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THE McKINLEY AND ROOSEVELT
ADMINISTRATIONS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
THE
Mckinley and roosevelt
administrations
1897-1909
BT
JAMES FORD RHODES, LL.D., D.Litt.
AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF THK UNITKD STATES FROM THE
COMPROMISE OF 1S50 TO THE FINAL RESTORATION OF HOME
RULE AT THE SOUTH IN 1877 ; HISTORICAL ESSAYS ;
LECTURES ON THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
DBLIVEEKD AT OXFORD ; HISTORY
OF THE CIVIL WAR ; FROM
HAYES TO MCKINLKT
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1922
All rights reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMEKIOA
COPTKIGHT, 1922,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1922.
NarJsjDoli 33k8s
J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Make Hanna 1
Mabk Hanna Secures McKinley's Nomination ... 12
The St. Louis Convention 13
McKinley and Hanna, BimetaljjIsts 13
The Resolution of the Convention for Gold ... 15
Nomination of McKinley 16
Gold and Silver 17
Nomination op Bryan 18
Bryan an Effective Campaigner 20
Coin's Financial School 22
Republican Fight against Free Silver .... 23
McKinley's "Front Porch" Speeches 25
McKinley's Election 29
CHAPTER II
Hanna's Fight 30
Secretary Sherman 31
Senator Hanna 35
The Dingley Tariff 37
McKinley and Arbitration with Great Britain . . 40
The Cuban Question 41
CHAPTER III
Cleveland and Cuba 44
McKinley and Cuba 46
The Maine 49
The President's Ultimatum to Spain 53
Spanish Procrastination 54
V
vi CONTENTS
FAQK
McKiNLEY Averse to War 60
The War Might Have Been Avoided 62
Declaration of War against Spain 66
CHAPTER IV
George Dewet 69
Battle of Manila 73
George Dewey 75
German and French Opinion 76
German Action 79
Progress of the War 81
Theodore Roosevelt 83
San Juan Hill ^85
American Depression, July 3 87
Spanish Despair 88
Battle of Santiago 91
Destruction of the Spanish Fleet 93
The Orient 96
The Defeat of Spain 97
CHAPTER V
Spain Relinquished Cuba 99
The Protocol 101
The Philippines 102
Senator Gray's Opinion 104
McKinley and the Philippines 106
The Monroe Doctrine 109
The Philippine Insurrection Ill
Hawaii 112
J. P. Morgan 115
The Steel Industry 117
Gold Standard Legislation 119
John Hay 120
Hay, Secretary of State 124
CONTENTS vii
FAOB
The "Open Door" 126
China — The Boxer Uprising 127
Peace with China 131
CHAPTER VI
The Presidential Campaign of 1900 132
Theodore Roosevelt, Vice-President 135
William J. Bryan, Democratic Candidate . . . ,136
The Contest of 1900 139
Mark Hanna 140
Roosevelt 141
The Election of 1900 143
J. P. Morgan 144
Andrew Carnegie 145
United States Steel Corporation 148
Andrew Carnegie 151
J. P. Morgan 154
The Stock Panic of 1901 155
John D. Rockefeller 157
The Standard Oil Co 159
McKinley's Second Inaugural Address .... 169
Assassination of McKinley 170
McKlNLEY AND THE TaRIFF 173
McKinley and Civil Service Reform 174
CHAPTER VII
Puerto Rico 176
Cuba 177
The Philippines 183
The Anti-Imperialists 188
The Schurman Commission 190
The Filipinos 194
Elihu Root, Secretary of War 195
The Taft Commission 197
viii CONTENTS
FACE
Root's Instructions . . . . ' . . . . 198
End of Guerilla Warfare 202
Torture by American Soldiers 203
Root, Creator; Taft, Administrator 206
Taft and the Supreme Court 208
Roosevelt and Taft 210
The Philippines 212
Cameron Forbes 213
Elihu Root 213
Archibald C. Coolidge 215
CHAPTER VIII
Roosevelt as President 218
The Northern Securities Case 221
Booker Washington 227
The Charleston Exposition 231
Roosevelt's New England Tour 233
Roosevelt's Accident 235
CHAPTER IX
The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902 236
Roosevelt — Hanna — Baer 239
Grover Cleveland 240
Roosevelt's Plan 242
The Settlement 243
Germany — Venezuela 247
The Alaska Boundary Dispute 254
Roosevelt's Idea of the British Navy .... 260
CHAPTER X
The First Hay-Pauncefote Treaty 261
The Second Hay-Pauncefote Treaty 262
The Panama Canal 263
The Hay-Herran Treaty 266
The Panama Revolution 268
CONTENTS ix
The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty 276
Bryce on the Panama Canal 276
CHAPTER XI
Roosevelt's Extraordinary Ability 279
Roosevelt — Hanna 281
The Convention of 1904 288
Death of Hanna 289
Character of Hanna . 289
CHAPTER XII
Record of the Republican Party 292
Parker's Charges 293
Result of the Election of 1904 295
Attack on the Financial Interests 296
"Our Friends Who Live Softly" 297
Roosevelt No Demagogue 299
The St. Louis Fair 300
CHAPTER Xlll
The Russo-Japanese War 302
Peace of Portsmouth 307
Death of Hay 310
Root, Secretary of State 311
Morocco Affair 312
Algeciras Conference 314
Roosevelt — The Kaiser 315
San Domingo 318
China 319
CHAPTER XIV
Railroad Rate Legislation of 1905 323
The Hepburn Bill 324
The Senate Bill 325
Rate Making by Interstate Commerce Commission . . 327
X CONTENTS
rjLtm
Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food Law .... 334
Muckraking 337
The Brownsville Affray 339
Japan 341
Third International Conference 342
CHAPTER XV
The Panic of 1907 344
J. P. Morgan 348
The President 348
Irrigation 354
The Reclamation Act 356
The Convention of Governors 360
CHAPTER XVI
Cuba 364
The Navy 366
The Voyage around the World 369
Japan 376
CHAPTER XVII
Republican Convention of 1908 378
Roosevelt for Taft 379
Henry Cabot Lodge, Chairman 380
Taft, Nominated 381
Roosevelt and Third Term 383
Roosevelt, a Bookish Man 390
Oliver P. Morton 392
The President and High Finance 394
Andrew Jackson 396
Roosevelt, Broad-minded 397
Roosevelt, Not Impulsive 398
Roosevelt, Wonderful Brain 399
THE McKINLEY AND ROOSEVELT
ADMINISTRATIONS
THE McKINLEY AND ROOSEVELT
ADMINISTRATIONS
1897-1909
CHAPTER I
This volume naturally begins with the political cam-
paign of 1896 during which three men absorbed public
attention — McKinley, Bryan and Marcus Alonzo Hanna,
or, as he was familiarly called and will be known in this
book, Mark Hanna. Of McKinley and Bryan, up to
1896, the student of affairs will have had some idea,
but Mark Hanna deserves an introductory notice before
the last eight years of his crowded life are related. Called
an enigma in New York City, he was no enigma whatever
to his intimates, except that they failed to gauge his
towering ability. They knew him for a shrewd money-
getter, able and diligent in business, but they could not
believe that he would reach a high position in public
affairs — that during one administration he would be
known as the ''king maker" and during another the
champion of the financial magnates against Theodore
Roosevelt — that he would at least divide with Roose-
1
2 CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION [1896
velt the allegiance of the Labor Unions. In all essentials
except political ability he was no enigma to his friends,
for he wore his heart upon his sleeve.
New York City is a good point of survey and from this
point Hanna's appearance in public life was like that of a
comet in the sky. Although fifty-nine years old in 1896,
he had gradually, but with steady ambition, been working
up to the place from which he was now to begin his
most important achievements. His restless mind had
always cast about for a new enterprise and, not being a
student or reader of books, and having no sympathy with
a man who devoted his whole ability to the acquirement
of money, he entered the field of politics. Before he was
thirty-two he made an informal alliance with an enter-
prising young man of Cleveland to break up the Repub-
lican machine that dominated city politics. Both were
good Republicans but objected to the manner in which
city affairs were conducted. Somewhat later when the
Republican machine nominated one of their representa-
tive men for mayor, Hanna led a revolt against the
machine and, with the aid of a number of independent
associates, nominated a Democrat of excellent business
ability and elected him ^ although the rest of the Repub-
lican ticket was chosen. In city and ward politics, he
was always noted for his independent action and often
showed no hesitation in supporting Democrats when they
were better men than the Republican nominees.
At the age of forty-three he was recognized as one of the
prominent business men of Cleveland. His business was
coal, iron ore and pig iron ; in 1867 he had been started
in it by his father-in-law, an iconoclast in society and
1 In 1873.
Ch. I.] MARK HANNA 3
trade and an uncompromising Democrat in politics.
Hanna's independence however did not come from any
family association ; it was inherent in himself and gained
for him the dislike of the solid financial men of Cleveland,
who had built up the city and were naturally the dominant
figures in its financial circles. In spite of the dislike of
these magnates, Hanna pushed ahead until in 1880, the
year of the Garfield campaign, he was known as a reliable
Republican and had acquired a very considerable local
prominence. He was head and front of the business
men's meetings in Cleveland and fully favored making
the campaign on the tariff and business issue rather than
on the "bloody shirt." Closely connected with the
Pennsylvania railroad through business relations, he
formed a link between that great organization and the
candidate of his party, afterwards president-elect. From
that time on he never lost an opportunity to identify him-
self with any Republican movement. Although he had
never read Cicero, he shared the Roman's belief that
he must keep himself constantly before the public.
Hanna was attracted to the Civil Service Reform
movement and attended the meeting of local organization
in Cleveland.^ He had no hope of being the president of
the Cleveland association, but he did aspire to the chair-
manship of the Executive Committee. The organization
was controlled by men who did not like Hanna and who
entirely ignored him in their dispositions, not even
awarding him the consolation of membership on the Exec-
utive Committee, of which he would have liked to be the
directing head. From that night, Hanna must have
argued, there is a ring of reformers as well as a ring
^ Either in January or February, 1882.
4 CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION [1896
of politicians. I think the politicians will suit me
better.
His failure to secure election as district delegate to the
Repubhcan National Convention of 1884 and his sub-
sequent success in being chosen delegate at large gave him
an inkling of what was needed for political success. At
the Convention he was an avowed supporter of John
Sherman, whose candidacy met with little favor. He
opposed Blaine, yet when the Convention named him as
its candidate Hanna gained prominence in his party by
his earnest and sincere efforts for Blaine's election; but
no sooner was Blaine defeated than Hanna began to work
for Sherman's nomination in 1888. Securing the unani-
mous support of Ohio, a portion of Pennsylvania and
many delegates from the Southern States, he went to the
Convention as a delegate confident of success. In my
last volume I have told how Harrison's nomination came
to be made but, soon after Sherman's defeat, Hanna real-
ized that under certain circumstances McKinley might
have been the man ; accordingly he decided no longer
to put his money upon the wrong horse and became an
open advocate of McKinley's nomination for the next
presidency. Between 1890 and 1892 Hanna had serious
business troubles which, to a certain extent, distracted his
attention from politics and he was not as powerful a factor
in the Convention of 1892 as he had been four years be-
fore ; he might have been thought to be losing his grip
on politics but he was simply biding his time. After the
astounding Republican victory in the election of 1894,
he went to his younger brother, then a business partner,
and told him that, for the future, he purposed giving more
time to politics and less to business. Arrangements were
Ch. I.] MARK HANNA 6
made with this end in view and thenceforward he gave
nearly his entire attention to securing the nomination of
McKinley in 1896.
Boston, apart from a few men in State Street, did not
like Hanna. His brusque manner, unconventional talk,
ignorance of literature and art alienated many, and he
did not always live up to the moral ideals in politics that
were professed in this city. The general opinion was
afterwards well stated by Henry S. Pritchett, a true West-
erner, although at that time Uving in Boston, the efficient
President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"The papers to-day," he said in a speech to the Bowdoin
Alumni Association on February 16, 1904, "have been full
of the life of an interesting man, who now lies dead in
Washington. He was a strong man, a man of noble parts,
of splendid personal power and of high ability for service
and he has played a great part as a leader in this country.
He deserves for all that high praise. And yet we can
never forget in estimating him as a public man that he
must be judged, not only for his high personal qualities
but also for the quality of his public service. One cannot
fail to regret in looking back over that life that it should
have carried with it the noble qualities of devotion, of
energy, of ability and of loyalty to a friend and yet have
not had with it also a higher level of what public service
means . . . and a higher estimate of moral and intel-
lectual force rather than pecuniary force in politics." ^
New York City and other communities may have had
their opinions influenced by the prevalent caricatures
which always have something to do with the formation
of public sentiment. Hanna once said that, although
1 Boston Herald, Feb. 17, 1904.
6 CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION [1896
his ancestry was Scotch-Irish there was more Irish than
Scotch in his composition ; thus with a plausible exaggera-
tion of his features he was often portrayed as a bloated
whiskey-drinking Irishman. A much-repeated cartoon
showed him and McKinley sitting over a bottle of whiskey
in earnest confabulation. These caricatures caused his
friends no little amusement, so entirely were they un-
founded in fact. Hanna drank no wine until he was
past middle life, did not care for it, and used stronger
liquors only for medicinal purposes. McKinley pre-
ferred water to wine at a banquet or dinner or any other
occasion. Indeed, if the cartoonist had shown McKinley
and Hanna, sitting calmly together over a bottle of Wau-
kesha or Poland water drinking to the toast ''Here's to
honest water which ne'er left man i' the mire," he would
have been much nearer the truth.
"I shall never forget," said Senator Scott of West Vir-
ginia, "one morning during the campaign of 1896 when
Hanna handed me a New York paper containing a car-
toon of himself pictured as a huge monster, clad in a suit
covered over with dollar marks, smoking an immense
cigar, and trampling under foot women and children until
their eyes protruded from the sockets and their skeleton
forms writhed in agony. After I had looked at it for a
moment he said to me, 'That hurts.' " ^
This was a favorite caricature, Hanna covered all over
with the dollar mark, the implication being that he be-
lieved money could buy anything. The Nation wrote
during the heated political campaign of 1908: "The
frankly commercial spirit in which Mark Hanna man-
aged the two campaigns in which he was chairman is no-
1 Address, AprU 7, 1904, 39.
Ch. I.] MARK HANNA 7
torious. A prominent and honored Ohio RepubHcan has
said of Mr. Hanna that his only notion of pohtical activ-
ity was 'to go out and buy somebody.' " ^ This remark,
born probably of factional hostihty, was unjust. Hanna
paid the penalty of talking too frankly about the use of
money, but no one knew better than he that money would
not accomplish everything and, after he had gained power
and influence, nothing perturbed him more than to be
looked upon simply as an office-broker.
Collecting money for a political party must be regarded
differently from getting means for the support of a church,
a university or a charitable institution and, according
to the cynical view of poUtics that obtains in certain
quarters, the corruption of voters seems to inhere in the
use of the party chest. But many voters looked upon
the RepubUcan party as something sacred, whose control
was necessary to the well-being and perpetuity of the
Republic. The man who raised money in order to insure
its continuance in power was looked upon by them as
doing holy work. Some such idea must have passed
through Hanna's mind when, without concealment, he
continually preached the use of money to save the party.
His outspoken scorn of bookish men and respect for
those who had money to contribute lent color to The Na-
tion's criticism, but in this matter and in others Hanna
stood in need of a certain hypocrisy which was lacking
in his nature. Making no bones of confessing his igno-
rance of Shelley and Pasteur, he loved Shakespeare as he
saw his plays acted on the stage and took delight in a
good performance of ''School for Scandal," in Joseph
Jefferson's "Rip Van Winkle," "Rivals" and "Cricket
1 Oct. 8, p. 328.
8 CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION [1896
on the Hearth." During the fifties when the Lyceum
system was at its height, he was a constant attendant and
Hked above all the lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
It is ordinarily thought that men in active life are apt
to become victims of wine, woman or play. Judged by
this standard, Hanna was a severely moral man who
needed no refuge in the dictum of the preacher, "The
moral man is he who is not found out." A generous giver
of dinners, he was a spare eater except for an insatiable
fondness for sweets to which his corpulence and rheu-
matism in later Ufe were due. Loving the society of re-
fined and well-bred women, he might be looked upon as
a model of chastity. Passionately fond of cards, he pre-
ferred whist or bridge without a money stake ; he never
played draw poker except when a party for his favorite
whist was unavailable and then only in what was known
as a "small game." He had a pure mind, rarely told a
smutty story and did not relish hearing one unless there
was something in it that he thought clever. He was
nevertheless rather undiscriminating in his response to
humorous fancies and, though some of his intimates
found in him an amusing companion, it was mainly his
whole-hearted audacity that made them laugh. He
gravitated toward the society of the best men. Amongst
those one met at his dinner table in Washington were
Root, Justice White, Taft, Long, 0. H. Piatt, Hobart,
Allison, Aldrich and occasionally Secretary Hay and
Senator Lodge.
Popular knowledge of a man of action who left few
letters, did not keep a diary nor write a book depends
largely upon his biographer and, in this respect, Hanna
was exceptionally happy. His son selected Herbert Croly,
Ch. I.] MARK HANNA 9
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 social-
istic proclivities undertaking the biography of a strong
individualist; yet the accomplished editor of the Amer-
ican 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 prose-
cution 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 acquaint-
ances. 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 Sher-
man. The Convention of 1888, when they both supported
Sherman, increased the mutual attachment. Each saw
10 CLEVELAND'S ADMINISTRATION [1896
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 danger-
ously ill and that McKinley might have kept the engage-
ment 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 success-
ful career. Croly prints some letters from Butterworth
to Hanna that are charming in the devotion shown by
I Croly, 361.
Ch. I.] MARK HANNA 11
him who stuck to the lesser man through thick and thin.
Butterworth was of too independent and impulsive a
nature to be successful in pohtics but his honest appear-
ance 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 assist-
ance 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 finan-
cial 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 Gover-
nor 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. ^
^ 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.