THE GLOBE. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1881. THE BOGUS TELEGRAM INDUSTRY.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2311, 31 August 1881, Page 2

THE GLOBE. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 1881. THE BOGUS TELEGRAM INDUSTRY.

The importance to the general welfare of encouraging local industry cannot, we think, be over-rated. When we look around and see the manufactories for the utilization of the products of the colony in full work, it gives us great hope for the future. But while this is so as regards such material products as wool, &c., such is the selfishness of human nature that it scarcely holds good with regard to telegraphic intelligence of events taking place in other parts of the world. As a rule the public would in this case, whatever might be the feelings of patriotism with which they are actuated, prefer vory much the imported telegram to the manufactured article. The committee of the association for the promotion of local industries, when drawing up their report submitted last night, evidently were not aware of the fact that a very important and ingenious addition to the long list of local enterprise, viz., the manufacture of telegrams, existed in our midst. Yet so it is, and had it not been for the perversity of the President of the United States in declining absolutely to die when one of the. evening journals here declared him to be dead, the public would have remained in blissful ignorance of the progress madehere in the modern science of humbng. Such conduct on the part of a personage of distinction such as President Garfield deserves, and no doubt will receive, from every right thinking and high-minded person having a reverence for the truth, the strongest possible reprobation. Can anvthing more disgraceful be imagined than the conduct of a man who, after the issue of a bulletin appearing on Saturday morning in thoso prosaic and unpatriotic journals who prefer the imported to the home manufactured telegrams, stating that there was no hope of his recovery, persisted on Monday—forty-eight honrs after he had been declared dead by the colonial manufacturer—in passing'a much better night. "We search the annals of crime in vain for anything approaching this conduct in depth of moral turpitnde. Had it not been for this unparalleled audacity the enterprising and truthful journal alluded to would have reaped the reward of its labours —and imagination. It is indeed hard to seo modest meiifc thus, even in the very hour of its recognition, deprived of that tribute of praise so worthily earned. It now only remains for President Garfield —who by his conduct in this matter has shown that he is entiroly destitute of all gentlemanly feeling—to recover his he.tuib, and the base ingratitude will be complete. 0£

■what avail is it that colonial industry is ever striving to find fresh fields for the -development of our resources when local talent, ingenuity, and imagination are to be cribbed, cabined, and confined by such conduct as it has been our duty to call attontion to. "With a high-minded sense of the fitness of things which doos credit alike to their head and heart, the managers of the journal in question prefer taking the goods tho gods provide, in the shapo of -telegrams paid for by other people, to encouraging foreign industries. Nay, more, by skilful manipulation—which, but for President Garfield, would never have been recognised—they so dress up the telegrams appearing in the morning that the public actually believe that they emanate from the source they purport to do. Such an evidence of colonial skill and industry should not, wo think, pass without recognition, and we dosire to add our humble tribute of admiration and wonder, mingled with condolence, on the fact that President Garfield should have caused so important a section of the Press of New Zealand as the journal referred to, even in tli9 smallest degree, to have swerved from tho strict line of truth. Perhaps next tirno that amount of success which is so worthily deserved will bo attained.