The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1906-02-01
THE MANN TRIAL.

Usually The National Tribune has the
most profound indifference to the doings
in what is popularity known society"
in New York and Washington. The
people who make up these associations
are in no sense leaders. They are
merely those who have recently inher-
tied or acquired money with which they
do not know what to do, and are using
it in various ways to make sensation,
personal advertisement that they
h V. wealth AS a rule. they are peo-
nothing worthy of mention. The real
solo people of those cities, the men
and women who have standing in the
communities for what they are. do not
belong to society" They move quietly
in circles where they are we'll known,
and have not the slightest desire for
any trumpet blowing, either about their
entertainments, their clothes, whether
or not they dock their horses, and a
multitude of other purely personal de-
tails. 1t is the people who have moth
ing but money who are making all the
feverish furore. Naturally. there gath
crs around this crowd flocks of harpies
and adventures, who make a parasitic
living Off them. One of these ways is
to publish society paper" full of
scandals, gossip. usually more or less
malicious, and "puffs' of some new
Corners social standing 1t is a vulgar,
noisy, pushing crowd. with a horde Of
nasty hangers-on. Men and women Of
sense and worth have as little as pos
sible to do with the push" and the
society paper" is about as tiresome
reading as one can imagine. The sem
sational suit in New York involving the
Town Topics, which has attained bad
eminence as the leader of this kind of
literature. brings out all this very clear
ly. The Town Topics was a distinctly
matchmaking sheet, and has made enor-
nous money by terrorizing the vulgar
pushing, scheming, characterless men,
bers of society with Threats of ex-
posture, and by fiattering the vanity of
those ignorant and aspiring Climbers"
who We're trying to break into the gild-
ed mob. In way the men and women
who were fieeced by the disreputable
sheet were deservedly punished. They
had many ugly things in their past. for
which they should have been held to
account. Probably they had not been
punishd in any other way. Many Of
them were frightened into paying by
their guilty consciences. Still, blackmail
is crime, the blackmailer frequently
robs innocent but timid people, he is
an enemy to the community, and should
be sternly repressed. The worst feature
about the case was that one of the
principal men of the Town Topics was
a Judge, who, after he left the. bench
for the day, went to the Town Topics
office to aid and direct the Matchmaking
For him no punishment can be too Sc
we're. He is already ruined forever in
reputation among decent men, and may
have added to this a term in the peni-
tertiary. This is earnestly hoped for
Probably Col. Mann. who has thus tar
nished good record made in the SER
vice of his country, may also have q
period of leisure in the State Prison to
reflect upon the wickedness of his ways
1t will all make for cleaner journalism.
and rouses the hope that gilded no.
bodies may be less obtrusiye of their
tiresome personalities in the papers.