Mark Hanna

College threw him out for handing round joke programs at a solemn ceremony. Mark Hanna was born in New Lisbon, Ohio in 1837 into a Quaker merchant family that moved to Cleveland, where he sat in the same high school class as John D. Rockefeller before Western Reserve College dismissed him. When the Civil War came he hired a substitute to serve in his place, then took a commission in a National Guard regiment that saw no fighting — he was away escorting a dead soldier's body home when it was posted to the Washington forts. In 1864 he married Charlotte Rhodes over her Democratic father's objections, joined the family coal and iron firm, and was a millionaire before he turned 40.

Politics as a logistics problem: that was the contribution. Hanna took over William McKinley's 1896 campaign as chairman of the Republican National Committee and raised something over 3.5 million dollars, roughly double what the party had spent in 1888, by assessing banks and corporations a flat quarter of one percent of their assets. Standard Oil alone gave 250,000. The money paid for a centralized national organization and for the trainloads of delegations routed onto McKinley's front porch in Canton, their leaders briefed in advance so the speeches matched the campaign's themes. William Jennings Bryan toured the country by rail. McKinley stayed home and won. Hanna took a Senate seat from Ohio in 1897 and used his last full year in it to swing the isthmian canal route from Nicaragua to Panama.

The man Homer Davenport drew in a suit of dollar signs, one foot on a skull labeled Labor, spent much of his life arguing that unions had a right to exist. Hanna became the first president of the National Civic Federation, which pressed employers to bargain instead of breaking strikes and pressed businessmen to accept some regulation. Accused in 1897 of grinding his own workers, he told a crowd to go ask any of the 5,000 men he employed whether he had ever paid below the going wage or asked one of them if he carried a union card. The unions confirmed it. The caricature held anyway, helped by a line he probably never wrote — no man in public office owes the public anything — which his own biographers doubted and later writers quoted as fact.

He had seen it coming. At the 1900 convention, unable to stop the party putting Theodore Roosevelt on the ticket, Hanna demanded to know whether anyone realized there was only one life between that madman and the presidency. Fourteen months later McKinley was dead. Hanna died of typhoid fever in Washington on February 15, 1904, eight days before the Senate ratified his Panama treaty, and was buried at Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland, where he had once arranged Garfield's interment. His name turned into a job description. Reporters reached for it whenever Karl Rove ran a campaign for George W. Bush, usually for the cartoon rather than the man. Rove, who had studied the period, thought Hanna's influence was overstated.

Mark Hanna's life against the full span of the corpus.

• M.A. Hanna and Company company
  The Rhodes coal and iron firm he entered by marriage and eventually ran 1867
• The 1896 McKinley campaign other
  Central fundraising, corporate assessments and message discipline — the template for the modern presidential campaign 1896
• National Civic Federation company
  He was its first president, pushing business and labor to bargain rather than fight 1900
• The Panama canal route law
  His Senate campaign for Panama over Nicaragua, argued with maps of Nicaraguan volcanoes 1902

• September 24, 1837 aged 0 Born in New Lisbon, Ohio, to a Quaker merchant family
• September 27, 1864 aged 27 Marries Charlotte Rhodes and enters her father's coal and iron business Daniel Rhodes, a Democrat, had opposed the match on political grounds.
• 1876 aged ~39 Watches a young lawyer named William McKinley defend striking coal miners and win The acquittals began a partnership that lasted 25 years.
• 1893 aged ~56 Organizes the rescue of McKinley's personal finances The governor had guaranteed a friend's notes and owed more than 100,000 dollars. Hanna's subscribers bought them up.
• November 3, 1896 aged 59 McKinley beats Bryan after the best-financed campaign ever run Hanna had raised over 3.5 million dollars as chairman of the Republican National Committee.
• February 21, 1897 aged 59 Appointed to the Senate seat John Sherman vacated for the State Department
• January 1898 aged 60 Narrowly elected to a full Senate term amid charges of bribery Anti-Hanna Republicans joined Democrats behind the mayor of Cleveland. Both sides were accused of buying legislators.
• June 1902 aged 64 Argues the Senate into the Panama route for the canal
• February 15, 1904 aged 66 Dies of typhoid fever in Washington at 66 Colleagues had been waiting for news in the lobby of the Arlington Hotel for days.

• William McKinley 1843–1901
  Twenty-fifth president who led the Spanish-American War and overseas expansion before being assassinated. elected
• John D. Rockefeller 1839–1937
  Established the Rockefeller Foundation and funded medical research, education, and public health initiatives. high school classmate and donor
• William Randolph Hearst 1863–1951
  Publisher whose sensational newspapers and national media empire wielded immense cultural and political power. attacked by
• Samuel Gompers 1850–1924
  Founding leader of the American Federation of Labor who established durable craft-union organization. faced across the National Civic Federation
• J. P. Morgan 1837–1913
  Banking titan who stabilized the economy during the Panic of 1907 and shaped modern finance. solicited