McKinley's cabinet was composed of men whose advanced age and conservative characteristics indicated that his advisers would commend themselves to the business world and would instinctively avoid all those radical proposals that were coming to be known as "Bryanism." The dean of the cabinet in age and experience as well as in reputation and ability was John Sherman, who was now almost seventy-four years of age and had been occupying a position of dignity and honor in the Senate. Two reasons have been given for his appointment to the post of Secretary of State. In the first place, important diplomatic affairs were on hand, in the settlement of which his long experience as a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations would be of obvious advantage. The second reason was the ambition of Hanna to enter the Senate. Since Sherman and Hanna were both from Ohio, it was possible to call the former to the cabinet and rely upon the Governor of the state to appoint the latter to the Senate. The propriety of this course of action depended somewhat on the question of Sherman's physical condition. Rumor declared that he was suffering from mental decay, due to his age, but McKinley believed the rumor to be baseless, summoned him to the cabinet, and Hanna was subsequently appointed to the Senate. When Sherman took up the duties of his office it appeared that the rumor had been all too true, and a serious lapse of memory on his part in a diplomatic matter forced his immediate replacement by William R. Day. Somewhat more than a year later Day retired and John Hay assumed the position. Many critics have asserted that McKinley was aware of the precise condition of Sherman and that he made the choice despite this knowledge, but it now seems likely that he was guilty only of bad judgment and carelessness in failing to inform himself about Sherman's infirmities. Another error of judgment was made in the choice of Russell A. Alger as Secretary of War. Alger failed to convince popular opinion that he was an effective officer and he resigned in 1899. As in the case of Sherman, McKinley then somewhat retrieved his mistake by appointing a successor of undoubted ability, in the person of Elihu Root.[2] It thus came about that the political and economic theories which had been characteristic of the leaders of both parties during the seventies and eighties, but more particularly of the Republican party, were again in the ascendancy. The President and his cabinet were uniformly men who had grown up during the heyday of _laissez faire_, and Hanna, who would inevitably be regarded as the mouthpiece of the administration in the Senate, was the embodiment of that philosophy.