economy since 1890.
The civil service and ballot reforms had been started on the upward
course, but party machines continued in control of each great
organization.

The conduct of the Senate discouraged many of the reformers in the
spring of 1897. Cleveland had left in its hands a treaty of arbitration
with Great Britain, but no action had been taken upon it when he left
office. Arbitration had been a common international tool between Great
Britain and the United States. Boundaries, fisheries, and claims had
repeatedly been submitted to courts or commissions of varying
structure, and even the claims affecting the honor of Great Britain had
been settled by arbitration at Geneva. After the Venezuela excitement
friends of peace gathered in a convention at Lake Mohonk to discuss the
extension of the method of arbitration. When Great Britain had accepted
the principle in the case of Venezuela, Cleveland entered into a general
arbitration treaty, which was signed at Washington in February, 1897.
Public opinion received it cordially, but the Senate was slow to take it
up. Late in the spring it was ratified with amendments that destroyed
its force and showed the reluctance of Senators to accept the principle
of arbitration. International peace was thus postponed, while the rising
insurrection in Cuba drove it as well as general reform from the center
of public interest.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The _American Commonwealth_ of James Bryce (1888) is the starting-point
for the study of political conditions of the nineties, and is to be
reinforced by W. Wilson, _Congressional Government_ (1885), T.
Roosevelt, _Essays on Practical Politics_ (1888), and P.L. Ford, _The
Honorable Peter Stirling_ (1894). Among the personal narratives the most
useful are T. Roosevelt, _Fifty Years of My Life_ (1913); R.M.
LaFollette, _A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences_ (1913; also
published serially in the _American Magazine_, 1911, as
"Autobiography"); Tom L. Johnson's _My Story_ (1911; edited by E.J.
Hauser); C. Lloyd, _Henry Demarest Lloyd_ (2 vols., 1912);
_Autobiography of Thomas Collier Platt_ (1910; edited by L.J. Lang, and
highly unreliable); and Jane Addams, _Twenty Years of Hull House_
(1910). Much light is thrown upon the mechanics of tariff legislation by
I.M. Tarbell, _The Tariff in Our Times_ (1911), and by the lobby
investigations conducted by committees of Congress in 1913, and by the
campaign fund investigations conducted