Speeches of Benjamin Harrison, Twenty-third President of the United States

by Benjamin Harrison

Stockton House, Cape May, August 12.

Gov. D. B. Hill, Albany:

I am very much obliged for your very cordial invitation, but it will be only possible for me to make a brief stay at Albany. How long depends upon the railroad schedule, not yet communicated to me. As soon as details are arranged will advise you. For such time as I can spare I will place myself in the hands of the city and State authorities.

Benjamin Harrison.

The following prominent citizens of Albany met the President at Selkirk and escorted him to the city: James Ten Eyck, Chairman; Col. A. E. Mather, John G. Myers, James M. Warner, Henry C. Nevitt, and William Barnes. Among others who greeted the President on his arrival were Capt. John Palmer, Commander-in-Chief of the G. A. R., Hon. Simon W. Rosendale, Deputy Controller Westbrook, H. N. Fuller, C. B. Templeton, William H. Cull, and Oscar Smith.

The reception was held in City Hall Square, where many thousand Albanians assembled. On the platform Governor Hill, Mayor Manning, with the Common Council, Secretary of State Rice, State Treasurer Danforth, and other State and municipal officers were gathered. The President received an ovation as he approached the stand. Mayor Manning welcomed him in the name of the city and presented Governor Hill, who extended to the Chief Magistrate a broader welcome in the name of the people of the Empire State.

Responding to these hospitable addresses, the President said:

Governor Hill, Mr. Mayor, and Fellow-citizens—The conditions of the evening, these threatening and even dripping clouds, are not favorable to any extended speech. I receive with great gratification the very cordial expressions which have fallen from the lips of his excellency, the Governor of this great State, and of his honor, the Mayor of this great municipality. It is very gratifying to me to be thus assured that as American citizens, as public officers administering each different functions in connection with the government of the Nation, of the State, and of the municipality, we, in common with this great body of citizens, whose servants we all are, have that common love for our institutions, and that common respect for those who, by the appointed constitutional methods, have been chosen to administer them, as on such occasions as this entirely obliterates all differences and brings us together in the great and enduring brotherhood of American citizens. [Prolonged cheering.]

This great capital of a great State I have had the pleasure of visiting once or twice before. I have many times visited your commercial capital, and have traversed in many directions the great and prosperous Empire State. You have concentrated here great wealth and great productive capacity for increased wealth, great financial institutions that reach out in their influences and effects over the whole land. You have great prosperity and great responsibility. The general Government is charged with certain great functions in which the people have a general interest. Among these is the duty of providing for our people the money with which its business transactions are conducted. There has sometimes been in some regions of the great West a thought that New York, being largely a creditor State, was disposed to be a little hard with the debtor communities of the great West; but, my fellow-citizens, narrow views ought not to prevail with them or with you and will not in the light of friendly discussion. The law of commerce may be selfishness, but the law of statesmanship should be broader and more liberal. I do not intend to enter upon any subject that can excite division; but I do believe that the general Government is solemnly charged with the duty of seeing that the money issued by it is always and everywhere maintained at par. I believe that I speak that which is the common thought of us all when I say that every dollar, whether paper or coin, issued or stamped by the general Government should always and everywhere be as good as any other dollar. I am sure that we would all shun that condition of things into which many peoples of the past have drifted, and of which we have had in one of the great South American countries a recent example—the distressed and hopeless condition into which all business enterprise falls, when a nation issues an irredeemable or depreciated money. The necessities of a great war can excuse that.

I am one of those that believe that these men from your shops, these farmers remote from money centres, have the largest interest of all people in the world in having a dollar that is worth one hundred cents every day in the year, and only such. If by any chance we should fall into a condition where one dollar is not so good as another I venture the assertion that that poorer dollar will do its first errand in paying some poor laborer for his work. Therefore, in the conduct of our public affairs I feel pledged, for one, that all the influences of the Government should be on the side of giving the people only good money and just as much of that kind as we can get. [Cheers.]