Los Angeles Herald

HAYSEED GALL.

When Uncle Jerry Rusk coolly undertook, at the banquet given to President Harrison in San Francisco, to appropriate the credit for introducing the Australian lady-bug into California, he gave a fine example of how hard the cheek of an innocuous granger could be when circumstances called for the pachydermatous article. At that banquet, under the gentle beguiling of General Barnes, he acquitted himself of the following astonishing statement:

I got you your lady-bug from Australia, and I am proud to tell you that I have got a man down there getting more bugs that will destroy every suspicion of blight that dares rest upon this fair land. If there is anything else you want, let me know and I'll send it to you.

The Hon. Frank McCoppin is a modest man and not at all prone to assert himself. He, as everybody in California knows, with the possible exception of General Barnes, deserves the credit for the introduction of the Australian parasite into this state. He must, therefore, have heard of this singular announcement of Uncle Jerry's with a great deal of amazement. Indifferent about his own claims, he was not prepared to see the administration of President Cleveland deprived of the distinction of having saved the orange groves of this state.

When Mr. McCoppin enters the controversial arena he generally, in the language of the sporting world, "gets there." He addressed to the editor of the Examiner a note from which we take the following:

I am not surprised that General Barnes should have fallen into error in regard to a matter with which he was not personally connected; besides, events follow each other so rapidly that one may be mistaken about a thing of this sort, but I can think of no explanation for Secretary Rusk's astonishing declaration. President Cleveland appointed the commission to Australia, and his secretary of state, the Hon. T. F. Bayard, controlled its operations throughout, and it was by his express permission that a portion of the funds appropriated by congress for representation at the Melbourne exhibition was used for paying the expenses of the entomologists who went out to Australia and found the lady-bug and brought it to this country. This work was all done in the latter part of 1888, under Cleveland's administration and before Harrison was elected president, and in fact before the cabinet office now known as the secretary of agriculture was created by congress.

Our modest granger of the hayseed bureau comes from the west, and he has stored away in his capacious mind the noble sentiment of the Missouri editor. "Whoso bloweth not his own bazoo, the same shall not be blowed." The secretaryship of agriculture was not even in existence when Mr. McCoppin forwarded the lady-bug from Australia. The equivalent office was the commissionership of agriculture. What a Republican will not claim, however, must be a very unconsidered trifle indeed.

From the growing grass to the cotton crop of the south-which latter, by the way, is the steady and reliable factor that has kept the balance of trade with Europe in our favor-the Republican party want the credit of it all. One might have supposed that the diminutive little Australian parasite would have escaped their voracious maw, but by no means. They are ready even to appropriate a California sunbeam and rob Dame Nature herself of any initiative in the good things of earth.