A Party Boss Overreaches: Barlow Tries to Hand-Pick Washington Territory's Delegates

The action of the Chairman of the Territorial Central Committee, B. Barlow, in his endeavors to bulldoze the Republicans of the Territory by robbing them of the prerogative of saying who shall represent them as delegates to the National Republican Convention to be held at Chicago next June, is awakening a storm of criticism from the party press of the Territory. We consider the act of Mr. Barlow grossly insulting to the intelligence of the party, and an assumption of far more power than is delegated to him. He will, and doubtless ere this has learned, that the masses cannot be whipped into the traces by the domineering arrogance of one man. It is evident that Mr. Barlow is in the wrong row. He is filling a position that he is unqualified for, and the sooner he steps down and out the better it will be for the party that he is attempting to cripple. He has no more right to call together the Territorial Central Committee and appoint those delegates than has the chairman of a County Central Committee to call a session of that body and proceed to nominate county officers. The action is unprecedented in the history of politics, and for pure and unadulterated gall surpasses anything that has come to our notice for some years.