The Wrangell Sentinel

ORIGINAL STEAM-ROLLER

The steam-roller may not cover ground with the speed of an antelope, but it gets there just the same.
First of the steam-roller tacticians to appear on the American political scene was the illustrious Marcus A. Hanna of Ohio.
Steam roller methods of attaining the objective, which in this case was the nomination of William McKinley for President, were first utilized by Mark Hanna in the Republican convention of 1896. And they succeeded.
Hanna had observed the amazing switch of delegates to James A. Garfield in 1880 when the latter was earnestly and honestly pleading the cause of John Sherman of Ohio.
Sherman tried again in 1888, this time employing McKinley as his convention manager.
At one stage of the proceedings, the report spread that if McKinley would say the word the strength of the delegates would be thrown to him. He promptly put an end to the movement, his vigorous interruption of the roll-call, for he already had received a vote, ending with a demand that: "No delegate who would cast reflection upon me shall cast a ballot for me."
Hanna was impressed, as were many others. From that day he moved his support from Sherman, who had been defeated three times, and began to groom McKinley for the presidency.
The opportunity came in 1896.
When the convention met, only "regular" delegates were seated.
The national committee o. k.'d them one by one, by the vote of 35 to 15.
And it just happened they all were McKinley men.
Newspaper reports of the times described the proceedings as a farce.
But at any rate they were successful for McKinley's principal opponent was courting the southern vote many of whom could not prove an unbroken chain of party fealty, and therefore were not seated.
The result was an outstanding majority for McKinley on the first ballot, Thomas B. Reed of Maine running a tired second, flattened under the weight of the original steam-roller, today an accepted part of our national politics.