John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

[478] forward by a pressing public need. Indeed, he was an opportunist, but an opportunist with such breadth of view and such knowledge of facts as enabled him to select the actual topics and make an interesting newspaper for every day of the year.

In commenting on General Harrison's inaugural address, the Sun, with its usual directness, declared that it showed the new President to be “neither a sneak nor a fraud,” and in view of the fact that it had already strongly expressed its disapproval of his accepting a cottage at Cape May from his party friends, this sententious commendation meant more than appeared on its surface. Taken in connection with the friendly comments that it made upon several of the gentlemen named for the new cabinet, it may be fairly regarded as foreshadowing a determination on the part of Dana to judge the incoming administration entirely on its merits.

It was at this time that what appeared to many to be an indecent rush for office under the new administration brought from the Sun a characteristic article favorable to politicians as a class, and deprecating the outcry against them as both thoughtless and unjust. It contended frankly that, if a man wanted an office, he should ask the appointing power for it, with the same freedom that he would ask a business man or corporation for a job. This view of the matter was as novel as it was sound and healthy, and seems to have been accepted as all that needed to be said on the subject.

But the Sun was always opposed to the creation of new departments of government, not only because it did not want to see the government functions enlarged, but because it did not want the army of federal office-holders increased. While it acknowledged that the rapid growth of population, which was a phenomenon of the times, would necessarily result in a corresponding increase of the officeholders