Government Policy

Cleveland’s Troubled Second Term

In 1892 the Democrats nominated Cleveland on the first ballot with Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois as vice-president. This time he triumphantly defeated Harrison by a landslide popular vote of 5,555,426 to Harrison's 5,182,690 and an electoral vote of 277 to 145. He was the only president ever to be reelected after a defeat.

Two months after the inauguration the great Panic of 1893 swept the country. Banks closed their doors, railroads went bankrupt, and farm mortgages were foreclosed. People hoarded gold, and the treasury was fast losing its gold reserve.

Cleveland called a special session of Congress to deal with the currency situation. Young William Jennings Bryan, the talented orator, spoke for three hours demanding the free and unlimited coinage of silver (see Bryan). But Cleveland stood for the gold standard and succeeded in having the Sherman Silver Purchase Act repealed. Financial disaster was not staved off, however, because there was so little gold in the treasury. Cleveland turned in desperation to Wall Street bankers in New York City and asked them to float bond issues to supply the needed gold. Not until 1896 was the crisis passed. A friend told Cleveland that history would see his actions in their true light. Cleveland replied, "I am not concerning myself with what history will think, but contenting myself with the approval of a fellow named Cleveland."

Meanwhile there were strikes in mines, on railroads, and in textile mills. In the summer of 1894 "Coxey's army" of unemployed men marched on Washington to demand relief (see Coxey). More serious was the great Pullman strike on the outskirts of Chicago. The American Railway Union came to the aid of the workers and refused to move any trains that included Pullman cars. Cleveland's attorney general, Richard Olney, had a federal court issue an injunction to restrain the strikers, and the president sent troops to quell the rioters.

Cleveland was unyielding in his opposition to foreign expansion. In 1893 he withdrew from the Senate a treaty calling for the annexation of Hawaii. In 1895, when the Cubans revolted against Spain, he held firmly to neutrality. He took vigorous action, however, against Great Britain in its quarrel with Venezuela and succeeded in having the boundary of British Guiana (now Guyana) settled by arbitration

National Personnel

President Cleveland

Cleveland corpulence, May 10

Having been rumored that President Cleveland was considering resigning his office due to his increasing corpulence, C.T. Thacker M.D. of Chicago generously sent him a Magnetic Abdominal Belt, which has so reduced his immensity that he expects to hold down the presidential chair until the end of his term.

Speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives

Charles F. Crisp, D, Ga. 1891-1895

Thomas B. Reed, R, Me. 1895-1899

Justice of Supreme Court

Stephen J. Field, Cal. 1863-1897 34

John M. Harlan, Ky. 1877-1911 34

Horace Gray, Mass. 1881-1902 20

Melville W. Fuller, Ill. 1888-1910 21

David J. Brewer, Kan. 1889-1910 20

Henry B. Brown, Mich. 1890-1906 15

George Shiras Jr., Pa. 1892-1903 10

Howell E. Jackson, Tenn. 1893-1895 2

Edward D. White, La. 1894-1910 16

Rufus W. Peckham, N.Y. 1895-1909 13

Eugene Victor Debs,

American Socialist leader. An advocate of industrial unions and a pacifist, Debs was imprisoned in 1895 for breaking an injunction during the Pullman railroad strike.

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt and Police Reform

As president of the Board of Police Commissioners of New York City in 1895, Theodore Roosevelt wrote against Tammany Hall in the Forum, "we shall win ... if only we stand squarely and fairly on the platform of the honest enforcement of the law of the land."

Secretary of State

Richard Olney

Attorney General

Judson Harmon

Booker T. Washington

Booker T. Washington by a speech in Atlanta, Georgia, assumed the role of national Negro leader.

National Concerns

Venezuelan Crisis

President Cleveland urged that the Monroe Doctrine be invoked against Great Britain, "peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must." The previous Monroe administration accepted and applied the logic of Washington’s Farewell Address by declaring in effect that American non intervention in European affairs necessarily implied and meant nonintervention in American affairs.

Overseas expansion

Henry Cabot Lodge, Massachusetts senator, argued forcefully in Forum that Hawaii should be annexed, outposts in the Pacific should be established, and that we should build the Panama Canal and establish a military base there.

Pullman Strike

The Supreme Court sanctioned the use of injunctions against striking labor unions when it declared the American Railway Union acted illegally in restraint of trade under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. It confirmed the sentencing of Eugene Debs, the union president, to six months in jail.

Income Tax

By a vote of 5 to 4 the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional an act of Congress, the Wilson-Gorman Tariff, because of a provision for a 2% tax on incomes over $4,000, leading to the most criticism of the court since the Dred-Scott decision

Populist Party and Free Silver

"Coin" Harvey and others propagandized that farmers and workers would benefit greatly by adopting the coinage of silver at a ratio of 16 to 1 (of gold). Its opponents called it a huge deceit by the mine-owners and speculators.

William Jennings Bryan’s stirring speech, backing the silver faction, included "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!"

Religion as an Essential Part of Education

Bishop John L. Spalding in a book, "Means and Ends of Education", was concerned with teachers as well as students, and believed that the only truly effective educator was a religious man. "The essential element in human life is conduct, and conduct springs from what we believe, cling to, love, The decadence and ruin of individuals and of societies come from lack of virtue, not from lack of knowledge. and yearn for, vastly more than from what we know."

Revolt of Cuba Against Spain

Repressive measures taken by the Spanish aroused American sympathy, which was inflamed to a war pitch by William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.

Women’s Suffrage

Utah became the second state to give women the vote.

Invention

Safety razor invented by King C. Gillette

Electric locomotives

Introduced c.1895, obtained their power from an electric trolley, or pantograph, running on an overhead wire, or from a third rail.

Comptometer

Aug 31 c The LA Times reports a new comptometer. a machine that adds, subtracts, multiplies, and divides. Colonel Wilson asked it to multiply 678 * 333. The machine answered 221,778/333.(should have been 225774) The story or the machine was not accurate.

Gasoline-driven Automobile by a U.S. Inventor

Its first U.S. patent was issued to Charles E. Duryea. The previous year the patent office had granted a patent to a motor car developed in Germany by Karl Benz.

Lighting of Washington D.C.

There was a bill passed in Congress, authorizing the lighting of the capitol in Washington, D.C. by electricity.

Art Music

America The Beautiful

Katharine Lee Bates put words to Samuel A. Ward’s melody.

Symphony Orchestras

NY Philharmonic 1880-

St. Louis 1880

Boston Sym 1991- Arthur Nikisch, cond.

Chicago 1891 Theodore Thomas, cond.

Cincinnati 1895

Moving pictures

Woodville-Latham demonstrated his moving picture projector, the Panoptikon which combines Thomas Edison’s Kinetiscope with the magic lantern.

News

Jan 9 Brown in NYC

Another well-known western millionaire who has recently provided himself with a palatial home in this city (NYC), is President F.E. Brown of the Bear Valley Irrigation Company. He is known as "Water" Brown in California. His friends say he can count his fortune at ten millions. He is living in a handsome brownstone mansion at 17 East 73rd Street, a few doors from Fifth Avenue. He is not now connected with the Bear Valley Company.

Joseph Pulitzer’s Advice to his editors on the New York World."

Always tell the truth, always take the humane and moral side, always remember that right feeling is the vital spark of strong writing, and that publicity, publicity, publicity is the greatest moral factor and force in our public life.

New York Times of January 24, 1895

Sixteen page issue. Price 3 cents.

Lead story A soldier’s fatal shot.

It struck a man gazing from a house roof. Linemen join strikers’ ranks. More cars run than on any previous day — routes guarded by militiamen. Extensive wire cutting going on. Decided that no more troops are necessary — regulars in readiness. The surface railroad strike in Brooklyn yesterday caused the sacrifice of another human life. A roofer, Thomas Carney, twenty-two years old was watching at the approach of a railroad car on the Hicks Street Line, guarded by a detachment of the Thirteenth Regiment soldiers, he merely looked over the edge of the roof to watch the soldiers pass. He heard the order from the troops, "Get back there." He started to run from the front edge of the roof and was struck in the thigh with a bullet. He declared he had thrown no missiles. On the other hand it is said that he did throw missiles at the soldiers and had ample warning that they would shoot unless he desisted. He died of his wounds.

No national news on the front page

Mostly New York City and New York State news, along with some brief items of other states.

Mostly politics, fires.

Editorial on page 4 — "Law and Order First"

In regard to the disorders in Brooklyn, attacking persons and property, interfering with the operation of railroads, and raising riots in the streets, are criminal violations of the law and an offense against the community. They should be put down without inquiring how or why they started.

One of the Assembly resolutions calls upon the Board of Mediation and Arbitration to further examine into all the causes that led up to this strike. The best thing that can be done with the Board of Mediation and Arbitration is to abolish it. It is one of a dozen useless contrivances gotten up to give places to politicians and plunder the Public Treasury. It cost 17,500 a year and has never been of any use.First of all let us have law and order and vindication of self-government. Labor disputes cannot be setttled by riot. A strike that leads to riot is already a failure by that very token.

Mexicans and Guatemalans

Impressions of an imminent war. Señor Romero’s opinion. Two warships were directed to proceed from Vallejo, California under sealed orders to proceed to Mexican and Guatemalan ports. The object of sending ships of war is to furnish protection to residents who are citizens of United States.

Duplex bicycle

Prominently advertised with one front wheel, pedals for each of two riders, with two back wheels, side to side.

Social

The Gibson Girl

Charles Dana Gibson popularized the slim, small-waisted American woman with the pompadour haircut. His clean-shaven young man had much to do with the disappearance of the hitherto popular mustache.

Vital Statistics Marriages, Divorces, and Rates in the U.S. Rates per 1,000 population

Business

Sears Roebuck

Mail order business opened by Sears Roebuck.