|
|
“Uncle Mark: ‘Not Saying a Word’ ”
No caption.
In
the winter of 1903-1904, political commentators speculated that Mark
Hanna, the powerful senator from Ohio who played a key role in winning
the White House for William McKinley in 1896 and 1900, would himself
become a candidate for the presidency in 1904, challenging McKinley’s
successor, Theodore Roosevelt. In
this cartoon, Hanna, who symbolized the wealth and influence of “big
business” in American politics, remains mum about his political
intentions. The Republican
Elephant, which has no rider, casts his eyes toward the Ohio senator as
they walk along together. Hanna,
though, died two months after this cartoon was published, removing the
only potential rival to Roosevelt for the Republican nomination.
Marcus Alonzo Hanna was born on
September 24, 1837, in New Lisbon (now, Lisbon), Ohio, the son of a
physician turned grocer. He
was educated in the public schools of New Lisbon and Cleveland, where
his family moved when he was 15. He
attended Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio, until expelled for a
prank. Hanna manifested a
flare for salesmanship while working as a traveling salesman for his
father’s wholesale food business, becoming managing partner upon his
father’s illness and death in 1862.
He served briefly in 1864 with the Union armed forces, but saw no
action. Later that year, he
married Charlotte Rhodes, the daughter of Daniel Rhodes, a prosperous
iron and coal producer. At
first, Hanna chose to operate his own oil refinery, but joined his
father-in-law’s firm in 1867. The
young man’s business vision and skills prompted him to steer the
company down several additional avenues, including mining, railroads,
shipbuilding, lake shipping, and steel manufacturing.
In 1885, he bought out his partners to establish M. A. Hanna and
Company.
In Cleveland, Hanna purchased a
bank, opera house, the Cleveland
Herald newspaper, and battled
Tom L. Johnson
for control
of the city’s streetcars. He
also became active in Republican politics, working on the presidential
campaigns of Ohioans Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, James A. Garfield in
1880, and John Sherman in 1884 and 1888 (the latter was not nominated
either time). It was,
however, his relationship with Ohioan
William McKinley
for
which Hanna was best able to demonstrate his political prowess.
Hanna first aided McKinley in the congressman’s unsuccessful
bid to become speaker of the house in 1889, and then worked on
McKinley’s successful gubernatorial campaigns in 1891 and 1893.
During the economic depression of the early 1890s, Hanna focused
on business affairs, including finding donors to relieve McKinley’s
personal debt. In 1895, the
businessman handed the reins of his company to his brother in order to
manage McKinley’s presidential campaign.
Hanna convinced Southern
Republicans to select delegations supportive of McKinley, and make sure
that the Republican National Committee (RNC) ruled in favor of McKinley
delegates in disputed cases. McKinley
won the nomination and Hanna was selected to chair the RNC.
When the Democrats nominated Congressman William Jennings Bryan,
the maverick, 36-year-old, free-silver advocate, Hanna played on fears
in the business community to raise an unprecedented amount of money
($3.5 million according to an audit, but Democrats claimed without evidence that it was higher).
Democrats and the press made an issue of both the large sum of
Republican money raised and Hanna, caricaturing him as a rich,
cigar-chomping political boss of questionable ethics.
Hanna borrowed tactics from the advertising industry to
“sell” McKinley with slogans, such as promoting the nominee as the
president who would guarantee “a full dinner pail” to working
Americans. Hanna dispatched nearly 1500 speakers across the country,
published numerous pro-McKinley pamphlets in various languages, and
spent most of the Republican war chest in the crucial Midwest.
In early 1897, Hanna declined
President McKinley’s offer of the cabinet position of postmaster
general, but was appointed by the Ohio governor to the U.S. Senate to
fill the seat of John Sherman, who retired to become U.S. treasury
secretary. The next year,
the Ohio legislature elected Hanna by one-vote to a full term.
An investigation by the U.S. Senate found no proof that he had
bribed legislators to secure victory.
Despite his negative reputation, Hanna gained popularity among
his colleagues and other Washington insiders because of his
friendliness, access to the president, and knowledge of political
issues.
In 1900, Hanna again chaired
McKinley’s presidential election campaign, and emphatically argued
against placing Governor Theodore Roosevelt on the ticket as vice
president. “Don’t any
of you realize that there’s one life between that madman and the
Presidency?” Hanna reportedly exclaimed.
However, the view of Senator
Thomas Platt, who wanted
Roosevelt out of New York, prevailed.
During the campaign, Hanna used his influence to prevent a coal
strike in Pennsylvania by bringing management and labor to the
bargaining table. As a
member of the National Civic Federation, the Ohio senator worked for
better management-labor relations.
After
McKinley’s
assassination
in September 1901, Hanna loyally
supported the new president’s policies, despite his uneasiness with
Roosevelt. In fact, the
senator’s speeches in favor of a canal through
Panama,
rather than Nicaragua, were so effective that some of his colleagues
nicknamed the project the “Hannama Canal.”
Behind the scenes, though, he told his fellow Republican senators
to “stand pat” in opposing legislation that tinkered with the tariff
or other economic policies. He
was considered a possible challenger to Roosevelt for the Republican
nomination in 1904, and refused to endorse the president’s reelection
before his death from typhoid fever in February 1904.
A few months later at the Republican National Convention that
nominated Roosevelt, a huge portrait of the late Hanna hung on the
podium.
Robert C. Kennedy
|
|
|
