Sound Bite
Tariffs and protectionism versus free markets and immigrant labor...President Trump is juggling issues strikingly similar to those that faced President William McKinley 125 years ago. But McKinley got the job done.
President McKinley's vision built the industrial base of the nation, making him one of America’s most popular presidents—with everyone from the bankers to the workers.
He united a fractured America like few presidents before or after, yet McKinley has been in the shadow of his successor Theodore Roosevelt for over a hundred years.
About the Book
William McKinley was the first US president to address globalization; his balancing act blended free trade, protectionism, and immigration. His legacy in protectionism and immigrant labor offer lessons for the current era. He orchestrated an alliance between big business and the American worker that ushered in one of the greatest periods of growth ever known in the US economy.
As Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, McKinley had forged a tariff bill in 1888 that united a nation that was still divided between North and South, East and West. His continued efforts to support free trade, protected by managed markets in the tradition of Henry Clay, and worker benefits like those provide by George Westinghouse, led to a great economic compromise. Further, with revolutionary, visionary rhetoric laden with America's "economic manifest destiny" he appealed to everyone from the steelworkers of Pittsburgh to the New York bankers.
He articulated a uniting philosophy: "Free trade in the United States is founded upon a community of equalities and reciprocities". "Free foreign trade admits the foreigner to equal privileges with our citizens. It invites the product of foreign cheap labor to this market in competition with the domestic, representing better paid labor" [albeit with tariffs to protect that domestic product].
McKinley's vision and policies built our industrial base. By the end of his presidency the American steel, glass, rubber, oil, machinery and electrical appliance industries dominated the world.
He was honored by bankers and workers alike. As his funeral train crossed the nation in 1901, factory workers as well as captains of industry stood along the rails to mourn him. Never since has such a political alliance between labor and management been forged.
He was the last president to build a voting alliance between laborers, immigrant workers, and capitalists. That alliance was marred by famous labor strikes and the building of great trusts, yet he still managed to sweep the labor votes in the great industrial centers—due to his belief in reciprocity and protectionism. McKinley's role as a "dinner pail" Republican offers insights into how the United States can approach today's globalization with the best interests of the "home team" in mind.
Author Quentin R. Skrabec Jr. has published over fifty articles on history, industrial history and business, and five books on the late 1800s and American business. This biography draws on ten years of research in the presidential library in McKinley’s hometown of Canton, Ohio. Primary sources reveal new information not published since the time of the McKinley Administration.
Information
By Professor Alexey Makarkin, Vice-President of the Center for Political TechnologiesUntil this week, few people remembered [former US President] William McKinley. When they did, it was mostly for two reasons. Firstly, he was one of the US presidents who was assassinated, shot by an anarchist who saw him as the embodiment of American capitalism. At that time, anarchists killed political leaders indiscriminately, regardless of whether they ruled over monarchies or republics; similar fates befell the French president, the Italian king, and even the Empress of Austria-Hungary. Secondly, McKinley was succeeded by a far more memorable president, Theodore Roosevelt.Many forget that it was during McKinley’s presidency that the US significantly expanded its global influence — annexing Hawaii and, following a victorious war with Spain, asserting control over Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam (the latter two are still classified as “unincorporated organized territories” of the US). However, McKinley’s presidency was overshadowed by Roosevelt’s more vibrant legacy as a politician and his direct involvement in combat in Cuba.McKinley’s image appeared on the $500 bills printed in 1928 and 1934, which circulated until 1945. However, these banknotes are now collector’s items rather than practical currency. While theoretically they are legal tender, any bank receiving such a bill is obligated to submit it to the US Treasury for destruction.McKinley’s portrait on the $500 bills was introduced during the presidency of fellow Republican Calvin Coolidge – another US president who is largely forgotten today.And now, seemingly out of the blue, Trump has invoked McKinley’s name in relation to the highest peak in North America – Mount Denali in Alaska. The locals called it “Denali”(meaning “The Great One”) and Russian settlers referred to it as “Bolshaya Gora” (Big Mountain). In an effort to promote American influence on the continent, a few decades after the Americans bought Alaska, they called the peak Mount McKinley in honor of the new president. Alaskans, who were concerned about local interests and not global ambitions, didn’t care much about the new name. A process to restore the mountain’s original name, Denali, began in the 1970s and culminated in 2015 when then-President Barack Obama signed the appropriate executive order.Now, in an unexpected move, Trump has signed a new executive order, calling for the mountain to be renamed Mount McKinley. He justified this by stating, “The naming of our national treasures, including breathtaking natural wonders and historic works of art, should honor the contributions of visionary and patriotic Americans in our Nation’s rich past.” He claimed that the order recognizes McKinley for “giving his life for our great Nation and dutifully recognizes his historic legacy of protecting America’s interests and generating enormous wealth for all Americans.”At the same time, Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, marking the end of the era of political correctness. The fact that Trump remembered McKinley, who expanded US territory, aligns with his previous statements regarding Greenland and Panama.The US president seems to be reviving an old “imperial” rhetoric, which notably avoids direct intervention in international conflicts (recall how cautiously America engaged in the First World War) but maintains the idea that the US should always emerge the winner. It’s not the old isolationism favored by some Trump supporters who want to focus solely on domestic issues; rather, it’s an even older, and far less predictable, perspective.
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