tion of the American flag to the high seas, and it was not easy to make its audiences listen to arguments in favor of the desired legislation. But the fact that he was risking his popularity in keeping the subject before his constituents did not deter him. His private secretary, Mr. Elmer Dover, states that ship subsidies were the one subject which he persisted in preaching, even when he was boring his audiences and knew that he was boring them.

His lively and insistent interest in ship-subsidy legislation was not, however, due merely to his own personal participation in the upbuilding of American fresh-water shipping. The subject made a strong appeal to him as a matter of national policy. Mr. Hanna had a sound and comprehensive understanding of the principles underlying American economic legislation. He saw that every branch of American industry, agriculture and domestic commerce rested more or less on encouragement by the government, and that such encouragement was granted on the assumption that the public economic interest was most effectually promoted by the stimulation of private enterprise. On this basis a national economic system had been created, the several parts of which were closely connected, and which with one exception included every essential economic activity. The one exception was that of American shipping engaged in foreign trade. He never could understand either why this exception had been allowed to occur or why it was not immediately remedied. It was to him incomprehensible that such an opportunity of employing American capital and labor should be neglected, and that the builders and possible operators of ocean-going ships should not be granted the same encouragement as that which every other essential American economic activity had obtained in one form or another.

In the winter of 1900 and 1901 certain recent developments in the character of American exports gave peculiar pertinence to legislation in aid of American shipping. It was just at this moment that American manufacturers, particularly of metal products, had begun a very successful invasion of the foreign markets. The exports of manufactured articles had increased suddenly and enormously. The prevailing opinion was that certain of them had outgrown the home market, that their pro

ductive capacity was far in excess of domestic consumption and that better arrangements must be made to introduce American products abroad. The grouping of many manufacturing plants under one ownership and management was explained and defended as a necessary step in the development of American export trade. It was claimed that the government could contribute substantially to the better organization of the export trade by subsidizing American marine carriers. From this point of view, ship-subsidy legislation became an essential part of a really efficient national economic organization. A government which had encouraged American manufacturers, when they were occupied in selling almost exclusively to the home market, should be all the more ready to supply them with an economic agency which would help them to make their profits out of foreigners.

The decision was reached, consequently, to tackle seriously the question of subsidy legislation during the short session which began on Dec. 1, 1900, and this decision was attributed chiefly to Mr. Hanna. For the first time his leadership became a conspicuous fact in the conduct of the Senate's business. He was not in actual charge of the measure on the floor of the Senate. That duty devolved upon Senator Frye, who was Chairman of the Committee on Commerce. But he was none the less more responsible for the legislative career of the bill than was its floor manager. In Senator's Frye absence he assumed charge of the measure. He frequently intervened. in the debate, which occupied a large part of the Senate's time from Dec. 4, 1900, to Feb. 18, 1901. On December 13 he made on behalf of the bill the first long speech of his career as Senator-a speech which was generally acknowledged to be a credit to its author and a very able presentation of his side of the case. At the same time he was actively canvassing among his colleagues, in order to find out how they would vote; and he was using his influence all over the country to create a more widespread public opinion in favor of the proposed legislation.

Notwithstanding the apparently vigorous attempt made to pass a subsidy bill during the short session, it is improbable that its advocates really intended to do more than concentrate public attention on their legislative enterprise. Even if they

could have brought the bill to a vote in the Senate, there was no time to force it through the House in the last weeks of a Congressional session. As a matter of fact they were powerless even to secure a vote on it in the Senate. The opposition of the Democrats was furious and determined. They had decided that it should not be voted upon at that session, and the rules of the Senate permitted them to discuss the measure at sufficient length to kill it. The Republican leaders must have realized their powerlessness. In pressing the bill they must have been making a demonstration in force, preparatory to a better sustained movement under the more favorable conditions of the ensuing long session.

Just as soon as the fifty-seventh Congress assembled on Dec. 1, 1901, a renewed attempt was made in the Senate to pass a subsidy bill differing in certain essential respects from the former measure. Its discussion was begun on March 3, 1902, and it occupied the entire time of the Senate until March 17, when a vote was obtained. During this second debate Mr. Hanna played, if anything, an even more important part than he had the year before. He did not, indeed, make any long set speech on behalf of the bill, but he made a number of extemporaneous statements in reference to particular phases of the discussion; and superficially he was more interested in the measure and more responsible for it than was the Chairman of the Committee.

The vote taken on March 17 was favorable to the bill. There were forty-two Senators recorded in its favor and only thirtytwo in opposition-its opponents including four such good Republicans as Senators Spooner, Allison, Dolliver and Proctor. It was then sent to the House, but although the session was still young, it was never voted on by that body. The attempt to stimulate the building and operation of American ships in foreign trade consequently failed; and its failure under the circumstances must have been due to the influence of very powerful opposing currents of public opinion. At a period when the Republican party was in full control of the government and was powerfully organized for united action, its most prominent leaders were unable to secure the acceptance of a measure which, whatever its faults, was an honest and care

fully considered attempt to meet an apparent public need and redeem a party pledge. The failure was, moreover, not due to the Democratic minority, which had far less power under the rules of the House than it had under the rules of the Senate. It was due chiefly to the impossibility of creating much interest in the object of the bill among Middle Western Republicans. They failed to see how the interests of their constituents would be helped by subsidy legislation; and in the absence of any local benefit they did not want to incur the unpopularity which might result from the actual appropriation of national funds for the benefit of a particular industry.

If the attempt to pass the bill had been successful, I should have been obliged to consider in detail its provisions, its merits and its consequences. But the ultimate failure of the attempt makes it unnecessary to discuss the measure, except in relation to the motives and ideas which induced Mr. Hanna so enthusiastically and tenaciously to favor it. Why he attached so much importance to it has already been indicated in a general way; but it is desirable to explain somewhat more in detail and partly in his own words his personal attitude towards the matter. Its importance in his eyes will seem either blind or sinister to people who object on principle to any attempt at the promotion of a public interest by the subsidizing and encouragement of private interests. But Mr. Hanna never addressed his arguments to people of such opinions. The system to which he had been accustomed all his life, and which determined all his own economic ideas was one which had identified the public interest with the encouragement of every phase of private productive enterprise. It had deliberately sought to bestow upon the farmers, the manufacturers, the miners, the cattlemen, the timbermen, the railroads and corporations of all kinds direct or indirect subsidies. Such had been the national economic policy since the Civil War. It was the system actually in existence, and it seemed to him really national in its scope, in its meaning and in the distribution of its benefits.

He is continually arguing that the adoption of some measure which would restore American shipping to the high seas is a necessary part of this national economic policy. Considering the protection which the government extended to other in

dustries, it was unjust as well as unwise that similar encouragement should be denied to American shipping engaged in foreign trade; and there were many ways in which the national economic interests were really endangered thereby. A war between Germany and England might work upon the large percentage of our foreign commerce carried under the flags of those powers, a serious injury which the government of the United States would be powerless to avert. The efficiency of the American navy and its supplies of men and auxiliary ships depended on the existence of a flourishing merchant marine. In these and other similar respects the encouragement of American shipping was merely a political precaution demanded by the necessities of general national policy; but it was equally demanded by the prevailing conditions of international commercial warfare. All the other great trading nations had built up a merchant marine partly for the sake of stimulating their export trade. American merchants and manufacturers were hampered by the lack of such an engine, and the benefit of supplying the need would be out of all proportion to its actual cost.

"The whole question," he wrote in an article in the National Magazine for January, 1901, "resolves itself into this: If the American people can be brought to understand the need and value of an American mercantile mar ne to the nation, they will support a bill which makes provisions for just such an accomplishment. The benefit aimed at is for the nation. To secure that benefit for the nation, incidentally certain individuals those willing to risk their capital in American-built ships in our foreign trade-will be safeguarded against loss in competition with foreign ships. This result, it cannot be said too emphatically, will utterly fail of accomplishment unless a very substantial reduction is brought about in the rates of freight charged for the carriage of our exports and imports, because only by reducing rates can American ships expect to wrest any of the business from their foreign competitors. The reduction in rates will, it is believed, several times repay the American people for whatever expenditure the government may make directly to the beneficiaries of the bill." Again in his speech in favor of the bill, delivered on Dec. 13, 1900, he said: