Wichita Eagle

A Prominent Politician and Newspaper Man Who Has Once More Taken Up His Residence in Washington.

The purchase of the Washington Post by ex-Postmaster-General Hatton and Beriah Wilkins promises for the capital at last something like a strong, bright, popular newspaper. Hatton, since his retirement from President Arthur's Cabinet, has engaged in a number of newspaper enterprises, all of which have become great successes not long after he let go of them. He has now settled in Washington to block out for himself a career as a journalist of National proportions. Hatton is a constitutional partisan, incisive and deadly as a carving-knife. There is not a fiber in him that is at all uncertain politically.

A few days before the expiration of Mr. Arthur's term a Virginia postmaster went into his office and proposed to Hatton to resign and have a Democratic friend of his appointed who would have the office in his store, and let him run it. Frank said: "You are a Republican?"

"Yes."

"You propose to continue to support the party?"

"Yes."

"You opposed Cleveland!"

"Yes."

"Well, you have no right to an office under an administration whose election you opposed, and I would not be a party to the mean trick by which you hope to get it. Stand up like a man and be kicked out with the rest of us!"

This illustrates Mr. Hatton's Republicanism. He is a native of Cadiz, O., forty-four years old. When the war broke out he enlisted, and at nineteen was a Lieutenant. Before he was twenty-one his father moved to Iowa, and there young Hatton engaged in newspaper work.

In 1874 he went to Burlington and bought a half interest in the Hawkeye, which became a great success. In 1876 he was a delegate to the National Republican convention at Cincinnati, where he voted for Conkling as long as that gentleman's name was before the convention. President Hayes appointed Hatton postmaster of Burlington in spite of the Hawkeye's criticism of Hayes' Southern policy. He was chairman of the Iowa State Committee through one or two campaigns, and was appointed First-Assistant-Postmaster-General on the indorsement of almost the entire West. When Postmaster-General Howe died he was promoted into the Cabinet.

HON. FRANK HATTON.