As I knew them : presidents and politics from Grant to Coolidge

Front matter

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Chapter I The Dreamland Of Other Days

"You Have Been Coming Here Longer Than Any Man I Know” — A Boy's Vision of His Future — Printer , Proof-reader and Reporter — The Country W eekly and Its Place of Confidence — Chance Makes Opportunity to Cover Half a Century of Politics.

“IV/TR. STODDARD,” said Irwin Hood Hoover, Chief A Usher at the White House, as I entered it one after¬ noon in response to President Coolidge’s invitation to luncheon, “you have been coming here longer than any man I know, and I have been here since Harrison’s inauguration.”

Hoover’s words startled me.

“Is it as bad as that?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, “that’s about right.”

. how noiseless falls the foot of Time!

A few hours later, on the Congressional Limited out of Washington, a former United States Senator, a Congressman and I drifted into discussion of the Presidents since Lincoln each of us had personally known; we endeavored to agree on which of them had grown while in office and which had not. We differed widely in opinion at the outset, but before the journey to New York City was over we found ourselves not far apart; partisan and personal prejudice gave way, slowly but steadily.

That train talk, and Hoover’s reminder of the flight of years, are responsible for this book.

My mind thus started on its wandering went back to the time almost half a century ago when, as political correspond¬ ent of the Philadelphia Press, in the field and also at Wash¬ ington, I had my earliest contact with national party leaders.

i

This intimacy, begun in 1884, has never ceased. In the presi¬ dential campaign of that year I had my first political assign¬ ments of importance. I was sent to Buffalo to look into Grover Cleveland’s early career; that task accomplished I was assigned to travel with James G. Blaine, and the closing weeks of the campaign I spent at Republican national head¬ quarters in New York City.

In the years from that day to the present, I have met either casually or on closer terms every President since Andrew John¬ son except Garfield, as well as most of the national leaders of both political parties, especially those in the East.

THE COUNTRY PRINT SHOP

It may not be out of place here at the outset to write briefly of myself and to say that I began my career, if such it may be called, as a typesetter on the New York Tribune. I have no recollection of any other desire than to be a printer, re¬ porter and editor. It was the one ambition of my boyhood and it has remained my one ambition through life. No public office has ever held the fascination for me that an editor’s desk possesses, no work has had the thrill of a newspaper correspondent’s duties “covering” a great event.

In boyhood, my vacations from the public schools of New York City were often spent in Hudson, Columbia County, New York, where my grandfather’s little printing shop on the main street was to me the most interesting place in the world. In 1778) now 150 years ago, my grandfather, four genera¬ tions back, had trekked over the Connecticut border and had started the Hudson Register, continuously published since then, and now a prosperous daily. The newspaper was trans¬ ferred to other ownership years ago, but the printing shop was retained.

In that family printing shop, as a boy, I learned the boxes of the printer s case that is, the divisions out of which each letter of the alphabet is picked by the typesetter. All the men of four generations of my family had stood in their youth in front of the same dust-covered cases, setting type for, and pub¬ lishing, a monthly magazine called the Rural Repository, one of the earliest publications in the country to be illustrated.

Later, in the office of the Eastern State Journal, at White Plains, New York, a weekly newspaper then owned by an uncle, I undertook during school vacations to gather and write village news paragraphs, to set type, and to “feed” a Washington hand-press.

Best of all, I learned there the place of confidence and power held by the country weekly. May it never decrease! I gained a respect for and interest in those modest publica¬ tions that increases with every year of my life.

DREAMING OF LIFE’S WORK

My keenest delight was to read thoroughly all the “ex¬ changes” — that is, the weekly newspapers published in other villages and county seats, near and remote. When other per¬ sons were too busy with their own work to be concerned about my doings, I would often sneak into the partitioned corner of the composing room set aside as the editor’s sanctum.

Seated in the editor’s cane-bottomed swivel chair, tilting it far back, and with my feet on the desk, assuming as closely as I could his pose of serene and lordly ease, with country weeklies scattered thickly on the floor about me, I would dream dreams of editorial triumphs that could not have been dreamier or more alluring had they been wreathed in the smoke of a favorite cigar spiralling above one’s head. Horace Greeley was not my goal. The man who in my mind had the world at his feet was the editor of a country weekly!

Restless to get really into newspaper work, I had no sooner been graduated from Public School 49 in New York City, thus gaining the right to enter the College of the City of New York, than I found a position as a beginner in the composing of the New York Tribune. Diploma from my school room in hand, I was now eager to get to the types (not linotypes in those days). I reported for work at six o’clock that night, thrilled with ambition to win my way some day to the editor¬ ship of a county-seat newspaper.

Here those imperceptible currents that affect one’s life seem to have changed mine. On the Tribune I was soon made a proof-reader, and “teamed-up” with dear kindly “Old Man” Barlow of Horace Greeley vintage and resemblance. I attribute my keen desire to know public men and to study public affairs largely to the fact that, night after night, I read with Barlow the proofs of Whitelaw Reid’s editorial leader, Z. K. White’s Washington dispatches, and George W. Smal¬ ley’s letters or cables from London. Cables, in those days, came across the Atlantic as mere skeletons on which the flesh of language was hung in the Tribune office by a jovial and talented Irishman named O’Dwyer.

I was impressed and inspired in those proof-reading days by the evidences of all that those great writers seemed to know of conditions and events, and the important personages, high in position, they discussed with such intimate knowledge. Could I ever get to know even a single one of the great men they knew so well?

I made up my mind to try — just how to try I did not know.

CHANCE, AS USUAL, MAKES OPPORTUNITY

Chance solved the problem for me as it has solved it for so many. Ordinarily one would regard New York City as the place of opportunity. In a small way, I happened to be of service to Charles Emory Smith, then the famous editor of the Philadelphia Press. That led to my joining the staff of that newspaper, and a year or so later I was able to satisfy my longing to write politics and mix with politicians.

The “Press” was then known for its brilliant editorial staff, among whom were Dr. Talcott Williams, beloved as “T. W.” by all who know him, and Bradford Merrill, in recent years the able editorial director of the Hearst news¬ papers.

Do not think that I achieved the distinction of writing politics, as I then regarded it and still regard it, without months of “watchful waiting.” I did not. The details of that wait for the great event are of no interest to others; sufficient that at last, when least expected, the day dawned when I was the proud and happy correspondent of the Phila¬ delphia Press “in the field.” I was assigned to interview Congressman Samuel J. Randall, then the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives!

Randall was reluctant to talk, but I kept at him, finally telling him it was my first political assignment and I did not want to fail. Randall was a high tariff Democrat, and it was important to get his opinion on pending legislation. My recollection is that I got enough from him to have it regarded in the office as a “beat.”

“And so far — far into the night,” as the talented Briggs puts it with such intimate truth in his understanding cartoons.

Chapter II Politics And Politicians

Companionships and Friendships That Are Fine Examples of Loyalty — No University So Trains You To Know Your Own Levels — Hovu Lincoln W as N ominated — All Presidents Represent The Conflict Of Politicians— Clay , Blaine, Bryan — The Stump-Speaker’s Silent Foe — W omen And The Radio In Politics.

T T has always seemed to me the duty of newspaper writers, whether correspondents or editors, to seek the men in control of government, or of large enterprises, and to talk with them, when possible, more or less intimately — “off the record,” as lawyers say — the better to understand and ap¬ praise their purposes. In such discussions you come to know the real man, who is not always so accurately reflected in what you read and hear of him.

In my own case I know that meeting the responsible leaders of the two political parties through so many years has been a helpful experience and a privilege for which I am grateful. From them I got a broad and ever new outlook on the country as a whole, on the interplay of contending forces in it, — the forces of business, of sentiment and of prejudice that merge into the composite life of the nation.

The companionships too have been most enjoyable; many of them ripened into friendships which have shown me inspir¬ ing examples of loyalty, courage and honor among rivals. Out of the passion and tumult of conventions, Legislatures and Congress I have learned to respect the opinions and motives of others, and to withhold judgment until certain, very certain, that prejudice is out of mind, so far as it may be possible to exclude it.

LEARNING TO MEASURE OTHERS - AND YOURSELF

What a schooling there is in such an experience ! It car¬ ries on the lessons of the little red schoolhouse now dis¬ appearing much too rapidly from our countryside, — lessons in those realities and simplicities of life that give solid backing to those who will learn them. No university so trains you in understanding the bigness and the littleness of others or so holds you at your own proper level.

Every human instinct — whether good or evil, courageous or cowardly, fair or false, selfish or unselfish — is in action when the men of politics gather to make party platforms and to achieve individual ambitions. The struggle to hold or to secure a hold on the largest body of public opinion, to find and nominate the candidate who best expresses and typifies the mind of the people, requires the same resourceful genius, if it is to succeed, as does the conduct of a great industrial enterprise — or even war.

From that fierce crucible flows ultimately the nation’s lead¬ ership in men and policies. Its results are the best evidence we have of the progress of the world, for if government does not advance nothing does.

Disappointment with some result in legislation or in can¬ didates leads us at times to denounce those in responsible position and irritably to question the wisdom and ultimate success of our experiment in government. Later, how fre¬ quently we see with clearer vision and realize that, when measures are undertaken on the scale of a continent, the meet¬ ing of many minds is a more dependable guide to the coun¬ try’s needs than the judgment of one mind, however wise that mind may be.

HOW LINCOLN WAS NOMINATED

Take for illustration that outstanding example of the work of politicians — the nomination in i860 of the crude and littleknown Abraham Lincoln over the polished and widely-known statesman, William H. Seward. At the moment, the country was staggered by the news from the Republican national con¬ vention. Seward rejected ! Salmon P. Chase rejected! Lin¬ coln nominated ! It seemed incredible.

Yet who today would reverse the unexpected verdict of that gathering of politicians?

Picture that historic convention assembled out in Chicago in the flimsy frame building called “The Wigwam.”

One name easily led all others as the man to nominate— William H. Seward, former Governor of New York, twicechosen Senator, the national leader, if such there was at the time, of the Republican party. Talented, distinguished, ex¬ perienced in statesmanship, he loomed a towering figure among the candidates. Two-thirds of the delegates were claimed for him in advance.

Who will attempt to fathom the influence that led those politicians to turn from wealth, prestige, and experience and nominate a Lincoln over a Seward? As though inspired much as the founders of our Republic seem to have been, the dele¬ gates sensed in the nation’s plight the need of a candidate who, to use an expression then common, “belonged” to the people.

Has monarchy ever scored such a triumph for mankind as democracy then scored — as politicians scored?

WE SHOULD BE PROUD OF OUR PRESIDENTS

Washington is the one man ever chosen as our nation’s chief Executive by unanimous consent. All of our other twenty-eight Presidents through a century-and-a-half have come to us out of the same conflict of politicians in caucus or convention as did Lincoln.

They represented different types of citizens, and came from different stations in life, each reflecting at the moment the keenness of the politician searching for the man who meant

THE THINNING LINE OF. ZOUAVES, IN THEIR “WOOLEN TOGS” — SEE PAGE 51

“THE WIGWAM” — WHERE LINCOLN WAS NOMINATED IN i860 to the people just what they had in mind. If a mistake was made it took only four years to correct it — a brief time in the life of a nation. This fluidity at the head of our nation, this changing point of view with each succeeding President, gives every element in our national life opportunity to express itself. On the other hand, it is an influence tending to keep the President’s thought directed toward public opinion.

Though not all the men who have occupied the White House have been of strong character and purpose, it is an inspiring tribute to representative government that as a people we are able to say that the highest ambition of every President has been to leave the country better off because he had served it. Even James Buchanan may be so classed, though his timid attitude during the last year of his term amounted almost to surrender of national sovereignty.

Surely we have reason to be grateful when we contrast the course of our Presidents with the experience other nations have had with their rulers. Not one of the twenty-nine we have had in 1 50 years exercised the great power of his office with thought of a personal dynasty or indulged in sighs for new worlds to conquer.

The nation made up of thirteen “original” States has been extended from the Alleghenies to the Pacific coast, and then beyond. In every instance, beginning with Jefferson, this has been done at the urging of a President. Though each expansion meant the addition of an empire, territorially, it was his country’s greatness, not his own, that moved the man at the head to action. Thomas Jefferson, faced as President with the responsibility of decision, put aside his earlier an¬ tagonism to expansion and negotiated the “Louisiana Pur¬ chase.” The territory embraced in the transfer was larger than that of any of the Empires of Europe, except Russia, and more remote at the time than any of our ocean posses¬ sions today; yet Jefferson, rather than see it forever under foreign sovereignty, did not hesitate to abandon his former opinions.

Only one President has ever stood against expansion. Grover Cleveland refused to permit Hawaii, at its own re¬ quest, to come under our flag; the islands would not be ours today if his will had prevailed. Even Woodrow Wilson bought the Virgin Islands in 1917.

CLAY, BLAINE, BRYAN

While we have had no imperialists in the White House, it is equally true that none of the men who finally became Presi¬ dent have represented only the hurrahs of the roadside.

Alluring and deceptive as those hurrahs always are to am¬ bitious men, they have seldom melded down as majority votes in our Presidential ballot-box. The careers of Henry Clay, James G. Blaine and William J. Bryan are outstanding demonstrations that the path of popularity, when travelled too rapidly, does not always lead to the presidential chair.

In his day, each of those men had a following so loyal and so enthusiastic that it seemed to represent a majority of the people. Clay was the “Mill-boy of the Slashes,” Blaine was the “Plumed Knight”; to his supporters Bryan was “The Peerless One,” while his opponents called him “The Boy Ora¬ tor of the Platte. Those three men, or their supporters, struggled through three or four national campaigns for nomination or election as President; Bryan was the most suc¬ cessful in achieving the indorsement of his party.

Accepting as valid Bryan’s statement that he did not seek to be named in 1912, the record stands that he was nominated on the three occasions when he desired to be. Clay and Blaine, each denied nomination in two or three conventions, suc¬ ceeded in being nominated only to be defeated in the election.

Yet no candidates ever had more enthusiastic supporters than had Clay, Blaine and Bryan; no candidates ever seemed to develop in their campaigns greater evidences of popular¬ ity. Bryan of course would have been a tragedy in the White House. He came perilously near being one as Secretary of

State. Clay and Blaine, however, were statesmen well qual¬ ified to be at the head of the nation.

THE WARWICKS OF OUR POLITICS •

Nevertheless the Presidency was not for any of them. The fate that denied it to them gave them the consolation of deci¬ sive power with their party to nominate others; in recog¬ nition of that power each served as Secretary of State in the Cabinet of the President he had named. Henry Clay’s sup¬ port made John Quincy Adams President in 1825 ; the Blaine influence nominated Garfield in 1880 and Harrison in 1888; Bryan forced Wilson’s nomination in 1912. President-makers they could be but not Presidents.

yep, bryan’s going to san francisco!

Clay is the only man of the three who continued through an entire term with his President; also the only one who did not oppose his chief’s policies in the subsequent convention. Blaine contested Harrison’s nomination in 1892; Bryan was elected delegate from Nebraska in 1920 on a platform op¬ posed to Wilson’s League of Nations.

BOURKE COCKRAN’S WRONG ESTIMATE

Before leaving the subject of Uhurrah candidates, let me recall to many readers the Bourke Cockran speech in the

1892 Democratic convention. I listened to Cockran when, as spokesman for Tammany Hall, he declared that if Cleve¬ land were made the Democratic candidate he could not be elected, adding “He is popular every day in the year but elec¬ tion day.”

That sentence, in a hectic speech, brought great applause, but it was not true. It should have been reversed.

Cleveland never excited the emotional support that char¬ acterizes a hurrah campaign. His popularity was expressed silently in votes on election day. In that respect it was in extreme contrast with the kind of popularity enjoyed by the three men I have just discussed. In his three campaigns, Cleveland led each time in the popular vote, and twice had an electoral college majority.

THE STUMP-SPEAKER’S SILENT FOE

Year after year, as I study election returns, I am impressed more and more by the number of citizens who do a lot of un¬ influenced home-thinking before voting for President or even for candidates seeking far less important offices. Such voters are not so numerous as they should be, but my observation leads me to believe that their number is increasing — and it should.

The impassioned rhetoric of the stump-speaker loses much of its persuasive power crossing the threshold of the home. There it faces the higher test of calm analysis and second thought; there it has to battle on higher levels than the blare of bands and the emotions of the crowd; there in the future, in my opinion, it will have to meet a foe of increasing poten¬ tiality — the motives of the family as voiced in the quiet of the fireside by wife, mother or daughter.

Women are individual; they have little of the crowd-mind such as controls most men; at least in public affairs. The bal¬ lot is yet too new to women for this independent thought to be shown, but it seems to me certain to come. Probably no other agency is hastening it so much as the radio. That marvel of the age has taken the place of the saloon and the corner soap-box as the new centre of political influence — the radio, in the home, with the entire family “listening in.” It is the keen rival of the newspaper and the stump-speaker.

TWO CONTRASTS BY RADIO IN 1 9 24

In the years ahead of us there is going to be developed in this way a “silent” vote much more numerous than heretofore and more difficult to analyze in advance; more remote from corruption, from demagogy and partisan control. Two ex¬ amples may be cited to substantiate this prophecy. In both instances a definite influence was exerted that would have been impossible by any other means.

The first was the radio report of the Democratic national convention in Madison Square Garden in 1924. More than a million people “listened in” on those proceedings day after day. No newspaper could have reported them, no orator could have reviewed them, in the realistic way the radio car¬ ried them into so many homes.

It is not necessary for me to dwell upon the effect on the Democratic party. Its disastrous consequences are conceded. Had John W. Davis possessed the popularity of a Wilson and a Roosevelt combined he could not have overcome the blighting effects of that convention; his election was never a possibility.

In contrast was the influence of the radio report of Presi¬ dent Coolidge’s address the night before election in that same 1924 campaign. The “hook-up” carried his voice to every voter who had a radio receiver. It is impossible to estimate how many hundreds of thousands of people heard him as he dwelt on the patriotism of voting, never once referring to his own candidacy, finally bidding the folks good night, “in¬ cluding my father, up on the Vermont farm, ‘listening in’.”

That radio speech made votes for Coolidge, everywhere. In one campaign, therefore, we have two instances of decisive radio influence that nothing else could have equalled. The people heard for themselves and acted on their own impressions.

Often enough to be accepted as a factor this “silent” vote emerges from the ballot-box as the surprising feature of the election. It rarely goes to the seemingly “popular man.” I regard it even now as a stabilizing influence in our politics. It is a menace to every party machine that becomes defiant with power and also a challenge to too hasty progress with new policies even in the right direction. It wants no short-cut to the millennium. It prefers time to think while on the way.

FASSETT THOUGHT HE COULD DEFY IT

Many a candidate has missed nomination in convention be¬ cause party leaders were fearful that by reason of his extreme views he could not command that “silent” vote; often candi¬ dates have been amazed when receiving election returns, to discover that the voice unheard in the campaign speaks loud¬ est on election day. It is the voice of those who have thought things out with their own best selves.

I remember when in 1891, J. Sloat Fassett, of Elmira, New York, a State Senator and Congressman several terms, demanded of Boss Thomas C. Platt that he be nominated for Governor. Fassett would have made an excellent Governor. Fie was eloquent, able, and experienced in public affairs, but he was known as a Platt lieutenant; indeed, the personal rela¬ tions between the two men were almost as close as father and son. Platt demurred. He said to Fassett in my presence at Rochester as the convention assembled: “You’re too close to me, Sloat. They call me a boss and the people opposed to me as a party boss would be opposed to you. There are too many voters of that kind for you to risk it this year. Better wait for an issue.”

The ambitious Fassett, however, remained unconvinced, so Platt let him have his way. He ran against Roswell P. Flower and was beaten by the “silent” vote from the homes in the rural districts.

Chapter III The “swings” Of A Campaign

Fortune Moves Backivard And Foriuard Before Election — Candidates Deluded by Hurrahs — Blaming Others For Their Defeat — The Sherman-Alger Rivalry To Persuade ’ Southern Delegates — Many Pri¬ maries Are A Contest Of Pocket Books — Every N ominee In A Primary Feels He Is His Own Party Platform.

T ALWAYS study with keen interest the “swings” of a cam¬ paign. In almost every contest there are currents of opinion that can be definitely charted as they flow to and from a candidate several times before merging into the mighty stream of settled public opinion. Matthew Stanley Quay, so long the controlling power in Pennsylvania politics, always urged his lieutenants to hold the high waves back until near election day, so as to be able to coast their candidate in on the crest. But such strategy is only for masterful cam¬ paigners, as Quay, of course, was.

I have known only a few candidates for public office who were not persuaded as they listened to the final hurrahs of the campaign, that they would win — and the greatest delusion is usually among those having least chance. Candidates for nomination are equally blind to their own fortunes.

I have sat in convention by the side of men who, despite the plain evidence that they were not in the running, confidently believed as the roll-call progressed that the next county or district called— always the next— would turn the tide in their favor. Disappointment as the roll-call proceeds seems only to encourage new hope until the last vote is polled. Never will candidates see defeat so long as it is possible to see any¬ thing else. In business and in the professions men usually know their possibilities — seldom in politics.

John W. Mackay, father of Clarence H. Mackay, was one of the few men I ever met who, while deeply interested in politics, kept a common-sense view of his own relation to it. He was one of the “Bonanza” Kings of the sparsely settled State of Nevada. He spent a great deal of his time around the Hoffman House in New York City.

Of course, this was many years ago. His influence made State officials and national legislators, but he could not be induced himself to accept office. When the Legislature wanted to make him Senator he refused and said: “I would rather be at home in a silver mine in Nevada than out of place in the United States Senate!”

Some degree of courage is required to make such a state¬ ment — and to mean it.

THE LOSER OFTEN SCENTS BETRAYAL

More than once I have met men in conventions convinced that the people eagerly demanded their nomination, and who, when not named, blamed their defeat on the disloyalty of party leaders, asserting they had reason to rely upon them for sup¬ port. Whether that reliance should in fact be called a hope rather than a settled matter is a question; usually it is a hope, for as a rule politicians keep their word. You must have it definitely, however, for “I’ll do what I can,” means nothing.

I had one example some years ago when a candidate for nomination for the Presidency, smarting under a defeat that came when he seemed close to victory — seemed so to others as well as to himself — told me several weeks after the con¬ vention had adjourned that his long friendship with the pre¬ siding officer was ended. He said:

“We have been friends for years, but in the chair he proved untrue. He promised our people to recognize us for a motion to recess, provided we showed certain strength on the first two ballots that final day; we showed that strength and more. If we could have forced a recess before another ballot, we had enough help promised to nominate me. The chairman, however, despite his agreement would not see our man when he rose to make the motion. Instead of recognizing him, he hurriedly announced another ballot and directed the Secretary to call the roll. Of course, no motion was in order during roll-call. That cost me the Presidency.”

I did not intend to reveal the identity of the candidate and the presiding officer referred to above; but since writing it death has removed the impropriety of doing so — perhaps it has made it a duty. The candidate was General Leonard Wood and the presiding officer was Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. The Harding “drive” was set for the Saturday morn¬ ing session of the 1920 Republican convention; Wood did not believe theie was staying strength behind Harding; he was convinced that, if after one or two test ballots that morn¬ ing he was still holding his column intact, he could arrange to take over a considerable block of Lowden votes. A re¬ cess would be necessary to negotiate this transfer, and Wood believed he had Lodge’s word to aid him secure the recess.