From a photograph taken for and used by courtesy of the Chicago Inter Ocean.
It was clear to him that for twenty years after the war the nation would be busy in construction; that the general aim would be to establish productive industries—North and South—that men would be building homes, advancing into new country, opening new mines, reaching farther into the wilderness, reclaiming more and more of the waste land, building more railroads, launching more steamships; and that there would come a period of erecting new homes, of beautifying, of adornment, of polish; and that then would come an era of study toward the conservation of forces, the learning of less expensive ways of doing what had been effectively done before—the era of economizing—to be swiftly followed by the era of stupendous wealth. And let that man who contends the essentials of this picture were not foreseen by William McKinley account on any other basis, if he can, for that statesman’s steadfast progress toward the one result which they alone could produce. Let that man who denies, reflect for a moment that these stages of development—from first to last—were foretold by William McKinley in a thousand speeches. It is not contended that in 1876 he “revealed” to his fellows that war with Spain would come in 1898; nor that he declared in 1880 that “the flag of the free” would wave over lands in the shadows of Asia at the sunrise of a new century. But no man who knows the history of his country and follows well this true story of William McKinley’s life can contend that he did not in 1876 see the imminence of that tariff struggle which culminated in 1880; nor that he failed in 1892 to see the need of a financial reform which 1896 should usher in; or that he underrated in 1898 the mighty consequences of that step which launched his people into a foreign war.
It has been said that he, almost alone of Americans, stood for a protective tariff at the very close of the Civil War. Foreseeing that period of industrial development, he looked at the rolling oceans, and knew each billow would bear on its foamy back a load of goods for American markets; and that each departing ship would heap in its hold the dollars that Americans had paid for those goods. And he knew that, with such a policy, American development could never go beyond the bondman stage; that “the land of the free and the home of the brave” would indefinitely remain mortgaged to the lords of cheaper labor, the host of shrewder men.
So from the first he struggled for a tariff rate which seemed small lessening of the burden that the war had left. Against the superficial charge of injustice he offered the defense of ultimate benefit, and if some of his countrymen were slow to see, let it be said to the credit of a majority that they followed him—not always seeing, but ever trusting until the crisis had passed.
Surely it is no exaggeration to say that William McKinley did more than any other man in America to fix and maintain the policy of protection. It can scarcely be too much to say that, without him, the protective policy would have been overthrown.
If these are conceded, it must follow that the preparation for the newer era, developed from that in which he labored, may be chiefly credited to him.
It was necessary to foster the industries of the United States. Maybe in the following of that policy some selfish persons took a mean and unpatriotic advantage of their countrymen, and claimed a concession they neither needed nor deserved. But in the main the effort was to build up such a wealth as no nation on earth ever before acquired in a similar lapse of time, by peaceful pursuits or the conquests of a victorious war. And if the day came when all that wealth was needed, it may be triumphantly rejoined that the money was here.
Over and over again Mr. McKinley had been assailed with the contention that, while protection would infallibly enrich a certain favored class—the manufacturers—it would as certainly impoverish and keep in poverty the people who must buy their goods. But the issue confounded them. Every class in America shared in the stupendous prosperity which protection insured. Never was labor so largely employed, never had it been so munificently rewarded. Never was the farmer so fortunately situated. Wide as were his fields, he added to them. Bountiful as were his harvests, he found markets for them. Never was the mechanic so much in demand. Never was the artisan so much sought after. And—as the flight of time brought the inevitable desire for refinement—never was there such a compensation for the artist, or the writer, the singer or the sculptor. The overflowing coffers of the country enriched all the countrymen who deserved.
Then came the pause when a nation, rising to the stature of maturity, looked over the mountain boundary, looked over the ocean wall, and felt the unformed impulse to share in the affairs of the world. It was so natural, as inevitable, as that the youth of health and strength should feel the stirring of desire to mingle with his kind. It is not scorn of home. It is not contempt for the precious past. But it is obedience to a law which Abram heard away there in Ur, of the Chaldees, and obeyed in his western pilgrimage. It is the process of growth which the Creator meant all mankind should feel.
At the doors of the continent lay the island of Cuba. From time before the Republic was founded, that island had been the spoil of the Spaniards. There was not a day since Ovando landed that did not see the Cubans cruelly treated by the Don. How they ever throve under a domination so severe is one of the mysteries. The Ruler of all the Earth must have raised up that people and preserved it through awful adversity for a purpose neither its leaders nor their task masters could foresee.