The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (30 page)
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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
BOOK: The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
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Hanna, on the other hand,
did
cut an extraordinary figure at the time. No one had ever come closer to establishing the role of political boss and kingmaker on the national level. He had dominated the Republican convention, shaped the party’s platform, selected the running mate (Garrett Hobart of New Jersey), and grasped every lever of the campaign machinery. St. Louis became known as “Hanna’s convention.”
50
Especially during the nomination period, he exercised unusual control over public access to his candidate while himself commenting in the press on every aspect of the Republican campaign.
51
It was not unreasonable to see Hanna as the stronger personality from the vantage point of mid-campaign. The question of strength, however, is somewhat beside the point. The
Journal
portrayed McKinley as the subordinate figure in their relationship more because he was beholden to Hanna than because of perceived weakness in character.
did
cut an extraordinary figure at the time. No one had ever come closer to establishing the role of political boss and kingmaker on the national level. He had dominated the Republican convention, shaped the party’s platform, selected the running mate (Garrett Hobart of New Jersey), and grasped every lever of the campaign machinery. St. Louis became known as “Hanna’s convention.”
50
Especially during the nomination period, he exercised unusual control over public access to his candidate while himself commenting in the press on every aspect of the Republican campaign.
51
It was not unreasonable to see Hanna as the stronger personality from the vantage point of mid-campaign. The question of strength, however, is somewhat beside the point. The
Journal
portrayed McKinley as the subordinate figure in their relationship more because he was beholden to Hanna than because of perceived weakness in character.
McKinley’s defenders dismiss the $130,000 bailout as inconsequential because the recipient was honorable, but someone had to ask the questions posed by the
Journal:
Was the money put up as “a gift or a loan? If as a gift, does Mr. McKinley feel any sense of obligation for their kindness. . . . If as a loan, what was the security, and when and how does Mr. McKinley expect to pay it back?”
52
It was arrogant of Hanna to brush off the bailout as a private matter between friends. Even in the Republican press, it was widely assumed that Hanna would gain from his many services to McKinley, influencing appointments, patronage, and policy in a new government, and perhaps taking a senior cabinet seat for himself. New York Republicans touted Hanna as the next secretary of the treasury.
53
Journal:
Was the money put up as “a gift or a loan? If as a gift, does Mr. McKinley feel any sense of obligation for their kindness. . . . If as a loan, what was the security, and when and how does Mr. McKinley expect to pay it back?”
52
It was arrogant of Hanna to brush off the bailout as a private matter between friends. Even in the Republican press, it was widely assumed that Hanna would gain from his many services to McKinley, influencing appointments, patronage, and policy in a new government, and perhaps taking a senior cabinet seat for himself. New York Republicans touted Hanna as the next secretary of the treasury.
53
The prospect of Hanna and friends throwing their weight around Washington was naturally and legitimately ominous to the
Journal
and its Democratic audience. Some of Hanna’s pro-business views were radical for the time, such as his belief that government existed primarily to protect and promote commercial enterprise. He loathed the income tax, supported protective tariffs, and saw nothing inherently wrong in the proliferation of trusts and monopolies. It is true that Hanna held some relatively enlightened views on labor, but, as Lewis reported, he did have some bad history with his ship workers and he had resorted to lethal force to settle the Massillon, Ohio, coal miners’ strike of 1876. Governor McKinley, for his part, had repeatedly used the National Guard to negotiate with strikers in Ohio. And Hanna’s election coffers were being filled by some of the most controversial employers in the United States, including Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, hosts of the 1892 Homestead debacle, one of the bloodiest strikes in U.S. labor history.
54
Journal
and its Democratic audience. Some of Hanna’s pro-business views were radical for the time, such as his belief that government existed primarily to protect and promote commercial enterprise. He loathed the income tax, supported protective tariffs, and saw nothing inherently wrong in the proliferation of trusts and monopolies. It is true that Hanna held some relatively enlightened views on labor, but, as Lewis reported, he did have some bad history with his ship workers and he had resorted to lethal force to settle the Massillon, Ohio, coal miners’ strike of 1876. Governor McKinley, for his part, had repeatedly used the National Guard to negotiate with strikers in Ohio. And Hanna’s election coffers were being filled by some of the most controversial employers in the United States, including Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, hosts of the 1892 Homestead debacle, one of the bloodiest strikes in U.S. labor history.
54
A good many Republicans shared the misgivings that Lewis, Davenport, and Hearst raised about Hanna. The seeds of Lewis’s arguments were gathered in conversation with McKinley’s Republican foes in Ohio who knew the details of Hanna’s $130,000 gift—it had been a controversy in the last gubernatorial campaign.
55
The vanquished regional bosses Tom Platt and Matt Quay initiated denunciations of Hanna’s methods and money; they also lambasted McKinley as weak and evasive on policy. The only serious opponent McKinley faced on his path to the nomination—Tom Reed, Speaker of the House of Representatives—made “liberal accusations about his alleged weakness” and about Hanna’s use of funds to purchase delegates.
56
Theodore Roosevelt, who made speeches for McKinley in ’96, complained to friends that the nominee had the “backbone of a chocolate éclair,” and that Hanna was selling him “as if he were a patent medicine.”
57
55
The vanquished regional bosses Tom Platt and Matt Quay initiated denunciations of Hanna’s methods and money; they also lambasted McKinley as weak and evasive on policy. The only serious opponent McKinley faced on his path to the nomination—Tom Reed, Speaker of the House of Representatives—made “liberal accusations about his alleged weakness” and about Hanna’s use of funds to purchase delegates.
56
Theodore Roosevelt, who made speeches for McKinley in ’96, complained to friends that the nominee had the “backbone of a chocolate éclair,” and that Hanna was selling him “as if he were a patent medicine.”
57
Finally, critics of the
Journal
’s coverage need also take into account the degree to which Hanna and McKinley had made targets of themselves. Hanna, who had never held an office or troubled himself with serious policy deliberations, who mocked and bullied reigning Republican grandees, who proclaimed that government existed as the handmaiden to business, and who declared that money was all that mattered in politics, shouldn’t really have been surprised to find himself caricatured as an oversized brute bicycling through the
Journal
in a “Dollar Mark” suit. Likewise, McKinley, sitting mute and debt-free in his humble Canton home as Hanna strode about moving heaven and earth to get him elected, might have expected his own portrayal.
Journal
’s coverage need also take into account the degree to which Hanna and McKinley had made targets of themselves. Hanna, who had never held an office or troubled himself with serious policy deliberations, who mocked and bullied reigning Republican grandees, who proclaimed that government existed as the handmaiden to business, and who declared that money was all that mattered in politics, shouldn’t really have been surprised to find himself caricatured as an oversized brute bicycling through the
Journal
in a “Dollar Mark” suit. Likewise, McKinley, sitting mute and debt-free in his humble Canton home as Hanna strode about moving heaven and earth to get him elected, might have expected his own portrayal.
The
Journal
did err in its coverage of Hanna and McKinley, and some of its positions were at best arguable. There was merit, nonetheless, to its core arguments about the Republican duo. The paper was asking important questions and playing its oppositional role superbly throughout the summer of 1896. Lewis and Davenport produced the most powerful journalistic statements in what was emerging as an epochal presidential campaign and it is much to their credit that one cannot discuss McKinley and ’96 today without mention of the
Journal
’s role. That role would only grow as voting day approached.
Journal
did err in its coverage of Hanna and McKinley, and some of its positions were at best arguable. There was merit, nonetheless, to its core arguments about the Republican duo. The paper was asking important questions and playing its oppositional role superbly throughout the summer of 1896. Lewis and Davenport produced the most powerful journalistic statements in what was emerging as an epochal presidential campaign and it is much to their credit that one cannot discuss McKinley and ’96 today without mention of the
Journal
’s role. That role would only grow as voting day approached.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Skin the East and Skin the Rich
About two o’clock of the hottest night of the famous hot summer of 1896, when all New York sweltered and the breathless air dripped with a rank humidity, a young man ran at fierce speed down the middle of Park Row. The panting wayfarers about the [Brooklyn] Bridge entrance and the tired newspaper men homeward bound looked at the running figure with manifest discomposure; his hot haste and hard work seemed to raise the temperature. He was a good-looking young man, well dressed, [and] except for his exertions in such an atmosphere, apparently sane. He carried a straw hat in one hand and an open newspaper in the other, and wholly oblivious of disparaging comment, he held his way to the Tribune Building, up the steps of which he bounded three at a time, and disappeared. I had never seen him before, but I knew from certain descriptions that this was W. R. Hearst, the new proprietor of the
New York Journal.
The next day Park Row buzzed with the cause of his feat of unseasonable athletics. It was so simple that it made men laugh and stare; yet nothing could have been more characteristic. Reading his paper on his way home from the office he had found something he did not like. With him there had been no time to waste in waiting for street-cars or cabs. From almost Chatham Square he had run to his office to have the error corrected in the next edition.
—
CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL,
Harper’s Weekly
1
CHARLES EDWARD RUSSELL,
Harper’s Weekly
1
T
he weather was a big story in the summer of 1896. By season’s end, close to a thousand deaths had been attributed to extreme temperatures and humidity—the worst toll in memory. Dogs, mad from the heat, were being shot in the street by policemen. So many horses had perished that the trams were idle. If indeed Hearst’s hot haste and hard work had contributed to the swelter, he at least had something to show for it when the temperatures dropped to a bearable range in September. His newspaper was still in the red, but its losses were manageable and accepted as the price of its phenomenal growth in circulation, advertising revenue, editorial talent, influence, and prestige. His new press capacity was coming on stream. His staff had intercepted a circular from Pulitzer to news agents around the country asking how many copies of the
Journal
they received and sold, and what special tactics the paper employed to boost sales. Hearst flaunted the memo on his front page as evidence of Pulitzer’s desperation, and also used the occasion to boast of a daily circulation of 378,694—“the largest morning circulation of any newspaper printed in the English language.”
2
he weather was a big story in the summer of 1896. By season’s end, close to a thousand deaths had been attributed to extreme temperatures and humidity—the worst toll in memory. Dogs, mad from the heat, were being shot in the street by policemen. So many horses had perished that the trams were idle. If indeed Hearst’s hot haste and hard work had contributed to the swelter, he at least had something to show for it when the temperatures dropped to a bearable range in September. His newspaper was still in the red, but its losses were manageable and accepted as the price of its phenomenal growth in circulation, advertising revenue, editorial talent, influence, and prestige. His new press capacity was coming on stream. His staff had intercepted a circular from Pulitzer to news agents around the country asking how many copies of the
Journal
they received and sold, and what special tactics the paper employed to boost sales. Hearst flaunted the memo on his front page as evidence of Pulitzer’s desperation, and also used the occasion to boast of a daily circulation of 378,694—“the largest morning circulation of any newspaper printed in the English language.”
2
That boast was made possible in part because Hearst found himself playing an ever more significant role in what was shaping up as one of the most exciting elections in American history. The currency issue had polarized the major parties and the electorate and had driven every other significant newspaper in the Northeast either into the gold camp or onto the sidelines.
3
This left the
Journal
as the leading print champion of Bryan, the leading critic of McKinley, and the leading opponent of the gold standard. To be so sharply distinguished from its competitors in the heat of a closely watched campaign was a marvelous break for an emerging paper in a crowded market. And having loaded up on journalists with powerful voices and progressive views, Hearst had the fighting spirit and intellectual muscle to hold his ground.
3
This left the
Journal
as the leading print champion of Bryan, the leading critic of McKinley, and the leading opponent of the gold standard. To be so sharply distinguished from its competitors in the heat of a closely watched campaign was a marvelous break for an emerging paper in a crowded market. And having loaded up on journalists with powerful voices and progressive views, Hearst had the fighting spirit and intellectual muscle to hold his ground.
The most unexpected development of the summer was that the presidential race was close. Coming out of the conventions, the supposedly unbeatable Republicans suddenly appeared vulnerable. They might have had a solid candidate, a state-of-the-art organization, buckets of money, and vast newspaper support, but they had no answer for William Jennings Bryan.
On paper, the Democratic nominee was a weak link in his party’s campaign. He was a relatively unknown ex-congressman from the lightly populated and politically inconsequential state of Nebraska. He was only a year over the minimum age requirement for the presidency (thirty-five), he had no executive experience, and he had never played an important role in a national campaign. Yet it was Bryan’s unique talents and determination that were propelling the Democrats within reach of a massive upset.
A true populist with an unaffected love of his fellow man and an abiding faith in the processes of democracy, Bryan knew intuitively that his party’s best chance lay in his own direct connection with voters. While it was not unusual by the 1890s for a presidential candidate to venture out and shake a few hands in advance of polling day, the preferred approach was still to sit statesmanlike on one’s own front porch as the party’s professionals raised the obligatory commotion. It had been good enough for George Washington, and it had worked for Grover Cleveland, who reportedly made a grand total of eight speeches and journeyed all of 312 miles in three national election campaigns. Bryan boarded a train immediately after his nomination and quickly smashed all records for travel and speechmaking in pursuit of the White House. After his first forty-five days of campaigning, the
World
ran a map of the United States showing all of the 172 towns and cities in which he had delivered his 205 speeches. The paper estimated that he had spoken more words on the stump and traveled farther than all presidential contenders put together in the previous 100 years.
4
By the time the ballots were counted Bryan would travel 18,000 miles and talk to as many as five million Americans.
5
World
ran a map of the United States showing all of the 172 towns and cities in which he had delivered his 205 speeches. The paper estimated that he had spoken more words on the stump and traveled farther than all presidential contenders put together in the previous 100 years.
4
By the time the ballots were counted Bryan would travel 18,000 miles and talk to as many as five million Americans.
5
The Republicans harrumphed at Bryan’s lack of dignity, but Americans could not get enough of this handsome young man and his eloquent message of compassion and hope. “It was the first time in my life and in the life of a generation,” remembered William Allen White, “in which any man large enough to lead a national party had boldly and unashamedly made his cause that of the poor and oppressed.”
6
Spontaneous gatherings of supporters and curiosity seekers turned out at all hours at every stop along Bryan’s routes. They listened keenly to his arguments on the currency, on the travails of labor, and on the merits of an income tax. They thrilled at his powerful delivery. They swooned at his wavy chestnut hair and his gallantry—one warm day, he interrupted himself in mid-speech to share his drinking water with women in the front rows of his pressing crowd. As he piled up the miles, his audiences multiplied, and he proved incapable of disappointing them. He would speak as many as thirty times a day. He caught catnaps of twenty minutes to an hour between stops and ate food by the tableload to keep up his strength. After a long talk on a hot afternoon, he would cool off by wiping down with a gin-soaked rag and then venture out to press the flesh. He would drag himself from his bed in the middle of the night and appear on the rear platform of his railcar in his nightshirt to offer an appreciative wave to supporters. Rolling into a station during his morning shave, he would stick his lathered face out the window for a cheerful salute. It might have been undignified by conventional measures, but it moved the people.
6
Spontaneous gatherings of supporters and curiosity seekers turned out at all hours at every stop along Bryan’s routes. They listened keenly to his arguments on the currency, on the travails of labor, and on the merits of an income tax. They thrilled at his powerful delivery. They swooned at his wavy chestnut hair and his gallantry—one warm day, he interrupted himself in mid-speech to share his drinking water with women in the front rows of his pressing crowd. As he piled up the miles, his audiences multiplied, and he proved incapable of disappointing them. He would speak as many as thirty times a day. He caught catnaps of twenty minutes to an hour between stops and ate food by the tableload to keep up his strength. After a long talk on a hot afternoon, he would cool off by wiping down with a gin-soaked rag and then venture out to press the flesh. He would drag himself from his bed in the middle of the night and appear on the rear platform of his railcar in his nightshirt to offer an appreciative wave to supporters. Rolling into a station during his morning shave, he would stick his lathered face out the window for a cheerful salute. It might have been undignified by conventional measures, but it moved the people.
The Democratic press, led by Pulitzer and Hearst, did an effective job of capturing the popular mania for Bryan. The Republican papers didn’t so much describe the phenomenon as deplore it, but all reporters who spent any time with Bryan that summer understood they were witnessing something extraordinary. The
Journal
’s Julian Hawthorne watched in awe as crowds in the Midwest mobbed Bryan’s moving train at risk of life and limb and old men climbed on the joists of railway sheds to get a glimpse of the candidate:
Journal
’s Julian Hawthorne watched in awe as crowds in the Midwest mobbed Bryan’s moving train at risk of life and limb and old men climbed on the joists of railway sheds to get a glimpse of the candidate:
The mass of them were poor people—men in dirty shirts and bad hats . . . rough-handed famers, small storekeepers, day laborers, clerks and their wives, sisters and children. . . . The numbers grew as we passed on, and the stifling night was succeeded by the sweltering day. . . . You could not look in their multitudinous homely faces, pinched, and hardened by laborious days and narrow circumstances, without feeling that they were in earnest, in desperate earnest. They did not know how to express their feelings gracefully and becomingly. . . . All they could do was to grin and laugh excitedly and to utter ever and anon, singly or in concert, that shrill “Hi, hi, hi!” which passes in country districts for a cheer.But you saw the motive power of these abortive demonstrations in their eyes, in the strained, tense look concentrated with painful unanimity on that single figure in the black alpaca sack coat and the grey felt hat who stood on the step of the car bowing and giving both his hands to all who could fight their way through the wedged mass to grasp them. It was a look such as drowning men bend on approaching succor, a pathetic, you might say a terrible look.
7
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