WITH JUSTICE FOR SOME. Lise Pearlman

donations in this pivotal election. Political boss Mark Hanna raised an unparalleled $3.5 million (about $93 million today) to elect the Republican Civil War veteran – five times the amount raised by his Democratic opponent. McKinley won by more than half a million votes. (For good or ill, Hanna has been credited with launching the modern role of money in politics.) Though Bryan lost, Hearst’s formula proved hugely successful in his new headquarters in the nation’s largest metropolis, ten times the population of his San Francisco home base.

      Source: Wikipedia article on yellow journalism, reproducing cartoon in the collection of the Independence Seaport Museum

      Source of both pictures: “The American Notion of Privacy, The First Wave of Assault on American Privacy: Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst.”

      Top: contemporary political cartoon lampooning publishers Joseph Pulitzer (pictured lower left) and William Randolph Hearst (pictured lower right) for the “yellow” of their papers filled with sensational headlines and colorful cartoons. The pair were credited with creating public fervor to push President McKinley to wage the 1898 Spanish-American War. Hearst had his own presidential ambitions. Hearst political cartoons caricatured President McKinley as a tool of the money-hungry trusts. One editor called the president “the most hated creature on the American continent” and another Hearst columnist suggested that the president deserved killing.

      Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_Gold_speech

      William Jennings Bryan first ran for president in 1896 as a populist advocating the silver standard instead of gold so that money would become more widely available. He became famous for his fiery “cross of gold” speech given at the 1896 Democratic Convention, arguing the nation would be “crucified” on the gold standard. Political boss Mark Hanna raised an unparalleled $3.5 million in 1896 (about $93 million today) to elect Bryan’s opponent, Republican Civil War veteran William McKinley –- five times the amount raised by Bryan -– launching the modern role of money in politics.

      Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org_Administration%27s_Promises_Have_Be/wiki/File:Theen_Kept.jpg

       Campaign poster for McKinley’s reelection in 1900, running with Spanish-American War hero Teddy Roosevelt. McKinley handily defeated Bryan for a second time. Note the disavowal of foreign aggression in that war, which ended with the United States annexing the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, and denial of empire-building in annexing Hawaii as a territory – “The AMERICAN FLAG has not been planted in foreign soil to acquire more territory but for HUMANITY’S SAKE.”

      In the second year of McKinley’s presidency, rivalry with Pulitzer motivated Hearst to exploit the sinking of the battleship U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, as a secret enemy attack. No proof of the charge would ever surface. With his repeated war-mongering headlines, Hearst induced Pulitzer’s paper to do the same, urging readers to “Remember the Maine!” Together they created such public clamor they helped pressure President McKinley into precipitating the Spanish-American War. What Hearst cared most about was that circulation for the Journal rose fifty percent.

      By the war’s end, the United States had emerged as a world power acquiring the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico from the Spanish Empire as well as control of Cuba. At home, rapid industrialization and consolidation of power in trusts fueled the economy; new waves of Eastern and Southern European immigrants provided a cheap, renewable source of labor. American workers felt increasingly exploited. In editorial cartoons, Hearst’s New York Journal characterized McKinley as a tool of the money-hungry trusts. One of his editors called the president “the most hated creature on the American continent” and another Hearst journalist suggested that the president deserved killing.³

      On September 5, 1901, few people were genuinely surprised to learn of an attempt on the president’s life by an unemployed worker among the crowd greeting McKinley at an international exposition in Buffalo, New York. Two political assassinations had made headlines the year before. In February of 1900, the new governor of Kentucky had been killed; five months later, on July 29, 1900, King Umberto of Italy was shot in retaliation for brutally suppressing a workers strike. Indeed, in the United States, many older citizens had searing memories of two presidents who had been assassinated – Lincoln in 1865 and Garfield in 1881. Since President Garfield’s death, political assassins overseas had also felled Russian Czar Alexander II, French President Sadi Carnot, Spanish Premier Antonio Canovas del Castillo and Empress Elizabeth of Austria.

      The disaffected Polish-American who fired his mail-order Sears Roebuck hand gun at President McKinley had been inspired by the recent assassination of King Umberto in Italy. Leon Czolgosz grew up in the Midwest and once worked in the steel industry. His politics were strongly influenced by the revolutionary speeches of Russian emigrant Emma Goldman. Historian Eric Rauchway suggests that Czolgosz also believed he was dying of untreatable syphilis when he decided to exchange his life for President McKinley’s.⁴ At first, President McKinley appeared to be recovering from his two wounds. But he took a sudden turn for the worse a week later and died of gangrene resulting from botched emergency medical care. Much ridiculed during his tenure, McKinley instantly became a martyr about whom few were willing to speak ill. Prohibition crusader Carrie Nation was an exception, claiming “he got what he deserved.”⁵ Goldman also voiced her dissent. She publicly praised Czolgosz as a modern-day Brutus for killing a 20th century Caesar, the “president of the money kings and trust magnates.”⁶ But these two outspoken women proved rare exceptions.

      Source: Oakland Public Library

      The nation reacted in shock to the attempted assassination of the president.

      Pioneering social worker Jane Addams captured the mood of most Americans: “It is impossible to overstate the public excitement of the moment and the unfathomable sense of horror with which the community regarded an attack upon the chief executive of the nation, as a crime against government itself which compels an instinctive recoil from all law-abiding citizens.”⁷ Many shocked readers blamed newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst for the attack on President McKinley. Effigies of Hearst were set afire. The New York Journal was boycotted for months.

      President McKinley had arrived at The Pan-American Exposition in the thriving city of Buffalo to celebrate the nation’s emergence as a world power at the dawn of the new century. The huge fair showcased innovations like electricity and the x-ray machine and featured exotic exhibits from around the globe. The president’s visit had been postponed from the opening of the festival in May 1901 to the week of Labor Day – a national holiday established just seven years before to honor the working class.

      The Secret Service agents guarding the president had scarcely noticed the innocuous-looking Czolgosz in the long queue of well-wishers on September 5 until after Czolgosz fired a gun camouflaged under his handkerchief. At the time, the agents had their eyes on a suspicious-looking six-foot-six “colored man” with a black moustache who was next in line.⁸ James Benjamin “Big Ben” Parker reacted quickly. The 41-year-old former slave knocked the weapon from Czolgosz’s hand before he could fire again and tackled him as others joined in the fracas. Parker enjoyed national publicity for a short while as a quick-thinking hero credited with saving the president’s life. But soon the government supplanted stories of Parker’s heroism with a new version of the shooting incident