President is a sick man which accounts the surgery be performed on a yacht and present disappearing for five days. Hi, im david cowan, president of the museum of American Finance. Welcome back to our lunch and learn series. welcome to the university of central oklahoma and professor arnold. Thank you for coming. Please join us again, everyone, next week on the 26th were going to continue the lunch and learn series. The director of the roth child archive will be here, melanie. They should be really fascinating. This is an historic banking house, again, a week from this thursday. And then on the 24th, this is tuesday upcoming, well be screening the rediscovering alexander hamilton. This is the pbs documentary recently released, and all your questions about the movie can be answered because the producer director, michael pack, will be in the house. Now, turning our attention to today and matthew algeo, and the president is a sick man. This is matthews third book. His second, which traced harry and bess trumans crosscountry trip in 1953, got a lot of great press, and in 2009 the Washington Post called it one of the best books of the year. And before that he wrote a book about the war years and football and the steigels, which is a combination of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the philadelphia eagles, another interesting book. Hes got a very eclectic background. Not just an author, not just a journalist, but let me tell you some of the things he has done. He has been a hot dog vendor at a traveling circus, hes been a Halloween Costume salesman, hes been a gas station attendant, a Convenience Store clerk, and all this is going to put him in good stead because in two months hes moving to mongolia with his wife, so that should be pretty interesting. And very importantly, he is a friend to this museum and a member of it. Its my pleasure to introduce matthew algeo. [applause] boy, you make it sound much more interesting than it is, my life. Its great to be at the museum of American Finance. For a couple of reasons. One, its a fantastic museum, and ive been coming to the museum for a few years now. But more importantly, when i was researching the book, the museum was very helpful in 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 that you could send an email with that urgency and get it answered within an hour. So it was very helpful to me, the museum of American Finance. And i am a member, a proud member, thats why i got in for free today. [laughter] before i talk about grover, who was a very interesting person, i should probably tell you a little bit about a much less interesting person. That would be me. As david said, my wife is a Foreign Service officer, so we move around a lot. I, my name is algeo, everybody thinks its italian. Its actually irish. The o is on the wrong end, i know. My grandparents were from north of ireland, and actually have irish citizenship. And i spent a year back in ireland in the 1990s as a freelance reporter. I should do this because it largely consisted of drinking a lot of beer for a year. But there was Something Interesting that i found out about having an unusual irish name in ireland. I had to get an identity card, so i went to the dmv, and they were very organized. They had three lines, and it was all according to the first letter of your last name, and the first line was al, the second line was mc0, and the third was pz. So there were certain advantages to that. I am the youngest of seven which is why im avoiding eye contact with you right now. I just found it was better to keep my head down. I did, though, grow up in a house of readers. My parents were prolific readers. They werent sitting around reading reading the existentialists. My dad liked mitscher, i used to say he would read by the pound. My mom loved true crime, and it would be embarrassing riding the train into the city with her because shed be reading Something Like the i95 killer, you know, and on the front cover thered be somebody stabbing somebody. I was like, can you just put it in a newspaper something . But i was lucky to grow up in a house like that. I rap into a friend from high school a few years ago, and he said, you know, whenever i went over to your house in high school, your parents would just be sitting in the living room reading, no tv, no radio, no nothing, and i always thought that was so weird. But now that he has kids of his own, i think he appreciates that that was really a good atmosphere to grow up, and it fostered my love of books. I went to college in philadelphia at the university of pennsylvania, graduated in 1988 with a degree in folklore. Any other folklore majors here today . [laughter] this was, and david went through the list of other occupations ive had. Ive, obviously, chosen many nonlucrative occupations including writing these nonbestselling books, but folklore especially was a nonlucrative one. I still remember looking at the want ads in the Philadelphia Inquirer every sunday. It would have been between florist and Forklift Operator if i remember quickly. But finding no such jobs, i moved to seattle and drifted into public radio. Of course, those are the stations way on the left of the dial. [laughter] like 89, 91, around there. And worked at public radio stations in st. Louis, seattle, i was in minnesota for a while, i went to maine for a while. 2005 i went to los angeles and got a job with the Public Radio Program called marketplace. A good program. And it was around this time that my wife took the Foreign Service exam and passed and was offered a position in the u. S. Foreign service. So we were 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 11. [laughter] and somehow i was, managed 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 nonlucrative career. And so we went to africa, and the first book i did david mentioned was this book about the philadelphia pittsburgh steigels. The nfl was so short of players during world war ii that they had to merge the steelers and the eagles. The center was deaf in one ear, the receiver was blind in one eye, lots of ulcers in the back field, so a rag tag, misfit kind of bunch. But what i tried to do with that book and the other books is take a small and unusual event in American History and really expand on it to talk a little bit more about the times that that event takes place in. And, hopefully, ive done that with this book. The president is a sick man, even i have to look at the subtitle to read it. Wherein the supposedly virtous Grover Cleveland vilifies the courageous newspaper man who dared to expose the truth. Well, thank you for coming, everybody. [laughter] actually, its funny. We were trying to be evocative of the really long 19th century titles that books would have, you know, being the true and fair account of blah, blah, blah, and this is the short version of the subtitle. We found out that the databases for book sellers today have a limit on how many characters you can have in the title of your book, so we actually had to reduce the title, if you can believe that. Ive always been interested in this story. Im kind of a president ial history buff, and ive read several Grover Cleveland biographies. How many people here have read several Grover Cleveland biographies . I always knew the story, the basic story that Grover Cleveland had had a secret operation to remove a cancerous tumor from his mouth. By the way, enjoy your lunch while i talk about clevelands cancerous tumor. I never really thought much more about it. About ten years ago i went to another fine museum in philadelphia, a museum of medical history. They have all kinds of unusual things there. They have chief justice John Marshalls bladder stones. If you ever have a hankering to see that. [laughter] theyve got a piece of the brain of the guy who assassinated garfield, and they have in a small glass jar they have the tumor that was removed from Grover Clevelands mouth in 1893 in this operation on a boat. And so that really triggered my interest in the story, the fact that the tumor was still around and that somebody had thought maybe this was something to keep. And i talked to the museum, and it turns out one of the doctors who performed the surgery had donated the tumor back to the museum back in 1917. I guess you would know he was a bit of a saver, but he also saved all his correspondence and clippings and lots of information about the operation which, of course; was intended to be secret. So i realized there there was a possibility of doing something about this story. And then as i, as i dug deeper into it, i found it wasnt just the story of this operation, it was really the story of the economy at the time, and it was also a story about medicine and its 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 maybe, but kind of the 1880s and90 i didnt know a lot about. So it was a lot of fun to go back and learned things that probably i should have been taught earlier but that you can learn at the museum of American Finance today. And it was the gilded age, is what it was called. Mark twain gave it that name that was not intended to be a compliment. Unnecessarily extravagant, and that name stuck, the gilded age. The politics were fascinating, and there were so many things in researching the book and that i talk about in the book that really have resonance today. Um, i i dont go into this in the book, but the first birther controversy actually took place in 1880 when garfield was running for president , and his Vice President was Chester Arthur. By the way, good luck trying to get a book about Chester Arthur published if you think cleveland is tough. The rumors at the time were that Chester Arthur had been born in canada. His father was an irishman, and his mother was a canadian from quebec, and they emigrated to vermont. But the story went that when she was pregnant and ready to give birth, she went back home to quebec and had the baby there which, if true, would mean that Chester Arthur was not an american citizen because neither of his parents were, and he wasnt born in the u. S. Ill point out that, no, we do not have the birth certificate, long or short form, for Chester Arthur. They just put his name in the family bible and said he was born in vermont, and i guess that was good enough in 1880 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 me just for the plain fact that and this is what Everybody Knows grover served two nonconsecutive terms. He was elected in 1884, lost reelection in 1888 and then came back four years later and won the white house back which is a unique achievement in american politics, in the american presidency. So the guy had to be a pretty good politician. And, of course, he screwed up the numbering for the president s. Hes number 22 and 24, a little aside, actually, when president obama gave his inaugural address in 2009, he said 44 people have now taken this oath of office, and i was at a party with friends, and i said, no, 43 because grover gets counted twice. Shut up, nobody wanted to hear about Grover Cleveland right now. [laughter] my friends who, we were in rome at the time, learned much too much about Grover Cleveland than anyone should, and theyre forgiven if they dont buy the book. But you wont be. Grover, aside from being a great politician, also had the most extraordinary rise to the white house. I mean, in 1880 when garfield was elected, Grover Cleveland was a single guy living in a boarding house in buffalo, had a fairly good wall practice, was well respected and well liked in buffalo but really wasnt active in politics in buffalo. And in four years he became president. And its just impossible to imagine now. I mean, we know the name of our next president. We dont know who its going to be, but weve heard the list at least. Theres a list of 30, 50, 100 people, and probably even the next two or three president s weve heard their name. But that wasnt the case when Grover Cleveland was elected. Nobody had heard of him four years before. He lived a charmed life in some ways. He was born in 1837, at 16 he left school, he moved to buffalo. He studied law in a law firm, really had no formal education after 16, just was selftaught in law. And in 1881 they were looking for a reformist candidate to run as the democratic nominee for mayor of buffalo. And grover won that election, and he immediately established a reputation for honesty and integrity. He vetoed a lot of bills. He was known as the veto mayor. One of the most famous bills was when there was a bill to, i think it was to establish a new sewer system, to build a 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, presumably, was to be spread among all the members of the city council, and grover vetoed that bill and vetoed many other bills and quickly earned a reputation for integrity and honesty. And the following year, 1882, he was elected governor of new york, and then two years later in 1884 he was elected president of the United States. So from 1880 to 1884 you have a guy who goes from being a lawyer nobody heard about in buffalo to mayor, to governor, and then finally to president. The 1884 election, by the way, this is another one of those things where you think things have changed a lot. They havent changed that much. It was a terribly vicious election, one of the dirtiest president ial campaigns in American History. It came out during the campaign that grover had fathered an illegitimate child, and his response was really legendary. He sent a telegram to his friends back in buffalo that said simply, tell the truth. And grover owned up to this. He had 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 out to be, in a way, a positive thing for his campaign. It demonstrated his integrity and his refusal to deny the truth. And the campaign, he was running against a guy named james g. Blaine, as the democrats like to say, 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. It was that simple. And a few days before the election blaine appeared at a Campaign Event in new york, and he was introduced by a protestant minister. And the minister called the democrats the party of rum, romannism and rebellion. Drunk, catholic and disloyal, basically. And this swung the catholic vote especially in new york city to cleveland who won, carried new york by a thousand votes out of 1. 1 million cast. So it was an extremely close election, but he won in 1884. In 1886 he finally married. He was still a bachelor when he was elected. He married a woman who was only 21 at the time. Grover was 49, so there was a 28year anal difference. I dont think well see another 21yearold first lady again. Its possible. Good thing schwarzenegger cant be elected president. [laughter] but francis turned out to be a great political asset for grover, and everybody loved her. Really one of the most beloved first ladies in American History, and theres a story after grover lost the election in 1888 he ran for reelection and lost to Benjamin Harrison in the electoral vote, although grover actually won the popular vote in 1888, but he lost in the electoral college. Well never see that again. [laughter] and as they were leaving the white house in 1889, apparently, francis told the chief steward there, just keep everything the way it is, well be back in four years. And sure enough in 1892, cleveland did win the white house back. And he and francis and now their youngest daughter, baby ruth, moved into the white house. There had been one change while they were gone. Benjamin harrison, while the clevelands were, while they were in the white house and the clevelands were away, they changed over from gas to electric, and i think they did this so none of the clevelandsappliances would work. [laughter] so in 1892 grover wins the election, and he takes the oath of office in march, the inaugurations were in march at that time. And it was not a good time to become president. And this is where the panic of 1893 comes in the. Just nine days before grover took office, the Reading Railroad had gone bankrupt. The reading had been one of the most successful railroads in the u. S. , just the year before they built a brand new terminal in philadelphia which stood until the 1980s. But in 1893 the reading went bankrupt, and it was a bad sign. Railroads were hopelessly overbuilt in the 1880s and 1890s, and this was a speculative bubble much like weve had recently with other, other things, real estate and dot. Com. Well m the 1890s it was railroads. The number of rail lines doubled, more than doubled after the civil wa