The President—The White House,
Washington, D. C.
When you sign the Peary bill you are honoring a man with sin-soiled hands who has taken money from our innocent school children. A part of this money I believe was used to make Arctic concubines comfortable. I am ready to produce others of the same opinion. Thus for twenty years while in the pay of the navy, supplied with luxuries from the public purse, Peary has enjoyed, apparently with National consent, the privilege denied the Mormons.
There are at least two children now in the cheerless north crying for bread and milk and a father. These are growing witnesses of Peary's leprous character. Will you endorse it?
By endorsing Peary you are upholding the cowardly verdict of Chester, Tittman and Gannett, who bartered their souls to Peary's interests by suppressing the worthlessness of the material upon which they passed. These men on the Government pay-roll have stooped to a dishonor that should make all fair-minded people blush with shame. This underhanded performance calls for an investigation. Will you close these dark chamber doings to the light of justice?
In this bill you are honoring one, who in seeking funds for legitimate exploration, has passed the hat along the line of easy money for twenty years. Much of this money was in my judgment used to promote a lucrative fur and ivory trade, while the real effort of getting to the pole was delayed seemingly for commercial gain. Thus engaged in a propaganda of hypocrisy he stooped to immerality and dishonor and ultimately when his game of fleecing the public was threatened, he tried to kill a brother explorer. The stain of at least two other lives is on this man. This bill covers a page in history against which the spirits of murdered men cry for redress.
Peary is covered with the scabs of unmentionable indecency, and for him your hand is about to put the seal of clean approval upon the dirtiest campaign of bribery, conspiracy and black-dishonor that the world has ever known.
If you can close your eyes to this, sign the Peary bill.
(Signed) Frederick A. Cook
The telegram was received but not acknowledged—the Peary bill was signed. But the false assumption of Peary's "Discovery of the Pole" was eliminated from the bill. There is therefore no National endorsement of Peary; though he was given an evasive Old Age Pension which the newspapers quoted incorrectly as an official recognition of Peary's claim to polar priority.
I now appeal to President Wilson and the present administration to make some official endeavor to clear our National emblem of the stain of the envious Polar contention. To that end I have written the following letter: