Blaine) as one of the most diligent students of industrial policy and questions affecting national taxation. In 1878 he took part in the debates over the Wood tariff bill, and in the same year he voted for the Bland-Allison silver bill. In Dec. 188o he was appointed a member of the ways and means committee, succeed ing James A. Garfield, who had been elected president in the preceding month, and to whose friendship, as to that of Ruther ford B. Hayes, McKinley owed much in his earlier years in Congress. He was prominent in the debate which resulted in the defeat of the Democratic Morrison tariff bill in 1884, and in the defeat of the Mills bill for the revision of the tariff in 1887 1888. In 1889 he became chairman of the ways and means com mittee and Republican leader in the House of Representatives, after having been defeated by Thomas B. Reed for speaker of the House. On April 16, 1890, he introduced the tariff measure known commonly as the McKinley bill, which passed the House in May, passed the Senate in September, and was approved by the president on Oct. 1, 1890. The McKinley bill reduced revenues by its high and in many cases almost prohibitive duties ; it at tempted to protect many "infant" industries such as the manu facture of tin-plate ; under its provision for reciprocal trade agreements (a favourite project of James G. Blaine) reciprocity treaties were made with Germany, France, Italy and Belgium.
Abroad there was bitter opposition to it and reprisals were threatened by several European States. In the United States the McKinley tariff bill was one of the main causes of the Dem ocratic victory in the Congressional elections of 1890, in which McKinley himself was defeated. In 1891 he was elected governor of Ohio, and in 1893 was re-elected, so gaining experience in executive as distinguished from legislative work.
McKinley had been prominent in national politics even before the passage of the tariff measure bearing his name. In 1888 in the national Republican convention in Chicago he was chairman of the platform committee and was leader of the delegation from Ohio, which had been instructed for John Sherman ; after James G. Blaine withdrew his name there was a movement to nominate McKinley, but he passionately refused to be a candidate, con sidering that his acquiescence would be a breach of faith toward Sherman. In 1892 McKinley was the permanent president of the national Republican convention which met in Minneapolis and which renominated Benjamin Harrison on the first ballot, on which James G. Blaine received 1826 votes, and McKinley, 182 votes. In 1896 he seemed for many reasons the most "available" candidate of his party for the presidency: he had no personal enemies in the party ; he had carried the crucial state of Ohio by a large majority in 1893 ; his attitude on the coinage question had never been so pronounced as to make him unpopular either with the radical silver wing or with the conservative "gold standard" members of the party. The campaign for his nomina tion was conducted with great adroitness by his friend, Marcus A.
Hanna, and in the national Republican convention held in St.
Louis in June he was nominated for the presidency on the first ballot. The convention adopted a tariff plank drafted by McKin ley, and, of far greater immediate importance, a plank, which declared that the Republican Party was "opposed to the free coinage of silver, except by international agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world, which we pledge our selves to promote, and until such agreement can be obtained the existing gold standard must be preserved." This "gold standard" plank drove out of the Republican Party the Silver Republicans of the West, headed by Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado.
The national Democratic convention declared for the immediate opening of the mints to the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio with gold of 16 to I; and it nominated for the presi dency William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska. There was a secession from the Democratic Party of conservatives who called themselves the National Democratic Party, who were commonly called Gold Democrats, and who nominated John M. Palmer (1817-1900) of Illinois for president. In this re-alignment of parties McKinley, who had expected to make the campaign on the issue of a high protective tariff, was diverted to the defence of the gold standard as the main issue. The campaign was en thusiastic : the Republican candidate was called the "advance agent of prosperity"; "Bill McKinley and the McKinley Bill" became a campaign cry ; the panic of 1893 was charged to the repeal of the McKinley tariff measure ; and "business men" throughout the states were enlisted in the cause of "sound money" to support McKinley, who was elected in November by a popular vote of 7,106,779 to 6,502,925 for Bryan, and by an electoral vote of 271 to 176. (See UNITED STATES : History.) Following his
inauguration the president summoned Congress to assemble in an extra session. His message urged revision of the tariff and revenue, and the Dingley tariff bill was accordingly passed through both houses, and was approved by the president on July 24.
The ensuing regular session of Congress was occupied chiefly with the situation in Cuba. President McKinley showed himself singularly patient and self-controlled in the midst of the popular clamour for intervention by the United States in behalf of the Cubans; but finally, on March 23, 1898, he presented an ulti matum to the Spanish government, and on April 25, on his rec ommendation, Congress declared war upon Spain. During the war itself he devoted himself with great energy to the mastery of military details; but there was bitter criticism of the war de partment resulting in the resignation of the secretary of war, Russell A. Alger (q.v.). The peace treaty, signed at Paris, Dec. 10, was ratified by the United States Senate on Feb. 6, 1899; and in accordance with its terms Porto Rico, the Philippine archi pelago, and Guam were transferred by Spain to the United States, and Cuba came under American jurisdiction pending the estab lishment there of an independent government. Two days before the ratification of the peace treaty, a conflict took place between armed Filipinos under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo and the American forces that were in possession of Manila. The war fare waged by these Filipinos against the United States, while having for the most part a desultory and guerrilla character, was of a very protracted and troublesome nature. Sovereignty over the Filipinos having been accepted by virtue of the ratification of the Paris treaty, President McKinley was not at liberty to do otherwise than assert the authority of the United States and use every endeavour to suppress the insurrection. But there was bitter protest against this "imperialism," both within the party by such men as George F. Hoar, Eugene Hale, Thomas B. Reed and Carl Schurz, and from the leaders of the Democratic Party. In the foreign relations of the United States, as directed by President McKinley, the most significant change was the cordial understanding established with the British Government. Other important foreign events during McKinley's administration were: the annexation of the Hawaiian islands (see HAwAii) in August 1898, and the formation of the Territory of Hawaii in April 1900; the cessation in 1899 of the tripartite (German, British and French) government of the Samoan islands, and the annexation by the United States of those of the islands east of 171°, in cluding the harbour of Pago-Pago ; the participation of American troops in the march of the allies on Pekin in August 1900, and the part played by McKinley's secretary of state, John Hay, in securing a guarantee of the integrity of the Chinese empire. In 1900 McKinley was unanimously renominated by the national Republican convention which met in Philadelphia in June, and which nominated Theodore Roosevelt, governor of New York, for the vice-presidency. The Republican convention demanded the maintenance of the gold standard, and pointed to the excep tional prosperity of the country resulting from the fulfilment of some of the most important of the pledges given by the Republi can Party four years earlier. However, the tendency towards the concentration of capital in great industrial corporations had been active to an extent previously undreamt of, with incidental consequences that had aroused much apprehension; and the Democrats accused President McKinley and the Republican Party of having fostered the "trusts." But the campaign against McKinley and the Republican Party was not only "anti-trust" but "anti-imperialistic." William Jennings Bryan, renominated by the Democratic Party on a free silver platform, declared that im perialism was the "paramount issue" and made a second vigorous campaign. As the result of the polling in November, 292 Republi can presidential electors and 155 Democratic electors were chosen. The Republican popular vote was 7,207,923, and the Democratic 6,358,133.