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 \/' 
 
 cKINLEY'S RECORD. 
 
 REVIEW OF HIS CAREER IN PUBLIC LIFE. 
 
 Weakness of His Financial Position in Congress, ^ad His Lack of 
 Capacity as Governor of Ohio 
 
 
 ^lALS AND LETTERS FROM THE EVENING POST. 
 
 Price, 10 cents a copy / postpaid^ 12 cents. 
 
 •emittances may be made by check, money order, or in postage stamps. 
 
 
 '^'^^^'^l.jjir 
 
 
 Copyright, 1896, by 
 Ii. EVENING POST pVjBLISHING COMPANY, 
 206-210 Broadway, New York. 
 
•i 
 
 / 
 
V3 ^ 
 
 ■-U 
 
 McKINLEY'S FINANCIAL RECORD. '3^ 
 
 Favored Free Coinage of Silver in 1877. 
 
 ',)x\ the 5th of November, 1877, Mr. Bland of Missouri moved in the 
 House of Representatives to suspend the rules and pass a bill to authorize 
 the fre; coinage of the standard silver dollar. On the call of the roll Mr. 
 McKin'.cy voted yea. 
 
 Opposed Hayes's Veto of the Bland- Allison Act in 1878. 
 
 "r u; ['land bill was amended in the Senate, under the lead of Mr, 
 Allison, so .s to provide for the coinage of not less than $2,000,000 nor 
 more til an !|;;i., 000,000 worth of silver bullion a month into standard dol- 
 lars, and in {hat form passed the House. President Hayes vetoed the bill 
 February 23. 1878. On the question of repassing the bi^l over the veto Mr. 
 tVlcKinley v- ted yea. 
 
 Conde'Txrie. Cleveland in 1888 for Urging Repeal of the Act Vetoed by Hayes. 
 
 Mr. ?. cKinley was chairman of the committee on resolutions in the 
 Republican lational convention of 1888. and reported a platform which 
 declared thai, "the Republican party is in favor of the use of both gold 
 and silver :;•: money, and condemns the policy of the Democratic adminis- 
 tration \:i i^ efforts to demonetize silver"— these efforts consisting of recom- 
 mendatioT,;. y President Cleveland that Congress should repeal the Bland- 
 Allison act, precisely like the recommendations made by Mr. Cleveland's 
 Repun'" .1 iredecessor, President Arthur. 
 
 Advocated Larger Silver Purchases in 1890. 
 
 I :Kinley, as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and 
 
 leader >t li.i House in the Fifty-first Congress, earnestly advocated the 
 passage of ; le silver-purchase act in 1890 as better than the Bland Allison 
 act and the ext best thing to free coinage, saying of it : " We cannot have 
 free coi ui;." now, except in the manner provided in the bill. To defeat 
 this bill rn< ns to defeat all silver legislation and to leave us with two 
 millions n nth only, when by passing this bill we would have four and 
 a half \ s a month of Treasury notes as good as gold." 
 
 HIS PLATFORM NOIV. 
 
 1 ■ ' iancial Resolution Adopted by the Ohio Republican Convention. 
 
 We c ntend for honest money, for a currency of gold, silver and 
 paper with which to measure our exchanges that shall be as sound as the 
 governmf nt and as untarnished as its honor ; and to that end we favor bi- 
 meta' -'■ 1 demand the use of both gold and silver as standard money, 
 eithe -rdance with a ratio to be fixed by an international agreement 
 
 (if th;u Co I obtained), or under such restrictions and such provisions to be 
 determined ; y legislation as will secure the maintenance of the panties of 
 value j, h; i.wo metals, so that the purchasing and debt-paying power of 
 the ci !) ^ lether of silver, gold, or paper, shall be at all times equal. 
 
\ 
 
EDITORIALS FROM THE EVENING POST. 
 
 OHIO'S CANDIDATE IN 1876 AND 
 IN iSg6. 
 
 Joe Manley recently made an in- 
 teresting and instructive comparison 
 between the situation a few weeks 
 before the Republican convention of 
 1876 and the outlook to-day, to show 
 that the candidate who leads two 
 months before the delegates meet, as 
 McKinley does now, may fail to secure 
 the nomination, as Blaine failed twenty 
 years ago. There is, however, a con- 
 trast between the situation in 1876 and 
 that in 1896, which is much more 
 important than Manley 's suggestion. 
 
 Twenty years ago, as now, Ohio en- 
 tered a "favorite son" in the contest 
 for the Republican nomination. Twen- 
 ty years ago the Ohio candidate was 
 successful in the convention, and the 
 Electoral Commission awarded him 
 the presidency. The national conven- 
 tion of 1896 is still a number of weeks 
 away, but the Ohio candidate is far 
 ahead of all his rivals, and his success 
 is confidently claimed. 
 
 In one respect, however, and that 
 the most important of all, William 
 McKinley in 1896 is as far removed 
 from Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 as 
 one pole from the other. The Ohio 
 candidate twenty years ago was so 
 sound on the financial issue that no- 
 body in the country could question his 
 position. The Ohio candidate now is 
 so vague and enigmatical in his out- 
 givings that nobody can tell what he 
 means. 
 
 Mr. Hayes came into national promi- 
 nence through his election as Governor 
 of Ohio in 1875, after the most inter- 
 esting, exciting, and important state 
 canvass known in the country for 
 
 many years. The nation was then 
 suffering at once from the business 
 depression that followed the panic of 
 1873 and from the demoralizing efTects 
 of a depreciated currency. The Demo- 
 cratic managers in Ohio, and indeed 
 throughout the country generally, 
 except in the extreme East, thought 
 that inflation of the currency would 
 prove the most popular policy on which 
 to run a campaign. They therefore re- 
 nominated the veteran "Rise-up Wil- 
 liam" Allen for Governor on a platform 
 which declared that the contraction of 
 the currency already made by the Re- 
 publican party, and the further con- 
 traction proposed by it, with a view to 
 the resumption of specie payments, 
 had brought disaster to the business of 
 the country and threatened general 
 bankruptcy; and made the "demand 
 that this policy be abandoned and that 
 the volume of currency be made and 
 kept equal to the wants of trade, leav- 
 ing the restoration of legal-tenders to 
 par, gold, to be brought about by 
 promoting the industries of the people, 
 and not by destroying them." 
 
 The Republican convention adopted 
 a guarded declaration that " a policy 
 of finance should be steadily pursued 
 which, without unnecessary shock to 
 business or trade, will ultimately equal- 
 ize the purchasing capacity of the coin 
 and paper dollar." This represented the 
 cowardice of many Republican politi- 
 cians, and after the nomination of Mr. 
 Hayes he was appealed to by many of 
 his party friends not to oppose an in- 
 crease of the paper currency. But he 
 refused to make any compromise, and 
 sounded the real keynote of the canvass 
 in his first deliverance, when he came 
 
out openly and boldly for honest money 
 and against inflation. The campaign 
 attracted the attention of the whole 
 country for months, and the success of 
 Mr. Hayes in what was then a doubtful 
 state brought him immediately within 
 the range of possible choice for the na- 
 tional convention the next summer. 
 
 Mr. Hayes continued as outspoken 
 and emphatic on the financial issue 
 after his election to the governorship 
 as before. In March, 1876, he wrote 
 Gen. Garfield that " the previous ques- 
 tion will again be irredeemable paper 
 as a permanent policy, or a policy 
 which seeks a return to coin," and 
 added that " my opinion is decidedly 
 against yielding a hair-breadth." The 
 Republican national convention met 
 the issue squarely. Its platform re- 
 called the fact that in the first act of 
 Congress signed by President Grant 
 the national government assumed to 
 remove any doubts of its purpose to 
 discharge all just obligations to the 
 public creditors by solemnly pledging 
 its faith to make provision at the earli- 
 est practicable period for the redemp- 
 tion of the United States notes in coin, 
 and declared that "commercial pros- 
 perity, public morals, and national 
 credit demand that this promise be ful- 
 filled by a continuous and steady pro- 
 gress to specie payment.'' Gov. Hayes 
 warmly endorsed this plank in his let- 
 ter of acceptance, speaking as follows : 
 
 " It is my conviction that the feeling of 
 uncertainty inseparable from an irre- 
 deemable paper currency, with its fluctua- 
 tions of value, is one of the great obsta- 
 cles to a revival of confidence and busi- 
 ness, and to a return of prosperity. That 
 uncertainty can be ended in but one way 
 the resumption of specie payments. 
 But the longer the instability of our 
 money system is permitted to continue, 
 the greater will be the injury inflicted 
 upon our economical interests and all 
 classes of society. If elected, I shall 
 approve every appropriate measure to 
 accomplish the desired end ; and shall 
 oppose anystep backward." 
 
 President Hayes's financial views 
 were put to the test within a few 
 months after his inauguration. He 
 convened Congress in extra session on 
 the 15th of October, 1877. On the 5th 
 of November Mr. Bland of Missouri 
 carried through the House, by a vote 
 of 164 to 34, a motion to suspend the 
 rules and pass "an act to authorize the 
 free coinage of the standard silver dol- 
 lar, and to restore its legal-tender char- 
 acter." During the following winter 
 the Senate amended the bill so as to 
 provide for the coinage of silver dollars 
 to the amount of not less than $2,000,- 
 000 nor more than $4,000,000 a month. 
 On the 28th of February, 1878, Mr. 
 Hayes vetoed this bill in a most effec- 
 tive message, on the ground that, " if 
 the country is to be benefited by a 
 silver coinage, it can be done only by 
 the issue of silver dollars of full value, 
 which will defraud no man " ; and he 
 declared that " a currency worth less 
 than it purports to be worth will in the 
 end defraud not only creditors, but all 
 who are engaged in legitimate busi- 
 ness, and none more surely than those 
 who are dependent on their daily labor 
 for their daily bread." 
 
 Such was the financial record of the 
 Ohio candidate of 1876 — a record of 
 which any man might be proud. By a 
 curious coincidence the Ohio candidate 
 of 1896 entered Congress at the same 
 time that Mr. Hayes became President, 
 The first test of Mr. McKinley's finan- 
 cial soundness came on the 5th of No- 
 vember, 1877, and he responded by 
 voting with Mr. Bland for the free 
 coinage of silver. The second test 
 came on the 28th of February, i878_ 
 when the question was whether the 
 Bland-Allison bill' should be passed 
 over the veto of the Republican Presi- 
 dent, and again Mr. McKinley followed 
 the lead of Bland, helping to make up 
 the more than two-thirds majority that 
 overrode the representative of his own 
 state and of his own party in the White 
 House. The McKinley of 1896 is con- 
 
sistent with the McKinley of 1877 and 
 1878, standing as he now does on a 
 platform that favors an undefined " bi- 
 metallism " and the coinage of silver 
 under restrictions and provisions " to 
 be determined by legislation," which 
 holds out the hope that the Ohio can- 
 didate of 1896 would not veto any cur- 
 rency act that should get through 
 Congress. 
 
 Can the Republican party afford to 
 go into the campaign of this year under 
 a candidate who began public life as 
 the advocate of free coinage and whose 
 position on the silver question, after 
 twenty years of service, is so vague 
 that nobody knows how he stands to- 
 day? 
 
 PRESIDENTS AND THE 
 FINANCES. 
 It is now thirty years since, directly 
 after the close of the civil war, the first 
 attempt was made to commit the coun- 
 try to a depreciated currency by paymg 
 government bonds in greenbacks in- 
 stead of gold. The Democrats took 
 up the idea with enthusiasm in 1868, 
 and put a plank in their platform de- 
 mandmg ' one currency for the govern- 
 ment and the people, the laborer and 
 the office-holder, the pensioner and the 
 soldier, the producer and the bond- 
 holder," and another declaring that, 
 "where the obligations of the govern- 
 ment do not expressly state upon their 
 face, or the law under which they were 
 issued does not provide that they shall 
 be paid m coin, they ought, in right and 
 justice, to be paid in the lawful money 
 of the United States." The Republi- 
 cans met the issue squarely, and 
 adopted a resolution that "we denounce 
 all forms of repudiation as a national 
 crime ; and the national honor requires 
 the payment of the public indebtedness 
 in the uttermost good faith to all credi- 
 tors at home and abroad, not only ac- 
 cording to the letter but the spirit of 
 the laws under which it was contract- 
 ed." Gen. Grant's election bv an over- 
 
 whelming majority upon this platform 
 settled the question, once for all. 
 
 The next attempt of the soft-money 
 men was to inflate the currency by the 
 act of 1874. This was blocked by the 
 veto message which President Grant 
 sent the Senateon the 22d of April in 
 that year, and in which he said : 
 
 " The theory, in my belief, is a depart- 
 ure from true principles of finance, national 
 interest, national obligations to creditors, 
 Congressional promises, party pledges on 
 the part of both political parties, and of 
 personal views and promises made by me 
 in every annual message sent to Congress 
 and in each inaugural address." 
 
 The next movement of the soft-mon- 
 ey men in Congress was to secure the 
 free coinage of silver at the lirst session 
 after Gen. Grant surrendered the presi- 
 dency to Mr. Hayes. Both branches 
 were then more thoroughly given over 
 to wild ideas on the finances than ever 
 before or since. Mr. Bland's motion on 
 the fifth of November, 1877, to pass a 
 free-coinage act was favored by 164 
 members of the House, and opposed by 
 only 34, all but ten of whom came from 
 the Northeastern section, comprising 
 New England, New York, New Jersey, 
 and Pennsylvania. The Senate, under 
 the lead of Mr. Allison, transformed 
 this into a bill providing for the pur- 
 chase of silver bullion and its coinage 
 into silver dollars of not less than $2,- 
 000,000 worth nor more than $4,000,000 
 worth per month. Again, as four years 
 before, the President stood up for the 
 national honor, and Mr. Hayes sent in 
 a veto, which unhappily was not sus- 
 tained by Congress, as Gen. Grant's had 
 been, but which redounds more and 
 more to his honor as the years pass and 
 justify his warning : 
 
 " It is my firm conviction that, if the 
 country is to be benefited by a silver coin- 
 age, it can be done only by the issue of 
 silver dollars of full value, which will de- 
 fraud no man. A currency worth less 
 than it purports to be worth will in the 
 end defraud not only creditors, but all 
 
who are engaged in legitimate business, 
 and none more surely than those who are 
 dependent on their daily labor for their 
 daily bread." 
 
 Mr. Hayes was succeeded in the 
 presidency by Gen. Garfield. He had 
 stoutly opposed the soft-money tenden- 
 cies in Ohio, and as a member of the 
 House had voted against free coinage 
 and in favor of sustainmg Mr. Hayes's 
 veto of the Rland-AIlison act. In his 
 letter of acceptance he gave' further 
 assurance that he could be depended 
 upon to stand for sound money by de- 
 claring against "any violent changes 
 or doubtful financial experiments." 
 
 The assassination of Garfield made 
 Arthur President for nearly three years 
 and a half. In his letter accepting the 
 nomination for Vice-President he had 
 come out boldly for the gold standard 
 as follows : 
 
 ''Our paper currency is now as good 
 as gold, and silver is performing its legi- 
 timate function for the purpose of change. 
 The principles which should govern the 
 relations of these elements of the cur- 
 rency are simple and clear. There must 
 be no deteriorated coin, no depreciated 
 paper, and every dollar, whether of metal 
 or paper, should stand the test of the 
 world's fixed standard." 
 
 In conformity with these ideas, Mr. 
 Arthur threw the influence of his ad- 
 ministration in favor of repealing the 
 Bland-Allison act. " I concur with the 
 Secretary of the Treasury," he said in 
 his last annual message to Congress, "in 
 recommending the immediate suspen- 
 sion of the coinage of silver dollars and 
 of the issuance of silver certificates." 
 
 Mr. Cleveland was fully committed 
 to the same position regarding the sa- 
 credness of the government's financial 
 obligations and the soundness of the 
 currency that had been maintained by 
 Grant, Hayes, Garfield, and Arthur. In 
 his first annual message to Congress he 
 recommended the suspension of the 
 compulsory coinage of silver dollars, 
 and throughout his first term he stood 
 
 as a rock against all schemes for the 
 depreciation of the cunency. 
 
 Thus for twenty years the executive 
 department of the government had 
 been the firm reliance of the people 
 against all the attempts of the soft- 
 money men to have their way. With 
 the election of 1888 came a change. 
 Mr. Harrison, the successful candidate 
 in that year, came from a state which 
 had in the past been given over to in- 
 flation and free coinage ; he had en- 
 dorsed the Bland-Allison act ; he was 
 nominated upon a platform which, for 
 the first time in the history of the party, 
 aroused doubt as to its attitude ; and 
 he evaded the issue in his letter of ac- 
 ceptance. The result was that, when 
 the free-coinage men attempted in 1890 
 to put through a bill incorporating their 
 ideas, the gravest apprehensions were 
 felt that he would give such a measure 
 his approval, and the silver-purchase act 
 was devised as the only defence against 
 such rashness. Senator Sherman, the 
 nominal author of the act, has left this 
 statement of the situation at that time 
 on record in his ' Recollections ' : 
 
 " A large majority of the Senate fa- 
 vored free silver, and it was feared that 
 the small majority against it in the other 
 house might yield and agree to it. The 
 silence of the President on the matter 
 gave rise to an apprehension that, if a 
 free-coinage bill should pass both houses, 
 he would not feel at liberty to veto it. 
 Some action had to be taken to prevent a 
 return to free silver coinage, and the 
 measure evolved was the best obtainable. 
 I voted for it, but the day it became a 
 law I was ready to repeal it, if repeal 
 could be had without substituting in its 
 place absolute free coinage.'' 
 
 The election of 1892 again placed 
 the executive department in the hands 
 of a man who could be implicitly de- 
 pended upon to protect the country 
 against all wild financial schemes. 
 During the first year of his administra- 
 tion Mr. Cleveland carried through the 
 repeal of the silver-purchase act, and 
 
vetoed a bill to coin the seigniorage ; 
 and thus stopped all coinage of silver, 
 for the first time since 1878. 
 
 This review shows that, with a single 
 exception, all of the Presidents elected 
 since the civil war have been sound- 
 money men of the strictest sort ; and 
 that the result of breaking this rule in 
 1 888 was the passage in 1890 of an act 
 so bad that within three years Congress 
 had to be convened in special session to 
 secure its repeal. In other words, the 
 country has tried both policies — choos- 
 ing Presidents whose financial position 
 was known and whose financial position 
 was doubtful. Can the nation afford 
 in 1896 to elect a President who en- 
 tered public life twenty years ago to 
 vote at the first opportunity for free 
 coinage and to override President 
 Hayes's veto of the Bland-Allison act ; 
 who, as leader of the House six years 
 ago, strenuously urged the passage of 
 the silver-purchase act as the next best 
 thing to free coinage; and who this 
 year takes refuge in declaring his adhe- 
 rence to a "bimetallism" which he 
 does not define and which conceals 
 nobody knows what wild scheme.'* 
 
 "IN CLOSE TOUCH WITH THE 
 PEOPLE." 
 
 In his first term as a member of Con- 
 gress McKinley voted for the free coin- 
 age of silver at the ratio of 16 to i in 
 1877, and to override President Hayes's 
 veto of the Bland-Allison act in 1878. 
 As leader of the House a dozen years 
 later he earnestly advocated the pas- 
 sage of the silver-purchase act in 1890, 
 on the ground that "we cannot have 
 free coinage now, except in the manner 
 provided in the bill." 
 
 The advocates of McKinley's nomi- 
 nation for the presidency have only 
 one way of meeting the disclosure of 
 these ugly facts. They excuse the 
 course of their favorite in each instance 
 by the plea that he was no worse than 
 his party or than public sentiment. As 
 the Chicago l7tter Ocean puts it: 
 
 "McKinley's record in Congress on the 
 silver question really shows that he was 
 in happy accord with a great majority of 
 the Republican party on that as well as 
 on other great questions. He was not 
 only with the vast majority of the Re- 
 publican party, but he showed himself to 
 be moving in close contact with the gen- 
 eral public sentiment of the country — 
 showed himself to be in close touch with 
 the people." 
 
 In this argument the supporters of 
 McKinley have touched the lowest 
 level that can be reached in urging the 
 claims of an aspirant for the presidency. 
 They maintain, and seem glad to main- 
 tain, that their favorite is a man with- 
 out a spark of that statesmanlike fore- 
 sight which enables its possessor to 
 discern the dangers of a popular craze 
 that for the moment sweeps everything 
 before it. They boast that the first aim 
 of their candidate while he was a 
 member of Congress was to learn what 
 the prevailing sentiment of the public 
 at the moment of voting was, and then 
 to array himself on that side. Their 
 argument logically leads to the conclu- 
 sion that, if he were elected President, 
 he would not interpose the executive 
 veto against the enactment of the most 
 dangerous bill passed by Congress, 
 because, if he took such an attitude, he 
 would no longer be "in close touch 
 with the people." 
 
 The framers of the constitution 
 would have been amazed to hear such 
 a plea, that the President of the United 
 States should be nothing more than 
 the mere recorder and endorser of 
 fleeting public sentiment. One chief 
 reason for vesting him with the veto 
 power was that he might stand as a 
 bulwark against this danger. Hamilton 
 says in the 'Federalist' of this preroga- 
 tive: 
 
 "The power in question not only serves 
 as a shield to the executive [from en- 
 croachments upon his power by the leg- 
 islative department], but it furnishes an 
 additional security against the enaction 
 of improper laws. It establishes a salu- 
 
tary check upon the legislative body, 
 calculated to guard the community 
 against the effects of faction, precipitancy, 
 or of any impulse unfriendly to the 
 public good, which may happen to influ- 
 ence a majority of that body. The pro- 
 priety of the thing does not turn upon the 
 supposition of superior wisdom or virtue 
 in the executive, but upon the supposition 
 that the Legislature will not be infallible ; 
 that impressions of the moment may 
 sometimes hurry it into measures which 
 itself, on maturer reflection, would con- 
 demn. The primary inducement to con- 
 ferring the power in question upon the 
 executive is to enable him to defend him- 
 self; the secondary one is to increase the 
 chances in favor of the community 
 against the passing of bad laws, through 
 haste, inadvertence, or design. The 
 oftener the measure is brought under 
 examination, the greater the diversity in 
 the situations of those who are to exam- 
 ine it, the less must be the danger of 
 those errors which flow from want of due 
 deliberation, or of those missteps which 
 proceed from the contagion of some com- 
 mon passion or interest." 
 
 The theory of the veto power is that 
 the President may save the nation from 
 disaster in a crisis by refusing to keep 
 " in close touch with the people," by 
 opposing whatseems to be the prevail- 
 ing public sentiment. As a rule, our 
 Presidents have lived up to the theory 
 of the constitution in tliis respect, and 
 in every such case history has justified 
 their action. When they have fallen 
 to the lower level of not opposing any 
 popular craze, the nation has always 
 suffered. 
 
 When Congress passed the inflation 
 act in 1874, public sentiment appeared 
 to favor it, and a majority of the Re- 
 publican Senators earnestly supported 
 it, among them such powerful leaders 
 as Cameron of Pennsylvania, Morton 
 of Indiana, and Logan of Illinois. A 
 President whose prime object was to 
 keep " in close touch with the people " 
 would have signed the bill without the 
 slightest hesitation. What saved the 
 
 nation from a frightful disaster was the 
 fact that General Grant recognized 
 " true principles of finance, national 
 interest, national obligation to credi- 
 tors " as superior to what might prove, 
 and did prove, an "impulse unfriendly 
 to the public good," such as the framers 
 of the constitution had foreseen. 
 
 When another of these dangerous 
 impulses was felt in Congress sixteen 
 year ; later, the incumbent of the White 
 House was unfortunately a man who 
 lacked General Grant's courage. In 
 1 890 the passage of a free-coinage act 
 was threatened, and Senator Sherman 
 and other Republicans who opposed 
 that policy were made apprehensive by 
 Mr. Harrison's silence that he would 
 not feel at liberty to veto such a bill if 
 it should pass. " Some action," says 
 Mr. Sherman, " had to be taken to pre- 
 vent a return to free silver coinage, and 
 the measure evolved was the best ob- 
 tainable." The silver-purchase act, the 
 operation of which within three years 
 compelled the calling of a special ses- 
 sion of Congress to secure its repeal, 
 was thus due to the weakness of a 
 President who could not be depended 
 upon to resist the passion of the hour. 
 
 McKinley's record on the currency 
 question is bad enough. But the de- 
 fence of that record on the ground that 
 he was in line with his party, and the 
 advocacy of his election to the presi- 
 dency because he will always try to be 
 in close contact with public sentiment, 
 uncover fresh perils to the country from 
 his successful candidacy. An execu- 
 tive whose highest aim is always to be 
 " in close touch with the people " is to 
 be dreaded, as a constant menace to 
 the safety of the nation. 
 
 PRESIDENT, CONGRESS, AND 
 
 CURRENCY. 
 
 It is of the first importance to the 
 
 nation that the next administration 
 
 shall be one which Can be depended 
 
 upon to play no pranks with the cur- 
 
& 
 
 rency. Whether that administration 
 shall be Republican or Democratic is a 
 matter of far less consequence than 
 whether it sh^ll stand for sound money. 
 
 As the Republican convention will be 
 held a month before the Democratic, 
 pu-felic attention is now chiefly concen- 
 trated upon the attitude to be taken by 
 the former convention regarding the 
 financial issue. That attitude will be 
 largely determined by the record of the 
 candidate for President who shall be 
 nominated. Indeed, the confidence of 
 the public in the stability of a Republi- 
 can administration may practically 
 depend upon whether a man shall be 
 chosen who has shown that he can 
 always be depended upon to stand out 
 against financial follies. 
 
 It is sometimes urged that the gen- 
 eral attitude of the respective parties is 
 the most important element in the 
 case, and that presidential candidate 
 and platform are of secondary conse- 
 quence. " I do not attach very much 
 weight to platforms or candidates," 
 remarked a prominent Republican Con- 
 gressman the other day. "The really 
 important thing is the general tendency 
 of the two parties. As regards free 
 silver comage, for example, or any 
 other aspect of the currency question, 
 the thmg to look at is which party in 
 Congress casts the larger proportion of 
 votes on the right side. That is the 
 party to be trusted." 
 
 This theory sounds plausible, but it 
 does not accord with the experience of 
 the nation as shown in more than one 
 emergency during the past quarter of a 
 century. Over and over again the 
 country has found that its preservation 
 from financial perils depended, not 
 upon which party had control of Con- 
 gress, but upon the foresight and 
 courage of the executive. 
 
 Gen. Grant was re-elected to the 
 presidency in 1872 upon a platform 
 which denounced repudiation of the 
 public debt, in any form or disguise, as 
 a national crime, and expressed a con- 
 
 fident expectation of a speedy resump- 
 tion of specie payment. The House of 
 Representatives elected at the same 
 time was Republican by more than two 
 to one and the Republican majority in 
 the Senate was almost as great. Nev- 
 ertheless, this Congress, under the 
 influence of the hard times following 
 the panic of 1873, passed in the spring 
 of 1874 an inflation bill which invol- 
 ved a tampering with national obliga- 
 tions and would indefinitely have post- 
 poned resumption. Only the veto of 
 President Grant then saved the country. 
 The first Congress under President 
 Hayes was Democratic in its lower 
 branch and almost equally divided be- 
 tween the two parties in the Senate, 
 The slow recovery of the country from 
 the business depression that followed 
 the panic kept alive the demand for the 
 repeal of the resumption act, which was 
 favored by many Republicans in Con- 
 gress, as well as by most of the Demo- 
 crats. Test votes in the House during 
 the autumn of 1877 showed that a bill 
 for such repeal could pass the lower 
 branch, and the concurrence of the Sen- 
 ate was to be feared. The movement 
 failed, however, because it became 
 known that the President would block 
 it by his veto. The knowledge that Mr. 
 Hayes was sound upon this issue saved 
 the country from the threatened peril. 
 In 1890 the Republicans controlled 
 presidency. Senate, and Hous.e together, 
 for the first time in many years. The 
 feehng in favor of silver was so strong 
 in the Senate that a free-coinage act 
 could be easily passed,and the advocates 
 of such a measure hoped that they could 
 carry it through the House. For weeks 
 the country remained in uncertainty 
 what to expect, because nobody felt any 
 assurance that President Harrison 
 would interpose his objection to the 
 enactment of a free-coinage act if it 
 could be got through Congress. That 
 mischievous and disastrous compro- 
 mise, the silver-purchase act, was finally 
 devised and passed for the simple rea- 
 
10 
 
 son, as Senator Sherman has declared, 
 that " the silence of the President on 
 the matter gave rise to an apprehension 
 that, if a free-coinage bill should pass 
 both houses, he would not feel at liberty 
 to veto it" ; and that "some action had 
 to be taken to prevent a return to free- 
 silver coinage, and the measure evolved 
 was the best obtainable." In this case 
 the fact that the President could not 
 be depended upon involved the country 
 in all the misfortunes that followed the 
 passage of the Sherman act. 
 
 Within three years came a panic to 
 which the policy embodied in the silver- 
 purchase act had powerfully contribut- 
 ed. The initiative rested with the 
 President. Mr. Cleveland convened 
 Congress in extra session for the ex- 
 press purpose of repealing this act, his 
 proclamation reciting that " the pre- 
 sent perilous condition is largely the 
 result, of a financial policy which the 
 executive branch of the government 
 finds embodied in unwise laws which 
 must be executed until repealed by 
 Congress." By his firmness Mr. Cleve- 
 land extorted from a reluctant Congress 
 the repeal of the Sherman act, and thus 
 set the nation on the road to financial 
 recovery. 
 
 We do not need to multiply such 
 illustrations. The four cases which 
 we have cited show the supreme im- 
 portance of having a President who is 
 sound. Such a President saved the 
 country from inflation in 1874, and from 
 the repeal of the resumption act in 
 1877. Such a President was the salva- 
 tion of the nation in 1893. The lack of 
 such a President in 1890 involved the 
 country in a disastrous policy. 
 
 The great objection to McKinley as 
 President is that nobody feels any con- 
 fidence in his financial soundness. He 
 voted for free coinage in 1877, and for 
 the silver-purchase act as the next 
 best thing to free coinage in 1890. No- 
 body would argue for a moment that 
 he would have vetoed the inflation act 
 if he had been in the White House, in- 
 
 stead of Grant, in 1874, or would have 
 prevented the repeal of the resumption 
 act if he had been in Hayes's place in 
 1877. The business interests of the 
 United States should not be subjected 
 to the terrible risks involved in a Presi- 
 dent who cannot be depended upon. 
 
 ''DETERMINED BY LEGIS- 
 LATION." 
 
 Public attention has been chiefly 
 fixed upon that part of McKinley 's 
 financial platform which advocates 
 " bimetallism " and the idea of a dou- 
 ble standard. There is another feature 
 of the resolution adopted by the Re- 
 publican state convention in Ohio last 
 March that should not escape notice. 
 We refer to the implied pledge that, as 
 President of the United States, Mc- 
 Kinley would not veto any act regard- 
 ing silver that might be passed by 
 Congress. This pledge is found in the 
 words italicized below : 
 
 "We contend for honest money, for a 
 currency of gold, silver, and paper with 
 which to measure our exchanges that 
 shall be as sound as the government and 
 as untarnished as its honor; and to that 
 end we favor bimetallism and demand 
 the use of both gold and silver as standard 
 money, either in accordance with a ratio 
 to be fixed by an international agreement 
 (if that can be obtained) or' under such re- 
 strictions and such provisions to be determined 
 by legislation as will secure the mainte- 
 nance of the parities of values of the two 
 metals, so that the purchasing and debt- 
 paying power of the dollar, whether of 
 silver, gold, or paper, shall be at all times 
 equal." 
 
 The meaning of any expression is de- 
 termined not only by its ordinary sig- 
 nification, but also by the special cir- 
 cumstances under which it is employed. 
 "Legislation,"' according to the diction- 
 aries, means the exercise of the power 
 of legislating, or the product of such 
 legislative action. In most of the states 
 the executive has something to say 
 about legislation, as he may veto a bill, 
 
11 
 
 and it can then become a law only by 
 repassage, and usually by a two-thirds 
 vote. But in Ohio the Governor has 
 never possessed any such check upon 
 the process of law-making. " Legisla- 
 tion" as it has always been in Ohio, 
 means the passage of a bill by both 
 branches of the legislative department. 
 
 The character of the man who stands 
 on the Ohio platform shows that the 
 phrase " to be determined by legisla- 
 tion " would inevitably mean in Mc- 
 Kinley's case the application to federal 
 affairs of the system in his own state 
 by which the executive does not med- 
 dle with the action of the legislative 
 body. No man as President will ever 
 exercise the veto power unless he be by 
 nature a man of strong convictions and 
 great independence. Such an act sub- 
 jects him to the imputation of "setting 
 himself up as knowing more than Con- 
 gress," and of "defeating the will of a 
 majority of the people's representa- 
 tives." 
 
 McKinley entered public life by elec- 
 tion to the lower branch of Congress 
 twenty years ago. During that long 
 period he has never given a single exhi- 
 bition of independence. On the con- 
 trary, from first to last his conduct has 
 been that of a man whose sole aim was 
 to be " in close touch with the people," 
 whether it seemed to him that the peo- 
 ple favored the free coinage of silver, as 
 in 1877, and the purchase of silver bul- 
 lion, as in 1890, or opposed free coinage, 
 aswhen he wason the stump in 1891. An 
 elaborate biography of this Ohio Na- 
 poleon has been published, but it cites 
 no case where he showed the qualities 
 of a commander in leading his forces 
 into action or restraining impetuous 
 subordinates from dashing into danger. 
 His very nature shows that as execu- 
 tive of the United States he would be 
 only what the executive of Ohio is as 
 regards legislation, a nonentity, and 
 that any silver measure which could be 
 pushed through Congress would be 
 sure of becoming a law. 
 
 There are people who believe in the 
 theory of a President who will pledge 
 himself not to veto a silver bill, or who 
 is known to be so weak-backed that 
 such a pledge is not necessary. Ex- 
 Lieutenant-Governor Black of Pennsyl- 
 vania came out the other day in favor 
 of an agreement that " our [Demo- 
 cratic] candidate for President is not, 
 if elected, to interpose his veto to em- 
 barrass or defeat any financial legisla- 
 tion which may be sent him by the 
 votes of a majority of the Democratic 
 members of Congress." Senator Jones 
 of Arkansas endorses this proposition, 
 and would have the Democratic con- 
 vention declare explicitly against any 
 use of the veto power *' except in cases 
 involving constitutional questions or 
 for the purpose of checking hasty and 
 impulsive legislation." 
 
 But a week's discussion proved long 
 enough to show that such a policy 
 would be rejected with contempt by 
 the people. Senator Jones is of the 
 opinion that the people resent the use 
 of the veto power. The truth is that 
 the history of the country for the past 
 quarter of a century shows that the 
 people regard the veto power as one of 
 the greatest safeguards of our govern- 
 ment, and that nothing strengthens a 
 candidate for executive office more 
 than the knowledge that he is strong 
 enough to use this power. It was the 
 veto power alone that saved the nation 
 from a terrible financial disaster when 
 a Republican President in 1874 thus 
 blocked the enactment of an inflation 
 bill passed by an overwhelmingly Re- 
 publican Congress, and no other act in 
 his civil career gave General Grant 
 such a hold upon the respect of the 
 people. It was the assurance that 
 Cleveland would use this power, if 
 necessary, to block any dangerous 
 silver legislation that brought him the 
 support ui the business community in 
 1892, and swelled his majorities to such 
 large proportions. 
 
 The election of McKinley as Presi- 
 
12 
 
 dent would mean the occupancy of the 
 executive chair for four years by a man 
 who would never be a check upon the 
 legislative body, and whose signature 
 could be counted upon for any bill that 
 was passed by a majority of " the peo- 
 ple's representatives." A McKinley in 
 Grant's place in 1874 would have set 
 the nation back a quarter of a century. 
 A President with the independence 
 that Grant showed in 1874 may be 
 quite as necessary to the safety of the 
 country from 1897 to 1901. 
 
 McKINLEY'S WEAKNESS. 
 There are gratifying signs that the 
 weakness of McKinley as a presidential 
 candidate, because of his record and 
 present position on the financial ques- 
 tion, is coming to be generally realized 
 by thoughtful Republicans. The can- 
 vass for his nomination at St. Louis is 
 fast changing from an enthusiastic 
 movement for the champion of protec- 
 tion to a defensive campaign, which 
 seeks to excuse his admitted shuffling 
 in the past and his vagueness now on 
 the far more vital question of the cur- 
 rency. 
 
 Gen. H. V. Boynton is one of the 
 most intelligent and candid observers 
 of public sentiment among the Wash- 
 ington correspondents. Writing to the 
 Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, the 
 leading Republican newspaper in Mc- 
 Kinley 's state, he reports that " there 
 is a growing belief here, which has 
 already become a conviction in many 
 minds, that New England, New York, 
 and New Jersey cannot be carried for 
 the Republicans on the Ohio money 
 platform"; while, on the other hand, 
 " the silver leaders have not been cap- 
 tured or even conciliated by it." Of the 
 outlook for the national convention he 
 says : 
 
 " The firm belief is that the St. Louis 
 platform will give no uncertain sound in 
 its plank defining the relations between 
 gold and silver. If this occurs, it will be 
 
 awkward for Ohio, and as matters now 
 stand, embarrassing for Ohio's candidate. 
 If it does not occur, the Democrats are 
 likely to join issue at Chicago with a 
 straght-out sound-money plank. In that 
 case he would be a bold prophet who 
 would declare that Republican success 
 was assured. The campaign would be 
 defensive from the start. Under present 
 conditions such might easily be a losing 
 campaign.'' 
 
 The supporters of McKinley in the 
 press betray a growing apprehension of 
 the bad effect produced by the disclos- 
 ure of his financial record, and make 
 feeble attempts to explain it away. The 
 Chicago Evening Post, for example, 
 wants to know why, in compiling Mc- 
 Kinley 's financial record, we did not 
 quote a stump speech that he delivered 
 at Niles, Ohio, in August, 1891, when 
 he declared himself against free coinage 
 and argued that the adoption of this 
 policy would be disastrous to the coun- 
 try. Simply because such a campaign 
 speech is of no consequence in estimat- 
 ing McKinley 's fitness for the presi- 
 dency. It meant only that at that time 
 he thought free coinage was not popu- 
 lar. One of his chief journalistic 
 defenders has said, with entire truth, 
 that '^ McKinley 's record in Congress 
 on the silver question showed him to 
 be moving in close contact with the 
 general public sentiment of the country, 
 to be" in close touch with the people." 
 If public sentiment in Ohio in August, 
 1891, had seemed favorable to free 
 coinage, McKinley would undoubtedly 
 not have opposed it. but would have 
 advocated it and "would have pointed 
 with pride ' to his course m Congress 
 in June, 1890, when, as chairman of the 
 ways and means committee and leader 
 of the House, he earnestly advocated 
 the passage of the silver-purchase act 
 as better than the Bland-Allison act, 
 and the next best c ing to free coinage, 
 saying of it : 
 
 " We cannot have free coinage now, 
 except in the manner provided in the bill. 
 
13 
 
 To defeat this bill means to defeat all sil- 
 ver legislation and to leave us with two 
 millions a month only, when by passing 
 this bill we would have four and a half 
 millions a month of Treasury notes as 
 good as gold." 
 
 Nobody cares what may have been 
 said on the stump in 1891 by a man 
 whose attitude at any time only reflects 
 his conception of what is for the mo- 
 ment the most popular policy with the 
 majority. The important thing about 
 an aspirant for the presidency is his 
 previous official record and the plat- 
 form on which he seeks the office. 
 McKinley voted for free coinage out- 
 right as a member of Congress in 1877, 
 and for the silver-purchase act as the 
 nearest thing to free coinage that could 
 be secured in 1890. He asks the 
 Republican nomination for the presi- 
 dency in 1896, on a platform which 
 declares that "we favor bimetallism 
 and demand the use of both gold and 
 silver as standard money," and which 
 would secure this impracticable double 
 standard either by international action, 
 if that can be obtained, as everybody 
 knows it cannot be, "or under such 
 restrictions, and such provisions, to be 
 determined by legislation, as will secure 
 the maintenance of the parities of values 
 of the two metals" — a provision which 
 would allow him as President to sign 
 another such dangerous act as he sent 
 to Harrison for his signature six years 
 ago. 
 
 A childish defense of McKinley is 
 made by another Chicago newspaper, 
 the Times- Herald, which quotes from 
 a speech delivered by him in the fall 
 of 1892, in which he said that free 
 coinage would be bad, and excuses his 
 dilatoriness in reaching this position 
 by the plea that " the real scope of the 
 baleful effects of unlimited coinage of 
 silver was not perceived until 1892." 
 Perhaps not by McKinley, but the 
 baleful effects of coining no more than 
 $2,000,000 worth a month of short- 
 ^ weight silver dollars were clearly per- 
 
 ceived by Hayes when he vetoed the 
 act for which McKinley voted in 1878, 
 on the ground that " a currency worth 
 less than it purports to be worth will 
 in the end defraud not only creditors, 
 "but all who are engaged in legitimate 
 business"; by Arthur from 1881 to 
 1884, when he each year urged Con- 
 gress to repeal this limited-coinage 
 act because of the disasters that it 
 threatened ; and by Cleveland in Feb- 
 ruary, 1885, when he wrote the Warner 
 letter urging upon the Democrats in 
 Congress the duty of immediately sus- 
 pending silver coinage because a con- 
 tinuance of the policy would inevitably 
 bring the terrible financial crisis that 
 finally came. We cannot afford to 
 have as President a man who did not 
 discover until 1891 or 1892 the danger 
 that was plain to Hayes in 1878, to 
 Arthur in 1881-4, and to Cleveland in 
 1885. 
 
 The final argument upon which the 
 defenders of McKinley fall back is the 
 assertion, as made by the New York 
 Tribune the other day, that " the peo- 
 ple know they can trust the Republican 
 party, whether one man be elected 
 President or another"; and that, "if 
 the money question alone were to be 
 considered, the country would be safer 
 by far in the hands of a Republican 
 Congress, even with the least trust- 
 worthy of all the Republican candidates 
 elected President, than it would be in 
 the hands of a Democratic Congress 
 with the best President that party 
 could possibly select." But this asser- 
 tion is easily disproved by a reference 
 to recent history. It was an over- 
 whelmingly Republican Congress 
 which passed the inflation act of 1874; 
 and a McKinley in the White House 
 would have signed that act without 
 question. On the other hand, while a 
 Democratic Congress passed the bill to 
 coin the seigniorage in 1894, the country 
 knew that it was safe because Cleve- 
 land could be trusted to imitate Grant's 
 example of twenty years before and 
 
14 
 
 block the scheme by the use of the 
 veto power. 
 
 The more the McKinley organs try 
 to explain and excuse away the financial 
 record of the Ohio man, the more plain 
 do they make his lack both of common 
 sense and of backbone. His advocates 
 are now exposing his weakness so 
 clearly that everybody can see it. 
 
 THE WA V TO BEA T McKINLE V. 
 
 Two months before the Republican 
 national convention of 1896 the chances 
 seem to favor the nomination of Wil- 
 liam McKinley for the presidency. Two 
 months before the corresponding con- 
 vention in 1876 the chances seemed to 
 favor the nomination of James G. 
 Blaine. The nomination of Blaine, 
 nevertheless, was prevented in 1876. 
 The nomination of McKinley can be 
 prevented in 1896. 
 
 Twenty years ago " favorite sons " 
 were entered by several states — Conk- 
 ling by New York, Jewell by Connecti- 
 cut, Hartranft by Pennsylvania, Hayes 
 by Ohio, Morton by Indiana, and Bris- 
 tow by Kentucky. This year the leader 
 is also opposed by local favorites — Reed 
 of Maine, Morton of New York, Quay 
 of Pennsylvania, Allison of Iowa, 
 Cullom of Illinois, and Bradley of 
 Kentucky. In 1876 one of the favorite 
 sons finally came in ahead of the man 
 who was the leader at the start. 
 
 What beat Blaine twenty years ago, 
 however, was not the fact that the 
 Republican managers in many states 
 opposed his nomination. It did not 
 hurt him with the masses of the party 
 that Conkling was against him in New 
 York, Cameron in Pennsylvania, and 
 Morton in Indiana. What prevented 
 the convention from nominating him 
 was the fact that a strong element of 
 conservative men considered him an 
 unworthy and dangerous leader. His 
 defeat was foreshadowed when the 
 Massachusetts Republican state con- 
 vention elected as delegates-at-large 
 
 Richard H. Dana, Jr., E. Rockwood 
 Hoar, John M. Forbes, and President 
 Chadbourne of Williams College, and 
 adopted this resolution : 
 
 " That this convention leaves the dele- 
 gates of Massachusetts to the Republican 
 national convention unpledged and unin- 
 structed in respect of individual candi- 
 dates for President and Vice-President of 
 the United States ; but expects and re- 
 quires them each and all to work and vote 
 for those candidates, and those only, 
 whose character and career give iinques- 
 tionable assurance to the whole country 
 that they will be faithful and zealous to 
 maintain the equal rights of all citizens 
 under the constitution ; to bring about 
 the resumption of specie payments at a 
 day not later than that already fixed by 
 law, and to effect a thorough and radical 
 reform in the civil service, to the end 
 that the administration of public affairs 
 may be characterized by efficiency, econ- 
 omy, and purity." 
 
 Conkling and Cameron and Morton 
 and the rest of the party bosses could 
 not by themselves have beaten Blaine 
 in 1876- Piatt and Quay and Clarkson 
 and the other bosses of to-day who op- 
 pose McKinley cannot by themselves 
 beat the Ohio candidate now. But 
 there is an element in the Republican 
 party which can again turn the scales 
 if it will. The men who want, first of 
 all, a President who is safe, a President 
 upon whom they can depend in any 
 financial emergency, can yet prevent 
 the nomination of McKinley if they 
 exert their power. 
 
 We publish elsewhere a brief sum- 
 mary of McKinley's financial record, 
 and we beg every business man to study 
 it with attention. It shows that in his 
 first year of his congressional service 
 he voted for the free coinage of silver ; 
 that the next year he voted against 
 sustaining President Hayes's veto of 
 the Bland-Allison act ; that ten years 
 later he condemned Cleveland for urg- 
 ing the repeal of the act vetoed by 
 Hayes; and that in his last term as a 
 Representative he advocated the silver- 
 
16 
 
 purchase act as the next best thing to 
 free coinage, and better than the 
 Bland-Allison act because it provided 
 a market for more silver. 
 
 McKinley was wrong on the tariff 
 issue when he was in Congress, and 
 would be wrong as President. But 
 that is a matter of little consequence 
 compared with the financial issue. The 
 country can stand another high tariff 
 if it must come, and it might come with 
 any Republican in the White House. 
 But it cannot stand four years of doubt 
 and uncertainty as to the President's 
 position regarding the currency ; four 
 years during which it would always 
 dread that the executive might sign a 
 free-coinage act if it could be got 
 through Congress, or encourage the 
 framing of another " cowardly compro- 
 mise," like the silver-purchase act 
 devised by Senator Sherman in 1890, 
 "to prevent a return to free silver 
 coinage," which, he says, was then 
 threatened by the silence of President 
 Harrison. 
 
 No defence is possible of McKinley's 
 financial record. None is attempted 
 by his supporters beyond the plea, to 
 quote from the Chicago Inter Ocean, 
 that " he was in happy accord with a 
 great majority of the Republican 
 party," was " moving in close contact 
 with the general public sentiment of 
 the country," and "showed himself to 
 be in close touch with the people." 
 His most earnest advocates thus admit 
 that he is a man who utterly lacks 
 independence and courage, and whose 
 first aim as President would be to learn 
 what policy seemed to be most popular. 
 It is enough to make every business 
 man in the country shudder to think 
 of having such a man in the White 
 House for four years. 
 
 Hitherto we have always had Presi- 
 dents, whether Republican or Demo- 
 cratic, who were sound on the financial 
 issue, with the single exception of 
 Harrison's weakness in the summer of 
 1890. For that temporary weakness 
 
 the country paid dearly, and the debt 
 is not yet liquidated. McKinley as 
 President means four years of Harri- 
 son at his weakest. It is an appalling 
 prospect. The nation ought to be 
 saved from it, and can be saved. Let 
 the business men among the Republi- 
 cans of New York, Brooklyn, Phila- 
 delphia, Boston, Chicago, and every 
 other city of the country at once 
 organize their forces and insist that, 
 whoever the candidate of the St. Louis 
 convention may be, he must not be the 
 man whose record would make his 
 election usher in four years of doubt 
 as to the safety of our currency system. 
 
 THE ROAD TO VICTORY. 
 
 The first essential to the restoration 
 of prosperity in the United States is 
 assurance of the stability of the curren- 
 cy. Such assurance has not existed 
 for years. The lack of it was the chief 
 cause for the panic of 1893, and con- 
 tinues the main reason for the prolong- 
 ation of the business depression. 
 
 What threatens the stability of the 
 currency is the demand of a large ele- 
 ment among the voters for the free 
 coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to i, 
 which would involve the substitution of 
 the silver standard for the gold one ; and 
 the readiness of prominent politicians 
 in each party, including the leading Re- 
 publican candidate for the presidency, 
 to compromise with this dishonest 
 demand by favoring a " bimetallism" 
 that is necessarily incompatible with 
 the maintenance of the gold standard. 
 The election as President of a man 
 whose record makes such a platform 
 the only one on which he could consis- 
 tently run, would mean four years of 
 constant apprehension as to the safety 
 of our financial system. 
 
 The one sure way of averting this 
 peril is the election of a man who can 
 be trusted, upon a platform which 
 pledges his party against free coinage 
 and for the maintenance of the gold 
 
16 
 
 standard. Such a result would estab- 
 lish the credit of the nation beyond 
 question, and this would of itself 
 introduce a period of great prosperity. 
 Secretary Smith of the Interior Depart- 
 ment has (Xpressed the opinion that 
 "the nomination and election by either 
 party of a sound-money man, on a 
 platform declaring briefly and clearly 
 that the dollar of this country should 
 consist of 25.8 grains of gold, and that 
 no legislation should be undertaken to 
 depreciate this dollar, would increase 
 business values in the United States 
 25 per cent, at once." We believe that 
 this is an underestimate of the good 
 that would be accomplished. 
 
 During the summer of 1868 gold 
 ranged at a premium of between 40 and 
 50. There was an active agitation for 
 the payment of government bonds in 
 the depreciated greenback currency. 
 Butler in the Republican party and 
 Pendleton in the Democratic advocated 
 the adoption of the policy. Pendleton 
 carried his party with him, and secured 
 the adoption of a platform by the De- 
 mocratic national convention which 
 declared that " where the obligations 
 of the government do not expressly 
 state upon their face, or the law under 
 which they were issued does not provide 
 that they shall be paid in coin, they 
 ought, in right and in justice, to be 
 paid in the lawful money of the United 
 States" — meaning greenbacks, instead 
 of gold, the only coin then current ; 
 demanded taxation of government 
 bonds ; and raised the clap-trap cry of 
 " one currency for the government and 
 the people, the laborer and the office- 
 holder, the pensioner and the soldier, 
 the producer and the bondholder." 
 
 The Republicans snubbed Butler, 
 and nominated Grant upon a platform 
 which contained this clear and explicit 
 declaration in favor of paying the bonds 
 in gold : 
 
 " We denounce all forms of repudiation 
 as a national crime ; and the national 
 honor requires the payment of the public 
 
 indebtedness in the uttermost good faith 
 to all creditors at home and abroad, not 
 only according to the letter, but the spirit 
 of the laws under which it was con- 
 tracted." 
 
 Although Seymour, whom the Demo- 
 crats nominated, did not believe in the 
 greenback policy, he "stood upon the 
 platform" and declared, in accepting 
 the nomination, that "the resolutions 
 are in accord with my views." The 
 issue therefore entered into the can- 
 vass, and resulted in a strong move- 
 ment bv business men to defeat the 
 Democrats on this ground. Only New 
 York and New Jersey of all the North- 
 ern states were returned for Seymour» 
 and his majority in the latter was 
 small, while the count of New York 
 for him has always been considered 
 fraudulent by many. 
 
 The first [act passed by Congress a 
 fortnight after Grant's inauguration in 
 March, 1869, was "an act to strengthen 
 the public credit of the United States," 
 which redeemed the pledge of the Re- 
 publican platform by declaring that 
 " the faith of the United States is 
 solemnly pledged to the payment in 
 coin or its equivalent of all the obliga- 
 tions of the United States not bearing 
 interest, known as United States notes, 
 and of all the interest-bearing obliga- 
 tions of the United States except in 
 cases where the law authorizing the 
 issue of any such obligation has 
 expressly provided that the same may 
 be paid in lawful money or other cur- 
 rency than gold and silver"; and that 
 "the United States also solemnly 
 pledges its faith to make provision at 
 the earliest practicable period for the 
 redemption of the United States notes 
 in coin." 
 
 The consequences of this victory for 
 sound money were immediate and last- 
 ing. The premium on gold, which had 
 ranged between 40 and 50 during the 
 summer before the presidential elec- 
 tion, fell to an average of below 35 in 
 the month after that election occurred, 
 
17 
 
 and was down to 13 within a year after 
 Grant's inauguration; while specie 
 payments were resumed only ten years 
 later. The Republican party, no less 
 than the country, found that honesty 
 was the best policy in a series of great 
 victories, while the Democratic party 
 has not to this day fully recovered from 
 the discredit brought upon it by its 
 tenderness towards repudiation nearly 
 thirty years ago. 
 
 The Republicans can make history 
 repeat itself this year. Bland, as a later 
 Pendleton, will go to the national De- 
 mocratic convention as the advocate of 
 free silver coinage, and will have a large 
 element of his party with him in this 
 later movement for repudiation. The 
 
 masses of the Republican partyare sound 
 on this issue. They are sick of "strad- 
 dles" and "dodges." They are tired of 
 the deceptive talk about "bi-metallism." 
 They are ready to welcome as clear and 
 emphatic a declaration for national 
 honesty as was adopted by their party 
 in 1868. Upon such a declaration, and 
 with a candidate who can be trusted 
 upon this issue as implicitly as Grant 
 showed that he could be trusted, the 
 Republicans can sweep the country. 
 
 The road to prosperity for party and 
 and for country is a plain one. "He 
 serves his party best who serves his 
 country best." The Republicans found 
 this to be the case in 1868. It will 
 prove as true in 1896. 
 
A HOME VIEW OF McKlNLEY, 
 
 Ohio's Candidate as His Old Neighbors See Him. 
 
 I. 
 
 How the Major Secured the Support of His 
 State for the Presidency. 
 
 Columbus, O., April lo. 
 
 Two facts must be obvious to every 
 one who studies the political situation in 
 Ohio to-day : first, that Major McKinley 
 has not his State behind him in his presi- 
 dential fight, in any save the strictly me- 
 chanical sense ; and second, that the 
 so-called "harmony" which has followed 
 the long factional feud in the Republican 
 party in Ohio is due in a great measure 
 to the disbelief of the anti-McKinley fac- 
 tion that the Major will get the nomina- 
 tion at St. Louis. By this is meant, not 
 that the anti-McKinley men will be un- 
 true to their pledges, but that the fight is 
 regarded by them as hopeless from the 
 start, and that the perfunctory votes 
 which ihey will cast for the state's candi- 
 date will not have to be long continued. 
 
 The fact that McKinley is to have the 
 vote of the full Ohio delegation at all is a 
 mere matter of bargain and sale. When 
 the Republican state convention was held 
 last year, the terms of the bargain were 
 struck, whereby the anti-McKinley ele- 
 ment were to be given the governorship 
 in exchange for a McKinley delegation to 
 the national convention. Both sides lived 
 up to the agreement. Bnshnell was nom- 
 inated by the anti-McKinleyiies, and the 
 latter responded this year by putting no 
 obstacles in the way of the McKinley 
 presidential boom. But any one who 
 supposes that, because Mr. Foraker and 
 leading members of his clan are to sit in 
 the national convention, and go through 
 the form of voting for McKinley when 
 the roll of states is called, they are to-day 
 enjoying their candidate's confidence as 
 to his plan of campaign, or that either 
 party to the compact is at all deceived as 
 to the real attitude of the other, is sadly 
 out of touch with conditions here. It is 
 not peace, but an aimed truce, which 
 keeps McKinley at the fron': as the " fa- 
 vorite son" of his state instead of a 
 mere ambitious factional leader; it is 
 state pride, and not personal regard, 
 which holds together even some parts of 
 
 his own nominal following; and the ped- 
 estal upon which he has laboriously 
 clambered is so honeycombed with apa- 
 thy, distrust, and contempt that, at the 
 first evidence of unexpected strength on 
 the part of one of the other candidates at 
 St. Louis, it is liable to go to pieces and 
 drop the statuesque pseudo-Napoleon 
 suddenly to the ground. 
 
 The secret olf the feeling about Mc- 
 Kinley here is the same that accounts for 
 the indifference with which he is re- 
 garded at Washington, and the inability of 
 any one there except his archangel, Gros- 
 venor, to conceive of his nomination as a 
 strong probability; the people in both 
 places know him. To them there is no 
 ideal McKinley, reeking with heroic 
 statesmanship and exhaling an atmos- 
 phere of irreproachable virtue, such as 
 has been conjured before the minds of 
 the credulous populace in other parts of 
 the country. They know the Major for 
 a very small pattern of a man, the em- 
 bodiment of mediocrity in talents, in 
 learning, and in character; an orator 
 whose stock in trade consists wholly of 
 phrases, not of thoughts; a politician of 
 the narrowest and most shifty stripe; 
 and a self-seeker before everything else. 
 He is sometimes spoken of as that rare 
 specimen — a public man without enemies. 
 But in such measure as this is true it is 
 the evidence of his greatest weakness, 
 not of strength. It is bf-cause he lacks 
 the decided convictions and personal 
 force wtiich make enemies, that he is also 
 to-dav, after twenty odd years of more or 
 less conspicuous political service at home 
 and in Washington, without admiring 
 and devoted friends 
 
 His antagonist in state politics, ex-Gov. 
 Foraker, does nt)t soar to sublime heights 
 of statesmanship himself; but when it 
 comes to a following who are ready to go 
 with him through thick and thin, to share 
 his isolation in defeat as well as his exal- 
 tation in the hour of victory, he is worth 
 two McKinleys. Ai ail events, ever^- one 
 knows where to find Foraker when a fight 
 is on ; nobody knows where to find Mc- 
 Kinley. What is true in party politics is 
 quite as true in business ; and in spite of 
 his idiosyncrasies, it will be found to be 
 
20 
 
 a fact that Foraker has five good business 
 men in his following to McKinley's one. 
 Foraker's limitations are well known, 
 and he has often a brutal frankness in 
 putting his case; but he wears no cloak 
 and mask. Nothing, therefore, makes 
 the average Ohioan, who knows both 
 men, grit his teeth so savagely as to be 
 told that Republicans of other states sym- 
 pathize more with McKinley than with 
 Foraker because McKinley is so much 
 the more respectable figure in American 
 politics. The Ohioan knows better. He 
 knows that personally and politically the 
 two men are on a dead level, and that 
 Foraker has at least the negative virtue 
 of not being ashamed to expose his meth- 
 ods and machinery to view. 
 
 It would not surprise any one here if 
 the renewal of hostilities, in a decorous 
 and deprecatory way, should occur before 
 the two factions walk into convention arm 
 in arm ; and a clash now, while it would 
 not release the anti-McKialeyites from 
 their bargain concerning the convention, 
 would certainly not help bind the delega- 
 tion any more firmly together. 
 
 The Foraker people will not admit that 
 they have any second choice among the 
 candidates ; but there is very good reason 
 to believe that this attitude is maintained 
 out of regard for what they deem their 
 present obligation, and that Reed would 
 be the most likely beneficiary by the dele- 
 gation's breaking in pieces after a suffi- 
 cient number of ballots had been cast. It 
 must be borne in mind that tht delegation 
 will not go on to St Louis under any defi- 
 nite instructions. The same motive of 
 state pride which holds it together at the 
 start might operate to save the vice- 
 presidency for Ohio if it were obvious that 
 the presidency must go elsewhere. Hence 
 if, after a few ineffectual ballots, Reed 
 should begin to gain votes, and an offer 
 should come from the Reed camp to make 
 the ticket "Reed and Bushnell," it would 
 possibly present a temptation too strong 
 to resist. Mr. Bushnell, it is believed, 
 would make a much stronger run in the 
 East to-morrow than McKinley, from the 
 fact that he is an out-and-out gold-stand- 
 ard man, while McKinley has wobbled, 
 and is still wobbling, so persistently on 
 the money question that no one knows 
 precisely where to place him. 
 
 II. 
 
 Flat Failure as a Business Man — The Debt- 
 or and the Machine. 
 
 Cleveland, O., April ii. 
 Turning from Major McKinley's varie- 
 gated and uncertain views on the finances 
 of the nation to see where he stands with 
 respect to his own, every visitor to Ohio 
 
 must be impressed with the universal 
 verdict of the Major's neighbors that he 
 is " no business man." This remark is 
 almost invariably accompanied with a 
 chuckle, as if the very association of the 
 words " McKinley" and "business" sug- 
 gested a comical incongruity. 
 
 "Why," said one prominent banker to 
 your correspondent, " he is as ignorant as 
 a child when it comes to practical affairs. 
 The Major's a very clever fellow, you 
 know ; 1 have voted for him regularly, 
 and should hate to do him any harm or 
 say anything harsh about him. But I 
 wouldn't trust his business judgment to 
 buy and sell a yellow dog. He has had 
 to be helped, and coddled, and lifted over 
 the hard places at every stage." 
 
 "But his friends represent him in the 
 East as the great missionary apostle from 
 Ohio to the business world outside." 
 
 " Every Ohio man knows better, and 
 the managers who circulate that stuff do 
 him a wrong, for they lead the American 
 public to expect so much more of him 
 than he is capable of performing. They 
 bill him like a circus, and the people 
 whose imagination is excited by the pic- 
 tures on the fence are bound to be awfully 
 disappointed when they get inside of the 
 tent.'' 
 
 " Is he not considered at home a great 
 business orator ?" 
 
 The banker laughed. "Oh, no," said 
 he, " we all know just what he amounts 
 to. He is a stump politician, with a set 
 of stock phrases, like a fisherman with a 
 ten-jointed rod. On a big occasion he 
 pulls out all the joints and puts them to- 
 gether. On small occasions he pulls out 
 one of the joints and uses that. There 
 is only one business subject he knows 
 anything about — the tariff. And he 
 doesn't know enough about that to hurt 
 him." 
 
 " Was his failure three years ago the 
 result of business incompetency ?" 
 
 '■ We think it was an honest failure — 
 that is, he didn't ' fail rich,' as the saying 
 is. There have been reports that the 
 money obtained by the loan of his name 
 to Robert L. Walker went into a tin mill 
 at Piqua, and for McKinley's benefit; 
 but no one who knows the Major believes 
 that. The statement has been made also, 
 by parties who assert that they have seen 
 the paper in bank, that some of it was 
 not made by Walker and endorsed by Mc- 
 Kinley, but bore McKinley's signature 
 and Walker's endorsement ; and an effort 
 has been made to turn this circumstance 
 to McKinley's discredit. But even sup- 
 posing this to be true, it does not of itself 
 prove anything. The notes signed by Mc- 
 Kinley, if there were such, may have been 
 accommodation paper, and the proceeds 
 used, like the proceeds of the endorsed 
 notes, for Walker's benefit alone. The 
 
31 
 
 fact undoubtedly is that Walker, over- 
 whelmed by his multitude of disappoint- 
 ing investments, made free use of the 
 credit which his friend possessed through 
 being, not a man of wealth or a man of 
 business, but a successful political figure- 
 head whose backers could not afford to 
 see him go entirely under. McKinley, 
 on his part, finding the banks willing to 
 lend money on his name, wrote it when- 
 ever requested to do so, with the result 
 that, in his unbusiness-like way, he 
 heaped up debts of which he did not even 
 keep any track, and never woke up to 
 what he was doing till everything he had 
 was gone, and a great deal more." 
 
 " Did not his wife's fortune make up 
 the difference ?" 
 
 "I don't think that was necessary. Mrs. 
 McKinley did what any loyal woman 
 would wish to do to save her husband. 
 But his creditors did not want that sacri- 
 fice. As we understand it, a number of 
 rich friends with a stake in his political 
 future got together and raised by sub- 
 scription enough to put him on 4>is feet 
 again, and more, too, and spared Mrs. 
 McKinley her threatened sacrifice. Mr. 
 Kohlsaat of Chicago, whose paper, the 
 Times-Herald^ has since become the great 
 McKinley organ, is reputed to have been 
 the most generous contributor to the 
 relief fund, and Mr. Hanna, the street- 
 rail -ray magnate of Cleveland, who is 
 the chief engineer or steersman of the 
 Major's presidential boom, is said to 
 have given a handsome sum. Other 
 well-known names are mentioned. But 
 the full list of contributors, and the 
 amounts they severally subscribed, have 
 never been published. What originally 
 got McKinley into this trouble was a 
 sense of obligation he felt to Mr. Walker 
 for past favors. A similar sense of 
 indebtedness he must now feel to the 
 little group of party associates who helped 
 him out of his extremity. His only hope 
 of repaying them rests on getting into 
 some place where he will have large 
 political favors to dispense." 
 
 There was an incident connected with 
 the McKinley failure to which the speaker 
 did not allude, but which to the minds of 
 many persons at the time infused a mild 
 flavor of comedy into what was generally 
 treated as a tragic episode. In a pub- 
 lished interview at Chicago on February 
 2r, 1893, immediately after the news of 
 the crash appeared in the press, Mr. 
 Kohlsaat said, referring to a conference 
 !)e had had with Major McKinley: 
 
 "The Governor will retire from politics, 
 since he cannot hold office and get up 
 again financially. He said he would 
 begin his law practice again, and make it 
 his object in life to pay all he had been 
 dragged into owing. 
 
 "Will the Governor resign? Well, it is 
 
 hardly possible to see what else he can 
 do. It will be quite necessary, since he 
 proposes to settle dollar for dollar, and 
 there is no money in being Governor." 
 
 At that moment McKinley was in 
 Cleveland. Simultaneously with the 
 giving out of the Kohlsaat interview, he 
 was approached with the question wheth- 
 er the report was true that he should 
 retire from the governorship and go to 
 work, and he answered promptly: 
 
 "You may state that I will not resign 
 my office and return to the practice of my 
 profession." 
 
 Mr. Kohlsaat never attempted to ex- 
 plain the discrepancy between his own 
 judgment of what was the right thing for 
 a politician in such a case to do, and the 
 plans of the politician himself. It was 
 an ingenuous impulse which led him 
 into giving an honest and sensible 
 business opinion. The salary of the 
 governorship was $8,000 a year, and the 
 load of debt under which the Governor 
 was staggering was more than a dozen 
 times that sum; whereas a good lawyer 
 in a live Ohio city ought to make $20,000 
 a year. 
 
 But Cleveland was the headquarters of 
 the Hanna machine which was preparing 
 to push McKinley into the presidential 
 chair. The question, what was right, 
 was not half so important at that juncture 
 as the question, what was politically 
 expedient. To retire from public life 
 and become a plain provincial lawyer 
 might be an eminently proper thing to 
 do, but its effect would be to drop the 
 flamboyant candidate back into his native 
 obscurity. So another programme was 
 decided on at Cleveland, and from its 
 authors the Major took his cue. Not only 
 did he cling to the governorship for the 
 term he was then filling, but the summer 
 of that year found him again on the 
 stump, a contestant for a second term. 
 Popular pity for his misfortunes was a 
 chord whose strings his machine-mana- 
 gers knew well how to strike. The cam- 
 paign was an eminent success, notwith 
 standing that the fruition of November 
 presented a somewhat sordid contrast 
 with the promise of February. 
 
 Mr. Kohlsaat has apparently learned 
 his lesson, and no prophetic interviews 
 have since been given out by him. It is 
 the machine in this city which is grinding 
 out all the authorized talk about McKin- 
 ley nowadays. 
 
 III. 
 
 Surrender to the Street Railroads — Comicts 
 Left in Idleness. 
 Cleveland, O., April 13. 
 Hovif poor an administrator of his own 
 business affairs Major McKinley has 
 
22 
 
 sbown himself was pointed out in a for- 
 mer Iciier. He has made an equal failure 
 in dealing with public business. The 
 four years of his administration as Gov- 
 ernor were four years of financial embar- 
 rassment for Ohio. At the end of the 
 first two years the State Treasury found 
 itself with so big a deficit that it had to 
 borrow $5oo,'OOOon short-term emergency 
 certificates as ihe only alternative of con- 
 fessed bankruptcy. The state constitu- 
 tion limits ihe borrowing of funds for 
 paying running expenses to $750,000. 
 Gov. McKinley's second term of two years 
 has not compelled the state to trench upon 
 the remaining $250,000 ; but every friend 
 of the retiring Governor heaved a deep 
 sigh of relief when the responsibility of 
 nursing the damaged resources of the 
 commonwealth devolved upon his suc- 
 cessor, who is a good business man and 
 has already secured legislation which he 
 believes will bring the revenues abreast 
 of the current expenses. Although, as 
 has been said, Gov. McKinley's adminis- 
 tration was spared the necessity of rais- 
 ing a second loan, it nevertheless left the 
 Treasury without means of taking up its 
 paper at maturity, and refunding opera- 
 tions aie now in progress with a view to 
 staving off the evil day for two years 
 longer. 
 
 Of all her domestic corporations from 
 which Ohio might derive a handsome 
 income by taxation, the street railways 
 in her thrifty cities, escape with the light- 
 est burdens. At the tw6 ends of the state 
 are Cleveland, with her " big consoli- 
 dated" and " little consolidated" systems 
 of trolley and cable cars, and Cincinnati, 
 with her notorious monopoly of a like 
 sort. The "little consolidated"' system 
 of Cleveland, which is by far the richer of 
 the rivals here, and will doubtless pre- 
 sently absorb the other, is controlled by 
 " Mark" Hanna, the millionaire boss who 
 is running McKinley for the presidency ; 
 the attorney for the Cincinnati monopoly, 
 who defends it from assault either in the 
 courts or in the Legislature, is "Joe" 
 Foraker, the factiona^l leader on whose 
 loyalty must largely hang the fate of 
 Ohio's candidate at any national Repub- 
 lican convention. 
 
 An Ohio statute known as the " Nichols 
 Law" provides for the taxation of tele- 
 graph, telephone and express companies, 
 on the basis of the proportion their pro- 
 perty in Ohio bears to their property 
 elsewhere. When Senator Whittlesey, 
 a shrewd and experienced farmer mem- 
 ber,sought to increase the state's revenues 
 by introducing in the Legislature a bill 
 extending the Nichols Law so as to cover 
 freight and equipment companies and 
 street railways, he expected the cordial 
 co-operation of Governor McKinley ; for 
 he knew, and assumed that the Governor 
 
 knew, the dire staits through which the 
 state's finances were then passing. But 
 the Governor never lifted a hand. 
 "Mark" Hanna and "Joe" Foraker, 
 though occasionally crossing swords in 
 factional fights, had become aunitas soon 
 as the street railways were threatened by 
 a tax spectre, and poor Whittlesey could 
 not stand up against such a combination. 
 Hi.* bill disappeared from sight for a 
 while, am^i when it emerged to make 
 another struggle for enactment it still 
 carried the freight and equipment com- 
 panies, but the street railways had 
 mysteriously dropped out ! 
 
 Here was one of the opportunities of a 
 lifetime missed by Gov. McKinley. Had 
 he taken hold of Senator Whittlesey's bill, 
 as he has always been ready to take hold 
 of any means for advancing his own 
 political interests, he would have enabled 
 the state to make good its deficit and 
 enjoy a surplus besides, and would have 
 turned over to his successor a sound 
 instead of a crippled treasury. The 
 charge freely made by the Governor's 
 critics that, inspired by Mr. Hanna, he 
 had actively interested himself in induc- 
 ing' Senator Whittlesey to strike the 
 street-railways item from the bill, 
 does not call for consideration here, as no 
 definite proofs have been published. In- 
 action by a public officer, however, at a 
 time when it is his moral duty to act, is 
 an offence often too serious to be distin- 
 guished from positive action of the wrong 
 sort. 
 
 Another opportunity allowed to pass, 
 whereby the state has been a loser, was 
 that of employing the idle convicts in the 
 Ohio penitentiary on public construction 
 work which is badly in arrears and which 
 is costing an immense sum in driblets. 
 That the convicts are in need of such 
 employment is the fault of the 'labor 
 unions, who are powerful politically here 
 as elsewhere. A few years ago they 
 procured the enactment of a law forbid- 
 ding the state to lease its convict labor to 
 contracting manufacturers to an extent 
 in excess of 5 per cent, of the amount of 
 free labor employed at the same time in 
 the same trades elsewhere in the state. 
 Of course such a restriction has killed the 
 profits of convict contracts both for the 
 state and for the contractors. One man- 
 ufacturing concern after another has 
 declined to renew its contracts and 
 dropped out of the prison shops: and 
 to-day as a consequence about half the 
 convict population of the state peniten- 
 tiary is sitting within its walls, staring 
 ill day long at the whitewashed stones, 
 with no occupation for minds or hands — 
 a pitiful addition to the horrors of being 
 locked up. 
 
 At least three of the public institutions 
 in various parts of the state were in pro- 
 
23 
 
 cess of building, extension, or repair 
 during Gov. McKinley's administration. 
 One of them, the Eastern Ohio Insane 
 Hospital at Massillon, has been five years 
 under way; another, the Epileptic Hos- 
 pital at Gallipolis, eight or nine years. 
 But the most inexcusable delay of all has 
 been in connection with the intermediate 
 penitentiary or reformatory at Mansfield, 
 which has been twelve years in building, 
 has cost $8,000,000 already, and is no- 
 where near finished yet. Besides out- 
 rageous extravagance from a pecuniary 
 point of view, this involves the herding 
 of young criminals, first offenders, in 
 places morally unsuitable, so that there 
 is every incentive for a conscientious 
 executive to pu«h the building to comple- 
 tion as fast as possible. It was suggested 
 that Gov. McKinley could do a good and 
 wise act by taking the unemployed con- 
 victs from the state penitentiary at 
 Columbus and setting them at work on 
 some of the unfinished buildings. The 
 best place seemed to be Mansfield, where 
 it was proposed to instruct the managers 
 of the building operations to carry for- 
 ward one wing far enough to make a 
 place for at least a part of the first offend- 
 ers,and then complete the rest by degrees 
 as practicable. This would have been a 
 master stroke in economy, besides sparing 
 the able-bodied inmates of the peniten- 
 tiary the misery of further idleness; and 
 the convict labor law did not apply to 
 public work. But the Governor paid no 
 heed. Possibly he was too busy with 
 his campaigning — for the universal criti- 
 cism of his conduct during his four years 
 is that he did more stumping than gov- 
 erning; or he may have hesitated to give 
 offence to the labor leaders, who would 
 have a share in electing party delegates, 
 and who are intense in their opposition 
 to all profitable employment of convicts 
 — both in those ways prohibited by law, 
 and in those against which they had not 
 yet been able to procure legislation. 
 
 Fatal inaction as usual carried the day. 
 Four of the twelve expensive years of 
 the reformatory at Massillon were passed 
 while Gov. McKinley sat in the chair of 
 state, not caring, or not daring, to take 
 the one course which had everything to 
 recommend it. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Governor s Offic as a Street Railway 
 Lobby Centre. 
 Cleveland, O., April 14. 
 
 Gov. McKinley's unfriendly attitude 
 toward the Whittlesey bill to tax the 
 street-railway companies would probably 
 not have caused so widespread a suspicion 
 of his motives, but for another incident of 
 
 his administration affecting the same class 
 of corporations. 
 
 The legislative session of 1892 was 
 made memorable by the dramatic fiasco 
 of the " ninety-nine-year bill." The mu- 
 nicipalities of Ohio are now limited by 
 law to a term of twenty-five years in 
 granting franchises to street railways; the 
 street-railway companies have been for 
 years engaged in a constant struggle to 
 have this term extended. Commonly 
 their demand has been for fifty years; 
 but in 1892, with Gov. McKinley just 
 seated in the executive chair, they seem 
 to have considered the time ripe for a 
 bolder dash, and a Senator named Spen- 
 cer introduced a bill which, stripped of 
 its technical verbiage, would have author- 
 ized the conferring of franchises for 
 ninety-nine years, without any compen- 
 sating advantages to the people thus tied 
 hand and foot. 
 
 So quietly did the machinery work that 
 the matter would probably have escaped 
 public notice till too late but for an acci- 
 dent. A certain newspaper correspond- 
 ent at Columbus, looking through a heap 
 of bills one evening in search of a topic 
 for a letter, was struck with a peculiar 
 incidental feature of this one, examined 
 it carefully, and exploited his discovery 
 in print the next day. At once the whole 
 state was aroused. The unfettered news- 
 papers in the cities, and the press of the 
 small towns and villages universally, 
 began pouring hot shot into the bill. 
 The street-railway lobby responded by 
 swarming about the capitol like bees in a 
 sugar-cask. The bill was put through 
 the form of amendment in committee, 
 but the obnoxious feature was still there 
 when it emerged with a favorable re- 
 port. 
 
 The crisis came on the evening of 
 April 7, when the bill was reached on the 
 Senate calendar and put on its passage in 
 that house. The excitement against the 
 bill and its lobby was so great throughout 
 the state that several of the Senators who 
 had hopes of a political future felt under 
 the necessity of explaining their votes 
 and showing their constituencies how 
 they had become "convinced" of the 
 virtues of a ninety-nine-year franchise 
 system. But not one of these men had 
 the hardihood to claim that his vote had 
 been solicited by anybody except persons 
 financially interested in, or retained as 
 attorneys by, the corporations involved. 
 
 On the other hand, the little group of 
 Senators who had not been won over 
 were outspoken in their denunciation of 
 the methods used to convert their col- 
 leagues. Senator McMaken, for instance, 
 described the social and political pressure 
 which had been brought to bear in the 
 interest of the bill, and said that nothing 
 but his firm conviction that it went 
 
24 
 
 against the interests of the people he 
 represented would have enabled him to 
 stand up against such powerful influ- 
 ences. Senator Forbes declared that for 
 the two weeks last past it had been 
 almost impossible to get into the Senate 
 chamber, so thickly was the way blocked 
 by the railway lobby; that the Senators 
 had been individually pulled, hauled, 
 and "manipulated" till it had become 
 tiresome and disgusting; and that now 
 the Senate was called upon to vote for a 
 bill for the passage of which not a soul 
 in the state of Ohio had asked except 
 street-railway stockholders and similar 
 interested parties. Senator Parker said 
 that, although he felt sure that the deci- 
 sion of the Senate had already been 
 "fixed" beyond the possibility of mis- 
 carriage, he considered it his duty to 
 enter his protest against the grievous 
 wrong which seemed imminent. The 
 people of Ohio had pursued a mistaken 
 and costly policy in the past in handling 
 their street railways, and they must not 
 go further in the same course, and tie 
 their hands for almost a century, without 
 a warning. 
 
 All these speeches, and others, were 
 made to the face of Mark Hanna, who sat 
 where he could watch every Senator in 
 the critical hour. Then, at the proper 
 moment, when the Senators of the major- 
 ity who were too much ashamed of their 
 votes to let them go unexplained had had 
 a chance to put themselves on record, 
 and before the pitiful minority could 
 frighten their weak-kneed brethren with 
 any more plain talk, Senator Phillips 
 sprang the " previous question," and the 
 bill was rushed through, ig to 8. 
 
 The newspapers the next day took up 
 the plain talk where the " previous ques- 
 tion " had cut it off, and their charges 
 remain the uncorrected record to this 
 day. Said one : "It has leaked out that 
 there was a secret conference of Senators 
 interested in the passage o/ the ninety- 
 nine-year bill held in the Governor's office 
 last night. Among those present were : 
 Bane, Eckley, Lampson, Abbott, Phillips 
 and Nichols. It is a little hard to under- 
 stand just why these gentlemen, neither 
 of whom has a city of any size in his dis- 
 trict, should take such deep interest in 
 securing the passage of this infamous 
 measure, which seeks to deed to wealthy 
 corporations for ninety-nine years the 
 prominent streets in all the towns and 
 cities of the state. Of course it was im- 
 possible to ascertain what was done at 
 this conference, but the fact that it fol- 
 lowed immediately after the appearance 
 here of one Mark A. Hanna is sufficient 
 to create suspicion in the minds of a great 
 many people who understand the influ- 
 ences that usually secure the passage of 
 job laws through the General Assembly. 
 
 "There is a suspicion that Gov. Mc- 
 Kinley has aided in securing the passage 
 of the robber b'll. At any rate, Mark 
 Hanna made his headquarters in the exe 
 cuiive office and sent for the Senators to 
 appear in his presence. By ones and 
 by twos they trotted down to see the Re- 
 publican boss. Yesterday at noon two 
 Senators who opposed the bill were in the 
 Governor's office for an hour or more, 
 where the street-railroad magnate labored 
 with them, but he was unable to get them 
 into line. However, a sufficient numb- r 
 were seen to pass the bill, and to-night 
 the House membership is being checked 
 off to ascertain if it is possible to railroad 
 the job through that body." 
 
 The scandal which followed the Senate's 
 share in this job, and the ugly thintjs 
 which were said of a Governor who 
 would permit his office to be made a 
 lobby headquarters, even to oblige an 
 old friend and heavy political creditor, 
 killed the ninety-nine-year bill in the 
 House. Not enough Representatives 
 could be found willing to face the charge 
 of selling out to the street-railway com- 
 panies to make its passage possible, and 
 it was therefore discreetly smothered. 
 But the scent of the whole business clung 
 about the Governor's office and refused to 
 be aired away during the rest of the four 
 years of the McKinley regime. It is for 
 that reason that so many worthy citizens 
 of Ohio refuse to believe that Gov McKin- 
 ley did not with his own hand strike the 
 blow which cut the street railways so mys- 
 teriously out of the Whittlesey tax bill. 
 
 V. 
 
 The Hocking Canal Job and Its Closing 
 Scandal. 
 Cleveland, O., April 15. 
 
 The unexplained collapse of the Whit- 
 tlesey tax bill, and the failure to make 
 use of idle convicts in finishing some of 
 Ohio's public buildings, have been cited 
 as single instances among many, illustra- 
 tive of Gov. McKinley's utter lack of 
 grasp when opportunities to benefit his 
 state and distinguish his own administra- 
 tion were within easy reach of his hand; 
 and the story of the " ninety-nine year 
 bill," with its inglorious reflections upon 
 the Governor, upon his bosom friend and 
 backer Mr. Hanna, and upon the nine- 
 teen " convinced" Senators, has been 
 told to illustrate the dramatic turn some- 
 times given to Gov. McKinley's blunders 
 of incapacity and indiscretion if nothing 
 worse. But the Hocking Canal case 
 combines the elements of the other cases 
 to effectively that no record of the Mc- 
 Kinley quadrennium could afford to pass 
 it by. 
 
25 
 
 A section of the Hocking Canal lying 
 chiefly in, or tributary to Athens County, 
 Ohio, was found some years ago to be 
 an unprofitable piece of property for the 
 state to carry longer. Its usefulness as a 
 commercial waterway had fallen off and 
 it was chiefly valuable as a menace to the 
 Columbus, Hocking Valley and Toledo 
 Railroad Company in case the latter should 
 exact inordinate freight rates or try other 
 tricks which could be countered by timely 
 competition on the part of the state gov- 
 ernment. In view of all the conditions, 
 the sentiment of the business community 
 throughout the state was strongly in favor 
 of abandoning the section and leasing it 
 at a good rental, so as to make it a steady 
 source of revenue instead of a drain upon 
 the Treasury. 
 
 Taking advantage ot this popular feel- 
 ing, certain thrifty gentlemen organized 
 a company ostensibly for the purpose of 
 building a railroad embracing the route 
 of the abandoned canal section, to be 
 known as the Columbus, Hocking Valley 
 and Athens. It was a " paper" scheme 
 at the outset. It still remains a " paper" 
 scheme. The indications are that its 
 projectors never intended it to be any- 
 thing else. As the new road, if built, 
 would parallel the Columbus, Hocking 
 Valley and Toledo for most of the way, 
 it was to be presumed that the Columbus, 
 Hocking Valley and Toledo Company 
 might wish to buy out the Columbus, 
 Hocking Valley and Athens Company by 
 giving it a handsome bonus on any bar- 
 gain it might drive with the state. Indeed, 
 there were many ways iri which even a 
 "paper" railroad with a valuable fran- 
 chise in the Hocking Valley might come 
 in handy. 
 
 At a low valuation, the lease of the 
 abandoned canal would be worth, for 
 legitimate railroad purposes, not less 
 than $30,000 a year; for the tow path was 
 wide enough for at least one pair of 
 tracks, and the dry canal bed would afford 
 space for more, and both were so level 
 and so solid that the original work of 
 grading and ballasting would be reduced 
 to a minimum, and the cost of keeping in 
 repair would be too insignificant to count. 
 But the new company was no prodigal. 
 Besides being short of funds, it believed 
 in getting the largest possible value at 
 the lowest possible price. It accordingly 
 procured the introduction in the Senate, 
 iwo years ago, of a bill authorizing the 
 lease of the abandoned canal to itself at 
 an annual rental of $6,000 a year. It did 
 not expect much opposition in the Senate, 
 and its sense of security there was well 
 founded ; but the House, being closer to 
 the masses of the people, was liable to 
 make more trouble, and to forestall this 
 contingency the company procured the 
 energetic championship ot Representative 
 
 Sleeper, an active politician from Athens 
 County, who kept his friendly eye on the 
 leasing bill while it wa'^ in the Senate, and 
 took personal command of its campaign 
 when it reached the House. Mr. Sleeper 
 assured everybody that he was not finan- 
 cially interested in the new railroad 
 project ; that his sole purpose in pushing 
 it was to help build up an effective com- 
 petitor with the old road and to furnish 
 an outlet for some coal properties near 
 his home which were still almost undevel- 
 oped. As the gentleman turned up, how- 
 ever, after the close of his legislative 
 struggle, as general attorney for the new 
 company, it is fair to suspect that he 
 spoke with some mental reservations. 
 
 The newspapers set up a loud outcry 
 at the insignificance of the rental offered 
 as compared with the real value of the 
 franchise, and demanded either that the 
 rental named in the bill be multiplied by 
 five at least, or that the bill provide for 
 putting the franchise up at auction with a 
 stiff upset price, and disposing of it to the 
 highest bidder above that. On all hands 
 the people interested in the state's wel- 
 fare looked to Gov. McKinley to inter- 
 fere in its behalf. "One blast upon his 
 bugle horn " would have called into be- 
 ing a majority in either chamber of the 
 Legislature. But once more he was a 
 victim of administrative paralysis : his 
 tongue was tied and his eyes were fixed. 
 For lack of his support, the opponents of 
 the job failed in their uphill fight. The 
 most they could accomplish was to in- 
 crease the rental to|io,ooo, with the stipu- 
 lation that the rent for five years, or 
 $50,000, should be paid in one lump and 
 within sixty days, and that the railroad 
 should be finished within two years. 
 
 On the night of the 17th of May, 1894, 
 the bill, which had reached its final stage, 
 was called up for passage in the House, 
 and its foes were put to their trumps. 
 They first procured from committee a re- 
 port in favor of a substitute bill throwing 
 the franchise open to competitive bids, 
 each bidder to enclose a certified check 
 for $1,000 as a guarantee of good faith, 
 and the successful bidder to execute a 
 bond in $100,000 for specific performance 
 of contract ; that was voted down. Then 
 an offer war presented to the House from 
 the Chicago, Columbus and Southern 
 Railway Company, another new corpora- 
 tion controlled by responsible capitalists, 
 of $15,000 annual rental, with $75,000 
 down ; that was rejected also. By this 
 time the blood of both factions had grown 
 hot, and a dramatic scene followed. 
 Charges and recriminations flew Irom 
 side to side like the phrases of an anti- 
 phonal chorus. The climax was reached 
 when one member arose and declared 
 that there sat in the chamber at that mo- 
 ment a man who had called him over to a 
 
26 
 
 sofa on one side and had offered him 
 $5,000 in cash, "and all expenses paid," 
 to change his vote. A roar of mingled 
 anger, surprise, and disparagement rose 
 from all quarters. In the midst of the 
 hubbub the accusing member held his 
 place undaunted, and as soon as he could 
 command another hearing he stretched 
 out his finger and pointed to a notorious 
 lobbyist who had sneaked inside of the 
 rail and was sitting beside another mem- 
 ber and coaching him for the debate, and 
 cried out ; 
 
 "And there he sits, Mr. Speaker. I 
 move his expulsion from this chamber ! " 
 The uproar broke out afresh. The 
 Speaker's gavel, pound as he would, 
 could no more be heard than a tap on the 
 window pane. There was no chance to 
 put the motion, however ; for before 
 order could be restored the lobbyist, under 
 protection of the Sergeant-at-Arms, had 
 hurriedly slipped through the yelling 
 crowd and sought refuge in the corridor. 
 It has been confidently asserted by 
 those who are most conversant with the 
 state annals that a scene at once so excit- 
 ing and so disgraceful has never been 
 witnessed in the Legislature of Ohio be- 
 fore or since that night. 
 
 But to the sequel. The Columbus, 
 Hocking Valley and Athens Company did 
 manage to raise the necessary money to 
 pay its first installment, and later it 
 bought some scrapers and other imple- 
 ments and turned up some earth. In that 
 condition the job stands to-day. The two 
 years' limit for completion of the work 
 will expire in about one month. There is 
 no new railroad. There is no " effective 
 competition" with the old road. There 
 is no development of new coal resources. 
 All the state has to show for her bargain, 
 and for the shame that was fastened 
 upon her in its consummation, is !|50,ooo 
 and a crop of annoying litigation ! If she 
 had accepted the better offer made her 
 on the spot, she would have had $75, 000 any. 
 way, even if the litigation had come with it. 
 And what has Gov. McKinley to show 
 for his lack of capacity, or disposition, or 
 nerve to grasp this scandal and wipe it 
 out of the four years' history of his 
 governorship? 
 
 The loudest shouter for " McKinley for 
 President" in the whole state of Ohio is 
 a former Foraker man, Mr. Sleeper of 
 Athens County. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Eggleston Avenue Canal- Bed Job ^ Now 
 Under Investigation. 
 
 Cincinnati, O,. April 16. 
 Most of the blunders which make up 
 the four years' period of inaction mis- 
 called the "administration" of Gov. Mc- 
 
 Kinley are traceable to his negative 
 character. Having been in the habit for 
 years of letting stronger men manage 
 him, he naturally did not attempt to 
 interfere when they proposed to manage 
 the state of Ohio as well. His thirst for 
 the presidency, too, has cost him all the 
 self-confidence and independence of spirit 
 which he might have cultivated but for 
 this. Behind every tree he has seen an 
 enemy whom he must placate; in every 
 friendly advance he has seen an oppor- 
 tunity to tie one more man to him, which 
 must not be jeoparded by haggling over 
 favors that count for much to him who 
 asks and cost the giver nothing. 
 
 One of these favors was asked some 
 months ago, and a legislative committee 
 is now engaged in an investigation to 
 find out whether it was granted or not, 
 for, if it was, it may have cost the grantor 
 nothing, but the state of Ohio seems to 
 have lost the annual interest on $200,000 
 somewhere in the operation. 
 
 In 1892, somebody with a gift for por- 
 ing over old records called the attention 
 of the Ohio Legislature to the fact that a 
 branch of the Pennsylvania Railway 
 Company was occupying with its tracks 
 and buildings a part of Eggleston avenue 
 in Cincinnati. This street was on the 
 site of an abandoned section of the Miami 
 and Erie Canal, and the state had granted 
 it to the city for highway and sewerage 
 purposes only; the railway company, 
 however, had taken possession under an 
 easement granted to it by the city, but 
 without obtaining the state's consent. 
 An inquiry was set on foot, the facts 
 were obviously as stated, and the At- 
 torney-General was accordingly directed 
 to bring an action in quo warranto for 
 the purpose of either ousting the railway 
 company or compelling it to purchase the 
 consent of the state to the existing diver- 
 sion from the terms of the grant from 
 state to city. Ex-Gov. Foraker and D. K. 
 Watson, now a member of Congress, 
 were retained as special counsel, and the 
 Supreme Court decided the case in favor 
 of the state, giving the railroad company 
 120 days in which to procure a lease 
 from the state authorities. 
 
 The law of Ohio provides that a so- 
 called joint board, consisting of the canal 
 commission, the board of public works, 
 and the chief engineer of the last-named 
 body, shall execute such leases as this, 
 using as a basis the valuation assessed 
 by the canal commission, and charging 
 the lessee an annual rental of six per cent, 
 on such valuation. The canal commis- 
 sion set upon the street where the rail- 
 road company had its tracks and build- 
 ings a value of $357,000. The company, 
 which was doing a business of perhaps 
 $40,000 a year by the use of this bit of 
 highway, and would have been driven to 
 
27 
 
 its wits' end to know where else to settle 
 down if compelled to remove thence, 
 nevertheless made a spirited " bluff,'' 
 and declared that it would tear up its 
 tracks and go befpre it would submit to 
 the imposition of such a rental. This bit 
 of theatricals was a matter of course, and 
 all who know the ways of railroad com- 
 panies expected it. Imagine the aston- 
 ishment, therefore, with which, just 
 before the expiration of the 120 days, 
 the public suddenly heard the announce- 
 ment that the canal board's valuation 
 had been cut down $200,000 at a single 
 stroke, and that the railroad company had 
 condescended to accept a lease on a re- 
 vised valuation of only $157,000. 
 
 Astonishment soon gave way to indig- 
 nation, for the state of Ohio, as has been 
 shown, is not so rich that it can afford to 
 throw six per cent, annual interest on 
 $200,000 into the gutter; and indignation 
 stirred up curiosity to discover how the 
 thing was done. According to Frank J. 
 McCuUach, president of the board of 
 public works, the person responsible for 
 the change was the Attorney-General of 
 the state, J. K. Richards, who was ex- 
 officio the legal adviser of the joint board. 
 There was only one member of the joint 
 board who had the backbone to stand out 
 and stick to the original valuation of 
 f357iOOO. He was a member of the canal 
 commission, named R. M. Rownd. Mr. 
 McCuUach says that he would not on 
 any account have voted for the lease but 
 for Mr. Richards's advice, and, knowing 
 what he knows now, he would not vote 
 so again. 
 
 Turning to the Attorney-General's lat- 
 est annual report to see what explanation 
 he offers for the change, we find no 
 record of any. He gives a very circum- 
 stantial account of the proceedings before 
 the courts, and a superficial statement of 
 the conflicting claims of the railway com- 
 pany and the joint board as to the terms 
 of the lease; but his record may be 
 searched in vain for any reference to the 
 $357,000 valuation and the mysterious 
 disappearance of $200,000 of it in a night. 
 
 Is he ashamed of his share in the busi- 
 ness? Does he think now, looking back 
 upon it in cool blood, that he was weak 
 in allowing the railroad to bluff the state 
 out of more than half its annual income 
 from the abandoned canal ? 
 
 Or is he simply shielding another and 
 higher functionary whose orders he was 
 bound to respect? For the legislative 
 investigators have only got to go deep 
 enough to find: 
 
 (i.) That a letter was received by Gov. 
 McKinley from J. Twing Brooks, the 
 Second Vice President of the railway 
 company, asking him if he would use his 
 good offices to bring about the desired 
 adjustment of the company's rental. 
 
 (2.) That after the receipt of this letter 
 Gov. McKinley was seen to go into the 
 Canal Commission's room, for an inter- 
 view the nature of which either the 
 Commissioners or the Governor would 
 doubtless be willing to disclose, if it 
 involved nothing questionable. 
 
 (3.) That thereafter the Attorney-Gen- 
 eral — who was both personally and offi- 
 cially as "close to" the Governor as any 
 man in the public service — gave his fatal 
 advice, on the strength of which the 
 valuation suddenly dropped from $357,000 
 to $157,000. 
 
 These are facts which are known. 
 There are several good people who can 
 tell the investigators where to look for 
 the original letter to the executive of an 
 impoverished state from an executive of 
 a railroad corporation then trying to 
 drive a hard bargain with that state; but 
 possibly the copy read by Mr. Brooks to 
 the legislative investigating committee 
 will answer just as well. 
 
 Judges of the nice proprieties of public 
 life will form their own opinion of the 
 personal or official relations which would 
 justify such a letter, and of the interplay 
 of cause and effect in the incidents which 
 followed its receipt. For Gov. McKinley's 
 letter to Mr. Brooks, in response to the 
 one asking for his intervention, said that 
 the matter had been placed entirely in 
 the hands of the Attorney General, and 
 that the Canal Commission would 
 undoubtedly act in accordance with his 
 advice! 
 
 The greatest interest is felt throughout 
 thf state in the forthcoming report of the 
 investigation. The Democrats, with a 
 lively recollection of the Blaine campaign, 
 are already stowing away choice morsels 
 of the evidence for use as material on the 
 stump next fall. 
 
 VII. 
 
 How AIcKinley Workers are Paid from 
 the State Treasury. 
 
 Columbus, C, April 17. 
 If the four years of Gov. McKinley's 
 so-called "administration " in Ohio show 
 a record of feebleness, neglect, and sub- 
 servience to rings and lobbies in connec 
 tion with the state's financiering, they 
 are positively disreputable ■ in another 
 light; for the Governor proved himself 
 not only nerveless and ineffective in 
 dealing with any important publn ques- 
 tion, but unable to choose men for ap- 
 pointment who could keep clear of scan- 
 dals. If he had left in their places all 
 the executive officers who were already 
 in the service when he took his chair, or 
 if he had, in making changes, sought 
 only those whose approved service under 
 former governors had given them a title 
 
28 
 
 to his consideration, he could have 
 steered clear of many of the perils which 
 beset his course, and gone out of the 
 governorship with a record fit for a can- 
 didate for ihc presidency. But instead 
 of that he hul a general clearing-out, re- 
 organizing offices and staffs and boards 
 and commissions till he had " McKinley- 
 ized" practically the whole state govern- 
 ment, with results which proved his in- 
 capacity for exercising the power of ap- 
 pointment and removal. 
 
 Indeed, the first cases which occur to 
 mind are those of one new appointee and 
 one hold-over. The new appointee was 
 the governor's personal choice for a high 
 place on his military staff ; he retired 
 after the newspapers had associated his 
 name with a domestic scandal of which 
 the details would not edify the refined 
 readers of the Evening Post, and which it 
 would be better to dismiss with this brief 
 reference. The hold-over — almost, if not 
 quite, the only person in a highly respon- 
 sible office whom McKinley saw fit to 
 keep in his place — was W. Z. McDonald, 
 chief inspector of workshops and fac- 
 tories. It is the duty of this functionary 
 to inspect all buildings in which large 
 numbers of persons are housed, and pass 
 upon their safety and the sufficiency of 
 ihf ir sanitary equipment. As an officer, 
 McDonald made himself unpopular by 
 his zeal in insisting on supplying all 
 sorts of buildings with fire-escapes. He 
 marred the architecture of many preten- 
 tious hotels, and added considerably to 
 the expense of various manufacturing 
 plants by this means, and the proprietors 
 whose pockets felt the pinch reviled him 
 as a "fire escape fiend," and threw out 
 broad hints that he received a commis- 
 sion from dealers in safety appliances. 
 In view of the excellence of the end 
 gained, however, no attention was paid 
 to this grumbling. But one fine day the 
 capital city was startled by the story that 
 McDonald had been drawing money from 
 the state treasury on fraudulent warrants, 
 and the accused officer was arrested and 
 brought to trial. 
 
 It was a queerly-mixed lot of evidence 
 which was brought out for both prosecu- 
 tion and defence; so much so that the 
 jury disagreed and no further proceed- 
 ings were taken, McDonald having made 
 good some $4,000, responsibility for 
 which seemed to have been fixed upon 
 him. It appeared that he had eleven 
 deputies serving under him, who divided 
 their time between official and political 
 work. They had been active, as he had 
 been also, in helping to elect Gov. Mc- 
 Kinley and other Republican candidates 
 10 office. Money was needed to keep the 
 machine runninij, and these fellows con- 
 tributed with the rest. For their ex- 
 penses they were expected to make a 
 
 regular accounting to their chief, who in 
 turn would draw the money from the 
 state treasury. Between accepting oral 
 statements of the expenses of his sub- 
 ordinates, instead of vouchers, and keep- 
 ing run in his head of the amounts he 
 advanced to them for the payment of the 
 political assessments, McDonald's ac- 
 counts became a hopeless tangle, and 
 all attempts to straighten them before a 
 jury made the political scandals of his 
 administration thicker. At the same time 
 it became plain to all who followed the 
 testimony that his own bank account did 
 not profit by his irregularities, but that 
 he was the victim of a rotten sort of 
 partisanship which permeated the higher 
 politics of Ohio — a convenient scapegoat 
 on whom bigger men could heap their 
 own responsibilities. It was sympathy 
 for his situation as a vicarious martyr 
 which undoubtedly had most to do with 
 the disagreement of the jury, and it was 
 the dread of raking over more adminis- 
 tration scandals which prompted the dis- 
 missal of the case after one mistrial. 
 
 How did Gov. McKinley act in the pre- 
 mises? Did he, as soon as it became clear 
 that McDonald had got into trouble by 
 over-zeal in working for his election, call 
 off the prosecution ? Or did he demand 
 of McDonald his immediate retirement 
 from an office which he had abused ? 
 
 Neither, so far as is known. But he 
 had an interview with McDonald at the 
 Capitol, which McDonald began to describe 
 on the witness-stand. 
 
 "Did the Governor say to you, ' I want 
 your resignation right away'?" asked the 
 attorney who was drawing the story out. 
 
 *' No, sir ; he said nothing of the sort," 
 answered the witness. 
 
 The audience strained their ears for the 
 revelation which was coming — but it 
 never came. Counsel on both sides 
 suddenly reached the conclusion not to 
 probe any further, and the record of 
 McDonald's interview with the Governor 
 remains unwritten to this dav. 
 
 That McDonald did not suffer in his 
 personal reputation by the disclosures 
 made in court and by his admitted short- 
 age, is evident from the fact that he is to 
 day employed as a responsible " travelling 
 man" at good pay. The chief sufferer by 
 the whole business was the Governor 
 himself ; for the inquiry was at once 
 raised : If the Governor knew nothing of 
 what this man had been doing, why did 
 he single him out as an exception to the 
 ■' clean sweep" made of the other state 
 officers? Or, on the other hand, if the 
 Governor knew of his proceedings before 
 they were made generally public, why 
 did he not remove him at once? And in 
 any event, why was not the McDonald- 
 McKinley interview described in its 
 entirety in court, when the good name of 
 
29 
 
 the administration had so much at stake? 
 Another investigation which has re- 
 cently been made discloses the fact that 
 "Joe" Smith, Gov. McKinley's State 
 Librarian, instead of staying in Columbus 
 and managing the library — the duty for 
 which he draws his salary— rhas been 
 spending his time in Cleveland, helping 
 " Mark" Hanna engineer the McKinley 
 campaign. When these disclosures came 
 out, they simply reduced to a formal 
 record a matter which was already known 
 to all Ohio, and a subject of general com- 
 ment. The disclosure evoked no expres- 
 sion of public indignation, but merely 
 laughter. Such things had become so 
 common under the McKinley regime that 
 they had passed the stage where they 
 exited any feeling except amusement. 
 
 "Bill" tfahn is another excellent speci- 
 men of the McKinley lieutenant who 
 draws his sustenance from the State 
 Treasury. Hahn was formerly a mem- 
 ber of the Board of Public Works, and, 
 while he was still under fire on account of 
 sundry grants of canal lands made to 
 railroad companies during his member- 
 ship of the board. Gov. McKinley put 
 him at the head of the State Insurance 
 Department. This appointment was re- 
 garded as significant that McKinley 
 needed some active political work outside 
 of his own state, for the duties of the office 
 would call Hahn elsewhere to examine 
 the affairs of foreign insurance companies 
 doing a branch business in Ohio. Sure 
 enough, it was of one of these " oflScial" 
 excursions to New York city, that an 
 Ohio journalist wrote from there to his 
 home paper in September of last year: 
 
 " Mr. Hahn's labors have not been con- 
 fined to talking McKinley. He has also 
 been working the press and has managed 
 to get a good deal of the right kind of 
 stuff for McKinley into print here. In all 
 this he is understood to be carrying out 
 his part of a regular organized effort to 
 boom the Ohio Governor, and obtain for 
 him the nomination so much desired by 
 him and his friends. This scheme . . . 
 is one which has been tried before many 
 a time, but never with great results. It 
 is a simultaneous booming of McKinley 
 in all parts of the country, with a claim- 
 ing of strength that it is supposed will 
 drive all other prospective candidates to 
 cover." 
 
 It is plain that Mr. Hahn knew what 
 Gov. McKinley had appointed him for. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Demoralization in the Conduct of Lunatic 
 A sy hints and Penitentiaries. 
 
 Columbus, O., April i8. 
 The history of penal and charitable in- 
 stitutions of Ohio during McKinley's gov- 
 
 ernorship is a long story of scandals and 
 investigations. It is useless to say that 
 the Governor was not himself in charge 
 of all these institutions. The point is that 
 he reorganized their management; and 
 his mind was evidently set so much more 
 upon making his appointments tributary 
 to his presidential aspirations than upon 
 doing well the duty right at hand, that he 
 appointed trustees and managers who 
 were unfit for their places, if general de- 
 moralization is any sign. 
 
 At the Dayton State Hospital for the 
 Insane, for instance, an inmate named 
 George Smith died mysteriously, and was 
 hastily buried. Some of his friends were 
 not satisfied, and a coroner's inquest was 
 held, with the result of showing that he 
 had died after being brutally beaten and 
 kicked. Several of his ribs were broken. 
 The attendants promptly placed the 
 blame upon other inmates of violent ten- 
 dencies, and from the nature of things it 
 was impossible to get satisfactory evi- 
 dence on the subject ; but nobody could 
 give a sufficient reason why, if the 
 poor creature had come to his death from 
 causes which the asylum management 
 could not have controlled, the facts had 
 not been frankly made known in the first 
 place and taken out of their atmosphere 
 of scandalous mystery. How little faith 
 was placed in explanations which failed 
 to explain, was shown by the prompt re- 
 vival of the stories of cruelty and broken 
 bones after the death of another inmate, 
 Michael Knecht, who went into the record 
 as a victim of pneumonia, and whose 
 body was buried in the asylum grounds. 
 What seemed to outsiders a pretty sure 
 sign of crooked work in this case, was the 
 summary discharge of Knecht's attendant 
 by the superintendent. But inquiry into 
 this scandal was put off by the superin- 
 tendent's -falling seriously ill and being 
 unable to testify. 
 
 The purchase of supplies for the State 
 Hospital for the Insane at Toledo from 
 "friendly" dea'ers.the extraordinary post- 
 age account of the Labor Statistician, 
 charges of grievous cruelty at the Boys' 
 Industrial School at Lancaster, and the 
 freedom with which the inmates of the 
 State Hospital for the Insane at Colum- 
 bus were permitted to make exhibitions 
 of themselves to the annoyance of the 
 sane people living in the neighborhood, 
 were only a few of the matters aired by 
 investigating committees and the press ; 
 and all tended to discredit the state ad- 
 ministration, so that good citizens with- 
 out regard to party cried out in despair : 
 " If Gov. McKinley would only give up 
 campaigning for the presidency long 
 enough to attend to the needs of Ohio ! " 
 
 The Penitentiary at Columbus was one 
 of the institutions which furnished the 
 largest crop of scandals. Escapes of con- 
 
30 
 
 victs became suspiciously frequent ; and 
 a murderer named Elliott was blinded by 
 vitriol thrown in his face by another 
 prisoner whose plot to escape he had 
 helped to frustrate — though how the 
 vitriol had been smuggled into the con- 
 vict's possession nobody seemed able to 
 find out. The first penitentiary chaplain 
 under McKinley's governorship retired 
 from service after being charged with 
 immoralities not necessary to reheaise 
 here. The second went out also under a 
 cloud, the result of certain financial trans- 
 actions with convicts. He took charge 
 of convicts' money for them ; he also had 
 to sign recommendations for paroling 
 convicts for good behavior. Accusations 
 began to fly about that he did not always 
 return to the convicts all the money he 
 obtained from or for them. An investi- 
 gation was made, and, though he was able 
 to explain a good many of his operations, 
 he nevertheless admitted to the board of 
 inquiry that he had committed a grave 
 indiscretion in borrowing money from 
 prisoners upon whose applications for pa- 
 role he would have to pass ; and his resig- 
 nation was tendered and accepted with- 
 out more ado. 
 
 Owing to these two successive scandals 
 in so rapid succession, greater pains was 
 apparently taken with the choice of a 
 third chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Winget, for 
 he still holds the place. But it must have 
 been a great discomfort to him, if at all 
 sensitive to the association in which his 
 name appears in print, to be drawn into 
 such a spectacle as was presented one 
 Sunday, and which is cited here not be- 
 cause it is unique, or highly important 
 in itself, but as illustrative of the sort of 
 discipline maintained in the state institu- 
 tions under the governorship of a weak- 
 kneed, vacillating politician. 
 
 A deputy warden named Playford was 
 going to leave the service on Monday, his 
 successor having been appointed and 
 broken in. There having been some 
 rivalry between Playford and the warden 
 as to who was the more popular with the 
 convicts (!), the retiring deputy had ar- 
 ranged with the chaplain to allow him to 
 make a farewell speech in connection 
 with the weekly religious exercises. The 
 warden, however, had got wind of this 
 plan, and was informed also that a large 
 bouquet had been smuggled into the 
 prison, which, at the close of Playford's 
 speech, was to be presented to him by a 
 leading convict, with appropriate re- 
 marks, as a testimonial of the affection 
 with which "the boys" would ever 
 cherish his memory. The next day, of 
 course, the newspapers would print an 
 account of the whole affair, and the re- 
 tiring deputy would be one point ahead 
 of the warden in his reputation for popu- 
 larity in their prison world. The warden 
 
 was resolved to break up the show and 
 spoil its theatrical effect. As will be seen, 
 he succeeded simply in turning a roaring 
 farce into a somewhat gory melodrama. 
 
 The chaplain finished his discourse and 
 signalled to Playford, who stepped for- 
 ward with a bow and began his prepared 
 address to the convicts, in the presence 
 of Warden James, an assistant deputy 
 warden named Stackhouse, the warden's 
 son, Curry, the other penitentiary em- 
 ployees, and a large number of philan- 
 thropic ladies and gentlemen who were 
 in the habit of visiting the penitentiary 
 chapel on Sunday. But instead of at- 
 tempting to describe the scene which fol- 
 lowed in the language of an ordinary 
 chronicle, let us get its picturesque flavor 
 — the "local color," as it were — from the 
 lips of Mr. Playford himself, as he made 
 his statement to the police : 
 
 "After singing and prayer," said he, 
 " the chaplain beckoned to me to get up. 
 I got up and said: ' Boys, don't you wish 
 you were me?' I was going to say, ' as 
 1 retire to-morrow night,' but before I 
 could utter these words the warden 
 jumped up and grabbed me by the left 
 arm and said: 'Sit down!' I replied, 
 ' Warden, I have the permission of the 
 chaplain to make a few remarks for the 
 benefit of the service.' Again he said, 
 'Sit down!' and beckoned to Stackhouse. 
 
 "Stackhouse jumped to his feet and 
 grabbed me by the left arm, with his 
 club raised, and jerked me round in 
 presence of the visitors, hurting me by 
 wrenching my side. He dragged me 
 over the feet of several lady visitors, 
 when I said: 'Stackhouse, let go of me! 
 You are hurting me.' He raised his 
 cane in the air, and being so much larger 
 than I, weighing about 250 pounds and 
 being over six feet tall and powerfully 
 built, I feared he would hit me with his 
 cane. I then let go my right, and caught 
 him below the right eye in the angle of 
 the nose, knocking him over against the 
 annex prisoners, who sat on the plat- 
 form. He recovered himself and raised 
 his club to hit me, when 1 clinched him 
 to save myself, and we fell down three 
 steps of the platform to the floor. He 
 fell partly on me. 1 grabbed him and 
 twisted him till his back was towards me. 
 
 " By that time the new deputy, five 
 guards, and the warden's son, Curry, 
 rushed around us. Curry shouted to 
 Stackhouse, " Give it to him! ' 1 jumped 
 to my feet and exclaimed: ' If any of you 
 come at me, I'll do you as I did Stack- 
 house.' I would not hit Curry, as he is 
 not worth hitting." 
 
 All this in a chapel devoted to divine 
 worship, on the day consecrated to the 
 Prince of Peace, and in the presence of 
 some hundreds of convicts, kept under 
 lock and key and branded for life because 
 
31 
 
 they have raised violent hands against 
 their neighbors! 
 
 Warden James's version of the affair, 
 and that given by other participants and 
 witnesses, did not differ materially from 
 Playford's, though lacking some of the 
 rare moral aroma which pervaded his. 
 The press, irrespective of party, de- 
 nounced the whole business as a public 
 shame and disgrace. And yet it was 
 only typical of the management of the 
 penal institutions of Ohio during Mc- 
 Kinley's administration as Governor. Is 
 it wonderful that their condition became 
 so intolerable at last that, even in this 
 politics-ridden state, a project was soberly 
 broached and discussed of putting the 
 penitentiary system under a non-partisan 
 board of managers, in the hope of fumi- 
 gating it? 
 
 IX. 
 
 Cruelty and Incapacity at the Deaf-mute 
 Asylum. 
 Columbus, O., April 20. 
 
 In the last letter some typical instances 
 were cited to show the demoralization 
 into which the penal and charitable insti- 
 tutions of Ohio lapsed during the rule of 
 Major McKinley as Governor, thanks to 
 his poor appointments in reorganizing 
 the personnel of the state government. 
 It is not given to any man to do always 
 the right thing; but the only man fit to 
 be trusted with power is he who, having 
 made one serious blunder, does not invite 
 its repetition by following the same 
 course a second time. Major McKinley, 
 unhappily, is one of those persons on 
 whom the lessons of experience are 
 thrown away. Take for an example the 
 case of the superintendents of the State 
 Institution for the Deaf and Dumb in 
 Columbus. 
 
 The law of Ohio — section 647 of the 
 Revised Statutes — requires that these 
 superintendents "shall be persons of 
 acknowledged skill, ability, and experi- 
 ence in their profession, and of good 
 moral character." A carefully prepared 
 opinion of the Attorney General construes 
 this to mean that, besides his other 
 accomplishments, a superintendent shall 
 be able to understand and use the sign 
 language of the deaf mutes. In spite of 
 thelaw, reinforced by the plainest dictates 
 of common sense, the first superintendent 
 appointed after Gov. McKinley had set 
 his reorganization programme in motion 
 was one S. R. Clark. He had not been long 
 in command before reports began to cir- 
 culate that the children at the institution 
 were ill treated. The accusations pres- 
 ently became so definite that they could 
 no longer be] ignored, and an official 
 
 investigation was ordered. In the early 
 part of 1894 the investigating committee 
 made its report. Although his relations 
 with his immediate superiors, as will be 
 seen later, were such as to cause the 
 most charitable possible view to be taken 
 of the superintendent's conduct, the 
 committee was compelled to make several 
 painful admissions. Among other things, 
 it found that he was a cruel martinet in 
 dealing with trifling acts of stupidity on 
 the part of the pupils. On one occasion 
 three of the girls, being a little late for a 
 meal, thought to take a short cut to their 
 seats by entering the dining-room through 
 the main door instead of the door which 
 the rules required the children to use. 
 Clark rushed at them, seized one of the 
 party by her arm or shoulder, and turned 
 her about so suddenly that her head 
 struck the door-casing and her face was 
 badly bruised. 
 
 For such petty infractions of the rules 
 as leaving table without permission, 
 entering library without permission, or 
 congregating in a hall, Clark applied or 
 threatened violent punishment, which so 
 terrorized the helpless children that one, 
 in trying to flee at his approach, took a 
 bad fall and was injured. 
 
 The tables were at times insufficiently 
 supplied with meats, or too liberally sup- 
 plied with bad butter; competent and 
 experienced teachers and employees were 
 dismissed without cause; and a law 
 requiring that the girls should be taught 
 how to make wearing apparel was flatly 
 violated. These examples show the wide 
 range of the offences reported by the 
 committee as proved. The committee 
 took pains to point out that, if the super- 
 intendent had had the acquaintance with 
 the deaf-mute sign language which the 
 law called for, he might have avoided 
 much friction in his relations with the 
 pupils, as they could have understood his 
 orders and he could have understood 
 their excuses. But he was found guilty 
 finally of an offence which mere ignor- 
 ance could not condone. The yearly 
 allowance of public monej' for running 
 the institution was based upon the super- 
 intendent's report of the general average 
 of attendance, and the committee found 
 that Clark had put in a voucher for 435, 
 whereas the actual figures were only 375. 
 So Clark had to go. But so reluctant 
 were the board of trustees to part with 
 him that, in accepting his resignation, 
 they took pains to say that they did so 
 "not because of any lack of confidence in 
 his work as superintendent, * * * 
 but because circumstances beyond our 
 control left us no other course to pursue." 
 And they emphasized this friendly senti- 
 ment by making him a handsome pres- 
 ent as a souvenir of his brief administra- 
 tion. 
 
32 
 
 Fcr a month after Clark's retirement, 
 the politicians swarmed about the Gov- 
 ernor's room, trying to capture the vacant 
 superintendentship for one or another 
 favorite. Among other influences brought 
 to bear, was that of the Republican Glee 
 Club, which had done yeoman work in 
 the last preceding McKinley campaign. 
 
 The club pressed as a candidate one of 
 its own members named Ellis, who had 
 once served a term as steward of the in- 
 stitution. The confidence of the club 
 that it had sung itself into a position of 
 authority with the Governor, where it 
 could name the head of a great state 
 charity, is, perhaps, a sufficient commen- 
 tary on the way Major McKinley's fellow- 
 partisans looked upon his use of patron- 
 age as Governor. Indeed, back of every- 
 thing else to be considered in this 
 connection lies the fact that the law vests 
 the selection of the superintendent in the 
 board of trustees ; yet the board's own 
 candidate, a protessor in the institution 
 named Odebrecht, stood no better chance 
 for the place than any political "boomer." 
 It was this way with all appointments 
 under the McKinley regime, down 
 almost, if not quite, to the charwomen 
 who scrubbed the floors of the public 
 buildings : the Governor's hand was in 
 everything, no matter where the law 
 placed the right of selection, and to the 
 Governor all petitions and appeals lor 
 patronage were addressed. 
 
 To return to the Glee Club. When its 
 committee visited the Governor to urge 
 the appointment of Ellis, they found that 
 they were too late. The Governor told 
 them that he was sorry to seem unac- 
 commodating, but he had already given his 
 word in favor of the Rev. W. S. Eagleson, 
 an applicant for the recent vacancy in 
 the penitentiary chaplainship. It having 
 been necessary to refuse the reverend 
 gentleman's request in that quarter, it 
 was of course desired to give him "• some- 
 thing equally as good," and the place of 
 superintendent of the Institution for the 
 Deaf and Dumb seemed to fill the bill 
 pretty well ! 
 
 A little later came the trustees. They 
 pointed out to the Governor that Prof. 
 Odebrecht met all the legal requirements 
 for a superintendent, and had in addition 
 a familiarity with this particular institu- 
 tion and its inmates which would obviate 
 the need, of such a breaking-in as must 
 be given to a new man. The Governor 
 answered that, while all they said might 
 be true, he considered Mr. Eagleson a 
 very superior person, who wtiuld soon 
 adapt himself to the duties of superin- 
 tendent. The trustees replied that Mr. 
 Eagleson might be morally and intellectu- 
 ally all he was represented to be, but 
 that he did not know the deaf-mute 
 language, which was by law a si7ie qua 
 
 non, and had had no special training 
 in this field of educational work. They 
 recalled to the Governor's mind the very 
 bad blunder that had been made in 
 appointing Mr. Clark, who gave as good 
 promise as Mr. Eagleson, and, like him, 
 was ignorant of the sign language, to his 
 own cost and that of the institution ; 
 they thought it would make a bad impres- 
 sion, and tend to destroy public confidence 
 in the management of the institution, to 
 do again what had been done with so 
 sorry a result in the Clark case. 
 
 Within twenty-four hours the scramble 
 for the place was ended by the announce- 
 ment that Mr. Eagleson was appointed. 
 The way this consummation came about 
 was characteristic. The trustees had 
 met and heard the report of their com- 
 mittee, when a messenger appeared at 
 the board-room with a request from the 
 Governor that two of the trustees — two 
 who were regarded as uncertain, and who 
 held the balance of power — would call 
 upon him at once at his hotel. They did 
 so. and on their return there was nothing 
 left for the board to do but to ratify the 
 Governor's mandate and select Mr. 
 Eagleson by formal vote. The legal 
 requirement as to his acquaintance with 
 the sign language was evaded by giving 
 him until the following August — three 
 months — to "study up" the subject under 
 a private tutor ! 
 
 This wretched subterfuge cost the 
 reverend gentleman a vast amount of 
 hard work for a very small return; for, 
 one year after he had thus fitted himself 
 for his post, he was obliged to quit it, 
 owing to a quarrel in which he _had_be- 
 come involved with the matron. 
 
 X. 
 
 The Campaign of Noise — A Specimen 
 Touter. 
 Cleveland, O., April 22. 
 
 The McKinley campaign, as has been 
 said, is strictly a " brass-band" affair. 
 The idea of making a great noise, and 
 thus frightening the timid delegates and 
 driving rival candidates from the field 
 unless they have uncommonly good 
 nerves, was the product of "Mark" 
 Hanna's ingenuity. Hanna knows the 
 sort of human material with which he 
 has to deal. That his plan is effective, 
 at least in spots, is shown by the sort of 
 letters which are coming to leading Re- 
 publicans in Ohio from lesser lights of 
 the party in other states. A typical case 
 is that of a Kentuckian who wrote some 
 time ago to a prominent business man in 
 this state. " I want to be internal rev- 
 enue collector for my district," said he, 
 "and I am in need of advice. Gov. 
 
33 
 
 Bradley is an old and valued friend of 
 mine, and if I could do what I wanted I 
 would support him for President. But 
 everything I hear is ' McKinley.' J. S. 
 was through here lately, fresh from 
 Ohio, and he says that every delegate 
 who doesn't come out for McKinley now 
 is going to be blacklisted. I am a dele- 
 gate, and I don't know what to do." 
 
 Luckily, he was dealing with an honest 
 man, who answered: "Stick to Bradley. 
 Then you will be sure of his good-will 
 if he has the distribution of the patronage 
 in your state. If you come out for Mc- 
 Kinley now, you will be only one of a 
 crowd, and neither candidate will remem- 
 ber you ivhen the time comes." 
 
 Every Ohioan to whom this was re- 
 peated bore witness that the advice was 
 good, not only because founded on a 
 wholesome principle of loyalty, but be- 
 cause Major McKinley's memory— after 
 election — is notoriously treacherous. 
 There are not wanting those good Re- 
 publicans who accuse him of forgetful- 
 ness at an earlier stage, as, for instance, 
 at the Minneapolis convention of 1892, 
 when a candid word from him at a criti- 
 cal juncture would have released the 
 Ohio delegation from their hypocritical 
 bondage to tiimself and enabled the Har- 
 rison men to go where they belonged. 
 As it was, he made them play the inane 
 part of the chorus in the old Greek 
 drama — they insisting that he should 
 accept the honor of the nomination, 
 while he stood up behind the chairman's 
 desk, and virtuously protested in a gentle 
 voice that his own choice was Harrison. 
 For that piece of spectacular fol-de-rol, 
 following immediately after a series of 
 events which convinced everyone of his 
 willingness to have the nomination forced 
 upon him, McKinley has never been 
 forgiven by the friends of General Harri- 
 son, and with reason. The whole per- 
 formance was as empty as the excuses 
 with which he dodged the challenge of 
 Col. McClure of Pennsylvania, a month 
 later, to take part in a joint debate on the 
 tariff. McKinley's successes in the polit- 
 ical field have never been won by hard 
 logic, but by the stampede process, just 
 as his votes while the leader of the 
 Hduse in the Fifty-first Congress were 
 won by the application of the " previous 
 question" gag rule and the sharp cracks 
 of the party whip. The campaign-chest 
 is always well in evidence also, and the 
 rich people who have had something to 
 gain by his election have never failed to 
 keep it full. Eighty-five thousand dollars 
 is the figure set here upon the campaign 
 fund raised for his first election to the 
 governorship, contributed by Eastern 
 manufacturers and other "business" 
 constituents who already had him in 
 training for the presidency. 
 
 A sensation has been caused within the 
 last few days by the publication, in a '' 
 Columbus paper which has repeatedly 
 given McKinley the most loyal support, 
 of the announcement that the men who 
 held minor offices in this state under his 
 governorship were to be assessed $25 
 each for the expenses of this year's can- 
 vass. The article proceeds: 
 
 " Some idea of the magnitude of thecall 
 may be obtained when it is considered 
 that altogether there are about eight 
 hundred officials, clerks, and " sich " who 
 owe their employment to the Governor 
 more or less directly. ... As a 
 matter of course these persons are not 
 compelled to pav the money. They are 
 simply asked to do so to assist the cause, 
 but, being asked, the great majority of 
 them will feel in duty bound to respond. 
 If a number respond, proportionate to 
 the number who respond in the state 
 campaigns, this horizontal assessment 
 will produce about $20,000. 
 
 The need of money to run this cam- 
 paign must be very pressing indeed, if 
 the clerks must be taxed at so early a 
 stage, when the only expense that can be 
 incurred is that of " working up" delega- 
 tions to St. Louis. It seems as if the 
 candidate ought to look for this prelimin- 
 ary fund to some of the multitude of 
 wealthy friends whose loyalty is exploited 
 so persistently in the McKinley press. 
 There is " Mark' Hanna himself, whose 
 street-railroad interests owe so much to 
 Major McKinley's forbearance, if not to 
 his friendly cooperation, as Governor. 
 And there is "Ves" Everett, whom Hanna 
 has put upon the Ohio delegation as his 
 confidential friend. The New York 
 Tribune referred to Everett the other day 
 as " a prominent banker of Cleveland." 
 The writer of the Tribune article would 
 have been more strictly correct if he had 
 referred to this gentleman as a retired 
 capitalist, for the Cleveland directories 
 give his name and his residence in the 
 most gorgeous 'part of Euclid Avenue, 
 without attaching any occupation thereto. 
 
 It is true that Everett was a banker 
 once. That was back in the seventies. 
 The firm was Everett, Weddell & Co. 
 Everett was credited with being the 
 moving spirit of the concern, and Weddell 
 the ornamental partner, with a snug 
 fortune but little practical knowledge of 
 the business. One day there came an 
 awful crash. The creditors seized on 
 everything in sight. So much of Wed- 
 dell's property as would realize anything 
 went to pay the debts of the firm, together 
 with money put up by some friend of 
 Everett's, generally understood to be a 
 rich relative by marriage. Weddell re- 
 tired from public view, utterly ruined in 
 fortune; what became of the " Co." does 
 not appear ; but Everett, always buoyant 
 
; 
 
 34 
 
 and debonair, soon rose to the crest of 
 the wave again. Hanna has apparently 
 never lost failh in him, and has put him 
 into this and that place, sometimes in the 
 banking line and sometimes elsewhere. 
 Just now he has him in street railroads 
 and politics, while Everett is interested 
 on his own account as a "promoter" of 
 various gigantic enterprises scattered 
 around the country. 
 
 Everett is " smart," in the Western 
 sense. Even the neighbors who lower 
 their voices when they rehearse his varie- 
 gated experiences as a financier are ready 
 to admit that. He has a most attractive 
 way, too, of forgiving — or appearing to 
 forgive — those quondam friends who 
 have played football publiclv with his 
 fair name. This makes people speak of 
 him as " popular" as well as smart 
 
 Indeed, his popularity has always been 
 one of his strong points. Once, while he 
 was poor Weddells senior partner, he 
 was so popular that, though a Republican, 
 he was elected City Treasurer on both 
 party tickets at once. There are malicious 
 politicians who account for this pheno- 
 menon by saying that the Democrats 
 nominated him out of esteem for his mag- 
 nanimity as shown in contributing more 
 money to their campaign fund than to 
 that of the Republicans? Hcjwever that 
 may be, he was elected term after term, 
 till it began to be wondered whether no- 
 body else in Cleveland was fitfor the place. 
 
 One secret of his long continuance in 
 office was, without doubt, his clever hand- 
 ling of the city securities. When the city 
 issued a new batch of bonds, they would 
 be turned over to Everett to dispose of, 
 and, when anv of the money was needed, 
 Everett furnished it. That was highly 
 satisfactory to the public, for it saved them 
 a lot of trouble in watching where the 
 bonds went to, or where the money came 
 from, or on what terms the city dealt with 
 its creditors. As long as the money was 
 always on tap when needed, what folly to 
 bother the taxpayers' heads wiih details ! 
 
 But one day a loral banker — the old 
 inhabitants say it was John F. Whitelaw, 
 now presidentof the National City Bank — 
 conceived the idea of throwing a little light 
 on these operations. So he prepared an 
 ordinance, which the Common Council 
 enacted, requiring that the city's securi- 
 ties should thereafter be put up for 
 competitive bids and sold at the highest 
 figure offered. Everett stoutly resisted 
 the new order of things, but he was 
 compelled to surrender, and the wisdom 
 of the competitive plan was shown by the 
 fact that about $16,000 was saved to the 
 city on a single issue of a quarter-million 
 dollars' worth of bonds. Not long there- 
 after the treasurership seemed to lose its 
 attraction for Everett, and he passed into 
 private life. 
 
 It is not the writer's purpose to single 
 out this one financier for especial distinc- 
 tion. His career is reviewed here simply 
 because he is " Mark" Hanna's right- 
 hand man, and a McKinley oracle whom 
 the Tribu>ie seems to love to quote. He 
 is doubtless no worse and no belter than 
 other people Hanna makes useful for 
 blowing the McKinley campaign trum- 
 pets, and whom he will "take care of" 
 after he has elected his little President. 
 
 Where would " Ves" fit best in the next 
 administration? Asa "prominent ban- 
 ker of Cleveland," how would he do, say, 
 for Comptroller of the Currency when 
 James H. Eckels steps out ? 
 
 XI. 
 
 The Indictment Summarized — A Pitiful 
 Prospect. 
 Cleveland, O., April 23. 
 The sole aim of this series of letters 
 has been to present a faithful portrait of 
 Major McKinley as his lifelong neighbors 
 in Ohio see him. That it is only an out- 
 line sketch is partly the fault of its sub- 
 ject, who is only an outline statesman, 
 and partly the result of there being so 
 great a mass of material of the same sort 
 to draw upon, that it is practicable to 
 cite only typical cases. It does not 
 straighten the crooked lines in this picture, 
 or lighten its heavy strokes, to say that 
 it does not leave Major McKinley under 
 indictment for positive and aggressive 
 wrong-doing. To the extent that it does 
 not attempt to make him out a criminal 
 and an outlaw, this is true. The com- 
 plaint against him, admitted freely by 
 Ohioans who are most friendly to him 
 personally, is that he is ignorant of the 
 fundamental principles of business, a 
 shifty politician, and a weak and nerve- 
 less executive. The only strong trait for 
 which his neighbors give him credit is an 
 inordinate ambition to become President 
 of the United States. That one idea 
 appears to have dominated his whole life 
 ever since "Mark"' Hanna began to make 
 use of him as a candidate; and it has 
 warped and unfitted him for doing his 
 duty to himself or to the trusts his state 
 has committed to his keeping. 
 
 In our rapid panorama of his career 
 for four years, we have seen him fright- 
 ened into a pitiful paralysis of tongue and 
 pen when urged to make plain his posi- 
 tion on the silver question at a critical 
 time. We have seen him leaning, for 
 his main support as a presidential candi- 
 date, upon a false and hollow pretense of 
 having his own state behind him. We 
 have seen him go down under a load of 
 another man's debts in which he would 
 not have become entangled but for his 
 
35 
 
 lack of ordinary business sense. We 
 have seen him trading upon a credit 
 which proved itself chiefly wind, since his 
 own means would not meet a respectable 
 fraction of the obligations with which he 
 had loaded himself, and he had no settled 
 income. We have seen that, instead of 
 quitting politics and going to work — the 
 only course which his frank friend Mr. 
 Kohlsaat thought practicable for a bank- 
 rupt who proposed to pay his debts him- 
 self — he allowed a group of his rich 
 backers to "pass the hat" and pay his 
 debts for him. We have seen him in the 
 Governor's chair, letting the state of Ohio 
 run a half-million dollars into debt for 
 mere current expenses, while he devoted 
 his attention to his presidential prospects. 
 We have seen him ignore the need of 
 replenishing the state treasury, when his 
 best friends wanted his aid in passing 
 the Whittlesey tax bill. We have seen 
 him equally oblivious of his present duty 
 when his help was most needed, in the 
 case of the Hocking Canal lease, with the 
 consequence that the state lost $25,000 at 
 a single stroke, and the chance of an 
 improved yearly rental at a later date. 
 We have seen him manifest an active 
 interest in only one of the state's financial 
 operations, which resulted in leasing to a 
 railroad corporation a piece of public 
 property on a valuation of $157,000, 
 though it was valued by the lawful 
 authority at .|357,ooo. We have seen 
 him permitting the use of the Governor's 
 room in the capitol as a camping-ground 
 for his friend and backer, the chief street- 
 railway magnate of the state, when a bill 
 was pending to secure street-railway 
 franchises for ninety-nine years, and a 
 number of legislators had to be "con- 
 vinced'" before the vote. We have seen 
 demoralization pervading the state gov- 
 • ernment in every department during his 
 exercise of the appointing power, and 
 the atmosphere of the prisons and asylums 
 saturated with scandal. 
 
 It is no apology for such a record to say 
 that Gov. McKinley never ran his own 
 hand into the state treasuiy to enrich 
 himself; it is the business of a Governor 
 to keep the hands of other men out, also. 
 It is no excuse for McKinley's incapacity 
 that the Governor of Ohio has no veto 
 power under the constitution; he has at 
 hand other means for advancing good 
 and blocking bad legislation, as the 
 records of several of McKinley's prede- 
 cessors in office show. It is not enough 
 to plead, as a reason for promoting a 
 Governor to the presidency, that the 
 scandals which made his term as Governor 
 memorable were not so huge as some 
 which have blackened the pages of other 
 histories; petty sins are too often asso- 
 ciated with petty virtues, and a long list 
 of them stamps their perpetrator as a 
 
 petty man and a petty public officer, far 
 below the standard of character and 
 ability which our republic has set for its 
 chief executive. 
 
 The half-measure quality which per- 
 vades all that Major McKinley does and 
 is, can certainly not be considered a rec- 
 ommendation for the presidency. The 
 same craving which has paralyzed his 
 best energies while a first term has been 
 in sight would undoubtedly dominate 
 him in the hope of a second. The same 
 lack of sturdy independence which has 
 always made him a tcy in the hands of 
 stronger men would keep him under their 
 control as President, especially in view of 
 the additional obligations incurred in his 
 campaign. What could be mdre edifying 
 than to see the daily gazette of appoint- 
 ments bristling with the old, familiar 
 names: "Mark" Hanna for Premier, 
 with power to plunge the nation into war 
 to-day and coo the sweet notes of peace 
 to-morrow, according to whether the 
 markets needed a bear or a bull impulse; 
 "V^es" Everett to manage the Treasury 
 and dispose of the bonds; Richards for 
 Attorney General, to advise the govern- 
 ment how it could most effectively cut 
 down its sources of revenue; "Bill" 
 Hahn for Secretary of the Interior, with 
 the largest cabinet patronage to handle; 
 Sleeper for Interstate Commerce Commis- 
 sioner, to see that that unbuilt railroad in 
 Athens County gets its share of whatever 
 is "going 'round"; "Joe" Smith for 
 Librarian of Congress, with leisure to 
 run a second-term literary bureau; and 
 Eagleson for Superintendent of the Coast 
 Survey, with three months' leeway to 
 "get up" the necessary mathematical 
 knowledge. 
 
 Although this list of possible appointees 
 must be only imaginary at the present , 
 stage, the experience of the state of Ohio 
 under McKinley's administration sug-' 
 gests that something quite as grotesqu'; 
 might be in store for the whole Union'if 
 he became President. The pressure ;or 
 favors would begin with the big mer to 
 whom the ex-Governor is over his ears in 
 debt, and end with the little fellows who 
 feel in need of a " vindication "— and a 
 salary. If the lessons of the pasi furnish 
 any basis for prophecy, the officer who 
 stood at the focus of this pressure would 
 be unable to resist it, anu the air of 
 Washington would soon become as thick 
 with "deals" and "combmes ' and 
 "schemes" as the air of Columbus was 
 from January, 1892, to December, 1895. 
 Knowing what they do of their candi- 
 date, can we wonder that the most in- 
 telligent Republicans of Ohio, and even 
 leading members of the delegation to 
 St. Louis, still refuse to believe that the 
 national convention will let McKinley 
 stampede it? 
 
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