" I produced
the following extract from one of his speeches: "I will vote not only to
strike out this provision, but I will vote to repeal the whole law." To
this he merely replied that there was "no inconsistency between those
two statements." He asserted that "Rufus P. Putnam, fraudulently
credited to Washington County, Ohio, never lived in Washington County,
Ohio, or in my Congressional district, or in Ohio as far as I know."
We produced a letter which, thanks to a beneficent Providence, he had
himself written about Mr. Rufus P. Putnam, in which he said: "Mr. Rufus
P. Putnam is a legal resident of my district and has relatives living
there now." He explained, first, that he had not written the letter;
second, that he had forgotten he had written the letter; and, third,
that he was grossly deceived when he wrote it. He said: "I have not
been informed of one applicant who has found a place in the classified
service from my district." We confronted him with the names of eight. He
looked them over and said, "Yes, the eight men are living in my district
as now constituted," but added that his district had been gerrymandered
so that he could no longer tell who did and who didn't live in it.
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