Lucky Hanna

HANNA--Thomas Beer--Knopf ($4). The Man. "Hanna's luck" was proverbial, but like so many easy explanations of success it will not bear scrutiny. Even in business he had his ups and downs; in politics no less. For five years he, a millionaire, tried to make a newspaper pay, and failed. But he was lucky in his name. That name, with its blended suggestions of some old Roman or Carthaginian proconsul, was no title for a mediocrity; Mark Hanna sounded best as either a bum or a conqueror. He was a conqueror. Marcus Alonzo Hanna, son of Leonard Hanna, well-to-do wholesale grocer and ship owner, was born in New Lisbon, Ohio, in 1837. All his life Ohio was his empire. Until the Presidential campaign of 1896, when Bryan, the silver-tongued prophet of Free Silver, ran against Hanna's man McKinley, he was hardly known outside Ohio's borders. He worked at his father's grocery and shipping business until he had made a fortune out of it; married Charlotte Augusta Rhodes, daughter of Coal-and-Iron-King Daniel Rhodes, lost his fortune and went into partnership with his father-in-law. Soon Rhodes & Co. became M. A. Hanna & Co. Long before he showed his whole political hand Hanna began to take an interest in politics. He attended the Republican conventions of 1888 and 1892, but he bided his time and saw how things were done. Then in 1896, when he was ready, when he had found his man William McKinley, he quietly retired from business, went into politics with a bang, and put his candidate across on the first ballot. From that time until Death came for him in his Washington mansion (1904), Mark Hanna, as Senator from Ohio, "minister without portfolio," leader of the Senate, was very much in politics. In Ohio he was politics. Now and then someone was foolhardy enough to oppose him in his own state. One such, Robert McKisson, a Mayor of Cleveland with Senatorial aspirations, found in 1898 that Hanna's threatening figure was not a mirage. When McKinley was shot and the unpredictable Theodore Roosevelt stumbled delightedly into the White House (1901), Hanna's fall was hourly expected. But it never came. There was still plenty of useful data in the unaccredited minister's portfolio.

With exteriors, and what they hid and revealed, he had less than no patience. If there was ever a political realist, it was he. Some were shocked by his "effrontery," others embarrassed by his "bluntness," for "he had made a President and he had done it visibly. It is hard to forgive such realism." He was revered and hated as strong men are. "He appealed to materialists as a materialist; his pragmatism was not draped in virtuous pretenses. He grinned." That grin was the comment of a successful man, not only on the politics of his day but on human nature, and it is easier to admire than to forgive it. Reddish of hair, big of frame, curt and direct of speech, limping (he had hives on his ankles), Hanna worked hard all his life, and believed in work, but only because it gave him power. "Up to his neck," he growled, "a man is worth only the price of a day's labor." The Significance. Mark Hanna used money in politics as a fireman uses water. Author Beer does not stress the point nor go into details, but he does not seek to palliate Hanna's political morality. To him it needs no palliation. "Money does not rule democracy," is Author Beer's thesis, "money is democracy." To Author Beer, men like Hanna, who "get things done," who have power and use it, are the real heroes of the commonwealth. As for their critics--"let the dogs howl." But Mr. Beer has not altogether a clear conscience in his admiration. With such jarring notes as this he startles us once or twice: "Hanna was not McKinley's ruler, but an adoring, diffident friend." The Author. Author Beer has been accused--he repeats the accusation but not the name of the accusers--of being paid by Mrs. Ruth Hanna McCormick. Mark Hanna's daughter, to whitewash her father's memory. Author Beer denies that he has been bribed. Author Beer's father, William C. Beer, figures frequently in these pages as a Hanna henchman. Author Beer, filial son, no Democrat, needed no bribe. He writes potboilers for The Saturday Evening Post, but composes his books slowly. Born in Council Bluffs, Iowa (1889), he went to Yale College, Columbia Law School, served as First Lieutenant on the staff of the Syth division in the A. E. F. A critic in all he looks at, Author Beer is intelligent, impatient, partisan. Other books: The Road to Heaven, Stephen Crane, The Mauve Decade.

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