he made his mistakes in his business as well as in his political allies, and if he had come to have any friendship for a man whom he had made a mistake in trusting, it was hard to convince him of his error. He would remain faithful to the tie

even when the man had, to the satisfaction of other people, shown himself to be unworthy, not merely of loyalty, but sometimes of respect. Inevitably a man like Mr. Hanna made enemies in business as well as friends. He had, indeed, no gift for personal quarrels as he had a gift for personal loyalties. He did not cherish grudges. There was nothing vindictive in his nature. But he liked to have his own way, and if any other man blocked a path which he believed himself entitled to travel, the obstructor might well be somewhat roughly and ruthlessly pushed aside. When he was in a fight he fought hard, and like all strong and self-willed men he enjoyed fighting. Probably he made certain unnecessary enmities. He was at times during his business career an unpleasantly plain-dealer. Certain of his associates testify, indeed, that never in their presence was he brusque or harsh; but evidently he could be harsh, when he was rubbed or had rubbed himself the wrong way. One unfavorable witness states that during his early years he "was positively indifferent to popularity."

The witness quoted above may well be exaggerating, for he admitted some measure of prejudice. But there is sufficient corrobation for the general statement that he might at times be, or appear to be, arbitrary and self-assertive. He was a quick, impulsive man, impatient of what seemed to him unnecessary and perverse opposition, and when excited he might become peremptory in manner and explosive in speech. He might in the heat of the moment blurt out his opinions without any mincing of words, and without, perhaps, very much consideration for the feelings of others. Many men who subsequently became his friends and warm admirers were, before they came to know him, prejudiced against him by his manner and local reputation.

Judge William B. Sanders, who was for many years associated with Mr. Squire and Mr. Dempsey as attorneys for Mr. Hanna, says of him: "In Mr. Hanna's business life, before he became known as a national politician, he had not learned the art of saying 'No' without offence. He was plain and quick, and

frequently hurt and offended people with whom he had a difference. However, a change came over him in this respect. I remember that I was in his room in St. Louis during the Republican Convention of 1896 when a delegation of colored men, delegates representing several Southern states, came to see him. They were after money, and he knew it. In the old days he would have kicked them out of the room; but on this occasion he politely refused them without hurting their feelings." One cannot help wishing that under the circumstances he had been less diplomatic, and had ruthlessly hurt their feelings — assuming, of course, that it was their feelings which would have been chiefly hurt by the act of kicking them out of the room.

The foregoing account of Mark Hanna will, I think, justify the description of him as a business man who carried over into the period of industrial expansion the best characteristics of the pioneer. The industrial pioneer of the seventies needed qualities and methods different in certain respects from those of the early pioneers. Mr. Hanna, for instance, was a great organizer, and he could not have made his success unless he had believed both in organization and in the delegation of power and responsibility. But like them, he was an all-round man of action, whose behavior was determined chiefly by instinctive motives and external conditions, and who used his intelligence merely for the purpose of making his will effective. Like them he was performing a necessary preliminary work of economic construction, and one in which for the most part his own interest as a maker and an organizer of enterprises was coincident with the public interest. As with them, the aggressive individualism of his private business life obtained dignity from its association with an essential task of social and economic construction. And finally, as in the case of the better pioneers, he had the feelings and the outlook of a man who has done more than accumulate a fortune. His methods in business and the way in which he gave personality and humanity to his business life all tended to the fulfilment of social as well as individual purposes.

His individual social edifice had the disadvantages as well as the advantages of being wrought at the prompting of instinctive rather than conscious motives. If it had contained a

larger conscious element, it probably would not have been so effective, because it would not have squared in other respects with his essentially objective disposition. But its unconsciousness always made him callous to the fact that certain phases of his business demanded essentially unsocial action—such, for instance, as influencing elections to the Common Council in the interest of his street railway company. He was, that is, a man of wholesome and varied social instincts which had a powerful and edifying effect upon his life and the life of his associates, but he was not a man of civic and social ideals - in which again he was true to his pioneer type.

The fact, however, that his business methods were born of a deeply rooted American tradition and had a definite social value was salutary. It enabled him to draw for the success of his subsequent political career upon sources of energy outside of himself. In case he had become the kind of a business man that many rich Americans of his generation did become, any but an insignificant political success would have been impossible. A financier may buy or earn a politicial position, but he cannot accomplish much by means of it. Mark Hanna always remained a Cleveland merchant, and his business remained, as I have said, personal and local. He rarely, if ever, embarked in enterprises which he did not personally control. He never "set up" as a capitalist, and bought with his money other men to do his work. He put back his profits, either in the coal and iron business, or in some other local enterprise, over which he exercised personal supervision. All his enterprises were Cleveland enterprises or immediately related thereto. He was rooted in his native business soil, and his personality and his work depended for their value on local associations and responsibilities. He had too sound an instinct for the sources of his own personal dignity and power to let himself become a homeless financier. The consequence was that when he entered politics as a business man, he represented a vital and a genuinely popular American business tradition.

He never was essentially a money-maker. If he had been, he might have made very much more money than he actually did. His business life is inextricably entangled with his domestic and his social life. He never hesitated either to spend

money or to sacrifice the making of it in the interest of something better worth while. As much as any very successful business man, and far more than the average, Mark Hanna earned by personal economic services his private fortune. He made a genuine contribution to the economic development of the Cleveland district at a time when such contributions were not disproportionately rewarded by any accession of scarcity values. When his political enemies stamped the sign of the dollar on Mark Hanna, they literally turned his relation to money upside down. What they should have done was to stamp on every dollar he made the initials "M. A. H."- the Hanna mark.

CHAPTER XI

BEGINNINGS IN POLITICS

WE have already seen that about 1880 the range of Mark Hanna's business interests began suddenly to widen. The dozen years following 1867 were spent chiefly in a laborious and enterprising effort to establish the business of Rhodes & Co. on firm and broad foundations and to expand it to the limit of its opportunities. The full fruits of this effort were not gathered until after the revival of business in 1879. Thenceforward Mark Hanna had the spare money and the leisure to undertake other enterprises. He emerges as one of a score of men who had become peculiarly prominent in Cleveland business; and almost simultaneously he began also to obtain a certain prominence in local politics. During the campaign of 1880, resulting in the election of James A. Garfield, he begins to count as a politician.

His interest in politics does not date from 1880 any more than his interest in business dates from 1867. He had always been interested in politics, although there is some conflict of testimony as to the point of departure of his earlier political activity. The statement has been made that his street railway interests first induced him to take a hand in the political game; but of all the eye-witnesses of Mr. Hanna's career only one lends any support to this explanation. Mr. Charles F. Leach, formerly Collector of Customs in Cleveland, and one of Mr. Hanna's own appointees, states that before he knew intimately his subsequent political chief, he had been prejudiced against Mr. Hanna. "I had heard of him as a local politician for what appeared to be his business interests. I had known him to stand at a corner on the West Side and peddle tickets for a candidate to the City Council who was supposed to be all right on street railroad matters or anything else that might come up." That Mr. Hanna at one time was not indifferent to the kind of