Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 March 1893 — 4 SOFT ANSWER TO TURN AWAY WRATH. [ARTICLE]

4 SOFT ANSWER TO TURN AWAY WRATH.

Poor Uncle Isaac Pus'ey Gray! He wanted to be president, then vice-president, then in the cabinet, then a first class mission, and now he can’t get even the mission to Mexico unless he begs for it of Gresham, his hated and more supple political-acrobat rival; and probably not even then. Alas poor Uncle Isaac! It looks as though he would have to content himself with a mail route agency.

While there may be and no doubt is,, much in the character and disposition of President Elect Cleveland to command respect, there is much also, of an opposite character. Take, for instance, his action four years ago in violating al! established precedents and the rules of common .courtesy, when he abandoned the 'Whitehouse before the inauguration of Harrison, and left no one there to receive Mr. and Mrs. Harrison, but a lot of insolent servants, several of whom were so -drunk that they had to be removed iby the police. The conditions •of things are now reversed and Mr. Harrison and his family will not return Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland’s inexcusable boorishness in kind, but will faithfully observe the requirements of Courtesy, ant show the Clevelands how ladies and gentlemen should conduct themselves.

The hired young man of the Pilot devotes nearly three columns towards establishing the truth of what we said last week, in saying that he w r as of that envious, narrow minded class, who considered every competitor in business a villain. He only mentions one new point in his article and that is the only one we shall trouble ourselves to notice at any length. This point is tba charge that when he was working for uS we cheated our foreign advertisers by putting in their advertisements after the edition was nearly printed and running off only enough with the advertisements in to send to the advertisers, and ■thus got pay for advertising which we never did. If he had told the whole truth about that incident, it would have shown that we gave those adyertisers, not only full yalue for all wo ever received, from them, but a good deal more. We had taken a yearly contract for about two columns of advertising from an agency in New York. A very small portion of the payment was made in advance, in certain articles of merchandise, thus lawfully binding the contract. The balance, and by far the largest part, was payable in due bills upon the advertisers, which due bills were to be received only as part payment for different articles, such as organs, fanning fcilltp Ac., and these due bills were represented to us by the advertising agency as being readily saleable and worth their face. After having carried the advertising to the amount of fully ten times the value of the advance payment, we found we

could not use the due bills so as to realize anything from them, and then, and not till then, did we resort to the plan which he menlioiis and which we believed at the time and still believe, was entirely justifiable. And even after we learned that the contract was practically a total lose, we carried it out fully, except during some brief

periods, when home advertising was crowding our columns. In conclusion we will add that W 6 never asked for nor received, frotn any either for advertising or for anything else, for the value of a single dollar, that we did not consider dur due. Nor is there a single human being on this earth who can truly say that we ever cheated him or tried to cheat him of so much as the value of a single cent

There is scarcely a mechanic in this town who has not worked for us at some time or other; no man in business whom we have not had dealings with, not one of these will say we have not always been scrupulously honest with them; no man or boy that ever worked in our printing office, including the one who now with such unfathomable baseness and such total absence of justification, is trying to injure our standing as an honest and honorable man, not even le nor any other, will venture to say that in all his dealings with us we ever tried to wrong him to the value of a farthing. Can he truly say as much? But even had we “done up” the advertising agencies as he claimed, is he not aware that in the opinions of all decent men he has hurt himself more by the revelation that he has us? Who is there /hat does not in his heart despise

the man who will draw the pay of another for years in a trusted position, like that of a foreman in some pari of his business, and then, when he has left that employ, to seek to build himself up and tear down the former employer, by revealing matters which every principle of honor between 'man and man should require him to keep inviolate. Had he believed we were committing a wrong, his only proper course would have, been to have protested against it, and, that not availing, to have refused to assist in it. But as he made no such protest, nor refused to assist in the wrong, he not only became a sharer with us in doing the act, but ten times more dishonorable in revealing it, years afterwards, to wreak a little petty malice.

What man of business of any kind will respect or trust a man who wantonly betrays the confidence reposed in him by atrusting employer? Who does not hafa and despise the betrayer of confidence; the human snake in the grass? Are not Jud#? and Benedict Arnold

the types of that particular form of baseness which of all others men hold in deepest detestation. k inan Wo will betray one employer) orsell one get of principles, will be ready, to betray another or to sell himself again. Even the members’ of the “gang,” unprincipled as £hey have shown themselves to be) dan not it would seem, help but despise in their hearts and distrust" the pitiful tool and dupe who hafrsold himself so cheaply to their uSe, The various points in the balance of his article, into which’ the father of liars himself could ’ not have crowded a greater number of malicious lies, will be briefly notice ed. '

. _. says we published one street improvement notice free merely to beat the Pilot. The statement is false. The notice was one made necessary by a change in the plan of the improvement, and which change was one greatly to the benefit of the writer as a property owner on the street When told by the town clerk that the Board was getting sore over the expense their numerous changes was causing, We at once agreed to publish the notice free, in gratitude for

the change which saved us at least 1150. We informed the clerk when we made the offer that we were quite willing to help the Board out of the hole they had got into to that extent We also added, in a jesting way, that if thq PiU)t or the Sentinel wanted to make a lower bid they would have to pay for the privilege, of publishing the notice. This part of our conversation was evi

dently repeated by the clerk, and probably not at all in the spirit in which the said clerk knew it was spoken. ' do work for nothing to beat the Pilot. Another absolute falsehood. If such cases have occured he could name them. We have never bid against that establishment more than three or four times, and in every case we named prices that would give us fair returns for our labor and material. If Our bill against the town board was not an attempted steal, he says, why did we settle for less?

That is the logic of an idiot, in the language of a blackguard. If every man who settles a claim for less than he first asks is attempting to steal, then there are no honest men in this world. He says we measured our street notices too large. Another absolutely false statement Not one o the notices was measured a single iota more than it contained, and jahy printer who knows how to measure type will say the same. The notice we published free was set with a smaller headline than most of the others, he saysVery true, it was, but the notice was set in much larger type, and actually was given more space for the amount of matter it contained than any of them; and was also,put in a better position in the paper, as our files will show.

He says, in effect, that we have overcharged merchants for their advertising. The statement is a lie, and a dirty, cowardly lie. Not in all the twelve years that we published Tqe Republican have we charged any man, woman or child more than a fair price for advertising or anything else; and he can not produce the individual that will substantiate his charge. He says we lie when we say that the Pilot gang bull-dozes our merchants into advertising in that paper, yet in the very same article he says the Pilot stockholders, ora portion of them at least, patronize those who patronize that paper. That is a threat that has been constantly held over the heads of our merchants from the first; that the Pilot stockholders and members of the alliance generally would boycott the merchants who did not support the Pilot. And the threat has not been confined to its -xqlumiiß, but haa been, naadft. to merchants, directly, by those interested in the political movement which the Pilot was established advocate. If that is not bull-dozing and virtual blackmail, then what else is it? Our statement that probably the , „ we paid on the street iiQ- | amount • » I prove inent is mblfe than the Pilot I gang will pay to the town in twenty years, is intentionally perverted to make it\ seem that we meant the Pilot stockholders; but he very 5 well know. 8 that we have always confined t. be term I Hot gang” to theaanonymous. mous § an ? o£ slanderers who manage 3 itß e^tor " ial columns. Some \ er ? good men are stockholders in th. paper we have no doubt, but tha mu ost o£ them were induced to become SA lch by false representation® that we* e virtually an obtaining isoney u.r> der false pretenses,-and if justice were done would'be punished as I such. I

Underwear, you need underwear for the winter;,,^-have got a Saw line just opened. 'Give us a call. R. Fendig. Austin and jßopkihs have perfected arrangements by which they can make you farm loans at 6 per cent, and these loans can be paid off at any time and stop interest. We have the money on hands* and make these loans without delay. We can give you more money at less expense than any firm in town.

Rand, McNaliyA Co., 166 Adams St., Chicago, Ilk, desire a local map, ager to take the management of the sale of their new Universal Atlas. Any orfk desiring a pleasant and profitable position would do well to write them. 21-1 (hr. Any person wishing to invest or borrow money. Call and see me, at' my office, up-staira in the WilliamStockton building, opposite publie 'square. B. F. Fkbgubon.