History of the United States Volume V Part 13

MR. CLEVELAND AGAIN PRESIDENT

[1893-1895]

In the special session beginning August 7, 1893, a Democratic Congress met under a Democratic President for the first time since 1859. The results were disappointing. Divided, leaderless, in large part at bitter variance with the Administration, the Democrats trooped to their overthrow two years later.

During his second Administration Mr. Cleveland considerably extended the merit system in the civil service. Candidates for consuls.h.i.+ps were subjected to (non-compet.i.tive) examination. Public opinion commended these moves, as it did the President's prompt signing of the Anti-Lottery Bill, introduced in Congress when it was learned that the expatriated Louisiana Lottery from its seat under Honduras jurisdiction was operating in the United States through the express companies. The bill prohibiting this abuse was pa.s.sed at three in the morning on the last day of the Congressional session, and received the President's signature barely five minutes before the Congress expired.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cleveland seated at a cluttered desk.]

Grover Cleveland.

From a photograph by Alexander Black.

At the opening of the Special Session, in August, 1893, the President demanded the repeal of that clause in the Sherman law of 1890 requiring the Government to make heavy monthly purchases of silver. The suspension in India of the free coinage of silver the preceding June had precipitated a disastrous monetary panic in the United States. Gold was h.o.a.rded and exported, vast sums being drained from the Treasury. Credits were refused, values shrivelled, business was palsied, labor idle. It was this situation which led the President to convoke Congress in special session.

Though achieving the repeal on November 1st, after Congressional wrangles especially long and bitter in the Senate, President Cleveland, pursuing the policy of paying gold for all greenbacks presented at the Treasury, was unable, even by the sale of $50,000,000 in bonds, to keep the Treasury gold reserve up to the $100,000,000 figure. Both old greenbacks and Sherman law greenbacks, being redeemed in gold, reissued and again redeemed, were used by exchangers like an endless chain pump to pump the Treasury dry. In February, 1895, the reserve stood at the low figure of $41,340,181. None knew when the country might be forced to a silver basis. In consequence, business revived but slightly, if at all, after the repeal.

In its first regular session the same Congress enacted the Wilson Tariff. As it pa.s.sed the House the bill provided for free sugar, wool, coal, lumber, and iron ore, besides reducing duties on many other articles.

It also taxed incomes exceeding $4,000 per annum. The Senate, except in the case of wool and lumber, abandoned the proposal of free raw materials, stiffened the rates named by the House, and preferred specific to ad valorem duties. Many believed, without proof, that improper influences had helped the Senate to shape its sugar schedule favorably to the great refiners. The President p.r.o.nounced sugar a legitimate subject for taxation in spite of the "fear, quite likely exaggerated," that carrying out this principle might "indirectly and inordinately encourage a combination of sugar refining interests." In a letter read in the House, however, he upbraided as guilty of "party perfidy and dishonor" Democratic Senators who would abandon the principle of free raw materials. But nothing shook the senatorial will.

What was in substance the Senate bill pa.s.sed Congress, and the President permitted it to become a law without his signature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

William L. Wilson.

The Wilson law pleased no one. It violated the Democrats' plighted word apparently at the dictation of parties selfishly interested. The Supreme Court declared its income tax unconst.i.tutional. The revenue from it was inadequate, and had to be eked out with new bond issues. These were alleged to be necessary to meet the greenback debt, but this need not have embarra.s.sed the Government had it followed the French policy of occasionally paying in silver a small percentage of the demand notes presented. Borrowing gold abroad, moreover, tended to inflate prices here, stimulating imports, discouraging exports, increasing the exportation of gold to settle the unfavorable balance of trade, and so on in ceaseless round.

The Democratic management of foreign affairs was severely criticised.

Our extradition treaty with Russia, a country supposed to pay little or no regard to personal rights, and our delay in demanding reparation from Spain for firing upon the Allianca, a United States pa.s.senger steamer, were quite generally condemned. There were those who thought that Cuban insurgents against the sovereignty of Spain might have received some manifestation of sympathy from our Government, and that we should not have permitted Great Britain to endanger the Monroe Doctrine by occupying Corinto in Nicaragua to enforce the payment of an indemnity.

The President offended many in dealing as he did with the Hawaiian Islands' problem. Most did not consider it the duty of this country to champion the cause of the native dynasty there, a course likely to subserve no enlightened interest. Whites, chiefly Americans, had come to own most of the land in the islands, while imported Asiatics and Portuguese competed sharply with the natives as laborers. Political power, even, was largely exercised by the whites, through whose influence the monarchy had been reduced to a const.i.tutional form.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

Princess (afterwards Queen) Liliuokalani.

In January, 1893, Queen Liliuokalani sought by a coup d'etat to reinvest her royal authority with its old absoluteness and to disfranchise non-naturalized whites. The American man-of-war Boston, lying in Honolulu harbor, at the request of American residents, landed marines for their protection. The American colony now initiated a counter revolution, declaring the monarchy abrogated and a provisional government established. Minister Stevens at once recognized the Provisional Government as de facto sovereign. Under protest the Queen yielded.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

James H. Blount.

The new government formally placed itself under the protectorate of the United States, and the Stars and Stripes were hoisted over the Government Building. President Harrison disavowed the protectorate, though he did not withdraw the troops from Honolulu, regarding them as necessary to a.s.sure the lives and property of American citizens. Nor did he lower the flag. A treaty for the annexation of the islands was soon negotiated and submitted to the Senate.

The Cleveland Administration reversed this whole policy with a jolt. The treaty withdrawn, Mr. Cleveland despatched to Honolulu Hon. James H.

Blount as a special commissioner, with "paramount authority," which he exercised by formally ending the protectorate, hauling down the flag, and embarking the garrison of marines. Mr. Blount soon superseded Mr.

Stevens as minister. Meantime the Provisional Government had organized a force of twelve hundred soldiers, got control of the arms and ammunition in the islands, enacted drastic sedition laws, and suppressed disloyal newspapers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

Albert S. Willis.

So complete was its sway, and so relentless did the dethroned Queen threaten to be toward her enemies in case she recovered power, that Minister Albert S. Willis, on succeeding Mr. Blount, lost heart in the contemplated enterprise of restoring the monarchy. He found the Provisional Government and its supporters men of "high character and large commercial interests," while those of the Queen were quite out of sympathy with American interests or with good government for the islands. A large and influential section of Hawaiian public opinion was unanimous for annexation, even Prince Kunniakea, the last of the royal line, avowing himself an annexationist with heart, soul, and, if necessary, with rifle.

A farcical attempt at insurrection was followed by the arrest of the conspirators and of the ex-Queen, who thereupon, for herself and heirs, forever renounced the throne, gave allegiance to the Republic, counselled her former subjects to do likewise, and besought clemency.

Her chief confederates were sentenced to death, but this was commuted to a heavy fine and long imprisonment. After the retirement of the Democracy from power in 1896 the annexation of the islands was promptly consummated.

Walter Q. Gresham, Secretary of State in the early part of Cleveland's second term, died in May, 1895, being succeeded by Richard Olney, transferred from the portfolio of Attorney General. In a day, Cleveland's foreign policy, hitherto so inert, became vigorous to the verge of rashness. Deeming the Monroe Doctrine endangered by Great Britain's apparently arbitrary encroachments on Venezuela in fixing the boundary between Venezuela and British Guiana, he insisted that the boundary dispute should be settled by arbitration.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

Richard Olney.

The message in which the President took this ground shook the country like a declaration of war against Great Britain. American securities fell, the gold reserve dwindled. The President was, however, supported.

Congress was found ready to aid the Administration by pa.s.sing any measures necessary to preserve the national credit. In December, 1895, it unanimously authorized the appointment of a commission to decide upon the true boundary line between Venezuela and British Guiana, with the purpose of giving its report the full sanction and support of the United States. The dispute was finally submitted to a distinguished tribunal at Paris, ex-President Harrison, among others, appearing on behalf of the Venezuelan Republic. While Great Britain's claim was, in a measure, vindicated, this proceeding established a new and potent precedent in support both of the Monroe Doctrine and of international arbitration.

In 1894 a ten months' session of the famous Lexow legislative committee in New York City uncovered voluminous evidence of corrupt munic.i.p.al government there. The police force habitually levied tribute for protection not only upon legitimate trade and industry, but upon illicit liquor-selling, gambling, prost.i.tution, and crime. The chief credit for the exposures was due to Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, President of the New York City Society for the Prevention of Crime. A fusion of anti-Tammany elements carried the autumn elections of 1894 for a reform ticket nominated by a committee of seventy citizens and headed by William L.

Strong as candidate for mayor. At the next election, however, the Tammany candidate, Van Wyck, became the first mayor of the new munic.i.p.ality known as Greater New York, in which had been merged as boroughs the metropolis itself, Brooklyn, and other near cities. As was revealed by the Mazet Committee, little change had occurred in Tammany's predatory spirit. In 1901, therefore, through an alliance similar to that which elected Mayor Strong, Greater New York chose as its mayor to succeed Van Wyck, Seth Low, who resigned the Presidency of Columbia University to become Fusion candidate for the position.

[Ill.u.s.tration: About fifty men standing in a Court room.]

The Lexow Investigation. The scene in the Court Room after Creeden's confession, December 15, 1894.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

Charles H. Parkhurst.

Copyright by C. C. Langill.

A recrudescence of the old Know-Nothing spirit in a party known as the "A. P. A.," or "American Protective a.s.sociation," marked these years. So early as 1875 politicians had noticed the existence of a secret anti-Catholic organization, the United American Mechanics, but it had a brief career. The A. P. A., organized soon after 1885, drew inspiration partly from the hostility of extreme Protestants to the Roman Catholic Church, and partly from the aversion felt by many toward the Irish. In 1894 the A. P. A., though its actual members.h.i.+p was never large, pretended to control 2,000,000 votes. Its subterranean methods estranged fair-minded people. Still more turned against it when its secret oath was exposed. The A. P. A. member promised (1) never to favor or aid the nomination, election, or appointment of a Roman Catholic to any political office, and (2) never to employ a Roman Catholic in any capacity if the services of a Protestant could be obtained. A. P. A.

public utterances garbled history and disseminated clumsy falsehoods touching Catholics, which reacted against the order. The a.s.sociation declined as swiftly as it rose. Chiefly affiliating with the Republicans, it received no substantial countenance from any political party.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

William L. Strong.

CHAPTER VIII.

LABOR AND THE RAILWAYS