CONTENTS I. Birthplace, Parentage And Family .... 1 II. Benjamin Hanna, his Family And His Fortune . 8 IV. The Passing of New Lisbon 28 V. Early Years In Cleveland 36 VI. Marriage And Its Results 47 VII. Business Life In Cleveland 54 VIII. Miscellaneous Business Interests .... 65 IX. Mark Hanna And His Employees .... 84 X. Characteristics In Business 96 XL Beginnings In Politics 110" XL1. Two Conventions And Their Results . . . 120 XIII. Political Friends And Enemies 140 XIV. The Making Of A President 164 XV. The Convention Of 1896 190 XVII. Senator By Appointment 228 XVIII. Senator By Election 242 XIX. Three Years Of Transition 272 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Mr. Hanna in 1903 Frontispiece FACING PAGE The House in New Lisbon in which Mr. Hanna was born. It has been changed by the addition of one story .... 8 The New Lisbon Homestead 18 Mark and Howard Melville Hanna as Children .... 22 Mark Hanna as a Boy 24 The Prospect Street Homestead in Cleveland 36 Mark Hanna as a Lad of Eighteen 38 Mark Hanna in 1864 48 Mark Hanna about 1871 56 Mark Hanna about 1877 112 Mr. Hanna in the Early Nineties 150 Mr. Hanna in 1901 344 Facsimile of the Letter written by Mr. Hanna during his Final Illness to President Roosevelt 452 INTRODUCTION Before beginning the story of Mark Hanna's life and work I want to claim the unprejudiced attention, even of those readers who may be predisposed against him. His personality and his career are entitled to the fair and serious consideration of his opponents in politics and economics. They have a value apart from and beyond the controversies in which they were entangled during his own life, and in which, from the point of view of many Americans, they are still entangled. I do not underemphasize the difficulties of giving a fair account of Mr. Hanna's life or of passing a disinterested judgment on a man whose public action involved so much bitter contention and who so recently died. Grave as those difficulties may be, this book is an attempt to overcome them. It must stand or fall on the attempt. Like all strong and capable men who fight hard for their own political purposes and opinions, Mr. Hanna made many friends and many enemies. He was loved and trusted by his friends as have been very few American political leaders. He was abused and distrusted by his enemies with no less ardor. At the outset of his public career the varying estimates of him as a man were determined chiefly by the judgments passed upon his political purposes and methods. For years he could not obtain an unprejudiced hearing, unless it were from his political allies. He was denounced as the living embodiment of a greedy, brutalized and remorseless plutocracy; and this denunciation infected the opinion of many members of his own party who had no knowledge of the man. Gradually, however, the public estimate of him improved. As his personality became better known, and as his political opinions became more fully expressed, the popular caricature of Mark Hanna began to fade from the public mind. The fair-dealing characteristic of his own attitude towards other! men aroused a corresponding attitude towards him on the part of a large part of the |