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tried at Canton, the county seat. His pleading was so successful that out of twenty-three indicted men only one was convicted, and he was sent to the penitentiary for three years. The trial took place just before the convention which gave to McKinley his first nomination for Congress.

Inasmuch as Mark Hanna, as the head of the operators' association, was in Canton during the trial, his first meeting with McKinley may have taken place on this occasion; but if such is the case the meeting made no impression on either of the two men. Mr. Hanna, in an article on "McKinley as I Knew Him," published after the President's death, explicitly states that he has no recollection of his first meeting with his friend. He believes it took place "early in the seventies" `as well it might, for his business interests must have frequently taken him to the region in which McKinley was a rising and popular young lawyer and politician. Judge George E. Baldwin, who was associated with McKinley as counsel of the accused miners, states that he is "sure" that the meeting at Canton during the trial was not the first meeting. He knew both men well throughout many years, and neither of them ever spoke to him about the matter-as they would be likely to do, because of his intimate connection with the case as leading counsel. In any event, even if the first meeting did occur at Canton in June, 1876, during the trial, it was merely a casual contact, which resulted in no closer association for many years.

Such is the story of the one serious disagreement with their employees in which any of Mr. Hanna's companies were entangled. If the miners were hardly treated on this occasion, that was the result of general conditions, which no individual was powerful enough to check. Mr. Hanna himself, at a time. when labor-unions were regarded with even greater disfavor by employers than they are at present, was friendly to the unions. John James, the secretary of the Miners' National Association in 1875 and 1876, states that "he was the first mining operator in the bituminous fields of the United States to recognize the cardinal principle of arbitration in the settlement of wages, disputes, and the first also to recognize the 'Miners' National Association."" During the whole of their intercourse Mr. James found him to be "one of the most intelligent, con

siderate and conservative" of the operators. He was always accessible to the officers of the union, and he always freely recognized the "real rights and interests of labor."

The reader must not understand that Mr. Hanna became an active advocate of labor organization and went out of his way to favor unions among his employees. His early record merely shows that he was much more liberal than the ordinary employer in recognizing the laborer's right to organize, and much more quick to perceive the advantages to both parties of collective bargaining and regular methods of industrial conciliation. But the chief fact is that he applied to his own business the method of always keeping close to his employees, always listening respectfully to their demands, of always granting the just claims of his men as a body and of always treating needy individuals with generosity. At a time when many American employers overlooked the fact that their relation to their employees was a human as well as an economic relation, Mark Hanna always treated them as far as he could as men. The subsequent interest which he took in labor problems, and the subsequent policy which he advocated as a means of avoiding industrial disputes, were both of them a result and an expression of his own practice as an employer.

CHAPTER X

CHARACTERISTICS IN BUSINESS

MARK HANNA has been described as an industrial pioneer. An analytic account of his characteristics as a business man will confirm the description. The typical pioneer of the period of rapid industrial expansion after the Civil War differed in certain respects from both the agricultural and industrial pioneers of the generation preceding the war, but the differences between the two types are insignificant compared to the fundamental similarities. Mr. Hanna was not only the sort of industrial pioneer whose methods and achievements illuminate and dignify the economic life of his generation, but he remained true to his type, even after many of his own early associates had departed from it. His political career and system, as well as his business career, cannot be properly understood except as the expression and result of his point of view and his experience as an industrial pioneer.

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Mark Hanna's salient characteristic in business was initiative. He was essentially, if not exclusively, an entrepreneur. He broke new ground. He started and developed enterprises. The Middle West of the seventies and eighties was seething with industrial and commercial opportunities mines to be developed, factories to be started, lines of trade to be laid out and established, mechanical improvements to be introduced and perfected, and commerce to be organized with increasing efficiency and economy. In order to take advantage of these opportunities a man needed an aggressive will, an abundant energy, and an alert, shrewd, and comprehensive mind. Such qualifications Mark Hanna conspicuously possessed, and they found full and effective expression in the policy and organization of Rhodes & Co., and M. A. Hanna & Co. Their policy aimed at the encouragement of enterprises which would produce commodities to be handled and sold by the firm; and its exe

cution demanded business qualities, unusual in their variety, in their intensity and in the individuality of their combination.

"He was choke-full of energy," says Mr. Robert R. Rhodes, his brother-in-law and early partner, "aggressive and progressive." "His very first desire was to be the head and front of every enterprise in which he was engaged," says Mr. Andrew Squire, his attorney for twenty years, "to be the leader in his own business and his own affairs." "He was always leading," says Mr. A. C. Saunders, another early associate, "and was quick to drop one thing and take up another. It is a great thing for a man to know when to let go. Mr. Hanna knew when to quit that was one of the secrets of his apparent good fortune. He was tremendously interested in anything new. If his judgment approved of it, he was enthusiastic in pushing it and testing its value. But he quickly sensed a failure and turned to something else with equal energy and courage." This passion for leadership and this insistent but alert initiative kept pushing him forward and made him eager to seize opportunities, to stamp his own will on events, and exert effective influence and power. He was never afraid to go ahead and to take the risks and the responsibilities incidental to leadership. Under the economic conditions of his own day and region, his aggressive and dominating will resulted inevitably in a highly enterprising business policy, which he was able successfully to carry out because his initiative was sustained by an equally emphatic executive ability.

When he had anything to do, he did not spare himself in the doing of it. "He was a hard worker," says Mr. Rhodes, "and a man who applied himself very closely to his business. In industry he was unsurpassed." Another early partner adds testimony to the same effect. According to Mr. A. C. Saunders, his industry was extraordinary. "He was an inveterate worker. When I first went into his office he had to travel a good deal. He would return, write his letters and be off again. Few people realized how hard he worked. Often he used to stay until late at night, and I as his secretary stayed with him. He would tire me out." But while he worked hard he also worked well; and he could quickly change from work to play. During the years of his closest application to business he entertained freely,

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and kept very much alive his other great interest a love of companionship.

His unusual industry was directed by a mind which had mastered every detail of his business. For one thing he was during his early years an extremely successful salesman. He had the gift of persuading other people to do what he wanted them to do. Mr. Lucius F. Mellen, an early competitor, states that "Mark could beat us all in a trade and in getting customers." Mr. E. H. Bourne, who succeeded Mr. Hanna as president of the Union National Bank, but who was at one time his competitor in the coal business, tells of an occasion on which the city of Chicago was asking for bids on a large quantity of coal. Coal dealers from Pennsylvania and Ohio flocked to Chicago to try for the business, among them Mr. Hanna. Many of the salesmen stopped at the same hotel, and they were smilingly informed by Mr. Hanna one morning that the contract had been awarded to him. He beat the field, because, according to Mr. Bourne, he was remarkable in obtaining the information he needed and then in taking such action as was best adapted to get the business.

Another of his gifts which was of peculiar value to his business was an aptitude for mechanics. An understanding of machinery was natural to him, so that he was thoroughly and intelligently familiar with the mechanical details of a business, whose prosperity became in the course of years more and more a matter of the efficient use of machinery. Mr. A. B. Hough, who took many trips with him on the iron ore vessels up the Lakes, testifies to his exact knowledge, not only of the mechanism of the boats, but of every detail of its operation, including the capabilities of its officers, the details of its expense account and the like. "He used to surprise me," says Mr. Squire, "with his knowledge of the principles of mechanics. He and Mr. J. F. Pankhurst worked out a plan, by which a dynamo was directly connected to one of the engines of a power plant in which they were interested; and I think I am right in saying that this had never been done before." Partly as a result of Mr. Hanna's aptitude for mechanics, his firm was closely associated with the development of the machinery necessary for the more economical conduct of their business. We have already seen how im

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