Chapter 2

Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the senate and house of commons of Canada, enacts as follows:

1. United States vessels and wrecking appliances may salve any property wrecked and may render aid and assistance to any vessels wrecked, disabled, or in distress in the waters of Canada contiguous to the United States.

2. Aid and assistance include all necessary towing incident thereto.

3. Nothing in the customs or coasting laws of Canada shall restrict the salving operations of such vessels or wrecking appliances.

4. This act shall come into force from and after a date to be named in a proclamation by the Governor-General, which proclamation may be issued when the Governor in council is advised that the privilege of salving any property wrecked or of aiding any vessels wrecked, disabled, or in distress in United States waters contiguous to Canada will be extended to Canadian vessels and wrecking appliances to the extent to which such privilege is granted by this act to United States vessels and wrecking appliances.

5. This act shall cease to be in force from and after a date to be named in a proclamation to be issued by the Governor-General to the effect that the said reciprocal privilege has been withdrawn, revoked, or rendered inoperative with respect to Canadian vessels or wrecking appliances in United States waters contiguous to Canada.

And whereas said proclamation of the Governor-General of Canada was communicated to this Government by Her Britannic Majesty's ambassador on the 2d day of June last:

Now, therefore, being thus satisfied that the privilege of aiding American or other vessels and property wrecked, disabled, or in distress in Canadian waters contiguous to the United States has been extended by the government of the Dominion of Canada to American vessels and wrecking appliances of all descriptions, I, Grover Cleveland, President of the United States of America, in virtue of the authority conferred upon me by the aforesaid act of Congress approved May 24, 1890, do proclaim that the condition specified in the legislation of Congress aforesaid now exists and is fulfilled, and that the provisions of said act of May 24, 1890, whereby Canadian vessels and wrecking appliances may render aid and assistance to Canadian and other vessels and property wrecked, disabled, or in distress in the waters of the United States contiguous to the Dominion of Canada, including the canal and improvement of the waters between Lake Erie and Lake Huron and the waters of the St. Marys River and Canal, are now in full force and effect.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States of America to be hereunto affixed.

[SEAL.]

Done at the city of Washington, this 17th day of July, A.D. 1893, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and eighteenth.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

By the President: W.Q. GRESHAM, _Secretary of State_.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas it is provided by section 13 of the act of Congress of March 3, 1891, entitled "An act to amend Title LX, chapter 3, of the Revised Statutes of the United States, relating to copyrights," that said act "shall only apply to a citizen or subject of a foreign state or nation when such foreign state or nation permits to citizens of the United States of America the benefit of copyright on substantially the same basis as its own citizens, or when such foreign state or nation is a party to an international agreement which provides for reciprocity in the granting of copyright, by the terms of which agreement the United States of America may at its pleasure become a party to such agreement;" and

Whereas it is also provided by said section that "the existence of either of the conditions aforesaid shall be determined by the President of the United States by proclamation made from time to time as the purposes of this act may require;" and

Whereas satisfactory official assurances have been given that in Portugal the law permits to citizens of the United States the benefit of copyright on substantially the same basis as to the subjects of Portugal:

Now, therefore, I, Grover Cleveland, President of the United States of America, do declare and proclaim that the first of the conditions specified in section 13 of the act of March 3, 1891, now exists and is fulfilled in respect to the subjects of Portugal.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

[SEAL.]

Done at the city of Washington, this 20th day of July, A.D. 1893, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and eighteenth.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

By the President: W.Q. GRESHAM, _Secretary of State_.

EXECUTIVE ORDERS.

AMENDMENT OF CIVIL-SERVICE RULES.

Departmental Rule VII is hereby amended by adding thereto the following section:

8. The First Comptroller of the Treasury having advised the Secretary of the Treasury that under the operation of section 5 of the legislative, executive, and judicial appropriation act making appropriations for the fiscal year ending June 30,1894, the employment of substitutes in the departmental service must cease from and after July 1, 1893, it is hereby ordered, in view of the fact that the substitutes now employed were appointed by regular certification under section 7 of this rule, that such of said substitutes as shall not be appointed to regular places before the employment of substitutes shall cease shall be eligible for appointment to regular places by reinstatement under the provisions of Departmental Rule X, in the order of their employment as substitutes as provided in said section 7, notwithstanding the prohibition contained in the second proviso of said section; and said substitutes shall have preference for appointment in the manner herein provided over all other eligibles.

This section shall become inoperative and cease to be a part of the civil-service rules when all of the substitutes now employed in the several Departments shall have been appointed as herein provided or shall have ceased to be eligible for appointment by reason of the expiration of the time within which a reinstatement can be made under Rule X.

Approved, April 12, 1893.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _May 8, 1893_.

It has become apparent after two months' experience that the rules heretofore promulgated regulating interviews with the President have wholly failed in their operation. The time which under these rules was set apart for the reception of Senators and Representatives has been almost entirely spent in listening to applications for office, which have been bewildering in volume, perplexing and exhausting in their iteration, and impossible of remembrance.

A due regard for public duty, which must be neglected if present conditions continue, and an observance of the limitations placed upon human endurance oblige me to decline from and after this date all personal interviews with those seeking appointments to office, except as I on my own motion may especially invite them. The same considerations make it impossible for me to receive those who merely desire to pay their respects except on the days and during the hours especially designated for that purpose.

I earnestly request Senators and Representatives to aid me in securing for them uninterrupted interviews by declining to introduce their constituents and friends when visiting the Executive Mansion during the hours designated for their reception. Applicants for office will only prejudice their prospects by repeated importunity and by remaining in Washington to await results.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _May 26, 1893_.

_It is hereby ordered_, That the several Executive Departments and the Government Printing Office be closed on Tuesday, the 30th instant, to enable the employees to participate in the decoration of the graves of the soldiers and sailors who fell in the defense of the Union during the War of the Rebellion.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

AMENDMENTS OF CIVIL-SERVICE RULES.

Special Departmental Rule No. 1 is hereby amended as follows: Include among the places excepted from examination therein the following:

6. In the Department of Agriculture:

In the office of the Secretary: The assistant chiefs of the following divisions: Of economic ornithology and mammalogy, of pomology, of microscopy, of vegetable pathology, of records and editing, and one property clerk.

In the Weather Bureau: The assistant chief of the Bureau, the three professors of meteorology of highest grade, executive officer, superintendent of telegraph lines, and one property clerk.

In the United States Commission of Fish and Fisheries the following: Scientific or professional experts to be temporarily employed in investigations authorized by Congress, but not to include any persons regularly employed in that Commission nor any person whose duties are not scientific or professional and who are not experts in the particular line of scientific inquiry in which they are to be employed.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _June 6, 1893_.

The foregoing amendments are hereby approved.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

AMENDMENTS OF CIVIL-SERVICE RULES.

Postal Rule No. 2 is hereby amended as follows:

Strike out all of section 1 except the last paragraph, relating to non-competitive examinations, and insert in lieu thereof the following:

1. To test the fitness for admission to the classified postal service one or more examinations shall be provided, as the Commission may determine, which shall not include more than the following subjects: Orthography, copying, penmanship, arithmetic (fundamental rules, fractions, and percentage), elements of the geography of the United States, local delivery, reading addresses, physical tests: _Provided_, That when special examinations are needed to test fitness for any place requiring special or technical knowledge or skill the examination shall include, in addition to the special subjects required, such of the subjects of the regular examination as the Commission may determine.

Strike out section 2 and insert in lieu thereof the following:

No person shall be examined for the position of letter carrier if under 21 or over 40 years of age, and no person shall be examined for any other position in the classified postal service if under 18 years of age.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _June 6, 1893_.

The foregoing amendments are hereby approved.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _Washington, June 16, 1893_.

In accordance with section 16 of the act of Congress approved April 25, 1890, and entitled "An act to provide for celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus by holding an international exhibition of arts, industries, manufactures, and the product of the soil, mine, and sea in the city of Chicago, in the State of Illinois," the designations of the following-named persons as members of the board of control and management of the Government exhibit at the World's Columbian Exhibition are hereby approved:

W.W. Rockhill, chief clerk of the Department of State, to represent that Department, _vice_ William E. Curtis.

Lieutenant-Commander E.D. Taussig, United States Navy, to represent the Navy Department, _vice_ Captain R.W. Meade, United States Navy.

Frank W. Clark, chemist, United States Geological Survey, to represent the Department of the Interior, _vice_ Horace A. Taylor.

GROVER CLEVELAND.

SPECIAL SESSION MESSAGE.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 8, 1893_.

_To the Congress of the United States_:

The existence of an alarming and extraordinary business situation, involving the welfare and prosperity of all our people, has constrained me to call together in extra session the people's representatives in Congress, to the end that through a wise and patriotic exercise of the legislative duty, with which they solely are charged, present evils may be mitigated and dangers threatening the future may be averted.

Our unfortunate financial plight is not the result of untoward events nor of conditions related to our natural resources, nor is it traceable to any of the afflictions which frequently check national growth and prosperity. With plenteous crops, with abundant promise of remunerative production and manufacture, with unusual invitation to safe investment, and with satisfactory assurance to business enterprise, suddenly financial distrust and fear have sprung up on every side. Numerous moneyed institutions have suspended because abundant assets were not immediately available to meet the demands of frightened depositors. Surviving corporations and individuals are content to keep in hand the money they are usually anxious to loan, and those engaged in legitimate business are surprised to find that the securities they offer for loans, though heretofore satisfactory, are no longer accepted. Values supposed to be fixed are fast becoming conjectural, and loss and failure have invaded every branch of business.

I believe these things are principally chargeable to Congressional legislation touching the purchase and coinage of silver by the General Government.

This legislation is embodied in a statute passed on the 14th day of July, 1890, which was the culmination of much agitation on the subject involved, and which may be considered a truce, after a long struggle, between the advocates of free silver coinage and those intending to be more conservative.

Undoubtedly the monthly purchases by the Government of 4,500,000 ounces of silver, enforced under that statute, were regarded by those interested in silver production as a certain guaranty of its increase in price. The result, however, has been entirely different, for immediately following a spasmodic and slight rise the price of silver began to fall after the passage of the act, and has since reached the lowest point ever known. This disappointing result has led to renewed and persistent effort in the direction of free silver coinage.

Meanwhile not only are the evil effects of the operation of the present law constantly accumulating, but the result to which its execution must inevitably lead is becoming palpable to all who give the least heed to financial subjects.

This law provides that in payment for the 4,500,000 ounces of silver bullion which the Secretary of the Treasury is commanded to purchase monthly there shall be issued Treasury notes redeemable on demand in gold or silver coin, at the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury, and that said notes may be reissued. It is, however, declared in the act to be "the established policy of the United States to maintain the two metals on a parity with each other upon the present legal ratio or such ratio as may be provided by law." This declaration so controls the action of the Secretary of the Treasury as to prevent his exercising the discretion nominally vested in him if by such action the parity between gold and silver may be disturbed. Manifestly a refusal by the Secretary to pay these Treasury notes in gold if demanded would necessarily result in their discredit and depreciation as obligations payable only in silver, and would destroy the parity between the two metals by establishing a discrimination in favor of gold.

Up to the 15th day of July, 1893, these notes had been issued in payment of silver-bullion purchases to the amount of more than $147,000,000. While all but a very small quantity of this bullion remains uncoined and without usefulness in the Treasury, many of the notes given in its purchase have been paid in gold. This is illustrated by the statement that between the 1st day of May, 1892, and the 15th day of July, 1893, the notes of this kind issued in payment for silver bullion amounted to a little more than $54,000,000, and that during the same period about $49,000,000 were paid by the Treasury in gold for the redemption of such notes.

The policy necessarily adopted of paying these notes in gold has not spared the gold reserve of $100,000,000 long ago set aside by the Government for the redemption of other notes, for this fund has already been subjected to the payment of new obligations amounting to about $150,000,000 on account of silver purchases, and has as a consequence for the first time since its creation been encroached upon.

We have thus made the depletion of our gold easy and have tempted other and more appreciative nations to add it to their stock. That the opportunity we have offered has not been neglected is shown by the large amounts of gold which have been recently drawn from our Treasury and exported to increase the financial strength of foreign nations. The excess of exports of gold over its imports for the year ending June 30, 1893, amounted to more than $87,500,000.

Between the 1st day of July, 1890, and the 15th day of July, 1893, the gold coin and bullion in our Treasury decreased more than $132,000,000, while during the same period the silver coin and bullion in the Treasury increased more than $147,000,000. Unless Government bonds are to be constantly issued and sold to replenish our exhausted gold, only to be again exhausted, it is apparent that the operation of the silver-purchase law now in force leads in the direction of the entire substitution of silver for the gold in the Government Treasury, and that this must be followed by the payment of all Government obligations in depreciated silver.

At this stage gold and silver must part company and the Government must fail in its established policy to maintain the two metals on a parity with each other. Given over to the exclusive use of a currency greatly depreciated according to the standard of the commercial world, we could no longer claim a place among nations of the first class, nor could our Government claim a performance of its obligation, so far as such an obligation has been imposed upon it, to provide for the use of the people the best and safest money.

If, as many of its friends claim, silver ought to occupy a larger place in our currency and the currency of the world through general international cooperation and agreement, it is obvious that the United States will not be in a position to gain a hearing in favor of such an arrangement so long as we are willing to continue our attempt to accomplish the result single-handed.

The knowledge in business circles among our own people that our Government can not make its fiat equivalent to intrinsic value nor keep inferior money on a parity with superior money by its own independent efforts has resulted in such a lack of confidence at home in the stability of currency values that capital refuses its aid to new enterprises, while millions are actually withdrawn from the channels of trade and commerce to become idle and unproductive in the hands of timid owners. Foreign investors, equally alert, not only decline to purchase American securities, but make haste to sacrifice those which they already have.

It does not meet the situation to say that apprehension in regard to the future of our finances is groundless and that there is no reason for lack of confidence in the purposes or power of the Government in the premises. The very existence of this apprehension and lack of confidence, however caused, is a menace which ought not for a moment to be disregarded. Possibly, if the undertaking we have in hand were the maintenance of a specific known quantity of silver at a parity with gold, our ability to do so might be estimated and gauged, and perhaps, in view of our unparalleled growth and resources, might be favorably passed upon. But when our avowed endeavor is to maintain such parity in regard to an amount of silver increasing at the rate of $50,000,000 yearly, with no fixed termination to such increase, it can hardly be said that a problem is presented whose solution is free from doubt.

The people of the United States are entitled to a sound and stable currency and to money recognized as such on every exchange and in every market of the world. Their Government has no right to injure them by financial experiments opposed to the policy and practice of other civilized states, nor is it justified in permitting an exaggerated and unreasonable reliance on our national strength and ability to jeopardize the soundness of the people's money.

This matter rises above the plane of party politics. It vitally concerns every business and calling and enters every household in the land. There is one important aspect of the subject which especially should never be overlooked. At times like the present, when the evils of unsound finance threaten us, the speculator may anticipate a harvest gathered from the misfortune of others, the capitalist may protect himself by hoarding or may even find profit in the fluctuations of values; but the wage earner--the first to be injured by a depreciated currency and the last to receive the benefit of its correction--is practically defenseless. He relies for work upon the ventures of confident and contented capital. This failing him, his condition is without alleviation, for he can neither prey on the misfortunes of others nor hoard his labor. One of the greatest statesmen our country has known, speaking more than fifty years ago, when a derangement of the currency had caused commercial distress, said:

The very man of all others who has the deepest interest in a sound currency and who suffers most by mischievous legislation in money matters is the man who earns his daily bread by his daily toil.

These words are as pertinent now as on the day they were uttered, and ought to impressively remind us that a failure in the discharge of our duty at this time must especially injure those of our countrymen who labor, and who because of their number and condition are entitled to the most watchful care of their Government.

It is of the utmost importance that such relief as Congress can afford in the existing situation be afforded at once. The maxim "He gives twice who gives quickly" is directly applicable. It may be true that the embarrassments from which the business of the country is suffering arise as much from evils apprehended as from those actually existing. We may hope, too, that calm counsels will prevail, and that neither the capitalists nor the wage earners will give way to unreasoning panic and sacrifice their property or their interests under the influence of exaggerated fears. Nevertheless, every day's delay in removing one of the plain and principal causes of the present state of things enlarges the mischief already done and increases the responsibility of the Government for its existence. Whatever else the people have a right to expect from Congress, they may certainly demand that legislation condemned by the ordeal of three years' disastrous experience shall be removed from the statute books as soon as their representatives can legitimately deal with it.

It was my purpose to summon Congress in special session-early in the coming September, that we might enter promptly upon the work of tariff reform, which the true interests of the country clearly demand, which so large a majority of the people, as shown by their suffrages, desire and expect, and to the accomplishment of which every effort of the present Administration is pledged. But while tariff reform has lost nothing of its immediate and permanent importance and must in the near future engage the attention of Congress, it has seemed to me that the financial condition of the country should at once and before all other subjects be considered by your honorable body.