6: Presidential Knight-Errantry
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Presidential Knight-Errantry
Although President Cleveland decisively repelled the Senate's
attempted invasion of the power of removal belonging to his
office, he was still left in a deplorable state of servitude
through the operation of old laws based upon the principle of
rotation in office. The Acts of 1820 and 1836, limiting
commissions to the term of four years, forced him to make
numerous appointments which provoked controversy and made large
demands upon his time and thought. In the first year of his
administration, he sent about two thousand nominations to the
Senate, an average of over six a day, assuming that he was
allowed to rest on Sunday. His freedom of action was further
curtailed by an Act of 1863, prohibiting the payment of a salary
to any person appointed to fill a vacancy existing while the
Senate was in session, until the appointment had been confirmed
by the Senate. The President was thus placed under a strict
compulsion to act as a party employment agent.
If it is the prime duty of a President to act in the spirit of a
reformer, Cleveland is entitled to high praise for the stanchness
with which he adhered to his principles under most trying
circumstances. Upon November 27, 1885, he approved rules
confirming and extending the civil service regulations. Charges
that Collector Hedden of the New York Customs House was violating
the spirit of the Civil Service Act, and was making a party
machine of his office, caused the Civil Service Commission to
make an investigation which resulted in his resignation in July,
1886. On the 10th of August, Daniel Magone of Ogdensburg, New
York, a widely known lawyer, was personally chosen by the
President with a view to enforcing the civil service law in the
New York Customs House. Before making this appointment, President
Cleveland issued an order to all heads of departments warning all
officeholders against the use of their positions to control
political movements in their localities. "Officeholders," he
declared, "are the agents of the people, not their masters. They
have no right, as officeholders, to dictate the political action
of their associates, or to throttle freedom of action within
party lines by methods and practices which prevent every useful
and justifiable purpose of party organization." In August,
President Cleveland gave signal evidence of his devotion to civil
service reform by appointing a Republican, because of his special
qualifications, to be chief examiner for the Civil Service
Commission.
Democratic party workers were so angered and disgusted by the
President's policy that any mention of his name was enough to
start a flow of coarse denunciation. Strong hostility to his
course of action was manifested in Congress. Chairman Randall, of
the committee on appropriations, threatened to cut off the
appropriation for office room for the commission. A "rider" to
the legislative appropriation bill, striking at the civil service
law, caused a vigorous debate in the House in which leading
Democrats assailed the Administration, but eventually the "rider"
was ruled out on a point of order. In the Senate, such party
leaders as Vance of North Carolina, Saulsbury of Delaware, and
Voorhees of Indiana, openly ridiculed the civil service law, and
various attempts to cripple it were made but were defeated.
Senator Vance introduced a bill to repeal the law, but it was
indefinitely postponed by a vote of 33 to 6, the affirmative vote
being cast mainly by Republicans; and in general the strongest
support for the law now came from the Republican side. Early in
June, 1887, an estimate was made that nine thousand civil offices
outside the scope of the civil service rules were still held by
Republicans. The Republican party press gloated over the
situation and was fond of dwelling upon the way in which old-line
Democrats were being snubbed while the Mugwumps were favored. At
the same time, civil service reformers found much to condemn in
the character of Cleveland's appointments. A special committee of
the National Civil Service Reform League, on March 30, 1887,
published a report in which they asserted that, "tried by the
standard of absolute fidelity to the reform as it is understood
by this League, it is not to be denied that t this Administration
has left much to be desired." At a subsequent session of the
League, its President, George William Curtis, proclaimed that the
League did not regard the Administration as "in any strict sense
of the words a civil service reform administration." Thus while
President Cleveland was alienating his regular party support, he
was not getting in return any dependable support from the
reformers. He seemed to be sitting down between two stools, both
tilting to let him fall.
Meanwhile, he went on imperturbably doing his duty as he saw it.
Like many of his predecessors, he would rise early to get some
time to attend to public business before the rush of office
seekers began, but the bulk of his day's work lay in the
discharge of his compulsory duties as an employment agent. Many
difficult situations were created by contentions among
Congressmen over appointments. It was Cleveland's habit to deal
with these cases by homely expostulation and by pleas for mutual
concessions. Such incidents do not of course go upon record, and
it is only as memoirs and reminiscences of public men are
published that this personal side of history becomes known.
Senator Cullom of Illinois in his Fifty Years of Public Service
gives an account that doubtless fairly displays Cleveland's way
of handling his vexatious problems. "I happened to be at the
White House one day, and Mr. Cleveland said to me, 'I wish you
would take up Lamar's nomination and dispose of it. I am between
hay and grass with reference to the Interior Department. Nothing
is being done there; I ought to have some one on duty, and I
cannot do anything until you dispose of Lamar.'" Mr. Lamar, who
had entered the Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior, was
nominated for associate justice of the Supreme Court on December
6, 1887. He had been an eminent member of the Senate, with
previous distinguished service in the House, so that the Senate
must have had abundant knowledge of his character and
attainments. It is impossible to assign the delay that ensued to
reasonable need of time for inquiry as to his qualifications, but
Senator Cullom relates that "the nomination pended before the
Judiciary Committee for a long time." Soon after the personal
appeal, which was made by the President to every Senator he could
reach, action was finally taken and the appointment was confirmed
January 16, 1888.
Senator Cullom's reminiscences also throw light upon the process
by which judges are appointed. President Cleveland had selected
Melville W. Fuller of Illinois for the office of chief justice of
the Supreme Court. According to Senator Cullom, Senator Edmunds
"was very much out of humor with the President because he had
fully expected that Judge Phelps, of his own State, was to
receive the honor.... The result was that Senator Edmunds held
the nomination, without any action, in the Judiciary Committee
for some three months." Senator Cullom, although a party
associate of Edmunds, was pleased that the President had selected
an Illinois jurist and he was determined that, if he could help
it, Edmunds should not have the New Hampshire candidate
appointed. He therefore appealed to the committee to do something
about the nomination, either one way or the other. The committee
finally reported the nomination to the Senate without
recommendation. When the matter came up in executive session,
"Senator Edmunds at once took the floor and attacked Judge Fuller
most viciously as having sympathized with the rebellion." But
Cullom was primed to meet that argument. He had been furnished
with a copy of a speech attacking President Lincoln which Phelps
had delivered during the war, and he now read it to the Senate,
"much to the chagrin and mortification of Senator Edmunds."
Cullom relates that the Democrats in the Senate enjoyed the
scene. "Naturally, it appeared to them a very funny performance,
two Republicans quarreling over the confirmation of a Democrat.
They sat silent, however, and took no part at all in the debate,
leaving us Republicans to settle it among ourselves." The result
of the Republican split was that the nomination of Fuller was
confirmed "by a substantial majority."
Another nomination which caused much agitation at the time was
that of James C. Matthews of New York, to be Recorder of Deeds in
the District of Columbia. The office had been previously held by
Frederick Douglass, a distinguished leader of the colored race;
and in filling the vacancy the President believed it would be an
exercise of wise and kindly consideration to choose a member of
the same race. But in the Washington community, there was such a
strong antipathy to the importation of a negro politician from
New York to fill a local office that a great clamor was raised,
in which Democrats joined. The Senate rejected the nomination,
but meanwhile Mr. Matthews had entered upon the duties of his
office and he showed such tact and ability as gradually to soften
the opposition. On December 21,1886, President Cleveland
renominated him, pointing out that he had been in actual
occupation of the office for four months, managing its affairs
with such ability as to remove "much of the opposition to his
appointment which has heretofore existed." In conclusion, the
President confessed "a desire to cooperate in tendering to our
colored fellow-citizens just recognition." This was a shrewd
argument. The Republican majority in the Senate shrank from what
might seem to be drawing the color line, and the appointment was
eventually confirmed; but this did not remove the sense of
grievance in Washington over the use of local offices for
national party purposes. Local sentiment in the District of
Columbia is, however, politically unimportant, as the community
has no means of positive action.
(1)
In the same month in which President Cleveland issued his
memorable special message to the Senate on the Tenure of Office
Act, he began another struggle against congressional practice in
which he was not so fortunate. On March 10, 1886, he sent to
Congress the first of his pension vetoes. Although liberal
provision for granting pensions had been made by general laws,
numerous special applications were made directly to Congress, and
congressmen were solicited to secure favorable consideration for
them. That it was the duty of a representative to support an
application from a resident of his district, was a doctrine
enforced by claim agents with a pertinacity from which there was
no escape. To attempt to assume a judicial attitude in the matter
was politically dangerous, and to yield assent was a matter of
practical convenience. Senator Cullom relates that when he first
became a member of the committee on pensions he was "a little
uneasy" lest he "might be too liberal." But he was guided by the
advice of an old, experienced Congressman, Senator Sawyer of
Wisconsin, who told him: "You need not worry, you cannot very
well make a mistake allowing liberal pensions to the soldier
boys. The money will get back into the Treasury very soon."
The feeling that anything that the old soldiers wanted should be
granted was even stronger in the House, where about the only
opportunity of distinction allowed by the procedure was to
champion these local demands upon the public treasury. It was
indeed this privilege of passing pension bills which partially
reconciled members of the House to the actual control of
legislative opportunity by the Speaker and the chairmen of a few
dominating committees. It was a congressional perquisite to be
allowed to move the passage of so many bills; enactment followed
as a matter, of course. President Cleveland made a pointed
reference to this process in a veto message of June 21, 1886. He
observed that the pension bills had only "an apparent
Congressional sanction" for the fact was that "a large proportion
of these bills have never been submitted to a majority of either
branch of Congress, but are the results of nominal sessions held
for the express purpose of their consideration and attended by a
small minority of the members of the respective houses of the
legislative branch of government."
Obviously, the whole system of pension legislation was faulty.
Mere individual effort on the part of the President to screen the
output of the system was scarcely practicable, even if it were
congruous with the nature of the President's own duties; but
nevertheless Cleveland attempted it, and kept at it with stout
perseverance. One of his veto messages remarks that in a single
day nearly 240 special pension bills were presented to him. He
referred them to the Pension Bureau for examination and the labor
involved was so great that they could not be returned to him
until within a few hours of the limit fixed by the Constitution
for the President's assent.
There could be no more signal proof of President Cleveland's
constancy of soul than the fact that he was working hard at his
veto forge, with the sparks falling thickly around, right in his
honeymoon. He married Miss Frances Folsom of Buffalo on June 2,
1886. The ceremony took place in the White House, and immediately
thereafter, the President and his charming bride went to Deer
Park, Maryland, a mountain resort. The respite from official
cares was brief; on June 8th, the couple returned to Washington
and some of the most pugnacious of the pension vetoes were sent
to Congress soon after. The rest of his public life was passed
under continual storm, but the peace and happiness of his
domestic life provided a secure refuge.
On the other hand, the rebuffs which Democratic Congressmen
received in the matter of pension legislation were, it must be
admitted, peculiarly exasperating. Reviewing the work of the
Forty-ninth Congress, "The Nation" mentioned three enactments
which it characterized as great achievements that should be
placed to the credit of Congress. Those were the act regulating
the presidential succession, approved January 18, 1886; the act
regulating the counting of the electoral votes, approved February
3, 1887; and the repeal of the Tenure of Office Act, approved
March 3, 1887. But all three measures originated in the Senate,
and the main credit for their enactment might be claimed by the
Republican party. There was some ground for the statement that
they would have been enacted sooner but for the disturbance of
legislative routine by political upheavals in the House; and
certainly no one could pretend that it was to get these
particular measures passed that the Democratic party was raised
to power. The main cause of the political revolution of 1884 had
been the continuance of war taxes, producing revenues that were
not only not needed but were positively embarrassing to the
Government. Popular feeling over the matter was so strong that
even the Republican party had felt bound to put into its national
platform, in 1884, a pledge "to correct the irregularities of the
tariff and to reduce the surplus." The people, however, believed
that the Republican party had already been given sufficient
opportunity, and they now turned to the Democratic party for
relief. The rank and file of this party felt acutely, therefore,
that they were not accomplishing what the people expected.
Members arrived in Washington full of good intentions. They found
themselves subject to a system which allowed them to introduce
all the bills they wanted, but not to obtain action upon them.
Action was the prerogative of a group of old hands who managed
the important committees and who were divided among themselves on
tariff policy. And now, the little bills which, by dint of
persuasion and bargaining, they had first put through the
committees, and then through both Houses of Congress, were cut
down by executive veto, turning to their injury what they had
counted upon to help them in their districts.
During the campaign, Democratic candidates had everywhere
contended that they were just as good friends of the old soldiers
as the Republicans. Now, they felt that to make good this
position they must do something to offset the effect of President
Cleveland's vetoes. In his messages, he had favored "the most
generous treatment to the disabled, aged and needy among our
veterans"; but he had argued that it should be done by general
laws, and not by special acts for the benefit of particular
claimants. The Pension Committee of the House responded by
reporting a bill "for the relief of dependent parents and
honorably discharged soldiers and sailors who are now disabled
and dependent upon their own labor for support." It passed the
House by a vote of 180 to 76, with 63 not voting, and it passed
the Senate without a division. On the 11th of February, President
Cleveland sent in his veto, accompanied by a message pointing out
in the language of the act defects and ambiguities which he
believed would "but put a further premium on dishonesty and
mendacity." He reiterated his desire that provision should be
made "for those who, having served their country long and well,
are reduced to destitution and dependence," but he did not think
that the bill was a proper means of attaining that object. On the
19th of February, the House committee on pensions submitted an
elaborate report on the veto in which they recited the history of
the bill and the reasons actuating the committee. Extracts from
Cleveland's messages were quoted, and the committee declared
that, in "hearty accord with these views of the President and
largely in accordance with his suggestions, they framed a bill
which they then thought, and still continue to think, will best
accomplish the ends proposed." A motion to pass the bill over the
veto on the 24th of February received 175 votes to 125, but
two-thirds not having voted in the affirmative the bill failed to
pass. The Republicans voted solidly in support of the bill,
together with a large group of Democrats. The negative vote came
wholly from the Democratic side. Such a fiasco amounted to a
demonstration of the lack of intelligent leadership. If the
President and his party in Congress were cooperating for the
furtherance of the same objects, as both averred, it was
discreditable all around that there should have been such a
complete misunderstanding as to the procedure.
Meanwhile, the President was making a unique record by his
vetoes. During the period of ninety-six years, from the
foundation of the Government down to the beginning of Cleveland's
administration, the entire number of veto messages was 132. In
four years, Cleveland sent in 301 veto messages, and in addition
he practically vetoed 109 bills by inaction. Of 2042 private
pension bills passed by Congress, 1518 were approved and 284
became laws by lapse of time without approval. The positive
results of the President's activity were thus inconsiderable,
unless incidentally he had managed to correct the system which he
had opposed. That claim, indeed, was made in his behalf when "The
Nation" mentioned "the arrest of the pension craze" as a
"positive achievement of the first order.'" But far from being
arrested, "the pension craze" was made the more furious, and it
soon advanced to extremes unknown before.(2)
The Democratic politicians naturally viewed with dismay the
approach of the national election of 1888. Any one could see that
the party was drifting on to the rocks and nobody deemed to be at
the helm. According to William R. Morrison, who certainly had
been in a position to know, President Cleveland had "up to this
time taken no decided ground one way or the other on the question
of tariff." He had included the subject in the long dissertation
on the state of the Union, which ever since Jefferson's time the
President has been wont to send to Congress at the opening of a
session, but he had not singled it out as having precedence. He
now surprised the country, roused his party, and gave fresh
animation to national politics on December 6, 1887, by devoting
his third annual message wholly to the subject of taxation and
revenue. He pointed out that the treasury surplus was mounting up
to $140,000,000; that the redemption of bonds which had afforded
a means for disbursement of excess revenues had stopped because
there were no more bonds that the Government had a right to
redeem; and that, hence, the Treasury "idly holds money uselessly
subtracted from the channels of trade," a situation from which
monetary derangement and business distress would naturally ensue.
He strongly urged that the "present tariff laws, the vicious,
inequitable and illogical source of unnecessary taxation, ought
to be at once revised and amended." Cleveland gave a detailed
analysis of the injurious effects which the existing tariff had
upon trade and industry, and went on to remark that "progress
toward a wise conclusion will not be improved by dwelling upon
the theories of protection and free trade. This savors too much
of bandying epithets. It is a condition which confronts us, not a
theory." The effect of the message was very marked both upon
public opinion and party activity. Mr. Morrison correctly summed
up the party effect in saying that "Mr. Mills, obtaining the
substantial support of the Administration, was enabled to press
through the House a bill differing in a very few essential
measures from, and combining the general details and purposes of,
the several measures of which I have been the author, and which
had been voted against by many of those who contributed to the
success of the Mills Bill."
An incident which attracted great notice because it was thought
to have a bearing on the President's policy of tariff revision,
was the veto of the Allentown Public Building Bill. This bill was
of a type which is one of the rankest growths of the
Congressional system—the grant of money not for the needs of
public service but as a district favor. It appropriated $100,000
to put up a post-office building at Allentown, Pennsylvania,
where adequate quarters were being occupied by the post-office at
an annual rent of $1300. President Cleveland vetoed the bill
simply on the ground that it proposed an unnecessary expenditure,
but the fact was at once noted that the bill had been fathered by
Congressman Snowden, an active adherent of Randall in opposition
to the tariff reform policy of the Administration. The word went
through Congress and reverberated through the press that "there
is an Allentown for every Snowden." Mr. Morrison said in more
polite phrase what came to the same thing when he observed that
"when Mr. Cleveland took decided ground in favor of revision and
reduction, he represented the patronage of the Administration, in
consequence of which he was enabled to enforce party discipline,
so that a man could no longer be a good Democrat and favor
anything but reform of the tariff."
After the Mills Bill had passed the House(3)and had been sent to
the Senate, it was held in committee until October 3, 1888. When
it emerged it carried an amendment which was in effect a complete
substitute, but it was not taken up for consideration until after
the presidential election, and it was meant simply as a
Republican alternative to the Mills Bill for campaign use.
Consideration of the bill began on the 5th of December and lasted
until the 22nd of January, when the bill was returned to the
House transformed into a new measure. It was referred to the Ways
and Means Committee, and Chairman Mills reported it back with a
resolution setting forth that "the substitution by the Senate
under the form of an amendment.... of another and different
bill," is in conflict with the section of the Constitution which
"vests in the House of Representatives the sole power to
originate such a measure." The House refused to consider the
resolution, a number of Democrats led by Mr. Randall voting with
the Republicans in the negative. No further action was taken on
the bill and since that day the House has never ventured to
question the right of the Senate to amend tax bills in any way
and to any extent. As Senator Cullom remarks in his memoirs, the
Democrats, although they had long held the House and had also
gained, the Presidency, "were just as powerless to enact
legislation as they had been before."
__________
(1) It is a singular fact, which contains matter for deep
consideration, that the District of Columbia, the national
capital, is the only populated area in the civilized world
without any sort of suffrage rights.
(2) March 19, 1887.
(3) The Mills Bill was passed July 21, 1888, yeas 162, nays 149,
not voting 14. Randall, Snowden, and two other Democrats joined
the Republicans in voting against the bill.
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