Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1898-08-11
HOW stone
LOST HIS JOB.
He Was the Original Offensive
Partisan.
REFUSED TO TAKE ORDERS.


Big Guns at Pittsburg and to Be
Full of Speech Making.
Especial Correspondence
Philadelphia, Aug. 81 suppose
will have to plead guilty to originating
one expression in the political lam
guage of the country. although l don't
give utterance to it," said the Republi-
can candidate for governor the other
day. Colonel Stone is temporarily So
iourning at Atlantic City, but comes
up to town frequently. While the cam
paign will not be formally opened un-
til the second week of September, when
the State League of Republican clubs
meet at Pittsburg, the party enthusi-
asm has declined to await on formal
tiles this year. and the calls for Colonel
Stone have been so frequent that he
will have but little time outside of his
own state between now and the elec-
ton.
He has ALWAYS been a good cam
paigner, since he began making Re-
publican speeches before he was of age,
and his remark quoted above had ref
erence to this phrase, Offensive par
tisanship,' which he was the occasion
| for President Cleveland to embalm
] among the modern classics of political
| expression. Colonel Stone was the origi-
| nal offensive partisan. He happened to
! be United States district attorney for
! the western district of Pennsylvania
when the state campaign of 1886 came
on, and in pursuance of President
| Cleveland's attempt to emasculate as
many leading Republicans as possible.
received an intimation that if he did
not display offensive partisanship,
| which is to saw if he would sit on the
| fence and let his party ticket look out
for itself, he could retain his office.
That is just what he didn't do. He
went on the stump at the first call from
the state committee, and President
Cleveland promptly exacted the pen
atty by putting a man in his place
whose partisanship, being Democratic,
was presumably innocuous.
If the president had wanted va
cancy in that office he could not have
devised a better way to get it. for one
look at the head and neck that top out
the gigantic figure of the present Re-
publican candidate for governor is
enough to indicate that he is not well
built for taking orders from anybody.
He is deliberate in the extreme in
habit with farm bred men, who like
to roll a subject over from one end of
the furrow to the other and back again,
but he doesn't sub-let the contract to
anybody else. and his convictions will
all stand without being hitched.
He comes naturally by his DISPOSE
tion, with New England blood on the
one side of his ancestry, and Pennsyl-
yania German on the other. His father,
although only so acre farmer. poor
man all his life, was the general trust
officer of the neighborhood. and for 20
years before his death nobody In the
township thought of making a will
without getting him to write it, and APP
pointing him executor of the estate. He
was naturally, of course, a man who
liked to be the head of his own house
hold, and so, when the present candi-
date for governor, at the age of Is.
went after the cows one night, and
didn't come back but followed his two
older brothers to the army instead, the
old gentleman promptly went after him
and got him discharged. But he shortly
discovered what President Cleveland
found out in 1886, that whether it was
his country or his party that he
thought needed his services. his son
u
short time till he ran away and en-
listed again, and this time his father
concluded he might as well let him CO.
He showed the same independent
spirit in the matter of his first nomina-
ton for congress. The delegates had
been elected in the interest of the then
sitting member Colonel Thomas NJ
Bayne, but at the last moment he
astonished everybody by declining a
denomination, and turned it over to
Colonel Stone, who had not previously
been mentioned as a candidate. There
had been no contest, and the district
was so Overwhelmingly Republican that
any dissatisfaction which might have
arisen from this unusual circumstance
would have had no effect on the re-
suit but Colonel Stone promptly de-
clined to receive a nomination on any,
body else's credit, and went into new
primaries and won out on his own
strength.
One of the best descriptions of how he
1mpresses people as a campaigner, by
the way, appeared in the Scranton Tri-
bune last week, as follows:
Colonel Stone, the Republican nom
inee for governor, is not a popinjay,
nor poseur. as those who met him
ycStcIudy cdn dtteSl. he Is u modest,
straightforward and unassuming man,
who without any fiourishes impresses
the observer with his reserve strength
and his sincerity No man who looks
him steadily in the eyes or takes care
full measure of his words and manner
will depart from his presence with a
feeling of skepticism as to his integ-
rity or his moral courage. The clean
grit and stubborn fiber of the obscure
Tioga county farmer boy who worked
his way to the front by sheer dint of
persevering studiousness and industry
is in him yet and also the candor and
the total absence of vain pretension.
Colonel Stone is not an orator and
does not try to be. Those who shall
go to hear him during the ensuing
campaign with the expectation of hear
ing a thrilling exercise in word jugglery
will be disappointed. because he is not
that kind Of a man. In speech he often
becomes eloquent but 1t is the rugged