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Show FIVE MINUTE CHATS ABOUT OUR PRESIDENTS By JAMES MORGAN L . . THE SECOND HARRISON 1833 August 20, Benjamin Harrison, Har-rison, born at North Bend, Ohio. 1852 Graduated from Miami college, col-lege, Ohio. 1861-65 Colonel and brevetted brigadier general In the Civil war. 1881-7 In the United States senate. sen-ate. 1888 Elected president. 1S89 March 4, Inaugurated the twenty-third president, at the age of fifty-five. 1892 Defeated for re-election. 1901 March 13, death of Benjamin Ben-jamin Harrison at Indianapolis, Indian-apolis, aged sixty-seven. -fr BEXJAMIN HARRISON'S administration adminis-tration proved to be only an intermission in-termission between the two acts of the Cleveland drama. History gives but a passing glance at the one president whose predecessor became his successor, success-or, who had to give up the presidential chair to the man he took it from. Although Harrison had more brains than Cleveland, Cleveland had a larger nature, and that is what counts most In the leadership of men. Notwithstanding Benjamin Harrison was the grandson of a president, in whose house he was born, his father was poor and the boy was brought up plainly. Graduating from a small Ohio college, col-lege, Harrison married at twenty the girl to whom he engaged himself at i v Benjamin Harrison. eighteen, and they went to housekeeping housekeep-ing in a little three-room cottage in Indianapolis. He was not admitted to the bar until after his marriage, and the first money he ever made was as a court crier at $2.50 a day. Later on he helped out his lean practice with his salary as clerk of the supreme court of the state. Then came the Civil war, In which he served gnllantly as a colonel and marched with Sherman Sher-man to the sea. Afterward he rose to a high and prosperous rank In the practice of law. . The only political office Harrison ever held before his election to the presidency was a seat in the senate. Defeated for re-election to that body in the year before he was elected president, pres-ident, he left Washington with no thought that he would soon return as president-elect, and he frankly de-scrihed de-scrihed himself as "a dead duck." The only candidate that the rank and file of the Republicans wanted to nominate in 1SSS was Blaine. But he was not well, and he refused to make a contest for the nomination. At last he cabled from Scotland: "Take Harrison." Har-rison." And the convention, indifferently indiffer-ently took him. - , The more notable events of the Harrison Har-rison administration the McKinley tariff act; the silver act, which more than doubled the purchase of that metal by the treasury; the Sherman law on the subject of trusts ; the dependent de-pendent pension act, and the first Pan-American Pan-American congress hardly belong in this little story, hecause none of. them -originated with the president himself. He did not rise to leadership, and con-cress con-cress took the reins. All the while he sat in the White House in cold aloofness. aloof-ness. With the cry of "God help the surplus:" sur-plus:" the Republicans gave the country coun-try in Harrison's administration the first "billion-dollar congress," the appropriations ap-propriations for the two-year term rising ris-ing to that unprecedented total. To the popular protest Speaker Reed retorted: re-torted: "This is a billion-dollar country." coun-try." But the country did not feel rich enough to pay the higher tariff rates of the McKinley act. That law was passed only seven weeks before the congressional elections elec-tions In 1SD0. Of course anyone who had anything to sell seized upon the excuse "to mark up prices. The "shopping "shop-ping women" rose in their fury at the higher cot of living, and the voters overwhelmed the Republican majority In the house. That was the forerunner of a still "renter political overturn in the presidential presi-dential election In TTO. when Harrison j went down tit der a sweeping victory j for Cleve!::n I ' T CLEVELAND CAME BACK - - 1893 March 4, Grover Cleveland Cleve-land inaugurated a second time, aged fifty-five. May, a great panic began. July 1, Cleveland went under surgical operation for cancer. Oct. 30, The Silver act repealed. re-pealed. 1894 July 4, Cleveland sent troops to Chicago to intervene inter-vene In railroad strike. Aug. 27, the Wilson-Gorman tariff became law without president's signature. signa-ture. 1895 Feb. 7, Cleveland made arrangement with J. P. Morgan and others for protection of gold reserve. Dec. 17, sent in his Venezuela Ven-ezuela message. 1908 June 24, Cleveland died at Princeton, N. J., aged seventy-one. - GROVER CLEVELAND had no more than left the presidency In defeat and settled down to- the practice prac-tice of law In New York City than It was seen that he was still almost as much the leader of the Democratic party as when he was in the White House. In the four years of his retirement, he seldom saw party leaders. Yet so strong was the reaction against the Republicans and so loud the call for him In that he returned in tri umph to the White House. One of the periodical panics of the 10tb century smote the country with a financial and industrial paralysis In 1S93, only two months after the Inauguration. In-auguration. As usual, the party in power caught the blame, and day after day a leading Republican newspaper shouted In gleeful headlines: "Another bank gone Democratic !" As the first means of restoring confidence, con-fidence, Cleveland called a special session ses-sion of congress for the purpose of having It repeal the Silver act of the Harrison administration. The next day he submitted himself to the sngeon's knife for tbe removal of a cancerous ulcer which had appeared in the roof of his mouth. His grave physical condition con-dition was concealed from the panicky mind of the public, and the operation was performed in the closest secrecy aboard a yacht as It steamed slowly up the East River, off New York. Not until un-til many years had passed was it known that wben congress assembled he faced it with a rubber jaw. Under the pressure of the president, the Silver act was repealed, but only after a hitter struggle which left the Democratic party hopelessly split. The passage of a tariff bill divided the party par-ty still more. It was such a lobby-made, lobby-made, log-rolling measure that Cleveland Cleve-land refused to sign it, but let it become be-come law without his signature. After that the Democrats went down In defeat de-feat In the congressional elections of 1894. In the depth of our domestic troubles the president sent his famous Venezuelan message to congress. In it he announced that the British government gov-ernment had rejected all our appeals for the arbitration of a land dispute which It was pressing in South America, Amer-ica, and he boldly proposed that we ourselves should decide the question and proceed to enforce the decision. Stocks tumbled headlong in London Lon-don and New York, and there was much wild talk on both sides of the Atlantic. But the president confidently reassured his troubled private secre- lsss o. I ' far , v N j t t. jafc' ji os a. w ' i2 Grover Cleveland. tary, "Thurher, this does not mean war; it means arbitration." And that was the outcome of all the hubbub. Cleveland's outburst of plain speaking had the effect of awakening tbe English Eng-lish people, as never before, to the value val-ue of American friendship, and It opened a new era In the relations of the two governments. Cleveland's hardest, longest battle In his second administration was for the gold standard. Almost alone he upheld it through four years, abandoned by most of the Democrats and unaided by the gold Republicans In congress, who were afraid of "hurting the party" with the silver people. (Copyright, ly-O. by James MorganJ |