The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1920-11-02

PRIVAT
Grover Cleveland will be doubly re-
membered, If for no other reason, be-
cause his name and his name alone
! appears twice in the list of Presidents
which so many school children have to
memorize. He had no more than left
! the Presidency in defeat and settled
down to the practice of law in New
| York City that it was seen that he was
! still almost as much the leader of the
| Democratic Party as when he was In
the White House.
| Yet this ex-President had no ma
chine, and no organization. He did
| rot even have friends in politics, that
! is to say, personal friends. Always
standing on his dignity with the poll
ticians, he unbent only in the COM
l,anionship of intimates as far removed
from the political field as Joseph JEFF
ferson, the actor.
! n the four years of his retirement.
he seldom saw party leaders. let so
strong was the reaction against the
Republicans and SO loud the call for
| him in 1892 that he returned in
triumph to the White House.
i"Grover, Grover. four more years of
Grover.
Out they 60. in We go, then We'll be
in clover"
! So ran the favorite song of that
campaign. But second term never
has been a field of clover for any
President. 1t was filled with thistles
for Cleveland.
One of the periodical panics Of the
, 18th century smote the country with
a financial and industrial paralysis in
1893, only two months after the
Inauguration. AS usual, the party in
power caught all the blame, and day
after day leading Republican news
paper shouted in gleeful headlines:
Another bank gone Democratic!"
AS the first means of restoring con-
f1dence, Cleveland called special
session of Congress for the purpose
Of having it repeal the Silver act Of
the Harrison administration. The next
day he submitted himself to the sur
geon's knife for the removal of
cancerus ulcer which had appeared in
the roof of his mouth. His grave
physical condition was concealed from
the panicky mind of the public, and
the operation was performed in the
closest secrecy aboard a yacht as it
steamed slowly up the East River. off
New York. Not until many years had
passed was it known that when Con-
gress assembled he faced it with a
rubber jaw.
! Under the pressure of the President,
the Silver act was repealed, but only
after bitter struggle which left the
Democratic party hopelessly split. The
passage of a tariff bill divided the
party still mere. 1t was such a lobby
made, log rolling measure that Cleve-
land refused to sign it, but let it be-
come law without his signature. After
that sorry exhibition of themselves,
the Democrats went down in we'll
merited defeat in the Congressional
elections Of 1894
| To complete the general demora1iza-
ton. the railroads were tied up in the
Middle West by a big strike under the
leadership of Eugene V. Debs. With
the aid of injunctons and troops,
Cleveland kept the roads Open but his
unprecedented use of the Federal
power served to deepen the popular
feeling that he was more concerned
for the interests of property than for
the interests of the working people,
whose wages were continually going
down.
In the depth of our domestic trou-
bies the President sent his famous
Venezuelan message to Congress. In it
he announced that he British Govern
nent had rejected all our appeals for
the arbitration of land dispute which
it was pressing in South America, and
he boldly proposed that we ourselve S
should decide the question and then
proceed to enforce our decision.
Stocks tumbled headlong in London
and New York, and there was much
wild talk on 10th sides of the Atlantic
But the President confidently reassur-
ed his troubled private secretary,
"Thurber. this does not mean war, il
means arbitration" And that was the
outcome of all the hubbub. Cleve-
lands outburst of plain speaking had
the effect of awakening the English
people, as never before, to the value
of American friendship, and it opened
new era in the relations of the two
Governments.
| Cleveland's hardest, longest battle
in his second administration was for
the gold standard Almost alone he
upheld it through four years, aban-
doned by most of the Democrats and
unaided by the gold Republicans in
Congress, who were afraid of hurting
the party with the silver people.
Throughout those years of doubt
and panic, the business world morbid
ly watched the fall of the gold reserve
The treasury was overlooking with
silver all the while, and if the Govern
ment should be reduced to the neces.
sity of using it to redeem the paper
money and bonds and to pay it's bills
as it had a lawful right to do, the
currency and all credits would at once
| crash down on to a silver basis