It had already been announced that Mr. Hanna would again head the National Committee. Everybody had assumed, as a matter of course, that he would do so. His selection for the place was only a proper recognition of his service to the administration and the party and his proved ability as a campaign manager. Yet there was a period of some weeks previous to the meeting of the Convention, during which Mr. Hanna himself began to suspect and fear that he would not be selected. The naming of the Chairman was the practical prerogative of the head of the ticket; and Mr. McKinley's behavior was at least suspicious.

Early in the spring of 1900 Mr. Hanna began complaining to certain of his intimate associates that Mr. McKinley had said nothing to him about managing the coming campaign. Time passed and still nothing was said. Mr. Hanna became very much worried. The moment arrived when preparations ought to be made and when it was natural that the matter should be settled. The worry seems to have had a damaging effect on his health. Late in April he had an attack of heart failure, while writing a note in his office, and fainted away. He recovered almost immediately and even went that same night to the theatre; but his intimates, who knew his physical habits and realized how distressed he was, attributed the attack to the anxiety caused by the President's persistent silence. If at that particular juncture Mr. Hanna had been superseded as Chairman of the National Committee, one of the most essential supports of his personal prestige and power would have been removed. It would have meant that he no longer retained the friendship and confidence of the President. Fortunately, however, his suspense was not further prolonged. A little later Mr. Hanna appeared at his office one morning with every trace of anxiety vanished from his face and in the highest spirits. Mr. McKinley had the night before asked him to accept the office and its work, and had insisted upon his immediate and unqualified consent.

Considering the relations between the two men, one's natural suspicion would be that Mr. Hanna's anxiety was due to over-sensitiveness, and that Mr. McKinley had never even considered the selection of another Chairman. But from remarks

which Mr. McKinley made to other people, it is probable that the President really was hesitating. How serious the hesitation was, and upon precisely what grounds it was based, remains obscure; but unquestionably at this period a certain alteration was taking place in the relationship between the two men. The President's delay in asking Mr. Hanna to serve as Chairman, and Mr. Hanna's consequent anxiety, was only the first of a series of incidents which indicated such a change. The incidents will all be told frankly, because they are part of the true story of Mr. Hanna's life. They indicate not any estrangement, but simply the stress under which an old and fast friendship was adapting itself to new conditions. The new condition was Mr. Hanna's increasing personal power as a Congressional and as a popular leader. This power was assuming such formidable dimensions that the President might well begin to wonder how his own prestige was beginning to look by comparison. But in spite of the strain, the testimony is unanimous that at the end of the campaign the friendship of the two men remained substantially unimpaired.

Whatever the grounds of the President's hesitation, he really did not have a practicable alternative. No other man had a tithe of the qualifications possessed by Mr. Hanna for the office of Chairman. He could have claimed it, merely because of his ability as a campaign manager, even though as a political leader he was less popular than was actually the case. Mr. Hanna alone had in his mind a complete and accurate map of the political landscape. He knew just what the situation was in the different parts of the country, and just what states needed and would repay the most arduous efforts for their retention or conquest. During the four years that had elapsed since the previous campaign he had been studying the conditions and opportunities which would be presented in 1900. Responsibility for the work could not have been shifted without confusion, cross purposes and loss of efficiency.

Mr. Hanna's personal relation to the work in 1900 was very much the same as it had been four years earlier. He was the real supervisor and director of the whole campaign. Its management was absolutely his. Of course, he constantly consulted the President and other leaders; but, as in the case of any other

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efficient general, he acted often on his own initiative and his own personal responsibility. His private secretary, Mr. Elmer Dover, states that he laid out the actual work of a campaign without taking any one into his confidence. His plan was, as in 1896, based on what he believed to be the general condition of public opinion throughout the Union, from which he inferred how much work needed to be done, where it should be placed and what its character ought to be. As in 1896, also, the work was planned to be cumulative in its effect, culminating a few days before the election in an outburst of common conviction and enthusiasm. Early in the campaign even his intimate associates were puzzled as to his reasons for making certain moves, but their relation to the general plan was gradually unfolded. Every part of the work was well organized, and every part of the organization was thoroughly energized.

Of course his task was much less onerous than it had been in 1896. He did not have an uphill fight on his hands, or an almost country-wide campaign of popular instruction. He did not employ as many speakers, nor did he need to distribute as much literature. It is true that with his usual habit of making a sure thing doubly sure, he canvassed the country much more thoroughly than it ever had been canvassed before 1896. But with every intention in the world of leaving nothing undone which could possibly contribute to Republican success, there was very much less to do. In 1900, as in the campaigns previous to 1896, certain results in many parts of the country could be taken for granted. The hard canvassing could be concentrated on a smaller area of peculiar strategic importance. To continue the military analogy, he was operating in a familiar and a friendly country, instead of in a country which was hostile and comparatively unexplored.

He needed, consequently, much less money, and what money he needed he had much less difficulty in raising. In 1900 the total collections were approximately $2,500,000, and not all of this sum was used. By this time Mr. Hanna enjoyed the complete confidence of the big business men of the country. They would have placed at the disposal of the Committee just as much money as he demanded. If he did not raise any more than $2,500,000, it was because the expenditure of a larger sum

would have contributed nothing to the chances of Republican

success.

A significant change had taken place since 1896 in the nature and reasons of the support which business men were affording to the Republican party. Four years before the responsible business interests of the country, small as well as large, had united in condemning the free coinage of silver. A certain amount of the same feeling was carried over into the campaign of 1900. The fact that Mr. Bryan was again running on a free-silver platform, and the fact that even though elected on the issue of anti-Imperialism, he might be able and willing to disestablish the gold standard, took the heart out of business during the summer of 1900. The issue, however, between financial aberration and financial sanity could not be as sharply drawn as it had been in 1896, and there was a tendency among smaller business men to return to their traditional partisan allegiance. The Republicans could not demand the support of business just because it was business. They could not assess the National Banks all over the country for a certain percentage of their capital, because Democratic success would certainly cause acute financial disaster.

During the years between the two campaigns certain classes of American business had been radically reorganized. The process of combination had made enormous strides. It had infected more or less every important department of industry. It had, indeed, become the dominant characteristic of American industrial practice. But in proportion as this process of combination increased in volume, it became subject to political attack. The large corporations had a doubtful standing under state and federal anti-trust acts. They were not overscrupulous about conducting their business according to fair and legal methods. Even those whose standing under existing laws was unimpeachable were liable to severe injury from adverse state and national legislation. Agitation against them and against the millionnaires interested in them was becoming both violent and widespread. The large business interests could no more disregard the sort of denunciation which was more than ever hurled at them than the Southern slaveholders could ignore the denunciation of the abolitionists; and its effect in the two cases

was very much the same. Big business men became class conscious." They needed political power more than ever for the protection of business interests, and the power which may have been acquired in self-protection would inevitably be used for aggressive purposes.

In 1900, consequently, it was as much big business as general business which began to depend upon the Republican party for political protection. The Democratic platform and candidate denounced the process of business organization, while the Republican candidate and platform recognized that it had a certain validity. The whole corporation interest rallied more enthusiastically than ever to the Republicans and opened its purse more liberally than ever. To be sure, the distinction between big business and general business was not sharply drawn. The "prosperity" of which the Republicans boasted and which they promised to continue was necessary to both, and the waving of the "prosperity" banner was intended to appeal to both. Nevertheless, the distinction had become plainer than it was in 1896, and it had a profound bearing upon the campaign and its results. When Mr. McKinley was reëlected, big business undoubtedly considered that it had received a license from the people to do very much as it pleased.

Mr. Hanna himself never distinguished sharply between the interests of general business and big business. His own business life, except in relation to the street railway company, had never become entangled either with the methods or the interests characteristic of the larger corporations. He intended to represent in politics the essential interest of business itself - irrespective of size, location, organization' or character. The "prosperity" which he wished to promote was necessary to all sorts of business, and the policy of his opponents was dangerous to all sorts of business. Farther than that he did not go. Nevertheless, the necessities of practical politics brought him closer and closer to the representatives of large corporate interests. It was much more convenient to get the money needed for an effective campaign from them than from a larger number of smaller subscribers; and such was particularly the case because the smaller business men were much less conscious of their political interests and responsibilities than were their more opulent asso