Growth in his mouth. The author of the book the president is a sick man which recounts the surgery being performed on a yacht and the president disappearing for five days. Home run, im david cowen, president of the museum of American Finance. Welcome. Welcome back to our lunch and learn series. Welcome to the university of central ork and professional allen and. The okies are in the house. Thank you for coming. Join us next week on the 26th, were going to continue the lunch and learn series. Director of rothschild will be here melanie aspy. That should be fascinating, this is a historic banking house, again, on thursday. On the 24th, tuesday upcoming, well be screening rediscovering alexander hamilton. This is the pbs documentary recently released. All your questions about the movie can be answered because the producer director 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, Harry Trumans excellent adventure, which traced harry and besss crosscountry trip in 1953. 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 football and steagles, a combination between the Pittsburgh Steelers and eagles. He has an eclectic background, not just an author, a journalist. Let me tell you some of the things he has done. Hes been a hot dog vendor at a traveling circus. A Halloween Costume salesman. He has been a gas station attendant, a Convenience Store clerk. In two months, hes moving to mongolia with his wife, whos a Foreign Service officer taking a position there. So that should be pretty interesting. Very importantly, he is a friend to this museum and a member of it. Its my pleasure to introduce Matthew Algeo. 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, a fantastic museum. Ive been coming 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. This is the only place you could send an email with that urgency and get it answered within an hour. It was very helpful to me and i am a member, a proud member. Thats why i got in for free today. Before i talk about grover, who was a very interesting person, i should probably tell you about much less interesting person. That would be me. As david said, my wife is a Foreign Service officer, so we move around a lot. My name the algeo. Everybody thinks its italian. Its actually irish. The o is on the wrong end, i know. My grandparents from north of ireland, from done donegal. Actually of irish citizenship. G. Actually of irish citizenship. I spent a year in ireland in the 90s as a freelance reporter. I should do this because it 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 island. I had to get an Identity Card and i went to the irish e quift equivalent of the dmv. They were very organized. The first line was last names beginning a to l. Second was mick to o, the third was p to z. Of course, the longest line was mick to o. With an unusual last name in ireland, there were certain advantages to that. I am the youngest of seven, which is why im avoiding eye contact with you. I found it was better to keep my head down. I did grow up in a house of readers. My parents were prolitic readers. They werent sitting around reading french existentialists or anything. My dad like michener. I used to say he would read by the pound. My mom loved true crime. When i was a kid, it would be very embarrassing riding the train into the city with her. Shes be reading Something Like the i95 killer. On the front cover, there would be somebody stabbing somebody. I was like, could you just put it in a newspaper or something. But i was lucky to grow up in a house like that. I ran into a friend from high school a few years ago who said when ever i went to your house in high school, your parents would just be sitting in the living room reading. No tv, no radio. No nothing. I always thought that was so weird. Now that he has kids of his own, i think he would appreciate that was a really good atmosphere to grow up in. It fostered my love of books. I went to college in philadelphia at the university of pennsylvania. I 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 this nonbest selling books. Folklore especially was a nonlucrative one. I still remember looking at the want ads in the Philadelphia Inquirer every sunday. Would have been between florist and forklift operator. Finding those such jobs, i moved to seattle and drifted into public radio. The stations way on the left of the dial. Like 89, 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, i went to los angeles and got a job at the Public Radio Program called marketplace. 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. We were in a bit of a quandary sass to who would be the breadwinner, her or me. After several rounds of voting, it was still one to one. And somehow, i was managed to gain a controlling share in the firm and eventually, she took the position and became a bread winner, allowing me to work a little bit on this nonlucrative career. So we went to africa. The first book i did was about philadelphia pittsburgh steagles. They were so short during world war ii they had to merge the steelers and eagles. So rag tag misfit kind of bunch. What i tried to do with that book and with the other books is to take a small and unusual event in American History and really expand on it to talk a little bit more about the times that event takes place in. And hopefully, ive done that with this book. The president is a sick man even i had to look at the subtitle to read it. Written virtualous Grover Cleveland vilified the newsman who exposed the truth. Thank you for coming, everybody. Actually, its funny. We were trying to be evocative of 19th century titles that books would have, being the true and fair account of blah blah blah. This is the short version of the subtitle. We found out databases for book sellers have a limit for how many characters you can have in the title of your book. We 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 biography . I always new 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 Grover Clevelands cancerous tumor. I never really thought much more about it, but about ten years ago, i went to another fine museum in philadelphia. Its a museum of medical history. They have all kinds of unusual things there. They have chief justice john what are shalls bladder stones. If you ever have a hankering to see that. A piece of brain from charles guiteau, the man that shot garfield. In a small injury they have the tumor from Grover Clevelands mouth. That really triggered my interest in the story, the fact that the tumor was still around and somebody thought this would be something to keep, an interesting keepsake. I talked to the museum. Turns out one of the doctors that performed the operation had kept it and donated it to the museum back in 1917. Not only that but i guess you would know hes a bit of a saver since he saved a you tumor but he saved letters and lots of information about the operation, which was intended to be secret. I realized there was the possibility of doing thing about this story. Then 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. 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, you know world war ii, world war i, but the 1880s and 90s, i didnt know a lot about, so it was a lot of fun to go back and learn 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. Not intended to be a compliment. To guild was to be extravagant, unnecessarily extravagant. That name stuck, the gilded age. Politics were fascinating. And there was so many things in researching the book that i talk about in the book that really have resonance today. I dont go into this the book so much, but i like to point out the first birther controversy took place in 1880 when garfield was ranked 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 clevelands tough. I dont know what you do with Chester Arthur. The rumors at the time were that Chester Arthur had been born in canada. His father was an irishman, his mother was a canadian from quebec. They emigrated to vermont. The story went 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 arthur was not an american citizen. Because neither of his parents were and he wasnt born in the u. S. Ill point out right now, 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. 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 me just for the fact that, and this is what everybody knows. Grover served two nonconsecutive terms. He was elected in 1884. Lost reelection in 1888 and 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. 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. I was at a party with friends, and i said, no, 43, because grover gets counted twice. Shut up, nobody wants to hear about Grover Cleveland right now. My friends, 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 an extraordinary politician also had the most extraordinary rise to the white house. I mean, in 1880, cleveland was a single guy living in a boarding house in buffalo. Had a fairly good law practice. Well respected and well liked in buffalo, but really wasnt active in politics in buffalo. In four years, he became president. Its just impossible to imagine now. We know the name of our next president. We dont know who its going to be, but weve heard the name at least. Theres a list of 30, 40, 50 100 people that might be president. Probably the next two or three 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 live in some ways. Born in 1837. 16, left school, moved to buffalo, studied law. In a law firm there. Really had no formal education after 16. Selftaught in law. And in 1881, they were looking for a reformist candidate to run as democratic nominee for mayor of buffalo. Grover won that election and he immediately established a reputation forrenesty and integrity. He vetoed a lot of bills. He was nope as the veto mayor. One of the most famous bills was when there was a bill to establish a new sewer system in buffalo, and the city council awarded the contract to the highest bidder. The difference between that and the next lowest bid presumably was to be spread among all the members of the city council. Grover vetoed that bill. And he vetoed many other bills and quickly earned a reputation for integrity and honesty. In 1882, he was elected governor of new york and in 1884, he was elected president of the United States. So here you have from 1880 to 1884, a guy who goes from being a lawyer nobody heard about in buffalo to mayor, to governor and finally 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, was a terribly vicious election. One of the dirtiest president ial campaigns in American History. It came out during the campaign that grover fathered an illegitimate child. His response was legendary. He sent a telegram to his friends back in beautiful that said simply, tell the truth. 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 into a positive thing for his campaign. It demonstrated his integrity and refusal to deny the truth. The campaign, he was running against a guy named james g. Blaine. As the democrats like to say, james g. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of maine. 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. Whoever won new york state would win the election. It was that simple. A few days before the election, blaine appeared at a Campaign Event and was introduced by a protestant minister. The minister called the democrats the party of rum, romanism and rebellion. Drunk, catholic, and disloyal, basically. This swung the catholic vote, especially new york city, to cleveland, who won carried new york by 1,000 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 elected. He married a woman named francis folsom, who was 21 at the time. Grover was 49. It was a 28 year age difference. I dont think well see another 21yearold first lady again. Its possible. Its a good thing schwarzenegger cant be elected president. 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. There is a story after grover lost the election in 1888, he lost to harrison, although grover won the popular vote in 1888 but lost in the electoral college. Well never see that again. And as they were leaving the white house in 1889, apparently, francis told chief steward there, just keep everything the way it is. Well be back in four years. 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 while they were in the white house and they changed over from gas to electric. And i think they did this so none of the cleefds clevelands appliances would work. But in 1892 grover went to 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. This is where the panic of 1893 comes in. Just nine days before grove took office, the Redding Railroad had gone bankrupt. One of the most successful railroads in the u. S. Just the rear before they built a brandnew terminal in philadelphia, redding terminal, which stood until the 1980s. But in 1893, the redding went bankrupt, and it was a bad sign. Railroads were hopelessly overbuilt in 1880s and 1890s. This was a speculative bubble, much like weve had recently with other things. Real estate and dotcom. In the 1880s, it was railroads. The number of rail lines more than doubled after the civil war, but the population only grew about 50, 60 . Youd have multiple lines running between cities that competing Railroad Companies had. And then the bottom fell out in 1893. 119 railroads went bankrupt. In 1893. And about 20 , i believe, of the number of railroads in the country. And of course, all the people who had invested stock in the railroads were wiped out. And this really sparked a panic on wall street and sent the stock market down. There was another thing going on that contributed to the panic of 1893, and i wont get into it too much here. Suffice it to say in the book i write about it in sparkling detail. Really some amazing prose i came up with. But its about the debate over gold versus silver. That was what should our currency be based on . Should it be based on gold, or should it be based on gold and silver. Now, this all might seem arcane and a little silly to us today when our currency is based on yes. Nothing. Quality paper. Very good paper it is, though. You wash it and you can still use it. But in 1893, the debate really boiled down to should our money be backed by gold or silver. The country