OCR Text |
Show Progress, Not Deterioration IT HAS been a habit among men ever since the H siege of Troy to bewail the condition of pres- H ent things and tell of the glories of the past. H It is a sort of inborn habit. We are reminded of H it by a eulogy in the New York Sun upon Gov H ernor Judson Harmon of Ohio. We find no fault H with the eulogy, but the Sun referring to his ca- reer, says he belongs to the oldest school of pol- H iticians, that as a Governor he frankly and con- H sistently modeled his career not upon the La- H Follettes or the Cummings', but upon that of the H Hon. Samuel J. Tilden. H The rule is to either speak well of the dead or. say nothing. We have no disposition to break H that rule, but it is not fair to the present and H rising generations to even intimate that the pres- ent generation of Americans is not as true and as H capjible as the past. Samuel J. Tilden was a law- H yer. He had very many of the elements of a l statesman, but living in New York and practicing jH his profession as a lawyer from little or nothing ':H he accumulated twelve millions of dollars. One H of the means through which he did that was to H wreck the first railroad that was ever wrecked in jH the United States. For a long time ho was head and director of Tammany Hall when Tweed was H the active agent outside. All readers remember jH how after an election Mr. Greeley in an open let- jH ter to Mr. Tilden showed him that in one ward in H New York, under Mr. Tweed's administration, 'I there were more votes cast than there were men, H women, children, horses and mules in that ward, H and he reminded him that the receiver was equal- H ly guilty with the thief. But when the fates turned JH against Mr. Tweed, when the Times expn his !fl rascality, then Mr. Tilden made a great J xtion H by coming forward and prosecuting the crook. So H he was governor of New York and he made a rep- H utation for economy. But it took the incoming Re- ;H publican administration two years to pay the bills which ought to have been paid during his H term. At last he was candidate for president, H and manipulated the cipher dispatches in South H Carolina and so handled things in other southern , H and one western state that his election was IH disputed, and he not only did not dare to contest fl it, but he did not have the courage to frankly show tfl his hand and say that whatever frauds there 'H might have been, he was innocent. H Some reader after perusing the above may say H that our partisan spites are po strong that we are H ' "" " 'mimmmmmmmammammm.iuwmMMHmrr-''.t'--r'iemA HHBflUlaHMHIHHMBaHHIHallHMIl B unjust. We think we can prove that this is not B' true by citing a little more history. In 1868 or B '69 there came up a discussion in the Senate oE B the United States as to how the bonds issued dur-B dur-B ing the war ought to be paid. Some on the floor B insisted they ought to- be paid in specie, that is Bj gold and silver. John Sherman insisted that the Bf interest ought to be paid in specie, but that the Bjj principal ought to be paid in the currency which Bj the bonds were bought in and pointed out that B -whereas many of them were K bought with green-B green-B backs at from forty to sixty cents on the dollar, B as greenbacks were appreciating, they would have B enough reward for their money if they got the in-B in-B terest in hard money and the principal in greatly B advanced paper money. But a year or so later he B went to Europe He came back with new ideas; B he quietly tried to push the demonetization of sil-B sil-B ver through the Senate, when his purpose was de-B de-B feated by one strong man, Senator Morgan of New K York. He waited until that man was out of the B-' Senate and then the infamy was included in an t innocent looking bill which was headed, "For the M Regulation of the Currency," by Comptroller H) Knox. That bill was pushed through Congress, i silver was demonetized. Immediately thereafter B although John Sherman was not a rich man, he Hj started a bank in New York City with ?500,000 B capital, and when the crash came in '93 there was Bj an eight million dollar surplus in that bank. In Bj the same way Comptroller Knox went out of office B and became at once the president of a bank. So B the director of the mint at the same lime wnen 1 he went out of office became the director and B, large stockholder in another national bank. When m Mr. Cleveland was second time president, the m banks of New York headed by J. P. Morgan & H Company crowded greenbacks upon the treasury M and demanded gold until the surplus authorized H by law was reduced 40 per cent. Mr. Cleveland H and Mr. Carlysle could have stopped all that In H live minutes by tendering silver dollars, which H were a legal tender always, in payment for the H greenbacks that were crowded upon them, but they H declined to do it until the surplus was so reduced H that that was offered as a justification to first is-B is-B sue and sell $150,000,000 in bonds and later $100,-B $100,-B 000,000, or vice versa, we do not remember which, B but the total amounted to $250,000,000. They were B ' Bold at 94 cents to the very banks that had been B crowding Iho greenbacks upon the government, B and those bonds were worth $1.18 within sixty B days. When Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Carlysle went B out of office Mr. Carlysle at once was given a Bj magnificent practice in New York City and was B worth more money than he had ever dreamed Bl of being worth; and Mr. Cleveland left his office BI with more money than all the presidents of the I ' United States before him had ever possessed, alii al-ii though a very few years before, with a college ed- ucation and then an education in the law, he Bj could not make a living in one of the most pros-BJ pros-BJ perous cities in the United States. Since then if we keep track we find how many men have gone out from public offices in Washington, such offices of-fices as had something to do with the handling of the finances, into prominent financial positions. There was James J. Eckels, that bloomed out from Comptroller of the Currency to not only be president of a great bank in Chicago, but an authority au-thority on finance, and who actually knew about as much as did Professor Sumner of Yale or Professor Pro-fessor Laughlin of Chicago, or the old hypocrite of them all, Edward Atchison. We have faith to believe that the present gen-e'ation gen-e'ation is quite as capable, quite as true, quite as coitntry-loving as the old race that preceded them. We are only speaking as to the rule of the world. After the Revolutionary war every boy was taught to believe that there never were such fighters as the soldiers under Washington, until the war of 1812 came on, and that established that there was nothing done in the Revolutionary war that equalled what Scott and Brown did on the Niagara Nia-gara frontier or what Jackson did at New Orleans. Or-leans. The only parallel to the fight at Lundy's Lane was when Benedict Arnold in a rage fought that last afternoon's fight at Saratoga. When the Mexican war came then the war of 1812 was over-shadowed over-shadowed by the achievements of Buena Vista, of Cerro Gordo, of Molin del Ray and of Chapultepec, and finally when the great Civil war came on it was found the race hadw not deteriorated, that there never was quite such fighting done on earth as was done in some of the battles of that war. We believe as intelligence increases that, notwithstanding not-withstanding the rage for gold, people are steadily becoming more self-respectful, and self-respect brings honor and a horror of knavery of any kind. |