Norwich bulletin., 1910-01-08

you. The secretary advised against
 such 3 course; but asked you for a
 recommendation as to accepting Prices s
 resignation. in order that he might | bring the matter to me, to whom, he
 told you. it must ultimately come, be-
 cause I had considered the Glavis ! charges and had passed upon them Without further conference with the i secretary, and before making a. report | to him, you succeeded in making pub i lie, by having 1t read in the senate,
 letter from you stating that you had | sufficiently disciplined Messrs. Price
 and Shaw by reprimanding them and
 that your recommendation would be that further punishment was re- quired and this before that recom- mendation was submitted to the sec retary and me, whose power and duty
 it was to determine, upon Prices ad- mission as to his cOmpltcity, what ac-
 ton should be taken with. respect to his resignation.
 Tn order to understand the full pur- port of your letter in which you admit
 the compIicity of Price and Shaw in
 the publications of the press, 1t should
 be said that the grayamen of the Gla- wis charges was that Secretary Bal1n- ger and the others were all affected by a corrupt wish to patent thirty three so-called Cunningham claims upon coal lands in Alska; that the question whether these claims were fraudulent or not remained to be decided upon the evidence after both the United States and the claimants had been heard; that every patent as an executive act Is completely within the Jurisdiction of the president to direct the withholding of it in order that he himself may ex- anime the evidence as to the validity of the claim.
 These facts understood, the plain intimations in your letter are, hrst. that I had reached a wrong conclusion as to the good faith of Secretary Bal finger and the officers Of the land of flee, although you and your subordi- mates had only seen the evidence Of Glavis, the accuser. and had never seen or read the evidence of those &C., cused or the records that they dis closed which were submitted to me; and, second, that under these c1rcum- stances. without the exploitation by Messrs. Shaw and Price. in the daily, weekly and monthly press of the charges of Glavis the administration, including the present officers of the tn- terior department and land office, would have allowed certain fraudulent claims to be patented on coal lands in Alaska. although the matter had been specif1- president by the Glavis charges. You solicited the opportunity to make such a declaration in congress for the pur- pose of offsetting, if possible, in the public mind. the presidents decision in the Glavis case, supported by the opinion of the attorney general, after a full examination by both, of the evil dence adduced by the accuser, and the evidence on behalf of the accused, while the latter evidence you and your had never seen
 You did this against the advice of the secretary of agriculture, without notifying him that you intended to do so, and without conferring with me at all. Your letter was in effect an im- proper appeal to congress and the pub lie to excuse iN advance the guilt of your subordinates before I could act and against my decision in the Glavis case before the whole evidence on which that was based could be con sidered.
 'I should be glad to regard what has | happened only as a personal reflection, 1 so that I could pass it over and take ] no official cognizance of 1t. But other l and higher considerations must govern l me. When the people of the United l States elected me president they placed 1 me in an office of the highest dignity 1 and charged me with the duty of main 1 taining that dignity and proper respect | for the office on the part of my sub l ordinates. Moreover, if were to pass l over this matter in silence. it would be | most demoralizing to the discipline of | the executive branch of the govern | ment.
 By your own conduct you have de- 1 stroyed your usefulness as a helpful l subordinate of the government, and it | therefore now becomes my duty to i direct the secretary of agriculture to l remove you from your office as the ] forester.
 Very sincerely yours
 WILLIAM H. TAFT. Hon. Clifford Pinchot
 Forester