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Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI University Microfilms international A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Order Number 9227ST9 Mark Hanna and the transformation of the Republican Party. (Volumes I and H) Shoemaker, Fred Chester, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1992 UMI 300 N. Zeeb Rd. Ann Aibor, MI 48106 MARK HANNA AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY VOLUME I DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Fred C. Shoemaker, B.A., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1992 Dissertation Committee: Approved by K. A. Kerr J . C . Burnham W. Van Tine Advisor Department of History To My Parents 11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to the members of my dissertation committee for their encouragement and constructive criticism. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my adviser, Austin Kerr. Dr. Kerr has especially made me familiar with the recent conceptual frameworks used by historians who work in the "new" political history and the organizational synthesis school. My deepest gratitude goes to my parents, Fred and Rosalie Shoemaker, for their love and support throughout my years of graduate study. Because they have shared this long journey with me, I dedicate this dissertation to them. Ill VITA July 7, 1959 ..............Born - Columbus, Ohio 1982 ..................... B.A., Otterbein College, Westerville, Ohio 1983 ..................... M.A. , The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1985-87....................Teaching Assistant, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1988-90....................Lecturer, The Ohio State University at Marion, Marion, Ohio 1992 ..................... Lecturer, The Ohio State University at Newark, Newark, Ohio FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History Areas of Study: American History, 1877 - Present American Constitutional and Legal History Modern British History IV TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................... Ü i VITA ............................................. iv CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTION .......................... 1 II. MARK HANNA AND THE RISE OF THE CITY OF CLEVELAND........................ 25 III. OHIO REPUBLICAN FACTIONALISM DURING THE GILDED A G E ...................... G3 IV. "FORAKER CAN WAIT": THE 1891 OHIO REPUBLICAN FACTIONAL STRUGGLE .......... 141 V. THE McKINLEY-HANNA POLITICAL RELATIONSHIP REDEFINING THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ........ 190 VI. THE FINAL DEFEAT OF THE COMMONWEALTH IDEA: HANNA AND THE POLITICAL BATTLE OVER SHIP SUBSIDIES, 1900-1902 269 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Mark Hanna was one of the most controversial figures in American politics. Admirers considered him as a brilliant party chieftain, who during the 1896 presidential campaign had successfully brought the business methods of efficient organization and advertising into national politics, and saved the country from the threat of "Bryanism." Detrac­ tors viewed him as a corrupt politician, one who used the party system to reward his big business allies to perpet­ uate the trusts. Hanna appeared a contradictory figure to many of his contemporaries. As a successful businessman within the Great Lakes business world of coal, iron ore, and shipping, in mid-life Hanna gradually disengaged from business to enter the challenging and exciting world of Ohio Gilded Age politics. Hanna was a great believer and advocate of having the Republican party act as the primary policymaking instrument within the political economy. By the end of his life Hanna had added another dimension to his public career because he advocated settling labor disputes outside of the party system. Hanna was falsely accused by numerous Democratic and Populistic opponents as being a "labor crusher" and destroyer of organized labor. Actually, Hanna counted union leaders Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, and John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers among his close personal friends. At Hanna's funeral in February 1904, wreaths were sent by numerous labor organizations. A day of rest and mourning was authorized in the anthracite coal fields by the unions. Like many of his contemporaries who attempted to understand the major socioeconomic changes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Hanna’s own "search for order" led him down many divergent policy paths. To better understand Hanna's motives, ambitions, and impact, he must be studied within the context of the changing American political economy of the second half of the nineteenth century. Hanna's Historical Image For the past fifty years Hanna's reputation has been influenced by current trends in the literature. During the 1930s Matthew Josephson's The Politicos, a progressive liberal interpretation of the Gilded Age, viewed Hanna as a business plutocrat and kingmaker of William McKinley. Until the late fifties the majority of writers, following the lead of William Randolph Hearst's cartoonist Homer Davenport who had brutally caricatured Hanna during his national political career, considered Hanna as the controlling force behind McKinley. However, since the early sixties, a revisionst interpretation led by H. Wayne Morgan, Margaret Leach, and Lewis Gould has conclusively shown that far from controlling McKinley, Hanna was his loyal lieutenant. Instead of being Hanna's lapdog, McKinley is now portrayed as having initiated the modern American presidency.^ Throughout the past fifty years, many historians have naturally gravitated to focusing upon the role that brought Hanna the most fame: his role as national G.O.P. chairman during the 1896 presidential campaign. Writers who worked within the Presidential synthesis considered Hanna as the first major "businessman in politics." They focused primarily upon his "revolutionary" campaign leadership of the Republican party. Historians such as Clarence Stern considered Hanna's elevation as party chairman as symbolic of the triumph of big business in capturing the Republican party. According to Stern, this action led to a "resurgent Republicanism." Historians focused upon Hanna's "revolutionary" use of organiza­ tional business methods in conducting the 1896 national campaign. This scholarship has helped to shed valuable light upon Hanna's management of the national campaign. However, Robert Marcus has pointed out that most of Hanna's "revolutionary" organizational campaign methods had been used or advocated by previous Republican or Democratic campaign chairmen. With greater financial resources at his disposal than previous party chairmen, in 1896 Hanna effectively ran the best organized and efficient national campaign that contemporaries had ever viewed. Its scope, level of efficiency, and relative size (as compared with Bryan's campaign) astonished onlookers. It was this that led many contemporary writers, and later many historians, to consider Hanna as primarily a revolutionary campaign manager. The "businessman in politics" interpretation, though valuable, basically neglects previous businessmen-politicians who truly initiated "business methods" into state and national campaigns. This interpretation also over-emphasizes Hanna's 1896 campaign managerial role, at the expense of overlooking the significance of his entire public career. In 1961 Thomas Felt became the only historian to produce a biography of Hanna. Felt's unpublished doctoral dissertation, "The Rise of Mark Hanna," focused upon Hanna's career until 1897. Felt used the traditional Presidential synthesis frame work for interpreting Hanna. Felt emphasized Hanna’s relationship with such national Republican leaders as McKinley, Sherman, and Foraker. Felt stressed that Hanna's "exchange of loyalties and services with each of these men that brought" him into national political life. Felt's insight was correct. Also Felt summarized Hanna within the traditional "businessman in politics" framework. To Felt, the "symbolic significance of the rise of Mark Hanna lay in the dramatization of the approaching merger of the new urban industrial America with the machinery of democratic