The Republican County Committee Imitate Balaam's Ass

New York, 1895

Boss Youngs is bossing the Republican County Committee with a degree of amusing silliness. At his dictation the committee has served written notice on all of the Republican Supervisors that they must submit to Boss rule or be condemned. The notice served on the Supervisors is remarkable for two things: First, they "must" appoint a Republican as clerk. Second, they "must not" give patronage to THE FARMER because of its antagonism to certain Republican "leaders." It must be a brainless committee that would lend itself to such insane dictation. The Supervisors can want no better reason for refusing to be bossed.

The Boss demands the removal of Mr. Seabury from the clerkship for no cause at all, but merely on the ground that he is a Democrat, and yet, as a matter of fact, Democrats made the board Republican. Mr. Seabury is an excellent clerk. Politics plays no part in his official work. If the Boss could put a Republican in the office it would be used more for politics than any other purpose. This is the danger the Supervisors have got to guard against.

THE FARMER is compelled to laugh at the utterances of the committee as to patronage. This paper has given no offense to decent Republicans. Criticism of the eccentricities of management of Boss Youngs, exposure of jobs that were harmful to the public, and laying bare the venal acts of his servile tool, Mr. Vacheron, are the sins charged against THE FARMER. No sane person will deny that this paper has rendered a valuable public service in these things. We have been right in line with the conduct of the board of Supervisors all the time, so that the committee must necessarily harbor the same grudge against this honest body of public officers, but is too cowardly to express it.

Boss Youngs cannot bribe THE FARMER with promises of patronage, nor intimidate it with threats to take away patronage. The Boss has made a scandalous exhibition of himself at Albany as a lobbyist and place hunter, and the fact has been commented upon by several newspapers. THE FARMER has spoken adversely of him only to the extent that he has deserved, and that we shall continue to do as a public duty. Assemblyman Vacheron has been exposed in some of the rank jobbery that he has been identified with, and there is more to follow.

The Boss makes the County Committee declare that criticism of himself and Vacheron is an offense to be punished by the same board of Supervisors that has denounced every job that we have denounced. On the other hand, Republican newspaper denunciation of the Republican board of Supervisors meets with no objection from the Boss or his committee. A Republican newspaper, the Standard, may even go the length of trying to swindle the county and still keep the favor of the Boss and his committee. This Republican newspaper may pour forth venomous tirades against the Republican Supervisors for their honest act in preventing the consummation of the attempted swindle, week after week, but never evoke a word of expostulation from the Boss or his committee, and, as if fate had turned a mocker, the name that appears at the bottom of the committee's resolution ordering the board of Supervisors to do its bidding is that of B. Frank Wood, the assailant of the Supervisors, and the very man who would have been benefited if the Standard's fraudulent bill had crept through undetected.

As honest men the Supervisors should ignore the upstart mandate of the Boss and his Committee, and, again, as honest men the Supervisors should put it beyond the power of the Standard to present another fraudulent bill.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, April 19, 1895, p. 2.