President, he announced himself as a candidate for Congress. He did not say that his friends were urging him to run, or make any false pretence of reluctance to enter the race. He wanted to go to Congress; he believed himself capable of doing good service there for the district and State, and he said so in plain terms. There were a number of aspirants, and McKinley was nominated on the second ballot. His renomination in 1878 followed as a matter of course, and was conceded to him by acclamation, and in 1880 he was agáin nominated without much effort. In 1882 he had to fight for his seat; but he held it till 1890, when he was thrown out by shameless gerrymandering on the part of his opponents.

IN CONGRESS.

وو

McKinley was thirty-four years old when he entered the House in December, 1877. Samuel J. Randall, the great Democratic Protectionist from Philadelphia, was Speaker, and the Republican leader was James A. Garfield. The young man from the eighteenth Ohio district, with the Napoleonic face, the quiet manners, and the grave, preoccupied look, soon attracted attention by the deep interest he showed in all economic questions. The great champion of Protection at that time was William D. Kelly, of Pennsylvania, the oldest member in continuous service, and a living cyclopedia of facts on all subjects relating to tariff, taxation, and industrial conditions. "Pig-iron Kelly he was nicknamed, on account of his persistent advocacy of high duties on iron. McKinley may be said to have sat at the feet of Kelly during his first two terms in Congress. When visiting newspaper men asked the old occupants of the reporters' gallery who that young man was that so strikingly resembled the pictures of Napoleon, the reply was usually, “Oh, that's old Pig-iron Kelly's lieutenant, Major McKinley, of Ohio." The old Philadelphia statesman warmly appreciated this attitude of pupil to master on the part of the serious and studious young member from Ohio, and he more than once said that when he left Congress he hoped that his mantle as the leader of the Protectionists would fall upon McKinley's shoulders. He was a hard student of the history of tax and tariff measures and of their influence on industrial conditions, and his memory became a storehouse of facts that served him as keen weapons in debate. When he was put upon the Ways and Means Committee, at the Session which began in 1881, taking Garfield's old place, his fitness for the work was acknowledged on all hands. During his first term the House heard but little from him, but before the close of his second term he had won a reputation as a singularly clear and logical debater, who had a great talent for marshalling facts in order like a column of troops, and throwing them against the vital point in a controversy. His defeat in 1890 made him Governor of Ohio the next year, and the people of the State rebuked the partisanship that threw out of Congress the most prominent and the most useful of all the Ohio representatives by giving him a substantial majority of about 21,000.

THE CHAMPION OF PROTECTION.

McKinley's first speech in Congress was on the tariff, and his last speech was on the same theme. From the beginning of his public career he has been the unfaltering, sturdy, consistent and intelligent advocate of the principle of protection to American industries by tariff duties imposed with the purpose of keeping the cheap labour products of European and Asiatic countries out of American markets. He is not, as was Garfield, for such protection as will lead to ultimate free trade. He believes

that free trade is a dream of theorists which would bring industrial ruin and poverty to the United States if it were put into practice, benefiting no class but the importing merchants of the seaboard cities. He has no patience with tariffs formed to "afford incidental protection." Tariff bills, he thinks, should aim primarily at protection, and tariff legislation should be scientific and permanent, with a view to the continuous prosperity of the industrial classes. This was the chief aim of the McKinley bill, passed when he was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. No doubt other minds in both House and Senate helped to frame that measure, but McKinley's thought and work were on every page of it. When the Republican party was defeated in 1892, largely through public misapprehension of that measure and before it had received a fair trial, McKinley was one of the few Republican leaders who continued to breast the adverse current and who never faltered a moment in the faith that the tide would set back to protection. Others wanted to change front and abandon the high protection principle. He refused and proceeded to realign his party on the old line of battle. He set out to educate public sentiment anew, and during his memorable stumping tour of 1894 he made three hundred and sixty-seven speeches and spoke in the states of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio. For eight weeks he averaged seven speeches a day, ranging in length from ten minutes to an hour.

THE GENESIS OF HIS ENTHUSIASM.

To understand the strength and sincerity of McKinley's convictions on the tariff question one must be somewhat familiar with his environment in Ohio. The portion of the state in which he lives has become a great hive of shop and factory industries during his lifetime. Cleveland, the city of the region, had perhaps 100,000 people when Major McKinley was first elected to Congress in 1876, and has now 325,000, and all its growth in these past twenty years has come from the development of iron, steel, and allied industries. Nor was it alone in the towns of Ohio that McKinley thought he saw the manifest benefits of protective legislation. His home county of Stark is one of the richest and handsomest farming districts in the United States. The rolling landscape presents views of agricultural prosperity which recall the Midland counties of England. The farmsteads, flanked by apple orchards and grain fields and pastures, peer out upon the well-kept highways through screens of cherry trees, maples and lilac bushes, and the big red barns speak of good care for stock and of abundant harvests. The prosperity of this large rural population and this almost ideal condition of farm life is due to the fact that there is a market in the many manufacturing towns for everything the farmer has to sell, whether it be currants or cattle, pigs or poultry, apples or asparagus. If Stark county depended solely on raising wheat to ship to Europe and cattle to feed eastern cities, it could not possibly present its present aspect of a dense rural population living in a condition of prosperity that to a European peasant would seem to be opulence. Major McKinley has had before him this cheery spectacle of rural progress and comfort beside that of the growth of the towns ever since he hung up his sword and opened his law books. If he had not been gifted with a mind prone to original thought and research he would have absorbed his tariff views from his environment.

A GREAT CAMPAIGNER.

Ohio has produced two of the three greatest political campaigners of my day-James A. Garfield and William McKinley. I need hardly say that the third was James G. Blaine, of Maine. The chief qualities that go to the making of a really great stump orator are simplicity and directness of statement, a clear, far-reaching voice, a winning personality, an inborn faculty for giving to spoken thoughts such a projectile force as will secure for them a lodgment in other minds, and finally, physical endurance. All these qualifications McKinley possesses to a high degree. He has not as wide a range of thought and illustration as Garfield had, and he is not as magnetic and as spontaneous as Blaine was; but neither of those two superb orators had as great a gift for going straight to the understandings of plain people as he possesses. He never tells a story in his speeches; he is the personification of seriousness and earnestness. He quotes no poetry, he strives for no merely oratorical effects; he never abuses his political antagonists or the opposition party. He always starts out to convince the understanding of his hearers; then, when he has presented his facts and set forth his processes of reasoning, quietly, logically and persuasively, he warms up, his deep-set eyes glow, his form seems to tower, his voice rings out like a trumpet, and he drives in his argument with sledge-hammer blows of short, sonorous, epigrammatic sentences. He has wonderful staying qualities. He is never exhausted. To every fresh audience he brings the charm of a vigorous presence. During his great stumping tour in 1894, which unquestionably won for him the presidential nomination, more than two millions of people in eighteen states heard his voice. Once he made seventeen speeches in twenty-four hours. At Hutchinson, Kansas, thirty thousand people assembled to hear him, and in Topeka his audience was estimated at twenty-five thousand.

GOVERNOR OF OHIO.

Major McKinley was twice nominated for Governor of Ohio by acclamation and twice elected, the second time by the phenomenal majority of 80,995-a majority that was the most thorough popular endorsement possible of his first administration. The Governorship of Ohio is an office of more dignity than real power.

Governor McKinley's messages to the legislature were a surprise to political opponents who regarded him as a one-idea statesman. They showed an intimate acquaintance with the affairs of the State, and a broad comprehension of all matters affecting public interests. He discussed the problems of taxation, and the very serious problems of municipal government; he urged the building of good roads, opposed the careless authorisation of local indebtedness that had become an evil; he favoured short sessions and little legislation; he advocated laws for the protection of working, men engaged in hazardous occupations, and he was a notable champion of the principle of arbitration for the settlement of disputes between employers and employees. It was largely through his influence that a state Board of Arbitration was established, and that the great coal miners' strike in the Hocking Valley and in the Massillon region was brought to an end. Ohio history will rank McKinley among the really eminent governors of the Buckeye state-with Vinton, Meigs, Chase, Brough, Dennison, and Hayes.

PERSONAL TRAITS.

William McKinley is a stockily-built man of medium stature. His body is long above the hips, and this pecu

liarity makes him look to be much taller when he is sitting down than he really is. His frame is muscular, and he must The have had great physical strength as a young man. head would be called massive, and an unusually large part of it is in front of the ears. The upper lip is noticeably broad, the chin is large and firm, the nose of good size and symmetrical shape, the forehead wide and high, and the eyes are large and of a dark grey colour. They are shaded by projecting brows and at night they appear to be almost black. The hair is thin and straight and is just beginning to turn grey. The habitual expression of the face is one of gravity and kindness. His manners are very cordial and they do not seem to have been cultivated for political popularity, for you will note many little acts of kindness and attention that are not called for by ordinary politeness. He is as amiable with secretaries, stenographers and servants as with senators and governors. He accompanies his visitors to the hall door and cautions them about the steps, on which an electric street lamp throws a mass of shadow from the foliage. He is not in the least effusive-on the contrary, his habitual attitude in conversation is one of reserve-but the friendliness of his manner impresses you as genuine. He usually dresses in black and wears a frock coat buttoned up, with either the tricoloured rosette of the Loyal Legion or the copper button of the Grand Army in the upper button-hole. This and a very old-fashioned plain gold shirt-stud and his wedding-ring are his only ornaments. His house is neatly furnished in the manner of village homes, and there is nothing noticeable in its interior except the library, which is stocked with books on history, biography, politics and economic science, and displays on its walls some good engravings and photos of statesmen and war heroes.

HIS RECREATION AND HIS RELIGION.

McKinley's tastes are all simple and his habits of living have not been much changed since he was a young attorney. He eats heartily of plain food, has a good digestion, sleeps well, and takes very little exercise. His daily walk to his mother's house, which is about half a mile from his own, is about all the muscular activity he gets. He does not make use of wine or liquors, although he is not a prohibitionist, and he has no desire to enforce his own habits in this respect on other people. He smokes four cigars a day, having lately prescribed this limit, finding he has been smoking too much. His social recreations consist in going out with his wife to some neighbour's house to take tea and spend the evening, but a great many people come to see him, and his house has always an inviting atmosphere of informality and friendliness encouraging to men and women to drop in for a chat with the Major and his wife. Every Sunday he goes to the Methodist church, which is the handsomest church edifice in Canton. There he has his membership and his pew, and he is one of the sturdy pillars of the denomination. At the same time there is nothing of the bigot or the religious controversialist in him. He never discusses religion with the people of other faiths. He has his own belief and he is entirely willing that they should have theirs. He owns property which would be worth in good times about fifty thousand dollars. It is all in Canton, and most of it is in the form of a business block. His failure in 1893 grew out of his endorsement of paper for a friend who ran a little bank in Poland. All of his property and all of his wife's property was then put into the hands of three trustees, and they managed matters so as to pay off the debts and save all the real estate holdings of the McKinleys in Canton. It is said

that the Major derives from his rents an income of between three and four thousand dollars a year. The wise prayer, "Lord, send me neither riches nor poverty," seems to have been answered in his case.

The Major, as all his friends call him, is a fluent and interesting conversationalist. His voice is of an agreeable pitch and well modulated. His favourite topics are national history, the characters and influence of famous statesmen of the past, recollections of many prominent Americans of the present generation with whom he has come into personal associations, incidents of the Civil War, and memories of early times and early friends in Ohio. His range of reading is not wide, and does not go much into the fields of pure literature. His chief tendencies are to history, biography and political economy. He reads the leading magazines and half-a-dozen daily papers. His favourite New York daily is the Tribune, copies of the weekly edition of which he used to put into the subscribers' boxes in Poland when he was a clerk

in the post-office forty years ago. Occasionally, when on a journey, he reads a popular novel.

NO SHADOWS IN THE PICTURE.

If there were any dark spots that rightly belonged in a truthful picture of a unique personality that is filling a large space in the American public mind just now, I should not hesitate to put them in. I confess that I cannot find any. All the Canton neighbours of Major McKinley speak of him in terms of praise as a good citizen, a good son, an ideal husband, a faithful friend,

and an honest and capable man of affairs. Democrats, Populists and Republicans agree in saying that there are no blemishes on his record.

WHAT KIND OF PRESIDENT?

pure

We may expect from him a conservative, administration. I believe that it will be turdily American in its policy, for McKinley comes from our great mid-continental plain, and is not, like many men who live upon the Atlantic rim of the country, largely influenced by European thought and example. Its dominant ideas will be protection and sound money. McKinley will unquestionably use the influence of his position to restore to our tariff statutes the principle of ample, scientific, and symmetrical protective duties. He will oppose all efforts to detach the money of the country from the present standard in use by all the great civilised, commercial nations of the world, whether by the issue of irredeemable paper, or by giving to an unlimited quantity of silver a legislative fiat value greater than its actual value as a metal. He will not, I am confident, aim to make a one-man power of the administration. He will be a harmoniser for his party, for he has none of the domineering temper and stubborn egotism that breed political strife and create personal antagonisms. Among the early Presi dents his prototype will be Madison, and he will most resemble Hayes among our later Presidents. He comes from the great, sturdy, independent, moral and earnest American middle-class that forms the solid basis of our whole political and social fabric.

T has been well said that the nomination of Mr. Bryan,

I Democratic candidate for the American Presidency,

is a signal illustration of the political value of knowing how to use a metaphor. Mr. Bryan's nomination was due to his speech, and the success of his speech culminated in the metaphor about the Crown of Thorns and the Cross of Gold. The selection of so young a man, for he is only thirty-six-and no one is eligible as President until he is thirty-five-has been one of the sensational surprises of American politics. His youth, however, is likely to count heavily in his favour. Should he succeed, it will seem to bring the Presidential Chair ten years nearer to every boy in the Union; it will also give quite a dangerous stimulus to the popular regard for mere oratory. Mr. Bryan's nomination is the greatest tribute which has been paid of late years to what the Scotch describe as "the gift o' the gab." Mr. Bryan has got that gift in exceeding measure.

THE LAW OF ANTITHESIS.

Parties are often moved by the law of antithesis, if I may so call it, and as the Republicans selected a man whose speech was plain, practical, business - like, pruned of all oratorical flights, divested of all purple patches, and unadorned by a single metaphor, it is perhaps natural that the other great party should have chosen as its representative a man who is in all things exactly the reverse. Mr. Bryan spreadeagles all the time. His speeches are all in the vein of the favourite recita

tions in the elocution books. His enemies describe them as "blatherskite," and his friends declare they revive memories of the golden days of Ciceronian eloquence; but both agree in believing that it is the silver tongue of the silver knight that alone secured his nomination as Democratic candidate.

ORATOR AT TWELVE.

According to Dr. William Hill of Bloomington, the physician who assisted in bringing Bryan into the world at New Salem, Illinois, March 19, 1860, he was a remarkable child from his youth up. He could read and write long before he was six, and when a mere boy he used to stand up before his mates at school and in the street and pour forth eloquent harangues. When he reached his twelfth year his father took him to a great Democratic meeting in Centralia, Illinois, to hear addresses from the most distinguished men in the State, and the boy mounted the platform. The thousands present watched him with amazement not unmixed at first with derision. But, says Dr. Hill :

He had proceeded but a short time when the audience had become spellbound under the sway of his eloquence. Soon a ripple of applause greeted the speaker. Then the audience, catching up the enthusiasm of the young speaker, became tumultuous, and he could scarcely proceed because of the deafening cheers which greeted every sentence. When he closed there was a tremendous outburst of enthusiasm similar to that which marked his final words on the floor of the Chicago convention. It was a great triumph for the boy

orator, and he was surrounded by those present and carried away on the shoulders of men. The whole country around Centralia was electrified, and young Bryan was made one of the chief attractions during that campaign.

ELOCUTION AS A LOVE-MAKER.

When he went to college he kept up his habit of public speech, and carried off prizes in the debate contests which are a familiar feature in college life in the States. In this respect he resembled his wife, whose attention he first attracted by his elocutionary skill. One of the newspapers, speaking of his oratorical triumph at Chicago, said:

It was that same eloquence that had stampeded her love to Mr. Bryan in earlier years when she was Mary Baird, a blushing schoolgirl at Perry, Ill. At a country schoolhouse in those days she listened to his recitation one Friday afternoon when the "Soldier of the Legion" was enjoying the early stages of its popularity in provincial oratory. The foundation of a pretty romance was laid.

For she also took prizes as a collegiate debater, and was the valedictarian of her graduating class at the Jacksonville Seminary. She was educated in the same college that gave her husband his degree, and it was there they met.

HIS EARLY CAREER.

Mr. Bryan was admitted a member of the Presbyterian Church when fourteen, when fifteen he entered Whipple Academy at Jacksonville, and at seventeen entered Illinois College, where he completed a classical course and graduated with the highest honours in 1881. At Chicago he attended the Union College of Law for two years, and studied in the office of Judge Lyman Trumball. In 1883 he entered the office of Brown, Kirby and Russell, at Jacksonville, where he won golden opinions from his employers; he was bright,

loving, and industrious, and remarkable for his devotion to his blind father-in-law, with whom he used to walk to church every Sunday. In 1888 he removed to Nebraska, and became member of the firm of Talbot and Bryan. He had married his wife shortly before leaving Jacksonville, but she was admitted to the Bar very shortly after their arrival at Nebraska. It is said that she is counted as about as good a lawyer as her husband, and has helped him out more than once. It was in 1888 that he first made his mark in politics.

HIS DÉBUT IN POLITICS.

Speaking at Omaha at the Democratic State Convention, who were there to choose delegates for the National Convention at St. Louis, he made a speech on the tariff which brought the audience to its feet and gave him a reputation for oratory which foreshadowed that which he has now attained. Next year, in 1889, he declined the nomination for Lieutenant-Governor, but in 1890 he was elected to Congress after a hard campaign, in which he converted a Republican majority of 3,000 into a Democratic majority of 6,700. No sooner had he entered Congress than he achieved a sudden and unexpected success by his speech upon wool, which placed him at once in the front rank of American orators. So great and dazzling was his success that many predicted that he would never make another speech of equal merit; but his discourse on free silver was admitted to have equalled the effect of that on free wool, although he slightly spoiled the effect by declaring his willingness to die for the cause, at which his audience tittered.

HIS DEMOSTHENIC DECLAMATION.

It is said on one occasion when he was speaking in Congress under the one hour rule, it was moved and carried that Mr. Bryan should have another hour, and

again a third hour was given to him, with the result that at the end of the three hours the galleries were still crowded with an enthusiastic audience. So great and so sudden was his success that he was placed on the Committee of Ways and Means by Speaker Crisp. Although he speaks with marvellous ease, his speeches are very carefully prepared. When he was in Congress, it was stated then he never delivered a speech that he did not first rehearse in the open air. In the early morning he used to go into the woods and go over and over his speeches with no audience but the trees and birds, until he knew that every word would have the desired effect. The result is that some passages from his orations are regarded as gems by the elocutionists, and are being used as declamations by boys in schools throughout the Union.

ON THE STUMP AND IN THE GALLERY.

In 1894 he refused to be nominated for Congress as he wished to stand for the Senate, but the Republicans carried the Legislature of Nebraska in that year, and Mr. Bryan was not sent to Washington. He then became editor of the Omaha World's Herald, but he was not so successful in the sanctum as on the platform. He lectured throughout the country cn Free Silver, though he never succeeded in making much money. Indeed it is stated that only a few weeks before his nomination as Democratic candidate at Chicago he occupied a seat as an ordinary newspaper reporter in the press gallery of the St. Louis Convention which nominated Mr. McKinley. At St. Louis he represented a syndicate of silver papers, and wrote out his copy day by day and sent it off like the rest of the crowd, who little dreamed that their obliging and industrious colleague was destined so soon to figure as the hero of the rival convention.

NOMINATED FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

When the Democratic convention met at Chicago, Bryan was recognised as a candidate who might be in the running, but Bland was a long way first favourite, and no one knew how the voting might go. He was nominated by a representative of Georgia, seconded by a delegate from South Carolina, and supported by a Massachusetts delegate.

WHY HE WAS SELECTED AS CANDIDATE.

Nothing, however, that was said for Mr. Bryan told as a feather weight in the scale compared with what he said for himself. By universal consent, it was his speech which secured his nomination. It is said that he narrowly escaped being crowded out of any opportunity to speak. Tillman, from North Carolina, wished to monopolise the time to an extent which would have left it impossible for Bryan to be heard. As it was, he was the last speaker on the silver side, and the crowded Coliseum, which held from sixteen thousand to twenty thousand people, had been thrown out of tune by the rancorous speech of Mr. Tillman and the failure of preceding speakers to make themselves heard. When Bryan rose to speak, the opportunity of a lifetime arrived, and he made the most of it.

HIS PERSONAL PRESENCE.

Congressman Clark, writing of Mr. Bryan, says :Some men are so ugly and ungainly that it is a positive advantage to them as public speakers. Some are so handsome and graceful that they are on good terms with the audience before they open their lips. Of the latter class Bryan is a shining example. His appearance is a passport to the affections of his fellow men which all can read. He is the picture of health, mental, moral, and physical. He stands about 5 feet 10, weighs about 170, is a pronounced brunette, has

a massive head, a clean-shaven face, an aquiline nose, large under-jaw, square chin, a broad chest, large lustrous dark eyes, a mouth extending almost from ear to ear, teeth white as pearls, and hair-what there is left of it-black as midnight. Beneath his eyes is the protuberant flesh which physiognomists tell us is indicative of fluency of language, and which was one of the most striking features in the face of James G. Blaine.

HIS VOICE AND MANNER.

Bryan neglects none of the accessories of oratory. Nature richly endowed him with rare grace. He is happy in attitude and pose. His gestures are on Hogarth's line of beauty. Mellifluous is the one word that most aptly describes his voice. It is strong enough to be heard by thousands. It is sweet enough to charm those the least inclined to music. It is so modulated as not to vex the ear with monotony, and can be stern and pathetic, fierce or gentle, serious or humorous, with the varying emotions of its master.

When he faced this immense audience, they felt themselves for the first time that day in the presence of a man whose lightest whisper was audible throughout the whole building. His personal appearance was attractive and impressive.

HIS SPEECH.

As the speech which he then delivered stands notable among all the speeches of those latter days for the effect which it produced, I think it well to reproduce the full report, including the descriptions with which the reporter of the Chicago Times-Herald accompanied his report. It will be useful for reference, and will enable the reader to understand better than anything else exactly what kind of man Mr. Bryan is :

There was some applause when Mr. Bryan took the platform, but it did not equal in fervour the reception accorded Senator Hill. Senator Hill was given a storm of applause before he spoke; Bryan a cyclone of enthusiasm when he had concluded. The audience had not yet got the taste of Tillman out of its mouth and regarded the Nebraska orator with some suspicion. It must be understood that the great majority of the audience secured admission at the hands of the gold standard minority and was not in consonance with the sentiments uttered by Mr. Bryan. This makes his triumph all the more complete. When quiet had been restored by the chairman, Mr. Bryan epoke as follows: "Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention: I would be presumptuous indeed to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were but a measuring of ability, but this is not a contest among persons. The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armour of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the whole hosts of error that they can bring. I come to speak to you in defence of a cause as holy as the cause of libertythe cause of humanity (loud applause). When this debate is concluded a motion will be made to lay upon the table the resolution offered in commendation of the administration and also the resolution in condemnation of the administration. I shall object to bringing this question down to a level of persons. The individual is but an atom; he is born, he acts, he dies, but principles are eternal, and this has been a contest of principle.

NEVER SUCH A CONTEST.

"Never before in the history of this country has there been witnessed such a contest as that through which we have passed. Never before in the history of American politics has a great issue been fought out, as this issue has been, by the voters themselves.

66

On March 4, 1895, a few Democrats, most of them members of Congress, issued an address to the Democrats of the nation, asserting that the money question was the paramount issue of the hour; asserting also the right of a majority of the Dem cratic Party to control the position of the party on this paramount issue, concluding with the request that all believers in free coinage of silver in the Democratic Party should organise and take charge of and control the policy of the Democratic