BOOKS: Eric Rauchway's Murdering Mckinley

The 21^st Century socio-economic condition of the United States - the now - is characterized by terrorist attacks on the government, furtive in-system political discord, and illusory ‘rape' of the free market corporations of the masses' economy. Who would have thought that this same crisis occurred, in fact persisted and began in the US one century ago. And who would have taken the assassination of William McKinley, a mere speck in American history books, as a noteworthy, though short-spanned point in history. Who would have remembered it as having ended the sullied, devious, Industrial-Capitalist repression of the late 1800's - and which had began a civilizing era - President Roosevelt's Progressive America. What has not been said by the murder of McKinley now breaks the surface in "Murdering McKinley."

President McKinley's Assassination

"At or about 4 o'clock in the afternoon of September 6, 1901, President William McKinley arrived in an open carriage outside the Temple of Music at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York..." This is the first sentence in Eric Rauchway's 2003 historical non-fiction book "Murdering McKinley." Rauchway begins with the incidence of McKinley's assassination, tallying it equally with the murder of more prominent presidential figures as Abraham Lincoln and JFK with his vivid description of the episode - and emphasis on the chief reaction of the United States. "Americans were bereaved and frightened." Rumors rampaged as to what reason there is on the Commander-in-Chief's assassination. This is the main query (re-)investigated by Rauchway with the thought that the event was not fully given its deserved attention as little that was said of his finished administration. This would have explained the shock of the incidence, as it seemed ‘not much' was happening with McKinley and his America, until the day of the murder.

As investigators attempted to dig in and find the reason why Czolgosz killed the president, regrettably, it was, at first, put as an ordinary case by a lunatic killer. McKinley was once a regular victim. Still later, it was deplored that his death was also haphazardly dismissed as another occasion of political terrorism by a foreigner Czolgosz, and then later - an inter-government political-treason naturally floating up once in a while throughout history. For almost a century, these have been the speculated convictions on the former president's death - all to be debunked permanently by Rauchway's burgeoning thesis.

The Racism Factor in McKinley's Death

First, it was the psychotic motive behind Czolgosz's murder of the president that was discharged. Leon Czolgosz was a syphilis-laden taken to be a madcap going gun-wild as he was helplessly awaiting his appointed death within one-month due. Indeed, he died just days after his national performance. Yet, why the president - he would have slaughtered his entire neighborhood. He had something on his mind when he pulled the trigger.

Then, there were reports of his self-professed anarchist character. His act was then viewed as a one of an international terrorism on American politics - as suggested by his foreign name. However, Czolgosz, McKinley's assassin was an American - a Detroit native since birth. So that too was ruled out.

Next is Czolgosz's association with leftist politics. He was supposed as a radicalized police-informant - a gunman for ending an illicit government? On the other hand, also part of Czolgosz's being is the background of his every-day struggle as a poor immigrant-born laborer. Czolgosz (and the likes of him) didn't just have a strange name but also an atypical language and custom, hence - prospective prey to the US's economic means. Back then, they were only seen as rogues robbing American employment and representing a destabilizing political East European trade union - subverting against (any) American (or other foreign) authority driven by cultural / racial constraints.

Notice that the focus of the McKinley administration, and prevailing subject to historians, was McKinley's military victory against Spain, and his success on strengthening the Republic's economy by passing the highest tariff in history as part of his designed ‘nation-enabling' connections with big capitalist corporations. The plight of the industrial age working class, including Leon Czolgosz and others disregarding racial ethnicity during McKinley's term was incidentally overlooked.

Turning "Peasants into Punch Cards" - The Industrial Revolution

Discrimination rather than racism. At that time, the socio-economic misery undergone by the representative group of Leon Czolgosz was determined by their role or ‘use' in the capitalist American society rather than one's personal (cultural or ethnic) background. It was not a case of racial discrimination but of economic class distinction. They were proletariats in Karl Marx's terms alive in an actual setting in the US during McKinley's administration.

As President William McKinley's term was from 1897 to1901, the crisis must have had persisted from earlier administrations. The problem must have been a residue of the American Industrial Revolution beginning at the time of the Civil War (from 1861 to 1865) persisting until McKinley's term when the Czolgosz's working class was still slave to poverty, alienation, exploited for their labor discriminated, oppressed.

They were the coins in the free capitalist slot machine. "Punch cards." They could have suffered greater economic oppression, yet this could have been shrouded predominantly during McKinley's presidency. To recall, one of McKinley's ‘contributions' was passing the highest tariff in history as part of his designed ‘nation-enabling' connections with big masses-oppressive capitalist corporations.

McKinley's structure tried to create the signal that the US is still one of the remaining industrial powers by the turn on the 20^th century. McKinley would have realized and witnessed it flourish although greedily fueling on its socio-economic consequences - people like Leon Czolgosz who by then considered anarchy rather than any form of impoverishing capitalist government.

Anarchy and Leon Czolgosz

Economic inequalities, massive immigration, overcrowding of cities - these were the pre-conditions for an industrial-capitalist empire. President McKinley did not know of it until Leon Czolgosz (tried to show him). And Czolgosz was not the only self-proclaimed anarchist. The successor President Roosevelt saw this, and realized that McKinley's death is the crossroads for his reformed modern progressive America.

The author of "Murdering McKinley" took support for his book from the findings of Vernon Briggs, a psychologist who interviewed the Czolgosz family later to explain the psychologically deviant behavior of Leon in terms of their social milieu. This has been all there is for Leon Czolgosz's "anarchy," during the time when "anarchy" was equated only to the political terrorism rampant in Europe.

Leon Czolgosz had known the state of anarchy in the US by being a victim to the socio-economic consequences pointing to it. In the perspective of Czolgosz, anarchy did not only pertain to political disorder but a rejection, not just the absence of political authority. However, radicals such as Czolgosz would have still maintained anarchy as a lack of common standard, purpose, or ‘good' - having an obvious discrepancy, better yet, conflict between the interest of President's government and the wellbeing of the common poor of the American capitalist system.

McKinley's death set the platform for Theodore's turning point administration. Although the supplanting leader saw the murdering of McKinley as a "crime against free government all over the world," President Roosevelt was not blind of its message in and for America as he dedicated to find a progressive solution against the impending socialist uprising that threatened the new century.

Reading Eric Rauchway's "Murdering McKinley" could no longer pass for the murder of a dead president, just a slight mention to introduce the remarkable rule of President Roosevelt. - Czolgosz's assassination of an American leader has set the backdrop towards the dawning of a modern socially progressive America.

~Ae Dechavez

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