The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1904-02-19
Career of Marcus A. Hanna.

Marcus Alonzo Hanna was born in Lis
bon, Columbia county, Ohio, Sept. "a,
1887. BE was the son of Leonard and
Samantha Hanna When he was five
years old his father moved to Cleveland,
where he organized the firm of Hanna,
Garretson & Co., wholesale grocers, with
trade extending into the Lake Superior
region. 1t was in Cleveland that the
man, who was later known throughout
the length and breadth of the United
States as Mark Hanna spent his boyhood
and went to school. Very little is known
of this period of his life.
In 1862, the long illness of the elder
Hanna ended in death, and it fell to the
lot of the son to represent the interests
of his father in settling the affairs of the
concern, which was not completed for
several years.
In 1864 young Hanna married Miss G.
Augusta Rhodes, daughter of Danied D.
Rhodes of Cleveland. Three years after
his marriage he organized the firm of
Rhodes & Co., which engaged in the coal
and iron business. This business was
designed to engage the greater part of his
energy and attention. The organization
of the firm marked his embarkation up
on a period of independent commercial
development.
His next business ventures were the
organization of several collateral inter
ests, which included the mining of iron
ore and coal, the building and operating
of vessels on the lakes and the formation
of the Union National Bank of Cleve-
land in 1888. In addition to being init
mately interested in these projects, Mr..
Hanna was for more than fifteen years
president of the Cleveland City Railway
company and besides having controlling
interest in concerns manufacturing pig
iron in Buffalo and western Pennsyl-
vania, he had many manufacturing inter
ests throughout Ohio.
Tt has been said of Mark Hanna that
ne was at once the best known and the
least known public man in the United
States. Once he tried and failed to make
John Sherman president of the United
States. Twice he was a potential per-
sonal factor in electing William Nc
Kinley to the presidency. No man has
been so conspicuous and influential in
helping other men to write history with
in the span of his own days. Yet in
spite of all this, the American public
never learned to know the real Senator
Hanna. Cartoonists never tired of pictur-
ING him in all sorts of grotesque dis
guises. But no true or even approx
mately accurate image of the man exist
ed in the minds of the great bulk of the
American public.
Mark Hanna's rise in politics was by
far the most interesting phase of his
career. Ever since the days of his ear
lest manhood he had taken the keenest
interest in politics. As a young man
he believed attendance upon primaries
was one of the principal duties of the
citizen. Long before his name became
conspicuous in national politics, he took
an active part in primary elections. 1t
was a part of his earliest belief that to
take an interest in public questions and
a share in their determination was only
a portion of the compensation one owed
to ones country for the privileges one
enjoyed as an American citizen.
It was in 1880, when General Garfield
was the Republican nominee, that Mr.
Hanna first took an active part in
presidential campaign. In that year
with several prominent business men OF
Cleveland, he organized the Business
Mems league From its start in Cleve-
land this organization quickly spread
through several states and proved a pow
erful factor in the election of Garfield.
1t was this campaign that gave Mr.
Hanna his first appreciation of the enor
nous influence that could be welded II
politics, both in conventions and cleo
tions, by the systematic organization O
the business interests of the country. tx
him must be given the full credit for The
discovery of this potent factor, which
since that time has become more ant
more influential in the domestic ant
foreign policies of national administra
tions.
In 1884 Mr.. Hanna took a still more
active part in the making of a presi
dent, though this time success did no
crown his efforts. He was delegate
at-large from Ohio to the national con
vention, which he attended in the inter
ests of John Sherman, who failed to viii
the nomination.
Four years later Mr.. Hanna agail
shared Sherman's defeat at the Republi
can national convention. 1t was at thi
convention that he saw Congressman Nc
Kinley's great sacrifice in throwing aside
in his loyalty to Sherman, the possibili
ty of winning the presidential nomina
ton. It was at this convention that Their
was first born that loyal friendship be
tween Hanna and Mckinley that late
ripened into a love of one brother TO
another.
At this time there was steadil
growing sentiment in the country tina
Mckinley was destined to become ma