Mr. Cleveland, being elected Governor of New York in 1882 seemed always in favour of the preservation of the scenery at Niagara Falls. Governor Robinson, in 1879, likewise an advocate of the idea, even caused some preliminary steps to be taken but the following gentlemen especially deserve to be entered in the _Golden Book of Niagara_: Thomas K. Beecher, James J. Belden, R. Lenox Belknap, Prof. E. Chadwick, Erastus Corning, Geo. W. Curtis, Hon. James Daly, Benjamin Doolittle, Edgar van Etter, R. E. Fenton, H. H. Frost, General James W. Husted, Thomas L. James, Thomas Kingsford, Benson J. Lossing, Seth Low, Luther R. Marsh, Randolph B. Martine, Rufus H. Peckham, Howard Potter, D. W. Powers, Pascal P. Pratt, Ripley Ropes, Horatio Seymour, Geo. B. Sloan, Samuel J. Tilden, Senator Titus, Theodore Vorhees, Francis H. Weeks, Wm. A. Wheeler. They all made strenuous efforts to advance the bill introduced into the Legislature by Jacob F. Miller of New York City. One of its foremost promoters also was Mr. Thomas V. Welch, Superintendent of the New York State Reservation at Niagara, whose valuable pamphlet _How Niagara was Made Free_ affords much of our material for this chapter. A bill entitled "Niagara Reservation Act" passed the New York Assembly and the Senate, and was signed by Grover Cleveland on April 30, 1883. Commissioners were appointed consisting of William Dorsheimer, Sherman S. Rogers, Andrew H. Green, J. Hampden Robb, and Martin B. Anderson. But the final bill had to undergo many vicissitudes ere it was lastly amended and passed. The appraisals alone amounted to $1,433,429.50, and the then existing financial depression had to be dispelled before anything definite could be done. Between 1883 and 1885 there arose a most unjustifiable raid against the measure. I have already alluded to it above. John J. Platt of the _Poughkeepsie Eagle_ wrote for instance: "We regard this Niagara scheme as one of the most unnecessary and unjustifiable raids upon the State Treasury ever attempted." Mr. Platt became later on a warm advocate of the plan, but the wrong was done. Some denounced the bill as a "job" and a "steal" and berated Niagara Falls and its citizens, particularly the hackmen, hotel-men, and bazaar-keepers as sharks and swindlers, who had robbed the people individually and were now seeking to rob them collectively. They said they would oppose the bill by every means, hoped it would be defeated--bursts of temper mildly suggestive of strangers who had visited Niagara and had suffered at the hands of her showmen in the golden days of Niagara's army of fakirs and extortionists. [Illustration: Bath Island, American Rapids, in 1879. From New York Commissioners' Report.]