The Anaconda Standard

SENATOR QUAY'S DEFENSE.

Whether Senator Quay was wise or foolish in undertaking a personal vindication, is a question on which people in his own political party will differ. His speech in the senate may amount to a complete refutation of charges, but the meagre summary of it sent out to the western press furnishes no data on which any opinion can be based. It will be several days before the text of the senator's remarks will reach newspaper offices in the Northwest.

Those of the STANDARD's contemporaries which assume that the assault on Mr. Quay's financial career had their source in any democratic newspaper are invariably in the wrong. All the serious charges against him were first brought before the public in the columns of the leading republican newspaper in Mr. Quay's own state—a newspaper which bitterly opposed him when he was a candidate for state office as, very recently, it has waged aggressive warfare against Mr. Cameron. That newspaper is the Philadelphia Press. It attracted wide attention by the virulence of its attacks on Mr. Quay, it first gave to the world all the allegations concerning his alleged dishonesty. Mr. Quay was uniformly triumphant in spite of the opposition of the Press, yet the standing of that newspaper found recognition when President Harrison appointed Mr. Charles Emory Smith its editor to one of the most coveted diplomatic posts in the gift of the government. Mr. Smith is minister to the court of Russia. His newspaper gave wide currency to the criticisms on Mr. Quay which have since been persistently repeated, and Mr. Quay can easily trace all his troubles to the leading organ of his own party in his own state.