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"You have been in politics long enough to know that no man in public office owes the public anything." In these or closely similar words, Mark Hanna is alleged to have advised the attorney general of Ohio in 1890 to drop an antitrust suit against the Standard Oil Company.* Historians looking for a succinct illustration of how the late nineteenth century's robber barons and their vassals operated in the political field have found the alleged remark invaluable. It first did duty in the Democratic campaign against Hanna's election to the senate in 1897. Ida Tarbell used it in her History of the Standard Oil Company in 1904. Two years later it appeared in Harry Thurston Peck's influential Twenty Years of the Republic. The following generation of readers would find it in Matthew Josephson's persuasive The Robber Barons (1932), and elsewhere, while today it reappears in an occa- sional college text--and probably more frequently in classroom lectures-- as well as in a recent paperback reissue of the Josephson book.1 Since neither of Hanna's early biographers categorically denied that he expressed the sentiments in question, the essential legitimacy of the quotation has never been attacked.2 NOTES ARE ON PAGE 344 |
294 OHIO HISTORY
Marcus Alonzo Hanna was an unfamiliar
name outside Ohio political
circles in 1890. Not until he had
succeeded in managing the campaign of
his friend William McKinley for the
Republican presidential nomination
in 1896 did his words and deeds begin to
win a national audience, and not
until even later was he regarded as
having come "closer to being a national
Republican boss than any figure in the
lore of American politics."3 In 1890
Hanna was merely a Cleveland
businessman--in mining, ore fleets, ship-
building, street railways, and a
bank--who had been throwing his weight
around in the state Republican party for
the last six years with notable
effect. For a time he had befriended
both the ambitious young governor,
Joseph B. Foraker, and the veteran
senator and presidential prospect, John
Sherman. As leader of the Sherman forces
at the national convention of
1888 he had met a defeat he blamed in
part on Foraker, and since then
these two had squared off in a factional
fight that would continue the remain-
der of their lives. By the end of 1890
Hanna and his friends were in the
ascendant in Ohio Republicanism,
although the party itself was rapidly
losing ground to the Democrats there and
in the nation at large. The first
congress since Grant's day to support a
Republican president with a working
Republican majority had just been
repudiated at the polls. It was this
congress that had come to the voters for
judgment on two major statutes:
the McKinley tariff act, which is
usually blamed for the defeat, and the
Sherman antitrust act.
The source of Hanna's alleged maxim was
a letter which Hanna very
likely did write on the immediate
subject of the Sherman act and its Ohio
counterpart and on the more general
subject of what the Republican party
owed to the business community and the
public at large. Since, if Hanna
did write the letter, it represents one
of the most important expressions of
his views, it would seem worthwhile to
determine its authenticity. That no
original at present is known to exist
makes the problem more difficult, but
perhaps not impossible.
The story begins a few days after the
election. Hanna wrote a letter to
Ohio's attorney general, a young
Republican named David K. Watson. In
it he protested Watson's action of
several months earlier in bringing suit
against the Standard Oil Company for
violating its charter by transferring
control over its affairs to a trust
dominated by non-residents of the state.
Watson said later that when he received
the letter he casually permitted a
newspaperman, Francis B. Gessner, to
read it. No copy was made, however,
and the matter remained private.4 Watson
replied cordially but firmly that
he did not intend, as implied, an attack
on organized capital generally. The
WHAT MARK HANNA SAID 295 facts of the case at hand made his action seem a matter of duty. Senator Sherman was not behind it, despite rumors that the suit was related to his antitrust bill then pending in congress.5 After a few weeks' delay, Hanna wrote again to urge his view that there has been no industry of greater benefit to our city [than Standard Oil], and there are large holdings among our enterprising business men. [His brother Mel was one of them.] They are indignant at this attack, and when the time comes will make their influence felt. Therefore I have said to you in all frank- ness that politically it is a very sad mistake, and I am sure it will not result in much glory for you.6 There the argument rested. The case proceeded and so far as is known Hanna said no more to Watson about it. Seven years later, as Hanna was campaigning for election to the senate, opposition newspapers all over the state blossomed out in great black letters with the following quotation, ascribed to Hanna: "No Man in Public Office Owes the Public Anything."7 Their source was an article in the New York World of August 11, 1897, written by the same Francis B. Gessner who had supposedly read Hanna's first letter to Watson years before. Now he reported the story, first checking with others who also claimed to have read the letter. He said that this sentence had stuck in his memory verbatim, along with the substance of the rest of the letter. "No one could read it and ever forget it," asserted the somewhat tardily shocked Gessner. Watson was besieged by reporters for confirmation, but beyond insisting that the extracts published were inaccurate he would add nothing. Then, |
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296 OHIO
HISTORY
according to Watson's story, Hanna
asked him to return the letter. Watson
agreed. In a brief and somber ceremony
at the Neil House in Columbus, the
offending words were torn up and
flushed down the toilet, Watson pulling
the chain. The would-be senator was
contrite, and Watson was content, for
he had taken the trouble to make a copy
for himself.8
Nine years later James B. Morrow
interviewed Watson in the course of
his researches for Herbert Croly's
biography of Hanna. He took down the
story as related above, together with
some additional material on Watson's
efforts to prevent Ida Tarbell from
including the episode in an article for
McClure's Magazine. From his
own knowledge of Watson and Gessner
and from talking with Hanna's
secretary, Elmer Dover, Morrow doubted the
truth of the Watson version. But Watson
did give Morrow his alleged copy
of the destroyed letter, together with
a copy of his reply and the original of
Hanna's second letter. When Croly
published his biography of Hanna in
1912, he printed the Watson copy of the
first Hanna letter in full. The last
two pieces are still in the Hanna
Papers, but the copy of that first and most
important letter has disappeared. What
follows, then, is necessarily copied
from Croly's printing of Watson's copy
of the purported original letter of
November 21, 1890:
Some months ago, when I saw the
announcement through the papers that you
had begun a suit against the Standard
Oil Co. in the Supreme Court, I intended,
if opportunity presented, to talk with
you, and failing in the personal interview,
to write you a letter, but the subject
passed out of my mind. Recently while in
New York I learned from my friend, Mr.
John D. Rockefeller, that such suit
was still pending, and without any
solicitation on his part or suggestion from
him, I determined to write you,
believing that both political and business interests
justified me in doing so. While I am not
personally interested in the Standard
Oil Co., many of my closest friends are,
and I have no doubt that many of the
business associations with which I am
connected are equally open to attack. The
simple fact is, as you will discover, if
you have not already done so, that in these
modern days most commercial interests
are properly and necessarily taking on
the [this?] form of organization for the
safety of investors, and the improve-
ment of all conditions upon which business
is done. There is no greater mistake
for a man in or out of public place
to make than to assume that he owes any duty
to the public or can in any manner
advance his own position or interests by attack-
ing the organizations under which
experience has taught business can best be
done. [Italics supplied.] From a party standpoint, interested
in the success of
the Republican party, and regarding you
as in the line of political promotion, I
must say that the identification of your
office with litigation of this character is a
great mistake. There is no public demand
for a raid upon organized capital. For
years the business of manufacturing oil
has been done with great success at
Cleveland, competition has been open and
free, and the public has been greatly
WHAT MARK HANNA SAID
297
benefited by the manner in which the oil
business has been carried on. The Stand-
ard Oil Co. is officered and managed by
some of the best and strongest men in
the country. They are pretty much all
Republicans and have been most liberal
in their contributions to the party, as
I personally know, Mr. Rockefeller always
quietly doing his share. I think I am in
a position to know that the party in this
state has been at times badly advised.
We need for the struggles of the future the
cooperation of our strongest business
interests and not their indifference or
hostility. You will probably not argue
with me in this. I have been informed,
though I can hardly credit the information,
that Senator Sherman has encouraged
or suggested this litigation. If that be
correct, I would like to know it, because
I shall certainly have something to say
to the Senator myself. I simply say with
respect to this matter, that prudence
and caution require you to go very slow in
this business.9
The crucial sentence is the one
italicized. Croly was concerned also with
the second sentence prior to it, in
which Hanna suggested that some of his
own business connections were
"equally open to attack." Both of these state-
ments he found incredible. No matter
what Hanna might have thought
privately, he argued, he would never
have convicted himself of such "childish
folly" on paper. "Why, even if
he believed it," Croly asked, "should he be
cynical and incoherent enough to throw
in a remark that a public official
owes no duty to the public,"
especially when Watson was not a close friend
and would have good reason to be
offended by such talk. Croly concluded
that the letter itself had been tampered
with: "The suspicion which attaches
to the whole document makes it
impossible to accept absolutely any part of
it and base a criticism of Mr. Hanna
upon it." Nevertheless, Croly admitted
that much of the letter could have been
written as purported, and that there.
fore Hanna might have wanted it
destroyed in 1897 because he was ashamed
of it.10
Some suspicion may be cast on the
document, although it is cast in part
by biased witnesses. Hanna's secretary
in his senate days, Elmer Dover,
told some stories reflecting on Watson's
credibility: he had been rebuffed
by Hanna in his application for
financial aid in his 1896 congressional
campaign; he had presented a bill of
$250 for the expenses of a two-day
trip to mollify Ida Tarbell in New York;
and he had hinted to Hanna's
family that something might be done for
him for his services in keeping the
lid on the story as well as he did.11
Why the family might take that obliga-
tion lightly is apparent from a reading
of Gessner's story in the World.
Several aspects of it cast doubt on
Gessner's characterization of Watson in
1897 as an "intensely loyal"
McKinley Republican who would tell the
press nothing. Hanna's letter is
summarized, and its phrases, such as "organ-
298 OHIO HISTORY
ized capital," are quoted or
misquoted in the exact order in which they
appear in Watson's copy of the original
written seven years before. Then
too, the story suggests that Watson's
loyalty to his party might have been
under considerable strain in 1897. It
notes that after having been denied
effective help in his congressional
campaign for reelection in 1896 he was
defeated by forty-nine votes. Following
this, he had been disappointed in
his hope that the president-elect would
name him to a place on the interstate
commerce commission. Promised something
"equally good," he was still
waiting in August.12 So much
for Watson.
Gessner was under equally great
suspicion. Morrow, who had a wide
acquaintance among fellow newspapermen,
noted in his comments on the
Watson story that "even before
Francis B. Gessner became an outcast and
inhabitant of the gutter through drink
and drugs he was distrusted by news-
paper men who knew him in Ohio."
Behind this charge are some scraps of
contemporary evidence that still
survive. John Sherman traced down a false
news story in 1888 and found Gessner at
the bottom of it. He was known
then, Sherman reported hearing from a
newspaper friend, as a "common
liar" who had been "detected
in several similar matters."13 One year later
it appeared that Gessner may have been
turning over a new leaf. Foraker
addressed a letter to him in Detroit at
that time saying that he had written
a note of introduction for him to
Governor Russell A. Alger of Michigan.
"You will find Governor Alger a
very generous hearted man. He will take
a great deal of pride in helping a man
if he has confidence that he will stay
up. It gives me great pleasure to know
that you have come to a realization
of your mistakes and have formed a
determined purpose to redeem your-
self."14 Whether the
governor was satisfied with him thereafter is not in
evidence, but according to Watson,
Gessner was in his office in Columbus
six months later reading Hanna's
letter. Presumably he was at least a good
Republican then, for he kept the letter
in confidence. But in 1897 he was
contributing grist for the mill of the
Democratic New York World. In 1904
he is found again in the Republican
camp, this time writing the praises of
no less stalwart a party man than
Charles Dick, Hanna's successor in the
senate.15
Thus when Croly mentioned "the
suspicion which attaches to the whole
document," he must have been
thinking of derogatory reports on the charac-
ters of both Watson and Gessner as well
as of the "inexplicable" passages in
the letter itself. An alternate
explanation of the letter's history was given by
Morrow in his written comments on the
Watson interview, and by implication
this is the theory Croly accepts: Hanna
wrote a letter to Watson in 1890;
WHAT MARK HANNA SAID 299
Watson gave the substance of it, or
showed it, to Gessner in 1897 during the
heat of the campaign against Hanna, and
the two men conspired on the story
about Gessner's earlier reading of it in
order to cover their motives, since
Watson was afraid to oppose Hanna
openly. The original was destroyed to
satisfy Hanna, but a corrupted copy was
made and kept by Watson for use
should it become helpful later.
This seems an unnecessarily elaborate as
well as shaky defense. The first
part, covering the probable conspiracy
to hide Watson's motives is probably
true. But the more serious charge that
Watson falsified the letter reproduced
above by adding to it is both weak and
unnecessary. The sole excuse for it
is the belief that Hanna would not have
written what he was purported to have
written. It will be argued here that he
might well have written the entire
letter, "childish follies" and
all.
Mark Hanna in 1890 had none of the
politician's treasured skill in weigh-
ing his words. In the spring of that
year, for example, he had been caught
off guard by a New York newsman, and the
resulting "Foraker is dead"
interview fanned the embers of Ohio factionalism
to a blaze. He wrote his
mentor and leader John Sherman that
"what I said to him I am sure I am
not ashamed of. But I had not the most
remote idea that he was pumping
for an item. In that I plead guilty to
Capeller's charge of being a fool. I
certainly never aspired to being a
politician nor a boss as Mr. C. would
understand the terms."16
It might also be relevant that Hanna then and for
some years afterward had almost a phobia
against public speaking.17 He
disliked writing out a prepared text, and
he knew that his conversational
habit of pitching his thoughts
point-blank at his listeners could bring swift
embarrassment in the next day's papers.
It would be a long time before he
would develop that politician's sixth
sense of caution when exposing his
mind and heart to the public. His
written remark that he was no worse than
the men of Standard Oil may be
understood as only another spark in the
momentary heat of the occasion. He was
no legal shark. The slip was that
of a man morally certain, personally
indignant, and legalistically naive.
The second remark--the one italicized
above--is puzzling only because
it seems never to have been understood
for what it plainly says. It is a long,
compound-complex sentence, but it
expresses only one thought--the same
thought, essentially, that appears two
sentences later in the words, "There is
no public demand for a raid upon
organized capital." Watson was in politics
up to his eyes. He presumably had two
motives: to serve the public, and, in
doing this, to advance his own
interests, i.e., his career. Hanna was telling
him that he could accomplish neither of
these objects "by attacking the organ-
|
izations under which experience has taught business can best be done." This is not only the context of the thought; it is the thought itself. The thought that it is a mistake for a man to assume that he owes any duty to the public-- stopping there--is nowhere present.18 Hanna may have been right or wrong in what he did say, but the senti- ments he expressed were not atypical of him. His remark on the importance of supporting the leadership of businessmen was closely in keeping with dominant Republican attitudes toward the tariff act of 1890. It was part of the creed of a representative of the party that admitted of no differences between the best interests of the country and the best interests of the com- munity of business success. A prosecution such as Watson was undertaking |
WHAT MARK HANNA SAID
301
was a dangerous insistence on
technicalities. Had Hanna been alive sixty-
three years later he would have cheered
the answer of Secretary of Defense
Charles E. Wilson when Wilson was asked
by a senator whether as a former
president of the General Motors
Corporation he would feel able to make a
decision favoring the national interest
but detrimental to his old company's
interest. He could, he replied, but it
seemed an entirely hypothetical ques-
tion, "because for years I thought
what was good for our country was good
for General Motors, and vice-versa. The
difference did not exist. Our com-
pany is too big. It goes with the
welfare of the country. Our contribution
to the nation is quite
considerable."19 Wilson, too, found that his words
would cause him political embarrassment,
and he had not gone so far as to
draw any conclusions regarding the
proper attitude of the Republican party
toward his old company. At
least when he was later misquoted by hostile
politicians, the wrong words--"What
is good for General Motors is good
for this country"--expressed a part
of his thought. In Hanna's case, the
misquotation was of a different order.
He not only used slightly different
words but expressed an entirely
different thought.
In the story of the Republican party's
relationship to the Sherman act,
Hanna's letter is an early clue to later
policy. Its author represented the
views of a younger generation than John
Sherman's. He was growing up
with the combination movement in
business. Certain that many of his own
associations were "equally open to
attack," he looked to a future in which
big business would use its power to
bring new glories of American prosperity.
The men Hanna would represent as he rose
to national prominence over the
ensuing decade were a degree less timid
and naive than the authors of the
Sherman act.20 Their response
to political pressures for business regulation
gradually took a different turn. For a
time after the Republicans were
returned to power under McKinley,
prosperity, the gold standard, and a
small war served to cover a multitude of
omissions. Thus a recent scholar
has concluded that "during
McKinley's presidency antitrust enforcement
reached a new low watermark equaled
during no other period. The four
and a half years . . . witnessed the
institution of only three suits, all of them
civil."21 A more
creative response would appear later under the label of
the "New Nationalism," though
Hanna himself would make a contribution
as early as 1901. With his acceptance of
the presidency of the National
Civic Federation late in that year he
began an earnest search for a modus
vivendi between his older "associations" and the
countervailing power of
organized labor.22 These
"older associations," the targets of the Sherman
act, were in Hanna's view indispensable
incubators of economic statesmen.
302 OHIO HISTORY
The unions, under the leadership of such
prudent men as John Mitchell and
Samuel Gompers, were seen as having a
like capability. Conditions of
lasting peace and prosperity were to a
great extent considered subject to
negotiation between the leaders of these
great power blocs.
By late 1901, however, both John Sherman
and William McKinley had
passed from the scene. Before Theodore
Roosevelt would win the presidency
in his own right, Hanna, too, would be
dead. The Hanna who defended
John D. Rockefeller's oil trust in 1890
was sure only that enforcement of
the Sherman antitrust act and the state
laws akin to it were bad medicine
for the business community. He was less
sure as to why his attitude was
compatible with the public interest. Had
he been sure he would not have
let himself say either that there was no
public demand for regulation or that
"competition has been open and
free" among Cleveland oil refiners. But if
his logic was hazy, his faith was clear:
There could be no conflict of interest
between whatever made men like
Rockefeller succeed and what made Cleve-
land, Ohio, and the nation succeed.
In brief, it would appear that there is
more to Hanna's letter to Watson
than a cautionary word to the wise from
a provincial party boss. The only
reading of it consistent with the rest
of what is known about Hanna is as a
statement of faith rather than of
cynicism, or hypocrisy, or plain forgery.
Whether the faith expressed was a
realistic one is a question of a different
order.
THE AUTHOR: Thomas E. Felt is an as-
sistant professor of history at the
College of
Wooster. He is preparing a biography of
Mark
Hanna.
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"You have been in politics long enough to know that no man in public office owes the public anything." In these or closely similar words, Mark Hanna is alleged to have advised the attorney general of Ohio in 1890 to drop an antitrust suit against the Standard Oil Company.* Historians looking for a succinct illustration of how the late nineteenth century's robber barons and their vassals operated in the political field have found the alleged remark invaluable. It first did duty in the Democratic campaign against Hanna's election to the senate in 1897. Ida Tarbell used it in her History of the Standard Oil Company in 1904. Two years later it appeared in Harry Thurston Peck's influential Twenty Years of the Republic. The following generation of readers would find it in Matthew Josephson's persuasive The Robber Barons (1932), and elsewhere, while today it reappears in an occa- sional college text--and probably more frequently in classroom lectures-- as well as in a recent paperback reissue of the Josephson book.1 Since neither of Hanna's early biographers categorically denied that he expressed the sentiments in question, the essential legitimacy of the quotation has never been attacked.2 NOTES ARE ON PAGE 344 |