People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1895 — WARNING TO FEDERAL OFFICERS [ARTICLE]

WARNING TO FEDERAL OFFICERS

Cleveland’s Precepts in 1886 and Cleveland’s Practices in 1895. Grover Cleveland in 1886 was lauded to the skies by the press of the country for the following patriotic words: “I deem this a proper time to especially warn all subordinates in the several departments and all office-holders under the general government against the use of their official positions in attempts to control political movements in their localities. “The influence of federal office-hold-ers should not be felt in the manipulation of political primary meetings and nominating conventions. The use by these officials of their positions to compass their selection as delegates to political conventions is indecent and unfair, and proper regard for the proprieties and requirements of official placs will also prevent their assuming the active conduct of political campaigns.” In 1895 he overlooked these patriotic utterances and commanded the members of his cabinet and advised with the cuckoo United States senators and members of congress to go into all the length and breadth of the land to shout for “honest money.” Federal officeholders controlled the democratic conventions of Georgia, Kentucky and Ohio, and disrupted the Nebraska convention. Cleveland has attempted to dictate the policy of the democrats on the silver question, and has done so in this and other states. The Amherst (Va.) New Era says of this flrgrcrt ignoring of his early utterances: “Not or.’y did he flood the Ohio convention with his office-holders and rule its proc' - flings, but he did it in Kentucky, and previous to the conyention in that state, he ordered his secretary of the treasuy, J. G. Carlisle, to stump that state and he did it in the interest of gold bugism. In Georgia, Hoke Smith, another member of the cabinet, spoke too in favcr of gold bugism. In all three of these states the national administration had nothing on earth to do with the state conventions —there the people should have been let alone to decide what position they should take on the silver question—instead of that Mr. Cleveland thought proper to dictate to them what they should do. For consistency Mr. Cleveland takes the cake on this point.”