t have crashed
in utter shipwreck but for the precautions of one man who had charted
the angry waters and the dangerous shoals and who now had a firm grasp
on the helm. Marcus A. Hanna, or "Uncle Mark," was the genial owner of
more mines, oil wells, street railways, aldermen, and legislators than
any other man in Ohio. Hanna was an almost perfect example of what the
Populists denounced as the capitalist in politics. Cynically declaring
that "no man in public life owes the public anything," he had gone his
unscrupulous way, getting control of the political machine of Cleveland,
acquiring influence in the state legislature, and now even assuming
dictatorship over the national Republican party. Because he had found
that political power was helpful in the prosecution of his vast business
enterprises, he went forth to accumulate political power, just as
frankly as he would have gone to buy the machinery for pumping oil from
one of his wells. Hanna was a stanch friend of the gold standard, but he
was too clever to alienate the sympathies of the Republican silverites
by supporting the nomination of a man known to be an uncompromising
advocate of gold. He chose a safer candidate, a man whose character
he sincerely admired and whose opinions he might reasonably expect to
sway--his personal friend, Major William McKinley. This was a clever
choice: McKinley was known to the public largely as the author of the
McKinley tariff bill; his protectionism pleased the East; and what was
known of his attitude on the currency question did not offend the West.
In Congress he had voted for the Bland-Allison bill and had advocated
the freer use of silver. McKinley was, indeed, an ideally "safe"
candidate, an upright, affable gentleman whose aquiline features
conferred on him the semblance of commanding power and masked the
essential weakness and indecision which would make him, from Mark
Hanna's point of view, a desirable President. McKinley would always swim
with the tide.

In his friend's behalf Hanna carried on a shrewd campaign in the
newspapers, keeping the question of currency in the background as far as
possible, playing up McKinley's sound tariff policy, and repeating often
the slogan--welcome after the recent lean years--"McKinley and the
full dinner pail." McKinley prudently refused to take any stand on the
currency question, protesting that he could not anticipate the party
platform and that he would be bound by whatever declaration