the feelings and sentiments
of the people of California, and became SO
| inflated with its own importance that it
swelled to offensive proportions. The
truth is, San Francisco sorely needs that
men in its midst of some discernment,
good breeding and refined taste, should
| be put at the head of affairs of every kind
in which the city is called upon to act, in
a representative capacity. 1t sorely
| needs men to be brought out and to the
front, who will save that city from losing
the little remaining sympathy and re-
spect of the people of the interior OF
California for the metropolis.
AS things long have been, and still are
managed in San Francisco, she is sub
| jected to the judgment that the metropolis
| is wholly selfish, often brutality insensi-
| BILE of the rights of others, and that she is
cutting loose from all relations with the
State at large, except the slender ones
that commerce maintains. For it is not
of necessity that the interior shall be in
large degree dependent upon San Fran
cisco. Nor is it in the order of natural
and human things that the people Of the
State outside of San Francisco shall SUBJ
missively suffer under eontemptuous
! treatment by tire people of the metropolis.