Autobiography of Seventy Years Part 60

Better naturalization laws.

No tramp, Anarchist, criminal or pauper to be let in, so that citizenship shall not be stained or polluted.

Sympathy with Liberty and Republican government at home and abroad.

Americanism everywhere.

The flag never lowered or dishonored.

No surrender in Samoa.

No barbarous Queen beheading men in Hawaii.

No lynching.

No punishment without trial.

Faith kept with the pensioner.

No deserving old soldier in the poorhouse.

The suppression of dram drinking and dram selling.

A school at the public charge open to all the children, and free from partisan or sectarian control.

No distinction of birth or religious creed in the rights of American citizenship.

Devotion paramount and supreme to the country and to the flag.

Clean politics.

Pure administration.

No lobby.

Reform of old abuses.

Leadership along loftier paths.

Minds ever open to the sunlight and the morning, ever open to new truth and new duty as the new years bring their lessons."

I ought to explain one phrase in this platform, which I have since much regretted. That is the phrase, "No barbarous Queen beheading men in Hawaii." It was currently reported in the press that the Queen of Hawaii, Liliuokalani, was a semi- barbarous person, and that when Mr. Blount, Mr. Cleveland's Commissioner, proposed to restore her government and said that amnesty should be extended to all persons who had taken part in the revolution, she had said with great indignation, "What, is no one to be beheaded?" and that upon that answer Mr. Blount and Mr. Cleveland had abandoned any further purpose of using the power of the United States to bring the monarchy back again. That, so far as I knew, had never been contradicted and had obtained general belief.

I ought not to have accepted the story without investigation.

I learned afterward, from undoubted authority, that the Queen is an excellent Christian woman; that she has done her best to reconcile her subjects of her own race to the new order of things; that she thinks it is better for them to be under the power of the United States than under that of any other country, and that they could not have escaped being subjected to some other country if we had not taken them; and that she expended her scanty income in educating and caring for the children of the persons who were about her court who had lost their own resources by the revolution. I have taken occasion, more than once, to express, in the Senate, my respect for her, and my regret for this mistake.

CHAPTER XXV OFFICIAL SALARIES

When I was in the House the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States were raised to ten thousand dollars a year, and a provision for a retiring pension, to be continued for life to such of them as became seventy years old, and had served ten years on the Bench, was enacted.

But it is always very difficult indeed to get salaries raised, especially the salaries of Judges. That it was accomplished them was due largely to the sagacity and skill of Mr. Armstrong of Pennsylvania. He was a very sensible and excellent Representative.

His service, like that of many of the best men from Pennsylvania, was too short for the public good. I had very little to do with it myself, except that I talked the matter over a good deal with Mr. Armstrong, who was a friend of mine, and heartily supported it.

After I entered the Senate, however, I undertook to get through a bill for raising the salaries of the Judges of the United States District Courts. The District Judges were expected to be learned lawyers of high reputation and character, and large experience. Very important matters indeed are within the jurisdiction of the District Courts. They would have to deal with prize cases, if a war were to break out. In that case the reputation of the tribunals of the United States throughout the world would depend largely on them. They have also had to do a large part of the work of the Circuit Courts, especially since the establishment of the Circuit Courts of Appeals, as much of the time of the Circuit Judges is required in attendance there.

I had great difficulty in getting the measure through. But at last I was successful in getting the salaries, which had ranged from $1,500 to $4,000 in different districts of the country, made uniform and raised to $5,000 a year.

Later I made an attempt to have the salaries of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States increased. My desire was to have the salary of the a.s.sociate Judges fixed at $15,000, being an increase of fifty per cent., that of the Chief Justice to be $500 more. I met with great difficulty, but at last, in the winter of 1903, I succeeded in getting through a measure, which I had previously reported, which increased the salary of the a.s.sociate Judges to $12,500, and that of the Chief Justice to $13,000. The same measure increased the salaries of the District Judges from $5,000 to $6,000, and that of the Circuit Judges from $6,000 to $7,000 a year.

The salary of Senators and Representatives is shamefully small. This is a great injustice, not only to members of the two Houses, but it is a great public injury, because the country cannot command the service of able men in the prime of life, unless they have already acquired large fortunes.

It cannot be expected that a lawyer making from $25,000 to $50,000 a year, or a man engaged in business, whose annual income perhaps far exceeds that amount, will leave it for $5,000 a year. In that way he is compelled not only to live frugally himself, but what is more disagreeable still, to subject his household to the live in the humblest style in a costly and fashionable city, into which wealthy persons are coming from all parts of the country.

The members of Congress have a great many demands upon them, which they cannot resist. So a Senator or Representative with $5,000 a year, living in Washington a part of the year and at home the other part, cannot maintain his family as well as an ordinary mechanic or salaried man who gets $2,500 or $3,000 a year, and spends all his time in one place.

The English aristocracy understand this pretty well. They give no salary at all to the members of their House of Commons.

The result is that the poor people, the working people and people in ordinary life, cannot get persons to represent them, from their own cla.s.s. That will soon be true in this country, if we do not make a change. I suppose nearly every member of either House of Congress will tell you in private that he thinks the salary ought to be raised. But the poor men will not vote for it, because they think the example will be unpopular, and the rich men do not care about it.

CHAPTER XXVI PROPRIETY IN DEBATE

The race of demagogues we have always with us. They have existed in every government from Cleon and the Sausage-maker.

They command votes and seem to delight popular and legislative a.s.semblies. But they rarely get very far in public favor.

The men to whom the American people gives its respect, and whom it is willing to trust in the great places of power, are intelligent men of property, dignity and sobriety.

We often witness and perhaps are tempted to envy the applause which many public speakers get by buffoonery, by rough wit, by coa.r.s.e personality, by appeal to the vulgar pa.s.sions. We are apt to think that grave and serious reasonings are lost on the audiences that receive them, half asleep, as if listening to a tedious sermon, and who come to life again when the stump speaker takes the platform. But it will be a great mistake to think that the American people do not estimate such things at their true value. When they come to take serious action, they prefer to get their inspiration from the church or the college and not from the circus. Uncle Sam likes to be amused.

But Uncle Sam is a gentleman. In the spring of 1869, when I first took my seat in Congress, General Butler was in the House. He was perhaps as widely known to the country as any man in it except President Grant. He used to get up some scene of quarrel or buffoonery nearly every morning session.

His name was found every day in the head-lines of the newspapers.

I said to General Banks one day after the adjournment: "Don't you think it is quite likely that he will be the next President of the United States?" "Never," said General Banks, in his somewhat grandiloquent fashion. "Why," said I, "don't you see that the papers all over the country all full of him every morning? People seem to be reading about n.o.body else. Wherever he goes, the crowds throng after him. n.o.body else gets such applause, not even Grant himself."

"Mr. h.o.a.r," replied General Banks, "when I came down to the House this morning, there was a fight between two monkeys on Pennsylvania Avenue. There was an enormous crowd, shouting and laughing and cheering. They would have paid very little attention to you or me. But when they come to elect a President of the United States, they won't take either monkey."

The men who possess the capacity for coa.r.s.e wit and rough repartee, and who indulge it, seldom get very far in public favor. No President of the United States has had it. No Judge of the Supreme Court has had it, no Speaker of the House of Representatives, and, with scarcely an exception, no eminent Senator.

CHAPTER XXVII THE FISH-BALL LETTER

In August, 1890, the Pittsburg _Post,_ a Democratic paper, made a savage attack on me. He attributed to me some very foolish remark and declared that I lived on terrapin and champagne; that I had been an inveterate office-seeker all my life; and that I had never done a stroke of useful work. Commonly it is wise to let such attacks go without notice. To notice them seriously generally does more harm than good to the party attacked. But I was a good deal annoyed by the attack, and thought I would make a good-natured and sportive reply to it, instead of taking it seriously. So I sent the editor the following letter, which was copied quite extensively throughout the country, North and South; and I believe put an end, for the rest of my life, to the particular charges he had made:

UNITED STATES SENATE, WASHINGTON, D. C., Aug. 10, 1890.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PITTSBURG POST;

_My Dear Man:_ Somebody has sent me a copy of your paper containing an article of which you do me the honor to make me the subject. What can have put such an extravagant yarn into the head of so amiable and good-natured a fellow? I never said the thing which you attribute to me in any interview, caucus or anywhere else. I never inherited any wealth or had any. My father was a lawyer in very large practice for his day, but he was a very generous and liberal man and never put much value upon money. My share of his estate was about $10,500. All the income-producing property I have in the world, or ever had, yields a little less than $1,800 a year; $800 of that is from a life estate and the other thousand comes from stock in a corporation which has only paid dividends for the last two or three years, and which I am very much afraid will pay no dividend, or much smaller ones, after two or three years to come. With that exception the house where I live, with its contents, with about four acres of land, const.i.tute my whole worldly possessions, except two or three vacant lots, which would not bring me $5,000 all told. I could not sell them now for enough to pay my debts. I have been in my day an extravagant collector of books, and have a library which you would like to see and which I would like to show you. Now, as to office-holding and working. I think there are few men on this continent who have put so much hard work into life as I have. I went one winter to the Ma.s.sachusetts House of Representatives, when I was twenty-five years old, and one winter to the Ma.s.sachusetts Senate, when I was thirty years old. The pay was two dollars a day at that time. I was nominated on both occasions, much to my surprise, and on both occasion declined a renomination. I afterward twice refused a nomination for Mayor of my city, have twice refused a seat on the Supreme Bench of Ma.s.sachusetts, and refused for years to go to Congress when the opportunity was in my power. I was at last broken down with overwork, and went to Europe for my health. During my absence the arrangements were made for my nomination to Congress, from which, when I got home, I could not well escape. The result is I have been here twenty years as Representative and Senator, the whole time getting a little poorer year by year. If you think I have not made a good one, you have my full authority for saying anywhere that I entirely agree with you. During all this time I have never been able to hire a house in Washington.

My wife and I have experienced the varying fortune of Washington boarding houses, sometimes very comfortable, and a good deal of the time living in a fashion to which no mechanic earning two dollars a day would subject his household. Your "terrapin"

is all in my eye, very little in my mouth. The chief carnal luxury of my life is in breakfasting every Sunday morning with an orthodox friend, a lady who has a rare gift for making fish-b.a.l.l.s and coffee. You unfortunate and benighted Pennsylvanians can never know the exquisite flavor of the codfish, salted, made into b.a.l.l.s and eaten on a Sunday morning by a person whose theology is sound, and who believes in all the five points of Calvinism. I am myself but an unworthy heretic, but I am of Puritan stock, of the seventh generation, and there is vouchsafed to me, also, some share of that ecstasy and a dim glimpse of that beatific vision. Be a.s.sured, my benighted Pennsylvania friend, that in that hour when the week begins, all the terrapin of Philadelphia or Baltimore and all the soft-sh.e.l.led crabs of the Atlantic sh.o.r.e might pull at my trousers legs and thrust themselves on my notice in vain.

I am faithfully, GEO. F. h.o.a.r