A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [53]
Cleveland was inaugurated on New Year’s Day 1883, and immediately set the tone of his frugal new administration by refusing to hold a formal inaugural ceremony. The next day, he got down to business and sent the sixteen Republicans and ten Democrats who sat on the Common Council a stern message that hit them right in the collective solar plexus. The clerk started to read Cleveland’s address at 2:00 p.m.
First, the new mayor took aim at the “shameful neglect of duty” in the office of the street commissioner. How was it possible, Cleveland thundered, that the network of streets and sidewalks constructed by the city was in such deplorable condition and yet the city’s ten street inspectors could offer no record whatsoever of actually conducting a single inspection? And why did the city charge 26¢ per foot for the construction of plank sidewalks when private citizens were able to hire construction crews for 15¢? Henceforth, Cleveland demanded, as a blanket rule, that all city contracts be awarded to the lowest bidder.
One Republican alderman was so affronted he rose and moved that any further reading of the mayor’s address be dispensed with at once; he had heard enough. Perhaps curious about what was to follow, the council voted him down, and the rest of the mayor’s communiqué was read into the record. The aldermen listened as Cleveland went on to declare that he was “utterly unable to discover any valid reason” why municipal offices were closed at 4:00 p.m. when the city work force was paid to work until five. That policy was ending as of now.
The aldermen just sat there stupefied; they had never heard anything like this. Then they swiftly got back to the practice of business-as-usual machine politics.
A piece of legislation was passed creating the position of city mortician; the bill was sent to the mayor’s desk for his routine signature. Mayor Cleveland quickly surmised that the council was once again crafting a do-nothing patronage job for a political hack, to be named later. As Cleveland saw it, it was just another measure to bloat municipal government. It became his first veto.
More drama followed. A routine city contract came before the council: a politically connected businessman, George Talbott, was awarded a five-year contract to clean all paved city streets and alleys for $422,500. The curious thing was that Talbott was the highest bidder. A rival sanitation company with a perfectly acceptable history of honest work had put in a bid for $313,000 for the same contract. Another curious thing: Talbott’s original bid had been $372,000; he had raised it by $50,000. Everyone knew what was going on. It was so transparent it was almost laughable. Talbott was lining the pockets of the aldermen to win the contract. Even so, it took some horse trading to corral the necessary votes, but when it came before the council, it was awarded to Talbott, 15 to 11.
“This is time for plain speech,” Mayor Cleveland told the aldermen. “I regard it as the culmination of a most bare-faced, impudent, and shameless scheme to betray the interests of the people.” Cleveland’s language in vetoing the deal whipped the citizenry into a populist frenzy. Who could have imagined that the veto of a street-cleaning contract could galvanize the public?
John Weber, who lost the race against Cleveland for sheriff in 1870, would later recall it as “nothing short of a popular revolt. I cannot remember a time when interest in any municipal matter reached such a height,” he said. “Groups of men could be seen on the street, discussing it to the accompaniment of waving arms.” Weber watched in genuine amazement as the coverage of the scandal spread across the state, and as it did, he wondered if it would make Cleveland governor.
Cleveland had nothing against George Talbott. Actually, Talbott was a former law client and a drinking buddy. At the height of the hullabaloo over the veto, Cleveland took Talbott aside. “This is neither a personal nor a legal matter,” he said. “While I was your attorney, I was loyal to your interests. Now the people