Cleveland, Grover, 1927, Biographical Sketch

NO OTHER man has stepped so quickly from political obscurity to the Presidency as Grover Cleveland. Beginning life as a clerk in a village store at fifty dollars a year, Cleveland literally plowed his way to the top. As Mayor of Buffalo and later Governor of New York, he became the country's most conspicuous embodiment of the things that the times called for— independence in politics and a higher standard of conduct in office. Beginning his first term in 1885 by taking the oath of office on the Bible which his mother had given him, rather than by using a new copy of the Scriptures, as precedent prescribed, his administrations were notable for his constant defiance of precedents. Of him, it was said, he had "so much backbone it makes him stick out in front." While his second administration (1893-1897) was marked by the drastic panic of 1893, and by the railroad strike led by Eugene V. Debs, it was also conspicuous for the inauguration of the United States Commerce Commission, and the maintenance of the gold standard under terrific party and public pressure.1. Brief Biographies of our Presidents and the First Ladies of the Land, 1927, American Weekly, Inc., page 23.