PART I.

POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT,

OFFICE OF POSTMASTER-GENERAL,

WASHINGTON, April 29, 1885. DEAR SIR: The continued illness of Mr. Hay* will delay his coming for some time yet to the Depart ment, and I think it desirable that some action should be taken in the way of removals, and am impatient to assist our people in securing relief, to which they are justly entitled, from partisan postmasters.

I have had a conference with the Virginia delegation, and they will soon bring in their cases, and I shall hope to make the earliest removals in that State. As soon as they shall be ready, and I hope within a week, I desire to appoint from three to ten in a county in Virginia, and amounting to several hundred altogether.

I had intended to write yourself and the Democratic delegation from Ohio to meet me this week and consider the plan upon which we should proceed in making removals in Ohio, but I understand it will be inconvenient for some of them to travel hither now, and it has occurred to me that perhaps the same end might be accomplished by writing.

I shall beg you, therefore, to consider the sug gestions I make as to the methods of procedure, and if you can adopt them and get some cases ready within the next two or three weeks, I think within the month of May I can give substantial relief that will take away the importunity and discontent.

I think that from 15 to 20 per cent of the fourth-class postmasters in Ohio might be removed within the next two months, and a great good accomplished thereby, if our people will adhere to a proposed plan.

That is, in fact, to pick out the most obnoxious and offensive partisans in each county to the number of a sixth to a quarter of all, and choose first-class men to take their places. I will require no more proof of partisanship in these selections than the affirmation of knowledge on the part of a Representative or Senator that the postmaster has been an active editor or proprietor of a Republican newspaper, printing offensive articles, easily shown by the slips, or a stump speaker, or a member of a political committee, or officer of a campaign club, or organizer of political meetings, or that his office has been made the headquarters of political work, or that his clerks have been put into the performance of political duties. Possibly other acts of equal force will be needed in some cases.

If the Representative does not know the fact, it should be established by some affidavit of some person whom he can affirm to be of unquestioned credibility, or by some documentary evidence.

In recommending for appointment, I beg the Representative will state the age, business, and what kind of business experience, and a description of the business character of the applicant, and also his habits and standing in the community, and where there are various candidates, I shall be obliged by any explanations the Representative can give. This necessarily imposes a little trouble, and yet not very great, but it seems to me reasonable to require very extraordinary care and trouble to be taken to represent surely the facts.

The earliest removals and appointments of this kind will challenge the keenest scrutiny. The former must be justifiable, and the latter beyond criticism. Some mistakes have perhaps occurred, and our adversaries are keenly interested to make the most of every fault,because they have perceived a strong current of general disapprobation of the purposes of the Administration.

In rendering this justice to our people, which consists of the removal of enemies and substitution of our friends, I feel that it is very desirable to proceed with extreme care, and that I am correctly representing the President's wishes and purposes in earnestly soliciting that every step may be taken accordingly. I may add that as the common good is infinitely beyond the welfare of any one person, however great his place, so appointments to further a mere personal end should be absolutely forbidden, and recommendations upon that basis may well expect disfavor.

I shall very willingly take up the case of any district or of any county, whenever they are ready; and I shall be glad if the Representative can personally attend and go over them. Papers should be sent in as soon as possible, and will be then carefully briefed in the Department; and when so made ready, appointments can be made with great rapidity.

Should you think it desirable to have a personal conference before this is begun, I shall be very glad to meet the delegation; but as I have felt it desirable to relieve them of unnecessary journeying and expense, I have written a similar letter to each Representative from Ohio, and respectfully solicit responsive action in accordance with the spirit of it. Very truly yours,

WILLIAM F. VILAS, Postmaster-General.

PART II.

President Cleveland's letter on Silver He proposes a Suspension of the purchase and coinage of Silver.

The following letter addressed by Grover Cleveland to Representatives in the Fortyeighth Congress only a few days before he took the oath of office as President, March 4, 1885, will at this time be read with interest. It speaks for itself.

ALBANY, February 24, 1885. To the Hon. A. J. WARNER, and others, members of the XLVIIIth Congress.

GENTLEMEN: The letter which I have had the honor to receive from you invites, and indeed obliges me to give expression to some grave public necessities, although in advance of the moment when they would become the objects of my official care and partial responsibility. Your solicitude that my judgment shall have been carefully and deliberately formed is entirely just, and I accept the suggestion in the same friendly spirit in which it has been made. It is also fully justified by the nature of the financial crisis which, under the operation of the act of Congress of February 28, 1878, is now close at hand. By a compliance with the requirements of that law all the vaults of the Federal Treasury have been and are heaped full of silver coins,

which are now worth less than eighty-five per cent of the gold dollar prescribed as "the unit of value" in section 14 of the act of February 12, 1873, and which, with the silver certificates representing such coin, are receivable for all public dues. Being thus receivable, while also constantly increasing in quantity at the rate of $28,000,000 a year, it has followed, of necessity, that the flow of gold into the Treasury has been steadily diminished. Silver and silver certificates have displaced and are now displacing gold, and the sum of gold in the Federal Treasury now available for the payment of the gold obligations of the United States and for the redemption of the United States notes called "greenbacks," if not already encroached upon, is perilously near such encroachment. These are facts which, as they do not admit of difference of opinion, call for no argument. They have been forewarned to us in the official reports of every Secretary of the Treasury from 1878 till now. They are plainly affirmed in the last December report of the present Secretary of the Treasury to the Speaker of the present House of of Representatives. They appear in the official documents of this Congress and in the records of the New York Clearing House, of which the Treasury is a member, and through which the bulk of the receipts and payments of the Federal Government and of the country pass.

These being the facts of our present condition, our danger and our duty to avert that danger would seem to be plain. I hope that you concur with me and with the great majority of our fellow citizens in deeming it most desirable at the present juncture to maintain and continue in use the mass of our gold coin as well as the mass of silver already coined. This is possible by a present suspension of the purchase and coinage of silver. I am not aware that by any other method it is possible. It is of momentous importance to pre. vent the two metals from parting company; to prevent the increasing displacement of gold by the increasing coinage of silver; to prevent the disuse of gold in the custom houses of the United States in the daily business of the people; to prevent the ultimate expulsion of gold by silver. Such a financial crisis as these events would certainly precipitate, were it now to follow upon so long a period of commercial depression, would involve the people of every city and every State in the Union in a prolonged and disastrous trouble. The revival of business enterprise and prosperity so ardently desired and apparently so near would be hopelessly postponed. Gold would be withdrawn to its hoarding places, and an unprecedented contraction in the actual volume of our currency would speedily take place. Saddest of all, in every workshop, mill, factory, store, and on every railroad and farm, the wages of labor, already depressed, would suffer still further depression by a scaling down of the purchasing power of every so-called dollar paid into the hand of toil. From these impending calamities it is surely a most patriotic and grateful duty of the representatives of the people to deliver them.

I am, gentlemen, with sincere respect your fellow citizen, GROVER CLEVELAND.

PART III.

Senator Edmunds on the Whiskey Tax - Why the Internal Revenue System should be abolished - The Whiskey Tax should be levied by the States, and not by the General Government. The following letter is taken from the Democratic Evening Post of New York:

SENATE CHAMBER, Washington, July 21, 1888. DEAR SIR: I have yours of the 12th inst. I have not endeavored to verify the quotation you make from what is represented to have been my remarks in 1868 on the subject of the whiskey tax, but I will assume the quotations to be correct, and to be fair in the sense of quoting enough to show the whole scope of my position; and I adhere in letter and spirit to the

their

propositions I am represented to have laid down. At the same time and as I think in entire consistence with all I then maintained, and still believe, I am in favor of the total abolition of the whole internal revenue system, with its army of spies, and office holders, and political bummers, and thus relieving the people from a nuisance in the way of administration and from a taxation which we all know (whatever dispute there may be about who bears the principal weight of the customs duties) is a tax upon the people of the United States, and I include whiskey in this abolition for the reason that it cannot remain under taxation without the same army of office holders, and without really aiding, as it now does largely, whiskey interests and whiskey-trusts rather than discouraging them. I desire that whatever revenue is obtained from liquor and the liquor traffic shall be obtained by the States themselves and go directly into treasuries for the building of prisons for violators of the law, and providing for those -as the States only may-whom the evils of the liquor traffic have made homeless and desolate. I believe that the cause of temperance and prohibition will be largely promoted by dissolving all connection of the Government of the United States with that sort of business, and thus stimulating the States themselves to deal with it in their own independent way, as a question of social economy and social morals, and in this opinion I am sustained by a very large and rapidly increasing number of the most sincere, intelligent and active Prohibitionists of the country. And so I think it is only to be regretted that the present state of the expenditures of the Government is such as to probably require a retention of the whole or some part of the internal revenue system as it relates to the liquor traffic. It is perfectly well known here that the great whiskey combination of the country has been operating for a long time to retain the whiskey tax and the Government protection of its manufactures, and I am sure that you will agree with me in believing, as all human experience has proved in such cases, that the turning the whole matter over to the States will not make whiskey any freer than it is now, either in price or quantity.

I do not usually reply to letters on quasi-political subjects, written by strangers, but your letter is so evidently that of an earnest and honest man that it gives me pleasure to answer you with entire candor and earnestness. In haste, very respectfully yours, GEORGE F. EDMUNDS. CASSIUS CARTER, Esq., San Diego, Cal.

PART IV.

General Secretary Litchman's [K. of L.] Letter to Senator Quay - The triumph of Democracy the most serious blow possible to organized Labor.

The following letter, dated August 27, 1888, addressed to Senator Quay, chairman of the Republican National Committee, by General Secretary Litchman of the Knights of Labor, will interest all workingmen:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 30.- Senator Quay, chairman of the Republican National Committee, furnishes the following letter, dated August 27, and addressed to him in his official capacity for publication:

Dear Sir: My connection with the labor movement for the past fourteen years has made it necessary for me to be a close student of causes of labor depression and of the needs of those who toil. While as a body a labor organization may refrain from active participation in politics, so much of what organized labor demands must be obtained through legislation that the individual member of the labor organization must act politically as in his judgment will best aid the aims and objects expressed in the principles of the organization he represents, and whose success he desires.

In the gigantic political struggle now begun side issues count as nothing except to aid or hinder one of the principal combatants in the political arena. However sincere may be the advocates of the measures to