CHAPTER XV. MCKINLEY AS A CAMPAIGNER. It does not appear that William McKinley, at the beginning of his career as a politician, or at any other time in his life, endeavored to project himself into any sort of leadership. His forcefulness was innate, it is true, but the motive power, always, that surcharged his work was the demand of occasion. When he became a candidate for Congress for the first time, it was because he was needed from his district to do something. That he did earnestly, energetically and thoroughly for his immediate constituents. But, in Congress, the environment of national affairs brought to him national work. It presented itself to him as being the man for that, and he took it up with the same earnestness of purpose and the same commendable self-reliance that possessed his nature in all things. He went at it thinking only of what was needed, his duty in the premises being a matter of course, just as he quietly became a private soldier when the country needed every able bodied and faithful man that it could get to do the work of war. In the harness McKinley did, simply, always that which was for the best, as he saw it, and always in the strongest and best manner possible to him, and his career has exhibited the fact that what he thought was best, and what he was able to do, was ever valuable to those interests, including himself. In this he exemplified the principle that to do right is to do that which is for the best. Being in politics on the most commendable plane McKinley was a politician of shrewdness without cunning and he campaigned in the strongest way without descending to questionable methods. His power as a campaigner was of the kind that does its work steadily, unfalteringly and irresistibly, straightforwardly and fairly. Thus, in 1876, when McKinley was first set forth as a candidate for Congress, he had three rivals from his own county for the nomination, but the choice fell upon him at the first ballot, over all other candidates. Being elected, he was rechosen at each recurring convention and election for fourteen years, and always representing the district in which his county was, though it was not always the same district otherwise, for his opponents, not relishing the prominent and important place that he had taken in Congress, gerrymandered the district three times in that fourteen years hoping thus to defeat him, but in that they failed signally until the last time that game was played, but the defeat was only of a temporary character and was pitifully unsuccessful in keeping McKinley out of politics. The first attempt to change the McKinley district resulted in the formation of a district that would have naturally presented a majority for the opposition of 1,800. But this McKinley overcame with a majority of 1,300. In 1882, when McKinley's party suffered everywhere and especially in his state, this resourceful man managed nevertheless to hold his own quite safely. In 1884 the opposition gerrymandered the district again, but McKinley was not to be downed, and came to the front with a majority of 1,500. In 1890, the very year in which the McKinley bill became a law, the district being again gerrymandered, and Stark County-that in which McKinley lived-having been districted with other counties that gave a majority for the opposition of 2,000, and McKinley's opponent being exLieutenant Warwick, a prominent and exceedingly popular man, in the fierce battle that ensued McKinley was defeated Ly63 votes. The figures showed, however, that the vote was the tallest ever cast in the counties that now composed the district, and that McKinley received 2,500 more votes than had been cast for President Harrison in 1888, when Harrison was elected. This defeat took McKinley out of Congress, but not out of public life. McKinley was thirty-four years old when he entered Congress. At that time Samuel J. Randall was the Democratic leader and Speaker and James A. Garfield at the head of the Republicans. The new Congressman from Ohio soon attracted attention, and when he left the House fourteen years afterwards he was the Republican leader by virtue of his position as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. The McKinley bill, which in the latter capacity he urged through Congress, at first met with disapproval by the people and was practically rejected at the next Presidential election when Cleveland was successful. Four years afterward, however, the voters saw their mistake and William McKinley was elected President on the identical issue which it was supposed had ended his political fortunes in 1892. With fair intent, youthful ardor, a large and valuable fund of information on economic problems, painstaking industry, fidelity to political convictions, commanding address, parliamentary and diplomatic tact, dignified demeanor and philosophic turn, Congress was a wide and fertile field for the work of William McKinley. Being always at his best, because of healthfulness of mind, body and motive, he grew rapidly in strength, popularity and respect among the members of that body, and especially among his party associates. The appreciation of his ability and industry was quickly and continuously illustrated by the assignments that came to him of places upon various and important committees. On the floor of the House of Representatives he took rank early in his membership among the ablest debaters, by reason of his sincere interest in public questions, remarkable facility and power in the marshalling of facts, his forceful logic, fascinating rhetoric, fairness to opposition, freedom from excitement and bitterness, readiness and keenness in repartee and a palpable evidence at all times of cool reserve strength. In it all, however, he never spoke without occasion nor without full knowledge of his subject. He ornamented and exhausted the subject matter with which he happened to be occupied. Depth and honesty of conviction were apparent in his earnestness and his expression, lucidity of thought and easy clearness of detail gave delight when he spoke to friend and foes alike. It was particularly fortunate to Mr. McKinley and the country that upon entering Congress as a young man he was placed upon the Ways and Means Committee that proved congenial as well as specially adaptable to him! Here, under the tutelage of such chairmen as Kelley and Garfield, it was natural that with his bent he should reach the chairmanship of that great committee himself. It was thus that the opportunity came to him for the exercise of his special genius in tariff matters. His first speech in Congress was on the tariff and his last discussed the same theme. From the beginning of his public career McKinley was the unfaltering, sturdy, consistent and intelligent advocate of the principle of protection to American industries by tariff duties imposed with the purpose of keeping the cheap labor products of European and Asiatic countries out of our vast and desirable American markets. He was not, as was Garfield, for such protection as would lead to ultimate free trade. He believed that free trade is a dream of theorists, which would bring industrial ruin and poverty to the United States if it were put into practice, benefiting no class but the importing merchants of the seaboard cities. He had no patience with tariffs formed to "afford incidental protection." Tariff bills, he thought, should aim primarily at protection, and tariff legislation should be scientific and permanent, with a view to the continuous prosperity of the industrial classes. This was the chief aim of the McKinley bill, passed when he was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. No doubt other minds in both House and Senate helped to frame that measure, but McKinley's thought and work were on every page of it. When the Republican party was defeated in 1892, largely through public misapprehension of that measure and before it had received a fair trial, McKinley was one of the few Republican leaders who continued to breast the adverse current and who never faltered a moment in the faith that the tide would set back to protection. Others wanted to change front and abandon the high protection principle. He refused, and proceeded to realign his party on the old line of battle. He set out to educate public sentiment anew, and during his memorable stumping tour of 1894 he made 367 speeches and spoke in the States of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio. For eight weeks he averaged seven speeches a day, ranging in length from ten minutes to an hour. In these speeches McKinley addressed himself to the country upon the demerits of the Wilson tariff bill, then on its passage, which had been denounced by President Cleveland, who belonged to the same political party as did its author, and who was of the opposite political party to that of McKinley, as "a product of perfidy and dishonor," but who permitted it to become a law without his signature. At the same time McKinley spoke in favor of the underlying principle of the act of 1880. This latter bill, of which McKinley was the father and which bore his name, occupied the entire time of the first session of the Fifty-first Congress, and in all that terrific debate McKinley stood as the special champion of the measure. Its passage was a monument to his ability, patience and endurance, and to his great power as a debater. By 1884 he had won the title of "Champion of American Protection," and in 1888 his committee report was delivered, which headed the "Mills Tariff Bill," and that, with the speech delivered by McKinley at the time, became potent factors in the campaign that followed and in which Harrison was elected President and the political complexion of Congress was changed to one of harmony with the administration. After his defeat for Congress McKinley remained quietly at his home, where he was again called from its privacy to consider the question of his nomination for the Governorship of Ohio. Governor Campbell had frequently boasted that he had made Ohio a permanent Democratic State, but |