My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year

by George Francis Train

In the year '69 I had made twenty-eight speeches in California, and eighty on the Pacific coast. I also made a trip over the Union Pacific Railway, on the first train over that line, and made addresses at many places throughout the country. The following year, '70, I seriously set myself to the task of appealing to the people directly for support, and began a series of public addresses on the issues of the day. But this year's work was interrupted by my trip around the world in eighty days, which consumed the end of the year, from the 1st of August to Christmas.

In '71 I fought hard from January to December, making the total of my speeches to the people 800, and having spoken directly, up to that time, to something like 2,000,000 persons. Of course, my campaign was made on independent lines entirely. I was not the nominee nor the complaisant tool of any party or faction. I made my race as one who came from the bosom of the people, and who represented the highest interests of the people. It was just here that failure came. I thought I knew something of the people, and felt confident that they would prefer a man of independence, who had accomplished something for them, to a man who was a mere tool of his party, a distributor of patronage to his friends and relatives, or to one who was a mere stalking-horse. But I was mistaken. The people, as Barnum has said, love to be humbugged, and are quite ready to pay tribute to the political boss and spoilsman.

A remarkable feature of my campaign was that, instead of scattering money broadcast, to draw crowds or to win votes, I made a charge for admission to hear my addresses. I spoke to audiences that paid to hear me talk to them in my own behalf and in theirs. In three years of active work—with the interruption of my trip around the world in '70—I took in $90,000 in admission charges. In spite of these charges, I spoke to more people and had greater audiences to listen to me than any other speaker during that heated campaign.

There was another remarkable thing about my campaign. I possessed tremendous power over audiences. So long as I could reach them with my voice, or talk with them or shake hands with them, I could hold them; but the moment they got out of my reach they got away from me, and slipped back again to the sway of the political bosses.

I saw that my chance of getting the nomination was lost long before the assembling of the Liberal Republican Convention of '72 in Cincinnati. I was not astonished by the result of that convention, except that I did not expect the nomination of Greeley, which I considered as a piece of political treachery, a deliberately calculated movement in the interest of Grant. But I still felt, vainly, indeed, some hope that the people would see the futility of supporting Greeley, and of placing me at the head of the ticket.

I can recall now the scenes in the Convention Hall when Carl Schurz nominated Horace Greeley. Outside of some cheering on the part of those who were party to the trickery, the nomination was received with ominous stillness. Suddenly, from out of the gallery, near where I was seated, there came a thin, quavering, piercing voice, like the cry of a seer of the wilderness or a wandering Jeremiah: "Sold, by God, but the goods not delivered!"

The words sounded then like a pronouncement of doom; but it proved not to be so. The "deal" was carried out, and the "goods" were delivered. Grant was elected, and Greeley, betrayed, retired, a heart-broken man.

Before I close this chapter on the Presidency, I wish to record here one distinct service which I believe I rendered this city and the country during my campaign. It was I, and not the New York newspapers, that first exposed the so-called "Tweed Ring." I began the fight against this ring of corrupt politicians, single-handed, and kept it up for more than a year before any New York paper or any other journal took up the issue. The New York papers, in fact, refused to publish my speech exposing this gang of public plunderers, and it was published in the Lyons, N. Y., Republican on April 22, '71. The speech itself was made long before Tweed had been accused of misuse of public funds.

While I was on the platform, a voice asked me "Who is the ring?" I had been attacking the "ring" in every public utterance in New York. I replied: "Hoffman, Tweed, Sweeney, Fisk, and Gould." Later, in the same speech, I said: "Tweed and Sweeney are taxing you from head to foot, while their horses are living in palaces," and then, using, for effect, some of the methods of the French Commune, I cried: "To the lamp-post! All those in favor of hanging Tweed to a lamp-post, say aye!" There was a tremendous outburst of "ayes."

In other speeches I went into details and gave the sums of which the people of New York had been plundered, and the amounts that had been paid in bribes to obtain influence in stilling public suspicion, and to buy immunity from exposure and opportunity for further theft.