break out between the Cheyennes and the Arapahoes in Indian territory, Gen. Sheridan, at the request of the president, visited that country in order to study the cause of the troubles. He reported that the threatened outbreak was the result of the occupation of Indian lands by cattle-owners who leased vast areas from the Indians at a merely nominal rental. The legal officers of the government decided that these leases were contrary to law and invalid. The president thereupon issued a proclamation warning all cattle companies and ranchmen to remove their herds from Indian territory within forty days, and enforced the order, notwithstanding their strenuous objection.
In his message at the opening of the first session of the 49th congress on 8 Dec., 1885, President Cleveland recommended increased appropriations for the consular and diplomatic service, the abolition of duties on works of art, the reduction of the tariff on necessaries of life, the suspension of compulsory silver coinage, the improvement of the navy, the appointment of six general Indian commissioners, reform in the laws under which titles to the public lands are required from the government, more stringent laws for the suppression of polygamy in Utah, an act to prohibit the immigration of Mormons, the extension of the principle of civil-service reform, and an increase in the salaries of the commissioners, and the passage of a law to determine the order of presidential succession in the event of a vacancy. The senate,
sitting in secret session for the consideration of the president's appointments, called for the papers on file in the departments relating to the causes for which certain officers had been removed. Upon the refusal of the president to submit the documents to their inspection, a dispute ensued, and threats were uttered by republican senators that no appointments should be confirmed unless their right to inspect papers on the official files was conceded. On 1 March, 1886, he sent a long message to the senate, in which he took the ground that under the constitution the right of removal or suspension from office lay entirely within the power and discretion of the president; that sections of the tenure-of-office act requiring him to report to the senate reasons for suspending officers had been repealed; and that the papers that the senate demanded to see were not official, but were of a personal and private nature. Eventually most of the appointments of the president were ratified. During the first fiscal year of his administration the proportion of postmasters throughout the country removed or suspended was but little larger than had often followed a change of administration in the same political party.
In his second annual message he called the attention of congress to the large excess of the revenues of the country beyond the needs of the government, and urged such a reduction as would release to the people the increasing and unnecessary surplus of national income, by such an amendment of the revenue laws as would cheapen the price of the necessaries of life and give freer entrance, to such imported materials as could be manufactured by American labor into marketable commodities. He recommended the erection of coast defences on land, and the construction of modern ships of war for the navy; argued for the civilization of the Indians by the dissolution of tribal relations, the settlement of their reservations in severalty, and the correction of abuses in the disposition of the public lands. He urged the adoption of liberal general pension laws to meet all possible cases, and protested against special legislation for a favored few, as an injustice to the many who were equally deserving.
He approved a bill to regulate the questions arising between the railroads and the people, and appointed an interstate commerce commission under its provisions. A number of bills providing for the erection of public buildings in various parts of the country were vetoed, on the ground that they were not required by the public business; and while he approved 186 private pension bills, he vetoed 42 for various reasons; some being covered by general laws, others were to his mind unworthy and fraudulent, and others were not so favorable to the claimant as the general laws already passed. A dependent pension bill, permitting a pension of $12 per month to all soldiers and sailors who served in the war for the Union, upon the ground of service and present disability alone, whether incurred in the service or since, was vetoed, on the ground that a sufficient time had not elapsed since the war to justify a general service pension; that its terms were too uncertain and yielding to insure its just and impartial execution; that the honest soldiers of the country would prefer not to be regarded as objects of charity, as was proposed; and that its enactment would put a wholly uncalled-for and enormous annual burden upon the country for very many years to come. The veto was sustained by congress. Vetoing an appropriation for the distribution of seeds to drought-stricken counties of Texas, he said:
“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the constitution; and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.”
As he had done while governor, so now as president, Mr. Cleveland exercised the veto power with great freedom. This was particularly true during the session of congress which ended 5 Aug., 1886, when of 987 bills which passed both houses he vetoed 115.
In October, 1886, accompanied by Mrs. Cleveland and several personal friends, the president made a tour of the west and south in response to invitations from those sections, which involved about 5,000 miles of railroad travel and occupied three weeks. He was enthusiastically received by the people, and made speeches at Indianapolis, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Atlanta, and other cities. In December, 1887, departing from custom, he devoted his annual message to the presentation of a single subject, namely, the reduction of the tariff. He advocated a radical modification of the existing policy by the adoption of a law framed with a view to the ultimate establishment of the principles of free trade. The republicans immediately took up the issue thus presented, and the question at once became a predominant issue of the canvass. Cleveland
