McKINLEY: BUILDER OF A WORLD POWER.
The traveller standing close at the foot of a mountain can form no idea
of its altitude nor of its bulk. He can have no conception of its
grandeur, of its majesty, of the myriad beauties which embellish its
sides and crown its summit, nor of the limitless riches concealed in its
bosom. It is only when time and distance and reflection; when frequent
returns and thoughtful visits have set the scene in fair perspective
that he appreciates the marvels of the mountain.
The American citizen to-day cannot easily appreciate the full value of
William McKinley’s life work. It was not his career as a soldier, his
record as a lawyer, his achievements in the halls of Congress; it was
not as Governor nor as President that posterity will recognize him at
his very greatest, and it was not in either of these capacities that he
made his mightiest impress upon the American Republic.
His master work was in giving his country its proper place in the family
of the world.
Extravagant eulogy would say he reconstructed the Republic; that he
conjured a new nation into life; that he lifted the millions of his
countrymen from darkness into light; that he bestowed the grandeur of
imperial sunshine upon the humble inhabitants of a neglected land. The
extravagant eulogy would not be wholly inaccurate in essence, nor
necessarily offensive in terms. And yet the more modest statement more
nearly comprehends the essential truth.
He did not recreate the Republic. Practically all the elements here at
the end of his life were here at the beginning. He did not conjure up a
new nation. The mighty people who followed his bidding in 1898 and so on
to the end could never have been conjured from its elements by any force
less potential than Omnipotence!
And yet the true American can get a better conception of the dignity of
his citizenship; a better estimate of the majesty of national life, a
prouder view of world-wide actions upon the theater of the world if he
will but patiently and justly consider the steps in the transition which
certainly has occurred, and trace the credit through each crisis to the
influence most potent in producing that result.
It is believed the work and influence of William McKinley was that most
potent force; that, more than any other one man he has led his people
from the halls of an heritage of which they were justly proud up to the
threshold of an estate immeasurably more magnificent.
Let us begin at the beginning. When he came back from the army he
deliberately studied the whole situation. He saw the national condition
then existing, judged with astonishing accuracy what would be the
salient successive features in its future development, calculated with
rare discrimination what treatment would be best in each era, and
devoted all his energies to aiding in that progress to the very limit of
his ability. He had never a doubt from the first what the end would be.
But he did have a more sure foresight of what the future held than had
most other Americans then living. One cannot say that he foresaw the
time when the Republic should issue its mandate to a monarch of the old
world, when it should serve notice of ejectment upon a king; when it
should lay the restraining hand upon a mob of emperors and potentates
struggling in disgraceful melee for the spoliation of an ancient nation.
And yet, standing in the shadow of his funeral flags, with the echoes of
knelling bells in the ears, and the memory of that mighty work so late
accomplished, one can but see abundant reason for the belief that HE
KNEW! How else shall one account for that conduct which admits of
explanation on no other ground than that the guiding spirit understood?
How else shall one justify the actions which committed him to criticism,
which could reflect honor upon him only in the event of this marvelous
accomplishment?
[Illustration:
THE CATAFALQUE IN THE ROTUNDA OF THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON.]
[Illustration:
From a photograph taken for and used by courtesy of the Chicago Inter
Ocean.]
It was clear to him that for twenty years after the war the nation would
be busy in construction; that the general aim would be to establish
productive industries—North and South—that men would be building homes,
advancing into new country, opening new mines, reaching farther into the
wilderness, reclaiming more and more of the waste land, building more
railroads, launching more steamships; and that there would come a period
of erecting new homes, of beautifying, of adornment, of polish; and that
then would come an era of study toward the conservation of forces, the
learning of less expensive ways of doing what had been effectively done
before—the era of economizing—to be swiftly followed by the era of
stupendous wealth. And let that man who contends the essentials of this
picture were not foreseen by William McKinley account on any other
basis, if he can, for that statesman’s steadfast progress toward the one
result which they alone could produce. Let that man who denies, reflect
for a moment that these stages of development—from first to last—were
foretold by William McKinley in a thousand speeches. It is not contended
that in 1876 he “revealed” to his fellows that war with Spain would come
in 1898; nor that he declared in 1880 that “the flag of the free” would
wave over lands in the shadows of Asia at the sunrise of a new century.
But no man who knows the history of his country and follows well this
true story of William McKinley’s life can contend that he did not in
1876 see the imminence of that tariff struggle which culminated in 1880;
nor that he failed in 1892 to see the need of a financial reform which
1896 should usher in; or that he underrated in 1898 the mighty
consequences of that step which launched his people into a foreign war.
It has been said that he, almost alone of Americans, stood for a
protective tariff at the very close of the Civil War. Foreseeing that
period of industrial development, he looked at the rolling oceans, and
knew each billow would bear on its foamy back a load of goods for
American markets; and that each departing ship would heap in its hold
the dollars that Americans had paid for those goods. And he knew that,
with such a policy, American development could never go beyond the
bondman stage; that “the land of the free and the home of the brave”
would indefinitely remain mortgaged to the lords of cheaper labor, the
host of shrewder men.
So from the first he struggled for a tariff rate which seemed small
lessening of the burden that the war had left. Against the superficial
charge of injustice he offered the defense of ultimate benefit, and if
some of his countrymen were slow to see, let it be said to the credit of
a majority that they followed him—not always seeing, but ever trusting
until the crisis had passed.
Surely it is no exaggeration to say that William McKinley did more than
any other man in America to fix and maintain the policy of protection.
It can scarcely be too much to say that, without him, the protective
policy would have been overthrown.
If these are conceded, it must follow that the preparation for the newer
era, developed from that in which he labored, may be chiefly credited to
him.
It was necessary to foster the industries of the United States. Maybe in
the following of that policy some selfish persons took a mean and
unpatriotic advantage of their countrymen, and claimed a concession they
neither needed nor deserved. But in the main the effort was to build up
such a wealth as no nation on earth ever before acquired in a similar
lapse of time, by peaceful pursuits or the conquests of a victorious
war. And if the day came when all that wealth was needed, it may be
triumphantly rejoined that the money was here.
Over and over again Mr. McKinley had been assailed with the contention
that, while protection would infallibly enrich a certain favored
class—the manufacturers—it would as certainly impoverish and keep in
poverty the people who must buy their goods. But the issue confounded
them. Every class in America shared in the stupendous prosperity which
protection insured. Never was labor so largely employed, never had it
been so munificently rewarded. Never was the farmer so fortunately
situated. Wide as were his fields, he added to them. Bountiful as were
his harvests, he found markets for them. Never was the mechanic so much
in demand. Never was the artisan so much sought after. And—as the flight
of time brought the inevitable desire for refinement—never was there
such a compensation for the artist, or the writer, the singer or the
sculptor. The overflowing coffers of the country enriched all the
countrymen who deserved.
Then came the pause when a nation, rising to the stature of maturity,
looked over the mountain boundary, looked over the ocean wall, and felt
the unformed impulse to share in the affairs of the world. It was so
natural, as inevitable, as that the youth of health and strength should
feel the stirring of desire to mingle with his kind. It is not scorn of
home. It is not contempt for the precious past. But it is obedience to a
law which Abram heard away there in Ur, of the Chaldees, and obeyed in
his western pilgrimage. It is the process of growth which the Creator
meant all mankind should feel.
At the doors of the continent lay the island of Cuba. From time before
the Republic was founded, that island had been the spoil of the
Spaniards. There was not a day since Ovando landed that did not see the
Cubans cruelly treated by the Don. How they ever throve under a
domination so severe is one of the mysteries. The Ruler of all the Earth
must have raised up that people and preserved it through awful adversity
for a purpose neither its leaders nor their task masters could foresee.
But the tax collector was there. The Castilian despoiler was there. The
hand of the oppressor was laid heavily upon the Cubans, and they died at
the edge of the sword through two hundred years of tyranny.
And in that day when the American Republic had attained its growth, had
reached its manhood, there was a protest against a continuance of
cruelty. The Republic demanded that the Don cease from troubling; that
the Cubans be rescued.
President McKinley waited until the united voice of his countrymen
convinced him that they had surely arrived at years of national
discretion, and that their challenge was not the utterance of a
passionate mood but the expression of an unalterable determination. And
then he issued his order to Spain:
“Leave the West Indies forever!”
There was reason in the demand. Cuba lay so close to our shores that her
continual suffering, the outrages perpetrated upon her people, became a
scandal in the eyes of the Republic. It was like a strong man standing
unmoved while a child is being beaten by a bully.
Besides, one consequence of such rule as the Spaniards maintained was a
perilous sanitary condition in the cities that traded continually with
the ports of the States. American cities had learned the rules of
health, and had banished yellow fever and the cholera. But what profit
in that provision if a ship sailed across the narrow sea and spread the
plague upon our shores? There was reason in self defense for the notice
to quit.
That fundamental principle of the nation called the “Monroe doctrine”
forbade any power in the old world from extending its rule in the new.
It is but a logical sequence of that system that an old world power
which cannot in two hundred years complete its subjugation of a new
world people has never had a right it could maintain here; that no king
from Europe had title to soil in the Western hemisphere if he could not
perfect that title in that lapse of time. And as a policy of the nation
and the interest of the nation joined in dictating the action, the
Spaniards were commanded to retire. The time had come when President
McKinley could make his case good even in the courts of old-world kings.
And there was not a murmur of protest from a palace abroad when Madrid
received that portentous command.
But there was another reason—another consideration which men too often
overlook, yet which was of the most stupendous value to the Republic.
War with a foreign power would reunite a country divided by civil
strife, and stubbornly, ill-temperedly refusing to perfect its peace.
It was probably admitted that the passions following the rebellion and
particularly provoked by the assassination of President Lincoln, served
as warrant for a severity in dealing with the Southern States which was
far beyond the boundaries of justice. There was a Draconian rigidity
about the laws which the losers were compelled to obey; a perhaps
needless austerity in impressing the fact of conquest. Sectional
passions were aroused, sectional jealousies and animosities were
inflamed until unthinking men both North and South had achieved the bad
success of creating a religion of hate. In the years when Major McKinley
was acting the citizen-soldier part—putting away his sword and devoting
himself to the activities of peace—many less patriotic and wise than he
were teaching their children to hate the South. As the Swiss youth
imbibed hatred of Austria with their mother’s milk, so these children in
the North were filled with a bitter rage against the children who sat in
the Southland, under the shadow of the stars and stripes. And the
generation grew up in that enmity for brothers in the Republic, and many
men profited by making the propagation of strife their one
profession—the division of their country their one occupation. The poets
say that love begets love. It is certainly as true that hatred begets
hate. And if the youth of the North approached public questions always
with the poison of sectional prejudice rankling in their hearts and
warping their judgments, be sure the people of the South most cordially
reciprocated. To thousands above the Ohio river, the states below that
stream were still “rebel.” To thousands below the people of the North
were brutal and murderous invaders.
Through all the period when the nation was gathering material strength
the effort of wise men was to heal that hurt, to reunite the nation, to
erase forever that bitter dividing sectional line. But they could not
succeed. Throughout Major McKinley’s public speeches, dating from that
first debate, when he was scarcely out of uniform, clear to the end of
his career, one finds to-day no word of anger against the South; one
finds unnumbered expressions of fraternal love and good will.
Others followed his example, and swelled the rising chorus of a newer
Union. But it was from 1865 to 1898, a mere mockery. The fabric of
fraternity was but a gossamer web. The bridge that spanned the chasm was
a network of fancy, and men knew they could not cross. The very
brotherhood in which men from the two sections met in public and private
life was the sheerest superficiality, and each was ready to fly to arms
at a moment’s notice.
What, above all things, was needed as an absolute condition precedent to
national advance? Why, national unity! And no man had been able to
effect it. But when William McKinley heard that rising demand for stern
measures with Spain, he heard as well the pledge of a new and
everlasting bond of union.
So that the war with Spain was not merely the checking of a bully, the
act of a humane power, the safeguarding of cities from the descent of
the plague, the assuring of security to Americans resident in Cuba and
the protection to American trade with that island. It was, as well, the
master magic which could banish strife at home; it was the building of a
Vulcan forge to weld beyond the power of breaking the one bond “from the
lakes to the gulf.” For the first stroke at Americans by Spaniards was a
challenge that was answered by indignant manhood in every state from the
everglades of Florida to the snow-crowned heights of Mount Tacoma. And
OUR NATION sprang to arms!
Sometimes there is internal strife in your family, in your circle of
friends, in your party. That is a wise father who can deftly devise a
situation which compels his household to make common cause. That is a
shrewd citizen who can rally his friends by a stroke which menaces all
of them. That politician is skillful who can swiftly sweep away
dissension by a turn which menaces the whole organization. And that was
a wise President who saw behind the rising war cloud the rainbow of a
hope which nothing else could reveal.
There was no need for them to blow up the Maine. Without that dastardly
act, there would inevitably have come a change. Spanish oppression in
Cuba would have ceased. The reforms demanded by the Republic would have
been accomplished—every one. But, it would have been by the action of
Spain, and without inflicting upon that nation the expense, the
humiliation and the disaster of a war. Possibly, too, had those reforms
been made, had the conscience and humanity of Americans been satisfied
without striking a blow, the abolishing of the sectional line would not
have occurred.
But it is needless to speculate on what might have occurred. What did
occur is known. It was definite. At the moment when Spain, had she
rightly appreciated the situation, should have borne herself with all
dignity and honor, the blow which hurled down her house was struck. In
the middle of the night the darkness was rifted with a lance of flame,
the world was rocked with the shock of explosion, and a battleship, on
an errand of peace and courtesy, was crushed in the grip of a submarine
mine—and all over the still surface of the starlit bay floated the
mangled corpses of the slain. The darkest deed since St. Bartholomew
night, the most savage act since Calcutta’s Black Hole had stained the
page of history, and Christian civilization had seen a Christian nation
sound the deepest deep of infamy.
That bursting mine jolted the molecules of mankind into a new
combination, and the Republic became a Union indeed. After all, blood is
thicker than water; and he who uttered that—
“—bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony—”
was an American. Of course America was roused.
The story of the War with Spain has been well told. But it fails to
impress its moral if you miss the master hand of President McKinley in
fixing forever the unity of the Union. He appointed to the command of
American soldiers those who had commanded with ability, either North or
South, in the Civil War. And they proved his sagacity, for—without
exception—they quit them like men. They were strong. The flag of
Washington at Valley Forge, of Gates at Yorktown, of Jackson at New
Orleans, of Perry on Lake Erie, of Lawrence, and Fremont, and Grant was
the one banner about which they rallied. They won the war. And they
brought no honor to either North or South—but brought it all HOME.
This cannot well be overestimated. The time had come when the Republic
must advance from the formative stage to the stature of a power of the
world. It could not do so divided. Through the skillful use of
possibilities placed in his hands by the war, President McKinley at a
stroke, and within a week from that night in February when Havana harbor
heaved with the heaving of a treacherous stroke, made his people one.
Then they were ready!
Swiftly came the knocking of Hawaii for admission to the national fold.
It needed no war. No cannon, no circling sword or plunging bayonet was
in demand. The thousands of lives sought citizenship in the Republic,
and the material millions offered themselves for the nation’s
enrichment. And in a day the United States of America held half the
ocean as its own.
No need of recapitulating. The Ladrones, Porto Rico, and the
Philippines, an empire wider than Ferdinand knew, a region richer in
wealth and more pregnant with possibility than Carthage conquered, was
added to the Republic in a year. The nation which had insisted on a home
market, had taken command of the markets of the world. The nation which
had only insisted that no foreign power interfere on this side the
Atlantic, stretched the arm of might and the word of command into the
camps of kings—and secured obedience.
Nothing that occurred in the United States could in any way have
produced the events which took place in China. The Boxer rebellion was a
local event, due solely to conditions existing there. American
interests—of merchant and missionary, of ambassador and traveller, of
scientist and scholar—were all affected by those massacres which amazed
the world. Imagine, if you will, what would have been the result had the
Republic been in 1900 what it was in 1890. Then we had no army in the
Philippines. The nations of Europe, hurrying in response to that cry for
help from the hundreds in the legation, had small thought of America.
Well, American merchants had been massacred, American property
destroyed, American missions burned and American consuls assailed. But
to the European of 1890 there would not have been a suggestion of
America appearing on the scene with force of arms.
But the America of 1900 providentially had a force at hand. The fact had
already been established that the Republic was a world power, and must
be considered as such. And when General Chaffee marched from Tien Tsin
to Pekin, he was not regarded as an intruder. He was not looked upon
with cold superciliousness. The king’s men knew there was no place on
the face of the earth where the Republic might not appear. They knew it
had the right to appear at any point where its interests were menaced,
or where honor called. And they knew it had the power to go, to do, and
to return with laurels.
Perhaps the Republic’s influence over the king’s men at Pekin was the
greatest evidence of President McKinley’s masterly administration. That
influence checked the looting. It preserved native rights. It assisted
in a just retribution, and then stayed the mailed fist of unchristian
vengeance. It prevented the partition of China, and insured the
integrity of that ancient empire. And it loomed before the world as a
nation strong enough to take care of itself at home or abroad, and wise
enough to be just. It was an exhibition that did more for the good fame
of the Republic than any other act imaginable.
And not a detail of it could have happened had not the army been in
Luzon. Not a detail could have happened in 1890!
It is not easy for a little man to change his mind. The small man must
be “consistent,” because he can see nothing but small things; because he
can not appreciate the changes which inevitably come in the world. But
the world does change; and he who tries to make the clothes of yesterday
fit the occasion of to-day makes utter failure. Not many men who
followed Major McKinley, the protectionist, could easily grasp the
purpose of President McKinley, the supporter of the gold standard. Not
all who indorsed him in his financial policy could appreciate the swift
changes which succeeded each other in the world policies from 1898 to
1901. Yet each was necessary in its place, and if the President had
failed to grasp the situation, if he had failed to take at its flood
that tide in the affairs of nations, the Republic that mourns him to-day
would be but a hermit Union, refusing to employ its majestic powers and
of no more consideration in the assembly of nations than is the navy of
Switzerland in a marine exhibition.
No year ever brought swifter development to a people than did 1898 to
the United States of America. Questions of military policy and questions
of statesmanship, matters of immediate expediency and matters that
looked to the future—all these crowded the hurrying hours of that most
immemorial year. It is not curious that even the President was outrun by
the speeding conditions. When Porto Rico became a part of the United
States it was asked: “Shall her products come in free at the ports of
the mainland?” And President McKinley, pressed upon by a multitude of
duties, occupied with a myriad cares, filling his days and his nights
with most careful watching of details that had multiplied in a
twelvemonth, said: “It is our plain duty to give free trade to Porto
Rico.” And the word was heralded to the ends of the earth. Then came the
practical. If that sound theory should be enforced in actual commerce, a
disturbance would arise which would prove lamentable. It were better to
preserve the forms of a tariff until such time as revenues of the island
would support the government of the island, giving back, meanwhile,
every dollar derived from the Porto Ricans by that tariff. The changing
conditions had made that the wiser plan.
President McKinley led his fellow countrymen through the changes of the
passing years, guiding them always in the way most wise for that
peculiar time, and turning to new methods when the new occasion
demanded. And in the end we see the magnificent structure which his
planning and his labors have perfected. We see the very greatest nation
on earth, made great by protection; we see the richest nation, made rich
with a sound money; we see the strongest nation, made strong by an
actual union; and we see the most potent and influential nation on
earth, made so by the foreign policy of William McKinley. Remember—
“For I doubt not through the ages
One increasing purpose runs;
And the thoughts of men are widening
With the process of the suns.”