gave standing room to both factions, and it really compared very well with the Republican pledge to “correct the irregularities of the tariff and to reduce the surplus—so as to relieve the taxpayers without injuring the laborers or the great productive interests of the country.” If anybody was ahead in the platform contest it was Mr. Carlisle, and this from the fact that Mr. Morrison was selected to present the report to the Convention. At the time of the National Convention it looked as if the tariff would be the chief issue of the campaign, but as it turned out the Republican candidate, Mr. Blaine, was the issue, and he had not the vitality for the strain. His opponent, Grover Cleveland—a man unheard of in public affairs until three years before, but whose short record as mayor of the city of Buffalo and governor of the State of New York had been of such courage and patriotism that it had made him available for the nomination to the presidency, was elected in November by an electoral vote of 219 to 182. The tariff issue was in Mr. Cleveland’s hands. It has been frequently said that when Grover Cleveland became the President of the United States he knew nothing of the tariff. At least one tariff expert of that day has recorded a very different opinion. In an interesting unpublished manuscript of reminiscences by the late Professor Perry of Williams College there is an account of a talk the professor had with Mr. Cleveland in the fall of 1883 in Albany. Professor Perry had gone to Albany at the request of Thomas G. Shearman, of Brooklyn, to speak in behalf of free trade at a public meeting the Democratic leaders had organized, and the afternoon before the lecture he had been taken to the Capitol to meet the governor. “He and I stood in the corridor for half an hour talking on the subject which had brought me to Albany,” Professor Perry writes. “The governor, as was proper, did most of the talking, and his interlocutor was surprised and gratified at the clearness and strength of his views on the whole tariff question and began to think he had this time brought coals to New Castle, since the first official in the state apparently knew as much about tariffs as he did, and could express himself even better. The governor said he was glad I came to Albany, thought he had better not attend the meeting himself, but hoped everybody else would go, and on parting gave me his best wishes for the efforts made and making in behalf of the good cause, with which efforts he seemed to be familiar. He impressed me as few other men ever did on first acquaintance, as a strong man, a frank man, and a man every way to be trusted.”