The administration of the Navy will also command attention not only in the building of vessels, in the honesty and economy of which repairs have been made, and in the rectification of old and apparently settled abuses, but even in the detail affairs of the Department which have been conducted with such economy that the expenditures have, for the first time in many years, been kept within the estimates and the appropriations. The public land policy of the administration is fully set forth in the chapter devoted to this subject, and the facts therein stated are so startling as to carry condemnation of the methods which conferred nearly two hundred millions of acres of the lands of the people upon railroad corporations during the period of fourteen years while the Republican party held unrestrained power. The Indian Bureau is one of the branches of the administration to which the President has always devoted much thought and attention. His earliest declarations on this question showed a deep and intelligent interest in the wards of the nation, and the men selected for the purpose of carrying out his policy have done so with such success that while the expense of conducting the bureau has declined, the number of children in the schools has more than doubled. In the Department of Justice there has been an increase of nearly fifty per cent. in the business over the last year of President Arthur's administration, with an increase in cost of less than three per cent. The Department of Agriculture has never been conducted with such intelligence and efficiency as it is now. New experiments have been made which promise great results for the agriculture of the country, and the bureaus have been strengthened at every point until their work is perhaps better and more efficient than that done in any similar department in any other country. The comprehensive chapter on "Democracy and the Soldier," shows the relations not only of the President to the veterans of our civil war, but the practical results secured in the exccutive conduct of the Department. A larger number of pensions have been granted during three years of Cleveland's term than during any similar period. The annual value of pensions has increased, the number of pensioners has been greatly enlarged, and the business has been conducted with a promptness never before known and with an utter absence of partisan manipulation. The President's pension vetoes, both of general and of private bills, are fully set forth, and make a complete answer to the charges which have been so recklessly made of antagonism to the interests of the soldier. These show that he has, in three years, signed almost as many private bills as Grant, Hayes, Garfield and Arthur did during sixteen years. The Postoffice Department has extended its business almost indefinitely, with a cost surprisingly small compared with the old expenditures and the old results. The railway mail service has been enlarged and extended, as have the free delivery service and every other branch of postal work. The receipts have increased twentyfive per cent., with the same rates of postage, over the last year of Republican ascendency, while the expenses have only been increased eleven per cent. Due and careful study of the administrative features of the work accomplished by Mr. Cleveland and his cabinet is especially commended to all speakers and writers. The other features of the book are more obvious. The tariff question is fully treated not only in the speeches of the members of the Ways and Means Committee, and of a large number of the Representatives on the floor of the House, but by interviews, letters and other methods of communication employed by men of experience at the head of manufacturing establishments, as well as by practical artisans. The book is commended to campaign speakers and to the editors of newspapers friendly to the continuance of Democratic power, in the hope that they may find its pages an arsenal from which they may draw facts and arguments in favor of the assertion and maintenance of Democratic principles and policies. Statistical tables covering purely political questions are also appended, for the first time, to a book of this kind. An attempt has been made in the indexing to give the ready reference to the topics treated in the book. It does not, however, pretend to the fulness and completeness which would be expected in a work of a less ephemeral character. |
