h men, a policy which
greatly furthered its usefulness.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
William Booth.
From a photograph by Rockwood, New York.

The peculiar uniform worn by the Salvation soldiers, always sufficing to
identify them, called attention to a fact never obvious till about
1890--the relative uniformity in the costumes of all fairly dressed
Americans whether men or women. The wide circulation of fashion plates
and pictorial papers accounted for this. About this time cuts came to be
a feature even of newspapers, a custom on which the more conservative
sheets at first frowned, though soon adopting it themselves.

CHAPTER VII.

MR. CLEVELAND AGAIN PRESIDENT

[1893-1895]

In the special session beginning August 7, 1893, a Democratic Congress
met under a Democratic President for the first time since 1859. The
results were disappointing. Divided, leaderless, in large part at bitter
variance with the Administration, the Democrats trooped to their
overthrow two years later.

During his second Administration Mr. Cleveland considerably extended the
merit system in the civil service. Candidates for consulships were
subjected to (non-competitive) examination. Public opinion commended
these moves, as it did the President's prompt signing of the
Anti-Lottery Bill, introduced in Congress when it was learned that the
expatriated Louisiana Lottery from its seat under Honduras jurisdiction
was operating in the United States through the express companies. The
bill prohibiting this abuse was passed at three in the morning on the
last day of the Congressional session, and received the President's
signature barely five minutes before the Congress expired.

[Illustration: Cleveland seated at a cluttered desk.]
Grover Cleveland.
From a photograph by Alexander Black.

At the opening of the Special Session, in August, 1893, the President
demanded the repeal of that clause in the Sherman law of 1890 requiring
the Government to make heavy monthly purchases of silver. The suspension
in India of the free coinage of silver the preceding June had
precipitated a disastrous monetary panic in the United States. Gold was
hoarded and exported, vast sums being drained from the Treasury. Credits
were refused, values shrivelled, business was palsied, labor idle. It
was this situation which led the President to convoke Congress in
special session.

Though achieving the repeal on November 1st, after Congressional
wrangles especi