ing a mistake. They urged that he was not a professional campaigner, that his selection of South Dakota would look like the persecution of Mr. Pettigrew by the most powerful man in the Republican party and would react in that gentleman's favor, and that he had better keep out of the hot and critical fight which was being made in those particular states.

After the decision was made the President himself decided to interfere. One day the Postmaster-General, Mr. Charles Emory Smith, turned up in Chicago, and sought an interview with Mr. Hanna. He began in a somewhat indirect way to develop the reasons against the proposed Northwestern tour, dwelling particularly on the danger of personal violence. In pressing these arguments he claimed to be expressing the opinion of several other members of the Cabinet. But his manner implied that there was something behind the protest; and finally Mr. Hanna became impatient and asked him point blank, "The President sent you, didn't he?" When Mr. Smith acknowledged that he was an emissary of the President, Mr. Hanna answered (according to an account given immediately after the incident to an intimate friend), "Return to Washington and tell the President that God hates a coward," a sentence which has a familiar ring, but which the reader may feel confident was not uttered for the benefit of Mr. Hanna's biography.

Mr. Hanna was exasperated at this interference with his personal plans and his management of the campaign. He was a quick-tempered man, and under the influence of high feeling contemplated courses of action which his sober judgment could not approve. In his anger he even considered for a moment the sending in of his resignation; but his head was too cool not to prevent the commission of such a mistake. The course on which he decided was to justify his own judgment by making his stumping tour a success.

His lively resentment is to be explained partly on other than obvious grounds. Of course he did not like to have his judgment impeached in relation to a very important piece of campaign business. He had decided upon the trip only after considering fully and patiently adverse opinions. The decision for or against was a matter which lay absolutely within his discretion as campaign manager. But this formal protest from Wash

نا

ington indicated, not merely distrust of his judgment, but a fear of the impression which Mr. Hanna would make on his audiences. It indicated a wish to keep his personality out of the campaign and away from the people; and in considering its meaning Mr. Hanna could not help connecting it with Mr. McKinley's hesitation in asking him to remain at the head of the National Committee. He and the President expected opposite results from his appearance on the stump. Nowhere in the country had Mr. Hanna been more abused than by the "Populist" orators of the Northwest. He proposed by means of the trip to counteract the effect of this abuse, whereas the President apparently feared that his public appearance would confirm rather than confound the diatribes of his enemies. Manifestly Mr. Hanna could not submit to such a limitation of the range of his political action without implicitly circumscribing his own subsequent political career. The question fundamentally was whether his appearance so conspicuously on the stump would weaken the ticket or contribute to its election. He believed that he could both set himself right with the people of the Northwest and make votes. It hurt and angered him that so many leading Republicans, including his old friend the President, held to the opposite opinion. He determined to vindicate by the results his own judgment, and thereby to increase his own personal political prestige.

The tour was carefully planned. Instead of aiming directly for South Dakota and Nebraska, he made dates also in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, so that his excursions into the states on which he particularly desired to exert influence would not look like a special attack on any individual. It was to occupy a week all together, of which two days were spent in South Dakota. He was accompanied by a considerable suite. His own car contained the two speakers who were to assist him on the stump, his old campaign comrade, Senator William P. Frye, Mr. Victor Dolliver, brother of the late Senator Dolliver of Iowa and his private secretary, Mr. Elmer Dover. In the newspaper car there were representatives of the Associated Press, the Scripps-McRae League, the Minneapolis Journal, the Chicago Tribune, Times-Herald, Record, Inter-Ocean, and an official stenographer. The rest of the train consisted of a diner, a

reception car for the Committees and a baggage car. An immense territory was covered in a short time because the train was given the right of way over all other trains.

Senator Frye had prepared two speeches, one of which took over an hour to deliver and the other about forty-five minutes. Mr. Dolliver also had brought two speeches in his grip, one of which was very short for breathless stops and the other an elastic harangue which could be stretched from fifteen to thirty minutes. Wherever they spoke they made one of their two speeches, and after the first day the correspondents ceased to report them. Mr. Hanna made seventy-two speeches, varying between five minutes and an hour in length, and no two of them were alike.

Throughout the tour Mr. Hanna was extraordinarily and continuously successful in exciting popular interest. Two years before President McKinley had visited South Dakota, in order to welcome some soldiers returning from the Philippines. He had drawn the biggest crowds in the history of the state. Mr. Hanna's crowds were anywhere from about one and one-half times to twice as large as Mr. McKinley's. They were larger also than those which had greeted Mr. Roosevelt in the same district a few weeks earlier. At seven o'clock in the morning the train would stop at a station where one could see no more than half a dozen houses, yet there would be a congregation of three hundred people to hear Mr. Hanna speak. Farmers in the neighborhood had started at midnight and had driven many miles, in order to be at the station when the train arrived. At Sioux Falls, as well as at the larger places, a crowd three times as large as the population of the town gathered at the meeting.

They were all practically out-of-door meetings, except those held during the evenings in the big towns. In South Dakota the Populist Legislature had passed a law a few years before prohibiting political gatherings which were addressed from the tail-end of railway cars. Nor could such assemblies be held within two hundred feet of the railway track. The object of this discriminating use of the police power was to enable the Populist party to campaign on even terms with the Democrats and Republicans. The Populists could not afford the political luxury of special trains. The consequence was that the way

side meetings in South Dakota were all held at some distance from the tracks. The Committee would have a carriage at the station and would drive the Senator to a platform, situated at a strictly legal distance from the tracks, where a local spellbinder would be holding the crowd together. Mr. Hanna would speak for a few moments, the whistle would blow, cutting short his eloquence, and he would be hurried back to the train. The crowds were not only large, they were almost always respectful and attentive, and they were often enthusiastic. Of course he was interrupted and heckled, but such interruptions usually helped him with the audience. A public speaker with a bold, familiar and winning personality like Mr. Hanna's can always get the better of a heckler — provided he is not irritated and disconcerted by the interruption and can make a ready and plausible retort. Mr. Hanna always gave his annoyers a fair chance, and he was never disconcerted, because he was never making a set speech. He had at his disposal a fund of rough pleasantry which, while it often reads clumsy and even coarse, was received with gusto by his boisterous audiences.

A few instances may be given of the way he met these emergencies. In one small town he was introduced by an abject chairman as a "Joshua, who, if he wanted to, could command the sun to stand still." To allow such a silly adulation to stand unnoticed might be dangerous. Mr. Hanna in opening his speech said that the only suns he would like to command would be the sons of guns of Populists and honest Democrats to vote for McKinley. Its author is not to be congratulated on the deftness of this sally. It is given not because it was happy, but because it was clumsy yet effective. It at once set him right before the audience as, not a strange or remote animal, but as one of themselves. All the correspondents agree that he thereby captured the crowd and kept it with him. He was in a little better form at another place, when in beginning his speech, he said that he was not a politician. "Mark Hanna not a politician!" shouted a scornful voice in the audience. "No, I am not a politician, because I don't know how to tell you what is not -a retort which also proved to be a success and enabled him to go ahead with the sympathy of his audience.

SO"

At Auburn in Nebraska, about 2500 people had assembled

around a platform, from which Mr. Hanna was speaking. The platform was a flimsy structure, and it broke down under the weight of the men and boys who were trying to clamber on it. It looked like a serious business, for some fifty people had fallen about six feet and were struggling to free themselves from one another and from the débris. "Is Hanna hurt?" "How is Hanna?" shouted the spectators; and there was danger of a panic. Just then his body emerged from the confused mass; there was a twinkle in his eye and his smile was broader than usual. Holding up his hand to command silence, he cried: "It's all right. No one is hurt. We were just giving you a demonstration of what is going to happen to the Democratic party. This must have been a Democratic platform"-at which the crowd cheered vociferously.

Another incident which proved to be popular in the newspapers also occurred in Nebraska. Just outside Weeping Water a stop was made by the engineer for the purpose of permitting Mr. Hanna to shave before his night meeting in Omaha. The photographer of the Omaha Bee took advantage of the opportunity to secure a picture of Senator Hanna and his party. Just as the Senator was about to be photographed alone, the engineer, grimy with coal and grease, sauntered up to see what was going on. "Here, you are just the man I want," said Mr. Hanna, grasping the engineer by the arm and drawing him into the field of the lens. "We are both engineers, I run the Republican party and you run me." "Well! I guess I've got you faded then, Senator," said the engineer, with a grin, as the camera clicked. The picture of the "two engineers" was reproduced extensively at the time and certainly enabled a good many people to understand one of them somewhat better.

Throughout the whole of the tour he never once mentioned Senator Pettigrew's name in public. But although he was discreet enough to avoid a personal attack on the man against whom he had a personal grudge, he was far from avoiding all personalities. He could not do so, because his own personality was being made an issue, and because the object of the trip was to convert precisely that personal issue into a source of strength to the ticket. That he succeeded is indicated by the following curious fact. One of the peculiarities of the tour was the large