cording to what he conceived to be their financial interest in the canvass, a uniform assessment of one quarter of one per cent being levied on the banks. He systematized the expenditure and had the books kept on true business principles. The Republican National Committee spent between three and three and a half millions and had also in reserve a guarantee fund which was not called upon.

Hanna early perceived that this was to be a campaign of education. Six hundred thousand dollars were spent for documents that were printed in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch and Hebrew, as well as English; among those which were carefully distributed were Sherman's, Carlisle's and McKinley's speeches. The New York Evening Post's Free Coinage Catechism was much in demand and gladly supplied. It was written by Alexander D. Noyes, the Post's financial editor, and two million copies of it were circulated. Carl Schurz was induced to enter the canvass on behalf of McKinley, and one million and a half copies of a clear and convincing speech of his were scattered abroad. This speech lent itself to sententious quotations; hence the leaflets called Schurz nuggets that were placed before many readers. Innumerable speakers of lesser note presented the case against free silver. Men in every county of the pivotal Western States were supplied with sound money literature; and, as they could not give their time for nothing, they were hired to read and explain the pamphlets and talk to the few or many who might gather at the school-houses or other places of resort to hear expounded the political issue of the day. Probably the most effective speaker in gaining votes was McKinley himself. Declining to emulate Bryan in his "whirlwind

tour," he spoke from the front veranda of his house in Canton to many deputations, some of them spontaneous, others arranged for, discussing mainly the financial question. He almost always knew what the visiting spokesman was going to say so that he was often able to revise his own address beforehand. These speeches of McKinley's were carefully prepared, as he well knew that he was addressing the newspaper-reading public of the whole country as well as the men who had travelled some distance to greet their candidate in person. Close students of the art of guiding public sentiment assert that people will often read in the newspaper a speech that has been orally delivered while they pass by an essay or letter in the same type and given the same prominence. McKinley's efforts were called his "front porch"1 speeches and, in their general tenor were of a piece with the formal letter of acceptance that was given to the public on August 26. Acknowledging that the money question was the chief issue of the campaign he gave it the first and most prominent place in his letter. "The meaning of the coinage plank adopted at Chicago," he wrote, "is that anyone may take a quantity of silver bullion, now worth fifty

1 John Hay said in his Memorial Address on McKinley delivered in the Capitol at Washington on Feb. 27, 1902: "From the front porch of his modest house in Canton he daily addressed the delegations which came from every part of the country to greet him in a series of speeches so strong, so varied, so pertinent, so full of facts briefly set forth, of theories embodied in a single phrase, that they formed the hourly text for the other speakers of his party and give probably the most convincing proof we have of his surprising fertility of resource and flexibility of mind. All this was done without anxiety or strain. I remember a day spent with him during that busy summer. He had made nineteen speeches the day before; that day he made many. But in the intervals of these addresses he sat in his study and talked, with nerves as quiet and free from care as if we had been spending a holiday at the seaside or among the hills."

three cents, to the mints of the United States, have it coined at the expense of the Government and receive for it a silver dollar which shall be legal tender for the payment of all debts, public and private. . . . Until international agreement is had, it is the plain duty of the United States to maintain the gold standard. It is the recognized and sole standard of the great commercial nations of the world with which we trade more largely than with any other. Eighty-four per cent of our foreign trade for the fiscal year 1895 was with gold standard countries and our trade with other countries was settled on a gold basis." Addressing himself to the argument that the "present industrial and financial depression was the result of the gold standard," he declared, "Good money never made times hard."

Hanna had a high opinion of the influence of the Fourth Estate and knew the hold that the weekly county journals had on their readers. He sent them specially prepared matter, plates and ready prints. It was fortunate that nearly all of the large daily newspapers, whether Democratic or Republican, were ardent advocates of the cause of sound money; copies of these were industriously distributed. "Of course," wrote Croly, "cartoons, posters, inscriptions and buttons were manufactured by the carload the most popular poster being the five-colored, single-sheet lithograph, bearing a portrait of McKinley with the inscription underneath, 'The Advance Agent of Prosperity.'" 1

During August Hanna was somewhat staggered by the poll of Iowa which indicated that this sure Republican State would cast her electoral vote for Bryan. Yet ad

1 P. 218.

mitting, for the moment, that Iowa must be placed in the doubtful column, he was still confident of McKinley's election, believing that at the worst it would be a close shave, while he really hoped for a stampede. At any rate, the campaign was to him too serious a matter for any phase of it to be left to chance; indeed, he and McKinley had decided that, if matters got desperate, McKinley should take the stump in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Iowa and Kansas.

The Methodist, the Roman Catholic and the other churches were mainly on the side of sound money and many preachers did not hesitate to bring politics into the pulpit during their Sunday exhortations. Nature gave a welcome help to Hanna in an advance in the price of wheat. Now do something for corn came a witty demand from the Indian corn-growing States.

To Bryan's oratory more than to any other one cause was due the impression that the campaign was one of the masses against the classes. Some of the resolutions of the Chicago platform were deemed anarchistic 1 and influenced votes against Bryan who thought it wise to deny the imputation. "We have been called anarchists," he said. "I am not an anarchist. There is not beneath the flag a truer friend of government or a greater lover of law and order than the nominee of the Chicago convention." It is difficult to describe with strict impartiality a heated political campaign in one's own country and one's own time, but a keen observer from England should have been able to view the events of 1896 with a comparative lack of bias. "I have never thought the Republic in [such] serious peril as I do now, wrote Gold2 Speech in Baltimore during September, 463.

1 Ante.

2

win Smith, "when I see the organization of the Democratic party captured by Anarchism and Repudiation. Bimetallism, you will understand, is the least part of the matter; even Repudiation is not the greatest. The greatest is the uprising of disorder, in all its forms and grades against the institutions of the American Republic. . . . Bryanism is a vast cave of Adullam, in which are combined all the distressed, all the discontented, all who have nothing to lose and may hope to gain by a general overturn. In November the Republic of

.

the Fathers will be fighting for its life." 1

During October the stampede to McKinley took place. General J. D. Cox, who was then living in Cincinnati, Ohio, wrote on October 26 in a private letter: "When I went East in June I am sure nine-tenths of the Ohio Republicans were ardent bimetallists, with more leaning to free silver than to gold monometallism. Now nearly every man seems to rival his neighbor in putting gold forward as the single standard. . . . .. The claim of Republican managers that there is a 'landslide' going on in McKinley's favor, I assume to be sufficiently true to warrant a confident expectation of his election."

Bryan made a wonderful canvass, travelling 18,000 miles and addressing audiences almost every day. The mere fact of his bearing the physical strain he was undergoing and the eagerness of people to see and hear this famous orator must have counted in his favor.2

1

1 Saturday Review, Aug. 1, Sept. 5, Oct. 31.

In this account of the campaign of 1896, I have been assisted by Croly's Life of Hanna; Oleott's Life of McKinley; Bryan, The First Battle; Peck; Stanwood, Hist. of the Presidency; The Nation, passim; Goldwin Smith's articles in the Saturday Review; Foraker, Notes of a Busy Life, i.; Conversations with Mark Hanna, Aug. 23, Dec. 20.