The Hon. Grover Cleveland.
V
This ended my personal relations with Mr. Cleveland. Thereafter we did
not speak as we passed by. He was a hard man to get on with.
Overcredulous, though by no means excessive, in his likes, very
tenacious in his dislikes, suspicious withal, he grew during his second
term in the White House, exceedingly “high and mighty,” suggesting
somewhat the “stuffed prophet,” of Mr. Dana’s relentless lambasting and
verifying my insistence that he posed rather as an idol to be
worshiped, than a leader to be trusted and loved. He was in truth a
strong man, who, sufficiently mindful of his limitations in the
beginning, grew by unexampled and continued success overconfident and
overconscious in his own conceit. He had a real desire to serve the
country. But he was apt to think that he alone could effectively serve
it. In one of our spats I remember saying to him, “You seem, Mr.
President, to think you are the only pebble on the beach—the one honest
and brave man in the party—hut let me assure you of my own knowledge
that there are others.” His answer was, “Oh, you go to ——!”
He split his party wide open. The ostensible cause was the money issue.
But, underlying this, there was a deal of personal embitterment. Had he
been a man of foresight—or even of ordinary discernment—he might have
held it together and with it behind him have carried the gold standard.
I had contended for a sound currency from the outset of the fiscal
contention, fighting first the green-back craze and then the free
silver craze against an overwhelming majority in the West and South,
nowhere more radically relentless than in Kentucky. Both movements had
their origin on economic fallacies and found their backing in dishonest
purpose to escape honest indebtedness.
Through Mr. Cleveland the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Tilden was
converted from a Democrat into a Populist, falling into the arms of Mr.
Bryan, whose domination proved as baleful in one way as Mr. Cleveland’s
had been in another, the final result shipwreck, with the
extinguishment of all but the label.
Mr. Bryan was a young man of notable gifts of speech and boundless
self-assertion. When he found himself well in the saddle he began to
rule despotically and to ride furiously. A party leader more
short-sighted could hardly be imagined. None of his judgments came
true. As a consequence the Republicans for a long time had everything
their own way, and, save for the Taft-Roosevelt quarrel, might have
held their power indefinitely. All history tells us that the personal
equation must be reckoned with in public life. Assuredly it cuts no
mean figure in human affairs. And, when politicians fall out—well—the
other side comes in.