New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1892-05-09

writing To the correspondent of The Mail and
Express he said that all the erasurcs, il there
were any, could be accounted for by the correc-
tons made as the result Of correspondence with
institutions containing dependent people
1t is thus conceded that alterations in the orr
ginal returns were made That some of them
may have been properly made. and as the result
Of correspondence with the enumerators. nobody
will deny. But hundreds of thousands were MADE
without such correspondence, without me
epumerators knowing anything about 1t, and I'M
der a general instruction that where number
Of names occurred in the lists indicating them
to be the names of q family, and where the sup
posed head of this supposittious family was
marked with q "C7 TO indicate that he was a
citizen, and the rest of the so-called family were
marked with an "A" to indicate that they were
aliens. all such alien marks should be changed 10
citizen marks and that the benefit Of every DOUBT
should be given to the citizen theory Inc Juug-
ment of the computing clerks was thus subs'Itu'ed
for the sworn evidence and personal Investigations
Of the enumerator, and two Senators and SIX
Assemblymen were stolen for the Democratic party
by these changes They were made IN denance
Of law, right and probability. In many cases,
tho lists had been so altered, and the proof of
the fraud was by the alterations so obvious, that
entirely new returns were made out, and the
return and fastened ON 10 the new one so that
no was made to swear to q document he had never
seen. In one case that i know of, the erasurcs
were not made with a knife or a rubber, but the
clerk stupidity crossed out the A" by simply
drawing a line through it and then wrote the
"C' above the markedout letter. That return
was recepied in it's entirety, and a lecture was
read to the clerk which convinced him that he
must make his crasures more deftly. IL all this
or any Of ii, is false the returns themselves will
prove it.
To the charge, not so easily substantated, nor
so easily disprOved that 26,530 were added arbi-
trariy to the population of the city of Brooklyn,
Mr.. Benedict interposes explicit denial. But
he does not explain how the error occurred which
lie says was made in the Brooklyn figures, nor
does he explain how an error was possible in such
computations as made by the accountant
Church. Church was the man who handled the
Brooklyn figures. From the election district cards
he made out the ward total, and these properly
%ards the total a he computed as being the total
of the whole number of inhabitants was equal 10
the sum of the two totals he computed as being
the totals of the whole number of citizens and
the whole number of aliens respectively. Then
lie took these ward totals and added them to-
gether to get the population of the whole city;
Here again his totals balanced. That is, he found
the sum Of the whole number of inhabitants of the
whole city TO be- it should be- equal u the
sum of the two elements. Then he added l.3s6
persons, which was the number Of persons charged
TO Brooklyn as being the inmates of charitable
and other institutions throughout the State com
United from Brooklyn city That gave the entire
population of the entire city, and that result was
actually given out and published in the table of
county totals handed around to the correspondents
on the morning of April 81, the day the legisla-
ture adjourned.
Now, at some moment during that morning, but
after these typewriter tables were gwen 2pt,
26.5So people. were added to the, populatior.of
Brooklyn. Who hid it, or by whose authority
it was done. do not pretend TO say. But to
believe that it was honest necessitates the belief
that Church made impossible mistakes. For If
ha ma a dn nrtq m In
his totals balance, he must have made exactly |
compensatinQ errors in the figures Of the two elc-
pen's on the other side Any one can see for
Mr., Benedict does not have much 70 say about |
the charge that on the night of April 90, the |
computations for many of the. counties of the |
State being then incomplete, and three days more |
time being required TO complete them properly, Mr.
Waterbury having left the Office, orders were |
given by Benedict himself that the cards con- |
tanning the record of the population should be,
without verifcatlon, altered so as to make them |
agree wherever such agreements were necessary.
This order was given for the purpose of com
handed in to the Legislature the next morning. so
Us to carry out the plans of the Democratic man.
day. Hundreds Of cards were thus fraudulently
altered and the figures thus created entered into
the published results Of the population in about
twenty counties, the last, in alphabetical order,
of the counties of the State Eighteen or twenty |
clerks were occupied for four or five hours in |
making these fraudulent changes, and the cards |
now in existence or were on April Fl, bear |
ing on their face, complete impeachment of the |
report Rice sent TO the Legislature. In one re- |
spect, this is the most serious charge of all, for
il the men in control Of the enumeration were |
dishonest enough TO do that kind of work, and for
such reason, what kind of work wouldn't |
they do?
1t must be perfectly plain to everybody that |
mere denials Of such accusations as these will |
not suffice, and must not he allowed TO suffice. |
The records the proof. They show either
that The Tribune is wrong, that the officials
in charge of the census committed series Of out
when they have the means at hand 70 prove in
fifteen minutes that they didn't, and to decline
to take those means, to decline to exhibit the
proofs, to pooh-pooh the charges, to say they are
mere political buncombe can be construed in no
other way than as confession. To give as the
excuse for not showing the records that they
might get lost" is painfully feeble. OF course
they might get Iost"-that is true enough. They
might and they may, bnt, If they do, it will pot
be because honest people have been looking at
them. l.. t. u