What's a prez to do? Cleveland and Texas farmers
The 1880s were a tough time for Texas farmers. Drought afflicted much of the state, as it does periodically. The Texas delegation in Congress persuaded the legislature to approve a bill providing seeds to Texas farmers. The bill landed on the desk of Grover Cleveland.
The president was a Democrat of the old school, an adherent of the Jeffersonian philosophy that smaller government is generally better than larger. He construed the Constitution strictly, rejecting powers not expressly enumerated in that document.
Cleveland also had a reputation for strict probity. In an age when politicians were expected to do favors for one another, Cleveland was called “ugly honest"—refusing to help even his friends and Democratic allies, if such help conflicted with his judgment of the right thing to do. Amid his campaign for president in 1884, his Republican opponents discovered that as a young man he had fathered a child out of wedlock. What should we do?, asked Cleveland's campaign handlers. Tell the truth, Cleveland replied. They did, and voters rewarded Cleveland's candor by making him the first elected Democratic president since before the Civil War.
Yet though Cleveland was an honest politician, he remained a politician, responsible for the fate of his party, which indeed had fared poorly since the war. The Texas seed bill was popular enough to have won the approval of Congress, in an era when the federal government did not regularly take upon itself responsibility for the welfare of individuals. To veto the bill in the face of that popularity might spoil the Democrats’ comeback and ruin Cleveland's own chances of reelection.
He considered the matter carefully. And he decided as people who knew him expected he would. “It is represented that a long-continued and extensive drought has existed in certain portions of the State of Texas, resulting in a failure of crops and consequent distress and destitution,” he said in a message to Congress. “Though there has been some difference in statements concerning the extent of the people’s needs in the localities thus affected, there seems to be no doubt that there has existed a condition calling for relief; and I am willing to believe that, notwithstanding the aid already furnished, a donation of seed grain to the farmers located in this region, to enable them to put in new crops, would serve to avert a continuance or return of an unfortunate blight.” Yes, the Texas farmers were suffering.
“And yet I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan, as proposed by this bill, to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose,” Cleveland continued. “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.” Let the Texans look to charity or to one another.
There was a principle at stake. “A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people.”
This last sentiment—”though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people”—summarized conservative attitudes toward government responsibilities far into the twentieth century. Cleveland's own party moved away from this position, most conspicuously during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Congress approved various programs of federal aid to individuals. One of the reasons the Democrats changed their minds was that the depression demonstrated that in an industrial age, bad things like unemployment and loss of savings can befall good people through no fault of their own.
Another reason for the change was the cost to Cleveland and the party of his decision on the Texas seed bill. The year after his veto he was defeated for reelection, replaced by Republican Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland did regain the presidency in 1892, becoming the only president, as of early 2024, to be elected to nonconsecutive terms. Yet his second term witnessed a depression of its own that weakened the old guard and returned another Republican to the presidency. In his retirement, Cleveland watched the progressive movement gain ground in both parties, asserting the need for the federal government to step forward on behalf of individuals in the manner Cleveland couldn't countenance. He died before the New Deal established the American welfare state, but he could see it coming.