National Affairs: Statue & Story

Unveiled last week in Capitol Park at Harrisburg was a bronze statue of the late great Senator Boies Penrose. Unveiled a day later in Philadelphia was a new nugget of history, the story of how Penrose made Theodore Roosevelt President of the U. S. to settle a bitter grudge against Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna of Ohio. The story was more characteristic of Boss Penrose than the statue. Sponsor for the story was President Judge Charles L. Brown of the Philadelphia Municipal Court, longtime Penrose friend. Though he spoke at the Harrisburg ceremony he did not set his Republican auditors on edge with the details of this historic tale but saved them up to give the Philadelphia Record. The details: In 1897 Hanna of Ohio had put McKinley of Ohio into the White House. In 1898 the People's National Bank of Penn sylvania failed with the loss of State funds. With others, Pennsylvania's Senator Mat thew Stanley Quay was charged with conspiracy to misappropriate public funds, a charge that deadlocked the Legislature and blocked Quay's re-election to the Senate. Acquitted of the charge in 1899, Quay was appointed by the Governor to the Senate. But the stench of the case was still strong enough a year later, for the Senate, under the leadership of Hanna, to vote to exclude Quay. Senator Penrose sided with Quay and together they hated Hanna with a great hate. President McKinley's failing health caused Hanna much concern. In 1900 he secretly sent a specimen of the President's urine to the University of Pennsylvania's laboratory. The confidential report came back that McKinley had Bright's disease, could not live two years longer. The analysis fell into the hands of Dr. Charles B. Penrose, Boies's brother, who conveyed it to the Senator. Instantly Boies Penrose saw the political possibilities: McKinley, reelected, would die in office; Hanna had no second choice; the Vice-Presidency became all important; an enemy of Hanna's in the White House would quickly exile him from the national scene and Quay would be revenged.

Noisiest of Hanna critics then was Governor Roosevelt of New York who was blasting him as the "captain of corrupt capitalism." With the aid of New York's Senator Platt, Penrose and Quay started the Roosevelt vice-presidential boom, secured his nomination and election. A dead secret was their knowledge that he was destined for the Presidency. Six months after his second inaugural President McKinley died—not from Bright's disease but from Czolgosz's bullet. Penrose had made his first President, who promptly banished Hanna from the high council of the G. O. P.

In 1920 Penrose helped to make his second President. Too ill to attend the Republican National Convention in Chicago, he lay on his bed in Philadelphia and gave orders over the long distance telephone to G. O. P. leaders at Chicago's Blackstone Hotel. Not until he said "all right," did those leaders pick Warren Gamaliel Harding for the nomination. Last week Penrose's statue was dedicated. Undedicated at Marion, Ohio stood the tomb of the man he had exalted.