“It is just four minutes past four o’clock,” remarked Attorney General McKenna, glancing at the clock on the mantel.
McKinley stood and extended warm congratulations to the Maine congressman, who acknowledged the compliment and then departed with Hager.
Though the president harbored some disappointment at many of the law’s high duties, he took satisfaction at achieving his first big presidential objective within five months of taking office. And he consoled himself with the view that the measure, by restoring the concept of reciprocity, gave him an opportunity to negotiate trade pacts that would reduce mutual tariffs and open up new international markets to U.S. farmers and manufacturers. The Dingley Act gave the president three avenues of reciprocal negotiation: he could bargain with European countries to get executive agreements on artworks, liquor, wine, and other small items; he could pursue agreements with Latin American nations on tea, vanilla beans, and tonka beans; and he could cut tariff rates on major items by up to 20 percent for five years (in exchange for equal reductions for U.S. goods), so long as those agreements could be reached within two years. They would be subject to congressional approval.
McKinley quickly demonstrated his seriousness on reciprocal trade deals by opening up discussions with the French ambassador on a possible agreement with that nation. He responded to reports that the State Department lacked the resources to act aggressively on the matter by appointing a respected diplomat, John A. Kasson, to a new position of special commissioner, with plenary powers, to pursue trade pacts wherever possible. Kasson, a former Ways and Means Committee member in the House who later served as minister to both Austria and Germany, soon demonstrated his seriousness in pursuing his mission.
Observing the tariff bill’s emergence from across the Atlantic, the London Standard’s editor concluded the legislation’s “ultra-protectionism” would guarantee Britain’s continued supremacy in the overseas carrying trade. He foresaw for America political and economic havoc in the form of “further deficits, gold shipments, a fatiguing succession of strikes and panics and fanatics as political saviors.” It didn’t turn out that way. The country’s devastating deflationary spiral that had begun in 1891 had turned around, with raw-material prices reaching their lowest point in 1896 and manufacturing goods beginning a steady rise in value about a year later. This turnaround unleashed a spurt of economic activity, with mining, manufacturing, and farming all contributing potent spurts of productivity and growth. Not even high tariffs could dampen this surge of economic activity. “Wealth of all descriptions began to increase in an unheard of way,” wrote Tarbell. Commercial interests quickly credited the president with these favorable portents, and McKinley naturally took pride in what he viewed as the vindication of his decades-long protectionist embrace, though evidence was scant that the new tariffs actually had any impact on the economic rebound. The “business men of both parties not only express satisfaction with the situation,” New York’s John McCook wrote to the president, “but rightly attribute the results accomplished, to the manner in which you have been able to . . . carry through what was practically an adverse Senate, the tariff legislation.”
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White House Life
FAMILY, CRONIES, CIGARS, AND POLICY
At a White House reception during McKinley’s first presidential year, he walked up to Ida as guests congregated around her and bowed with elaborate courtliness. Then he pronounced in a tone audible to all, “Madam, your party is a great success!” It was a touching gesture—and a phony one. In fact as the date for the event had approached, with much to be done to ensure a social triumph, Ida’s health and stamina had collapsed, and she was forced to her bed for rest and serenity. Jennie Hobart, wife of the vice president and one of Ida’s most devoted new friends, suggested that the party be postponed, but McKinley wouldn’t hear of it. He took command, setting the menu, handling invitations, bringing in entertainment, even selecting flower arrangements. The party was a success, but it wasn’t Ida’s party.
McKinley’s devotion to his wife’s comfort and tranquility never slackened as the burdens of the presidency descended upon him. But now he felt a need also to burnish her image as a first lady performing the traditional functions of that prominent role. If that meant putting up an occasional false front, given that she was not always able to perform the role, then he was willing to do so. Jennie Hobart explained that the president took “no end of pains to give her the lion’s share of the credit, even when none was due.”
The peculiar nature of Ida’s condition, which beset her intermittently with various maladies between periods of relative health and calm, made it possible for McKinley to showcase her best times, when the word invalid seemed overblown. This confused the public and even some reporters, who had conjured an image of a frail woman confined to a wheelchair and needing constant care. During her first week in the White House, when reporters heard she had gone to a local hospital, they instantly concluded she had been rushed there because of her infirmities. In truth she went simply to visit Russell Hastings, the Major’s friend since Civil War days, who was being treated for a fractured leg. At a New York dinner in April, as she was conversing with dignitaries, the mayor’s wife suddenly swooned and slumped to the floor. Based on fragmentary information, some reporters rushed into print with the story that it was the first lady who had swooned. Corrections followed the next day.
But if her good days could be made to appear almost normal, the bad days always returned soon enough in the form of exhaustion, muscle fatigue, debilitating headaches, and those sudden seizures that couldn’t be explained. The president and family members sought to ensure that the first lady, just forty-nine when she entered the White House, would be defined by the good times. Particularly acute was the need to maintain a shroud of secrecy around Ida’s epilepsy. The public wouldn’t understand, it was assumed, and would view her as mentally impaired or perhaps even insane.
Ida’s family and the White House staff endeavored to accommodate her special needs and remained always ready to snap into action at the first sign of trouble. Charlie Bawsel, the family aide during McKinley’s gubernatorial days, visited in May and wrote to his wife with a knowing hint, “Mrs. McKinley had one of her headaches, and you know what that means for those around her.” Particularly troublesome for the president was the White House social protocol that required the first lady to be seated at table away from her husband. At an early dinner at the mansion, with Ida positioned across the table from McKinley, the ever-alert Jennie Hobart noticed the president was “anxious to the point of distraction and never took his eyes from her” because of his fear that she may have an epileptic episode.
“Could it possibly offend anyone,” the president asked Mrs. Hobart, “for me to have my wife sit beside me?” He feared that strangers seated next to her would suffer embarrassment in the event of an unexpected seizure. Mrs. Hobart assured the president that White House protocol was his domain, and he could change it at will. He did so, and of course some social critics complained that such arbitrariness rendered protocol “a difficult task,” as one magazine put it. But most people understood. McKinley was more accommodating in the matter of having the president escort the highest ranking female guest into the dining hall at formal dinners, while the first lady would be escorted behind him by the highest ranking man. The president escorted Ida at his first White House dinner, but it generated so much social confusion that he quickly reverted to the accepted practice. Besides, in these instances—as in receiving lines, which were organized along a similar pattern—he was never too far away under protocol practices to step in if necessary.
McKinley never knew when he would need to step in. During an autumn trip to Massachusetts, Ida seemed in her best health as she greeted friends and strangers during multiple social occasions. She caused a stir by saving a young boy from serious injury or possible death in Pittsfield. As the McKinleys traveled rapidly through town in an open carriage, a number of boys lea
ped upon the side of the vehicle to get a close-up glimpse of the president. When one began to lose his grip Ida reached down with a thrust of energy, grabbed the lad, and pulled him to safety. One newspaper reported, “He would have fallen under the wheels had it not been for her.”
But shortly afterward, during a lunch at the Stockbridge, Massachusetts, home of prominent lawyer Joseph Choate, Ida had one of her seizures. Her face became contorted, and she emitted a kind of hissing sound. The president calmly rose from his seat, walked around the table, and placed a large napkin over her head and face. He then returned to his seat, explaining matter-of-factly, “My dear wife is sometimes afflicted with seizures.” The conversation continued and after a few minutes the president once again rose, walked to Ida, and removed the napkin. “Mrs. McKinley,” recalled Choate’s daughter, “was herself again.” This was McKinley’s standard response in such circumstances, a ritual routinely accepted—and kept secret—by presidential intimates and even casual friends.
Even in good times, Ida lacked stamina. She could walk down a flight of stairs with the aid of her ever-present cane, but she could not make it upstairs. In the White House, when the temperamental elevator didn’t function, the Major would carry her to the second floor. She maintained her place in receiving lines as long as she could, but a chair was always placed strategically behind her, and she frequently retreated to it as her strength waned. At Jennie Hobart’s suggestion, she kept a bouquet of flowers in her lap to fend off endless handshaking. She delighted in afternoon drives with her husband, gave luncheons for the wives of diplomats and members of Congress, traveled on presidential trips. But in all of these ventures she needed to pace herself lest the physical burden become too much. More often she kept busy with her ongoing passion for crocheting and knitting slippers, which bolstered many philanthropic causes when she gave them to charities, which then sold them at inflated prices to finance their good works.
The impact of the first lady’s infirmity on her temperament also remained intermittent. On rare occasions, she could seem to be almost the charming and lighthearted Ida of her youth, and her “cleverness and wit was given free play,” as one doctor noted. She delighted in doing impersonations of prominent people, with an uncanny sense of intonation and dialect. Her wit occasionally was seasoned with just a hint of indelicacy. “When I put Mr. McKinley to bed,” she told a Cabinet wife, “I go to bed with him.” The Major delighted in the jauntiness that came with her good times. “I’m tremendously glad,” he told an interviewer, “that I married a woman with a sense of humor.”
What’s more, Ida often displayed a candid casualness about her fate. “I always forget that I cannot walk until someone reminds me of it,” she once told reporters. Without any hint of self-consciousness, she spoke of her “lameness.” She never seemed embarrassed in public settings when limping to a waiting carriage or availing herself of a wheelchair. Nor did she react with umbrage when a lifelong friend named Mary Logan wrote publicly—and provocatively—that some details of Ida’s infirmity “can never be told.”
But there were also those less endearing traits that accompanied her infirmities—the brittleness, the childlike insouciance, the tendency toward strong opinions on petty matters. Although she relied on young nieces and other relatives who served as White House social assistants, she complained about their youthful socializing. “Young people are always on the go, always out, always coming in late,” she grumbled to a friend. She loved card games but hated to lose, and her devoted husband adopted a tactic of booting the game for her peace of mind. Assisting one female friend into her chair at a card table, the Major whispered into her ear, “Mrs. McKinley always wins.” A constant concern for McKinley was the “jealous suspicions” displayed by Ida whenever he paid the slightest attention to an attractive woman in social situations. He normally maintained a cool reserve to dampen prospects for embarrassing scenes.
Ida adjusted her life to diminish the likelihood of headaches and anxieties. She avoided the color yellow in her clothing and in White House decor because it unsettled her. She loved blue because she found it soothing. She read magazine articles but avoided books, aside from poetry, because the expanse of words on the page taxed her mental stamina and brought on headaches. She set a fashion trend by wearing small bonnets because they caused less pressure on her head and hence fewer headaches. She wore her hair loosely in what was known as a “shingle bob,” which became popular among women who had no idea why the first lady opted for such a hairdo. She took a bedroom facing north to avoid the afternoon sun, another headache source. And she took sedatives before social events to diminish prospects for seizures at such occasions. (None occurred during her White House years.)
Such tactics, combined with the solicitous ministrations of family, friends, and staff, enabled Ida to project the image of a traditional first lady—and, at times, actually perform the role in something approaching a normal way. She demonstrated firmness in serving wine at White House social functions despite persistent criticism from temperance agitators. She introduced afterdinner entertainment to the executive mansion and brought popular music to social events, including ragtime, to which guests danced the cakewalk and two-step. It was inconceivable to both herself and her husband that she should forfeit such a role or relinquish the national standing it conferred. The American people, never fully understanding Ida’s enfeeblement, developed an affection for the woman who seemed heroic in serving her husband and nation.
McKinley helped maintain this equilibrium by doting on her as much as possible within the context of his presidential duties. He breakfasted with her every morning at 8:30, devoted his lunches to her whenever he could, and played cards with her into the evenings when social obligations didn’t intervene. When he planned to work late, which he did often, he soothed her to sleep by reading aloud from the Bible before returning to his office.
He also devoted time and attention to the medications sent to her by an absentee New York doctor named J. N. Bishop, who attempted to calibrate the proper medicine based on letters from the president regarding Ida’s latest symptoms. It was a questionable medical approach and reflected poorly on both doctor and husband. “I have decided to make a change in her medicine,” the doctor wrote to McKinley during the 1896 campaign, “and this change I hope, will help her to control and overcome the attacks that you tell me trouble her.” But Bishop often felt he wasn’t getting sufficient information to make his calibrations. “Pardon me for saying,” he wrote at another time, “that I feel I am treating her under a good many disadvantages, one of which is the lack of information that I have before me in regard to her physical and nervous condition.” He explained that some medications work for a time but then lose effectiveness and must be changed. McKinley often wanted continuation of medicines that had worked in the past, even when Ida’s condition worsened. Early in his presidency, he wired Bishop, “Bottle of medicine just received, not the same as the one preceding, please send the old medicine.” The doctor’s assistant replied that actually it was the same but he would “forward another supply, as you request, and trust that it may be satisfactory.” The exchange reflected the inherent ineffectiveness of long-distance treatments—and perhaps also the futility in thinking such medications could improve Ida’s condition.
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AS MCKINLEY SOUGHT to meld his complex personal life with his presidential duties, it helped that he had no hobbies that pulled him away from the White House. “The president has taken a notion to horseback riding,” reported the Washington Post early in his presidency, and he even borrowed a mount from Nelson Miles, the army’s commanding general. But he soon gave it up in favor of walks and carriage rides, which afforded greater opportunity for conversation and also for taking Ida along. He didn’t play golf, though he told an interviewer, with characteristic diplomacy, that he supposed it “was a very good game for the people that liked it.” Never had he developed a zest for fishing or hunting, but he did like croquet, which kept h
im at the White House and near Ida.
He spent abundant time with family members who flocked to the executive mansion for extended periods, and he attended services every Sunday at the Metropolitan Methodist Episcopal Church on C Street. Since Ida disliked going out on Sunday mornings, the president often attended church alone, occupying Ulysses Grant’s old pew.
Besides his family and matters of state, McKinley’s only real passion was politics and the men embroiled in the game. He loved to sit back with cronies over cigars and exchange stories from the colorful past or probe the intricacies of looming political battles. After one intimate White House dinner for Cabinet members, he brought out a box of Cubans made to fit the tastes of the emperor of Austria, “who likes his cigars long, fat, and strong,” reported the Washington Post. Fully eight inches long and an inch and a half in diameter, they cost two dollars apiece. But they burned down so slowly that the men had consumed only about half the cigars when they were called to rejoin the ladies.
The elements of McKinley’s life came together particularly during his many travels outside Washington for speeches, ceremonial appearances, and vacations. Ida always traveled with him, along with numerous family members and government officials, and he could easily combine his attention to her with socializing, crony conversations, and work. In the spring he traveled to New York to help dedicate the Grant Monument and then to Philadelphia, where he extolled the virtues of George Washington before the Society of the Cincinnati. In June he addressed the Philadelphia Manufacturers Club, where he urged patience as he struggled to steer the country toward more prosperous times. “The distrust of the present will not be relieved by a distrust of the future,” he declared, to applause. “A patriot makes a better citizen than a pessimist.”
President McKinley Page 23
