The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1894-02-09
CHAMPION MUD
SINGERS.
Staff" Little and Joe
Naar Still Further EX-
pose Each Others
Character.
AN ISSUE AS TO UGLINESS.
Party Treaehery and Public
Plumber Crook
edness and Political
BlundeFs.
The Senate MIDDLE and Its Pros
pectiye Influence on the Legis-
Lature Of 1895.

! Inc LIUUle-INddT ePlSbCldiJ D0eehO
| again been convulsing the people of Trenton
all this week. -Four letters have appeared,
two from Henry Stafford Little IN the
| State Gazette and two from Joseph L. Naar
in his own paper, the T1ate american. Both
combatants get in some rattling body blows
and both crawl out of the affray, presenting
anything but an ornamental appearance. He
would be a shrewd man who would say who
has had the best or the worst OF the inter
| change. Mr.. Little has done considerable
| more defending than Mr.. Naar, who meets
/ all charges with a sort of cynical bravado.
But Mr.. Little is also a trifie the more effec-
tive in attack since his allegations do not
depend upon historical and disputed evil
dence and are, at least specifically, OF the
self-proving sort.
ROUND NUMBER TWO.
1t had been announced that Mr.. Little
would counter to Mr.. Mars reply, on Teus-
| day morning in the State Gazette, but MI.
| Naar did not wait for him. In the True
American of Monday, he assumed the ag-
| gressive in an article which occupied tive
| columns of space. This effort will be OF in
estimable service to obituary editors when
! Mr.. Little dies. By a general revolutioniz-
ing of epithets, it may be made pass for the
usual scareer of the deceased" 1t goes into
| all the facts of Mr.. Little's public and private
life with painful m~inuteness. A large part
of it would be very tiresome reading for
Jersey City people, who know all the facts,
! and are content to assume that Mr..
puts the worst possible construction on them.
Yet there are some lively passages, which
| will serve for a moments entertainment.
Mr.. Naar keeps up through the letter a con
trast between Mr.. Little and the late q. w.
| Childs, and this is one of the word pictures
| it leads him to construct
You, sunk to the lips in the wealth that
you have sought as the sole object of your
life, and stumbling along hfe's pathway, at
the age of seventy-fve, without a man whom
YOU can call a friend; deprived of the public
| esteem which you so much desire, outcast
from your party associates; only tolerated
by the party'S enemies, to whom you have
sought to betray it; clutching desperately at
anything that keeps you In prominence, and
furnishing to your many acquaintance only
one question: how much you will leave be
hind when you die. The world has not been
made one atom the better by your presence;
it will lose no more by your taking Off.
Still you live, and while you live you will
continue to display your native mahgnlty
and malevolence, whenever you can get an
audience.
In YOUR open letter of the 31st january,
addressed to me, you referred to experiences
of yours Sin the sixties"
You did well to go back to that period for
a foundation for some OF your assertions,
because,
First, it enabled you to malign the dead
| with reasonable security against successful
contradiction; mi
Second, because it was at that period of
your life that you enjoyed the confidence OF
your fellowmen and your own pet theory
that you were better and wiser and purer
than the rest. of the world with whom you
were compelled to be in political contact.
Your associates in the Senate of New Jer-
sew still living are but few; but there are
those whose memory carries them back to
i that time, and points out to them instances
in which you then set up your notions OF
moral superiority and at the same time
descended to acts as reprehensible as those
which you were accustomed to complain of
in others.
coPYIsTs' COMPENSATION.
Another lively passage is that which treats
of Mr.. Little's employees in the Chancery
Office at Trenton during the period that he
was clerk of the Court. Here it ISL
1t was in the administration of your office
as Clerk of the Court of Chancery that the
hostility to Democratic ofice-holders found
greatest expression in the, Senate.s 1t was
said that you were making $4,000 a year do
ing nothing; that you were making this by
fees which increased unduly the cost of Hti-
cation. and that it would be a public service
to cut down your emoluments.
With this view, in 1876 an act was passed
which reduced the fees of your Office sone %
per cent. A considerable part of these fees
was derived from the earning of your copy
lists. The legal fee per folio was eight cents,
from which you paid to the persons who
were doing the work some three cents, re
tanning for yourself five cents per folio for
doing nothing. Nobody ever heard of a
copyist in your office making more
than q bare living. When the new law
came in, reducing the total fee about 25 per
cent, you proceeded to make your clerks
pay it by reducing the compensation for
| their labor 80 per cent. You expected and
demanded hat your employees should earn
their living at the rate of two cents per folio
for their actual work, in order that you
might continue to earn four cents per folio
as O profit to yourself on their work, to
which you contributed nothing, either OF
labor OF of thought. 1t is unnecessary to
say that this extortion was not permitted to
| continue for long: the protests of your en-
ployes, the denunciations of the newspapers
1see the State Gazette of that period caused
YOU to set DICK Ule price VI youE lbDoI 10
where it was before, except that with the in
stincts Inherent in you, you could not for
bear to take off a discount of five per cent,
as a sweating of the money that passed
through your hands.
You held this office of Clerk in Chancery,
with it's compensation of $4,000 a year, plus
~perauisites and opportunities, for ten years,
and when it was taken from you out of re-
spect to the universal demand from both
Democrats and Republicans in the State of
New Jersey, who had come to know you for
what You were worth, you made the State
resound with your complaining. You inn
mediately added another to Your list of
a~uarrels, and you denounced and abused the
Governor, who had refused to reappoint you,
simply because he had taken you at your
word, given to the people Of Freehold in
open, public meeting, and did not choose to
hand you the nomination with a string tied
to it.
THE CENTRAL REcE1vERsHIP.
Out Of the Central Railway ~receivership,
Mr.. Mar constructs the following spicy
chapter
AS Clerk of the Court Of Chancery, you
had a friend who was receiver ri the Gem
4 A-~r Dx1no.l - Naxr To4-cou q 3Alana IN f6d-