Arizona weekly journal-miner., 1897-09-29
AN .orEN LETTER. wn,rnn.

OONhCl uORt Aico III 1OftthoA McCord's removal, and he has sent forth the fiat that it shall be done, all on account of the governor not consulting him in regard to his official actions. This is the gist of an article recently published by our pop mayor in the shape of an open letter to the governor. Now if there is anything this twice defeated candidate for delegate to congress is distinguished for, 1t is writing open letters, in fact he is always "open" for two propositions. One is to run for office, no matter what sort of an office it is, "any old thing" and the other is to write letters.
 He attacked Governor McCord recently, in an open letter. in regard to the prison contract. He laid down two propositions, alleged to exist m that contract as his premises or foundation, and then belaboIed his brain till it produced a mess of stuif, which when set in type took three columns of leaded metal to compass 1t. When Governor Me- Cord showed that neither of said alleged conditions existed in the contract the entire article had the props knocked from under it and 1t fell as fat, as the aforesaid writer's candidacy for delegate has done twice, before the avalanche of votes which has lodged against it. It re- quired two columns more of type then for the ''open letter" writer 10 extricate himself from the prison contract hole, and having done this to his own satisfaction be returns to the fray again with another "open letter" against the loan commission. Wben this "open letter" writer wishes to strike particularly hard blow he does it in the shape of iD- terrogatories rather than in that of direct or positive assertions and this latter emanation IS of this char acter. Like his prison contract let ter though he bases his argument on the false premises. First as to the alleged selling price of the Yavapai county bonds and second as to the total amount funded.
 In the first misstStement, be sim ply uses figures which have been made to do duty before, figures which applied to the mortgage bonds issued by the railroad, but not to the county bonds.
 In his second misstatement, he only over shot the truth by about thirty-two per cent, getting the aggregate of the bonds issued by that amount more than the actual amount. This, though, is a pretty good shot for him, as his intellectual craftsmanship at truth very seldom strikes within that range. A remark able illustration of this can be seen from the following assertion in his article:
 "So thoroughly did the holders recognize the illegality of these bonds, that they never even at tempted to collect the interest in the courts"
 If this "open letter" writer had consulted the records of the district court in this county, or if he had even read the newspapers, he would have been better informed than to have made such a blunder as the above, through ignorance of the facts. He would have found that suit had been commenced, that the board of supervisors had hired at torneys to assist the district attor- ney to defend it, and that said suit had been dismissed since the fund ing of these bonds. But then, it was not ignorance that induced the statement, as in his preamble in ad- dressing the governor, he says:
 "lf you can, at your own motion, decide case pending in the district court, as you have done in refund ing the railroad bonds of Yavapai county, you can do the same in any court, and judges and juries and all the paraphernalia of the law at once become useless"
 From this it is evident that he had knowledge of this suit. but he again enters an error by assuming that the governor decided the case, or deprived the county of any rights of cohtesting it in the courts.
 The above is but a sample of the inaccuracies and misstatements con- tained in this open letter, the bal ance being either devoted to others of the same kind. or to word build ing on top of these, and to personal abuse and villi6cation of the chief executive.