The Evening statesman. [volume] (Walla Walla, Wash.) 1903-1910, 1904-12-24
JOHN II. MITCHELL ALL RIGHT.

TO the Editor.
An editorial entitled Oregon Faces
Disgrace" in your issue of December
20, while very mildly suggesting that
THE many friends and admirers of
Senator Mitchell in Walla Walla are
10th to believe that he has knowingly
aided in defrauding the government"
falls far short Of voicing the absolute
confidence Of every man who has ever
known John H. Mitchell intimately in
his absolute integrity or their con-
tempt for the conspiracy, perhaps con-
cocted in Washington City, to be-
smirch his name.
Any man with half an eye can see
that the attempt to magnify the rela-
lively petty land fraud case in Port
land against Puter ct al. into mat
ter of large Importance is but an at
tempt on the part of supernumerary
legal employees and special agents of
the interior department to justify their
retention on the government pay roll;
connected, perhaps, with dragnet at
tempt to find some flaw in the career of
Hon. Binger Hermann, who quarreled
with Secretary Hitchcock, and resign
ed the office of commissioner of the
general land Office rather than accept
Mr.. Hitchock's unwarranted and I'M
precedented constructions of the land
laws of the United States.
So far as his motives are concerned,
Secretary Hitchcock may be as good
man as could be found between
Waukiakum and Skookum Chuck, but
in everything every precedent and
ruling of his predecessors, in his con-
struction of our land laws, he has
shown his incapacity to fill the station
he occupies; in dissipating the public
funds in attempts to vent his personal
enmity against Mr.. Hermann he has
not carried himself on a high level;
while he and the grating special
idly by while whole townships of the
most valuable timber lands in the
world are being stolen on Puget Sound,
while at the same time looking for the
smallest fly specks in the final proofs
of farmers who have earned a home
under the homestead laws, have, to
say the least, shown his total inability
to see things in their proper proper
tion The president of the United
States will show less acument than
he has evinced in any other matter
whatsoever, and will greatly disap-
point the expectations of the great
body of the people of the west, if he
retains Secretary Hitchcock in his
cabinet one hour after the fourth of
March.
The other gentlemen whose names
have been mentioned in connection
with this Portland affair-Representa-
tive Williamson, State Senator Brow
nell and Hon. Franklin P. Mays-are
gentlemen as well and favorably known
as any man in Oregon. There has
never been the smell of fire upon the
garments of any one of them; and even
if weak grand jury should be induced
to indict them upon the self-serving
confessions of Puter and his gang.
it will take much more than that to
shake public confidence in their in
tegrity. "a long life of upright con-
duct" as Cicero said in his grafton
agaist Verres, els in itself defense
against such imputations.'
AS for Senator Mitchell, not only is
he, whether measured as a statesman
or as a lawyer or by his public ser
vices or his popularity at home, be-
yond all comparison the superior of
the cabinet officer who seems to be in
spring this attack upon him, but
through more than forty years spent
upon this Northwest coast he has
made his character so we'll known that
the confidence of the public in him