CHAPTER VIII

THE RIVER AND HARBOR BILL

I HAVE throughout my whole public political life acted upon my own judgment. I have done what I thought for the public interest without much troubling myself about public opinion. I always took a good deal of pride in a saying of Roger Sherman's. He was asked if he did not think some vote of his would be very much disapproved in Connecticut, to which he replied that he knew but one way to ascertain the public opinion of Connecticut; that was to ascertain what was right. When he had found that out, he was quite sure that it would meet the approval of Connecticut. That in general has been in my judgment absolutely and literally true of Massachusetts. It has required no courage for any representative of hers to do what he thought was right. She is apt to select to speak for her, certainly those she sends to the United States Senate, in whose choice the whole Commonwealth has a part, men who are in general of the same way of thinking, and governed by the same principles as are the majority of her people. When she has chosen them she expects them to act according to their best judgment, and not to be thinking about popularity. She likes independence better than obsequiousness. The one thing the people of Massachusetts will not forgive in a public servant is that he should act against his own honest judgment to please them. I am speaking of her sober, second thought. Her people, like the rest of mankind, are liable to waves of emotion and of prejudice. This is true the world over. It is as true of good men as of bad men, of educated as of ignorant men, whenever they are to act in large masses. Alexander Hamilton said that if every Athenian citizen had been a Socrates, still every Athenian assembly would have been a mob. So I claim no

credit that I have voted and spoken as I thought, always without stopping to consider whether public opinion would support me.

The only serious temptation I have ever had in my public life came to me in the summer of 1882, when the measure known as the River and Harbor Bill was pending. The bill provided for an expenditure of about eighteen million dollars. Of this a little more than four million was for the execution of a scheme for the improvement of the Mississippi River and its tributaries, which had been recommended by President Arthur in a special message. All the other appropriations put together were a little less than fourteen million dollars. The bill passed both Houses. President Arthur vetoed it, alleging as a reason that the measure was extravagant; that the public works provided for in it were of local interest, not for the advantage of international or interstate commerce; and that it had got through by a system of log-rolling, the friends of bad schemes in one State joining with the friends of bad schemes in another, making common cause to support the bill. He added that in that way, the more objectionable the measure, the more support it would get. The press of the country, almost without exception, supported the President. The reasons which applied to each improvement were not well understood by the public. So the conductors of the newspapers naturally supposed the President to be in the right in his facts. The Democratic newspapers were eager to attack Republican measures. Where there were factions in the Republican Party, the Republican papers of one faction were ready to attack the men who belonged to the other. The independent newspapers welcomed any opportunity to support their theory that American public life was rotten and corrupt. So when the question came up whether the bill should pass notwithstanding the objections of the President, there was a storm of indignation throughout the country against the men who supported it.

But the committees who had supported it and who had reported it, and who knew its merits, and the men who had voted for it in either House of Congress, could not well

stultify themselves by changing their votes, although some of them did. I was situated very fortunately in that respect. I had been absent on a visit to Massachusetts when the bill passed. So I was not on record for it. I had given it no great attention. The special duties which had been assigned to me related to other subjects. So when the measure came up in the Senate I had only an opinion founded on my general knowledge of the needs of the country and the public policy, that it was all right. My reelection was coming on. I was to have a serious contest, if I were a candidate, with the supporters of General Butler, then very powerful in the State. He, in fact, was elected Governor in the election then approaching. My first thoughts were that I was fortunate to have escaped this rock. But when the vote came on I said to myself: "This measure is right. Is my father's son to sneak home to Massachusetts, having voted against a bill that is clearly righteous and just, because he is afraid of public sentiment?" Senator McMillan, the Chairman of the Committee who had charge of the bill, just before my name was called, asked me how I meant to vote. I told him I should vote for the bill, because I believed it to be right, but that it would lose me the support of every newspaper in Massachusetts that had been friendly to me before. I voted accordingly. The vote was met by a storm of indignation from one end of Massachusetts to the other, in which every Republican newspaper in the State, so far as I know, united. The Springfield Republican and the Boston Herald, as will well be believed, were in glory. The conduct of no pick-pocket or bank robber could have been held up to public indignation and contempt in severer language than the supporters of that bill. A classmate of mine, an eminent man of letters, a gentleman of great personal worth, addressed a young ladies' school, or some similar body in Western Massachusetts, on the subject of the decay of public virtue as exemplified by me. He declared that I had separated myself from the best elements in the State.

The measure was passed over the President's veto. But it cost the Republican Party its majority in the House of

Representatives. A large number of the members of the House who had voted for it lost their seats. If the question of my reelection had come on within a few weeks thereafter, I doubt whether I should have got forty votes in the whole Legislature. If I had flinched or apologized, I should have been destroyed. But I stood to my guns. I wrote a letter to the people of Massachusetts in which I took up case by case each provision of the bill, and showed how important it was for the interest of commerce between the States, or with foreign countries, and how well it justified the moderate expenditure. I pointed out that the bill had been, in proportion to the resources of the Government, less in amount than those John Quincy Adams and Daniel Webster had formerly advocated; that Mr. Webster, with the single exception of his service for preserving the Union, prided himself on his support of this policy of public improvement more than on anything else in his life, and had made more speeches on that subject than on any other. Mr. Adams claimed to be the author of the policy of internal improvements. So that it was a Massachusetts policy, and a Massachusetts doctrine. I asked the people of Massachusetts to consider whether they could reasonably expect to get their living by manufacture, to which nearly the whole State was devoted, bringing their raw material and their fuel and their iron and coal and cotton and wool from across the continent, and then carrying the manufactured article back again to be sold at the very places where the material came from, in competition with States like Pennsylvania and New York and Ohio and Indiana, unless the cost of transportation was, so far as possible, annihilated. I concluded by saying that I knew they would not come to my way of thinking that afternoon or that week, but that they were sure to come to it in the end. With very few exceptions the letter did not change the course of the newspapers, or of the leading men who had zealously committed themselves to another doctrine. But it convinced the people, and I believe it had a very great effect throughout the country, and was the means of saving the policy of internal improvements from destruction.

Mr. Clapp, of the Boston Journal, with a manliness that did him infinite credit, declared publicly in its columns that he had been all wrong, and that I was right. The Worcester Spy, edited by my dear friend and near kinsman, Evarts Greene, had with the rest of the press attacked my vote. Mr. Greene himself was absent at the time, so the paper was then in charge of an associate. When Mr. Greene returned I asked him to spend an afternoon at my house. That was before my letter came out. I had sent to Washington for all the engineers' reports and other documents showing the necessity of every item of the bill. Mr. Greene made a careful study of the bill and agreed with me.

The Boston Herald also obtained all the material from Washington and sent it to a very able gentleman who, though not taking any part in the ordinary conduct of the Herald, was called upon for services requiring special ability and investigation. They asked him to answer my letter. He spent five days in studying the matter, and then wrote to the managing editor of the paper that Mr. Hoar was entirely right, and that he should not write the article desired. The Herald, however, did not abandon its position. It kept up the war. But I ought to say it so far modified its action that it supported me for reelection the next winter.

The Springfield Republican saw and seized its opportunity. It attacked the River and Harbor Bill savagely. It said: "Mr. Hoar is a candidate for reelection and has dealt himself a very severe blow. The Commonwealth was prepared to honor Messrs. Crapo and Hoar anew. To-day it pauses, frowns and reflects." So it kept up the attack. It had previously advocated the selection of Mr. Crapo as candidate for Governor. It bitterly denounced me. Mr. Crapo had himself voted for the River and Harbor Bill. It could not consistently maintain its bitter opposition to me, because of my vote, while supporting Mr. Crapo. So it declared it could no longer support him.

When the State Convention came the feeling was still strong, though somewhat abated. I had been asked by the Committee, a good while before, to preside at the Conven