The New Orleans Bulletin

The State-House Job Revisited.

The President of the Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Joseph H. Oglesby, is a patient gentleman. The marvelous patience of a much-tormented Scriptural character, whose name is strangely suggestive—afflicted Job—sinks into insignificance when contrasted with the much endurance of Mr. Oglesby.

On the 22d of last April, the BULLETIN published a full exposé of the "State House Job," and specifically charged Mr. Oglesby with being a party in interest. That charge was reiterated from time to time and every opportunity was given to Mr. Oglesby to come forward and deny any implication with a nefarious scheme, which contemplated plundering the State to the extent of $950,000 for a State House that could have been bought outright for the sum of $125,000 or $150,000 at most.

Why was the President of the Chamber silent in the face of this charge? Why did he permit the damaging allegation to be made, not once, but a score of times, until the public, seeing no refutation, believed it? Was it because Mr. Oglesby felt so assured of his reputation in this community that he did not think it necessary to make a public denial? Was it because he, a supporter and defender of the infamous usurpation of Kellogg, did not deem a charge emanating from the BULLETIN as worthy of his notice? or was it because his friend and eulogizer, a co-supporter of the same infamous usurpation, Mr. Moses Greenwood, advised silence in the matter?

For none nor all of these reasons did the President of the Chamber of Commerce find it convenient to pass over the plain charges made by us, but for a much more substantial and weighty reason—he was guilty! The charge is true, and no man knows it better than Mr. Oglesby, who is not only largely interested in the State House, but has advanced large sums of money to hasten its preparation for the purposes for which it was intended.

What does Mr. Oglesby mean then in the face of this fact, which he has admitted privately since the first publication in the BULLETIN, by rising in the Chamber of Commerce and making a speech in which he denies, what! The charge made by the BULLETIN! No, but a series of allegations made by himself.

The ingenious manner in which he manages to evade the charge made against him, that of interest in the State House job, would be amusing were it not the merest trifling with a serious subject.

He says he never heard of the State House bill until after the adjournment of the Legislature. That may be true, and probably is, as no State House bill ever did pass the last Legislature, and as even the clause in the General Appropriation bill appointing the commission to lease a State House was inserted after the adjournment, never having passed either house.

The BULLETIN never said that Mr. Oglesby assisted in getting the scheme through the Legislature, although he has had his finger in other Legislative pies with written agreements locked up in his iron safe beforehand. We read the following statement with unfeigned amazement:

"I have never, in my life, directly or indirectly, been interested in any measures before any Legislature of the State of Louisiana, except as every American citizen is."

This is simply untrue. Mr. Oglesby has been interested in numerous Legislative schemes, such as the Levee Shed Bill, the original Levee bill and a scheme to realize on the worthless certificates of the Legislature of 1870 and 1871. He has been notoriously a dabbler in legislative schemes of questionable character, and he and such men as Moses Greenwood and a few others we could name, have done more by their affiliation with Kellogg and other plunderers of the State, to injure our people than all the carpet baggers put together, who have invaded Louisiana.

We are astonished that a number of intelligent gentlemen should allow themselves to be so imposed upon and wheedled as were the members of the Chamber of Commerce last night. The whole affair wears upon its face the appearance of having been cut and dried, and the manner in which the whitewashing was effected is a serious reflection upon the intelligence and manhood of the Chamber. To permit a grave charge against its President to be dismissed upon the assertion that the source from whence it had emanated was entitled to no consideration, when that source was the BULLETIN, was at once an insult to us and to the community which supports us.

We are not surprised that Mr. Greenwood should think so lightly of the BULLETIN, inasmuch as we have never eulogized his friend Mr. Kellogg, and when we remember the fact that Mr. Greenwood was perhaps the only citizen of any repute present at the inauguration of Mr. Kellogg, and that he refused to act with the committee of citizens appointed to protest against the usurpation, we do not wonder that he should have felt called upon to rise and defend Mr. Oglesby, who with himself has been Kellogg all through.

It is something of a coincidence that this explanation of Mr. Oglesby comes upon the heels of the decision of Judge Hawkins, smashing the State House scheme into nothingness, and upon the heels too of a very ominous partial change in the Fiscal Agency. It would appear that the grapes are growing exceedingly sour, and that those who have been partaking of them are a little regretful that they did not discover the acidity before.

So far as the public is concerned, they know that but for the exposures in the BULLETIN, the State-House job would have been carried through and the State fleeced out of nearly a million of dollars, and we are content to rest upon the judgment of the people as opposed to Mr. Greenwood, Mr. Oglesby and their little coterie of friends in the Chamber of Commerce.

Since the above was in type we have been called upon by Mr. Greenwood, who informs us that he was not the gentleman who made the remark attributed to him by the Republican in reference to the source of the charges against Mr. Oglesby, and that he did not offer the resolution exonerating Mr. Oglesby which was attributed to him by both the Picayune and Republican. So far, therefore, as the two points are concerned, Mr. Greenwood has been misrepresented; but he does not deny that he voted for the resolution, which was, to say the very least, erroneous, inasmuch as it characterizes the charges against Mr. Oglesby as "anonymous obloquy."

The charge was made specifically in the BULLETIN editorially, and hence was not anonymous. The parties who were responsible for the publication could have been found at any time, and were prepared to substantiate what the BULLETIN asserted.

In the matter of the resolution, our own reporter was somewhat in doubt as to its author, but the Picayune and Republican both attributed it to Mr. Greenwood, and knowing that gentleman to be a supporter and apologist of Mr. Kellogg's, we naturally concluded that the reports were true. The further fact that the Republican attributed a remark containing a direct slur upon the BULLETIN to Mr. Greenwood, gave color to the other statement. We will say this much for Mr. Greenwood, that his affiliation with Kellogg, however unfortunate and injurious to the State, has sprung from no motives of enmity to the people, that he has never made or been suspected of making a dollar from such association, and that we have an abiding faith in his honor and integrity as a man. It was because we have this high opinion of his character that we felt so keenly the slur, which, according to the Republican, he had cast upon us, and it was because of his high commercial and social standing that we regret his association with the man to whom we all attribute our misfortunes.