on the popular vote, and the change of a few thousand ballots cast in New York and Indiana would have beaten the Republicans. They succeeded none the less in keeping their majority in the Senate and in winning a small majority in the House of Representatives, which was subsequently increased by unseating Democrats wherever their elections could be plausibly contested. In the winter of 1889 and 1890, when the new Congress assembled, the Republicans for the first time in many years were in complete control of both departments of the General Government, and they were committed to the passage of some legislation looking towards the reduction of the surplus without doing any injury to the protective system.

In November, 1889, about a week before the meeting of the new Congress, Mark Hanna went to Washington. His object in making the trip was to help Mr. McKinley in his fight for the Speakership of the House, and it is significant that he took the first opportunity which offered after the Convention of 1888 to work on Mr. McKinley's behalf. He put up at the Ebbit House and took an active part in the canvass. Mr. William H. Merriam states that his part was effective as well as active, for he actually converted to Mr. McKinley some votes from Minnesota. But his efforts were unavailing. Mr. McKinley's competitor for the place, Mr. Thomas B. Reed, was selected by the caucus by a majority of one vote.

Mr. McKinley's defeat was probably beneficial rather than the reverse to his subsequent career. The Speaker appointed him to the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee, and as chairman he became nominally responsible for the new Republican tariff policy. The bill in which it was embodied had his name attached to it, which made him in the eyes of the country more than ever the most conspicuous exponent of the theory and practice of high protection.

Inasmuch as their victory had been won by a narrow margin, the Republicans would have done well to use it with discretion. By a few reductions in the existing schedules, they might have quieted antitariff agitation for long time without doing any injury to the protectionist system. But the beneficiaries of the tariff were in the saddle, and they pursued the opposite course. Rates were raised all along the line. The surplus was

abolished largely by the simple device of spending it. The revenue was reduced by making duties which were almost prohibitory entirely so and by abandoning the large income derived from the duty on raw sugar, which at that time was produced only in small quantities in this country. Heavy duties were levied on many agricultural products which were not and could not be imported, except in very small quantities, and a successful attempt was made to establish new industries, such as the manufacture of tin plate and certain grades of silk. Finally, since the revenue still promised to be excessive, the appropriations for pensions and for other purposes were swollen beyond all previous records.

Such was the policy embodied in the McKinley Bill. It proved to be a dangerous policy for the Republican party. The effect of the bill was to raise prices all along the line. Every drummer became an effective campaign agent for the Democrats; and in the election in the fall of 1890, following the passage of the act, the Republicans were reduced to an almost insignificant minority in the House of Representatives. Two years later the Democrats, for the first time since the war, elected their presidential candidate, a large majority in the lower House and a small majority in the Senate. Some of the wiser Republicans, such as James G. Blaine and Benjamin Butterworth, one of Mr. Hanna's intimate friends, had predicted this result and tried to avoid it; but in truth forces had been unloosed which were beyond individual control. The policy of the Republicans in the session of 1889-1890 must be considered as a culminating expression of a method of economic legislation which had prevailed in this country at least since the Civil War. Under this method the only interests consulted in respect to a piece of economic legislation were the special interests thereby benefited; and the protective tariff was only one illustration of the practice.

In the case of the McKinley Bill and the legislation which accompanied it, the practice had been pushed to an extreme which exposed the incompatibility between the unregulated demands of a special interest and the manifest requirements of the national interest; but the error was natural, and the manufacturers were only behaving as all the other special interests

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had behaved. The American economic system had been conceived as a huge profit-sharing concern, the function of the government being to encourage productive enterprise in every form by lending assistance to the producers. Business of all kinds had thus become inextricably entangled with politics, and in one way or another the private income of the majority of American citizens was very much influenced by the government legislation. And whatever criticisms may be passed on this economic system or whatever the ensuing excesses, it was undoubtedly planned in good faith for the purpose of stimulating American economic expansion in all its branches and of contributing to the prosperity of all classes of American society.

The business men and politicians of the day were so accustomed to his method of promoting American economic welfare that they accepted it as a matter of course. Among others both William McKinley and Mark Hanna accepted it as so fundamental as scarcely to need any defence. Mistakes might be made in applying the policy, abuses might arise under its administration of the resulting legislation, and different special interests might fight over the distribution of the benefits, but the system itself was rooted in the American tradition of economic legislation. In spite of protests against specific excesses and abuses, public opinion overwhelmingly supported the system as a whole, and its inevitable effects were to make business prosperity depend upon the course of political agitation and the result of elections. It was precisely the interdependence between business and politics which gave to a man like Mark Hanna, who embodied the alliance, an opportunity of effective influence.

The Republican disasters in the elections of 1890 brought with them unpleasant consequences, possible and actual, for Mark Hanna and his immediate associates. In order to understand the resulting political complications, we must return to the course of political events in the state of Ohio. The prompt exhibition after the Convention of Mr. Hanna's friendship for McKinley was balanced by an even prompter exhibition of his hostility to Mr. Foraker. The latter was once again a candidate for governor. Mr. Hanna attended the State Convention held in June, 1889, at Columbus, and opposed Mr.