The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1902-07-12
After interviewing him year ago

After interviewing him year ago
wrote this sentence: Politicians
of all degrees and parties declare that
the little experience he had in politics
before 1896 amounted to nothing at
ALL" That was utterly false, but it
was what practically all the politicians
said, and still say and think. They
think that unless a man has been a
ward boss, district leader or an Of
fice-holder, he has known nothing of
politics. But in studying the life of
this arch politician and master of
vote-getting we are forced to the con-
clusion that he has had longer and
more intimate acquaintance with true
politics than most of the men who
have become past-masters in the less
valuable, the very unreliable and the
purely speculative methods of the
politicians of the old school.
In the first place, the men of Ohio
in Mark Hanna's youth were all in
politics, at least to the extent of tax
ing active interest in each election, in
attending political meetings, diges-
ting the arguments of their leaders
and of the partisan press, debating
with their neighbors, and voting as
religiously as if voting was what it
should be considered the highest
privilege and duty of our citizenship.
The New Yorker especially and the
dwellers in Our great cities in general
hold themselves aloof from politics,
leaving them to those who live upon
the people, and far too often do not
vote at all. This was not the case of
the Ohioans of Hanna's and McKin-
ley's youth. They were intense par
tisans and thorough Republicans, who
felt the weight of public affairs on the
shoulders of each individual. Poll
tics grew in warmth until the fever
brought on war, and youths too
young to vote went forth to fight.
"From my arrival in Cleveland as a
very young man," Senator Hanna
has told me, II always attended my
ward primaries and caucuses, took an
interest in politics and never failed to
vote"
With medesty which is remarka-
BILE, he played an important part in
the Garfield campaign of 1880 by
cleverly bringing about a meeting be-
tween Garfield and Roscoe Conkling,
who had been sulking in retirement
because his plan to renominate Cen
eral Grant had failed. Nothing ex-
cept the voting that ended the cam
paign was of more Importance to the
Republican party and its candidate
than this meeting of the New York
chieftain and the nominee of the
party. During this campaign Sena-
tor Hanna actively interested him
self, as friend and admirer of the
candidate, in national politics, but in
what then seemed small way.
What he did was to organize the
Business Mems League, beginning it
in Cleveland, yet helping it to spread
until its silent force of organized work
and influential opinion and its help in
drawing campaign funds from men of
large means made it so powerful that
the politicians who said that Hanna
was "only business man" came to
lean upon it-without knowing that
it was the offspring of this mere bus
mess mans brain. The general pub
lie paid no heed to this powerful or
ganization beyond applauding the
great "parades" of merchants which
became a feature of all subsequent
campaigns.
Thus we see with new interest the
form and manner of the bow made by
this hard-working, thrifty, friend
compelling descendant of traders and
scion of old Quaker stock, when he
entered the great arena of national
politics. Being practical man and
a business man, giving to the clanish
habits of the Scotch and Irish and the
smooth and shrewd methods of the
Quakers, he carried all these forces
into politics and began his work on
business principles with league of
business men.
In 1884 he went to the National
Republican convention as a delegate
pledged to support John Sherman.
Four years later he went to the next
convention as one of the managers of
Sherman's campaign. After each of
these conventions he spent two
months in campaign work. 1t was in
1894 that he began the gigantic work
of preparing the country for Mr.. Nc
Kinley's election in 1896. He had
known William Mckinley since the
early seventies, and they became
bound together by the two strongest
ties-outside of blood relationship
which Senator Hanna reverences
those of friendship and those of a COM
mon enthusiasm for the protective
policy. Mr.. Mckinley was first made
a national figure for a mere half
hour by James G. Blaine, who, in
1876, feeling too tired to make a long
speech in Philadelphia, reached out
and drew Mr.. Mckinley forward, say
ing: "And now I want you to meet
a young friend of mine from Ohio,
who can speak to you from personal
observation of the needs of labor and
the righteousness of its protection"
"The needs of labor and the right
eousness of protection !" Undoubt-
edly Mark Hanna will say that this
sentence sums up the whole of his
political creed. How remarkable
that these words should have been
used to introduce in national poll
tics the man whom Mark Hanna
made president and with whom he is
SO conspicuously coupled in the minds
of all his fellow-citizens He believes
in protection as the first essential of
American industrial success, coupling
the workman and the employer alike
as bene6ciaries of the principle. He
says that George Washington was the