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not been blown up, he might have succeeded, for Spain was willing to make almost any concession which did not actually terminate its possession of Cuba. As it was, the President risked his popularity and the confidence of the country by his reluctance to abandon a peaceful solution. He has been severely criticised for not holding out until the end; but had he done so, he might well have ruined his administration and split his party without actually preserving peace. Congress wanted war and had the power to declare it. The people were willing. If war had been declared, in spite of his opposition, neither Congress nor the country would have had sufficient confidence in him as the commander-in-chief of its army and navy.

In the end the President consented to a reversal of policy, which squared badly with the spirit and purpose of his earlier negotiations with Spain. Such was the price which Mr. McKinley and the country had to pay for his erroneous estimate of the general situation. Public opinion had come to believe that the independence of Cuba was the only satisfactory cure for the maladies of Cuba; and it was willing, if necessary, to fight for that conviction. The President had made the kind of a mistake which, in case he had been an English Prime Minister, would have forced him to resign and to pass on his executive responsibility; but as an American President, faced by a question of war or peace, he had no such alternative. He was obliged to turn warrior and keep the country's confidence as the commander-in-chief of its army and navy.

Senator Hanna's attitude absolutely coincided with that of the President. The outbreak of war seemed to imperil the whole policy of domestic economic amelioration which he placed before every other object of political action. He expected that it would check and perhaps extinguish the tendency towards business recovery which had really gathered some headway during the early months of 1898. His fears were groundless. The Spanish War in its immediate effect helped and strengthened the conscious and unconscious forces in American life, upon which the realization of his favorite economic policy happened at that juncture to depend. The uncertainties of the war and the resulting increase in taxation no doubt checked the returning tide of prosperity, but only for a short time. On the other hand, a

foreign enemy served to distract attention from the deep-lying domestic dissensions which had been exposed by the campaign of 1896. The pulse of the country was quickened by its little adventure. The sense of common national feeling and interest, which becomes weak and dull after a generation of economic sectional and class conflicts, was reawakened, and the new vitality imparted to the national consciousness was bound to work in favor of a party and an administration which represented the traditional national economic policy.

In spite of the inefficient management of the war, the administration pulled through this troubled period credited with an increase in public confidence. By virtue of this access of popularity it obtained a freer hand in dealing with questions of domestic policy. In the absence of a war with Spain, it is at least doubtful whether such would have been the case. If the Dingley Bill failed to have the same effect upon the political fortunes of its creators as the McKinley, Wilson and PayneAldrich bills, the war rather than the provisions of that measure may be considered partly responsible. The congressional and state elections of the fall of 1898 were favorable to the Republicans. They retained their control of the lower House and gained the control of the Senate. The still more decisive victory which followed in the presidential campaign of 1900 was as much the effect of the war as it was of the revival of prosperity.

The foregoing remarks are true, not only of the war, but of the immediate political consequences of the war. Both Mr. McKinley and Mr. Hanna would have been glad to avoid the risks and the complications involved by the acquisition of the Philippines and Puerto Rico. The policy of extra-territorial expansion did not harmonize with the President's inherited phrases. But he was enough of a realist in politics to know a Solemn Fact when it was forced upon his attention. Under the influence of men like Senator Orville Platt, he finally consented to accept responsibility for an American Colonial policy. In the end both he and Mr. Hanna became convinced Imperialists; and their Imperialism may have been due to a final understanding of the close relation between the traditions of the Republican party and a policy of national expansion. A party which originated in the deliberate assumption of a neglected

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national responsibility cannot well avoid the assumption of new responsibilities, whenever such a course is dictated by a legitimate national interest.

In the meantime Mr. Hanna was very slowly and tentatively developing his own legislative preferences and was finding, as it were, his senatorial legs. During the third and final session of the fifty-fifth Congress he began to appear in more conspicuous parts than that of a silent voter. On Dec. 19, 1898, he introduced a bill "to promote the commerce and increase the foreign trade of the United States and to provide auxiliary cruisers, transports and seamen for government use, when necessary." This measure which came finally to be known as the Hanna-Frye Subsidy Bill, and which was very much amended before it emerged from the Committee on Commerce, never came to a discussion, much less a vote, during the fifty-fifth Congress. It embodied a policy in which Senator Hanna became more and more interested and which must be considered his legislative hobby. He had already been preaching on the stump the desirability of some governmental subsidy for the American merchant marine, and he continued to do so until the end. The reasons for its peculiar importance in Senator Hanna's eyes will be explained in a later chapter.

It must not go unrecorded, also, that during this final session of the fifty-fifth Congress Senator Hanna first appeared as a speaker on the floor of the Senate. The occasion of his appearance is characteristic of the man. Its object was to perform a service for an insignificant but deserving person who, as he believed, was not being fairly treated. A German-American named Louis Gathmann had invented a so-called aërial torpedo which he had submitted to the Bureau of Ordinance of the Navy Department. Making no impression on its chief, Mr. Gathmann took his story to the Naval Committee of the Senate, of which Senator Hanna was a member, and aroused the Senator's interest. By means of Mr. Hanna's influence with Assistant Secretary Roosevelt, the inventor obtained a chance to test his shell at the proving grounds of the navy at Indian Head, Maryland. Several other tests followed which convinced Senator Hanna that the "Gathmann Torpedo" was a good thing. He submitted an amendment to the naval appropriation bill, author

izing the Secretary of the Navy to spend $250,000 in equipping two coast defence monitors with the shells. The amendment was not mandatory, but placed the spending of the money at the discretion of the Secretary of the Navy. Mr. Hanna's associates on the Naval Committee agreed to this recommendation. There were some objections to it in the Senate, and Mr. Hanna on several occasions spoke briefly in its favor. The appropriation was adopted in the Senate, rejected by the House and failed in conference. Mr. Hanna's only interest in the matter was derived from his confidence in the inventor and his belief that a prejudice against the inventor by the navy and army chiefs had prevented the "Gathmann Torpedo" from obtaining a fair trial.

As soon as Congress adjourned, Senator Hanna, accompanied by his family, went for over a month to Thomasville, Georgia, where President McKinley and others were entertained as his guests. His health at this time was not as good as it had been, and he was taking what opportunity he could of rest and recreation. By May he was in Cleveland again, but not for long. He was planning a trip abroad, -the first which he had ever taken,for the purpose of seeking some alleviation for his increasingly frequent rheumatic attacks. When he was about to start, it looked as if the trip would have to be abandoned, because a serious strike was threatened on the Cleveland street railway, which competed with the one of which he was President. But the employees of his own company proved loyal to the management, and Senator Hanna was able to get away. He returned in the fall, not particularly pleased and benefited by the trip, and resolute never to go to Europe again.

When the fifty-sixth Congress assembled in December, 1899, the Republicans were in a position to exercise much more complete control and to adopt a more vigorous policy than they had during the fifty-fifth Congress. Their majority in the House had been maintained; and they had gained in the meantime a majority in the Senate sufficient for all party purposes. The session was one of the utmost importance, less because of the large amount of legislation accomplished, than because the policy of the government in dealing with Puerto Rico and the insular dependencies was established not, to be sure, in its details,

but in its general outlines. A bill was passed organizing a territorial government for the Hawaiian Islands and defining temporarily the fiscal relations between Puerto Rico and the United States. It was this bill which provoked the most prolonged and virulent debate. It raised both a legal question as to the extent of congressional authority in the insular dependencies and how far it was subject to constitutional restrictions, and the economic question whether as a matter of policy Congress should impose any tariff on imports from Puerto Rico into the United States.

From the point of view of Senator Hanna's life these questions do not have to be discussed on their merits, because, as has already been pointed out, he was in relation to them a follower rather than a leader. Throughout all these long debates, extending over so many months, during which the legal abilities of Senator Spooner and others were conspicuously expressed, and during which the senior Senator from Ohio, Mr. Foraker, also displayed talents of a high order, Senator Hanna did not break his silence. He voted, of course, throughout for the orthodox Republican policy; and the aspect of the matter with which he was most concerned was its effect upon the coming presidential campaign.

Another question which the fifty-sixth Congress at its first session effectually disposed of was that of the standard of value. Inasmuch as the Republicans were for the first time in absolute control of both Houses, they were in a position to redeem their pledges and to establish gold as the statutory standard of value of the United States. This they did not hesitate to do, in spite of the fact that an election was coming on. They felt that they had the country behind them. They had weathered the squalls of the Spanish War. The business prosperity of the country had really been restored, and there was every evidence that a still further business expansion would follow. Prices had increased, but so had wages. A general air of satisfaction was overspreading the country. It was just the time to redeem the pledge of 1896, and to establish the gold standard, not merely as a matter of policy, but with a definite legal sanction.

In the debates on the currency bill Senator Hanna did not break the silence, which with but one insignificant exception

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