The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1911-05-04
ANSWER.


bad measures passed up to him by Congress.
He set his face formally against special pen
sion bills, very many of which are mere raids
upon the treasury by men who took no real
part in the Civil War. There is no question
that some of the benefciaries of the special
pension bills were deserters, bounty jumpers
and camp followers. The general pension law
is so extremely liberal that all meritorious
cases could have been gotten to the pension
department. Yet every session of Congress,
even now, is besieged with special pension bills
presented by shady Congressman in favor Of
applicants who fear to present themselves in
the regular way to the pension bureaus.
Mr.. Cleveland also deserves great credit for
making Tariff reform a national issue. His
message upon that subject was powerful ar
raignment of the iniquitous protective system.
His second administration was altogether
different from his first. His election had been
due to combination of Catholic Priests and
Wall Street interests. President Harrison was
not the biggest man that ever occupied the
White House, but he was one of the most
honest and independent. The politicians could
not manage him. Wall Street could not order
him about He paid off nearly $2OO,OOO,OOO
of our back debt, and when his Secretary of
the Treasury Mr.. Windon, had fallen in with
the plans of the national bankers and had
ordered the issue of the bonds, which they
desired, President Harrison interfered and
put stop to it. Mr.. Windon had gone so far
as to prepare plates for the engraving of the
bonds. Now, when Mr.. Cleveland defeated
Mr.. Harrison his Secretary of the Treasury,
John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, took the very
same plates which Harrison would not allow
Windon to use, and engraved the bonds which
Wall Street had demanded and which had
probably been promised by Cleveland cam
paign managers, as the condition of Wall
Streets support. Not only did Mr.. Cleve-
land pile up an additional debt on the nation
of $500, 100000, but he sold the bonds at a
secret midnight conference held in the White
House by himself, J. P. Morgan and Francis
Lynde Stetson. The price paid by Mr.. Nor
gan for these gilt-edged securities, payable in
gold, was less than that which the gold bonds
of the New England railroads were COM
handing at that time in the open market.
1t was less than the negroes of Jamaica were
giving for their gold bonds. The ugliest
feature of this secret, midnight deal was that
the law firm Of Grover Cleveland and Francis
l.. Stetson had been the attorneys of j. p.
Morgan & Co., and the contract by which one
of the members of this law firm sold United
States bonds to their Wall Street client, was
drawn up by one of the partners, Stetson, and
sig, ed by the other, Cleveland.
Another scandal of Cleveland's administra-
ton was the writing of the Tariff Schedule
as demanded by the Sugar Trust. It was
Clevelands Cabinet officer, Mr.. Carlisle, who
took his directions from Henry 0. Havemeyer
in person, and who then obediently wrote the
schedule according to Havemeyer's orders
Still another scandal of this second admin
istration of Mr. Cleveland's was his refusal
to veto the Infamous tariff bill as trans
formed by the 100 amendment which Sena-