Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 November 1887 — THE GREAT “REFORMER'S” SWING. [ARTICLE]

THE GREAT “REFORMER'S” SWING.

Mr. Seckendorf, the New York Tribune correspondent who went through the country with the President’s party, has this to say of the claim that Mr. Cleveland paid all his bills: “I notice that mugwump laureates continue to hug themselves at the thought that the President paid all the expenses of his recent trip. ‘The first President that paid his way,’ is their chant, and they ask a gullible public to believe it. Poor things, if they but knew the truth; as a matter of fact, beyond paying for what he ate and drank while actually traveling. Mr. Cleveland did not lay, out money for anything. Tne interstate-commerce law to the contrary notwithstanding, he traveled, together with his party, on free passes Let Colonel Lamont deny this, if lie can? Mr. BandwiD, of the Pullman service, was intrusted with a few checks of S3OO each, signed by Mr. Cleveland, out of the proceeds of which he purchased the supplies of the party. The bill for the Pullman coaches has not been presented yet, and probably never will be: In the cities he visited the President was treated as a guest of the municipality, or as the gdfest of a few public spirited citizens who went down in their pockets and footed the hotel bills. ___ “Altogether, I doubt if the President spent more than a thousand dollars while ‘getting acquainted’ with the country. The whole matter would not be worth a passing mention even, were itjnot for the ‘reform’ sentiment which mugwumpocratio admirers of Mr. Cleveland are trying to smuggle into the question. Iti is after all a question of tweedle dum and tweedle dte only. Why should the President his hotel bills to be paid by others and ob ject, in public at least, to accept the Hospitality of railroads, and then to be told with much unction at the ‘White House that the President tried to travel ‘as nearly like a private citizen as the circumstances would permit?’ Private zitizen —fiddlesticks! The whole thing is a faros-”