P. Flower was endorsed as Democratic candidate for the governorship of New York; Fassett, the Republican candidate, condemned. Flower was elected, and the following year (1892), Democratic victory having crowned the Presidential campaign, the Club at once arranged for a reception in honor of the President and Vice-President elect, Grover Cleveland and Adlai E. Stevenson, to take place on November 10, 1892.

It was at this time that the Lotos Club, founded in 1870 for the promotion of art and letters, found itself temporarily without a home. With characteristic hospitality, the Manhattan Club on May 1 extended club courtesies to its members, as it had previously (April 13) extended them to the Alpha Delta Phi.

The grave political issue of the tariff question, brought about by the McKinley Act of 1890, unsatisfactory even to those who had passed it, excited in 1894 strong factional and national feeling, which on May 24 found expression in the Manhattan Club in a resolution framed by Mr. Walter Stanton. It voiced the Club's disapproval of the tariff blunders, which, it held, were responsible for the sufferings of the memorable winter of 1893–94.

The Club took that occasion also to pledge itself anew to the principle of a tariff for revenue only. It urged the passage of a revenue reform bill, declared that every hour of delay was a crime against the people, and condemned the proposed passage of an income tax as unnecessary, unjust, undemocratic, and in violation of the Constitution of the United States.

The Club decreed that a copy of these resolutions be sent every Democratic member of Congress.

In the following October, again at the motion of Mr. Stanton, a campaign committee of fifty was appointed by the president, among its members being Walter Stanton, William C. Whitney, Thomas F. Ryan, Perry Belmont, John T.

1

Agnew, Theodore W. Myers, H. R. Ickelheimer, Joseph J. O'Donohue, John D. Crimmins, Henry C. Miner, C. F. Dieterich, Randolph Guggenheimer, Robert Maclay Bull, John C. Calhoun, J. D. Archbold, William Butler Duncan, Elijah P. Smith, Commodore Elbridge T. Gerry, Charles J. Canda, Charles A. DuVivier, George Alexander Brown, Daniel K. Bayne, Joseph C. Hendrix, Amos F. Eno, Jacob Ruppert, Jr., John R. Bennett, Louis V. Bell, George C. Clausen, Calvin S. Brice, John C. Graham, and Lloyd S. Bryce.

In keeping with these movements was the reception, proposed by the Club, October 4, to be given in honor of the Empire State nominees.

A ladies' reception, of which no memorial seems to have lingered in Club records, was given, April 11, 1895; and again we find the Club, on May 24, 1895, extending its hospitalities to Democratic editors and their wives, and, on November 14, to the commissioned officers of the United States men-of-war in New York Harbor for a fortnight.

A vote of thanks was extended, April 9, 1896, to Thomas B. Clarke for services in connection with the loan exhibition of pictures arranged by the Club.

The Club, consistent in its principles, believed the cause of the business stagnation of 1896 to be the agitation in favor of the free coinage of silver. Accordingly, on May 28, 1896, it passed resolutions endorsing "one single monetary standard of value to be used in the purchase of merchandise and payment of debts, as the imperative demand of all interested in secure and prosperous domestic and international commerce." The Club thereafter denounced all agitation in favor of the enactment of laws for the unlimited coinage of silver at any ratio, or the adoption in any form of a double standard of value in money, and proclaimed its adherence to the gold-dollar standard of money value as the only safe basis for all our foreign and domestic transactions.

It held that the coming Democratic Convention, to be held that year, should endorse the administration of President Cleveland and declare a gold basis for sound money to be the one prominent issue at the coming election.

On May 10, 1898, a meeting was called in celebration of Dewey's victory in Manila Bay. That same year (October 3) a reception was given to Augustus Van Wyck, Democratic candidate for governor of New York.

Again, February 9, 1899, Grover Cleveland was requested to accept life membership without payment.

In the death of Mr. Coudert, which took place at Washington, December 20, 1903, the Club lost one of its most valued members. In the resolutions drawn up as expressive of Club sympathy and appreciation, we read of his having been an active and conspicuous member of the Club, an honored and influential friend of the organization, taking always a profound interest in its welfare, and rendering faithful and efficient service in its behalf.

Mr. Coudert joined the Club on December 3, 1874, and continued to be an active and conspicuous member up to the time of his death, serving as president from 1889 until 1899, when he voluntarily resigned, having previously done duty on the Board of Managers in 1880, and as vice-president for nine years, from 1880 to 1889. As president he displayed the greatest zeal and ability, evoking the lasting gratitude of his fellow-members. With Chauncey M. Depew, Mr. Coudert shared great popularity with business men. He earned his own way through Columbia College, then at Park and Church Streets, doing newspaper work. He was a good raconteur, full of wit and humor, possessing a clear, musical voice, all of which gave him great acceptance as an after-dinner speaker. He was the recipient of decorations from both France and Italy, the former bestowing the insignia of the Legion of Honor upon him. A famous Manhattan private dinner was the one given by him to the Board of Managers

on the eve of his sailing to act as counsel in the Behring Sea difficulty. Mr. Coudert thus was president almost the entire time of the sojourn of the Club in the Stewart house, Judge Truax only succeeding him in 1899, the date of its removal to its present quarters, an account of which, and the events leading thereto, we shall hear in the coming chapter.

But first reference must be made to two members of note, prominent in the Club in the Stewart era. One was that enthusiastic Democrat, Christopher C. Baldwin, vice-president of the Club and former president of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, who rallied the Democracy after Hancock's defeat and issued the call to the famous Cooper Union meeting that led to the election of Cleveland; the other, J. Edward Simmons, president of the Fourth National Bank, an office to which he was elected when he owned no stock, knew no director, and had never been in the bank.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

The Stewart House a "White Elephant"-Removal to Cheaper Quarters Imperative-Hunting for a New Club-house-The Final Choice-A Happy Solution.

HE Club, as we have seen, moved into the Stewart house in 1890. At the time there was a committee, consisting of Messrs. J. Sergeant Cram and L. Holme, appointed (February 20, 1890) to consider the sale of the Benkard house for $75,000. On June 9, 1892, an appropriation of $15,000 was made from the reserve fund of the Club to discharge its indebtedness.

From that date onward financial affairs seem to have become troublesome. The expenses of keeping up such an establishment proved to be enormous, since on January II, 1894, we find the Club disturbed over its electric-light bill. In spite of all efforts to reduce the expense, the bills had doubled and redoubled until the one under discussion reached the sum of $9500. As no compromise could be arrived at, the Club decided to use gas exclusively, and to make inquiries about the practicability of procuring for the Club an electric plant of its own.

In February of that year an amendment to increase the