Contemporary American History, 1877-1913

by Charles A. Beard

But Mr. Hanna's greatest exploits in financing politics were in connection with Mr. McKinley's campaigns. In 1896 he at first encountered some difficulties because of his middle western connections and the predilection of Wall Street for Mr. Levi P. Morton in preference to Mr. McKinley. "Mr. James J. Hill states that on August 15, just when the strenuous work of the campaign was beginning, he met Mr. Hanna by accident in New York and found the chairman very much discouraged. Mr. Hanna described the kind of work which was planned by the Committee and its necessarily heavy expense. He had been trying to raise the needed money, but with only small success. The financiers of New York would not contribute. It looked as if he might have to curtail his plan of campaign, and he was so disheartened that he talked about quitting. Mr. Hill immediately offered to accompany Mr. Hanna on a tour through the high places of Wall Street, and during the next five days they succeeded in collecting as much money as was immediately necessary. Thereafter Mr. Hanna did not need any further personal introduction to the leading American financiers."[57]

Many grave charges were brought against Mr. Hanna to the effect that he had no scruples in the use of money for corrupt purposes, but such charges have never been substantiated to the satisfaction of his friends. That in earlier days he employed the methods which were common among public service corporations, is admitted by his biographer, but condoned on the ground that practically every other street railway company in the country was confronted with the alternative of buying votes or influence. Mr. Hanna's Cleveland company "the West Side Street Railway Company and its successors were no exception to this rule. It was confronted by its competitors, who had no scruples about employing customary methods, and if it had been more scrupulous than they, its competitors would have carried off all the prizes. Mr. Hanna had, as I have said, a way of making straight for his goal.... He and his company did what was necessary to obtain the additional franchises needed for the development of the system. The railroad contributed to local campaign committees and the election expenses of particular councilmen; and it did so for the purpose of exercising an effective influence over the action of the council in street railway matters."[58]

Grave charges were also made at the time of Mr. Hanna's candidacy for the United States Senate that he employed the methods which he had found so advantageous in public-service-corporation politics, but his biographer, Mr. Croly, indignantly denies the allegation, showing very conclusively that Mr. Hanna won his nomination squarely on the issue put before the Republican voters and was under the rules of politics entitled to the election by the legislature. Mr. Hanna's career, says Mr. Croly, "demanded an honorable victory. Like every honest man he had conscientious scruples about buying votes for his own political benefit, and his conscience when aroused was dictatorial.... It does not follow that no money was corruptly used for Mr. Hanna's benefit. Columbus [Ohio] was full of rich friends less scrupulous than he.... They may have been willing to spend money in Mr. Hanna's interest and without his knowledge. Whether as a matter of fact any such money was spent I do not know, but under the circumstances the possibility thereof should be frankly admitted."[59]

In his political science as well as his business of politics, Mr. Hanna looked to the instant need of things. He does not seem to have been a student of history or of the experience of his own or other countries in the field of social legislation. As United States Senator he made practically no speeches, if we except his remarks in favor of ship subsidies and liberal treatment of armor plate manufacturers. On the stump, for in later years he developed some facility in popular addresses, he confined his reflections to the customary generalizations about prosperity and his chief contribution to political phraseology was the slogan, "Stand pat."[60] When not engaged in actual labor of partisan contests, Mr. Hanna seems to have enjoyed the pleasure of the table and good company rather than the arduous researches of the student of politics. He had an immense amount of shrewd practical sense, and he divined a good deal more by his native powers of quick perception than many a statesman of the old school, celebrated for his profundity as a "constitutional lawyer and jurist."

The complete clew to Mr. Hanna's philosophy of politics is thus summed up by his penetrating and sympathetic biographer, Mr. Croly: "We must bear in mind that (1) he was an industrial pioneer and instinctively took to politics as well as to business; (2) that in politics as in business he wanted to accomplish results; (3) that politics meant to him active party service; (4) that successful party service meant to him the acceptance of prevailing political methods and abuses; and (5) finally that he was bound by the instinctive consistency of his nature to represent in politics, not merely his other dominant interest, but the essential harmony between the interests of business and that of the whole community." In other words, Mr. Hanna believed consistently and honestly in the superior fitness of business men to conduct the politics of a country which was predominantly commercial in character. He was not unaware of the existence of a working class; in fact he was said to be a generous and sympathetic employer of labor; but he could not conceive the use of government instrumentalities frankly in behalf of that class. Indeed, he thought that the chief function of the government was to help business and not to inquire into its methods or interfere with its processes.

An illustration of Mr. Hanna's theory of governmental impotence in the presence of the dominant private interests was afforded in the debate in the Senate over the price to be paid for armor plate, in the summer of 1900. The Senate proposed that not more than a stipulated price should be paid to the two steel companies, Carnegie and Bethlehem, which were not competing with each other; and that, in case they failed to accept, a government manufacturing plant should be erected. Mr. Hanna's proposition was that the price of steel should be left, as the House had proposed, with the Secretary of the Navy, and he warmly resisted all government interference. When it was brought out in debate that the steel companies had refused the government officers the data upon which to determine whether the price charged was too high, Mr. Hanna declared: "They did perfectly right in not disclosing those facts. That is their business; and if they chose not to give the information to the public, that was their business also." In short, he took the position that the government should provide ample protection to the steel interests against foreign competition, and pay substantially whatever the steel companies might charge for armor plate (for without proper data the Secretary of the Navy could not know when prices were reasonable), and then ask them no questions whatever. Here we have both laissez faire and capitalism in their simplest form.

Mr. Hanna, however, had none of the arts of the demagogue, not even the minor and least objectional arts. His bluntness and directness in labor conflicts won for him the respect of large numbers of his employees. His frank and open advocacy of ship subsidies and similar devices commanded the regard, if not the esteem, of his political enemies. His chief faults, as viewed by his colleagues as well as his enemies, were in many instances his leading virtues. If some of the policies and tactics which he resorted to are now discredited in politics, it must be admitted that he did not invent them, and that it was his open and clean-cut advocacy of them that first made them clearly intelligible to the public. When all the minor and incidental details and personalities of the conflicts in which he was engaged are forgotten, Mr. Hanna will stand out in history as the most resourceful and typical representative of the new capitalism which closed the nineteenth century and opened the new.

The Development of the Urban Population

The rapid advance of business enterprise which followed the Spanish War made more striking than ever the social results of the industrial revolution.[61] In the first place, there was a notable growth in the urban as contrasted with the rural population. At the close of the century more than one third of the population had become city dwellers. The census of 1910 classified as urban all thickly populated areas of more than 2500 inhabitants, including New England towns which are in part rural in character, and on this basis reported 46.3 per cent of the population of the United States as urban and 53.7 rural. On this basis, 92.8 per cent of the population of Massachusetts was reported as urban, 78.8 per cent in New York, and 60.4 per cent in Pennsylvania. That census also reported that "the rate of increase for the population of urban areas was over three times that for the population living in rural territory."

The industrial section of this urban population was largely composed of non-home owners. The census of 1900 reported "that the largest proportion of hired homes, 87.9 per cent, is found in New York City. In Manhattan and Bronx boroughs the proportion is even higher, 94.1 per cent, as compared with 82 per cent for Brooklyn.... There is also a very large proportion of hired homes in Boston, Fall River, Jersey City, and Memphis, constituting in each of them four fifths of all the homes in 1900." Of the great cities having a large proportion of home owners, Detroit stood at the head, with 22.5 per cent of the population owning homes free of mortgage.