semper the house is everywhere that they can't sell and people are being foreclosed. what do they blame this crisis on? illegal mexican workers who are coming in and taking the jobs for american citizens to. ..

a convenient scapegoat our irish democrats. they are poor. they are catholic. they are different from mass and may threaten mass. i should know, by the way, that's omar brings a treaty with switzerland to the senate energy senate to pass this treaty because they look at the american people right in switzerland swiss citizens equal rights in america except the first paragraph of the treaties that this will only apply to christian americans because half the cantons and switzerland did not allow to come then, much less do business or own land and air. and sylmar sees nothing wrong with this comment even though by this time they are our a quarter million suntanning estates, not as many as laxatives or irish immigrants, but these american sitters since i'm not on fillmore's radar screen because they are not his americans. and that is why i would argue in

fact what we have here is the first tea party president and in 1856, the first tea party presidential candidate. thankú@@@city.

this is just under an hour. >> hi, i am david cowen, president of the museum of american finance. welcome to our back to our lunch in the series. welcome to central oklahoma. the okies are in the house can muster thank you for coming. these join us again everyone next week on the 26 were going to continue at the lunch and learns series. the director of the rothschild archive will be here. melanie aspe, which will be fascinating. this is a historic banking a

week from this thursday on the 24th, to say upcoming wii will be screening the rediscovering alexander hamilton. this is the pbs documentary recently released and not your questions about the movie can be answered because the producer or michael pack will be in the house. turning our attention to today and matthew algeo and "the president is a sick man." this is matthew's third book, his second harry truman's -- "harry truman's excellent adventure," which traced the cross-country trip in 1953. it got a lot of great press in 2009, the "washington post" called it one of the best books of the year. additionally before that, he wrote a book about the war years and foot on the seacoast, a combination of the pittsburgh steelers world war ii, another interesting boat. he has got a very eclectic

background, not just an author, not just a journalist. let me say some of of the things he has done. he has been a hot tub under a traveling circus. he's been a hollow in costume salesman. he has been a gas station attendant, a convenience store clerk and all this will put them in good stead because in two months, he is moving to mongolia with his wife who is a foreign service officer who is taking a position there. so there should be pretty tame. very importantly, he is a friend of this museum and a member of the. this my pleasure to introduce matthew algeo. [applause] >> oil economy make it sound much more in interesting than it is. it's great to be at the museum of american finance for a couple reasons. one is it is a fantastic museum and i've been coming for a few years now. more importantly when i was researching the book, the museum

was very helpful answering my questions and i would have frantic questions like, how many grains of silver were in a silver dollar in 1870? and this is the only place you could send an e-mail with an urgency and get it answered within an hour. so it was very helpful to me, the museum of american finance and i am a proud member. that is why i got in for free today. before i talk about grover, who was a very interesting person -- i should probably tell you a little bit about it much less interesting person. that would be me. as david said, my wife is a foreign service officer so he moves around a lot. my name is algeo. everyone thinks it's italian. it is actually irish. the always on the wrong end, i know. my grand parents were from the north of ireland and actually i have irish citizenship. i spent a year back in the 90s as a freelance reporter.

i should do this because it largely consisted of drinking a lot of for a year. but there was something interesting that i found about having unusual irish name in ireland. i had to get an identity card. sorry to the irish equivalent of the dnc and they were very organized. they have three lines in a cell according to the first letter of your last name. the first line with last names became a too well. the second line was meant to. and so, with an unusual last name in ireland, there were certain advantages to that. i am the youngest of seven, which is why i'm avoiding eye contact with you right now. i just found it was better to keep my head down. i did grow up in a house of readers. my parents were prolific readers they were sitting around reading the french existentialist or anything. my dad liked michener.

i used to say he would read by the pound. my mom liked true crime and biographies. when i was a kid it was always very embarrassing right in the chain into the city with her because she would be reading some name like the i-95 killer and on the front cover therapy somebody stabbing somebody. unlike and he just put it in a newspaper or something? i was lucky to grow up in a house like that. i ran to a friend from high school a few years ago and he said whenever he went to your house in high school, your parents to be sitting in the living room reading, no tv, no radio, no nothing. i was thought that was so weird. but now that he has kids of his own, i think he appreciates that was actually really good atmosphere to grow up in that fostered my love of looks. i went to college in philadelphia at the university of pennsylvania. i graduated in 1980 with a degree in folklore. and the other for comanagers here today?

[laughter] this was -- and david went through the list of other occupations i have had. i've obviously chosen many non-lucrative occupations, including writing these non-best-selling books. the folklore especially with a non-lucrative one and i still remember looking at the want ads in the "philadelphia inquirer" every sunday. it would've been great between forest and forklift operator if i remember correctly. but finding no such jobs, i moved to seattle and drifted into public radio. public radio, of course those are the stations play on the left of the diode. lake 89 to 91, around there and worked at public radio stations in st. louis and seattle. i was in minnesota for a while, went to maine for a while. 2005 a went to los angeles and got a job at the public radio program called marketplace, a good program. it was around this time that my wife took a foreign service exam

in past and was offered a position the u.s. foreign service. so we're in a bit of a quandary as to who would be the breadwinner, her or me. and after several rounds of voting, it was still one to one. and somehow i was manage to gain a controlling share in the firm and eventually she took the position in the foreign service and became the breadwinner, allowing me to work a little bit on this non-lucrative career. so into africa in the first book i did david mentioned was about the philadelphia pittsburgh steve o'steen the nfl is so short of players during world war ii that they had to merge the steelers and eagles. the quarterback had a perforated eardrum. the receiver was blinded in one night. lots of ulcers in the backfield because all the guys were for us. the rag tag, and a sick kind of a bunch. i i try to do with that book in the other books is to take a

small and unusual event in american history and really expand on it to talk a little more about the times that event takes place in. and hopefully i have done that with this boat. the "the president is a sick man" wherein the suppose it virtuous grover cleveland vilifies the courageous newspaper man who dared to expose the truth. well, thank you for coming everybody. [laughter] we were trying to be evocative of the really long 18th century titles that books have. you know, being the true and fair account of paul, blah, blah. this is the short version of the subtitle. we found that the database for booksellers today have a limit on how many characters you can have in the title of your books, so we had to reduce the title if you can believe that. i've always been interested in the story. i'm kind of a presidential history buffs and i've read several grover craver and

biographies. how many of you have read several grover cleveland biographies? i always knew the basic story that grover cleveland had a secret operation to remove a cancerous tumor from his mouth. by the way, enjoy your lunch while i talk about the cancerous tumor. i never thought much more about it, but about 10 years ago i went to a museum in philadelphia called the meter museum, the museum of medical history. they have all kinds of unusual things they are. if chief justice john marshall's lighter stones. if you ever have a hankering to see that. they've a piece of the brain of charles kitano, who is the guy who was assassinated garfield. and they have been a small glass jar, they have the tumor that was removed from grover cleveland's mouth in 1893 and this operation on a boat. so that really triggered my interest in the story, the fact

that the tumor was still around somebody at that maybe this is a good thing to keep, and interesting keepsake. so i talked to the museum and it turns out one of the doctors to perform the operation had kept it and donated it to the museum back in 1917. not only that -- i guess you would know he was a bit was a bit of a saver since he saved the tumor, but he also saved his correspondence and clippings and lots of information about the operation, which of course was intended to be secret. so i realize there is the possibility of doing something about this story. and as i dug deeper into it, i found it wasn't just the story of this operation. it was really the story of the economy at the time and also a story about medicine and a story about journalism as well. there were a lot of things going on in the 1890s, which is sort of a dead spot for me in my history. you know, the civil war, world war ii, world war i, that the 1880s and 1890s i didn't

know a lot about, so was fun to go back in the ring that probably i should have been taught earlier, like cucumber at the museum of american finance today. and it was the gilded age is what it was cold. mark twain gave it that name. it was not intended to be a complement. to guiltless unnecessarily extravagant and that means that. the politics are fascinating and there were so many things in researching the book and that i talk about in the book could really have resonance today. i don't go into this in the book so much, but i would like to find out the first earth or controversy took place in 1880 when garfield was running for president and his vice president was chester arthur. either way, good luck trying to get a book about chester arthur published. if you think cleveland is tough. but the rumors at the timer that chester arthur had been born in canada. his father was an irishman and

his mother was a canadian from callback and immigrated to vermont. but the story went that when she was pregnant and ready to give birth, she went back home to québec and had the baby bear, which if true would mean that chester arthur was not an american citizen because neither of his parents were and he wasn't born in the u.s. i will point out right now that we do not have the birth certificate, long or short form for chester arthur. he put his name in the family bible and said he was born in vermont and i guess that was good enough to qualify him to hold the office of vice president and president. grover cleveland who was elected four years after garfield in 1884 always fascinated he was a plain fact and this is everybody knows, grover served to nonconsecutive terms. he was the lack of an 1884, lost reelection in 1888 and came back four years later and won the white house that, which is a unique achievement in american

politics and the american presidency. so the guy had to be a pretty good politician. and of course he screwed up the number for the president. he is number 22 and 24, a little aside when president obama gave his and my girl addressed in 2009, he said 44 people have now taken this oath of office and i was a party with friends and i said no, 43 because grover gets counted twice. nobody wants to hear grover cleveland right now. my friends who were in rome at the time and much too much about grover cleveland can anyone shed and they forgiven if they don't buy the book. but you won't be. grover, aside from being a great politician also had the most extraordinary rise to the white house. in 1880 when garfield look-alike day, grover was a single guide had a very good luck disc, was

well respected and well-liked in buffalo. it really wasn't active in politics in buffalo. and in four years, he became president. and it's impossible to imagine now. we know the name of our next president. we don't know who is going to be, but we've heard the name at least. there's 30, 50 people might be present at the next two or three but heard their name. but that was in the when grover cleveland was direct it. no one heard of them for years before. he lived a charmed life in some ways. he was born in 1837. he studied at my law firm right there. had no formal education after 16, was self-taught and law. in 1881 they were looking for a reformist candidate to run as the democratic nominee for mayor of buffalo and grover won that election. he immediately establish a reputation for honesty and

integrity. he vetoed a lot of bills. he was known as the beat-up mayor, one of the most famous was that there was a bill to establish a new sewer system in buffalo and the city council awarded the contract to the highest bidder. and the difference between that and the next lowest bid was to be spread among all the members of the city council and grover vetoed that bill and many other bills and quickly earned a reputation for integrity and honesty in the following year he was elected governor of new york. two years later in 1884, he was elected president of the united states. so here you have from 18821894, a guy who goes from being a lawyer nobody heard about in buffalo to mayor to governor and finally to president. the 1884 election and this is another thing we think things have changed a lot, and they haven't changed that much was a terribly vicious election, one of the dirtiest in american

history. it came out during the campaign that grover had fathered an illegitimate child. his response to this is really legendary. he sent a telegram to his friends in buffalo this is simply, tell the truth. grover owned up to this. he has supported this child since birth and was still providing for the child. and really, his reaction to what could have been a debilitating scandal turned into any way positive thing for his campaign that demonstrated his integrity and his refusal to deny the truth. at the campaign he was running against james g blaine is that democrats like to say, james g blaine, the continental liar from the state of maine. and it really was that kind of vicious campaign. it all came down to new york state. new york had the largest number of electoral votes at that time. whoever won, new york state would win the election. a few days before the election,

blaine appeared at events in new york and was introduced by a protestant minister and the minister called the democrats the party of around, romanism in rebellion. drunk, catholic and disloyal basically. this one to cavaco vote, especially new york city to cleveland who carried new york by a thousand dollars to 1.1 million cast. so it was an extremely close election, but he won in 1884. in 1886 he finally married or use a batch of an elected. he married a woman named frances folsom who is only 21 at the time. grover was 49, 328 year each difference. i don't think we'll see another 21-year-old first lady again. it's possible. it's a good schwarzenegger can't be elected president. but francis turned out to be a great political asset for grover and was really one of the most beloved first lady's in american

history. there's a story after grover last election he ran for reelection hamas to benjamin harrison in the electoral vote, although grover won the popular vote in 1888, but he lasted a lot or a college. we'll never see that again. and as they were leaving the white house in 1889, apparently francis told the chief -- the chief steward there, just keep everything the way it is. we'll be back in four years. and sure enough in 1892, cleveland did win the white house back and he and francis another youngest daughter, bebe ruth moved into the white house. there had been one change. benjamin harris and while the cleveland's were -- while they were in the white house and the cleveland's were away, they changed from gas to electric. and i think they did this so none of the cleveland's appliances would work. [laughter] in 1892, grover wins the

election and takes the oath of office in march. the inaugurations were in march that time. it was not a good time to become president and this is where the panic of 1893 comes in. nine days before grover took office, the reading railroad had gone bankrupt. the reading had been one of the most successful where roads in the u.s., just before they built a brand-new terminal in philadelphia, which stood until the 1980s. but in 1893, the reading what bankrupted it was a bad sign. railroads were hopelessly overbuilt in the 1880s and 1890s and this is a speculative bubble, much like we've had recently with other things, real estate. in the 1890s it was railroads. the number of rail lines doubled, more than doubled after the civil war, but the population only grew 50%, 60%. and then the bottom fell out in

1893. 119 railroads went bankrupt in 1893 and about 20% i believe that the number of rows in the country. of course all the people who would've vested stock in these railroads were wiped out in this release prior to the panic on wall street and sent the stock market down. there is another thing going on that contributed to the panic of 1893. i won't get into it too much here. suffice it to say in the book i read about in a sparkly detail. there's some amici in prose i came up with. it is about this debate of gold versus silver. that was, what should our currency be based on? should be be based on gold or gold and silver? now, this all might seem arcane and a little silly to us today when our currency is raised on on -- [inaudible] yeah, nothing. quality paper.

you can wash it and still use it. but in 1893, the debate really boiled down to, should our money be backed by gold or silver? and the country really hard since the 1870s had been on the gold standard and it worked pretty simply. the government printed those redeemable for gold. it is easier to carry those that hold so they catch in the treasury. if you wanted to redeem your gold certificates as they were known for gold you could. but in the 1880s and 1890s, a lot of new states came in the union in the west. montana, colorado, nevada. these were silver mining states. the silver mining states began to clamor for silver, to also be a unit of currency in the united states. and they had a lot of clout in congress, these new states they came in very quickly with the senators and representatives.

in 1890, they passed a bill called the sherman silver purchase act, which require the u.s. treasury to buy 4.5 million ounces of silver every man and print an equivalent amount of currency for that. wow, this cost inflation, rapid inflation in the united states is all the current seaport in the markets. now, but they must the people in the west or gold mining states religious zionists because they could sell all their silver to the treasury and the farmers in the south than in the midwest to a lot of them were in debt, especially in the south, still recovering from the civil war. well, inflation if you're in debt is a bad thing because the money you pay your debts is cheaper than the money you borrowed. so it's not that bad of a game. they needed lots of money in their pockets. back east, the bankers and industrialists who were by and large the people lending the

money didn't think so much of this inflation because it devalues their money that they had and it really set up a sectional battle and was a contentious issue between the civil war and the first world war, this debate over currency and it did divide along sectional lines. the north and the east were pulled. and so the uncertainty in the currency markets continued to the panic of 1893. sakura takes office in march and it's got a lot of sway. by the way, francis' wife is now pregnant with her second child as well. so he had a lot of concerns. it was in may of 1883 he noticed for the first time a little lump on the roof of his mouth, back behind the molar on the left side. and he didn't think much of it. as we all do, he put off having it looks out for a while. and now coming out a lot on his plate. it wasn't until june until the

stock air, a guy from new york named joseph bryant examined this bump on the roof of grover's mouth. brent had expertise in oral cancers and he determined it was in fact a cancerous tumor. he called it a bad looking tenant. the word cancer -- cancer had a statement in the 1890s. in the 19th century into the 20th century. the word itself was avoided. newspapers would call it the dread disease for the disease no doubt for the disease no doubt for the disease no doubt a bad looking tenant is that it a bad looking tenant and said it should be removed. cleveland agreed to have this tumor removed, but only on the condition that the operation b. can do it in secret. cleveland was afraid if it came to be known he had cancer, which was uttered virtually a death sentence in a teeny theory that the markets would crash, the wall street would panic and the

depression would only worsen. he had other reasons, too. about 10 years before coming ulysses s. grant died of tumor and it was a very public spat to call. reporters camped out outside his house in a death watch and cleveland was president when grant died and he was fully aware of how that happened in cleveland had no desire to become the object of a spec to collect data. he was a very introverted guy in many ways and didn't want to be the center of attention. so we said, i think we should do this operation in secret. his top or said okay, fine. why the doctors agreed to do this in secret as an example how especially when the patient is a president, the patient dictates the terms of treatment, not the.yours. you see this time and again in american history are presidents have some illness or debility dunk at the best treatment because they're not yours acquiesce to the patient's

demand incentive to him at is best for the patient medically and physically. so where do you remove a tumor and seeker from the roof of the mouth of a president in 1893? too many potentials for springing a leak. it was cleveland himself the came up with the idea of having a tumor removed on a frenzy. he knew a guy named benedict, not me from new york on a yacht called the unita. cleveland and then in france and it often gone fishing together. so cleveland decided this would be the perfect cover. we can have the operation on board the oneida. we can say were going to sail out to cape cod. cleveland had a summer home on cape cod in the operation on the bow. had an operation on a go present certain problems, but nonetheless, six.as were recruited to prefer in this operation and agree to do it on the boat. i'm a night at june 30, 1893,

cleveland came to new york in the six.there's also came to new york. the boat was anchored in the east river in the top yours were ferried undercover darkness, each separately from different peers so no one would know what was going on. had some cigars, and maybe the cigars for the problem to begin with. and the next morning the boat set sail in her shortly after 12:00 that cleveland went downstairs. it incidentally has a very volatile compound and operate

with this in the closed confines of your room below dad when a guy was probably not the best to do it. they anesthetize cleveland. the operation took about 90 minutes of update date if they remove the tumor on the upper left out of it anxieties on the left, everything behind their car taken out, as did a big chunk of its upper left jawbone. i was taken in 90 minutes come using fairly naturally to consider rudimentary tools, basically chisels and four sides. they had no suction devices of course at the time. there is no means a blood transfusion, saw the blood he lost, he lost and there were no means of artificial resuscitation if anything would happen to him either. nonetheless, somehow the operation succeeded and cleveland survived. they packed his mouth with gauze and gave him a shot of morphine and put into bat for the night.

it was four days later on july july 5. so the president had been missing for four days now over the fourth of july weekend. the chief executives back in the 1890s wasn't quite what it is today. the office wasn't quite what it is today, but even then it was unusual for the president to disappear the fourth of july. he arrived at his home in massachusetts on the evening of the fifth late at night. none of the reporters there to greet him or see his a rifle were there. probably back at the hotel drinking if i know how reporters operate. so they didn't find out until the next day that cleveland had returned. cleveland healed remarkably quickly. he was fitted with a prosthetic device after about three or four weeks when the wound had cleared on trade healed sufficiently enough. this is a piece of vulcanized rubber and a fashion as to plug the hole in his mouth and equipped onto a couple teeth on the other side in a restored the

shape of his face because a piece of the job had been missing. but more importantly, restored his speaking voice. without this device, cleveland speech was unintelligible and he was famous for his speaking voice. he was one of the great american speakers of the era. and so with this device in his mouth, he could speak again and he appeared completely normal. they hadn't made any external incision. the operation was done entirely in the mouth. they hadn't removed his trademark walrus mustache. god forbid we have a president without facial hair at that time. to all intents and purposes, it looked like cleveland was going for a long vacation on buzzards bay. he was out fishing in a couple weeks and reporters were kept at a distance. it reminds them how ronald reagan would stand by the helicopter and say i can't hear you, i can't hear you when you save in the white house. that's kind of what they did was grover. they kept him at a distance. he would go out fishing and come

back the end of the day in the spokesperson would say everything was fine. there were rumors something was wrong with him. one of the.is on the boat missed an appointment because he was performing this operation. so when he met the doctor he was supposed to meet with for the missed appointment he explained i was operating on the president of the united states. i hope that's a good enough excuse. presumably it was, but then word began to filter on the medical community. doctors in new york began to hear whispers of something that happened. eventually these reached a reporter, a guy by the name of dj at words, a new york correspondent for the philadelphia press. a great time for newspapers in the 1890s. 20 or 30. philadelphia had 15 daily newspapers in the 1890s and everything was very competitive. and e.j. at words heard about this and so he went to the

dentist and played a little trick within the fair balance of journalism at the time, maybe even today. he went on to the dentist that edwards knew more about the story than he did have a two hasbrouck inside i understand operation was performed on the president, that he had a cancerous tumor removed and this was performed and the dentist said somebody in the boat must've told you all that. i went on to spill the beans they get more information to edwards to confirm the operation. on august 29, 2 months after the operation, edwards published a story under the headline, the president is very sick man. the problem is no one believed him. that is because cleveland, as i said earlier had developed his reputation for honesty and integrity and his spokesperson said this was a lie, that no operation had been performed and no tumor removed. they said he merely had a bad tooth extracted. which, technically was true or

if you didn't mention the other tumor and the job of. so the public at this time was inclined to believe cleveland. any else have this reputation for honesty. he was known at the honest president. in a way it almost appears as if he had built buzz this capital in this reputation for honesty and now decided to cash in all his chips on this one big lie. and it worked. cleveland recruited his friends in the press, democratic papers, especially a rival paper in philadelphia called the times, to not merely denied the story, but to discredit the story. and that meant killing the messenger. and so, e.j. edwards was derided as a disgrace to journalism, a cancer faker, panic monger. yet come up with one of the great scoops in american

history, probably the most detailed account of a medical procedure performed upon a president without the patient's authorization and no one believed him. and it is really too bad. i think cleveland probably went too far in discrediting edwards. it was one thing to keep the operation secret, but another thing to in this man's reputation, which he effectively did. so the secret held. in fact, the secret held well into the 20th century. cleveland died in 1908 and there is no recurrence of the cancer. so this is a significant achievement in american medicine and surgery to have a cancerous tumor removed from somebody in 1893 men have no recurrence was really quite spectacular. but nobody knew about it. it wasn't until 1917 finally that one of the doctors who taken part of the operation, a guy named cain from

philadelphia, fascinating guide in and of themselves. there's three main characters, the president, the newspaperman and that that. he graduated from med school in 1862 and then served in the civil war as a commissioned officer, working as a medic. and later on was a commissioned officer in world war i. so he had an amazing career that really stand this. for what we all must consider medieval medicine to modern medicine. keane was a good baptist and always felt badly about the way edwards has been treated. so in 1917, he decided to publish an account of the operation. he asked permission from cleveland's wife, frances. by the way, i forgot that francis had the baby only about six weeks after the report came out that he had cancer. so this help to posh and a last doubts about whether or not the president was a sick man. i mean, he's making babies.

how sick can he be? so keen asked for frances this permission. of course grover had been dead many years and francis agreed. francisco went by the way, she remarried after grover died and married a princeton professor, a guy named thomas preston was married to him much longer than she was to grover. if on a quick story, that francis ledoux on time and 1957 was seated next to eisenhower at a fancy dinner. her place car just identified her as mrs. thomas preston, so eisenhower had no idea who she was. they began chatting and started talking about washington. francis said generally used to live in washington. eisenhower said really? where? only then francis identified herself as the former first lady and eisenhower was quite embarrassed. she agreed with team that there should be an account published

in 1893. and so, that followed 1917, finally broke the embargo and publish an account of the operation of all places the saturday evening post. you think you would go to a medical journal to talk about this amazing achievement in american medicine and oncology, but instead decided to publish it in the saturday evening post. i interviewed a couple of pathologists and said, why do you think this article in the saturday evening post and not some journal of medicine in the path allah just that it's like all that airs, heated a geegaws wanted everyone to know. the saturday evening post is the most popular periodical in the country so that was the place to brag about your achievement. but he also did it to vindicate edwards. the account came out and it did 24 years after the fact after he wrote finally edwards reputation as a truthful correspondent was

vindicated. it is very big news among media people who had always wondered about this account that edwards had written many years before. edwards is still among living at the time and was very gratified by this and sent his letter grades. edwards should be much better remembered not for this, but other work in journalism. he was one of the early -- you worked with jacob rees. and he was an early supporter of stephen crane. he let him stay at his apartment in new york when crane was struggling to write and sell red rash of courage. one of the things i think happened to edwards, his houses burned down in 1908 and he last a lifetime of correspondence and clippings and notes. there is no legacy to leave. it would be amazing to read through his papers and see exactly what his thoughts were as this happened in 1893. he came up with the scoop and

himself fell aside. fortunately, you know where he'd gone to school has some of his papers, so i was able to cobble together a story through that. there is another postscript to this story. the tumor itself, which i'm mentioned that computer museum in philadelphia. it's not much to look at, kind of like a piece of land cauliflower, although i think they're 10 fragments of bone and five teeth, one with a filling, old, naturally because cleveland was a cool guy. and this amorphous blob in this chart always tantalized medical and presidential historians because they wanted to know what kind of cancer did cleveland have? this was an amazing achievement in american cancer research, that they've successfully removed this tumor and there'd be no recurrence of the disease for 15 years until cleveland died in 1908.

but there is a problem. cleveland's children, his last son, francis died in 1995. in fact, i was living in portland, maine and we went to church and had a woman named margaret cleveland and i made a joke about grover. she said actually it was my grandfather. grover was born in 1837. when he was 60, he had a son francis in 1897 and francis would he was 60 had a daughter in 1957 who was margaret. there were 120 years between the birth of margaret and her grandfather. the children lived one to 20 century and they would not allow it the specimen to be tested pathologically to determine the cause of a kind of cancer was because grover had been a wild guy back in his days in buffalo and there were rumors he had a disease, specifically. and the children were afraid if it came out they did the testing

on the specimen that it would come out their father had and this would be embarrassing to them into their father's legacy. it wasn't until the 1970s they finally acquiesce to have a pathological examination on the tumor. the examination determined grover had a very rare kind of cancer. it is called various carcinoma, a mentally and tumor at -- i can never say this word. metastasize. it does not metastasize. but it has to be removed because the tumor continues to grow and can grow so large it will make eating and breathing impossible. so the treatment for this tumor today and the tumor itself was not even identified until 1948. so the.yours in 1893 had no idea what this was because it hadn't even been identified as a specific kind of cancer. the treatment today would be exactly what grover had. you have to excise the tumor

completely. there is no alternative. although today they came out to reconstructed bones and tissue grassi thomas walk around with a piece of rubber, a hockey puck in your mouth, so you can talk to me. this explained that what grover had gone so long without any recurrence of the cancer, that it was the kind of cancer that does not metastasize. and the test also conclusively determined whether or not grover cleveland did have. and the results of that test are in the book, which is now for sale. thank you very much. if anyone has any questions, i'd be happy to answer them. [applause] i think kristin has a microphone event has a question -- or did i cover everything so excellent way? there is the question. >> hello, thank you for the wonderful talk on grover

cleveland. how did he die eventually? that was the cause of death? do not grover retired to princeton and it's a bit of a mystery. he complained of gastrointestinal programs and there is actually some suspicion he may have had an intestinal tumor. although since the oral cancer he doesn't have -- why do you keep make me say and not, the intestinal tumor would not have been related to the oral cancer. he was 71 when he died in 1908 and the official cause of death was listed as cardiac arrest, but that doesn't explain the precipitating causes to that. yeah, grover retired to princeton. it was interesting, yet never gone to college and he sort of became the mascot they are. after football victories, students at march grovers house and give a cheer and he really enjoyed his final time in princeton. we have somebody who's going to

bring a microphone up for you. just a second. >> yeah, the other half of your title tag is the panic of 1893 and other the fact that you mentioned there was a railroad bubble that burst, you didn't say anything about that. there's a covered in the book quite >> yeah, it's covered in the book. there were two major causes, which was the overbuilding of the railroads and the uncertainty in the currency situation. it would be hard to overstate how contentious and controversial attachment of this was to the country, debate of gold over silver. and that is what really precipitated the panic. people didn't know what was going to happen with the currency. would there be a inflation? would there be deflation? it could be you would have a money famine. and these happen periodically.

in fact, that is one of the reasons if they wanted to increase overproduction until so very became a form of currency, there had been periodic periods of great deflation in the country and money would be almost impossible to find. there were other causes in the river of staff they took businesses. things like companies that made forward or rope went out of business in each of the towns where these railroads passed through come to ancillary businesses connected within one out of business. the panic of 1893 lasted until the 1897 and 1898 when the spanish-american war came to give the economy a boost. at the time it was the worst depression in american history. double-digit unemployment for more than five years. it only exceeded now but the great depression of the 1930s. at the time also during the panic of 1893 was terrible

unemployment, terrible inflation, but really no safety net as we have today. and grover was opposed to this. he did not believe in paternalism. in his second inaugural he said while the people she cheerfully support the government, the government should not support the people. this appeals today even to libertarians. i know ron paul keeps a picture of grover cleveland in his office. so this i think also, certainly contributed to grover's unpopularity at the end of his second term. as some accounts it the panic. although, the panic for the first time we see some semblance of public works projects in boston. they pay people 1 dollar a day to chop wood. so there were some programs beginning. most of the relief programs during the panic of 1893 were run by labor unions and also churches and other charitable organizations. there really was no government support program. the panic was also exacerbated.

again in the book it is just an amazing writing i do about this panic of 1893 that is really going to blow your mind. there was a hurricane that hit the southeast coast of the united states in the fall of 1893 and it could have happened at a worse time it pretty much devastated georgia and the carolinas. and this contributed to even greater problems at the panic of 1893 and there was really nothing -- there were no resources to rebuild these areas. and so, it was an interesting confluence of political, economic and natural events that made 1893 such a terrible year economically for the country. like i said come it took about four years for the panic to add finally. but yeah, you'll like it, what i say about that in the book. you might want to get two copies just because you want to give

one away. another question appeared. just wait a second. it's coming. here she comes. >> what was the makeup of the congress at the time of cleveland's operation? would you look at it as kind of a lame duck waiting to die? or mac for one thing, cleveland was a cool guy. his vice president was at least stevenson, future the presidential candidate. stevenson was a sober right. stevenson was from illinois and in favor of bimetallism, using gold and silver as currency. he had been added to the ticket at the convention in 1892 to give balance because democrats needed to win southern states. so you have this unusual situation where the president and vice president are on exact opposite side of the most contentious issue of the day. cleveland was adamant that he not know what was going on.

stevenson had heard rumors. stevenson was at the fair in 1893 and heard rumors and immediately headed east to visit him and and cleveland and her subjectivity telegram and said actually, i would like you to go on a political trip to seattle in 1893, which involved stagecoach, trains,, all sorts of things. that puts stevenson out of action for a considerable amount of time. at the time, democrats controlled both houses for the first two years of his second term, but the panic had gotten so bad by 1894 that republicans then took back the two houses. although cleveland did manage to have the sherman silver purchase act repealed shortly after the surgery in fact. and that is stopped the u.s. treasury from purchasing a 4.5 really an officer month. they had accumulated so much silver in the history of the half years and so many silver certificates have been issued

that silver certificates are actually issued and i believe are valid until 1968. so it was the kind of thing -- it was another cool thing about the book as you go see decisions made in 1893 and don't think they have any relevance. but in a lot of ways to hear the echoes of these things even 120 years later. yeah, as david mentioned, one of my jobs is a gas station attendant. you used to seek him even in the 80s silver certificates come in once in a while. there lucio said at the korean steel. but it was republicans congress for the second half of this term. >> that was a really good talk. >> thank you. you are a really good listener. >> thank you. >> dimension of course he was a

great president or where we choose surrogate has to rate and rank, where it should put him on the spectrum? >> well, yet a method named after him first of all, so you've got to lay grover. at the beginning i said this is amazing. to lose the white house, come back four years later and win it back. i don't care who is involved. will that ever happen again? it's just impossible to conceive of now an incumbent president loses the presidency and retire to their $200,000 gig at speaking events, which is exactly what i am getting paid today. [laughter] but grover didn't have that. there were no pensions at the time and part of the concern for grover was it was pretty much the only job he enjoyed and could do. he retired to new york between his two terms and did a little bit of lawyering, mostly practicing as a mediator. but it is funny. grover was the last of the do-nothing presidents. i don't mean that in a bad way.

he vetoed more bills, twice as many bills in his first term than all his predecessors combined. so he really saw his job primarily is keeping congress from passing laws. he really thought that was what the executive was supposed to first and foremost. he did that. be done in as mayor and did as president. and so, as i said also, he didn't believe in interventionist government in this appeals to a lot of people even today. so i think he deserves to be remembered much better than he has. i mean, let's see, he's got a turnpike rest stop on the jersey turnpike named after him. i think it's between exits 11 and 12 northbound and that's about it. and this great new book. last night that they.

[inaudible] >> every child who places a place not to eat on it has all the presidents. the child looks down and says this is a mistake to cause this picture is coming up twice. >> yeah, he screwed up the numbering. but harry truman never could understand why grover was counted twice. he thought that was ridiculous because only 43 people had been president. why is this president number 44? so yeah, tanks, grover. >> thanks for very interesting talk. the book is now available and matthew would be happy to sign a

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