The Portland daily press., 1894-06-12
HOW NEWS HAS BEEN CAPTURED.
Vice President Wilson Once Gave Away a
Treaty Apparently Without Intent.

(E. G. Dunnell in the New York Times.)
Reference has been made in the Senate,
during the debate on the proposition to
compel the testimony of newspaper wit
nesses, to the imprisonment of q. L. White
and II. j. Ramsden for refusing to tell how
they obtained copy of the Washington
treaty on the fisheries award. According
to an account of that matter given to the
writer by correspondent attached at the
time to the New York Tribune, there was
no reason why either of these gentlemen,
both now dead, should have refused to tell
the Senate how they secured that treaty,
unless, as was natural, they were DESTROYS
of provoking the Senate to do something
that was unnecessary and und1gnihed.
The story of the capture of that treaty, as
told to me, was this:
Senator-afterward Vice President-W1l-
son of Massachusetts, was in the habit of
dropping in upon the correspondents OF the
Tribune, then occupying the ofhce now &C.
eupied by the New York Times. 1t was his
regular habit, too, to carry papers IN his
hands, and to put these papers, with his
hat, on a desk while he sat and talked over
the events of the day. On leaving he would
gather up his hat, his papers, and whatever
other loose property he had brought with
him, and go on his way to his hotel. One
day, while the treaty of Washington was be-
fore the Senate, and all the correspondents
were pulling wires to get it, MI. Wilson drop
ped in on his newspaper friends of the
Tribune He put down his papers and his
hat, and talked freely about everything ex-
cept the treaty that was under discussion,
and to secure which there was SO much live
" competition. In all thes conversation
with the occupant of the newspaper office
he never SO much as alluded to the treaty,
or to the progress that was being made with
it's consideration.
When it came to be time for Senator Will
son to leave for his dinner, he gathered up
his papers and his hat and went out. The
correspondent with whom he had been talk
ing was about to resume writing when he
saw document upon his desk that startled
him. 1t was marked Confidential" pur-
ported to be a copy for the use of the SEN
ate, of the coveted traety of Washington,
and it had number in the corner to indi-
cate to whom it had been issued. Without a
moment of hesitation, the correspondent
jumped from his seat and hurried with the
treaty to the telegraph office, where he di-
rected that, without separating the leaves
or in any way damaging the copy, it be sent
to the newspapers he named, there being
several supplied by a combination of three
four men. The Geographic work went
on at once, and in the course of a few
hours the text of the treaty was in the
hands of the compositors of several news
papers. The telegraph operators having
completed their work, the document was
returned to the correspondent. who had
submitted it.. 1t was clean and whole. and
there was nothing about it to suggest the
fact that it had been used in any other way
that theSenate intended.
During the evening the correspondent
who had found it on his desk, and who sur
missed how it had come to be there, found
occasion to call upon Senator Wilson in his
rooms He took the copy of the treaty
with him, and while he was with the Senate,
he secured an opportunity unobserved to
put it under the Senator's hat, along with
the papers he had dropped when he came
from the capitol. In the morning, and when
it was learned that the treaty had been
procured for publication he was able to pro-
duce his copy as proof that it had not been
published through his assistance. All the
other Senators produced their copies. No
one was suspected. DuU Wien Gue GlIno came
to compel newspaper men to say how they
had obtained it the Senators thought that
they would be able. by harsh means. to COM
pei the correspondents to state that they had
bought it of some Senator, perhaps, or that
some Senatorial employe had given it for
a consideration.
Scoops are apt to be obtained by news
paper men in some such way as that de-
scribed by the correspondent who told me
the story of the capture of the Washington
treaty. In 1885,, when the civil service law
became effective, Commissioner Dorman
B. Eaton prepared rules for the approval of
the President. The day before the rules
were to be promulgated the writer found in
his Office note. dropped in at the door,
from a man who offered for S25 to supply
copy of the rules. The note was badly
written, and there was nothing in it to en-
able the Times to get at the writer of it,
glad as he would have been to do so. Later
in the day package was dropped in at the
door, purporting to be typewriter copy
of the rules. 1t was unsafe to ask a men,
Der of the commission or the cabinet to iden-
tify the rules as genuine, and it was not