Perth Amboy evening news., 1920-04-13
Fiue Minutes A Day .
With Our Presidents
An ml-Starrcd President
BY JAMES MORGAN


The most notable event of Van
Buren's administration was the oc-
Currence of one of the great panics
from which in the nineteenth century
the country regularly collapsed every
fifteen or twenty years, as in 1919.
1887, 1857, 1873 and in 1898. Those
periodics prostrations always follow
ed wild debauches in speculation.
but since il is convenient and consol-
ing to blame some one else for our
own sins, the President invariably
has been a the scapegoat in each
period of hard times.
No doubt Jackson's removal of the
public deposits from the United
States Bank caused financial disturb
ance and his distribution of the fed
eral surplus among the state treas
uries also was disturbing. The w
eminent, the banks and the people
generally had all merrily Joined in
sowing the wind, whose harvest was
the whirlwind of 1897.
The nation had been indulging in
the first of it's big western booms.
The river steamboat aided to open
up new regions. where mushroom
states, in ambitious emulation of
New York and its Erie canal, q
wild in appropriations for the build
ing of canals. Van Buren, was the
first President-elect to ride in a train
even part of the way to Washington,
and the expansion of the steam rail-
way system was beginning to ini1ame
the national imagination.
When the day of reckoning and
remorse came; when bread riots
broke out; when laborers stood IN
line near New York to get jobs at a
wage of 81 a month and board; when
banks suspended payments in coin,
and when business houses were tum-
Hing into hapk rtf nfrX- the ank
and business men, who had always
violently anti-Democratic, turn
ed upon Van Buren, and pointed their
accusing fingers at the White House.
The foremost man of business in
conservative New England, Abbott
did not hesitate to hint TO
a public meeting in Boston the in
might come for forcible resistance to
the government, when the crew, as
said, would have to mutiny ana
seize the ship of state. |
Van Buren, faced the gale without
bending. He rose above political
and the temptation to
natter the mad passions of the hour
and preserved an attitude of mas |
terful inactivity. In his philosophy |
of government, as In that of his OPP
also. there was no solution
of thu pressing problems, and ne
warned the people not 10 look
TO the helpless government for rellef.
The President did call congress in
extra session, but only to recommend
the adoption of the sub-treasury sys-
The banks having failed, he
that Uncle Sam, like a
timid old woman, should lock up his
money in the bureau drawer. And
the economic folly of the sub-treas-
.ry was persisted in until the estab-
lishment of the federal reserve sys-
1t was squally weather all around,
with the costly Seminole war drag
cling It's slow course through the
.alarial everglades of Florida; with
embarrassing revolutions on both
sides of us, in the revolted Mexican
Province of Texas and in the British
Province of Ontario. Although he
had appealed to the "sobe second
of the people"-a phrase
which he popularized-they mistook
lis independence for indifference,
md from mouth to mouth passed the
lalse story of a cold and naughty
,ristocrat in the White House, eating
rom gold spoons and disporting him
self with English servants. horses
md carriages"
With a New Workers. more luxuri-
tastes the White House did lake
on q somewhat ulileTtHl ~ i
Van Buren's tenancy, but without the
extravagances that were charged to
him by his political opponents. I'm
ii his eldest son, Abraham. brought
4 bride to the mansion-a cousin OF
Dolly Madison-only the sons of h
President lived with him. The best
remembered of these, Prince john
Van Buren,, a really able lawyer and
distinguished figure in society, coined
IN election day slogan that has car
led more than one contest at the
POLLS: Vote early and vote often..
The defeats of the Democratic
ticket in the off years plainly fore
;hadowed the ill-starred Presidents
defeat in his candidacy for re-
election in 1910. No prophet was
to write the refrain OF the
popular campaign song of the Wings:
Van! Van!
Is q used up man. Il
Nevertheless Van Buren remained
N active politics ten years, as VIII pc
recorded in later chapters. For still
another ten years he lived on in re-
tirement at Lindenwold, his country
in his native village. where he
died in the midst of the Civil War.