William McKinley

B

1

Entrance into Politics

In 1869 McKinley was elected prosecuting attorney of Stark County. He also became active in the Republican Party. In 1876, the year of Hayes’s election to the presidency, McKinley was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

C

United States Congressman

McKinley served in the Congress of the United States from 1877 to 1891 with the exception of one term. In 1882 the boundaries of his congressional district were changed to prevent him from being reelected, but he won reelection two years later (see Gerrymander). As a congressman he was known as a powerful speaker and a hardworking but very conservative legislator.

C

1

McKinley Tariff

In Congress, McKinley became the foremost supporter of a high tax on imports, called the tariff. Tariffs on imports were intended to raise money for the government and to protect U.S. businesses from foreign competition by increasing the cost of importing those goods. Industries in Northern urban areas and banking interests tended to favor high tariffs because they helped domestic businesses; agricultural areas in the West and the South tended to oppose them because they made it harder for people to buy cheap foreign goods such as clothing. McKinley said his belief in a laissez-faire economic system, in which government did not interfere with business, did not deter him from demanding high tariffs to protect American industry from foreign competition. In 1890 he wrote the tariff act that bears his name. The McKinley Tariff imposed the highest tariffs that the United States had ever placed on imports.

C

2

Bimetallism

McKinley took a more moderate stand on the other pressing issue of the day, the demand by Western factions for the unlimited coinage of silver, a position called bimetallism. Western farmers wanted the government to issue more silver dollars, which would raise the prices for their crops; a larger money supply would also decrease the value of a dollar and enable farmers to repay their debts with less valuable money. Large banks and industries, located mostly in the East, wanted to maintain the gold standard, a monetary system in which paper money may be converted, on demand, into gold at a rate fixed by law. This would limit the supply of money, protect creditors, increase the value of their loans, and keep prices high.

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The Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which pledged the government to issue more silver coins, was a compromise between silver advocates and supporters of the gold standard. McKinley voted for it in exchange for support for his tariff bill. His vote angered Eastern bankers and industrialists but helped lessen Western opposition to his stand on the tariff.

D

Governor of Ohio

Because he was a champion of protective tariffs, as well as an extremely popular politician, McKinley attracted the attention of a Cleveland industrialist, Marcus Alonzo Hanna. Hanna was eager to be the maker of a president and to be the man who exercised power behind the scenes. In 1890, as a result of popular reaction against his tariff and of another Democratic redistricting, McKinley lost his congressional seat. With Hanna’s help, McKinley was elected governor of Ohio in 1891 and reelected in 1893.

As governor, McKinley improved Ohio’s roads and public departments and established an arbitration board to settle labor disputes. He showed some sympathy to workers by carefully avoiding the use of force in breaking a labor strike.

McKinley also had the opportunity to speak out on national issues, and at the Republican National Convention of 1892, Hanna made a brief attempt to win the presidential nomination for him. But when the cause became hopeless, Hanna and McKinley threw their support to the moderate Republican president, Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893), who was seeking a second term.

McKinley’s political career was almost ruined in 1893 when a friend, whose bank notes he had endorsed, went bankrupt and left McKinley responsible for his debt of $130,000. McKinley was saved from ruin only when Hanna and his wealthy friends and associates agreed to repay the debt. As a reflection of the esteem in which he was held, McKinley also received many donations from the public, all of which he returned.

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