Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 June 1884 — Lawyers and Editors. [ARTICLE]

Lawyers and Editors.

If I should charge the Press in the same proportion that lawyers charge for their time I should get about SI,OOO for this letter. Here is a case: Mr. Z. L. White (as lovely a fellow as ever wrote a paragraph), now the editor of the Providence Press, and I were associated as correspondents of the New York Tribune. The Alabama treaty, on whose provisions two continents hung breathlessly, had been signed and sent to the Senate. This was many years ago. A copy came to us as legitimately as any piece of news comes into the Press office, but it happened so that we could not tell where it came from. We were brought before the Senate and sent to a committee, and we refused to tell where the treaty, as printed in the Tribune, came from. We were locked up for about a fortnight. The great public was with us, and we had more applications for our autographs than we could pay postage on, and we had cases of wine, of brandy, demijohns of whisky, boxes of cigars, woodcock, terrapin, canvas-backs, flowers, and such things galore, Senators came to our rooms for drinks and lunches, and the whole thing fronribeginning to end was a great joke. But—-and here comes the point—we\were, of course, released by a tremendous majority of the Senate, but there were certain legal points to be disposed of. We had been indicted for disrespect to the Senate, or something of the kind. We engaged a lawyer, and he went into court and asked that our indictment be quashed. That was all, and the indictment was quashed. How much, Mr. Editor, do you think he charged for that five minutes’ work ? He charged and I paid him SSOO for that job, and I have his name on my check to show it. Suppose a newspaper man had taken $500! Well, you know what Pistol said when he was compelled to eat the garlic.— H. J. Ramsdell.