Ohio History Journal

264                                                  OHIO HISTORY

expect it. Practical statesmen can only strive for it, and secure the best

which is attainable."1

Successful politicians are not gods, but mortals, growing from the earth

of their native heath, nurtured by the ingredients of that soil. Firmly rooted

in it, they can bend like trees, before stormy political winds sweeping over

the land of their constituency, accommodating themselves to uncertain shifts

in direction and force. Toughened by their practice in adaptation, such

men may wax in strength through the years, negotiating the climb up the

political Mount Olympus. A few reach the top. Such an one was William

McKinley.

A fair understanding of the record made on an important political issue

by a highly successful officeholder tests the mettle of the historian. One

must evaluate triple peculiarities: those of the issue, the region, and the

person. In the relationship of the twenty-fifth president of the United

States to the currency problem of his era,² there stand revealed three par-

ticularly dynamic factors: the peculiar potency of the currency issue in

United States politics between 1860 and 1900; the irregular pattern of

political behavior then in Ohio; and the embodiment, in McKinley's person-

ality, of the disposition and skills essential to a successful fusion of the

issue, the region, and a career.

The following narrative begins with brief descriptions of the three most

dynamic factors pertinent to this subject, and proceeds therefrom into the

emergent sequence of events.

The peculiar potency of the currency problem in United States politics

between 1860 and 1900 arose chiefly from the economic and social insta-

bility experienced by the populace. America was establishing the basis

for unprecedented national productivity, and demonstrating phenomenal

recuperative powers after adversity, but the pace of change was so rapid,

and so frequently raised urgent problems, that painful groping for answers

was a common experience. The nation was demonstrating that under a

representative form of government economic status is a political fact of

prime importance, making shifts in that status a prime cause of political

instability.

Anyone born in 1840 and living into 1900 experienced in his adult life

three severe depressions (1857-59, 1873-78, 1893-98) and at least four

minor recessions (1881, 1884, 1888, and 1890). He was caught up in

the rushing current of an unprecedented national expansion--in area, popu-

lation, and wealth--without a correlative expansion in the circulating

medium needed to oil the economic machinery.

McKINLEY'S MONETARY PROBLEMS                                    265

Furthermore, the American was without the protective services of a

central bank or other institution expressly assigned the task of striving to

cushion ups and downs of the economy. Whenever, for many complicated

reasons, the economic machinery lost momentum, slowed down miserably,

and stripped its gears, innumerable delicate parts got "out of whack."

Ambitious and solicitous tinkerers, blessedly unaffrighted by the intricacy

of the mechanism, rushed to the rescue, each with his own design of a new

monkey wrench. No conflict lacks its appeal to pseudo science as well

as science.

Many of the repairmen concentrated their endeavors on the currency

area of the mechanism--one of its most delicate parts and nearly defense-

less against the well-meaning self-confidence native to the American demo-

cratic tradition. Some daring technicians sought to alter, or remove alto-

gether, that part of the machinery known as the gold standard; decades

ahead of their time, they argued against forcing a distressed national

economy to pay obeisance to that imperious concept of international

respectability.

Less daring repairmen, remembering that printing-press money had

helped to finance the Civil War, proposed to fight depression with issues of

paper to be maintained "as good as gold" by the fiat of their growing

country. The more timid, fearful of "soft" money, counted on the same

fiat to maintain hard money--depreciated silver--on a basis of "equality

with gold"; to these mechanics "bimetallism" was the magic lubricant.

Perforce, the currency issue acquired both national and international conno-

tations: of class conflict, of intra- and inter-regional jealousies, of intra-

and inter-party rivalries, of nationalism and isolationism.

The result was a melange of fantasy, friction, and faction, challenging

the understanding and ingenuity of everyone, especially persons subject

to the electorate. The enormously difficult currency problem thus exer-

cised a peculiar potency to raise, and wreck, political careers. This potency

warned William McKinley to keep at a safe distance from the radioactive

issue. Ultimately, as will be seen, he stationed himself safely behind a

shield fused of patriotism, bimetallism, and the tariff.

The irregular pattern of political behavior in Ohio rested upon an his-

toric, pre-Civil War, partisanship and became aggravated by postwar eco-

nomic diversification. As in some other midwestern states, strong agricul-

tural interests survived amid burgeoning industrialization, with sharp

diversities in population movements, occupations, and the momentum of

activity. Political unity within parties was hard to come by, with personal

266                                                  OHIO HISTORY

rivalries and rank inconsistency often at a premium as devices for affecting

the balance of power in the party machine. By the same token, statesman-

ship--the reconciliation of divergencies for the overall good--was an

arduous endeavor, highly punishable. Candidates had to thread a veritable

Minoan labyrinth. John Sherman and William McKinley became the two

Ohio politicians who, Theseus-like, were most successful in keeping hold

of a thread strong enough to lead them safely through the maze.

Ohio furnished a sharp contrast to New England's secure postwar hier-

archies of Republicanism, on local, state, and national levels. McKinley's

own county, Stark, remained almost constantly Democratic (as did Sher-

man's Richland County), and his congressional district was so closely

fought that it was gerrymandered five times out of the seven races he ran

for the house of representatives from 1876 to 1890. In his hair's breadth

contest of 1882 McKinley finally lost out by eight votes. The Republicans

were the minority party in the lower house in all but four of the more than

thirteen years he served in congress; and, in those four, greenbackers and

silverites made their legislative presence known.³

Ohio during the 1860-1900 era gave her gubernatorial terms to Demo-

crats four times; her congressional terms ran approximately forty-five

percent Democratic until the depression beginning in 1893, a political

windfall for the Republicans which so increased their longevity in the house

as to raise their forty-year average to a shade above sixty percent. Her

senatorial terms went to Democrats five times out of fifteen, with six of

the Republican victories won by Ohio's other masterly middle-of-the-roader,

the Republican Nestor, John Sherman. This left only four terms for less-

skilled Republicans. Sherman tenaciously kept a seat in the United States

Senate through two sixteen-year periods (1861-77, 1881-97), broken only

by four years as secretary of the treasury under President Hayes; but his

senatorial colleague from Ohio was always a Democrat after bluff old Ben

Wade left the scene in 1869. Here indeed was rigorous training making

for an acute sensitivity to partisan potentials.⁴

Ohio's political irregularity was an invitation to monetary enthusiasms;

but in such uncertainty precise definitions were usually to be avoided like

the plague. Democrat or Republican, Ohio's senators and representatives,

when traversing monetary ground, had best walk on eggs. Thus, the

unending practice of vague generalization became an ever-present fact of

McKinley's life, annoying opponents, biographers, and historians, and (as

will be seen) fooling the platform drafters in 1896.

Right John Sherman

268                                                  OHIO HISTORY

McKinley, the individual, embodied the disposition and skills essential

to a successful fusion: of the volatile monetary issue, of Ohio's political

fickleness, and of his own career in Republicanism. Rooted deeply in the

mid-Victorian mores of a middle-class, midwest environment, he consist-

ently aimed always to keep within the bounds of a middle position. His

ambition wore too gentle a guise to defeat his advancement, making usually

for a comfortable feeling among most of his associates.

He sought preferment through avoidance of leadership: through caution,

ingrained indirection, passivity, postponement, neutrality, temporizing, lis-

tening, earnest oratory, and (where moot issues were involved) through

strategic silence or skillful use of a maze of familiar-sounding, more-or-

less-sacrosanct verbiage. McKinley possessed the inner strengths peculiar

to sincerely cherished mediocrity. His native optimism could not be weak-

ened by doubts stirred in broad study of vagrant monetary philosophies;

he learned "by ear" and confined his reading almost exclusively to

newspapers.

McKinley attended a school of experience with a comparatively light

monetary curriculum. He never had to endure the bitter opprobrium of a

secretary of the treasury (such as Sherman) commissioned to achieve

resumption of specie payments before Americans could forget a long-

lasting depression. He never had to direct the vast patronage of the treasury

department under a president (such as Hayes) committed to cleansing the

Augean stables of corruption. Altogether, this lucky politician enjoyed a

simple philosophy, undisturbed by any very disquieting awareness of the

basic socio-economic problems of the nation; surely, he thought, high protec-

tion could solve most economic problems, including monetary issues. Thus,

McKinley need never be given to following new paths, other than those

blazed by the emotions of his fellow countrymen. To these emotions, within

the range of his basic principles and his simple understanding, he conscien-

tiously sought to give heed. Of this, he made a capital demonstration as he

threaded his way through the monetary politics of his era.

McKinley sallied into politics early--in 1867, before the fledgling

lawyer was twenty-five years old. Ohio decisions were typically uncertain,

and his experiences as a local campaigner during the next nine years taught

him a great deal about monetary politics. He helped get the governorship

for his Civil War commander, Rutherford B. Hayes, in the hair-line contest

of 1867, bringing in Democratic Stark County for Hayes. But the legis-

lature proved to be Democratic on joint ballot by eight votes, ensuring that

Senator Sherman's next colleague would be a Democrat, Allen G. Thurman.

McKINLEY'S MONETARY PROBLEMS                                    269

One reason for the Democratic majority at Columbus was the rise of

greenbackism.⁵ The flow of debtor payments into the banks and into the

East was creating a currency scarcity, aggravated by the treasury's policy

of greenback retirement preparatory to resumption of specie payments on

a gold basis. Greenbackers demanded new issues of greenbacks for retire-

ment of the bonded debt; they aimed to decrease both the national debt

and interest charges on it, and to increase both the supply of currency for

paying their own debts and the prices paid to them. Radical Democrats

seized on this issue as one calculated to restore their party to power and

pushed less-daring Democrats and Republicans into various concessions

on it.

So McKinley began his lifetime adjustments to the monetary issue during

his novitiate. The "rag baby" proposition was coming to be called the

"Ohio Idea" because of its strength in his home state. The formerly con-

servative Cincinnati Enquirer was vociferously popularizing it, and out-

standing advocates of various greenback solutions included Ohio's vigorous

ex-Republican Greenbacker, Samuel F. Cary, and her less radical but very

prominent Democratic presidential aspirant, "Gentleman" George H.

Pendleton. His moderate "Pendleton Plan" for using greenbacks as a

means for achieving specie payments was endorsed, January 8, 1868, by

the state Democratic convention; and a month earlier both Ohio's senators

and all her congressmen but two had helped to pass a law to suspend further

reduction of greenbacks.⁶ What platforms would the national parties pro-

vide for use on Ohio hustings?

The Republicans officially denounced "all forms of repudiation," gently

adding that the public debt should be paid gradually, at an honestly reduced

interest rate, in good faith according to the "letter" and "spirit" of the

laws; but several of their state conventions and some leaders leaned on the

Pendleton Plan for support. The Democrats officially endorsed it, declaring

that such public debt as was not expressly issued as payable "in coin . . .

ought, in right and in justice," to be paid in "lawful money"; but they

finally passed over Pendleton, to nominate an embarrassing anti-Greenback

New Yorker, Horatio Seymour.⁷

Ohio's Republicans, fortified by Grant's military popularity, cannily

sought votes on both sides of the monetary fence. Their state platform

advocated war-bond redemption "in the currency of the country which may

be a legal tender when the government shall be prepared to redeem such

bonds." Senator Sherman cagily pronounced that the government had the

right to redeem in "existing" currency but not in a new issue emitted for

McKINLEY'S MONETARY PROBLEMS                                   271

felt confident of prosperity and he accepted the dubious honor of nomination

for Stark County prosecuting attorney, a place the Democrats usually held.

He won, surprisingly. So did Hayes; but their party's control of the legis-

lature was somewhat diluted by "Liberal Republican" members. During

the next winter national interest in the currency sufficed to bring nearly

fifty variegated monetary measures into the congressional hopper.

The state campaign of 1871 was hard fought, but there was then less

political percentage in the greenback issue (temporarily in abeyance) than

in the fact that the new legislature would determine whether John Sherman

should win another term. Again the Democrats officially endorsed the

Pendleton Plan and the Republicans omitted it from their platform. The

Republicans won the legislature narrowly, but were badly factionalized.

Sherman had a near miss, winning by only two votes on joint ballot. This

escape from defeat was enviously explained by Congressman James A.

Garfield, who claimed that Sherman had the regular habit of being "very

conservative for 5 years and then fiercely radical for one."⁹

Quietly observant and listening, McKinley returned to private legal prac-

tice that fall. Before he again sought public office (in 1876) he saw

abundant evidence of monetary hazards to Ohio candidates. Her repre-

sentatives in Washington were moved to introduce bills of varied hues of

monetary doctrine, while they won and lost their Ohio campaigns by narrow

squeaks, eschewing platform consistency. After the depression descended

in 1873, twelve of their twenty house members voted for a permanent increase

of greenbacks up to $400,000,000; but neither Ohio senator, Sherman or

Thurman, voted for it, and Grant vetoed it.¹⁰ Nine Ohio congressmen voted

against the historic act of 1875 which specified ultimate contraction of legal

tender notes to $300,000,000 and resumption of specie payments by

January 1, 1879.11

Protest against contraction flamed high in Ohio in the summer of 1875,

for reasons besides agricultural distress, alarming both the major parties.

Newcomers to the Ohio Democracy were employing greenbackism to gain

party influence; and over-extended investors in Ohio's iron, coal, railroads,

and growing heavy industry saw ruin in deflation.¹² The party abandoned a

recent tolerance of resumption and distaste for irredeemable currency.

Uttering dire warnings of disaster from resumption, their boldest element

got a platform demanding repeal of the offensive law, displacement of bank

notes by greenbacks, and maintenance of a volume of currency "equal to

the wants of trade." This was a little too much for Democratic Senator

Allen Thurman; he occasionally assured the voters that his party neither

opposed resumption nor demanded inflation.

272                                                 OHIO HISTORY

The Republicans adopted a gradualism the Democrats recently had advo-

cated; they declared for a financial policy which should "ultimately equalize

the purchasing capacity of the coin and paper dollar . . . without unneces-

sary shock to business and trade"--an implication of postponement useful

with disaffected audiences. Also they found it better to place their emphasis

on the horrors of inflation rather than the beatitudes of resumption. They

employed moral appeals: irredeemable currency was "unsound," a viola-

tion of a "pledge." After using these tactics to soften the impact of Hayes's

bolder defense of resumption, and after fervid oratory from Carl Schurz,

imported to remind the Germans of the dire evils of inflation, McKinley and

other ardent campaigners won in 1875 a third term for ex-Governor Hayes,

but narrowly.13

McKinley knew that the currency issue was splitting his party. William

D. Kelley, an outstanding protectionist whom Pennsylvania Republicans

established in congress in 1861 (and who was destined to occupy that seat

until death ousted him in 1890), had been converted to greenbacks in 1866;

in 1875 he had been invited into Ohio's hard-hit iron and mining districts

to campaign as a Republican opponent of resumption and national banks.

Sagely accepting party double-talk as a plain fact of political life,

McKinley decided that Hayes's candidacy for the presidency in 1876 was

a good time for him to run for congress. He easily balanced resumption on

one shoulder and bimetallism on the other, trying out the tariff as a "minor

issue";¹⁴ and the Ohio state Republican committee was equally dextrous,

balancing Hayes with Kelley, especially as Youngstown steel manufacturers

liked Kelley's protectionism. As Kelley jocularly reminded his fellow

representatives, Republicans and Democrats, it was "a very convenient

thing" for his party to be able to send him, a Republican greenbacker, a

"convertible bond man," into greenback districts of Ohio, Indiana, and

Pennsylvania. With becoming gratitude Hayes and Congressman Charles

Foster--but not Garfield, an unswerving hard-money man--had endorsed

Kelley's own candidacy in appropriate quarters of Pennsylvania.¹⁵

While the national Republican platform of 1876 endorsed "continuous

and steady progress to specie payment," the point was rather a quiet aside

in a clamorous waving of the bloody shirt.¹⁶ Despite, or perhaps because

of the existence of a Greenback party, Ohio Republicans managed to give

to Hayes a presidential majority of 6,636 votes, and to their slate--includ-

ing McKinley of Stark--twelve of the twenty congressional seats. The

ultimate seating of Hayes, and his selection of Sherman as secretary of

the treasury, opened the senatorship to an ex-Democratic supporter of

274                                                  OHIO HISTORY

for free coinage, November 5, 1877.18 But he promptly thereafter voted

against repeal of the 1875 resumption clause.¹⁹

His coupling of free silver with specie resumption came easily to

McKinley that November. His home-town newspaper said that silver would

"strongly aid" resumption because two metals would be used; silver

remonetization therefore was not inflationary and, besides, it signalized

defeat of "eastern money sharks" and "European money lenders." The

Canton Repository lauded his type of ambivalence and deplored different

angles adopted by such seasoned politicians as Garfield, Hayes, Matthews,

and Sherman.²⁰

As the winter wore on McKinley continued to learn by ear, listening

while for three exciting months senate, house, administration, and nation

argued over free coinage. Secretary of the Treasury Sherman noted that

commerce was favorable and gold was accumulating in the treasury, but

under the silver uncertainty he avoided bond sales, "awaiting events without

any committals whatever."²¹ Back in Columbus the assembly noted that an

1877 declaration for free coinage had passed with only three nays in their

house and one in their senate, and they reiterated that "common honesty,

true financial wisdom, and justice to the taxpayers of this country, demand

the immediate restoration of the silver dollar to its former rank, as a legal

tender for all debts, public and private."

The Democratic brethren among them, being in the majority, made it a

personal matter, sending notice to every Ohioan at the national capitol "that

President Hayes and Secretary John Sherman, in their opposition to the

restoration of the silver dollar, do not represent the views of, nor the wishes

of the people of the State."²² The majority expressed their own wishes by

electing to the senate Pendleton of greenback fame. There would be no

Ohio Republican in the senate for the next two years to grease the ways for

McKinley projects there.²³

Over in Washington, Stanley Matthews was pressing through the senate

a resolution declaring that it did not violate public faith nor derogate

creditor rights to make government bonds payable, principal and interest,

"at the option of the government" in silver dollars.²⁴ Secretary Sherman

was insisting that, until the government was ready to redeem greenbacks

"in coin," holders of them should be allowed to convert them into four

percent bonds at par;²⁵ but he was opposed to free coinage.

As this was the decade when the house was the branch most addicted to

currency expansion, it was the senate which here provided a remedy. Con-

veniently attaching the name of a midwestern senator to a mild substitute

McKINLEY'S MONETARY PROBLEMS                                  275

for Bland's unlimited coinage, the senate sent back to the house the famous

(or infamous, depending on viewpoint) Bland-Allison bill, carefully tailored

to obtain a two-thirds vote in both houses. It met part way three different

clamors: the popular demand for currency expansion, the mine owners'

demand for a market, and the conservatives' demand for recognition that

America's international repute was involved.

The government was to spend monthly no less than $2,000,000 and no

more than $4,000,000 for bullion bought at the market price (then about

ninety cents for the content of a dollar); it was to coin it into silver dollars

which were to be "legal tender" and which could be exchanged at the treas-

ury for "silver certificates" in denominations of no less than ten dollars;

the Hayes administration must call an international bimetallic conference.

This compromise got the votes of both senators, McKinley, and sixteen of

the other Ohio representatives, including Garfield. The other three repre-

sentatives were not rewarded with long terms in the house.²⁶

Would the president from Ohio accept it or veto it? Secretary Sherman

was dubious about a veto. He suggested to Hayes that the minimum pur-

chase of $2,000,000 worth at the market price, with the government pocket-

ing the difference between actual cost and the stamped value, should remove

"all serious objections," especially "in view of the strong public sentiment

in favor of free coinage." But Hayes's sense of moral values was aroused;

he was not so sure that even the minimum could be kept at par with gold;

"the nation must not have a stain on its honor." He vetoed, and house and

senate promptly overrode that veto. The Repository explained the desertion

of Hayes by his friends from Ohio: "It was not that they loved Hayes less

but that they loved tranquility more."²⁷

But what about McKinley? What had happened to the thirty-four-year-old

resumptionist of 1875? In truth, he was putting on a pair of mismated

monetary shoes which he wore comfortably on his stroll through politics

over the next twenty years. One foot wore a shoe of continued opposition

to currency expansion through emission of paper unbacked by metal. The

1875 Schurz type of argument had convinced him of the rightness of that

opposition--of that kind of support for resumption. Its advocates bore the

aura of fortitude; as McKinley modestly explained in referring to Garfield's

insistence on resumption, "No act of his life required higher courage."²⁸

The other shoe was half-soled with silver.

McKinley found in silver expansion of the currency the moral, patriotic,

and "sound" policy to adopt. Morally, a wrong needed righting. Like

millions of Americans then and recurrently since, he tended to accept the

276                                                 OHIO HISTORY

"Crime of '73" doctrine which able inflationists and mine owners endlessly

dinned into receptive ears.²⁹ The doctrine argued that silver had been

"unjustly deprived" of its "rightful place" in the American bimetallic

system when the mint act of 1873 "secretly" and through "wicked machina-

tions by a British agent of London bankers" had failed to include the silver

dollar in the list of pieces authorized for coinage.

Herein McKinley parted from Garfield, Hayes, Sherman, and others who

pointed out that the act was long debated, the silver dollar was not then in

use, and the supposed "agent" was himself an internationally known

bimetallist. McKinley thought it "unjust" that rich advocates of gold should

keep from the poor the use of silver--a conviction reinforced by impolitic

comments from gold spokesmen.

Patriotically, McKinley must resent any masterminding by British cred-

itor interests. Furthermore, United States use of bimetallism was an his-

torical custom hallowed by the constitution and by Hamilton's projection

of it in 1792. McKinley's faith in it was not undermined by the fact that

under American experience with bimetallism, silver and gold had chased

each other in and out of circulation as one or the other metal reached a

market value above the current coinage ratio.³0 Our great democracy must

hold to its priniciples. Also to an ambitious congressman who was by way

of becoming engrossed in "protection" as a sure solution of domestic prob-

lems, American-produced silver merited that "recognition" which limited

coinage provided. Congress must "do something for silver."

McKinley found limited silver coinage, at the approximate ratio of

sixteen to one, "sound" for many reasons. The metal had been valued in

the marketplace above that ratio for eighteen years. Silver did not carry

the deep stain of "inflationary" greenbacks. The resumption act specified

"coin," not gold, affording silver high respectability and opening avenues

of further use. Besides common folk, some notable economists, statesmen,

and reputable journals were arguing that gold, alone, had demonstrated its

inadequacy as a monetary base. The European powers deserting bimetal-

lism of late must shortly cooperate with the United States in restoring it;

their economic need for an international bimetallic agreement was being

preached by bimetallic leagues (maintained by minority intelligentsia) in

England, France, and Germany.

Meanwhile, McKinley and many other resumptionists believed that our

United States could keep a limited volume of silver legal tenders "as good

as gold." All United States money, "the money of the poor no less than

the rich," must be "as good as gold," of course. Certainly for McKinley

McKINLEY'S MONETARY PROBLEMS                                    277

and many other congressmen of his type of personality, limited economic

grasp, schizophrenic constituency, and conservative Republicanism, a modi-

cum of silver legal tender acquired a validity which suited the convenience

and satisfied the conscience.

The McKinley who had voted, November 5, 1877, for Bland's free coinage

bill had vanished three months later--never more to return. He had become

a limited bimetallist. The breed aggravated Bland and his ilk, because

McKinley and his ilk would not agree that the United States could open her

mints to the silver of the world "without waiting for any other nation on

earth." The breed confounded the gold standard advocates because it did

just enough for bimetallism to hang silver like a Damocles sword over the

heads of the president and the secretary of the treasury.

The breed never "ran true"; it fathered all sorts and conditions of men,

bipartisan, erratic in everything except unwillingness to stop "doing some-

thing for silver." Through fifteen years, to the infinite annoyance of five

successive presidents, it held the balance of power in America's monetary

politics and diplomacy. McKinley remained faithful to the main tenet of

this group through these years, as representative, as governor, and, later

for a brief space, as candidate for the presidential nomination.

During this period of comparative consistency, McKinley's monetary

tread could proceed at a measured pace, until 1889, when he quickened it

sharply for a few months prior to his defeat for reelection to the house of

representatives. His monetary experience between April of 1878 and Decem-

ber of 1889 therefore requires only summary treatment.

Republican party managers, in the nation and in Ohio, hoped that the

Bland-Allison act had put the silver issue in a deep coma; and intermittent

upward trends in business occasionally provided a subdued lullaby. But

the few free-coinage diehards, from both parties, strove to make enough

noise to waken the sleeper and had their decibels magnified at times by at

least four helpful amplifiers. The comparatively mild recessions of 1881,

1884, and 1888 encouraged popular yearnings for currency expansion and

some businessmen complained that they were constricted.

Also, Democratic party managers were not deaf, powerless, or asleep;

holding control of the house from 1875 to 1881 and fro_m 1883 to 1889

(and near control of the senate 1881-83) they exploited silver at such

times and in such places as it had appeal. A fourth group was those silver-

mine owners who looked somewhat askance at Bland-Kelley-Warner bills

to admit foreign bullion to the United States mints, but cooperated with

bullion speculators in rousements. They were disappointed at the failure of

McKINLEY'S MONETARY PROBLEMS                                  279

the minimum Bland-Allison purchases to sustain the bullion market; through

free coinage oratory congress might again be aroused to "do something

for silver."

Congress found the various types of silver lobbyists infiltrating the nation.

As McKinley's colleague on the banking and currency committee, Congress-

man Edwin H. Conger of Iowa, reminded the house: "You cannot point

to a single locality where free-coinage resolutions have been adopted, nor

a single paper which has advocated the free coinage of silver, except you

find in that locality the foot-prints of the silver-bullion owner or his agents

or else the mark of the men who are employed by them."³1

Much of the monetary activity had little effect before 1890. The amount

outstanding of greenbacks was frozen at $346,681,016 on May 31, 1878;

but on December 17, following, Wall Street dealt in greenbacks at par. A

concurrent resolution, fathered by Ohio's inflationist Senator Matthews, had

declared that bonds issued under the refunding act of July 14, 1870, and the

resumption act of January 14, 1875, were payable in gold or silver, but "at

the option of the government," and all the administrations were notorious

for their addiction to gold.³² Ohio Republican candidates of 1878 had a

state platform opposing "further agitation of the financial question," and

some of them vouchsafed that they should be reelected because their party

had given the nation the greenback, which should be worth "one hundred

cents on the dollar."

Garfield's victory over Sherman in the race for the Republican presiden-

tial nomination in 1880 turned largely on comparative warmth of person-

ality, but the delegates knew, also, that Sherman was more vulnerable,

nationally, as a target for advocates of cheap money. His enemies sometimes

spoke of bankrupts as "Shermanized."

McKinley's bimetallic stance was protected by a secret agent from Ohio,

and by Congressman Kelley of Pennsylvania. S. Dana Horton, a multi-

lingual Ohioan committed to bimetallism if maintained by international

agreement, functioned as secretary of the international bimetallic conference

assembled at Paris in 1878 in accordance with the Bland-Allison command,

and during the next decade managed to obtain repeated employment on

confidential missions under Arthur and Harrison.

Horton, and weightier confidential agents sent by each administration

during the decade, tried to scare England, France, and Germany into various

forms of recognition of silver as a monetary metal, threatening that other-

wise congress would terminate purchase of United States silver, its market

value would fall further, and their own business relationships would suffer.

280                                                  OHIO HISTORY

Unfortunately for the American emissaries, Democratic and Republican

congresses gave them the lie. The Europeans knew that the monetary

balance of power in the United States lay with McKinley and his kind.³³

Completely effective in blocking cooperation from Germany was the high

chief of the free coinage men in the Republican party. The ebullient Con-

gressman Kelley, traveling abroad and sending back columns to the Phila-

delphia Times, secured a teatime invitation from the Iron Chancellor.

Bismarck asked Kelley what the United States would do if European govern-

ments would not cooperate for international bimetallism. Kelley promptly

assured him that congress in that case would immediately establish free

coinage of silver throughout the United States. Making matters still worse,

Kelley soon sent the Times a long account of the confidences in the garden,

making Bismarck furious.³⁴

The assassin's bullet soon relieved Garfield of further challenge by the

silver issue, but McKinley and numerous other politicians found it wise

to maintain ambivalent bimetallism through the decade of the eighties.

They were counseled to this course of action by the activities of particular

persons and groups.

Ohio's free coinage ranks were bolstered by General Adoniram Judson

Warner, a Democrat who during his three terms (1879-81 and 1883-87)

competed with Bland in the introduction of free coinage bills. Only one of

these passed the house and none the senate, before 1889. McKinley's

Republican confreres, and sometimes a few Ohio Democrats, voted with him

against free coinage bills. But they joined the Democrats in a unanimous

Ohio "no" against suspension of limited silver coinage.³⁵

McKinley became increasingly an intimate associate in his party's mone-

tary finesse. Chairman of the resolutions committee at both the 1884 and

1888 conventions, he presented to those gatherings the proof of committee

skill. 36 In 1884 they could hedge easily: "We have always recommended

the best money known to the civilized world, and we urge that an effort be

made to unite all commercial nations in the establishment of an international

standard which shall fix for all the relative value of gold and silver coinage."

The Democrats also felt comfortable: "We believe in honest money, the

gold and silver coinage of the Constitution, and a circulating medium con-

vertible into such money without loss.^"37

But Cleveland had boldly demanded, in his first inaugural, repeal of the

Bland-Allison silver purchase act, and the late eighties brought drought to

the farmers, recession to business, and demands for free coinage from the

Farmers' Alliances, Populists, and Union-Labor groups. In this parlous

McKINLEY'S MONETARY PROBLEMS                                    281

situation the unlucky Democracy in 1888 had to avoid mention of silver,

merely reaffirming "the platform adopted by its representatives in the con-

vention of 1884." On the other hand, McKinley and his fellow draftsmen

were free to spring to the attack. He read to the convention these resounding

words: "The Republican party is in favor of the use of both gold and silver

as money, and condemns the policy of the Democratic administration in its

efforts to demonetize silver." It was pleasant to twit the Democrats with

the fact that Cleveland blocked free coinage.³⁸

Whenever McKinley entered debate on the currency he was likely to refer

to the need to keep the greenbacks "sacred and at par"; he wished to protect

"the good financial name" of the Republicans through maintaining a treasury

working balance above the $100,000,000 gold reserve which Sherman had

established to safeguard resumption.³⁹

So went the decade, with the international bimetallists and gold men

unable to halt limited silver coinage and the free coinage men unable to

remove the limitations. McKinley and the rest of the middle-of-the-roaders,

opposing both unlimited free coinage and suspension of limited coinage, sat

tight. With the approach of 1890, however, they found it necessary to

reaffirm their position in order to protect their political status. At the same

time, in Ohio, interest was shifting from the currency to the tariff, with both

parties enticing wool-growers, and the iron and steel manufacturers, with

protective state planks. McKinley and some other Republicans industriously

encouraged the shift, watchful lest Democratic monetary propositions under-

mine the protective principle, which they should reinforce.

The conjunction of the 1888 recession and President Cleveland's demand

for a lower tariff appeared a godsend. Surely high protection must bring

prosperity (incidentally meeting the party campaign pledge) and put a

quietus on silver. The first session of the fifty-first congress seemed a golden

opportunity, with Republicans holding the presidency, and senate and house

(narrowly), for the first time since 1875. They had a talented triumvirate

in the house, with determined McKinley installed in the dying Kelley's

chairmanship of the ways and means committee, with imperious Reed as

speaker, and with wily Joe Cannon as third member of the committee on

rules; they cooperated with the Aldrich leadership in the senate. As the

president had no important policies differing from those of this Republican

machine, it could function as a unit, drawing party lines tightly.

But McKinley et al must pay toll on the legislative highway; the minority

had warned them the price would be high.⁴⁰ Friction and filibustering had

re-proved their efficacy in the previous session, and many agrarians were

282                                                 OHIO HISTORY

dubious of high protection. The four new states--Montana, North and South

Dakota, and Washington--hopefully but uncertainly admitted in November

1889 for a senate Republican majority, favored silver producers and allied

themselves with currency expansionists. For such reasons, party irregularity

became more common in the 1889-91 congress than at any time since the

Liberal Republican era.⁴¹ Yet the machine maneuverers managed to push

through four important measures in 1890: the McKinley tariff and McKinley

customs administration laws, and the Sherman silver purchase and Sherman

antitrust laws, not to mention the back-scratching dependent pension act. It

was a great year for Ohio.

To devise a monetary compromise which should grease the ways for high

protection required much maneuvering--at the White House and both ends

of the capitol. President Harrison invited the influential Francis G. New-

lands of Nevada, vice president of the National Executive Silver Committee,

to confer with him and with the Republican policy makers on a suitable

"compromise."⁴² They concocted a plan to attract votes of members with

silver producer, and currency expansionist, constituencies: bullion purchases

would be expanded to cover currently calculated output, and would be paid

for by emissions of treasury notes, thus amplifying the currency supply--

but avoiding free coinage at sixteen to one.

A bill pieced together along these lines, after hectic caucuses of senate and

house members, emerged as the April 23 caucus agreement.⁴³ But it lan-

guished in the house while McKinley et al pushed through the house version

of high protection as a party measure--a job completed May 21. On June 5,

after heated disputation, McKinley was able to get house consent to a special

rule limiting amendments and debate. He said of the leadership, "We are

after practical results." The Republicans were doing their duty by silver,

whereas Cleveland's party had neglected it. "For four long years . . . a

single voice, a single man, elected to execute the laws, not to make them,

commanded the majority on that side of the House to be silent, and they

were silent." (Applause and laughter on the Republican side.)⁴⁴

Late on Saturday afternoon, June 7, McKinley closed the debate with

remarks calculated to reassure diverse factions and himself (if he had

doubts). He insisted that the bill was "the best which is attainable." "We

cannot have ideal legislation," he said. "It is not possible. Practical men

do not expect it."⁴⁵ Representative Horace F. Bartine of Nevada complained

that eastern Republicans did not show proper gratitude for protection votes

of western Republicans.⁴⁶ But McKinley insisted that the bill was just--just

to silver producers as furnishing a market for their annual product; to free

McKINLEY'S MONETARY PROBLEMS                                   283

coinage men because they themselves calculated that the new purchases

would raise silver's price toward parity and then consummate free coinage;

to the guardians of "good money" because the bullion was bought at its

market price and the silver certificates were redeemable in gold and silver

coin and legal tender for all debts, public and private. On that day a house

bill for limited silver coinage got through, 135-119, with 73 paired or not

voting.⁴⁷

Meanwhile, free coinage men had been busy concocting a senate free

coinage bill, S. 2350, and collecting fifteen Republican members to join

southern Democratic senators in amending the house bill with a free coinage

requirement. This they accomplished June 17. Next, house silverites sought

house concurrence in the senate amendment. But McKinley, Reed, and

Cannon were determined to get nonconcurrence, so as to salvage their limited

coinage bill through a conference committee. In their effort the triumvirate

overreached themselves, incurring a majority vote against them June 21 on

their sleight-of-hand manipulation of the record in the house journal of two

days earlier. As Cannon frankly admitted, a majority can make the journal

"tell that which is untrue . . . can do anything . . . can disregard the rules;

it did falsify the Journal." He ridiculed Bland for protesting against "gag

law": "My friend is always being gagged. Why, God knows a barrel of

ipecac would not gag him. (Laughter.)"⁴⁸

Over the ensuing weekend McKinley recovered his self-assurance, if

indeed he ever had lost part of it, and laughingly reminded the house of

his power, June 24. "The Republican party having taken possession of the

Chamber again (laughter), bring this bill back at once." He demanded

nonconcurrence, lest the United States have to coin, free, the silver of the

entire world. His party through the past thirty years had "given the country

the best monetary system known to the financial world," and this measure

would "not interfere with future international arrangements." He chose

this moment to reiterate his personal allegiance to silver. "I would not

dishonor it; I would give it equal credit and honor with gold. ... I would

utilize both metals as money and discredit neither. I want the double stand-

ard, and I believe a conference will accomplish these purposes . . . will

produce a bill satisfactory to our whole people of every section and interest.⁴⁹

Charges were rife of the pressure being exerted for the senate free silver

measure. As Representative Abner Taylor of Illinois complained, "it was

being pushed by the most disgraceful lobby ever in the Capitol. Hardly a

corner outside of the hall of the House could be turned without running

against some of them." Nevertheless the house on June 25 voted 135-152

284                                                  OHIO HISTORY

against the senate free coinage amendment and then sent the bill to

conference.

What precisely happened in the conference is unclear. Sherman, who

headed it, reported briefly on its action in his Recollections four years later;

but he refused to tell the senate what the conferees said to each other,

alleging that it would be a "departure" from "gentlemanly propriety" to

disclose private conversation indicating "the means by which we got

together." Their refusal aggravated Senator John T. Morgan of Alabama,

who tartly reminded Sherman, "Oh, Senators are not in that sense gentlemen

in the conference-room. They are Senators." To which Sherman replied,

"But they are expected to be gentlemen.^"50 (Herein Sherman divulged one

reason why the Congressional Record often frustrates inquisitive historians

and biographers.)

Thuswise did the Sherman silver purchase act reach the statute books

July 14, 1890, a testimonial to ambivalent bimetallism. McKinley et al had

unwittingly guaranteed future trouble for the nation's gold reserve. The

conference compromise required the treasury to buy 4,500,000 ounces of

silver bullion monthly at the market price, paying for it with treasury notes

redeemable in gold or silver coin at the "discretion" of the secretary of the

treasury; but the act also declared it to be United States policy to maintain

gold and silver on a parity, wording which the treasury interpreted as a

virtual pledge to redeem in gold. The potential strain on the treasury was

thought lessened, however, by the stipulation (credited to Sherman) for

purchasing by ounces; it seemed that if the price fell (which before long

it did) the treasury would save money.

The worried Sherman regretted the 4,500,000 ounce requirement, as

something above actual current production; and he openly declared he

voted for the measure only to forestall free coinage. As events transpired,

the act produced fresh issues of the legal tender treasury notes amounting to

$24,000,000 in 1890, $53,000,000 in 1891, $47,000,000 in 1892, and

$24,000,000 in the first half of 1893. But possibilities of gold strain roused

no concern in the breasts of the drafters of the Ohio state Republican plat-

form in 1890. Endorsing the Harrison administration, they added, "We

also fully approve the wise action of the Republican members of both

houses of Congress in fulfilling the pledges of the party in legislation upon

the coinage of silver," and upon the tariff, pensions, and so forth.⁵¹ Not so

the majority of McKinley's constituents that November. They unreasonably

rewarded his efforts with retirement.

McKinley's defeat was a blessing. It helped to keep his path toward the

presidency relatively free of monetary obstructions prior to 1896. Absence

McKINLEY'S MONETARY PROBLEMS                                  287

bility for devising concrete policy, used cloudy monetary comments on the

stump, telling audiences that silver must not be "discriminated against"; it

must have "justice." The Republicans meanwhile were so vigorously build-

ing up protectionist sentiment that they were able to turn the tables and

secure for McKinley handsome majorities in the gubernatorial elections of

1891 and 1893. His second victory was not unconnected with the well-

known fact of his own straightened circumstances due to a depression mishap,

which identified him further with common folk.⁵³

By the close of his second governorship (January 1896) McKinley's candi-

dacy for the presidential nomination had been well launched by Mark Hanna,

helped by the expert vagueness of the protege. Until he was very close to

convention time, he refused Hanna's urging that he stand on the gold stand-

ard, firmly insisting that he stood on his record. This policy won him

endorsement by western silverites and by the Ohio Republican convention,

which in March obliged nicely with a high-tariff-bimetallic platform. Also,

the policy gave Hanna a bargaining weapon for the coming convention, where

he could fake reluctance to accept a gold plank which, when consented to,

would afford eastern supporters of Reed and other McKinley opponents a

solacing sense of quasi-victory, assuaging defeat of their candidates.⁵⁴

However, during the interval between January and June, McKinley's

opponents made such capital of his silver uncertainties that under a less

able tactician than Hanna the Canton "sphinx" might have been covered by

sands shifting in favor of Reed of Maine or Allison of Iowa.⁵⁵ Actually, a

few publicists and economists had been calling attention to the fact that world

gold production had been rising since 1887 and was likely to continue

(because of South African developments) into a rising price level, which

would alleviate some of the distress that free silver was claimed to cure.

There is no reason to suppose that McKinley had studied these analyses, but

his faith in the tariff panacea, on which he had hoped to run, and his earlier

success with bimetallic utterances inspired his silence on money.

Immanence of the convention forced him to take advice and exercise his

skill at shaded meanings.⁵⁶ He realized that he must endorse the existing

standard, which was gold. The right of free and unlimited silver coinage

had ended in 1873 and the policy of limited coinage, implemented under

the laws of 1878 and 1890, had been discarded by the repeal of 1893.

Yet he, and many other Republican fence-sitters, had repeatedly done

obeisance to "bimetallism." Also, the magic word had aided repeal of the

Sherman purchase act, in a closing clause of that measure calling on the

government for steady efforts to establish "a safe system of bimetallism."

`

288                                                 OHIO HISTORY

Many Republican candidates--even some in the East--wanted to be able

to use the term in 1896.

Therefore, McKinley's plank as carried to St. Louis in the pockets of

Hanna and Foraker, sought to make his retreat from ambivalent bimetallism

as conciliatory as possible. He used familiar verbiage: his party stood for

sound money, the fullest use of silver consistent with parity with gold, and

an international bimetallic agreement to maintain that parity. To these

mellifluous phrasings he added that his party opposed free and unlimited

silver coinage because it had become "the plain duty of the United States

to maintain our present standard."⁵⁷

But what was the "present" standard? The re-drafters at St. Louis insisted

on less conciliatory wording, although not averse to some sweetening. So,

in the final version they based their argument on honesty, domestic good

faith, and international repute. The party stood for "sound money," every

dollar "as good as gold," unimpaired credit, and "inviolable obligations"

in line with "the most enlightened nations of the earth." "We are therefore

opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement with

the leading commercial nations of the earth, which agreement we pledge

ourselves to promote, and until such agreement can be obtained the existing

gold standard must be maintained."

The fat was in the fire--as that old Republican Nestor from Colorado had

warned them it would be. Teller et al walked out. But numerous less

intransigent Republicans with silver producer or cheap money constitu-

encies stayed, clinging to an uncertain future for international bimetallism

and for themselves. Among these, there soon was some little rivalry for the

"credit" for inserting, "which agreement we pledge ourselves to promote.^"58

But their credit rivalry was nothing compared with ardent authorship of the

word "gold," claims highly vocal after it began to appear that the word

was more of an asset than a liability. This precious convention "victory"

was claimed by some dozen voices rising from New York to Wisconsin,

bequeathing an historical controversy to the next half century. Of course

the efforts of no individual could be completely separable from activities

of others.⁵⁹

Gold was hard for McKinley to pronounce, but by July he felt emboldened

to utter the word on his front porch and early in August he thought the

silver craze would not go higher. His acceptance speech, of August 26,

astutely coupled this "good money" with the financial welfare of laborers,

producers, and common folk, no less than businessmen and financiers. Again

he pledged promotion of international bimetallism. Prosperity would return

McKINLEY'S MONETARY PROBLEMS                                  291

appropriation of $100,000 for financing United States participation in

another international bimetallic conference, should the president find the

time propitious. The senator had assured the incoming president that such

legislation would lessen the hazards for tariff legislation.

The next day McKinley's inaugural pledged that international bimetal-

lism would "have early and earnest attention," and he recommended also

a United States bipartisan commission of businessmen and politicians to

take monetary problems out of the political arena.⁶³ Mid-March found him

formulating, for use abroad, instructions with "a certain vagueness," which

John Hay presumed was "intentional," and one month later he appointed

Wolcott, Charles J. Paine (a Boston capitalist), and ex-vice president

Adlai E. Stevenson as peripatetic emissaries in search of a conference.

While they sought in vain, German and French exporters found unpleasing

the tariff emerging at Washington. There silver senators held the majority

in the senate finance committee, and enjoyed enough power in the senate

as a whole to make things mildly unpleasant for a less-well-assured man

than McKinley.

They unkindly taunted him with his earlier pro-silver votes, questioned

his loyalty to the Wolcott mission, and criticized his choice of the gold

standard advocate, Lyman J. Gage, as secretary of the treasury. As

McKinley espoused bond payments in gold, they pressed through the senate

a Teller resolution for redemption of bonds "at the option of the Govern-

ment in silver dollars"--a proposition supported by neither of Ohio's sena-

tors and by only six of her twenty-one representatives, of whom but one

lasted in congress thereafter as long as March 1903. Their high point of

1898 was a rider to the war revenue act of June 13, directing the secretary

of the treasury to coin into standard silver dollars all the bullion remaining

in the treasury from the Sherman silver purchase act, at a rate of not less

than $1,500,000 monthly. But business was too active to make this measure

inflationary.⁶⁴

Unperturbed, McKinley pursued his even way on the hustings that fall,

boasting of gold accumulations, and denouncing "any demoralization of

our currency." He celebrated November Republican winnings with an

annual message reiterating an 1897 request that United States notes, once

redeemed in gold, be paid out again only for gold; and he bespoke immedi-

ate legislation to erect a gold trust fund for redemption of greenbacks.⁶⁵

Time was running out on bimetallism in 1899--thanks to South Africa,

Australia, the Yukon, a new cyanide process for extracting gold, and heavy

farm exports to crop-disappointed Europe. Gold production in 1898 had

292                                                   OHIO HISTORY

been two and one-half times that of 1890 and congressional elections had

diluted Republican silver strength. Per capita circulation was up and so

was the price level, slightly. McKinley basked in the effulgence of what

he interpreted as protection prosperity; the former bimetallist in the fall

of 1899 descanted to middlewestern audiences on the favorable balance of

trade which "comes to us in gold."66

So McKinley and Gage greeted the first session of the fifty-sixth congress

with a clarion call: "to make adequate provision to insure the maintenance

of the gold standard" congress should enlarge the power and the mandate

to the secretary of the treasury to buy gold with long and short term bonds,

at lower rates of interest, to forestall any future drain on the gold supply;

thus, would the parity in value of gold and silver coins be maintained.

Congress obliged. H.R. 1 got through the house December 19. But nearly

three months elapsed before its enactment into law, giving more time for

wandering silver sheep to seek the path back to the Republican fold. Teller

grew less denunciatory than of yore, and Wolcott reported that people out

West grew less pessimistic about life.67 Yet some concession to surviving

bimetallists must be made, and so the act of March 14, 1900, carried a faint

odor of the bimetallism of McKinley's political youth.

On the one hand, the law acknowledged the long-existing fact that the gold

dollar was the standard unit of value. All forms of United States money

must be maintained at parity with the gold dollar; and to insure prompt

gold redemption of greenbacks and 1890 treasury notes, the treasury must

set apart a reserve fund of $150,000,000 in gold coin and bullion and the

redeemed notes must not be reissued except for gold.

On the other hand, the law gave solemn assurance that the legal tender

quality of any money coined or issued by the United States was retained.

Also, "the provisions of this Act are not intended to preclude the accomplish-

ment of international bimetallism whenever conditions shall make it expe-

dient and practical to secure the same by concurrent action of the leading

commercial nations of the world and at a ratio which shall insure permanence

of relative value between gold and silver."⁶⁸

McKinley could sign this act without qualms; and he could applaud the

1900 Republican plank, "We renew our allegiance to the principle of the

gold standard and declare our confidence in the wisdom of the legislation

of the Fifty-sixth Congress."⁶⁹ On silver he had come full circle.

THE AUTHOR: Jeannette P. Nichols for-

merly was associate professor of history and

chairman of the Graduate Group in Economic

History at the University of Pennsylvania, and

now is research associate in economic history.