Northern Wisconsin advertiser. [volume] (Wabeno, Wis.) 1898-1925, 1903-06-11

pears, also, That a great waste mas Oc'
CURED in the purchase and distribu'
ton of different devices like book
type-writers, eash-registers. automatic
changemakers, etc, which. after trial
prove to be useless for postoffice pur
poses. Scores of these are lying idle
stored away in the cellars of postoffices
here and there. The secretion of such
stun, in order to avoid its public con.
domination and sale and the criticism
incident thereto, is all wrong. and
there may. have been, as charged. ia
voritism shown in the selection of
these particular types of machines in
preference to others which would work
better; but, unless such favoritism
can be shown, the facts are perfectly
consistent with a theory of bad judg-
ment.
AS the investigation proceeded its
scope broadened. till, from an over
hauling of the Office of the first as
sistant postmaster general, it extended
to the postoffice department at large.
How Tyner Became Involved.
The assistant attorney general of
the postoffice department is a postal
officer, not member of the depart
ment of justice, as might be supposed
from his title. He is the immediate
law adviser of the postmaster general
and his assistants. For a good while
gossip has been free with the person
mel of the assistant attorney generals
Office under the present administra-
ton. The correspondence and litera.
ture of certain fraudulent concerns in
the west have escaped exclusion from
the mails, while others no worse in
character have been bundled out.
James N. Tyner of Indiana, the late as
sistant attorney general, was an old
man, much broken in health, but as
stanch in his contempt for civil service
reform as in his lusty youth. He had
no sooner settled into his seat under
the Mckinley administration. than he
entered into struggle with the civil
service commission to procure the res
toration of certain ''confidentiaP
places under him to the
patronage list, so that he could appoint
friends and relatives to them without
examination. A majority of the com
missioners were new to their work and
presently yielded; and the first bene-
ficiary of the change was Harrison V.
Barrett, a near kinsman of Tyner.
Barrett addressed himself promptly to
the codification of the postal laws, and
about the time that task was finished
he resigned and went into private prac-
tice. His thorough acquaintance thus
gained with the ms and outs of the law
made his services particularly useful
to clients seeking to evade it or to him
der its strict application by the author
tiles of the department OF course it
did not take long to connect his name
with the stories of the gambling and
other fraudulent concerns which had
been using the mails without punish
ment and the authors of these stories
endeavored to follow the trail of the
,swindlers, by way of Barrett, directly
into Tyner's Office. The inference
was that Tyner had himself been ex
torting blackmail or sharing in Its
profits. He came out with defiant
card of denial; hut the postmaster
general. while accepting this at its
face value, nevertheless concluded that
it was a mistake to keep an aged man
most of the time bedridden at his
home, in a position of authority where
an alert prosecutor of criminals was
needed. Mr.. Tyner's resignation was
requested and rendered, and he was
granted the customary thirty days
leave with pay. The care of the office
was turned over, for the interval, to
George A. Chris tiancy, Barrett's sue
ceSsor.
The Mrs. Tyner Episode.
One afternoon, shortly before the
accompanied by Barrett's mother and
an expert locksmith, appeared at
Tyner's room in the department build
ing, and proceeded to break into his
safe, rifle it of It's contents and carry
these away Accounts differ as to
whether Christiancy--a rather inef-
fective and colorless young man, but
believed to be of good characterize
fered any resistance to the operations
of the party, or even protested against
them. At all events when the news
came out, and the postmaster general
withdrew his acceptance of Tyner's
resignation and summarily discharged
him in disgrace from the service.
Christiancy requested to be relieved of
official responsibility himself till the
whole affair could be cleared up. This
was done. Meanwhile Mrs. Tyner
had taken legal counsel, and her at
torney came in haste to the depart
ment with bundle purportlng 10 con-
tain all the papers he had distracted
from her husbands safe, with an ex-
PLANTATION that she lid not know that
she had been doing anything wrong,
and the expression of hope that the
postmaster general would not take
harsh measures under the circum-
stances. Mr.. Payne's response was
to turn the whole business over to At
torney General Knox as the basis for a
criminal prosecution of the Tyners.
The statutes against the abstraction