The economy was one of the most important forces shaping America and therefore its politics in 1888. After the Panic of 1873, the country saw rapid growth in the 1880s, particularly in the North. As the economy industrialized, more laborers saw high tariffs as helping secure their jobs. Southern and Western farmers, hit by drought and dependent upon the success or failure of foreign harvests, did not. They blamed protection for making every imported good they bought—from sugar to dishware to clothes, fabric, and other necessities—more expensive and condemned the gold standard for making credit tight, farm prices too low, and currency less available.1
Then there was the Democratic Party’s recovery. In 1884, New York governor Grover Cleveland became the first Democratic president since the Civil War. He won because of a complicated confluence of circumstances. The South was made solidly Democratic by the repression of black and white Republicans and the North splintered by three factors. Insurgent Republicans defected, drawn by Cleveland’s promise of civil service reforms and repulsed by questions about Blaine’s character. The Prohibitionist Party drew just enough GOP voters to cost Republicans key states. And the economy faltered in 1884 when a Republican was in the White House.
Even then, the race was close. It was a party victory for Cleveland and a personal defeat for Blaine. Cleveland’s victory depended upon what one historian calls Blaine’s “series of accidents, misjudgments and shortfalls,” including his famous failure to quickly renounce a supporter’s charge in the election’s closing days that Cleveland stood for “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.”
AS PRESIDENT, CLEVELAND MADE two major attempts to reduce tariffs, framing his efforts as responsibly reducing the government’s budget surpluses by returning it to working people in tax cuts. Both times, Cleveland’s principal opponent in the House was McKinley, who would soon be called the “Napoleon of Protection” for his staunch defense of high tariffs.
Democrats made their first attempt in 1886, believing that cutting tariffs while the government was running a $100 million surplus would help the party in the midterms. Ways and Means chairman William R. Morrison prepared a tariff reduction bill, déjà vu from two years earlier.2
Once again, McKinley led the GOP opposition. He needed a new playbook because many of Randall’s Democratic protectionists were gone—defeated or retired. Thus he paid special attention to issues affecting wool growers and other farmers adversely affected by Morrison’s bill, hoping to peel off rural Democrats. The strategy was tested on June 17 when the House considered whether to take up Morrison’s new bill.
Outwardly confident, Morrison was worried, telling Cleveland the night before that though Democrats were the majority, he might not have the votes. He didn’t. The motion to consider his bill failed, 140 ayes (4 Republicans and 136 Democrats) to 157 nays (122 Republicans and 35 Democrats). McKinley had outflanked Morrison by winning Northern Democrats from agricultural districts. Morrison threatened to try again. McKinley replied, “We’ll be ready to meet you then,” before sitting down to applause. The bill was not brought up again.3
A year and a half later, Cleveland tried again, sending a blistering annual message to Congress focused on one subject: the need to reduce tariffs, an issue “upon which every element of our prosperity depends.” Because tariffs were too high, the federal government’s surplus was too large, Cleveland thundered, an “indefensible and a culpable betrayal of fairness and justice.” These “inequitable and illegal” taxes must be immediately cut for the benefit of laborers, farmers, and families.4
McKinley laid out the GOP case against this newest Democratic tariff reform at a Boston Home Market Club dinner in early February 1888 with a well-prepared speech. As an alternative to gutting protection, he called for ending domestic taxation and picked apart the arguments for free trade, suggesting it would bring down the economy. Guests gave “a round of hearty cheers.” It was another impressive performance and excellent preparation for this coming fight.5
It took the new Ways and Means chairman, Roger Q. Mills of Texas, until April 2 to present his bill to the House. It dramatically expanded the list of duty-free items and slashed tariffs on pig iron, rails, glass, earthenware, and woolen goods. The House clerk, who moonlighted as a Louisville Courier-Journal reporter, leaked the bill in advance, giving McKinley time to write a committee minority report.
McKinley excoriated the majority for writing the legislation in secret, “without the knowledge of the minority and . . . discussion in full committee” or comments from affected industries or workers. McKinley characterized the Mills bill as “a radical reversal of the tariff policy of the country,” calling it “disastrous if not entirely ruinous to many American industries.” It was also crassly political, meant to be the Democratic platform in the coming presidential election. McKinley’s mentor, Pig Iron Kelley, was delighted with “every sentence of the Major’s report.”6
McKinley led the GOP floor debate. Democrats outnumbered Republicans 170 to 154. The platoon of Democratic protectionists had been thinned in recent years and was under intense pressure from the administration, which threatened to withhold patronage.
Still leader of the high-tariff Democratic Party, Randall joined McKinley in mid-May to double-team Mills. Ill and weak, Randall hit the bill for cutting tariffs rather than direct internal taxes and appealed to Democratic protectionists to support Jefferson’s tariff principles. His time ran out before he finished and Mills refused to let him continue, drawing the ire of friends and foes alike. McKinley yielded some of the Republicans’ time to the former Democratic Speaker before taking the floor himself.7
McKinley began by echoing Randall’s call for cutting direct internal taxes, then rejected Mills’s claim that it was impossible for a workingman to buy a $10 suit, asserting it could be done. Leopold Morse, a Massachusetts Democrat and haberdasher, heckled McKinley, saying, “Not at my store.” The Major turned on him, producing a suit bought from Morse’s store, waving a bill of sale for $10 and asking, “Come now, will the gentleman from Massachusetts know his own goods?” The House dissolved into laughter. When he finished, McKinley was mobbed by colleagues and received “round after round of applause.”8
Randall’s platoon of Democratic protectionists had shrunk to a squad: four Democrats joined the Republicans in opposition but Democrats were in the majority and approved the Mills bill and sent it to the Senate, where Republican senators mangled it, leaving it to die before the election.9
WHEN OHIO REPUBLICANS LEFT for their national convention in Chicago in June 1888, McKinley’s pick was Sherman. His loyalty to his candidate would help the Major capture the national spotlight.
Foraker, always driven by his own ambition, was outwardly supportive of the senator, but privately hoped to be on the ticket. Foraker may have dispatched a lieutenant, Asa Bushnell, a Springfield businessman and former state GOP chairman, to parley earlier that spring with New York’s “Easy Boss,” Thomas Collier Platt, and Pennsylvania’s boss, Senator Matthew S. Quay, about Fire Alarm’s candidacy. In March 1888, papers reported on Foraker’s outreach efforts. Perhaps to distract attention, the governor bitterly complained to Hanna about being left out of Sherman’s preparations, despite being the nominal head of the Ohio delegation.10
Foraker then got word that Hanna was to be Sherman’s convention manager and someone else would nominate Sherman. Apparently the Sherman men did not trust Foraker with reprising either of his roles from the last convention. All this made Foraker petty. He complained to Hanna in May about giving up his hotel rooms next to the delegation headquarters and being moved to a nicer suite one floor up. “I prefer to retain my rooms.” His ambitions burned even hotter after Democrats nominated Allen G. Thurman of Ohio for vice president in early June. Shouldn’t Republicans turn to a young, rising Ohio man, like its forty-two-year-old governor, for vice president if not the top slot?11
But as the convention approached, everyone’s attention was on James G. Blaine. As the party’s candidate in 1884 and a firm advocate of protection, Blaine had a large, loyal following. But he didn’t want the nomination. He dreaded another campaign and, as a hypochondriac, believed it could kill him. Instead, he hoped to have a second turn at secretary of state. Some delegates thought they should nominate him anyway.12
The prospect of convention chaos made one group extremely happy—the party’s bosses. Blaine’s popularity ensured no one else could steamroll the convention. With a murky outcome, the bosses could offer support in exchange for patronage and cabinet posts.
When the national convention opened, the jockeying was well under way. Most of Sherman’s managers had been in town plotting for days. Hanna dominated their second-floor headquarters at the Grand Pacific hotel, working in shirtsleeves, fanning himself, and mopping his brow with what looked like an American flag. He told reporters Sherman would have 300 votes on the first ballot, in striking distance of the nomination. McKinley publicly pegged Sherman’s support at 360. Both were raising expectations when they should have been lowering them.13
Amid the spectacle of the convention’s opening day, two developments stood out. The first was the appearance of colorful ribbons with Foraker’s face and below his image, the words “No rebel flags shall be surrendered while I am governor,” a jab at President Cleveland’s call for Ohio to return captured Confederate battle flags. At the top was his slogan, “Vim, Vigor, Victory.”14
The second development was the quiet and growing trust in an emerging national leader whom many thought worthy of the presidency. Remembering his important role in the 1884 convention, all the factions settled on McKinley as chairman of the Resolutions Committee to draft the party’s platform.15
On the second day, delegates called on Foraker, still angling to be on the ticket, to speak. He obliged with a punchy address, saying they had to write a platform and choose a candidate. The first was “not difficult,” he said. “There is not an intelligent schoolboy in all the land who does not already know what our declarations will be.” It was a shot at McKinley, who was in charge of drafting the platform. Foraker then described the right candidate’s qualities as good moral character and loyalty to the Union. It was general enough to apply to almost anyone, including himself. The Chicago Tribune reported the speech made “Gov. Foraker the favorite of the convention.” McKinley and Hanna knew what Foraker was doing.16
The third morning, McKinley received a standing ovation when he appeared onstage to read the platform, wearing a red, white, and blue Sherman badge. He attacked Southern violence against black voters, slammed Democratic tariff reform as favoring Europe over the United States, and called for reducing the federal government’s surplus by cutting taxes or slashing duties on tobacco and goods made abroad that “cannot be produced at home.” Another plank backed “the use of both gold and silver as money” and criticized Cleveland’s efforts “to demonetize silver.” McKinley did not want to take a position on the politically volatile topic and was back to straddling the currency issue. He was interrupted thirty-two times by applause. The platform was adopted unanimously.17
The convention’s main event—nominating the party’s ticket—followed. Lesser figures were put forward first. The real action started with the nomination of former Indiana senator Benjamin Harrison, a successful lawyer who fought under General William T. Sherman, the Ohio senator’s brother. Harrison was severe and unbending, but inexplicably popular in his quintessential swing state.18
Iowa offered Senator William B. Allison, a quiet legislator with a talent for compromise. Michigan nominated Russell Alger, the state’s governor, who had fought under George Armstrong Custer at Gettysburg. Platt’s New Yorkers offered Chauncey Depew, a Yale-educated lawyer who managed the fabulously wealthy Vanderbilt family’s interests. He was a placeholder. The Easy Boss, Platt, knew Depew could not win, but his candidacy united New York, which would help Platt when he moved the state’s delegates to his eventual pick.19
To show that Sherman had substantial support outside his own state, a Pennsylvanian, Daniel H. Hastings, placed Sherman’s name in nomination, with Foraker seconding him. But it did little good. Sherman led on the first ballot, but with only 229 votes, far fewer than Hanna and McKinley had predicted. After peaking on the second ballot, Sherman began declining on the third, a sign his candidacy was dead. The anti-machine men moved to adjourn so they could regroup and come up with a new candidate.20
There was growing sentiment that if Sherman couldn’t win, then the party’s most consequential protectionist advocate, McKinley, should be put into play. The idea took root in many states. Texans claimed nearly two dozen delegates from their state would support McKinley as soon as Blaine faltered. A caucus of Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, and other delegations agreed to support McKinley “should a favorable moment arrive.” Congressional colleagues wired encouragement. Support came from men who admired McKinley’s leadership in the tariff fights and his oratorical prowess, as well as from some bosses who were interested in further scrambling the convention.21
This troubled the Major, who discussed it with Hanna around a table at Sherman’s Grand Pacific headquarters. As the men fanned themselves and smoked cigars, McKinley reached for a blank telegram form and wrote a short statement explaining he would refuse to be drafted. Hanna was impressed by what he read and then later by what he would hear.22
When the convention reconvened Saturday, the Chicago Times endorsed a Blaine-McKinley ticket, but delegates were realizing Blaine was unavailable, so they were turning to the Major. When he received a vote from Connecticut early in the roll call, he stood on a chair and nervously sought recognition from the stage. Once called on, he waited until delegates fell silent.
McKinley then told them he was bound by his state party to support Sherman, a responsibility “my heart and my judgment approved.” Someone yelled “Sit down, we’ll make you president,” but saying Sherman “trusted me in his cause,” McKinley continued. “I cannot with my sense of personal integrity, permit my name to be used in this convention.” He asked that delegates not vote for him and stepped down to a thunderous ovation.23
Hanna was dumbstruck, later writing, “For the first time, it occurred to me that he was a logical candidate for the presidency in years to come.” If McKinley had entered the race, Hanna thought, he would have immediately won many Blaine men and Harrison backers. But personal honor made him refuse. His selflessness convinced Hanna that the Major “was destined to become a great power in national politics.”24
On the fourth ballot, Sherman kept dropping, ending at 235, only 19 ahead of Harrison. Despite McKinley’s plea, he received 11 votes. The fifth ballot ended with Harrison at 212 to Sherman’s 224 with Alger and Blaine growing modestly. Things were so unclear that when the convention returned at 4 p.m., it recessed until Monday. The afternoon session had lasted just thirty minutes.25
Pressure was mounting for McKinley to run amid rumors Blaine would declare. Foraker chose this moment to tell reporters it was his “duty toward Mr. Sherman as well as the party” to vote for Blaine and bring most of Ohio with him. “I have been faithful and true to Mr. Sherman,” he said. “I cannot be accused of unfaithfulness or treachery,” just as his words and actions justified charges of both. Foraker’s ambition, ego, and his irritation at the attention given McKinley led him to defect.26
The bosses pressured McKinley to become a candidate, but the Major refused to abandon Sherman. It was not a reaction the Easy Boss understood. Calico Charlie Foster later told a friend he heard McKinley “use violent profanity only once in his life. It was when he refused to be nominated by the Platt crowd at the convention of 1888.”27
Hanna wired Sherman to suggest that only McKinley could prevent Blaine’s nomination. “Who do you advise? Can Ohio afford to lose this opportunity? I regret the situation but fear I am right.” Sherman wired back: “Let my name stand. I prefer defeat to retreat.” If McKinley entered the race, it would be “a break of implicit faith.”28
Delegates tried to make McKinley break that faith. Californians said if not Blaine, then McKinley, who had “an unmistakably good feeling” among their delegates. He would get 25 of the 28 Massachusetts delegation, according to its secretary. Illinois was ready to split, half for Blaine, half for McKinley. Connecticut leaned toward the Major.
Worried his convention plea was not enough, McKinley visited delegations Saturday night to personally ask them to stop. Told that 15 of New Jersey’s 18 delegates would vote for him, McKinley said that he would rather lose his “good right arm” than accept a nomination that way. Impressed, the delegation’s chairman, Garret A. Hobart, backed off. When McKinley got to sleep early Sunday morning, he was awakened by Ohioans in the next room plotting to nominate him. The Major appeared in his nightgown and demanded they cease.29
Sunday morning, Andrew Carnegie, who was hosting Blaine at his Scottish castle, wired a second time that Blaine was not a candidate and favored Harrison. Party leaders sent agents to Indianapolis to meet with Harrison after church and that afternoon Platt took a ride with Stephen B. Elkins, a key Harrison advisor, and returned believing he would be secretary of the Treasury in a Harrison administration, with all the customhouse patronage.30
Harrison was nominated Monday after three more ballots. Sherman’s star had, as far as the presidency was concerned, winked out. Yet Hanna discovered a new man in whom he could invest his skills, energy, and purse. At forty-five, McKinley was young and energetic, with achievements that attracted many Republicans. The “exasperating days of the Chicago convention” inspired Hanna to devote himself to making McKinley president.31
Hayes agreed that his former comrade’s reputation had grown, telling McKinley, “You gained gloriously.” While ambition was necessary in politics, Hayes believed “the surest path to the White House” was to never allow “ambition to get there to stand in the way of any duty, large or small.”32
McKinley and Hanna left Chicago, wiser in the ways of convention politics. For the second time, the two men had seen how chaotic and unpredictable a convention could become. They observed the power of machine states like New York and Pennsylvania. From inside Sherman’s campaign, they learned more about how to manage men, expectations, message, and momentum, sometimes through the cruel expedient of mistakes. They saw that a candidate needed a united home state to win and realized that was difficult to achieve in factionalized Ohio. They also understood that McKinley had a growing national clout, not simply from his leadership for protection and his impressive stints as Resolutions chairman but also from the impression that he “waved aside the glittering temptations of the Presidency rather than betray a friend.”33
McKinley and Hanna also picked up lessons from the fall campaign. McKinley easily won reelection but the presidential race was very close. Harrison beat the incumbent, Cleveland, by winning twenty states with 233 electoral votes but lost the popular vote by 90,592, or 0.8 percent, as Cleveland carried eighteen states. Three of them had black majorities—Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina—that might have gone Republican if blacks had not been kept from voting.
Republicans were successful in large part because Pennsylvania senator Quay—who managed the Harrison campaign—concentrated money, speakers, literature, and organization on the four swing states of Indiana, New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. Harrison carried the first two and with them, the Electoral College, and nearly won the last two. Quay also strengthened the GOP’s outreach in the border states and the upper South, leaving Harrison almost taking Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.34
Additionally, Senate Republicans helped the GOP campaign effort by presenting an alternative to the Democrats’ tariff-for-revenue. They passed a bill to cut internal taxes to reduce the surplus while GOP orators exploited weaknesses in a Democratic tariff bill. This allowed Republicans to play offense the entire campaign. The party’s orators borrowed generously from McKinley in framing the tariff debate around pocketbook issues and nationalism, talking about jobs, wages, and growing markets and pounding British support for free trade. By contrast, Democrats often sounded incoherent. Cleveland did not campaign or even vote, and the DNC effort was disorganized.35
McKinley and Hanna were impressed by Quay’s disciplined focus and saw the vital role of organization and money targeted at the right places. They learned the power of a broad campaign of persuasion to educate and convert and understood that in a close race, victory depends on using resources wisely and presenting policies like protection in ways that allowed voters to see how their daily lives would be improved.36
THE 1888 ELECTION HAD another powerful implication for McKinley. Republicans won the House, which meant they would elect a new Speaker. Some colleagues began promoting him for the post, which would be filled in December 1889 when the 51st Congress would meet.37
But first, McKinley had to contend with a political problem at home. Foraker wanted another term as governor, but no one had ever served three consecutive terms. Some Republicans worried Foraker would lose. While McKinley’s name was widely discussed as a possible replacement, the Major agreed to nominate a constituent, Asa Jones, for governor. Seven other men ran, including Foraker.38
Nonetheless, Foraker won renomination. When the Major moved to smooth over ruffled feathers by calling for the nomination to be made unanimous, Foraker repaid the courtesy by saying McKinley should be elected senator. But the Plain Dealer read the situation correctly: the governor “was looking at McKinley but talking for Foraker.”39
The 1889 general election was brutal and close, like most Ohio contests. On October 4, Murat Halstead’s Cincinnati Commercial Gazette claimed the newspaper had documents proving James E. Campbell, the Democrat candidate, sponsored a bill in Congress requiring a standardized ballot box after secretly signing a deal with its manufacturer for a share of the profits. Campbell called Halstead “a double liar” and challenged him to produce the documents. Foraker pounced, claiming Campbell’s scheme was an attempt to “steal a million dollars” and started carrying one of the ballot boxes onstage with him.40
Halstead refused to print the contract, but Democrats found it and made it public. It included signatures from prominent Republican investors in the “Ballot Box Trust,” including McKinley, Sherman, and Vice President Levi Morton, and Democratic Speaker John G. Carlisle. It was explosive, but a hoax. The signatures had been traced from official documents and Halstead duped by the box’s manufacturer, Richard G. Wood, who fled to Canada.41
Foraker had let ambition cloud his judgment and called the state’s senior GOP senator (Sherman) and most popular GOP congressman (McKinley) crooks. In November, Fire Alarm Joe lost reelection by 10,872 votes, or just over 1 percent.42
McKinley probably regretted losing the governorship, but not Foraker’s defeat. Regardless, the Major had little time to ruminate. He was campaigning for Speaker. McKinley was a strong candidate but not the front-runner. That was Maine’s Thomas B. Reed, a man of substantial girth whose enormous forehead made him appear larger than he was. He had deep, dark eyes and a walrus mustache, which made him look like a six-foot-three, three-hundred-pound bowling pin with facial hair. He was an intellectual with a library of five thousand books, Maine’s largest private collection. Five hundred volumes were in French. His wit was fast and cutting, his humor irreverent and biting. He was feared more often than loved. The election was November 30, 1889, two days before the 51st Congress held its first session.43
Five men were running. Since McKinley refused to solicit support, Hanna established a war room at the Ebbitt a week before the election and canvassed for commitments. Other members and friends helped, such as Minnesota governor William R. Merriam, who worked his state’s delegation. Freshman Ohio congressman Charles H. Grosvenor kept a tally of commitments.44
Massachusetts congressman Henry Cabot Lodge ran Reed’s headquarters at the Wormley Hotel. To canvass new members from freshly admitted Western states, Lodge recruited Teddy Roosevelt, along with former South Dakota territorial delegate Richard F. Pettigrew.45
It took two ballots. Reed led the first with 78, six short of a majority. McKinley was in second at 39. A Reed man from Oregon arrived in time for the second ballot. Roosevelt and Pettigrew converted four new Western congressmen to Reed and two non-Westerners moved to Reed, putting him over the top by a single vote. The Major moved to make the vote unanimous. This was not the last time the two men would compete.46
Afterward, Roosevelt told McKinley that while he didn’t support him for Speaker, he “hoped some time to vote for him as President.” That was unlikely if Reed ran. Grosvenor was sour, claiming McKinley had twenty-one more pledges than votes. McKinley viewed the discrepancy as proof of man’s moral frailty rather than a comment on Hanna’s efforts. One Ohio congressman said of Hanna’s work, “I do not know that he was influential but he was certainly active.”47
Since McKinley’s countenance reminded him of the former French emperor, Reed had taken to calling him “Napoleon” behind his back and confided in his diary that he thought McKinley was “a man of little scope.” Still, Reed named him Ways and Means Committee chairman. That made sense. Reed was the parliamentarian, McKinley the expert on protection. Reed didn’t want to lead the tariff battle. “Last night,” the Speaker had written in his diary, “I studied Protection. There is a Sahara.” The issue was too dry and arid to interest Reed.48
With the House narrowly divided, Democrats signaled they would obstruct Republicans by refusing to answer roll calls on the House floor, thereby denying the House a quorum to conduct business. Reed soon directed the clerk to list as “present” any member on the floor and declared a quorum. When a Democrat claimed Reed had no right to count him present, Reed responded, “The Chair is making a statement of fact that the gentleman from Kentucky is present. Does he deny it?” Congressman William H. “Howdy” Martin of Texas, a six-foot-six veteran of Hood’s Confederate Brigade, threatened to forcibly remove Reed from the dais. Reed didn’t flinch. Martin took to sharpening his Bowie knife on his boot sole each day while sitting in front of the Speaker. But led by McKinley and Congressman Joe Cannon, the House sustained the Speaker’s ruling and Republicans began moving legislation.49
McKinley entered Reed’s “Sahara” immediately. After Harrison’s election as the first Republican president with a GOP House and Senate since 1874, Republicans believed they had a responsibility to reduce the surplus by revising the tariff schedules upon the principle of protection. Harrison raised the issue in his inaugural and in his annual message to Congress.50
Fortunately for McKinley, his defeat for Speaker allowed him to tackle the most important issue dividing the parties. Showing he had already given the matter great thought, McKinley quickly offered two bills in early December. One reformed the customs system and was approved in June 1890. Despite Democratic criticism, the law was left unchanged the next time their party controlled Washington.51
The other bill was loosely based on legislation Senator Allison had already drafted. McKinley’s version made three major changes in the tariff system. For the first time, it levied duties on all foreign agricultural imports. Republicans were worried about growing discontent among farmers, hit hard by drought and dropping prices. Every foreign farm import that was also produced in America, from barley to beans and meat to tobacco, now had a duty or, in the case of wool, a higher one.52
The second major change reduced the surplus by adding sugar to the free list and cutting internal taxes on tobacco. Americans had long grumbled at paying $55 million a year in sugar duties. Southern cane growers would receive a bounty for each pound they produced to keep their plantations profitable.
Finally, the bill addressed inequities that had grown or been discovered in recent years, generally by modestly raising tariffs or, in dozens of cases, adding items to the free list. The most prominent change was a new 2.2¢-per-pound duty on tinplate. Tin was on the free list, but the absence of a tinplate tariff meant the country was flooded with finished tin imports while America’s nascent tinplate industry floundered.53
McKinley often worked past midnight, meeting with interested parties at the committee rooms, accepting callers at his Ebbitt office, and handling mounds of letters and reports. Ida complained to Hayes, “My good husband’s time is all occupied so that I see but little of him.”54
Anyone who wanted to testify did so at the committee’s open hearings each morning. McKinley and other members smoked cigars as 1,400 pages of testimony were collected. If the Major thought an industry was being “selfishly demanding,” a reporter observed, he would ask questions “as to what the industry required to be prosperous, not what the man required to be rich.” After three weeks of floor debate and following the addition of the tinplate tariff by the margin of a single vote, McKinley’s bill passed the House by 164 to 142, with no Democratic support and two Republicans opposed. The bill went to the Senate Finance Committee, which reported its version June 18.55
Colorado senator Henry M. Teller and Western silver Republicans held the bill hostage, demanding free coinage to pry it loose from the Senate. Senator Sherman proposed replacing Bland-Allison by requiring that the Treasury increase its purchases to 4.5 million ounces a month, virtually all the U.S. domestic production. Paying with Treasury notes redeemable in gold or silver would increase the money supply. Still, Free Silver men were not happy, with Missouri senator Francis M. Cockrell saying there was “not a scintilla” of free coinage in the bill because it limited the government’s silver purchases and Alabama senator John Morgan, a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, denouncing Sherman’s “fine Italian hand.” But mining state Republicans released the tariff bill. People insisted on redeeming the Treasury notes in gold, not silver, drawing down the nation’s gold reserves.56
McKinley’s tariff bill hit another snag. Blaine—who got another turn as secretary of state—wanted Latin American countries that benefited from sugar’s addition to the free list to reduce tariff barriers to American goods or else lose their trading advantage. Blaine felt a reciprocity clause would calm farm belt discontent and undermine the emerging Populist movement. Blaine’s reciprocity amendment became one of the bill’s major features. The Senate approved the measure September 11 after 496 amendments by Rhode Island senator Nelson Aldrich, the bill’s Senate manager, so it went to a conference committee to work out the differences.57
By September 26, 1890, House conferees had accepted 272 of the Senate amendments and negotiated compromises on 173 more while the Senate withdrew the rest. McKinley complained to colleagues, “I scarcely know what will be the end of it.” Members were eager to go home to campaign, so on October 1, both chambers approved the modified bill with little debate. Harrison came to the Capitol to sign it before Congress adjourned two and a half hours later.58
Passing a large piece of legislation in such a short time was an extraordinary achievement, given the GOP’s narrow majority and Democratic bitterness over Reed’s management. Much of the credit goes to McKinley, who succeeded because of hard work, patience, a readiness to embrace an open process, and cordial personal relations with his ideological—but not personal—Democratic free trade adversaries. The measure was quickly labeled the McKinley tariff.59
Democrats howled, claiming it would raise the cost of living, reduce exports, increase the surplus, and lower wages. That didn’t happen. In the year following the law’s implementation, both imports and exports rose, as McKinley predicted. He forecast a $61 million reduction in duties over the next year: They dropped $52 million and duties were levied on a smaller share of imports. The next year, a bipartisan Senate committee investigated charges that the cost of food, clothing, and other necessities had risen and unanimously concluded prices were lower on 214 common household items. Even tariff critic Ida Tarbell admitted, “Manufacturing goods generally fell in price in 1891.” But that was in the future. In the month that followed the tariff’s passage, McKinley faced a different reality.60
THAT FALL, MCKINLEY WAS up for reelection and the Democrats’ number-one target. He was running again in a gerrymandered district specifically designed to defeat him that included heavily Democratic Holmes County. Expecting to win by 3,000 votes, Democrats nominated a popular former lieutenant governor, John G. Warwick. He was also from Stark, which Democrats hoped would further undercut McKinley.61
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) took control of Warwick’s effort, sending in money, organizers, and speakers. Democrats covered Holmes in broken-down wagons, posing as peddlers and offering tin coffeepots at exorbitant prices and 5¢ tin cups and plates for 25¢ so they could blame the McKinley tariff for the increases. Republicans responded with a pamphlet, titled Better Days for Farmers, that tried to explain how the McKinley tariffs would increase domestic prices and markets without raising the cost of living. It was difficult reading and unpersuasive.62
McKinley officially kicked off his campaign October 8 in Millersburg, seat of Holmes County, but was soon off stumping for others—he had to repay favors to Ways and Means Committee colleagues. When Harrison spoke in Ohio in mid-October, McKinley was campaigning in Michigan for Representative Julius C. Burrows, before heading to Wisconsin to help another committee member, Robert M. La Follette Sr.63
Reed appeared in Stark County with the Major. The Speaker hadn’t helped when he joked earlier, “Just now the thing which is destroying the world is the McKinley bill.” Ida was so nervous about the outcome that McKinley spent election night with her rather than with supporters.64
The Major was defeated by 302 votes out of 39,816 cast that November. Ohio Republicans lost 9 seats, and thus were reduced to 7 of the state’s 21 congressmen. It was a wipeout nationally: Republicans dropped from 179 House seats to 88 while Democrats picked up 83 seats to end at 235. For the third time in sixteen years, the House changed hands. Marking the era’s political turbulence, a new party entered Congress with the election of eight Populists. The GOP managed to keep control of the Senate, but only with unreliable Western silver Republicans.65
In retrospect, the McKinley tariff was passed too close to Election Day to be fully explained and Democratic attacks were too fierce and difficult to answer quickly. Sugar did not go onto the free list before the voting, so people didn’t feel the drop in its cost until after the election. Before higher duties became effective, manufacturers raised prices to increase their profits. Blaine had tried convincing Harrison to handle the issue in a special session in 1889 so the GOP had time to explain it before the midterms. Hayes had also warned the party faced annihilation if it pushed the bill.66
However, it wasn’t just the tariff. Led by Lodge, Republicans fought for a controversial law—branded the “Force Act”—providing federal supervision in federal elections to guarantee black voting rights in the South. This enraged small-government advocates and bigots. There were other issues, including an administration scandal over veterans’ pensions, dissatisfied Republican farmers defecting to the Populists, and public disenchantment with the first billion-dollar federal budget. When a Democrat complained about this, someone—the remark was erroneously attributed to Reed—callously responded that America was a billion-dollar country.67
In defeat, McKinley adopted a confident, forward-looking tone. A despondent George Frease, the Repository’s editor, asked the Major how he should explain the election. McKinley scrawled an editorial that began, “Protection was never stronger than it is at this hour. And it will grow in strength and in the hearts of the people.” It had been pilloried and its supporters defamed, but “increased prosperity, which is sure to come, will outrun the maligner and vilifier.”68
He was more sanguine in private. “I agree with you that defeat under the circumstances was for the best,” he wrote Hanna. “There is no occasion for alarm. We must take no backward step.”69