Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-05-29
Fiue Minutes A Day
With Our Presidents
Rx LANES MORGAN
From Obscurity TO the White Housc
In Three Years.
by JAMES MORGAN

III EnIte Ears.
No other man has stepped so quick
lly from obscurity to the Presidency as
IGrover Cleveland. When Garfield
stood on the steps of the Capitol to
be inaugurated he never had heard
the name of this Buffalo attorney, who
was TO stand in the same place four
years afterward.
At forty-hve Cleveland remained
unknown outside his county. AT forty
seven he was in the White House.
1t was a meteoric rise. Yet this
man was no meteor. Slow Of mind.
with a narrow range of reading and
of intellectual interests. Cleveland was
stolid in manner and without brilliant
qualities. But he had a character as
rugged and immovable as a mountain.
1t had been built up in rural parson-
ages, where his father. a ~Presbyter-
ian minister. was required to rear a
large family and set an example to
the community on $500 a rear.
AT the early death OF his father,
stephen Grover, who improved his
name by dropping the first part of 1t.
had to leave school and shift for him
self. First he clerked in a village store
at $50 a year; next he taught in a
blind asylum, and finally swept out a
law office in Buffalo at four dollars a
week, until he had swept a path for
himself to the bar.
For more than a quarter of a CEN
fury he plodded along in Buffalo, a
quiet, trusted. but not distinguished
lawyer. Unmarried and without family
or a home. he took no part in the So
cial life of his community, where one
hundred other B~uffalonians may have
been better known to their fellow
ltownsmen.
He had been am assistant district
attorney of Erie County and also its
lsheriff. The first that was ever heard
of him outside his neighborhood were
his sledge hammer vetoes from the
Mayors office only two years before
his election to the Presidency. The
whole State of New York stopped to
listen to his ~resounding whacks and
IpeXt the whole country took notice.
Being Mayor of Buffalo never would
have made Cleveland famous. but be-
ing an honest Mayor of any city in the
United States at hat time, who had
the courage of his honesty. was a dis
~ltinction unfortunately rare. For al
most everywhere p~artisanship was
lblindfolding the people while munich
pal rings and gangs picked theii
pockets OF franchises and of contracts
for predatory interests - railway
street car and gas companies. con
tractors, and the petty criminals of the
underworld.
It CHANGED that yea that two "bie
men We're dividing the votes of tbs
Democratic State convention for Gov
crnor, and tho little fellow" THU
veto mayor slipped in between
them. The Republicans a put up
machine-made ticket and Cleveland
personified the issue. He did not have
to make a campaign speech; hi
vetoes spoke for him. and he wal
lelected by 10000 plurality. the big
geSt in the records of New York up 4
that time.
After voting on election day, he sa
down in the certainty of victory an
wrote a letter to his brother. II is
l~letter which reveals a side of h maj
that he never turned 10 the public ane
that is always The real side of an,
public man. Il am honest and SINGER
in my desire to do WELL" he wrote
but the question is whether / know
enough to accomplish what | desire
l.. If mother were alive,
lshould feel much safer. / have Away
thought that her prayers had much t
do with my success"
CleveIand's two years In the Cover
.norship at Albany was only an en-
ilargement of his few months in tn
lM~ayorality of Buffalo. His promotion
10 the Presidency followed naturally
The sudden. the theatrical rise o
this man was not a mere caprice, /;
blind stroke of luck. on the contrary
he was nominated and elected Presi
ldent because he was the logical, com
lmon-sense choice; because this un'
known. unambitious lawyer of Buffalo
had become in two swift years thu
most conspicuous embodiment of th'
things that the time called for-inde'
Ip~endenee in politics and a higher
standard Of conduct in Office.
The National campaign of 1sSl
sank to a new low level of mudsling
ling. when a great people seemed re
iduced to h~umiliating choice between
common honesty and commol
idecency. Inscribing on their banners
I-Pubiic Once is a Public Trust tn
kDemocrats bombar6ed he publ