who made the work a labor of love and has presented the real Mark Hanna with remarkable perspicacity and skill. Some of Hanna's friends, on hearing of the selection, may have shuddered at the thought of an author with socialistic proclivities undertaking the biography of a strong individualist; yet the accomplished editor of the American Statesmen series had chosen Carl Schurz, an avowed tariff reformer, to write the life of Henry Clay and the wisdom of this selection had been fully demonstrated. Even so was the choice of Herbert Croly to write the life of Mark Hanna. One may learn from that book what manner of man was Hanna when he determined to bend all his energies to the nomination of McKinley in 1896.

Hanna and McKinley were warm personal friends. They had first met in 1876 in the Court House at Canton, Ohio, where were being tried one miner for assault with intent to kill and a number of others for being engaged in a riot. Hanna as head of his Coal Company was active in prosecution and McKinley was one of the attorneys of the Stark County bar who had volunteered for the defence. It was a trial in which bitterness developed on both sides and McKinley won attention from the prosecution by his personal resemblance to Daniel Webster, and by his gentle consideration for the men who had deemed it their duty to prosecute the offending miners. In the same autumn McKinley was elected to Congress and by degrees he and Hanna became intimate acquaintances. At the National Convention of 1884, they shared an apartment at a hotel; their relations were cordial although McKinley was for Blaine and Hanna for Sherman. The Convention of 1888, when they both supported Sherman, increased the mutual attachment. Each saw

qualities in the other that drew them together and, as both were working for the same end, they were now in complete sympathy.

Hanna's admiration for McKinley was profound. He shared his belief in the protective tariff as something sacred and not to be touched by profane hands. A man put forward for the presidential nomination should lose no opportunity of seeing influential men in the several States and commending himself to them by his personal bearing. Once when Hanna had with some difficulty secured an assemblage of men to meet the prospective candidate in an Eastern city, McKinley sent regrets on account of the illness of an invalid wife. This, for the moment, irritated Hanna as he thought that the wife might in her chronic condition have been left to the care of a doctor and nurse, as she was by no means dangerously ill and that McKinley might have kept the engagement which would have been a signal aid to his candidacy. This misfortune seemed to Hanna a considerable obstacle in the path of McKinley's advancement yet he was so struck with the man's sublime devotion to his invalid wife that he could not help exclaiming, "McKinley is a saint."

Hanna "had not a single small trait in his nature," declared Roosevelt. "I never needed to be in doubt as to whether he would carry through a fight or in any way go back on his word."

Hanna's friendship with Ben Butterworth embodied a rare unselfishness that dignified his strenuous and successful career. Croly prints some letters from Butterworth to Hanna that are charming in the devotion shown by 1 Croly, 361.

him who stuck to the lesser man through thick and thin. Butterworth was of too independent and impulsive a nature to be successful in politics but his honest appearance and conduct gave him a standing with leaders that he seemed unable to acquire with the mass. When he was unsuccessful in politics Hanna redoubled his assistance and when at last he fell fatally ill Hanna watched by his bedside in a Cleveland hotel with the same devotion that he would pay to a brother.

The campaign for the nomination was proceeding apace when McKinley gave it a set-back through his own financial failure. He made himself liable by endorsements to help a friend for one hundred and thirty thousand dollars, a large sum in 1893 and an enormous one for the Governor of Ohio. He had no other idea than that the debt must be paid in full and it seemed to him as if the labor necessary to this end meant the close of his political career. But Hanna, Myron T. Herrick, H. H. Kohlsaat and many others came to his aid and saved him from bankruptcy. These facts were more or less publicly known and McKinley was reproached with having put himself in the power of these men by accepting financial favors for which they would expect repayment in some way. But it does not appear that any of them asked for consideration nor that anything was done for the raisers of the fund except for Hanna and Herrick who received McKinley's support on entirely different grounds.1

1 In this characterization I have been helped by Life of Hanna, Herbert Croly; Mark Hanna, Solon Lauer, Cleveland, 1901; William Allen White's article, McClure's Magazine, Nov. 1900; Murat Halstead, Review of Reviews, Oct. 1896; the contemporary cartoons; many newspaper notices of Hanna's death in Feb. 1904. My son, Daniel P. Rhodes, was private secretary of Mark Hanna for a year and a half covering 1897 and a part of 1898; to him I owe a careful revision of this whole chapter.

1

Croly has related in sufficient detail Hanna's labor in securing the nomination of McKinley. From January 1, 1895, his whole attention was devoted to the work and everything that energy, social entertainment, political blandishment and the judicious use of money could accomplish was forthcoming in full measure. He spent, said Croly, "something over $100,000" (which would not now be considered a large amount) obtaining almost no assistance from his friends. "Corrupt methods were always expressly and absolutely forbidden," wrote Croly, but when Hanna put in his own time and energy he could make a dollar go a great way, as he did in this case although he had opposed to him Quay and Thomas C. Platt, adepts in all the arts of political management, as well as a hearty New England backing of Thomas B. Reed who, by common consent, was well fitted for the place. Yet it was not Hanna's work alone that won the prize. McKinley, in capacity and manner, was well fitted for the White House; moreover, since 1893, affairs had been working his way. The panic of 1893 had been followed by a commercial crisis and business was extremely bad. The Republicans ascribed the evil condition to Democratic success and to the avowed promise of a reduction of the tariff. The tariff was reduced during the summer of 1894 and the autumn elections for Congressmen showed a complete change in public sentiment. It was natural that a distracted public should turn to the arch-protectionist for relief. McKinley was reëlected Governor of Ohio in 1893 by an increased majority 2 and in geographical and all other respects was an available candidate.

1 1919.

2 For McKinley's first election see my vol. viii. 374.

Henry Clay said in the bitterness of his disappointment at failing to receive the Whig nomination in 1840, "If there were two Henry Clays, one of them would make the other President of the United States." 1 But McKinley's and Hanna's relations were so intimate that Hanna might be called an alter-ego. What one could not do, the other could. McKinley knew the men in public life through and through, and Hanna learned how to manipulate conventions and secure delegates; and he thought that he was serving party and country well in putting to the fore an arch-protectionist. By May 1, 1896, if not before, Hanna felt that McKinley's nomination was assured, but before the Convention met on June 16 in St. Louis the question of platform was the most important one, and the only portion on which there was a marked divergence of opinion related to silver; this difference grew as the time for the assembling of the Convention approached. When the delegates began to come together, the Committee on Resolutions, of which Foraker was the chairman and Senator Lodge the Massachusetts member, had many declarations to consider but, out of the confusion and heat of convention days, only two resolutions are important for the historian; these are the McKinley-Hanna resolution, which Hanna brought with him to Chicago, and the resolution finally adopted by the Convention, on which the canvass of 1896 was made.

Both McKinley and Hanna were bimetallists. While in Congress, McKinley had in 1877 and 1878 voted for free silver, for the Bland-Allison bill and for its passage over President Hayes's veto; but in his support of silver 1 Schurz's Clay, ii. 181.