e slightest doubt. The mainspring of the trouble,
I believe, was an inability to select good men for public office.
He was not a good judge of men; he surrounded himself with a coterie
that betrayed his trust and used the State offices for personal
gain. I have always sympathized with Governor Altgeld. Had he
been eligible I believe he would have been the nominee of his party
for the Presidency; but he was born abroad.

One can scarcely imagine industrial conditions in a worse state
than they were at the close of the Cleveland Administration. The
election of a Republican Congress in 1894 had helped some, but the
revenues were not sufficient to meet the ordinary running expenses
of the Government; bonds had to be issued, labor was out of
employment, the mills and factories were closed, and business was
at a standstill.

This was the condition of affairs when the Republican National
Convention assembled in 1896.

CHAPTER XIX
McKINLEY'S PRESIDENCY
1896 to 1901

The hard times, the business depression, all attributable to the
Wilson Tariff Bill, made the Republicans turn instinctively to
Governor McKinley, the well-known advocate of a high protective
tariff, as the nominee of the Republican party, who would lead it
to victory at the polls.

The Republican National Convention of 1896 was held at St. Louis.
It was one of the few national conventions which I failed to attend.
Since entering the Senate, I have been usually honored by my party
colleagues in the State by being made chairman of the Illinois
delegation to Republican national conventions. But for some reason
or other--just why I do not now recollect--I was not a delegate to
the St. Louis Convention. Congress was in session until near the
time when the convention was to meet, and Mr. McKinley, who, it
was well known, would be the nominee of the party, invited me to
stop off in Canton on my way from Washington to Illinois and spend
a day with him. I did so, arriving at Canton about nine in the
morning, Mr. McKinley meeting me at the station and driving me to
his house, where I remained until my train left at nine in the
evening. From his residence in Canton, I wired the Illinois
delegation, appealing them to vote for McKinley. He received all
but two of the votes of the delegation. He was nominated without
any serious opposition, through the brilliant generalship of that
master of party manipulation, the Hon. Marcus A. Hanna.

I was talked about