Samuel J. Randall was one of the prominent Democrats of his day; but strange to say he favored a protective tariff. He also served about fifteen terms, two of them in the Speaker's chair. He had an anxious solicitude for the success of his party, and made many political speeches. He was a young member when I first knew him, away back in the sixties, but even then he occupied an influential position.
I remember meeting him in Mr. Blaine's office one day, when the latter was Secretary of State, and Mr. Blaine not being in, we sat on the settee and had a talk. He was in poor health, but curious respecting the relations between President Harrison and his party. I told him they were not getting along very well; that he satisfied his party about as well as Mr. Cleveland satisfied his when he was in the White House.
"I think," he observed, "he is better than our President. We never could do much with Cleveland." Then he added this characteristic remark: "If you want an army to fight, you must feed it. It is the same with a political party: if a party is to take care of itself, its workers must be recognized in the distribution of its patronage."
I never saw Samuel J. Randall afterwards.
Judge Godlove S. Orth was one of my most intimate friends in the House of Representatives. He was a splendid man, and was regarded as an honorable and able member. He and I saw much of each other every day, as we roomed in the same neighborhood and generally visited the departments together. We were seen with each other so often on the streets, in fact, that when we were separated, friends would ask either one or the other of us: "What has become of your partner?" At one time I canvassed his district for him and he was re-elected.
He had a peculiar name, "Godlove." I never heard of a man named Godlove, either before or since. The story was told of a lady sitting in the gallery, listening to the proceedings of the House. She could not hear very well. When the roll was being called, and she heard the name "Godlove" called by the clerk, she did not understand it; she wend down stairs and told her friends that the House of Representatives was a most pious body; that every time they called the roll, and the clerk got about half way through, he would stop and exclaim: "God love us all!"
Judge Orth has been dead for many years, but I have always remembered with great pleasure our friendship when we served as colleagues in the House, nearly half a century ago.
Oakes Ames of Boston was a prominent member of the House. He had charge of the Union Pacific Railroad construction, and it was charged—and proven, I believe, afterwards—that he secured the concessions for the railroad by undue influence,—the use of money, gifts of stock, etc.,—and the whole thing finally culminated in what is known as the Crédit Mobilier scandal, the exposure of which came after I retired from the House.
Ames was a member of the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, Forty-first, and Forty-second Congresses, and I knew him very well during my six years' service. I was made chairman of the Committee on Territories in the Forty-first Congress, by Mr. Blaine, who was then Speaker. Ames annoyed me very much by coming to me almost every day in the interest of legislation in the Territories affecting the Union Pacific, and I asked him one day, being a little out of temper, whether he was so absorbed in the Pacific Railroad that he had not time to devote to anything else. He made some light rejoinder; sometime later the exposure came, and I found that he was engaged in most unfortunate and unlawful practices in securing legislation in the interest of his road.
I never believed that Oakes Ames was naturally a dishonest man, but the proof was against him, and the scandal resulted in his death, as it also did in the death of James Brooks, of New York, and the ruination of other public men.