The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1893-10-14
BLuNDER UPON BLUNDER.
Congressman Boutel1e Describes the Stu
alton on Board the Ship of State.


My observations at the national capt.
tai have produced an impression upon
my mind akin to that of seasickness
"a sort of feeling of being embarked
upon great snip of State wallowing in
the trough of the sea, with an unskilled
pilot at the helm, an unframed crew in
control, and general sense of impending
every mind, says Congressman Boutelle
in an interview published in the Boston
journal. When President Cleveland
occupied the Executive chair for the four
years in which the existence of Repub-
lican Senate prevented any substantial
disturbance of the Republican policies
of government it was easy for him to
look wise, to- utter occasionally pom
derous platitudes. and to placidly accept
the aduIation andworship.of sMugwump
admirers. But this time the conditions
are.%schanged, ..and finding himself..fully
empowered politically as we'll as pledged
to establish great reforms, he has .been
obliged to make some pretence of response
to public expectation.
ITO say that he has. disappointed exec
tations in a most signal manner would be
a mild statement of the case. Beginning
with the selection of his Cabinet it would
be difficult to suggest any course more
calculated to shake public confidence in
his administrative ability or to inspire
distrust throughout financial and
business circles of the country than that
which has proceeded from one blunder to
another until nearly every great interest
of the country has been confronted with
paralysis during the early months of
his second term.
The money panic which swept the
country a. few months ago can be traced
no m ore clearly to any overt origin than
to the amazing course of Secretary Car
Isle in announcer ing that he did not
regard the Treasury as bound by law to
maintain the parity of our outstanding
currency. A convulsion of distrust
Immediately followed the publication of
that interview, and the harm done was
not remedied by the Presidents subse-
quent attempt to disavow the views of
his Secretary. The visit of Secretary
Carlisle to New York when he conferred
with the bankers of that city caused
serious deepening of the distrust by the
impression Grated upon the .mindssof the
great metropolitan fnanciers of the
actual unfamiliarity of the eminent
Kentucky lawyer and free trade doctrin-
aire with the great problem of business
and finance. In nation of 65, 000,-
OO0 of the most enterprising and pro-
gressive of the nations of the world these
occurrences deepened and intensified the
distrust early and seriously created by
the action of the Secretary in first eneour
aging the passage Of a meaure through
the Senate last winter, giving the
Secretary of the Treasury authority to
issue bonds when necessary to maintain
the gold reserve, and then, under the
influence of the Bland silver men of the
House, helping to secure it's defeat IN
that body.
"My idea Of the situation is very much
that which I should entertain of the
prospects of such great cruiser as the
New York if all her tried and trained
officers and crew were to be replaced by
unprofessional theorists for officers and
a crew composed of wreckefs whose
training had been in gathering the debris
of shipwrecks on the coast rather than
in sailing great ships upon the ocean.
This Stately and splendid craft might
move for a while under the impetus of
the power generated by the skilled crafts
men who constructed her, while the sea
was smooth and the weather calm, but
the moment the signs of tempest appear
upon the horizon and the Titanic ma
chinery demands the skill of those whose
lives have been given to it's fashioning,
and the great hull begins to plunge and
roll for lack of a trained hand at the
tration of the condition of our admin
istrative government today, drifting,
plunging, wallowing, at the mercy Of
every wind and every sea-"