The McKinley Bowl’s Services and Disservices, 1898–1901

Nationwide media coverage of the massive cut glass bowl gifted to President McKinley in 1898 extended the vessel’s audience from one man to the masses. In this essay, I show how the artifact and its fanfare offered a political service and, perhaps, disservice to the politician’s public image, especially as it pertained to his advocacy for laborers like those foregrounded in many reports of the bowl. Though not commissioned by McKinley or his administration, the bowl celebrated the president as a defender of American industries, like glassmaking, through protective tariffs. Accounts of the gifting and other primary sources support this interpretation. But the bowl could also undercut McKinley’s posturing as the “full dinner pail” candidate for workers in the wake of the 1893 depression. This interpretation requires a more speculative approach attentive to how the object’s materiality intersected with wider discourses around the president, luxury, and labor during the period.