| Show written ariff f for this pa paper CLEV ELANDS MESSAGE washington november 29 1893 the presidents message is is ready for congress it will be submitted next week and could an advance copy be secured it would bring a hundred dollars for every crabbed stroke in the signature at its close presidents messages always affect the stock market and once every year the president puts forth a paper which makes and unmakes fortunes this was never more so than it is today and there are numbers of new york brokers who are ready to pay well for advance information a A wall street man is said to have offered to one of the white house employed emp loyes for an advance copy of one of andrew johnsons messages and one of president hayes messages was sold to the newspapers by the printer who set it up for 1000 the agreement was that he was to have 1500 and the combination which bought it were the correspondents of the chicago times of the cincinnati 0 enquirer and the new york times each one of these papers was to pay floo boo for the exclusive use of the message but the times went back on its bargain through the difference in time between new york and chicago the chicago tribune correspondent in new york had heard that the message was to be ant printed hinted he remained up all night and bought the first new york papers that came from the press he found the message in in the new york times tim find and at once telegraphed it to his chicago paper storey was then editor of the chicago times and he refused to pay his share of the and so the man only got 1000 for his perfidy Clev elands message has been very carefully guarded he has written the most of it with his own pen and he does more and more of his own writing every day the white house has never been so close and exclusive as it is now and news has never been more carefully watched president cleveland seldom uses a stenographer though there are several good shorthand writers at the white house and there is one who draws a calary on the executive pay roll as such the president prefers to write his own letters and his message has been written almost entirely with his own hand he uses a pad and a pen 1 I and he has written the message in in piecemeal taking up the different subjects one by one and fitting the pieces into the mosaic which is is now in in the hands kv of the government printers he is a remarkable ready writer his hand is small and eram cramped ped but he writes rapidly and he revises little he has a good command of language and he likes out of the way expressions during his last administration he penned the longest message which was ever submitted to congress and the probability is that the present message will equal this in length so far none of president Clev elands messages have been published in advance of their submission to congress he has been exceedingly careful to keep them from the newspapers and it is is interesting te to know how this is done the matter is given out only to the most trusty compositors and the proofs and the galleys are locked up when not in use in in a burglarproof burglar proof safe this was the method which was adopted when cleveland was in the white house before and at this time the government printer read the proofs himself and made the corrections he brought the copy to the white house and carried the proofs to president cleveland in his own hand then the news was not half so valuable as it is now information as to the financial question is is now being greedily asked for the whole country wants to know what Cleve cleveland jand I 1 is going to say on the tariff and his exact statement as to the hawaiian matter would be worth 5 a line if it could be published now the employed emp loyes about the executive mansion appreciate this and they are as silent as the sphinx secretary thurber looks wise and says nothing executive clerk pruden is is more dumb and owl like than ever and the whole white house seems to have suddenly become tongue tied one of president arthurs messages was stolen and published a day or so before it was delivered in the house honse of representatives and grants first message was read by the whole county a day beare bei ore congress had it one of the most striking thefts of presidents messages was one of Lincol ns which was gotten by chevalier wykoff for the new york herald and it is believed that this man obtained a sight of the message through mrs lincoln he was living here at washington as a gentleman of society rather than a newspaper man and when his bis dispatch was published he was called before a committee of the house of representatives and commanded to state where he had gotten the message he replied that he was bound under a promise of secrecy not to reveal this matter and it was currently reported that mrs lincoln had shown him the message while he was out riding with her in her carriage president lincoln was greatly annoyed over the matter and wykoff finally said that the gardner ga ddn r at the white house had gotten the manuscript and shown it to hm him his statement was evidently disbelieved for congress did nothing with the gardner and he afterwards after wards received an appointment as second lieutenant in the army president harrison spent fully as much time upon his messages as does president cleveland he wrote them in sections and handed the first draft over to miss sanger who transcribed them with the typewriter and handed the copy back to the president for revision president harrison then went over this copy changing it here and there and sometimes rewriting an entire paragraph after it was finished it was given to miss sanger to be again copied and again revised until it exactly suited president harrisons ideas he e was very particular as to his messages message and his state papers will rank high for their diction and thought none of his messages were ever published in advance though they were set up at the government printing office president fiarn harrison son gave positive instructions as to the care to be taken in regard to them and at one time he thought of having the printers come to I 1 the white house to set them up at least this report was published at the time the message does not go to congress in in typewritten form it is usually sent in manuscript on long sheets of gray blue paper and it seldom reaches congress in in the handwriting of the president one of the best penmen in in the united states is the executive clerk mr pruden and it is he who copies the messages for congress two copies are made one for the senate and the other for the house and at the same time that these are read printed copies are laid on the desks of the senators and representatives some of whom follow the reading of the clerk with the books and others who take the printed messages home live to read at their leisure w it is said that president cleveland writes his own messages he takes plenty advice from his cabinet and gets all the suggestions he can but he has his own opinions and he writes his own ideas at the end the present message has been looked over by the cabinet and a few outside parties cleveland and gresham lamont lament and bissell have had the most to do in consultation but the finished document is I 1 am told the work of the president why it be you ask the reply is that it ought to be but at the same time it would be nothing strange if it were not many of the executive messages of the past for which presidents get credit were written by others than themselves washington gave the ideas for his farewell address but it was alexander hamilton and james madison who put the thoughts into shape for him amos kendall wrote most ot of andrew jacksons messages and his first inaugural address was written for him by major lewis and henry lee jeremiah black wrote a number of fhe messages of andrew johnson Jo hoson and nd daniel webster revised the inaugural address of william henry harrison Har it was full of classical expressions and had many allusions to greece and rome webster cut these out and in speaking of his work at a party the night after he had revised the aldress a he excused himself for being tired because of the number of roman proconsuls pro consuls he had k killed lied that day you remember jacksons famous nullification proclamation it is said that edward livingston brot 4 it for him and it is so with other famous messages the first messages to congress adre were read by the presidents in person and the presidents would probably be read ing them today in this way had it not been for thomas jefferson kf jefferson lerson it is said could not speak he he was a poor reader and he want to appear ridiculous by trying to read his message to the house the result was that he sent it up by his private secretary washington gave his first mes sage his inaugural to congress in new york he took the vice presidents chair in delivering it and a few days after this the house and senate prepared a reply to the message and went to house and one of their members delivered the reply to him this procedure was gone through with for several years and president washington was looked upon as having the right to direct congress he delivered thirteen messages to congress during his eight years in office and in addition to these gave his farewell address john adams was one of the most wordy of our presidents he delivered ten messages in four years and you find the pronoun 1 I thirteen times in his inaugural address van buren and harrison each used this pronoun thirty eight times in their respective addresses and thomas jefferson used the word 1 I nineteen times in his first message to congress jefferson gave twenty three messages during his presidential term madison twenty five andrew jackson seventeen and james monroe thirteen the outlook is is that president devoir land will be decidedly unpopular with a part of his party during the coming ses sion and his message will bese be verily criticised criticized what evil it may be congress will however have no chance to insult him as it did in the case of washington they refused to call upon I 1 washington and would not adjourn for thirty minutes on the aad of one of the f februaries of his term to congratulate t him upon his birthday as they bad been in the habit of doing they refused if also to receive john adams and the i papers of that time criticised criticized wash ft ington and adams quite as severely as cleveland is bein being criticised criticized now ington once said that he had been ha abused worse than a common pick pocket and when jacksons jac esons farewell r address was published one of the i new york newspapers congratulated its readers as follows happily this is the last humbug which the mischievous popularity of this illiterate violent vain and iron willed soldier can impose upon a confiding and credulous people pie much worse expressions were 7 used concerning washington at t the he tittle time he left the presidency thomas jefferson sent fourteen special messages to congress and in matisons Madi sons time congress received a number of confidential messages from the pre president sa s1 andrew jackson was censured by the be senate end and he sent a protest a against dinst this censure to that body president iba i en t grant addressed congress by messages eight times he did not write his messages himself and left the work of the various departments to his cabinet officers these bep mep men sent in their reports and he took such parts of them as he wished for his message pieced them together and fini finished s hed the them m up so that they made a consecutive sa message all of his vetoes he wrote with his own hand and his state papers read well president Lincol ns messages ate are wonders of good diction and W D kelly of pennsylvania I 1 the famous pig iron protectionist once told me that he thought lincoln was the greatest allaround nd genius since shakespeare and that his messages to congress would eventually become classics president arthurs messages were written in a bold round hand and it is said that surrogate rollins aided him in the preparation of them he came to ie washington and the president and himself went over the topics which were to compose the message and the result was the combination oi of their two brains j president hayes was a greater man than he has the credit of being he had a broad mind and his state papers read well his messages were copied by his private secretary mr rodgers and he used his cabinet officers to a large extent in their preparation there is only one case in our history in which a presidents message has been forged this was in 1864 and it was rather a proclamation than a message it was a production of a famous new york correspondent who is still writing for the press and it pretended to be a call for half a million more troops and to come from president lincoln it never saw the white house however but was gotten up in new york it was written on the manifold paper then used for the associated press news and was handed in to the morning papers by telegraph boys who gave it to the papers as an associated press dispatch the only wonder is that it was not used by every morning paper in new york but through some bungling in the delivery suspicion was aroused in the office of the times and tribune and they would not use it the herald had struck off an edition of copies believing the message to be genuine but when they did not see it in the times and tribune they investigated its source and finding it bogus they suppressed the entire edition among the papers who used it were the journal of commerce and the world the publication created a great sensation tio nand and president lincoln ordered the editors of the papers who used the matter to be imprisoned in fort lafayette but finding they were innocent of any intention to do wrong he afterward countermanded the order the correspondent spon dent who got up the scheme was next arrested he made a full confession and he was imprisoned in fort was not by the intercession of powerful friends secured his release the message will be taken from the white house to the capitol by the executive clerk there is a good deal of red tape about the matter and thou though ath the cable cars run directly from the e white house to the capitol a presidents message is always taken in a carriage and usually behind a spanking two horse team the carbige is the office turnout of the white house it trots out ot of the yard of the executive mansion down to the treasury then alom along the west side of fifteenth street and down own the south side of the avenue Atthe at the bottom of the avenue it skirts the peace monument and goes up to the senate here mr pruden gets out angi carr carrying ng a big official envelope in his hand this contains the message he carries it up to the front door of the senate where he is usually met by old mr bassett or by the clerk of the senate who announces that there is a message from the president of the united states it is then carried up to the clerks desk and it is there read the words in which the message is delivered to the senate are uttered by mr pruden as follows 1 I am directed by the president of the united states to present a message in writing copies of the message are given to the newspaper correspondents and they are sent out by the associated press to all the papers in the country it used tobe to be that manifold copies were handed over to the newspaper and they rushed for the telegraph offices in order to send the news to their papers althis at this time correspondents kept carriages and fast horses at the capitol during such times and made races to wet set possession of the telegraph wires afore the telegraph came into existence it took the mail a week or so to give the cac a aada message to some parts of the united states and the cincinnati gazette once made a great fuss about its feat of publishing the presidents message within sixty hours |
