Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 January 1908 — CARE FOR EX-PRESIDENTS, IS PLEA OF GROVER CLEVELAND [ARTICLE]

CARE FOR EX-PRESIDENTS, IS PLEA OF GROVER CLEVELAND

Urges Duty to Make Provision for Men Who Have Filled Highest Post in Nation. Referring to the poverty of Jefferson when he left the presidency as a blow to national pride, Grover Cleveland, writing in the Youth’s Companion under “Our People and Their eXPresidents,” argues that definite and generous provision should be made for the maintenance of chief magistrates at the expiration of their terms. He deals with the subject at length and explains that he feels he can do so without his sincerity being questioned, since he Is beyond the need of aid from the public treasury. “The condition is by no means met,” Mr. Cleveland writes, “by the meager and spasmodic relief occasionally furnished under the guise 1 of a military pension or some other pretext, nor would it be best met by making compensation dependent upon the discharge of senatorial or other official duty. Our people ought to make definite and decorous provisions for all cases alike, based on motives of justice and fairness, and adequate to the situation.” Mr. Cleveland describes the limitations that his former high office place ‘on a retired President in his choice of occupations and means of livelihood, and how popular conception of him as a repository of national dignity enforces a scale of living that may not be within his private means. “There is a sort of vague, but none, file less imperative, feeling abroad in the land that one who has occupied the great office of President holds In trust for his fellow citizens- a certain dignity which, in his conduct and manner of life, lie is bound to protect against loss or deterioration. Obedience to this obligation prescribes for him only such work as in popular judgment is not undignified. This suggests without argument a reciprocal connection between the curtailment of opportunities and a reasonable obligation of indemnification.” One division of the Cleveland article is devoted to the “Occupations of an bx-President,” and- in it the former President reveals the multiplicity of things which persons endeavor to bring to the attention of the retired statesman and the class of affairs he is asked to engage in.