The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-10-18

Hitchcock to a reporter and he went on to explain:
 Those who can contribute but a small amount do not care to have the fact known, and others, who could afford to give large amounts, but who know that their contributions must be made public, are deterred because they fear it would not look well for them to give so much. ]"
 Although the famous Cleveland letter is dead as a campaign issue, there may be some interesting results to follow District Attorney Jerome has taken up the case with the object of finding out if the document was fnrged. It may be interesting to go into the history of this affair
 According to the. New York Times, which published the alleged Cleveland letter, some time after MT. Cleveland s death, Broughton Brandenburg, in the role of literary agent, offered the Times a typewriter article on the political sit uaton bearing what purported to be the signature of Grover Cleveland. Inquiry of MT. Frank S. Hastings, executor of the Cleveland estate, elicited the follow ing statement:
 VI am cognizant of an article written by Grover Cleveland which by oral agree ment he assigned to MT Brandenburg and, with Mrs. Cleveland's consent, have given MT. Brandenburg a formal written assignment by which he has the exclusive right to said article, including the right to dispose of it as he may see fit.'
 Doubts of the genuineness of the arti- cle having been expressed prior to It's publication, MT. Hastings was again ap- pealed to. In the course of his written reply he said:
 q have no reason to believe that the article furnished you by MT. Branden- burg, purporting to have been written by MT. Cleveland, is not genuine. l am sending you a signature of MT. Cleve- land, in order that you may compare 1t with the one submitted by MT. Branden- burg"
 Upon its publication the article was challenged by leading democrats, and the Times again appealed to MT. Hastings, who then said:
 "There are within my knowledge facts and incidents that confirm my belief Tn the genuineness of the article as MT. Clevelands own production
 This was printed in the Times on Sep tember g. Two days later MT. Hastings wrote to the same paper stating that 'there has since come to my knowledge 'eYldonCo WHICH ledNeS III ny iiihu iiO doubt of the fact that the said article was not written nor signed by Grover. Cleveland, and therefore is, in my opin- ion no longer entitled to credit as his production"
 When asked for this "evidence'-he himself used the word in quotation marks MT. Hastings referred the Times to MT. John G. Carlisle, who was Secretary Of the Treasury under Cleveland. Mir Car lisle would say nothing further than that he was convinced MT. Cleveland's sigma ture was a forgery
 MT. Brandenburg, in a statement given out to the press, tells his side of the tangled story. After describing a num- Der of interviews with MT. Cleveland in his office at No. 1 Madison avenue, dur- ing which it was suggested that the ex- President should write a series of arti- cles which MT. Brandenburg would sell for him, this statement goes on to say;
 we discussed the matter, and he ac- cepted my offer of s2O00 for three arti- cles one to appear, say in August on the field of politics, one in September on the doubtful issues, and one in late Octo- Der on the doubtful states.
 Placing the date by incidental circum- stances, it was on March that I visited him in the morning and made an ap- pointment for the afternoon. He was then at work writing on the things we had decided were the foremost topics. l returned in the afternoon and he had ready a bundle of little sheets. some yell low and some white, on which he hal written on each subject.
 "When we had gone thoroughly over the subject matter he gave me the mono- graphs to group and type. This did at once, returning the original matter and the typed copy, having altered it only as I inserted few words or a phrase here