The Row In the Republican Party.

New York, 1895

A row has been kicked up in the Republican party over the appointment of the Glen Cove Gazette as an official paper. The Standard had to be thrown overboard because it had become dishonest and corrupt, having failed in one instance to swindle the county, and having actually swindled the county in other instances, so the Supervisors, at the suggestion of Mr. Youngs, selected the Gazette, an eminently respectable newspaper and having a good circulation. The Long Island City Herald, which has taken rank as the leading Republican paper, takes issue with the appointment on the ground that the Gazette is not and never was a party paper. A nice question is thereby raised. Mr. Youngs ought to know the politics of the Gazette, for he has been a contributor to it, and if he did not consider it Republican in character it is hardly likely that he would have recommended the paper to a Republican board of Supervisors; and the board, not unreasonably, may have relied on his judgment, and thought that he represented the county committee in the matter, as he had in other matters, so that, if a mistake was made, the blame does not rest with the Supervisors.

This question engaged the attention of the county committee at its last meeting. Lucien Knapp offered and the committee adopted the following resolution:

Resolved, That the action of the Board of Supervisors in appointing the Glen Cove Gazette an official paper representing the Republican party in Queens County is not in accordance with the law, and the Republican County Committee hereby disapproves of such appointment or designation as against the interests of the party and unjust to our regular Republican newspapers.

Subsequently there was a conference about the effect of the resolution. It was held to be a censure of Mr. Youngs, who had induced the action of the Supervisors, and then the resolution was reconsidered and expunged, but, nevertheless, the committee is on record against Mr. Youngs in spite of the death of the resolution. Both the committee and the Herald are somewhat astray in the promises. The appointment of the Gazette is sound in law, for it has not been appointed the official paper, that distinction having been accorded the Flushing Times, and Mr. Youngs gave the board of Supervisors no irregular or questionable advice in the case of the Gazette.

The Herald discusses the action of the committee somewhat bitterly, styling it "cowardly." The Herald's wrath goes to the extent of a personal attack on Mr. Youngs, who, it says, was twice blackballed by the Lincoln Club of Long Island City, a representative Republican organization, and the further statement is made that there is in existence a letter written by one of the most prominent Republicans of the state which seriously impugns Mr. Youngs' Republicanism and his motives for being in politics at all. This may be all very true, but the blackballing of a man is but the malicious expression of a few narrow-minded persons, usually the inferiors of the object of their animosity, and in this case has no significance whatever, for William J. Youngs is certainly the peer of any man in the Lincoln club.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, June 28, 1895, p. 4.