Economist v. Journalist

On the white pages of World's Work (monthly) word followed word with seemingly unimpeachable logic. Mark Sullivan, dean of Washington correspondents, wrote as he had written many times before. Genially, understandably, he eulogized the six-year record of keen-minded Andrew Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury, explained how he had reduced the national debt between Aug. 31, 1919, and Dec. 31, 1926, from 26.6 billion dollars to 19.1 billions.

In his study, Fabian Franklin, economist and likewise journalist, Mr. Sullivan's senior by 22 years, scanned the article. He was accustomed to spying an error a day in the press. He was accustomed to let them pass in silence. But these errors by famed Mr. Sullivan were too flagrant to endure. To the New York Times he wrote hotly: "We note an astonishing error in the mere statement of bald facts. President Wilson's term did not end until March 4, 1921."

How then can Mr. Mellon (appointed by President Harding) be credited with a two billion, 600 million dollar reduction in the debt before that time? ". . . The blunder is almost incredible on the part of a newspaperman, to whom Presidential year dates are naturally the most familiar of all possible landmarks . . . the article throughout is vitiated by ... error."

How, asked Mr. Franklin, can Secretary Mellon be honestly called debt-reduction-wonderman in face of the facts that "in the months from Aug. 31, 1919, to Dec. 31, 1920, the debt was reduced by 2.6 billions under Mr. Mellon's predecessors; and that the best Mr. Mellon was able to do was to reduce it by 2.1 billions in the three years from Dec. 31, 1920, to Dec. 31, 1923, and by 2.8 billions in the three years from Dec. 31, 1923, to Dec. 31, 1926?"

All of which made unhappy those newspapermen who revere Mr. Sullivan. They could say it was remarkable that a man who writes so much is so seldom wrong. But, of late, too many were saying that he is becoming more of a partisan, less of a newspaperman.