Norwich bulletin., 1920-04-13
Five Minutes a Day With Our Presidents Copyright 1s2o-By James Morgan

ILL-sTARRED PREsI-
 DENT. 1S37-Martin Van Buren inauqu-
 rated eighth president, aged
 54.
 Revolution in Ontario.
 Revolution in Texas.
 The Seminole War.
 1e4o-The Sub-Treasury law.
 Van Buren defeated for TO-
 election.
 1s44-Defeated for nomination.
 t84s-Free Soil candidate for pres
 ident.
 1se2-JuIy 24, died at Kinder
 hook, N. Y, aged 7e. The most notable event of Van Bu- ren's administration was the occur renee of one of the great panics from which in the 18th century the coun- try regularly collapsed every 15 or 20 years, as in 1Si9, 1887, 1S57,- 1873 and in 1893. Those periodic prostra- tions always followed wild debauches in. speculation, but since it is con venient and consoling to blame some one else for our own sins. the presi- dent invariably has been made the scapegoat in each period of hard times.
 
 public deposits from the United States bank caused financial disturbance and his distribution of the federal surplus among the state treasuries also was disturbing, The govern ment, the banks and the people gen. erally had all merrily jined in sow ing the wind, whose harvest was the | whirlwind of 1897.
 The nation had been irdulging in the first of its big western booms ] The river steamboat aided to open up new regions, where mushroom l states, in ambitious emulation of New York and its Erie Canal, ran wild in | appropriations for the building of ca nals. Van Buren was the first presi- | dent-e elect to ride in a train even part of the way to Washington. and the | expansion of the steam railway sys- | tenn was beginning to inflame the na- l tional imagination.
 | When the day of reckoning and re. morse came; when bread riots brok, out; when laborers stood in line neal New York to get jobs at a wage of s- a month and board; when banks sus pended payments in coin. and whe1 business houses were tumbling into bankruptcy, the bankers and bushes men, who had always been violentl, anti-democratic, turned upon Van Blu ren and pointed their accusing finger at the White House. The foremos man of business in conservative Ney England, Abbott Lawrence, did no hesitate to hint to a public meeting il Boston the incendiary suggestion tha the time might come for forcible re sistance to the government. when tn crew, as he said, would have to mu tiny and seize the ship of state. 
 Van Buren faced the gale withou bending. He rose above political ma neuyering and the temptation to flat ter the mad passions of the hour and preserved an attitude of master full inactivity In his philosophy c government, as in that of his oppo , nents also. there was no solution. C the pressing problems. and he blunt warned the people not to look to th helpless government for relief The president did call congress extra session. but only to recommen the adoption of the sub-treasury sys tenn. The banks having failed, a proposed that Uncle Sam, like a timi old woman. should lock up his none 1 In the bureau drawer. And the ecor i omic folly of the sub-treasury wa persisted in until the establishment ( the federal reserve system.
 It was squally weather all aroun with the costly. Seminole War draf 9 ging it's slow course through the ma . larial everglades of Florida: with en r barrassing reVolutions on both sid, of us, in the revolted Mexican pro, s ince of Texas and in the Britis e province of Ontario. Although he hs d appealed to the sober second thougl = of the people"-a phrase whicf : popularized-they mistooA his ind y pendence for indifferences, and fro r, mouth to mouth passed the fal t story of a cold and naughty aristocr in the White House. eating from go Q | cr,Aann and disnnrfinn hinnanlR ,uh