In the same month in which President Cleveland issued his memorable special message to the Senate on the Tenure of Office Act, he began another struggle against congressional practice in which he was not so fortunate.On March 10, 1886, he sent to Congress the first of his pension vetoes.Although liberal provision for granting pensions had been made by general laws, numerous special applications were made directly to Congress, and congressmen were solicited to secure favorable consideration for them.That it was the duty of a representative to support an application from a resident of his district, was a doctrine enforced by claim agents with a pertinacity from which there was no escape.To attempt to assume a judicial attitude in the matter was politically dangerous, and to yield assent was a matter of practical convenience.Senator Cullom relates that when he first became a member of the committee on pensions he was "a little uneasy" lest he "might be too liberal." But he was guided by the advice of an old, experienced Congressman, Senator Sawyer of Wisconsin, who told him: "You need not worry, you cannot very well make a mistake allowing liberal pensions to the soldier boys.The money will get back into the Treasury very soon."The feeling that anything that the old soldiers wanted should be granted was even stronger in the House, where about the only opportunity of distinction allowed by the procedure was to champion these local demands upon the public treasury.It was indeed this privilege of passing pension bills which partially reconciled members of the House to the actual control of legislative opportunity by the Speaker and the chairmen of a few dominating committees.It was a congressional perquisite to be allowed to move the passage of so many bills; enactment followed as a matter, of course.President Cleveland made a pointed reference to this process in a veto message of June 21, 1886.He observed that the pension bills had only "an apparent Congressional sanction" for the fact was that "a large proportion of these bills have never been submitted to a majority of either branch of Congress, but are the results of nominal sessions held for the express purpose of their consideration and attended by a small minority of the members of the respective houses of the legislative branch of government."Obviously, the whole system of pension legislation was faulty.
Mere individual effort on the part of the President to screen the output of the system was scarcely practicable, even if it were congruous with the nature of the President's own duties; but nevertheless Cleveland attempted it, and kept at it with stout perseverance.One of his veto messages remarks that in a single day nearly 240 special pension bills were presented to him.He referred them to the Pension Bureau for examination and the labor involved was so great that they could not be returned to him until within a few hours of the limit fixed by the Constitution for the President's assent.
There could be no more signal proof of President Cleveland's constancy of soul than the fact that he was working hard at his veto forge, with the sparks falling thickly around, right in his honeymoon.He married Miss Frances Folsom of Buffalo on June 2, 1886.The ceremony took place in the White House, and immediately thereafter, the President and his charming bride went to Deer Park, Maryland, a mountain resort.The respite from official cares was brief; on June 8th, the couple returned to Washington and some of the most pugnacious of the pension vetoes were sent to Congress soon after.The rest of his public life was passed under continual storm, but the peace and happiness of his domestic life provided a secure refuge.
On the other hand, the rebuffs which Democratic Congressmen received in the matter of pension legislation were, it must be admitted, peculiarly exasperating.Reviewing the work of the Forty-ninth Congress, "The Nation" mentioned three enactments which it characterized as great achievements that should be placed to the credit of Congress.Those were the act regulating the presidential succession, approved January 18, 1886; the act regulating the counting of the electoral votes, approved February 3, 1887; and the repeal of the Tenure of Office Act, approved March 3, 1887.But all three measures originated in the Senate, and the main credit for their enactment might be claimed by the Republican party.There was some ground for the statement that they would have been enacted sooner but for the disturbance of legislative routine by political upheavals in the House; and certainly no one could pretend that it was to get these particular measures passed that the Democratic party was raised to power.The main cause of the political revolution of 1884 had been the continuance of war taxes, producing revenues that were not only not needed but were positively embarrassing to the Government.Popular feeling over the matter was so strong that even the Republican party had felt bound to put into its national platform, in 1884, a pledge "to correct the irregularities of the tariff and to reduce the surplus." The people, however, believed that the Republican party had already been given sufficient opportunity, and they now turned to the Democratic party for relief.The rank and file of this party felt acutely, therefore, that they were not accomplishing what the people expected.
Members arrived in Washington full of good intentions.They found themselves subject to a system which allowed them to introduce all the bills they wanted, but not to obtain action upon them.
