Show A CHAT WITH FOSTER He Discusses Public Matters in a Breezy Way SOME BOYHOOD EXPERIENCES How Gaerfllds Cabinet Was Hade and Why I I LevI P Horton Was Sent tor Trance WASHINGTON April 23 lS2fSpecial correspondence of THE SUNDAY HERALD I spent an evening this week with Secretary S Secre-tary Foster at his home on Vermont avenue and had a running conversation of several hours with him upon matters of interest in-terest There is no more Democratic man in public life than our secretary of the treasury He has abolished red tape from his department and when I called to see him the other day to make an appointment for my chat I was told to walk right in and I found him working at his desk in the same practical business manner which he had in hts office in Fostoria and which be used when I knew him as governor of Ohio He is an easy worker and he is a typo of the successful practical businessman business-man of the west Ho passes upon things quickly talks freely with every one and gauges everything by the standard of good hard common sense aided by a long life of practical experience His gauge is too broad to allow him to put on any airs about his work and in private life ho is one of the most delightful conversationalists among the noted men of Washington I found him lying on a sofa in his little reception re-ception room at tho left of the wide hal which runs through his big Vermont avenue mansion and tie talked in this position posi-tion save when he became much interested In the subject when ho would sit up for a moment and enforce big speech with gestures ges-tures I asked as to his work in tho department de-partment and whether burdens of the Treasury were such that they had affected his health Tho secretary laughed as he replied There Is a great deal of foolishness about the statement that public men are lulled by overwork I dont believe that good hard work hurts any man It is the worry and the irregularities of life that kills us I am feeling pretty well now and I have about regained my health since I went to Europe I don51 think my sIckness S q was caused by overwork in the treasury It came from the Ohio campaign of last fall T went out there to speak for McKinley McKin-ley and I traveled about all over the state speaking at night in the open air and keeping keep-ing all sorts of hours and the result was my sickness I tried to do at sixty what I I used to do easily when I was forty and my system would not stand tho strain As to the treasury there Is plenty of work to do and I am there from 9 until about 3 everyday every-day ana it keeps mo on the Jump all the time I do not bother mystlf about details however and I have learned that in doing business you have got to trust others to do their parts of the work and I do it I can drop my work as soon as I go away from the department and I never bring it horn with mo Do you think the treasury killed Secretaries Secre-taries Folger and Manning Governor Foster I asked I think not was tho reply Certainl not in ono sense Folgor died largely from bis disappointment in being defeated as governor of New York Be tried to watch all the details of the department and he carried his work home at night with him and worried because ho couldzot do everything every-thing himself As to Manning ho came > J into the treasury under very peculiar circumstances umstances The Democratic party had been out of office for more than twenty years and the watch cry of their campaign had been turn the rascals out and they had made a great fuss about wanting to get at the books and show up the corrup tion of the Republicans Manning was expected ex-pected > to clean out the department Hound > Ho-und that he could not get along without the Republicans to help him run the department de-partment Ho did not find the frauds ho expected and the worry of these things preyed upon his mind and made him ill 1 They say that Windom also died from overwork over-work The truth ot it wa that ho had the heart disease and hIs death at that New York dinner was the result at that moment of over exertion Elaine says if he had stopped his speech when he was about half through ho would be alive today The conversation hero turned to Govor nor Fosters European experiences and I asked him as to tho statement which ho published in America as to his referring to the Irishman as our clammonthed immigrants immi-grants He replied I had 110 interview at all that day in I London but people were coming in and out of my room all day and I presumably said something about our immigration I did not use that expression however for I vould remember it if I had but I probably spoke of the wonderful changes which our climate and life makes upon the foreigners who como here Have you ever noticed how after a generation or two tho Irish and Germans lose even the facial expression I expres-sion which is characteristic of them on the other side of the water and they assume the American type I dont think this is so much so with the Italians and we want all tho immigrants immi-grants that we can get that are of the best German and Irish character I understand that some of the newspapers commented upon that interview as an intimation that I thought tho Irish a little below tho Americans Ameri-cans of the United States in the way of rank and culture But it would be ridiculous ridicu-lous for us to talk of rank in the United States for none of us can go back many generations By the way governor where did your family come from and of what nationality are you 1 1 am ScotchIrish and my people on my fathers side came from tho north of Ireland Ire-land Foster is the abbreviation of For rester and I suppose the first of us had the nhftrirrt of si forest nr lived in n fornat In this country the name has been abbreviated abbrevi-ated to Forster and Foster and some of our family spell their name with an r today to-day When did the Fosters first como to this country It was In 1C32 The first American Foster Fos-ter settled near Boston Ho had twelve children and each of these so the story goeshad six and I come of about the sixth generation from him My fatner was born in Massachusetts and he married my I mother there and she brought him out to Ohio She had gone out west with her father who was a man of some means and had bought a largo tract of land near Tiffin Ohio My mother had gone back to Massachusetts Massa-chusetts on a visit when father became engaged to her and married her and went back with her My mother is still living I in Ohio Sho baa a farm of 500 acres which I her father entered and which has been in I the family since then My father was poor I when he was married and the first year after his marriage ho worked for his father inlaw and he got S100 for the years labor Ho then struck out for himself entered and cleared some land and in a short time got a start Ho bad the mercantile sense and he soon saved enough to buy a stock of goods and he opened a store at a little place called Rome Just across the way from this town and almost adjoining it1 think Secretary Foster said across the county lino was another little town called Risden There was great rivalry between the two villages and my fathers village was Whig and Risden was Democratic My father was the leading spirit of Rome and the people of Risden used to call him the Pope of Rome At last the two towns got tired of fighting one another and tho people of Risden camo to my father and told him they would unite tbe two towns if ho would let them name the new town He consented and they cal ed it Fostoria after him I suppose governor you were born on the frontier I would like to ask if you I are one of those babies who were rocked In j sugar trough 1 dont know about tho sugar trough replied Mr Foster but I was born within i a year after my father and mother were married and I was brougMun in what was then one of the wildest parts of tho west II Where did you go to school I asked I never had much schooling was the reply I went first to a little log schoolhouse school-house near Fostoria It was torn down not long ago and I have been sorry that I did not preserve it Our schools did not amount to much then The chief thing was spelling and I can remember goin about at night to spelling matches where all tried to spell each other down at the age of four I learned here to read and to spell and got a smattering of arithmetic and I then had tho idea that I WANTED TO UK A LAWTEIJ and my father sent me to the academy of Norfork which was a neighboring town I was going hero to school at the age of fourteen four-teen when the whole family got sick and came home I found the storo closed because be-cause there was no one to attend to it and I dropped school and opened the store This was fortysix years ago and I had the management of that store until 1S87 or for more tban forty years Of course I was not in it all the time but I directed it When I was eighteen my father took me into partnership with him and I used togo to-go to New York to buy goods for it and I was in it when I was elected to Congress You were in Congress with Garfield were you cot When did you first meet i him It was during that congressional cam paign It was at tho time of the Franco Prussian war and Garfield came over and made some speeches in my district I had a great number of Germans and he talked to them in German and got me a lot of votes I I was impressed with him as a jolly good fellow and when ho left he embraced me and asked me to hunt him up when 1 came to Washington He overflowed in fact with good fellowship and when u few months later I went on to Washington I rushed up to him and was surprised to fine him cola and distant He apparently bardly knew me and as he acted the same way several times alter that I decided to let him alone After I got to know him better I began to understand his character He was a man of moons and he wao apt to bo preoccupied and to lorget faces and names It is wonderful the difference in mens minds I was not six weeks in tile J House before I knew every member of Congress by laco and could call him byname by-name Garfield who ha1 bo3 s years in I Congress had not a per sal a quaintance with fifty men and he t QuId no remember faces He could howovoi Lead n book or poem and repeat almost word for word everything that he read He coulu dictate a speech and then get up and deliver it just as ho had dictated it I cannot commit com-mit anything I can remember the ideas of the books I read but not the words Wherein consisted Garfieldfl strength in Congress governor It was in his wonderful debating power and in his classic expressions sand ideas He was the most wonderful debater wo ever had in Congress His sentences were so clear and his language so beautiful that ho always filled the gallerieD and ho was perfectly at home on the floor Ho bed a wonderful power of absorbing information from others and he had a way of getting ideas from his friends to add to his own thoughts in his great speeches He would sometimes call his friends into his room the night before bo wag about to make a great speech and discuss the points with them I remember the speech bo made against Hill which was you know ono of tile most eloquent ever made in the House Tho night before that speech he called a half a dozen of his intimate friends into his room and I was among them He went over the synopsis or outline of his speech and asked for suggestions He got many new ideas I know and whilo sve wero talk igg from time to time books with marked passages were sent into him by his friends and he read these The next day the cream of all this matter appeared in his speech sotransformed ana revivified BY HIS MASTER HIND that it made ono strong symetrical and beautiful whole Garfield seldom wrote 4 jjij J < < v Ji J4 out his speeches and his best thoughts and expressions often came to him on the loorHow How about his speech at the Chicago convention which nominated him I Tho greater part of tho speech said Governor Foster was written before hand and was shown by him to Senator Sherman before he came to Chicago und Sherman approved of it But the beautiful introduction intro-duction to It Garfield composed as ho stood there before that great convention and this was from the inspiration of the occasion occa-sion I was with Garfield during that whole ccnvention We had rooms adjoinIng I adjoin-Ing each other and we were together nearly I all the time You went thoro to nominate Sherman Did you notice anything that led you to believe be-lieve that Garfiod was false to Sherman l No I did not replied Secretary Foster and until after Garfields death I had n faith whatever in any of tho statements I made that he was not true It has shaken I my faith however to find that he knew Rusk and those sixteen Wisconsin votes were ready to come to him at any time and I understand that ho had some talk with tho Wisconsin men while he was in Chicago He certainly seemed to be doing all he could for John Sherman Those sixteen votos started tho boom did they not Yes they did but Garfield Is dead and I think in this ho should have the benefit of the doubt I have heard govornor President Garfield Gar-field intended to make you his postmaster general Is that true and what can you tell me as to how his cabinet was made President Garfield altered his cabinet several times before he reached the one which he finally announced to the people Ho changed the whole slate after ho came to Washington and of all the names he had down for the various departments when he was in Ohio only two remained after he camo on here Those were James G i Blaine his secretary of state and Robert Lincoln his secretary of war I had reason to expect that 1 was to be made postmas tergeneral and I think there is no doubt but that he intended to appoint me to that position But the complications were such 1 that h8 had to make changes and tho chief ones were made by Roecoo Conklin 6r I were due to his influence During the summer Conklin came to Ohio and demanded de-manded that the treasury department should bo given to New York and that Lei P Morton should be appointed Conkling was rather tyranni l in hla mo hnt hi InAnonnn 0 nn u U uuu u u u u u uy great you know and Garfield at first said I he would maim this appointment He found it however hard to arrange matters and he asked Morton il ho would not taco some other place in the cabinetend that ho would give him the navy Mr Morton said at firs that he would take the navy and that on the whole he rather preferred it as there was less work about it than in the treasury and the fact wus that he cared moro for the position on account of the social advantage it would give him than anything else Garfield Gar-field then supposed that New York was arranged ar-ranged for but when Morton went to Conk ling and told him what he had done Conk ling sot his foot down aid told him ho must not take the navy and Morton thereupon went to Garfield and told him he would not have it Garfield then chose Hunt of Louisiana for the navy Ho put Windom into the treasury und as he thought he must nave a New York man in his cabinet ho put Thomas L James in as postmaster general and at the samo time he sent Morton Mor-ton to Paris as minister to France Did Blaine have much influence in Gar fields administration 1 Yes I think he had replied Governor Foster Blaine did not seem to affect things but he was influencing Garfield more or less all the time He Is a great personality and at that time when he was in the prime of life and health he could not help influencing all with whom ho came in contact Do you think Garfield would have made a great President if he had lived J I asked I dont know replied tho secretary He was a great man in some respects ana an-a weak one in others Some people say that hedied just at the right time to fill a great place In history I doubt this Ho might have made a1 great President He was you know just at the beginning of his prime and ho bad a great deal of growth in him What he lacked ia a large degree cit i > i > 4 was worldly wisdom He never had much contact with men aed his life was rather hat of a professor or a literary recluse than that of tho practical man of affairs He began lifo as a professor Then ho went into the army and then to Congress I Con-gress He had little experience with the hard knocks and tho business of the i world and ho made mistakes of judgment that a more experienced man would have seen and shunned He was a very timid man in some things and a very bold one in other He was always bravo on the money question and ho took his position early as to a sound currency He always stood up for the principles ho believed in and his timidIty was rather in regard to matters I relating to himself than public questions le feared newspaper comment and though he had some of my democratic tastes he was rather ashamed to lot them bo known 1 remember instance the secretary wont on which may give a little light on this phase of Garfields character which occurred curred when we were in Congress together He was fondof playing cards and his favorite favor-ite game was casino and he liked to play for 10 cent stakes I remember one summer nicrht at Willards hotel we cot a party to g jether and were seated around a table in a room on the second floor on the F street side in the house facing newspaper row It was very hot and we had our coats and vests off and our sleeves wore rolled up to the elbows The windows were wide open and by the gaslight in the room you could see our cards from across the street After we had played about an hour a telegraph tele-graph blank was handed me It was from Bob Vance the correspondent of tho Cincinnati Cin-cinnati Commercial and it read something I like this Immense excitement on Newspaper 1 I Row A big crowd is watching your little game Pools are being sold on the result and the boys are sending dispatches out over the country concerning it I read this dispatch out loud at tho table and Garfield was very much frightened by it He wanted to close the blinds but we would not let him and he evidently feared that the story of his card playing would be sent home Of course tho crowd was altogether alto-gether fictitious and I knew the newspaper newspa-per men well enough to know that they had other things more important than a little Congressional card game and that they were too goodnatured to say anything about the matter anyhow No word of it ever appeared in the papers but Garfields annoyance about the matter amused the rest of us very much LT nho Ana on 4 thn no uu uu oAJU Golyer pavement I think he was more foolish than wicked in those things and it was his simplicity that got him into trouble A great deal of fuss has been made about Oakes Ames and I hold a different opinion concerning him now than I did at the time of the Credit Mobliier investigation Oakes Ames did a I great work in building that railroad and it was a work that few men could have done I believe he undertook it more with the idea of having a groat name for his family than for pure money making He was you know worth millions wbich his family had made out of the manufacture of shovels and he wanted to go down in history as the builder of the Pacific road It was a wonderful won-derful undertaking to contemplate at that time and Ames had the nerve to go into it and ho was spending millions to carry it through All the while ho knew that Congress Con-gress could at any time knock out his scheme und he thought i doubt not that if he could get Colfax Kelley Garfield and others of the leading congressmen to hold a little stock in it that they would watch tho legislation and not let his enemies get the advantage of him Ames was not a bad man and the censure of the House killed him It Is the regret of my life that I voted to censure him and I think ho was very badly used When Garfield got into this trouble his other friends in Congress from Ohio deserted him and itwas shortly after this that ho had a fuss on the floor with Butler He was you know the chairman chair-man of the appropriations committee and as such ho had objected to ono of Butlers items Butler was very btter in his speeches and ho sneered at Garfield and got off a Latin quotation De mortals nil nisi bonum or say nothing but good of the dead He wanted to tell the House that Garfield was a dead man and his speech was so mean that I went to Garfield and shook hands with him and told him that I was his friend and that I would stick dlf > g ittHtt > r ja atrMrftgajy x J to him Before that we had been feeling rather cold towards each other but he was I affected by my offer and he put his arms around me when I met him after tho session ses-sion was over and we were always strong i friends after that Yes1 was the reply it gave ma a 1 national reputation for the time and it came about in rather a curious way When I first came to Congress I felt very backward I back-ward and out of place The Congressmen 11 I seemed bigger men to me than they seemed Ito I-to Senator Nesmyth but Blaine who was speaker treated me very well and he gave I me good comirittees I found afterwards that he had received a letter from Horace Greeley about me telling him to look out for me and that I ought to be cared for T had never met Greeley but Blame sent me his letter when ae was writing his book not long ago and in this letter he hud described de-scribed my Democratic district and had shown how I had changed it to a Republican Republi-can one Well I got into the work in a short timo and by keopine my eyes open did fairly wAll I remember I did not even know how to file a petition and wrote out my first one and showed it to Frye and asked him if It was all right Frye said It is not periect but it is better than nine I tenths of the petitions and you will get along all right One of my committees was claims and at the beginning of the next session Blaine came to Eugene Hale and myself who were the only two men loft on the committee and he said he wanted to divide the committee and to I i make two committees of it and ho wanted us to propose it We did so and in that way we came to have a committee on war I claims and one on claims and at the time we each expected to have a chairmanship of one of these committees ro our surprise sur-prise however we were given better i places on more important committees and I was put on the ways and means and was II given charge of internal revenue matters Now a great many of the taxes which had been levied during the war were uncollected I i uncol-lected During the rebellion everything I I you know was taxed and it was to get i some of these uncollected taxes that Ben I Butler got up in the House one day and proposed that the secretary of the treasury 1 bo authorized to appoint a collector His I resolution carried and a collector named I Sanborn was appointed and the arrangement arrange-ment was that he was to have half of all I tho taxes he collected Now the treasury treas-ury officials were such that the four or five men thrUgh whose hands these accounts had to pass were Massachusetts men and in the work which came before mo on the ways and means my attention was called to these collections col-lections and I found that Sanborn had made about SiOOOCO out of his work and the way this was done looked very naby I got the papers in the case after a while and I found that he had collected S1800J from William Walter Phelps who is now minister to Germany and was then a member mem-ber of Congress and ho had also collected S40000J of Mr Phelps as unpaid taxes on the Delaware Lackawanna railroad I called upon Mr Phelps and I found that he supposed that he had paid these taxes to an internal revenue collector and that the only reason that they had not been paid before was that his fathers estate and the road were in litigation and they coula not adjust ad-just them I found in fact that all the taxes collected in this way were such that they would have come into the treasury anyhow and the treasury was being corruptly cor-ruptly used to put money into Sanborns pocket Well Butler got wind ot what was going on and he denounced me on the floor of the House He had gotten a half an hour of Garfields time ono day and Garfield gave me five i minutes of his time to answer him I had all these facts at my fingers end and as I brought the story of the fraud out piece by piece and called upon members who were personally acquainted with the circumstances circum-stances to substantiate what I said Butlers I But-lers face grew as white as a sheet and at I last ho said that he admired the bravery of a man who would attack absent parties referring to the contractors and the others I replied that tho parties whom I accused were not absent but they were present before be-fore the House by proxy in the person of their attorney I here pointed at Butler and there was a great scene in the House To make a long story short the result wa3 that all of these people had to resign from the treasury d partment and even tbe secretary whom I think was innocent wont out and Grant appointed Bristow in his place f > > Iio r I suppose you had some intervi ws with President Grant about It1 Yes but ho was loathe to do anything though we urged it upon him I remember one day I was talking with him about it and ho mado this remark It is easy to stand by your friend when they are right but it takes nerve to stick to them when you fear they are wrong I Did you know Conklin when you were in Congress i I Yes be was in the Senate while I was in the House but I did not have much to do I I with him He was a great man In some respects but he was a very foolish one in I others and ho had an overbearing sneering way about him that was very offensive I I remember one time during my second term I in the House I had a talk with him about I some matters and during this I said to him I Senator Conk ing thsre is only one thing that you do not seem to have fully settled in your mind and that is you do not know I whether you made the Lord Almighty or the Lord Almighty made you And what did Conkling say to that I I asked He didnt say anything said Governor Foster with a laugh He merelv sneered IIii and turned upon his heel and after that our relations wee not very friendly How about President Harrison will he be nominated l I think there is i no doubt of it was his I reply Blaine is entirely out of the field and ho will not I think ever bea presiden 1 A ial candidate again Harrison will be nominated by acclamation He has growu I a great deal since he became President and he is stronger now with the people than ho I was in 1SSS How about McKinley I McKinley is too near the McKinley bill to be a presidential candidate this year I replied Governor Foster He may be avery a-very good candidate lor 1S9G when the vorkmgof the bill has been made manifest I to all but it would not be wise to nominate him now How about the Democratic candidates I think Cleveland will bo the nominee and I dont see anyone else who has any real chance before the convention How about Governor Hill I think Mr Hill has as the boys say overcrapped himself He has bitten off more than he can chow and keeping up the same style of expression he is not in It1 How about the issues Both the tariff and the sliver question will enter into the campaign We will accept ac-cept the position of the President on silver I and the Democrats will make some kind of a plank that will read both ways and be for or against silver according as the locality is in favor or against it The tariff question will be the same as It has been in the past I and I think the chances are very fair for the Republican party carrying the election elec-tion FKANK G CARPENTBU |