Part 23 of My Presidential Review Series
After a long delay, here is Benjamin Harrison. Harrison is the only president whose successor is also his predecessor. He is also the only grandson of a president to become president. He was elected in one of the closest elections in U.S. history; in fact, he lost the popular vote. He was known as the human iceberg because of stiff, formal manner. Harrison served March 4, 1889 to March 3, 1893.
A longtime champion of fellow veterans, Harrison approved the Dependent and Disability Pensions Act, which extended compensation to veterans disabled from nonmilitary causes and to veterans' dependents.
The first of the antitrust laws, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act made it a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison or a $5,000 fine, to take part in a "contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations." Sponsored by Senator John Sherman of Ohio, it was deliberately vague about what a trust or restraint was. According to the Supreme Court in U.S. vs. E. C. Knight Co., the law only applied to purely commercial interests, distinct from manufacturers. The law was then barely effective, but was reinvoked with some success under the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and William H. Taft. The law was strengthened by the Clayton Anti-Trust Act.
Sponsored by Senator John Sherman of Ohio, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was Harrison's concessions to the western delegates for support of the McKinley Tariff. Under its terms, the Treasury was required to purchase4.5 million ounces of silver a month at market price, nearly the entire output of silver in the country at the time. The silver was to be bought with notes redeemable in gold or silver. Many of the holders redeemed them for gold, seriously depleting federal reserves. It was repealed in 1893.
Sponsored by Representative (later president) William McKinley of Ohio, the severely protectionist McKinley Tariff set the average tariff rate at a massive 48%, the highest in peacetime history up to that time. Though it was meant to protect industry, the excessive rates proved restraining in certain cases. Duties were placed on items produced domestically and on agricultural products that the U.S. had no need to import. Sugar was duty-free, but a 2 cent-per-pound bounty was levied on domestic raw sugar to compensate producers. The effect was an increase in consumer prices. The public responded by lashing out at the Republicans in the 1890 congressional elections. The McKinley Tariff was replaced by the Wilson-Gorman Tariff.
Harrison died on March 13, 1901.
Harrison, like so many others, did very little. All the things that happened in his term, for good or for bad, cannot really be attributed to him. Therefore, the best we can say is that he did nothing bad. The man was simply too reserved to make a good president in this time period.
Overall Ranking: 27
"The indiscriminate denunciation of the rich is mischievous.... No poor man was ever made richer or happier by it. It is quite as illogical to despise a man because he is rich as because he is poor. Not what a man has, but what he is, settles his class. We can not right matters by taking from one what he has honestly acquired to bestow upon another what he has not earned."