The Manager of The Mariposa Estate
Defines His Position.

Mr. Editor:

During the present election canvass the writer has several times received the compliment of an invitation to address the public. He has [274]declined these invitations solely for the reason that there seems to be no lack of men practiced in public speaking and who do speak to the public edification, while he has no reason to suppose that he is qualified to do so. Why it should have been expected of him to appear publicly in politics, or why it should be inferred that his interest in the approaching election is light because he neglects to appear publicly, can only be ascribed to the fact that he happens to occupy a position which has hitherto been filled by active and prominent politicians, whose conduct has materially been made a constant subject of public and heated comment. A share of the importance which justly belonged to these gentlemen, appears to have been undeservedly given to him, and a share of the duties to the public which they performed to have been consequently expected of him. He would have persisted in declining both the honor and the duties, had not the Editor of the Mariposa Free Press seen fit to bring a question which he considers to be one of his private responsibility, before the public, and, in doing so, to introduce his name in such a manner as may tend to confirm the impression, which he is informed prevails with some, that he regards the approaching Presidential election with great indifference.

No man who has the smallest right to the respect of his fellow-citizens, can willingly allow it to be supposed of him that he has no interest in the great questions to be decided for good or evil at this election. No man who wishes to transmit an honorable name to his children, can allow it to be recorded against him that he is an indifferent spectator of one of the grandest events in the history of mankind; that he could stand by and, having the right to take part, take no part in the momentous struggle.

With regard to the accusation made by the Editor of the Press against the Superintendent of the Mariposa Company, it seems impossible that any man who cares at all about it should not know that men of both political parties are employed, and that men of both political parties are discharged almost every day from the Company’s service. If a Superintendent of the Company ever made such statements as are alleged, evidence of their untruth could certainly be found under his nose every day. There is not one of them who does not employ men who are known to him and are known to the public to be McClellan men, honest and above board McClellan men, who are faithful to their work. There is not one of them who has not discharged from employment supporters of Mr. Lincoln, and that recently, but it was never because they were supporters of Mr. Lincoln that they were discharged.

That when shirks are out of employment they should give any reason but the right one for being so, is neither new nor strange. If a man had come to the Editor of the Free Press with a statement that Mr. Lovejoy or Mr. Hite had discharged him because he would not promise [275]that his ballot should be in favor of Gen McClellan, would he have thought it his duty to reprove Mr. Lovejoy or Mr. Hite publicly? If so he would not be merely a very consistent but a very unsophisticated editor. The writer has been responsible during the last half dozen years for the selection for employment of about twenty thousand working men out of not far from a hundred thousand applications, and for the discharge from employment of a proportionate number, and this experience taught him that when men really believed themselves to have been rejected, discharged or otherwise treated with injustice or tyranny by a subordinate officer, they were extremely unlikely to make their appeal for redress to his superior through any editor or politician. It taught him, also, that when men take the latter course, it is pretty certain to turn out to be a waste of time to pay any attention to the charge. This experience has also led him to think that when a man who has once been employed by the Mariposa Company seeks employment again of the officer under whose superintendence he has formerly worked, and is refused it, it would be a more sensible course for the man to take, if he believes that the officer has not done his duty, before complaining to the Editor of a newspaper, who can have no more to do with the matter than he has with the selection of the Manager’s tailors and shoemakers, to come to the Manager himself, who may possibly have somewhat better information than the editor can possess of the reasons why the man left in the first place.

The Editor of the Free Press, regarding the single case of alleged political tyranny which he cites, as unusual and exceptional, states that under former administration of the property of the Mariposa Company men were selected for employment upon it with especial reference to the defeat of the candidates for office favored by the Editor. Recognizing that this, as a rule, is no longer the case, he associates the fact with the circumstance that some of the present owners are members of his own party and that the Manager is not (known to be) interested in politics.

How far it is true that the management of the property has heretofore been used for such purposes the writer personally knows nothing. This, however he does know, namely: that since the change of management referred to, occurred, the Supervisors of the County have seen fit, in the face of a formal and solemn assurance of the present Manager that what they proposed was a gross wrong and injustice to the Company, to nearly double their valuation of the property and to demand from it the payment of a tax just twice as large as the average tax they required to be paid by those in possession of the same property, during the previous two years when, according to the Free Press, not a man could obtain employment upon it who was not pledged to oppose the election of the very gentlemen who compose a majority of the Board of Supervisors and whose election was advocated by this same Editor. These taxes do not [276]include the national or war, nor the School taxes; there has been nothing unusual done with them, so far as the writer can see, by which the Company has received benefit; on the contrary, the roads in which the Company are interested, are most insufficient and in scandalous condition. The Supervisors have not shown the slightest disposition to cooperate with the Company in improving the advantages for business of the County, much less to accommodate and encourage the Company in the strong efforts it is making and which if successful must be greatly for the advantage of every citizen of the County. If there has been such a change, then, as the Editor of the Press alledges, it may strike a somewhat less unsophisticated man as a little problematical whether the Stockholders of the Company will, on the whole, be strenuous to prevent a return on the part of the Superintendents to “their old tricks,” even if there are among them some members of the same political party which controls the councils of the Board of Supervisors.

That this reference to the Supervisors need not be misunderstood the writer will add that while he differs with them in judgement and much regrets the policy they have chosen to adopt, he means to cast no reflections on the integrity of their motives.

It is the duty of the Superintendents in the employment of workmen for the Company to act with exclusive regard to the interests of the Company, subject only to the ordinary requirements of morality and humanity. No partisan predelictions on the one hand, and no fear of an appeal to party prejudices on the other, will be allowed to influence them in the exercise of this duty. If it should be found to do so, precisely the same course will be taken by the Manager with regard to it as he would take with regard to any other breach of trust. At present he finds no more reason to caution them against the one danger than against the other.

It has been currently reported that there are men in this community, banded together and sworn under a political pretence, to take part in a scheme of resisting the authority of the Government of the United States under certain circumstances. If this is true, and positive knowledge should be obtained by a Superintendent of the Company that he had some of those comprising this organization in his employment, and he thought their discharge would tend to lessen its strength, it would be his duty to discharge them, no matter how valuable their services to the Company. To do otherwise would in the first place be equivalent to harboring a felon; and in the second place the maintenance of the authority of the Government, and of respect for that authority, is of so much greater consequence to the interests of the Company, as well as to those of every good citizen, that no possible value which might be attached to any individual service could be thought of a feather’s weight in comparison with whatever was of the slightest consequence the other way.

[277]

It is perfectly evident that the present is no ordinary political contest, and that there are some among us who have sympathies, purposes and plans with regard to the Government of this nation that the editor of the Free Press is himself too honest and patriotic to favor; which at any rate he does not and dare not favor. Should the Superintendents of the Company encourage these treacherous men, knowing them to be such, to remain here, by offering them remunerative employment, merely because they are mean enough and false enough to call themselves Constitutional Democrats? Under no circumstances can it be their duty to offer employment to dishonest men where honest men can be had; and for such as these they can have to offer only the defiance and contempt which every good citizen must feel toward hypocrites, traitors and knaves. These men are none the less hypocrites, traitors and knaves because they think it safe and convenient to sail under the flag of the Democratic party; and if, when their disguise is exposed, they fail to be treated as if they stood on the same footing with honest men, by the Superintendents of the Company, in no just sense of the word can it be said that they suffer from political prejudices. Men may choose to have you warm vipers at your fire sides, and call it justice, but no sensible man will be afraid or ashamed of being called unjust upon the ground that he has disregarded such a demand.

But if there are men here who thus disgrace the name of the Democratic party, there are also many others who are above all question honest men and skillful and faithful workmen, whose well considered and sincere conviction it is that Geo. B. McClellan would succeed better than Abraham Lincoln in maintaining the integrity of our Union, and putting an end to the present rebellion, and to all resistance to the National laws and Constitutional authority.

The writer wishes no man to think that, whatever his opinion may be as to the proper means to be used for effecting the election, he shares that conviction. If any man supposes that he has had the least reason for suspecting so, it can only be because the writer has had a strong personal regard for General McClellan; that he has believed him not always treated with perfect justice, and that he has exerted all the strength and means of influence which he possessed, privately and publicly, to defend him from injustice. He would do the same for Jeff. Davis, Fernando Wood, or the Devil. But when Gen. McClellan, eating his own words, stooped to accept a nomination for the Presidency upon the platform adopted at Chicago, he lost the greater part of all the respect which remained for him on the part of many of his former friends.

If the writer, then, has a right to influence a man in this community by an expression of his wishes, he would have no man be in doubt how that influence would be exercised.

There is no sacrifice (consistant with honor and morality) that he [278]would not make to sustain the opinions which General McClellan maintained so long as Mr. Lincoln suffered him to remain in command of the army. None which he would not make with equal heartiness in resistance to the schemes of base ambition with which Gen. McClellan has allowed himself to become identified since Mr. Lincoln, in the conscientious exercise of his Constitutional duty, saw fit to deprive him of that command. He can have no more ardent desire than that the noble men whom Gen. McClellan once led, and upon whom he has now turned his back, should receive at the coming election the strongest possible expression of encouragement and support from the people for whom they are fighting so heroically, or than that the double faced rebels who have managed to get half possession of the reins of the Democratic party, should receive an equally overwhelming popular rebuke. He would be sorry that a vote should be lost that by any honest means can be got for this purpose. But while this is so he wishes to exercise no influence upon any voter except such as may be addressed to his self respect and his understanding. He would simply exhort every man in the employment of the Mariposa Company, as he would every other, to calmly compare for himself the claims of the two candidates to his confidence, as men fitted by character and training for the momentous duties now devolving upon the Chief Magistrate of this Nation. He would ask them to study the platforms of the two parties, and judge for themselves which offers the most honest, straight forward, open and manly way of meeting the present dangers of our dear land; and if any man can, after doing so, with a clear conscience cast his vote for McClellan, and in favor of the experiments proposed to be tried by those who constructed the Chicago platform, God forbid that he should not do so, and be at perfect freedom to do so. There will be no influence exercised on the Mariposa Estate, with the consent of the Manager, which will interfere with that freedom, let the result be what it may.

The ballot box has, till its decision was stamped under foot by the villains who under a vast conspiracy of robbery, perjury and falsehood, brought about the present war, been the sheet anchor of our peace. To the decision of the ballot box, the leaders in the atrocious crime against mankind must again be brought to bow their necks, before peace can return to us. The ballot box was intended to secure to every citizen the free exercise of his own judgement in the election of his public servants. This is the policy and intention of our laws, and it is in defiance of the spirit of our laws, when means are used to control votes which are not addressed to the understanding and the sense of duty of the voters.

If there has been a change in the management of the Mariposa Estate with regard to elections, it has been because its present Manager is possessed by this conviction. It most certainly is not because he is more indifferent than the most ardent politician in the county as to how men [279]shall vote next week, or because he is in the slightest degree influenced by the fact that some of the Stockholders of the Company may take a different view from his own of the shortest way to secure a permanent peace. He expects to do what he thinks his duty in politics as in everything else, fearing no man, and to treat others in politics, as in anything else, as he would have others treat him.