In journalism the most effective writer at this time was the “Parsee Merchant,” Joseph S. Moore. Moore was a clever German-Hebrew, who had come to New York from Bombay and had secured a place in the New York Custom House. He had first attracted attention in 1869 by a series of letters to the New York _World_, signed “Adhersey Curiosibhoy.” These letters, addressed to “Sahib Greeley,” told of the adventures of a Parsee merchant who came to New York from India to buy goods. His theory in coming, he said, was that as the United States was the land where certain things his firm traded in were raised they ought to be cheaper there; and as the United States bought jute, seeds, gums, etc., from India, he could establish a direct trade instead of the indirect through London. He wanted copper, but copper he found cost five cents more a pound in New York than in London. He wanted cotton prints, but they were 25 per cent dearer here than in England. He wanted enamelled hides, but they cost 25 per cent more than in England. He went to New Haven to buy carriages, but the price was $1100 in currency against 90 guineas in London. He wanted iron; it cost 80 cents more than in England, 60 per cent more than in Bombay. He wanted wood-screws, but the “wood screw sahib” laughed and told him he had a better market at home than any the Parsee could bring him and in it he could sell all he could make at from 70 to 100 per cent more than the foreigner paid. Discouraged, the Parsee wrote a series of over forty letters to “Sahib Greeley,” begging him to reflect and weigh the facts in his “great political economical mind” and explain to him why a policy which produced such prices for the people of America and made trade with foreigners impossible, was not stupid. So effective was the Parsee that he greatly incensed the Industrial League. The Executive Council declared him to be subsidized by British gold and attributed to him much for which he was in no way responsible; for instance, the Wood Bill, of which Moore really disapproved, they characterized as a “crazy structure contrived by a foreigner who has been so long tolerated in the New York Custom House that he has grown to imagine himself an authority.” The opposition to the Parsee was so strong that Secretary Sherman finally removed him.