page_title: Garret Hobart
section_title: "Assistant President"
hierarchical_section_title: Garret Hobart / Vice President (1897–1899) / "Assistant President"
caption_attribution_description: English: Garret A. Hobart, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing right
context_page_description: Garret Augustus Hobart was an American politician who served as the 24th vice president of the United States, from 1897 until his death. He was the sixth American vice president to die in office. Prior to serving as vice president, Hobart was an influential New Jersey politician and political operative.
  Hobart was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on the Jersey Shore, and grew up in nearby Marlboro. After attending Rutgers College, Hobart read law with prominent Paterson attorney Socrates Tuttle. Hobart both studied with Tuttle and married his daughter, Jennie. Although he rarely set foot in a courtroom, Hobart became wealthy as a corporate lawyer.
  Hobart served in local governmental positions, and then successfully ran for office as a Republican, serving in both the New Jersey General Assembly, ending his time there by becoming Speaker, and the New Jersey Senate, where he became its president. Hobart was a longtime party official, and New Jersey delegates went to the 1896 Republican National Convention determined to nominate him for vice president. Hobart's political views were similar to those of McKinley, who was the presumptive Republican presidential candidate.
context_section_description: Hobart was more assertive as Senate president than his predecessors had been. It was customary for the vice president not to rule on disputed points, but to submit them to a vote. Hobart, with his experience as a presiding officer in the New Jersey Legislature, took a more assertive role, ruling on disputes, and trying to expedite legislation. Hobart was initially diffident in his role, feeling himself unproven beside longtime national legislators, but soon gained self-confidence, writing in a letter that "I find that I am as good and as capable as any of them. If they know a whole lot of things I don't know, I also know a whole lot of things they don't know. And there is a common humanity running through them all that makes us all as one, after all." Hobart was so successful at guiding the administration's legislative agenda through the Senate that he became known as the "assistant President".
  Hobart was constant in his attendance at the Senate; one onlooker called him a "chronic audience". Vice President Hobart only cast his tie-breaking vote once, using it to defeat an amendment which would have promised self-government to the Philippines, one of the possessions which the United States had taken from Spain after the war. Hobart was instrumental in securing the ratification of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the war; according to McKinley biographer H. Wayne Morgan, Hobart was "almost the president's alter ego, [turning] every screw with his legendary politeness".
  One post which Hobart refused to relinquish upon his inauguration was his position as one of three Joint Traffic Association (JTA) arbiters. The association was a group of railroads which sought to coordinate rates; if two railroads applied rates in different ways, the matter was settled by Hobart and two other arbiters. Hobart heard appeals while vice president. An October 1897 Supreme Court decision signaled that the JTA was likely to be found in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (it was, the following year) and Hobart resigned as arbiter in November 1897. Hobart was a major investor in the Ramapo Water Company; he had interests in many New York and New Jersey water utilities. In mid-1899, there was controversy over the so-called "Ramapo Scheme", whereby the Ramapo Water Company, which owned large tracts of land in the Catskill Mountains, would sell New York City $5 million in water per year for 40 years at high rates. The proposal was never agreed to, and a Republican-controlled investigating committee found no wrongdoing, but Hobart's role in the company was widely discussed in the press.
caption: Vice President Hobart
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