Editing Garret Hobart (section)

=== "Assistant President" ===
Hobart was more assertive as [[United States Senate|U.S. Senate]] president than his predecessors had been. It was customary for the vice president not to rule on disputed points, but to submit them to a vote. Hobart, with his experience as a presiding officer in the New Jersey Legislature, took a more assertive role, ruling on disputes, and trying to expedite legislation.{{sfn|Connolly|pp=28–29}} Hobart was initially diffident in his role, feeling himself unproven beside longtime national legislators, but soon gained self-confidence, writing in a letter that "I find that I am as good and as capable as any of them. If they know a whole lot of things I don't know, I also know a whole lot of things they don't know. And there is a common humanity running through them all that makes us all as one, after all."{{sfn|Connolly|p=31}} Hobart was so successful at guiding the administration's legislative agenda through the Senate that he became known as the "assistant President".<!-- Cap in original -->{{sfn|Miller Center, "Hobart"}}
[[File:GHobart.jpg|upright=0.7|thumb|left|Vice President Hobart]]
Hobart was constant in his attendance at the Senate; one onlooker called him a "chronic audience".{{sfn|Connolly|p=30}} Vice President Hobart cast his tie-breaking vote only once, using it to defeat an amendment which would have promised self-government to the [[Philippines]], one of the possessions which the United States had taken from Spain after the war.{{sfn|Connolly|p=31}} Hobart was instrumental in securing the ratification of the [[Treaty of Paris (1898)|Treaty of Paris]], which ended the war; according to McKinley biographer H. Wayne Morgan, Hobart was "almost the president's alter ego, [turning] every screw with his legendary politeness".{{sfn|Morgan|p=320}}

One post which Hobart refused to relinquish upon his inauguration was his position as one of three Joint Traffic Association (JTA) arbiters. The association was a group of railroads which sought to coordinate rates; if two railroads applied rates in different ways, the matter was settled by Hobart and two other arbiters. Hobart heard appeals while vice president.{{sfn|Connolly|pp=23, 27–28}} An October 1897 [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] decision signaled that the JTA was likely to be found in violation of the [[Sherman Anti-Trust Act]] (it was, the following year) and Hobart resigned as arbiter in November 1897.{{sfn|Connolly|p=32}} Hobart was a major investor in the Ramapo Water Company; he had interests in many New York and New Jersey water utilities. In mid-1899, there was controversy over the so-called "Ramapo Scheme", whereby the Ramapo Water Company, which owned large tracts of land in the [[Catskill Mountains]], would sell New York City $5&nbsp;million in water per year for 40&nbsp;years at high rates. The proposal was never agreed to, and a Republican-controlled investigating committee found no wrongdoing, but Hobart's role in the company was widely discussed in the press.{{sfn|Connolly|pp=33–38}}