A Secret Life_ The Lies and Scandals of President Grover Cleveland - Charles Lachman [66]
“Good afternoon, Governor,” Hill began and, with a wink and a nod, turned his attention to Lamont. “Good afternoon, Dan. I see your old friend from Syracuse was here today.”
Playing out his part, Lamont said, “Yes, he was here.”
“Was he sober?”
Cleveland’s head shot up in surprise. Now they had his full attention.
“Seemed to be,” Lamont said.
“How did he get here?” When Lamont replied by train, Hill said that would have required money. “Who’d he borrow it from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he go away sober?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t see him after he left here.”
“How did he get back? Didn’t borrow money from you, did he?”
“Oh, no,” answered Lamont. “I kept out of his way.”
With a snort, Cleveland resumed his work, but he had taken everything in. It had all gone according to the script, and the disreputable gentleman from Syracuse never got the appointment.
In Buffalo, Cleveland had been known as the Veto Mayor; now he was becoming known as the Veto Governor. The scale of Albany’s corruption proved as institutionally deep-rooted as Buffalo’s, and then some. A young reform-minded Republican assemblyman, Theodore Roosevelt, estimated that a third of his fellow legislators were agreeable to putting their votes up for sale—sometimes on the floor of the state assembly chamber itself.
Cleveland set a new standard: Every bill that was up for passage had to meet the standard of good government; otherwise it was dead. The veto that aroused the biggest hullabaloo concerned the railroad fare. Tammany Boss John Kelly—the so-called friend of the workingman—led the fight to reduce the ten-cent fare on the 6th Avenue and 9th Avenue elevated railroads in Manhattan to a nickel. Naturally, it was a popular piece of legislation, and the senate passed it by the overwhelming vote of 24 to 5. Cleveland, knowing that a tempest would come his way, showed real political courage in vetoing the measure on solid business and constitutional grounds. He was getting ready for bed after he had sent his veto message to the senate when he thought to himself, By tomorrow at this time, I shall be the most unpopular man in the State of New York.
Cleveland woke up at seven the next morning, had his breakfast, and walked to the office with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He dared not look at the stack of New York City newspapers that he knew for certain would have launched full-scale attacks on his young administration. As he went through the morning mail with Dan Lamont, still thinking about those newspapers, in as casual a tone as he could muster, he asked Lamont, “Seen the morning papers, Dan?”
“Yes.”
“What have they got to say about me, anything?”
“Why, yes,” said Lamont, “they are all praising you.”
Cleveland was stunned. “They are? Well, here, let me see them.” Cleveland scooped up the papers and read—in the Tribune, World, Mail, and Express—that they were solidly in his corner. Even the Sun, which had urged passage of the five-cent fare, was extolling Cleveland’s pluck. The governor exhaled a deep sigh of relief.
Tammany Hall, whose support for Cleveland at the Democratic state convention in Syracuse had put him over the top, now demanded a “few crumbs” of political patronage from him. Boss Kelly’s puppet in the state senate, Tom Grady, sent the governor a note asking that, as a special favor, Cleveland name a former Tammany Hall alderman, Bryan Reilly, harbormaster of New York City.
“I hope that you will kindly make the appointment for me as it will place me in a most humiliating