Fifty Years of Public Service Part 24

McKinley's campaign for the nomination and controlled it absolutely and, to use the common expression, he "ran every other candidate off the track."

He came into Illinois and carried the State easily. He was not sparing in the use of money, but believed in using it legitimately in accomplis.h.i.+ng results.

It must have been a great satisfaction to him when the St. Louis Convention nominated his candidate, William McKinley, of Ohio, on the first ballot by a vote of 661 as against 84 votes for Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, the next highest candidate. He had it all organized so perfectly that the St. Louis convention was perfunctory so far as Mr. McKinley's nomination was concerned. The Convention recognized that it was Mr. Hanna had achieved this great triumph; and after Senator Lodge, Governor Hastings, and Senators Platt and Depew had moved that the nomination of Mr. McKinley be made unanimous, a general call was made for Mr. Hanna. He finally yielded in a very brief address:

"Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention:--I am glad there was one member of this Convention who has had the intelligence at this late hour to ascertain how this nomination was made--by the people. What feeble effort I may have contributed to the result, I am here to lay the fruits of it at the feet of my party and upon the altar of my country. I am now ready to take my position in the ranks alongside of my friend, General Henderson, and all good Republicans from every State, and do the duty of a soldier until next November."

Naturally, Mr. Hanna was made chairman of the Republican National Committee, and as such conducted Mr. McKinley's campaign for election just as he had conducted the preliminary campaign for the nomination.

He there showed the shrewdest tact and ability in its management, and many people believe that he elected McKinley very largely by his own efforts.

I do not know whether Mr. Hanna was very ambitious to enter the Senate or not, but I do believe that Mr. McKinley saw that he would be probably the most useful Senator to his Administration; and he contrived to make a vacancy in the Senators.h.i.+p from Ohio by inducing John Sherman to accept the position of Secretary of State in his Cabinet, thereby making a place for Mr. Hanna in the Senate.

Senator Sherman resigned to enter the State Department; and on March 5, 1897, Mr. Hanna was appointed by Governor Bushnell to fill the vacancy.

From the very first Mr. Hanna took rank as one of the foremost leaders of the Senate. Of course, he had everything in his favor.

He had nominated and elected McKinley; he had been Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and it was known that he stood closer to the President than any other man in public life.

But notwithstanding this, he had the real ability naturally to a.s.sume his place as a leader. He a.s.sumed a prominent place more rapidly than any Senator whom I have ever known. He took hold of legislation with a degree of skill and confidence that was remarkable, and carried his measures thorough apparently by his own individual efforts and energy. He changed the whole att.i.tude of the Senate concerning the route for an interoceanic ca.n.a.l. We all generally favored the Nicaraguan route. Senator Hanna became convinced that the Panama route was best, and he soon carried everything before him to the end that the Panama route was selected.

During the first McKinley campaign, Mark Hanna was probably the most caricatured man in public life. He was made an issue in the campaign and was usually pictured as being covered with money-bags and dollars. But it is very strange how public sentiment changed concerning him. Before the first McKinley Administration was over, Mark Hanna enjoyed quite a degree of popularity; but it was not until he entered the campaign of 1900 that he really became one of the popular figures in American politics.

Some one, I do not know who, induced him to go among the people and show himself, and try to make some speeches. His first few efforts were so successful that it was determined he should make a speech-making tour. Senator Frye, of Maine, one of the oldest and most experienced and finest orators in the country, accompanied him on his tour. Senator Frye told me that he prevailed upon Senator Hanna to make short campaign speeches first. He requested him to try a fifteen-minute speech, then extend them to thirty minutes. Before their tour was ended, he was making just as long and just as good a speech as any old experienced campaigner. During this campaign, there were more calls on the Republican National Committee for Senator Hanna than there were for any other campaign speaker. Everywhere he went he made friends, not only for President McKinley, the nominee of the party, but for himself as well. Mark Hanna became one of the most popular leaders in the Republican party, and I have never for a moment doubted that he could have been the nominee of the party for the Presidency in 1904, had he consented to accept it. He told me in a private conversation had been gratified when he had seen his great personal friend, Mr.

McKinley, twice elected President of the United States, and now that he had pa.s.sed away he had no particular ambition on his own account.

Mr. McKinley promptly proceeded to call a special session of Congress, which convened March 15, 1897, and in which Mr. Reed was elected Speaker of the House. This session was called for the purpose of enacting a law for the raising of sufficient revenue to carry on the Government; and on March 31 the Dingley Bill pa.s.sed the House. The bill was debated in the Senate for several weeks, and after eight hundred and seventy-two amendments were incorporated, it pa.s.sed the Senate July 7, 1897. The conference report was agreed to, and the act was approved July 24, 1897. The country was in such condition then that we heard no complaint concerning the high protective tariff. The Republicans were united in advocating such a protective tariff as would enable the mills and factories to open, thereby affording employment and restoring prosperity.

From the election of President McKinley and the enactment of the Dingley Law I do not hesitate to say that we can date the greatest era of prosperity, and the greatest material advancement, of any period of like duration in our history.

Toward the close of the Cleveland Administration and all during the first part of the McKinley Administration, conditions were leading up inevitably to the Spanish-American War. The enthusiasm of some Senators, especially Senator Proctor, of Vermont, and my own colleague, Senator Mason, of Illinois, became so intense that war was brought on before the country was really prepared for it.

Mr. McKinley held back. He knew the horrors of war and, if he could avoid it, did not desire to see his country engage in hostilities with any other country. He acted with great discretion, holding things steadily until some degree of preparation was made; and I have no doubt at all that the war would have been averted had not the _Maine_ been destroyed in Havana harbor. The country forced us into it after that appalling catastrophe.

The entire Nation stood behind the President, and so did Congress.

One of the most dignified and impressive scenes I ever witnessed since I became a member of the Senate was the pa.s.sage of the bill appropriating fifty million dollars to be expended under the direction of the President, in order to carry on the war. The Committee on Appropriations, of which I had long been a member, directed Senator Hale to report the bill. It was agreed in committee that we should endeavor to secure its pa.s.sage without a single speech for or against it. Some of the Senators who seemed disposed to talk, were prevailed upon to desist, and it was pa.s.sed without any speeches. The ayes and nays were called, and amid the most solemn silence the bill was pa.s.sed. The galleries were crowded; a great many members of the House were on the floor, and it reminded me of the days when the great Reconstruction legislation was being enacted, in the sixties. It was a demonstration to the country and the world of our confidence in the President, and the determination on the part of Congress to do what was necessary to uphold the dignity and honor of the United States. The vote for the bill in the Senate was unanimous.

The war came on immediately afterwards. The history of it is yet too fresh in the minds of the people to need repet.i.tion here. It was soon over, and with its conclusion came new and greater responsibilities. Whether it was wise for the United States to a.s.sume these new responsibilities, I am not prepared to say. Time alone can determine that.

I have always had great sympathy for General Russell A. Alger, of Michigan, who was in President McKinley's Cabinet as Secretary of War. It was not his fault that conditions in the War Department were as they existed in 1897, when he a.s.sumed office. We must remember that the country had enjoyed a continuous period of peace from 1865 to 1898. We were unprepared for war, and in the scramble and haste the Department of War was not administered satisfactorily, the whole blame being laid upon General Alger. It had been the policy of the Democratic party in Congress to oppose liberal appropriations for the maintenance of the War Department and the Army. Many Republicans thought that the best means of limiting appropriations was in cutting down the estimates for the War Department. They seemed to think that we would never again engage in a foreign war.

General Alger was a thoroughly honest man, of whose integrity I never had any doubt. He was made the scapegoat, and President McKinley practically was forced by public sentiment to demand his resignation. Personally, I have always believed the President should have stood by General Alger. I was much gratified when his own people in Michigan showed their confidence in him, very soon after he was forced out of the McKinley Cabinet, by electing him to a seat in the United States Senate made vacant by the death of the late Senator McMillan.

During his Administration, President McKinley did me quite an honor by appointing me chairman of a commission to visit the Hawaiian Island, investigate conditions there, and report a form of government for those islands. He appointed with me my colleague, Senator Morgan of Alabama, and my friend the Hon. R. R. Hitt, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. In all my public life this was the second executive appointment that I ever received, the first being from President Lincoln during the Civil War, to investigate commissary and quartermasters' accounts, to which I have already referred.

It had been the well-known policy of the United States for many years that in no event could the ent.i.ty of Hawaiian statehood cease by the pa.s.sage of the islands under the domination or influence of another power than the United States. Their annexation came about as the natural result of the strengthening of the ties that bound us to those islands for many years. The people had overthrown the monarchy and set up a republic. It seemed certain that the republic could not long exist, and they appealed to the United States for annexation. The treaty of annexation was negotiated and then ratified by Hawaii, but it was withdrawn by President Cleveland before the Senate acted upon it; finally, the islands were annexed by the pa.s.sage of an act of Congress during the McKinley Administration.

It was under these circ.u.mstances that Senator Morgan, Mr. Hitt, and I visited the islands. The appointment came about in this way.

I had been urging the President to appoint Mr. Rheuna Lawrence, of Springfield, Illinois, as one of the commissioners. The Hon. James A. Connolly, then representing the Springfield district in Congress, had also been very active in trying to secure Lawrence's appointment.

He came to me in the Senate one day and told me that there was no chance of Lawrence being appointed and that the President had determined to appoint me. I told Connolly I did not see how I could accept an appointment, under the circ.u.mstances, and that Lawrence might misunderstand it. Connolly said he thought I must take the place. The President himself afterwards talked with me about it. I hesitated. He urged me, insisting that I could not very well afford to decline. Finally I said that if he insisted, I would accept. He nominated us to the Senate for confirmation.

This precipitated considerable debate in the Senate, for, by the member of the Committee on the Judiciary, the appointment of Senators and members on such a commission was regarded as unconst.i.tutional; but the committee determined to take no action on the nominations at all, so we were neither confirmed nor rejected. President McKinley urged us to go ahead, however, visit the islands, and make our report, which we did. This was the beginning of expansion, or Imperialism, in the campaign of 1900.

One writer, in speaking of the acquisition of these islands, said:

"One of the brightest episodes in American history was the acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands, and Senator Cullom's name is prominently a.s.sociated with that act. He read aright our history as a nation of expansionists. He was not afraid to permit the great republic to become greater. He deemed it wise that to the lines of our influence on land should be added a national influence on the seas.

This view was accepted by the people and by the national Legislature.

By President McKinley, Senator Cullom was appointed chairman of the Hawaiian Commission, composed of Senator Morgan of Alabama, and Congressman Hitt of Illinois, and Senator Cullom, to visit the islands and frame a new law providing for their civil government and defining their future relations with the United States. Since the days of Clyde in India, few men have been clothed with a more important duty than this commission, whose mission it was to prepare a Government for the Hawaiian Islands. The bill recommended by the commission was enacted by Congress, and stands as the organic law of the islands to-day."

We had an exceedingly interesting time in the Hawaiian Islands.

They were not known so well then as they are to-day. We visited several of the islands composing the group, and publicly explained our mission. The people seemed to have the impression that American occupancy of the islands was only temporary, and that as soon as the Spanish-American War was over they would return to old conditions.

We told them that annexation was permanent, and they would remain a part of the United States for all time to come. I did not favor giving them statehood. There was not a sufficient number of whites and educated natives to justify giving them the franchise as an independent State in the American Union. Senator Morgan and I differed on this a great deal, and on several occasions in the hearings of the commission, he stated that they were to become a State. I always interposed to the effect that, so far as my influence was concerned, they would remain a Territory.

There was one island of the group called Molokai devoted entirely to the care of lepers, leprosy being quite common in the Hawaiian Islands. We deemed it our duty to visit this island as well as the others. It was one of the most interesting and pathetic places of which the human mind can conceive--a place of grim tragedies.

There were about twelve hundred lepers on the island, divided into two colonies, one at each end of the island. The island itself forms a natural fortress from which escape is almost impossible, the sea on one side and mountains on the other. We spent the day there and ate luncheon on the island. We saw the disease in all its stages. We entered a schoolhouse in which there were a crowd of young girls ranging from ten to sixteen years of age. They were all lepers. They sang for us. It was very pathetic. We visited the cemetery and saw the monument erected to the memory of a Catholic priest, Father Damien, who went there from Chicago, to devote his life to the spiritual care of the unfortunates, but who, like all others residing on the island, finally succ.u.mbed to the disease.

We met an old lady at the cemetery and I asked her if there was any danger of contracting the disease. She said there was not unless we had some abrasions on the skin, and advised us as a matter of caution to wear gloves. I promptly put mine on and kept them on until I left the island.

I was told that they expected me to speak to them, and I did make them a speech. A large number of them a.s.sembled. I have addressed many audiences in my life, but this was the queerest I was ever obliged to face. There were men and women in all stages of the disease. Leprosy attacks the fingers and they fall off, and some natural instinct prompts the victim to hide his hands; but as my speech was translated to them, in the excitement they would forget and throw out their hands and applaud. It was a hideous sight and I most fervently wish never to see the like of it again.

For our expenses one hundred thousand dollars had been appropriated.

I am not one of those who believe in lavish expenditures of public money by commissions. While I was willing as chairman of the commission to permit travelling expenses and the reasonable necessaries and probably the luxuries of life while abroad, yet I differed with my colleague, Senator Morgan, and insisted that no money should be spent for entertaining. Out of the hundred thousand dollars we spent something like fifteen thousand; and Senator Morgan, Mr. Hitt, and I agreed that it would not be lawful or right for us to accept any compensation for our services as members of the commission. Something like eight-five thousand dollars reverted to the Treasury.

We returned and made our report to Congress, and the bill which we recommended was enacted. I do not think the present form of government of Hawaii will be changed for many years to come. I have regretted exceedingly that, despite the repeated recommendations of Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, Congress has not seen fit to make an appropriation to improve the harbor and fortify the islands.

It is true they afford us a coaling station in the middle of the Pacific, but that is all. Should hostilities break out in the Far East, our country being a party, it would be almost impossible for us to defend them, and they would become easy prey to foreign aggression. I hope that this policy will change in the near future, and that Pearl Harbor will be improved and the islands fortified.

The important events of the first McKinley Administration were the enactment of the Dingley Tariff, the successful conclusion of the war with Spain, the ratification of the Treaty of Peace, the independence of Cuba, and the acquisition of Porto Rico, the Philippines, and the Island of Guam; the establishment of the gold standard by law, and the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands.

At the close of the Administration no one questioned that the country was in a more prosperous condition than it ever had been before, and that McKinley was probably the most popular President that ever occupied the White House. He was unanimously nominated at the Republican Convention, at Philadelphia, for a second term.

The campaign of 1900 was fought out on the issue of Imperialism; the tariff was almost forgotten, and the silver question was only discussed incidentally.

Mr. McKinley's popular vote was not much greater than it was in 1896. He received 7,207,000 as against 6,358,000 votes cast for Mr. Bryan.

During the short session which convened after his election, the Platt amendment concerning our future relations with Cuba was pa.s.sed. The War Revenue Act was reduced. It was an uneventful session, and Mr. McKinley was again inaugurated March 4, 1901.

On September 6, 1901, the President attended the Buffalo Exposition, accompanied by Mrs. McKinley and the members of his cabinet, and during the reception which he held at the Temple of Music on that day, he was shot and wounded by an a.s.sa.s.sin, one Leon F. Czolgosz.

After lingering along until Sat.u.r.day, September 14, he pa.s.sed away, and Theodore Roosevelt, Vice-President, was sworn in as President of the United States. On taking the oath of office, he uttered but one sentence:

"I wish to say that it shall be my aim to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, prosperity, and the honor of our beloved country."

CHAPTER XX ROOSEVELT'S PRESIDENCY 1901 to 1909

Colonel Roosevelt served as President of the United States from September 13, 1901, to March 4, 1909. What he accomplished during those years is still too fresh in the minds of the people of the United States to justify its recital by me here; suffice it to say that he gave one of the best Administrations ever known in the history of the United States. He accomplished more in that term than any of his predecessors; more laws were enacted, laws of more general benefit to the people; but above all, his Administration enforced all laws on the statute books as they had never been enforced before.

The Sherman Anti-Trust Law was a dead letter until Mr. Roosevelt instructed the Attorney-General to prosecute its violators, both great and small. No fear or favor was shown in the enforcement of the laws against the rich and poor alike. There were many other notable features of his administration, but that, to my mind, stands out conspicuously before all the others. By his speeches, by his public messages, he awakened the slumbering conscience of the Nation, and he made the violators of the law in high places come to realize that they would receive the same punishment as the lowest offenders. He did more than any of his predecessors to prevent this country from drifting into socialism.

I have known Colonel Roosevelt for many years. I knew him as Civil Service Commissioner under President Harrison. In that position, as in every other public office he held, he saw to it that the law was strictly enforced. I once wrote him a note, when he was Civil Service Commissioner, requesting him to act favorably on some matter, which he considered was contrary to his duty. He promptly returned this characteristic reply: "You have no right to ask me to do this, and I have no right to do it."

As a.s.sistant Secretary of the Navy under President McKinley, he was able, aggressive, and pus.h.i.+ng in preparing the Navy for the Spanish-American War. He seemed so interested in what he was doing that he would appear to an outsider to be nervous and excitable.

My old friend, the Hon. W. I. Guffin, than whom there was no better man, was visiting the Department with me one day, and I took occasion to introduce him to Colonel Roosevelt, who was then a.s.sistant Secretary. Guffin was astonished at Roosevelt's manners and his way of speaking, and I recall Guffin's remark when we left the office. I was very much amused at it. He said: "Well, that is Roosevelt, is it! He is one h.e.l.l of a Secretary." Doubtless that was the impression that Colonel Roosevelt left on many people whom he met in the Navy Department, who did not know him and who had not yet come to know the degree of promptness and ability with which he despatched public business.

I was at the Philadelphia Convention which nominated Colonel Roosevelt for Vice-President. I know that he did not desire the nomination, but it was thrust on him through the manipulation of Senator T. C. Platt, of New York, then the acknowledged "easy boss"

of that State. Platt himself said afterwards that he did it to get rid of him as Governor of New York, and that he regretted it every day of his life after Roosevelt became President. The politicians of New York did not want Roosevelt in control at Albany, and they thought it would be an admirable plan to remove him from the State, and eventually relegate him to private life--to nominate him for Vice-President. But the fates willed differently, and the nomination for Vice-President opened the way for him to become Mr.