Indeed, it is said on good authority, that Governor Cornell, after listening to a description of the shameful condition at the Falls and the surroundings at the time when he sat in the gubernatorial chair remarked: "Well, the water goes over just the same doesn't it?"
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.
Bath Island, American Rapids, in 1879.
From New York Commissioners' Report.
Thus the matter dragged and great fears were entertained that the case would be lost. Meanwhile the above-named prominent citizens had not been idle. They had sent to their friends and constituents a kind of a circular and obtained about four thousand signatures in favour of the measure. Clergymen, educators, editors, and attorneys were well represented; medical men without exception signed the petition, which was finally submitted to Governor Hill. For a time it almost seemed that the Governor shared the views of Governor Cornell. He was "pestered to death" in behalf of the bill until the matter actually created a stir, as though the very welfare of the State depended on it. Great pressure was brought on Mr. Hill to sign the bill; he visited the Falls himself, went over the ground, but he was non-committal and even his intimates had no idea whether he would affix his signature. Yet he seemed apparently more favourably disposed than heretofore.
There was left a feeling of uneasiness and uncertainty [writes Mr. Welch], concerning the fate of the bill. Another week passed. Rumours were rife concerning the intention of the Governor to let the bill die, in lack of his signature, and thus arrived the 30th of April, 1885, the last day for the scheme allowed by law.
The forenoon was spent in a state of feverish anxiety—not lessened by frequent rumours of a veto in the Senate or Assembly; some of them started in a spirit of mischief by the newspaper reporters. When noon came, it seemed as if the bill would surely fail for lack of executive approval. But the darkest hour is just before daybreak. Shortly after noon a newspaper man hurriedly came to the writer[12] in the Assembly chamber and said that the Governor had just signed the Niagara Bill. A hurried passage was made to the office of the Secretary of State to see if the bill had been received from the Governor. It had not been received. At that moment the door was opened by the Governor's messenger who placed the bill in the hands of the writer saying "Here is your little joker." A glance at the bill showed it to be the "Niagara Reservation Bill," and on the last page was the much coveted signature of David B. Hill, rivalling that of Mr. Grover Cleveland in diminutive handwriting.
It is reported that the "King of the Lobby," a man notorious for years in Albany, expressed his satisfaction at the approval of the bill, saying "The 'boys' wanted to 'strike' that bill, but I told them that they must not do it; that it was a bill which ought to pass without the expenditure of a dollar—and it did."
The Report of the Commissioners of the State Reservation at Niagara lies before me. It is dated February 17, 1885.[13] The commissioners were appointed in 1883 to consider and report what, if any, measures it might be expedient for the State to adopt carrying out the project to place Niagara under the control of Canada and New York according to the suggestions contained in the annual message of Governor Cleveland with respect to Niagara Falls. The report states that the attractions of the scenery and climate in the neighbourhood of the Falls are such that with their ready accessibility by several favourite routes of travel it might reasonably be expected that Niagara would be a popular summer resort; that there was nevertheless, no desirable summer population, attributed chiefly to the constant annoyances to which the traveller is subjected: pestering demands and solicitations, and petty exactions and impositions by which he is everywhere met. While it is true that such annoyances are felt wherever travellers are drawn in large numbers, at Niagara the inconvenience becomes greater because the distinctive interest of Niagara as compared with other attractive scenery is remarkably circumscribed and concentrated. That the value of Niagara lies in its appeal to the higher emotion and imaginative faculties and should not be disturbed and irritated; that tolls and fees had to be removed; traffic was to be excluded from the limits from whence the chief splendour of the scenery was visible. That the only prospect of relief was to be found in State control; that the forest was rapidly destroyed which once formed the perfect setting of one of Nature's most gorgeous panoramas, and that the erection of mills and factories upon the margin of the river had a most injurious effect upon the character of the scene.