CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER
and in culture. During his absence Harrison was elected to succeed Cleveland. This was the first presidential campaign since 1852 in which Mr. Schurz had not taken an active part as a public speaker.
On his return to New York it was quickly revealed that the business aspect of his trip had had important results, for in December the announcement was made that with the new year he would assume the duties of general American representative of the Hamburg-American Steamship Company. The assumption of an income-producing routine had been in Mr. Schurz's mind ever since he left the Evening Post. In 1885 he had negotiated for a controlling interest in the Boston Advertiser, but had not been able to see a sufficiently attractive financial outlook in the project. The Boston Post also was under consideration at the same time, but without result. The Hamburg-American connection was in many respects more agreeable than any other business could have been. Although not a man of business training, as he had told Hayes, he had been a close student of international affairs in commerce as well as in diplomacy. And he formed this business connection with the confident expectation that his time and strength would not be so engrossed as to prevent the prosecution of his literary labor. He found it impossible, however, to resist the temptations to take active part in the social and political movements of the time, and these, with the business routine, continually crowded out his much loved but less insistent projects. He gradually became convinced that his hope of successfully combining the steamship agency with literary productivity was ill-founded, and on July 1, 1892, after holding his position at the urgent request of the company for six months longer than he wished, he severed his connection with the Hamburg-American Line.
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