embodiment of the pioneer spirit and method may now wear a more plausible aspect. He flourished at a time when a traditional system, which was losing its vitality but retained much of its authority, was under pressure. The peculiar mixture of transparency, candor and sincerity in his nature had enabled him to incorporate the system without distortion into his own life. Under the pressure of the attack and in the ardor of his defence, the meaning of the system, its merits and defects, were fully and clearly revealed. For the benefit of the cause, he turned himself and his own people inside out, and the exposure threw a great deal of light on the whole process, which was just then reaching its culminating stage. Many earlier aspects of American pioneerage can be better understood when considered in the light of Mr. Hanna's doctrines, methods and achievements, while Mr. Hanna himself, and what he achieved, remain wholly inexplicable when detached from their sources and surroundings. He added nothing to the traditional system, except some improvements in organization, and he took nothing away from it. He merely reflected it, and there is much to learn from the reflection.

Mark Hanna's political method and doctrine were no less characteristic of pioneer politics than his business doctrine and methods were characteristic of pioneer economics. The pioneer Democrats had organized party government in order to supply an irresponsible official political system with some machinery of responsible direction. The parties became the engines of government and received recognition at the hands of the state to an extent unprecedented in previous political history. The men of Mr. Hanna's generation knew only one kind of responsibility for political action. Party organizations dictated candidates and platforms, and were supposed to guarantee the acceptability of its nominees and the realization of its policies. The better party leaders, such as Mr. Hanna, took this responsibility very seriously. Under Mr. McKinley's leadership and his, the Republican party was more than usually successful in redeeming its promises; and its success was due to their ability in drawing and keeping the party together. They assumed power at a moment when the Republicans, like the Democrats, had been very much divided by the intrusion

of sectional economic issues. They gradually converted it into probably the most efficient partisan machine for the transaction of political business that had been built up in this country.

The cause of partisan harmony and efficiency, like the cause of prosperity, demanded many sacrifices. Mr. Hanna himself was willing to make the needed sacrifices, and he required them of his partisan associates. He labored unceasingly in the attempt to persuade his fellow-Republicans to abandon local interests, and personal feelings and ideas for the benefit of a united and harmonious policy. He often required sacrifices which conscientious men could not make. Under his leadership good Republicans were asked to abandon protests against the corruption and tyranny of the machine in the interest of Republican success. But in order to understand this attitude, we must remember that from his point of view, the Republican party was the Government. Revolts against the partisan organization seemed to him the result merely of factious motives. They were no more worthy of respect than were the perverse class, sectional and personal quarrels which have always constituted the gravest obstacle to the realization of a really national policy. They indicated a lack of public spirit.

Here again Mark Hanna was faithfully representing an historical tradition. The party system, corrupt and tyrannical as it had become in many of its local manifestations, had been forged to meet a real need. It had constituted the most powerful of agencies for the nationalizing of public opinion in a country which was peculiarly liable to be distracted by local and class interests, and it had introduced some responsibility into an irresponsible official "machine." In Mark Hanna's time it contained and concealed many abuses; but it had not for that reason become any less necessary. Reforming legislation recognizes this necessity by incorporating the party systems in the organization of the state, and all effective reformers have been obliged, in order to accomplish their purposes, to become local or national partisan managers and leaders. If Mark Hanna acquiesced in and protected much that was evil in "machine" politics, he also brought out and developed the real responsibilities and capabilities of the system. Under his leadership the Republican party was an effective engine of

government, conscious of its duties, responsive to public opinion and efficient in the exercise of its powers.

A careful analyst of American political institutions has said (Henry Jones Ford, "Rise and Growth of American Politics," p. 310): "Nowhere else in the world at any period has party organization had to cope with such enormous tasks as in this country, and its efficiency in dealing with them is the true glory of our political system. . . . The conclusion may be distasteful, since it is the habit of the times to pursue public men with calumny and detraction; but it follows that when history comes to reckon the achievements of our age, great party managers will receive an appreciation very different from what is now accorded them." If there is any truth in this prediction, Mr. Hanna will be better entitled to a revised judgment in his favor than any of the political leaders of his own day. He was the greatest and most successful of American party managers because he brought to the task of party management a peculiar combination of loyalty and adaptability. The power of a party leader is entirely a matter of personal authority. It is based on his ability to read correctly various phases of public and private opinion; to be always on the alert and ready for any emergency; and finally to understand other men, to convince them and obtain their confidence. His leadership has no definite term and no official sanction. It must be earned every day or it vanishes.

Mark Hanna's personal authority was the direct result, not merely of his competence, not merely of his reliability, but above all of his adaptability. He introduced the phrase "standpat" into American politics, and "stand-pattism" is usually considered equivalent to a blind and rigid conservatism. Reformers like to talk about a "stand-pat intellect," meaning thereby a mind inaccessible to the impact of fresh experiences and ideas. That is precisely the kind of mind which Mark Hanna did not possess. He was, of course, deeply attached to certain traditional ideas, but his advocacy of a traditional system should not obscure the essentially progressive nature and meaning of his personal life. His salient quality as a business man had been his flexibility, his enterprise, his power of being every kind of a man demanded by success in his business. His salient quality as a political leader remained his flexibility, —

his power of being every kind of a man demanded by success in politics. Few have been the leaders who escaped so completely from the limitations of their own past. His career was a series of surprises and accumulated achievements, because he proved adequate to one opportunity and responsibility after another. In the sphere of his own proper personal work his disposition was essentially adventurous. He was always undertaking new enterprises and assuming new duties. The limitations of his ideas were the result, not of the rigidity of his mind, but of the limitations of his experience. That experience was exclusively practical and was restricted by the desire for immediate results. But within the limits of a purely practical point of view he was the most flexible of men; and his flexibility was the personal reflection of that social fluidity so characteristic of pioneer Americanism.

The conclusion is that Mr. Hanna's personality and career had an essentially social value, which the opponents of his political and economic opinions should be the last to ignore. He gave a highly individual expression both to the practical aspect of pioneer Americanism and to its really underlying tendency. The aggressive and sometimes unscrupulous individualism of the pioneer was redeemed by the conviction that in doing well for himself he was also doing well for society. The pioneer honestly identified and confused individual and social interests, and he was honestly concerned as much for the one as for the other. The society in which he was interested was not an abstract, remote entity. It was a living group of men and women, whom one liked or disliked, helped or hindered, and who aroused in one another an essentially neighborly interest. His hopes and aspirations of a better social state was an extension of the actual good-will which he felt towards his associates individually and as a body.

In this region, also, Mark Hanna helps us to understand the pioneer American, and the pioneer helps us to understand Mark Hanna. Personal ties and associations composed the substance of his life. During each successive phase of his career he made a few enemies and many friends. He made enemies because he had to fight his way to his goal. because he could make his own the interests of other men. He

He made friends

was building up a better society in his own vicinity by treating his associates as he would like to be treated by them. According to his own lights, he always played fair-not merely towards his friends, not merely towards his business associates and employees, not merely towards his political associates, but towards his personal constituents and towards public opinion. This spirit of fair play is characteristic of pioneer Americanism and constitutes its best legacy to a future American society. But characteristic as it was, it received only occasional expression in the lives of the pioneers. While their good-fellowship and good-will are indisputable, their actual expression of the Golden Rule was not zealous or persistent. They were so eager to make their private fortunes that they were inclined to take the fortune of society for granted. They could not rise to the level of personal disinterestedness which the spirit of their social edifice demanded. Mark Hanna's distinction is that he did rise to the necessary level of personal disinterestedness. He was throughout all his business and political relations what the average good American is only in his better moments. His ability to give an exceptionally high expression to a spirit which Americans traditionally revere constitutes the secret of his extraordinary success. It was by virtue of this that his personality inspired confidence as soon as it became known. He awakened echoes among his followers, not merely of their traditional interest in economic self-betterment, but of their traditional spirit of social fair play.

The economic and political system advocated by Mr. Hanna may not make for social fair play; but any one who rejects the system should be the more willing to recognize the good faith of the man. His personal behavior towards other men was directed towards the realization of those social values, the promotion of which is declared to be the object of a better system. If he was lacking, as his critics have declared, in idealism, the deficiency was at least partly due to the very reality of a certain ideal element in his own life. An impulse toward a better quality of human association was instinctive with him. When, if ever, Mark Hanna's way of behavior towards his fellows becomes common instead of rare, we shall not need so much reform or so many reformers. That so typical an American