The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 12, 1901, Page 3

lived with you for these many years.” Then they both laughed gayly, and “Good for you, mother,” shouted Wil- liam Jr., as he ran to kiss her. It is perhaps the impression of most people who take no interest in politics—of whom there are unfortunately far too meny—that the devotion of President Mc- Kinley to the tariff was a matter of com- puratively recent date; that it was taken up by him as any successful politician 9/ who casts about for a popular wave on which to ride This is as far from the truth as anything can be. Probably it has seldom before been realized and perhaps never before written that the father of the President was one of the first men in America to see the necessity for a tariff and he saw & deeper reason for it than the mere profit of the day which came to the protected manufacturer. It was for this reason Andrew Rose, above mentioned as grandfather of Wil- jam Sr., had the danger that threatened America during the War of the Revolution, when the British soldiers came over, armed with plenty of good hard metal guns and the poor continental forces, who had nearly all been farmers, and had not gone into iron working, were forced to fight with such primitive guns v had for killing birds and game. In order to adapt their arms for warfare to have swords and There were no foundries ir the country and but the primitive forges for farm blacksmithing. The only iron was in the shape of useful agri seen it was necessary bavcnets. 1tural tmplements. Tkese were painfu worked by the aid of ements of defense. The be seen to this day in digging over the old battlegroun: The American weapons can be told from the old and rust-eaten as they are, lab-riously 2l fires into result is to revolutionary he reason that being only made of they are The handi- oft iron instead of good steel most invariably bent and injured soldiers were not only American on, but capped then 3 3 ery one knows what by #ts feriority. of iron been greater. the; would have had to ron gave out. object lesson before him, Sr., with strong patriotism, saw most clearly that the In- dependence of the United States ly be maintained by keep! this am McKinley his could g the coun- ¥ in a condition to supply itself with ms. ing the time that he was manufac- iron at New Wilmington, Pa., Eng- nd began a determined effort to under- mine the iron industry of America by de- livering English iron at Pittsburg for $1 per ton less than the Pennsylvania foun- dries could produce it in their own fur- There was a clear object lesson in favor said “Buy the all too fresh in v's mind was the story which his of the people who in cheapest market.” Mc! grandfather had told him of the troubles when the homes of Americans were being burned and lack of iron to defend them. riddled with bullets for the “Better pay a dollar a ton more, or $10 a ton more,” said he, “in time of peace and preserve the peace than to save the dollar and be vanquished in a hopeless war that is sure to be forced upon the un- prepared.” All his life long the senior McKinley t for this principle. that the éfforts of himself and of those ling men of his time put the United States in a position that made it invin- The result was cible; gave it & start that has sent it fly- ing ahead, until now those same Pennsyl- ilding iron bridges for the British colonies; invading Great Brit- itself and there slowly stifling the smoke of the foundries that once nearly ’ country its national existence. vania towns are b tain cost t t was in this atmosphere of tariff, not for revenue, not for protection of trade only, but for protection of the very lives of the people and the Integrity of the Gov- t itself, that William McKinley Sr. raised his ernm family. What could be more apparent to them than that the folly of buying cheap iron during the summer of prosperity was like the policy of the grasshopper who sang through the summer. In the winter of war's frowning clpuds the busy ant would say “Go dance.” The iron smelters of those days had no such convenlences ac are now known, and much of the work, most of it in fact, was done by main strength of manual labor. In all of the processes which were used in getting metallic iron from the ore William McKinley was a leader in advanced meth- In those carly days it was not even could be “Stone coa ods. supposed that coal used for smelting purposes. it was called then by Mr. McKinley as opposed to the charcoal which he used in his furnaces. The ore of Pennsylvania was of a low grade, containing but 30 per cent of and dross. The loss in heating and fusing this use- less mass of sand and rock greatly re- duced the profit. To overcome this Mr. McKinley became interested in the first company which ever developed the rich iron ores of Michigan, which are now supplying half of the metal of the world. fron and 70 per cent of s He was a pioneer in that Mdrs. Tlliam NcRinley, Mother OF the President. e line, but like all pioneers he was lacking in experience and was working fqr the berefit of others who came after him. The ores of Michigan were at that time too rich and thick with iron to be worked by themselves. and they would clog the furnaces with masses which would adhere together, exclude the intermixer fuel and so gradually cocl and form great ingots in the furnace which could not be got rid of except by rebuilding. A new furnace was started on a canal in Ohio which connected with the interior river system, and also with the lake. To this place were brought the too low grade ores of Pennsylvania and the too high grade ores of Michigan and all about was the forest to yield charcoal for the smelting of them. The result was a success until the for- ests began to give out and then again the McKinley inventiveness was called in- to action and he found that by burning the stone coal in the same way that wood was burned ' the resulting carbon, now known as coke, was a perfect sub- stitute for the wood charcoal. Stll the prejudices of the iren buyers could not be entirely overcome and so for that pur- pose it was always necessary to mix char- coal with the coke, that it might still have some of the virtues of charcoal iron. Thus it was that William McKinley the younger imbibed his tariff ideas along with his patriotism and his politics, from the same source; the source from which all good boys and strong men get their politics—from his father. A protective tariff to him was far more than a political theory or a commercial necessity. It was the protection which the family as a unit needed against the outside hungry, aggressive world across the water. There is enough of evidence in the fact of McKinley's pertinacious fight for the tariff, when all the rest of the Republican party wished to give it up, to show that it must have been born in him. And not only that, but what was born in the bone was strengthened in the gbringing up. There were short rations the McKin- ley family when their furngees had to sell iron for a dollar a ton less than it cost them to make it in order to meet English competition and not forever lose their trade. It was a patriotic duty that main- tained them in a sometimes apparently hopeless contest. It was this early life acquaintance with the facts, which the tariff framer formed, that has always enabled him to invest such an apparently dry subject with the interest which he knows how to throw into it. Around the home of Willlam McKinley there was always a mixture of three in- dustries, for they were in the midst of the great farming and coal belt as well as the smelting. The father was a man who could not only work and plan, but he was a logician and kept his wits sharpened by continual reading of the heavy authors of past centurles. _There were tariff arguments then as now, and, of course, much more acrimo- nious, as less was known by both parties. The farmers who surrounded the mining and manufacturing towns closely on every side could not as a rule easily be brought to see why it was that they should be made to pay more for their tools than those same tools could be bought for abrcad. It was true, they noticed that when the tariff was reduced and the mines and furnaces closed down, that there was no chance for them to sell their garden truck, even if they could buy the hoes with which to cultivate it for a few cents less each. The miners, too, thought more of being able to get cheap tools when they worked than to be always sure of having work. As sons of the iron founder, the young McKinleys were always being twitted by their comrades whose fathers were in agricultural or mining occupations. The result was that all of the boys were con- tinually in the midst of a tariff war, which was a valuable training for them. To a boy his father Is always right, and in their defense of their father they were priming themselves for the future defense of their nation in which all of the sons of ‘William McKinley Sr. have joined with their strength whenever has arisen the question of protectton to American Ingus- tries. Then, as now, the tariff rates had their ebbs and flows. There were high tariff times and low tariff times, and with each change the young McKinleys got an ob- ject lesson. High tariff the household and low tariff there were hard times and privations of all kinds. More work and less money to show for it. In time the family moved to Poland, and later on to Canton. The life in Po- land was important as coming in the years when young Willlam was growing and developing, There, as well as in the other towns, the family made a deep impression upon the people of the town. Mr. Porter says in his volume: ““One who knew Mrs. McKinlev In the old days at Poland speaks of her quiet dignity of manner, of her never-failing watchfulness of the young family and of her influence for good. It was a family full of sunshine and hope, of self-sacrifice on the part of both father and mother and of filial devotion on the part of the children. It represented a pure American home where sound religion and love of was prosperous country 'were Inculcated from childhood. It was typical of those homes which turn out the best and most useful citizens of the republic. Hear what this friend says: “Many of McKinley’s good . qualities, both of heart and mind, were due to his mother. I recall her quiet dignity of man- ner. She was just the same in the midst of commonplace duties as in a palace if she had been relgning there. All her old friends and neighbors of Poland who speak of her agree to this. Her charac- ter, for all that is commendable in a woman'’s sphere, stands pre-eminent here In church and in the hearts of her friends —she had that blending of sweetness and Strength Of WIN ana pmTre=e that nas been a rich inheritance to her childrer.” She was the most sociable woman that ever lived. At her home of late years, the one in Canton, she never took a dinner without at least one guest at table, and often there were as many as the table could by its biggest stretch accommodate. She never gave up making calls her- self. Every afternoon after the old-fash- foned noon dinner she would take a rap —fifteen minutes it always lasted, as pre- cisely as if there were some brain clock to announce the time. Then she arose as fresh and bright as a girl, put on her best bib and tucker and went out to make calls. Nothing but a storm or trouble at home ever Kept her from this hour or two with her friends. This devotion to her friends lasted Mrs. McKinley to the last year of her life, dur- ing which it was the pleasure of Mr. Jos- eph S. Spear Jr. and his wife, who are old friends of the McKinleys, to meet her and spend many pleasant days at the Canton home of the then President-elect, where his mother was staying. Mr. Spear tells of his charming visit to the illustrious old lady as follows: “We had been staying at the home of Mr. Mark Hanna, and he had suggested 2 run down to the McKinleys’. “Having always lived in the one-ralled land of the Southern Pasific, I had forgot- ten that there could be more than one rali- road in a town, and so had not thought of asking which depot when Mr. Hanna said in the morning, ‘I have to go down early, and will meet you at the depot.’ “The result was that I landed up at an- other depot, took another train, and got into Canton half an hour after the rest of them. The President himself had driven down In his thoughtful, informal way to meet me. Arrived at the house, we met among others there Mr. Edison, the uncle of the Wizard of Menlo Park. Mr. Me- Kinley’s mother, herself took us for a drive in the family carryall. She sat in the rear seat with Mrs. Spear and direct- ed us where to drive, while Mr. Edison and myself sat on the front seat. “Now, you can perhaps guess cs to the route over which she drove us. It was first to the place where her son had made his early success as an orator at the bar. Then to the house where he had met and sourted his wife, then to the church where they were married, to the bullding where his office had been when he made his famous fight against Mark Hanna in the coal-mine trouble—that fight in which he won the case for his clients and yet handled the opponent, the bulldog Mark Hanna, in such a way as to wia his ever- lasting friendship and esteem, long betors he was politically prominent. “So Mrs. McKinley directed us from point to point over what seemed to me al- ready historic ground and which certainly will become so. “With the drive we had also the de- tailed life history by the one who knew it best of all, who in her motherly pride did not hesitate to turn the light upon all of the detalls. Indeed, that Is the one pride that Mrs. Willlam McKinley Sr. had—a pride in her that was based not on his} recently acquired honors but on the solid, painstaking life work by which he had got there.” She never could relinquish her hold on household duties, and she insisted upon doing some housework even though there was no need of it, with comvetent ser- vants, and though her children and grandchildren begged her to leave labor to younger hands. “There are no younger hands,” she would insist, and greatly did she resent the implication that she was growing old or ever could. So every Monday morning she would go to the kitchen and spend the fore- noqn among pots and pans, making her- selt useful in a thousand ways and satis- A= fying her lifelong pride in “looking well to the ways of her household.” While she devoted her spare hours to her friends, her husband took to his books. He was an inveterate Teader, clinging fondly to the classics ana espe- cially to Shapespeare. There was not a line of the dramatist that he could not place on the instant. And dear as Shakespeare was to him he never saw any of his works played. It was the writer that ap- pealed to him, not the dramatist. He was never inside a theater in his old-fashioned, home-loving life, even to see the produc- tions of his beloved author. “The Wandering Jew” was another of his favorites. He would pore over the Jew's adventures evening after evening, never growing weary of re-reading. As for the Bible, he and his wife were both students, yes, scholars of that. They could quote any part of it. In the early part of the seventies they visited San Francisco, coming to see their eldest son David, who had already made his home here. At that time they were what the world would call old, but they would not own it, nor would any one who saw them. They were tall, erect, and un- touched by gray. They were always in full possession of their keen faculties, a submission to spectacles being the only sign of failing. They were greatly delighted with this city and extended their stay to several months, but they never wanted to re- main here. Ohio was home to them; it was where they had been reared, loved, married, and where their children had come to them. In the last years of his lifs, Mr. Mec- Kinley’'s shoulders began to show a slight stoop In spite of all his efforts to the con- trary. When his family would rally him on this, he would brace bravely for the minute and defy them to prove their as- sertlon. “Father, you are growing old at las one of them said, teasingly. “You certainly are stooping. Look at mother—see how erect she is.”” “My dear, look out at that wheat fleld,” he replied. “You will notice that all the full heads bow, while those that stand erect are—empty."” His death followed that of his eldest son by two months. The news of the death was without preparation and it was a blow from which the father never recov- ered. He spoke scarcely at all after tiie news, and in a few weeks’ time his life ebbed away. He missed the joy of seeing his son in the Presidential chalr, a joy that was vouchsafed the proud mother. She lived to be present at the first inauguration, and the picture of her on this page shows her in the point lace inauguration cap presented her for that great occasion.