Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

The Wilson Tariff bill was passed with protective features sufficiently liberal to maintain our industries with the enlarged markets it would have produced for American products, but it was assailed as one of the chief causes of our industrial depression, and it became an important factor in the election of McKinley in 1896. It is now demonstrated before the close of the McKinley administration, that the protective features of the Wilson bill were more than equal to the necessities of the present. New and unexpected conditions brought this country suddenly to a policy of expansion in territory and trade, and to-day we have hardly an industry that really needs protection if it can have free markets for its products.

Cleveland was bitterly assailed as unfriendly to a liberal pension policy for our soldiers. He came into his second term in the midst of a tidal wave of pension profligacy. Private pensions were passed by the hundreds in Congress usually without debate, and often with only a small fraction of a quorum present. Cleveland vetoed a number of these bills, and I cannot recall one vetoed private pension bill that was passed over his veto, although there may have been a very few.

I happened to witness a painful exhibition of the cowardice of Congressmen in meeting the pension question after Cleveland had vetoed a bill greatly enlarging our pension system. On the morning of the day that the veto was to be taken in the House to sustain the veto or pass the bill, notwithstanding the objections of the President, I called upon Speaker Carlisle in his room in the Capitol, and there found him in earnest consultation with twelve or fifteen leading Democratic Congressmen. There was grave danger that the bill would pass over the veto, although certainly not one-third of the members of the House believed that the bill was just. The question discussed at that conference was who of the Democratic leaders could afford to take the floor in defence of the veto. All heartily approved of it, but only two of all those present expressed his willingness to come to the front and stand for the right. Governor Curtin, then a member of the House, had the courage to say that as the friend of the true soldier he would defend the veto on the floor, and while every one present agreed with him, a majority of them declared that it was a necessity, for their own safety at home, to vote for the bill. It was only by the greatest effort that the veto was sustained for want of a two-thirds vote, although a decided majority of the House voted for the bill.

Such were the conditions in which the people entered upon the memorable contest of 1896. Governor McKinley and Speaker Reed took the lead early in the race for the Republican nomination for President, and McKinley was most fortunate in having his Warwick in Mark A. Hanna, of Ohio, who conducted the McKinley battle on the same lines that Samuel J. Tilden conducted the contest for his nomination in 1876. His fight was won by well-organized and earnestly directed contests in every debatable State, and for a year or more before the convention met Hanna was tireless in his work. He had a strong candidate in McKinley; a man of blameless character, of admitted ability, a champion of protection, a soldier who had carried his musket as a private in the flame of battle, and possessing many attributes of personal popularity. Reed in his rough way fought his battle more heroically than wisely, and was finally unhorsed at the close of the contest by McKinley sweeping some of the New England States from him. That defeated Reed, and McKinley’s nomination was assured.

On only one point did Hanna seriously miscalculate the lines of safety. He saw the cheap-money and repudiation issue formidable on every side and in both parties, and he decided that McKinley should be nominated for President on a platform that straddled the money issue in a cowardly way. In order to give the cue to the party on the money issue, he called the Republican State Convention of Ohio to meet on the 11th of March, 1896, and that convention adopted the following money plank, intended to be the McKinley platform:

“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 restrictions and such provisions, to be determined by legislation, as will secure the maintenance of the parities of value 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 Ohio money plank was generally accepted by the Republicans of the West as a cunning straddle, that would hold the cheap-money Republicans, whose devotion to protection made them willing to yield something on the money question, but it was severely criticised by a number of the ablest Republicans of the East, and before the convention met it became evident that the friends of an emphatic honest-money plank were likely to dominate the body.

The Republican National Convention met at St. Louis on the 16th of June. There was little or no dispute as to who would be nominated for President, as a decided majority of the delegates came there for the purpose of nominating McKinley. Charles W. Fairbanks, of Indiana, was temporary chairman and present Senator John M. Thurston, of Nebraska, permanent president. The struggle over the money plank of the platform kept the convention in idleness until the third day, when an agreement was reached in favor of the gold standard. There has been some dispute recently as to who made Hanna adopt the gold platform. There were many and very earnest consultations in St. Louis before an agreement with Hanna could be reached, and it was finally accomplished by a number of able members of the body deciding that they would notify Hanna, giving him one hour to accept the gold-standard platform, or they would carry it into the convention and compel McKinley’s friends to meet the issue in open debate. I was at the same hotel, on the same floor with Hanna, and knew just when that proposition was sent to him, and knew also that in little over half an hour he agreed to the demand of the gold-standard Republicans, and it was then adopted without a contest. When the platform was reported, Senator Teller, of Colorado, who led the Silver Republicans, and who was a member of the committee on resolutions, offered the following as a substitute for the money plank of the platform:

“The Republican party favors the use of both gold and silver as equal standard money, and pledges its power to secure the free, unrestricted, and independent coinage of gold and silver at our mints at the ratio of 16 parts of silver to 1 of gold.”

Senator Teller delivered an earnest and able argument in support of his substitute, but it was rejected by 818¹⁄₂ votes to 105¹⁄₂. A separate vote was also had on the financial plank as reported by the majority, and it was adopted by 812¹⁄₂ to 110¹⁄₂. When the platform was adopted, Senator Cannon, of Utah, presented a protest against the money plank of the platform, after which thirty-four delegates from the Western States, including Senators Teller and Cannon, withdrew from the convention. There was only one ballot for President, as follows: