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+Project Gutenberg's Theodore Roosevelt and His Times, by Howland
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+Title: Theodore Roosevelt and His Times,
+       a Chronicle of the Progressive Movement
+
+Author: Harold Howland
+
+July, 2001  [Etext #2724]
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+Project Gutenberg's Theodore Roosevelt and His Times, by Howland
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+THIS BOOK, VOLUME 47 IN THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES, ALLEN
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+THIS BOOK, VOLUME 47 IN THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES, ALLEN
+JOHNSON, EDITOR, WAS DONATED TO PROJECT GUTENBERG BY THE JAMES J.
+KELLY LIBRARY OF ST. GREGORY'S UNIVERSITY; THANKS TO ALEV AKMAN.
+
+
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+
+
+Theodore Roosevelt and His Times,
+a Chronicle of the Progressive Movement
+
+by Harold Howland
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+I. THE YOUNG FIGHTER
+II. IN THE NEW YORK ASSEMBLY
+III. THE CHAMPION OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM
+IV. HAROUN AL ROOSEVELT
+V. FIGHTING AND BREAKFASTING WITH PLATT
+VI. ROOSEVELT BECOMES PRESIDENT
+VII. THE SQUARE DEAL FOR BUSINESS
+VIII. THE SQUARE DEAL FOR LABOR
+IX. RECLAMATION AND CONSERVATION
+X. BEING WISE IN TIME
+XI. RIGHTS, DUTIES, AND REVOLUTIONS
+XII. THE TAFT ADMINISTRATION
+XIII. THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY
+XIV. THE GLORIOUS FAILURE
+XV. THE FIGHTING EDGE
+XVI. THE LAST FOUR YEARS
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+
+
+THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND HIS TIMES
+
+CHAPTER I. THE YOUNG FIGHTER
+
+There is a line of Browning's that should stand as epitaph for
+Theodore Roosevelt: "I WAS EVER A FIGHTER." That was the essence
+of the man, that the keynote of his career. He met everything in
+life with a challenge. If it was righteous, he fought for it; if
+it was evil, he hurled the full weight of his finality against
+it. He never capitulated, never sidestepped, never fought foul.
+He carried the fight to the enemy.
+
+His first fight was for health and bodily vigor. It began, at the
+age of nine. Physically he was a weakling, his thin and
+ill-developed body racked with asthma. But it was only the
+physical power that was wanting, never the intellectual or the
+spiritual. He owed to his father, the first Theodore, the wise
+counsel that launched him on his determined contest against ill
+health. On the third floor of the house on East Twentieth Street
+in New York where he was born, October 27, 1858, his father had
+constructed an outdoor gymnasium, fitted with all the usual
+paraphernalia. It was an impressive moment, Roosevelt used to say
+in later years, when his father first led him into that gymnasium
+and said to him, "Theodore, you have the brains, but brains are
+of comparatively little use without the body; you have got to
+make your body, and it lies with you to make it. It's dull, hard
+work, but you can do it." The boy knew that his father was right;
+and he set those white, powerful teeth of his and took up the
+drudgery of daily, monotonous exercise with bars and rings and
+weights. "I can see him now," says his sister, "faithfully going
+through various exercises, at different times of the day, to
+broaden the chest narrowed by this terrible shortness of breath,
+to make the limbs and back strong, and able to bear the weight of
+what was coming to him later in life."
+
+All through his boyhood the young Theodore Roosevelt kept up his
+fight for strength. He was too delicate to attend school, and was
+taught by private tutors. He spent many of his summers, and
+sometimes some of the winter months, in the woods of Maine. These
+outings he thoroughly enjoyed, but it is certain that the main
+motive which sent him into the rough life of the woods to hunt
+and tramp, to paddle and row and swing an axe, was the obstinate
+determination to make himself physically fit.
+
+His fight for bodily power went on through his college course at
+Harvard and during the years that he spent in ranch life in the
+West. He was always intensely interested in boxing, although he
+was never of anything like championship caliber in the ring. His
+first impulse to learn to defend himself with his hands had a
+characteristic birth.
+
+During one of his periodical attacks of asthma he was sent alone
+to Moosehead Lake in Maine. On the stagecoach that took him the
+last stage of the journey he met two boys of about his own age.
+They quickly found, he says, in his "Autobiography", that he was
+"a foreordained and predestined victim" for their rough teasing,
+and they "industriously proceeded to make life miserable" for
+their fellow traveler. At last young Roosevelt could endure their
+persecutions no loner, and tried to fight. Great was his
+discomfiture when he discovered that either of them alone could
+handle him "with easy contempt." They hurt him little, but, what
+was doubtless far more humiliating, they prevented him from doing
+any damage whatever in return.
+
+The experience taught the boy, better than any good advice could
+have done, that he must learn to defend himself. Since he had
+little natural prowess, he realized that he must supply its place
+by training. He secured his father's approval for a course of
+boxing lessons, upon which he entered at once. He has described
+himself as a "painfully slow and awkward pupil," who worked for
+two or three years before he made any perceptible progress.
+
+In college Roosevelt kept at boxing practice. Even in those days
+no antagonist, no matter how much his superior, ever made him
+"quit." In his ranching days, that training with his fists stood
+him in good stead. Those were still primitive days out in the
+Dakotas, though now, as Roosevelt has said, that land of the West
+has "'gone, gone with the lost Atlantis,' gone to the isle of
+ghosts and of strange dead memories." A man needed to be able to
+take care of himself in that Wild West then. Roosevelt had many
+stirring experiences but only one that he called "serious
+trouble."
+
+He was out after lost horses and came to a primitive little
+hotel, consisting of a bar-room, a dining-room, a lean-to
+kitchen, and above a loft with fifteen or twenty beds in it. When
+he entered the bar-room late in the evening--it was a cold night
+and there was nowhere else to go--a would-be "bad man," with a
+cocked revolver in each hand, was striding up and down the floor,
+talking with crude profanity. There were several bullet holes in
+the clock face, at which he had evidently been shooting. This
+bully greeted the newcomer as "Four Eyes," in reference to his
+spectacles, and announced, "Four Eyes is going to treat."
+Roosevelt joined in the laugh that followed and sat down behind
+the stove, thinking to escape notice. But the "bad man" followed
+him, and in spite of Roosevelt's attempt to pass the matter over
+as a joke, stood over him, with a gun in each hand and using the
+foulest language. "He was foolish," said Roosevelt, in describing
+the incident, "to stand so near, and moreover, his heels were
+closer together, so that his position was unstable." When he
+repeated his demand that Four Eyes should treat, Roosevelt rose
+as if to comply. As he rose he struck quick and hard with his
+right fist just to the left side of the point of the jaw, and, as
+he straightened up hit with his left, and again with his right.
+The bully's guns went off, whether intentionally or involuntarily
+no one ever knew. His head struck the corner of the bar as he
+fell, and he lay senseless. "When my assailant came to," said
+Roosevelt, "he went down to the station and left on a freight."
+It was eminently characteristic of Roosevelt that he tried his
+best to avoid trouble, but that, when he could not avoid it
+honorably, he took care to make it "serious trouble" for the
+other fellow.
+
+Even after he became President, Roosevelt liked to box, until an
+accident, of which for many years only his intimate friends were
+aware, convinced him of the unwisdom of the game for a man of his
+age and optical disabilities. A young artillery captain, with
+whom he was boxing in the White House, cross-countered him on the
+left eye, and the blow broke the little blood-vessels. Ever
+afterward, the sight of that eye was dim; and, as he said, "if it
+had been the right eye I should have been entirely unable to
+shoot." To "a mighty hunter before the Lord" like Theodore
+Roosevelt, such a result would have been a cardinal calamity.
+
+By the time his experiences in the West were over, Roosevelt's
+fight for health had achieved its purpose. Bill Sewall, the
+woodsman who had introduced the young Roosevelt to the life of
+the out-of-doors in Maine, and who afterward went out West with
+him to take up the cattle business, offers this testimony: "He
+went to Dakota a frail young man, suffering from asthma and
+stomach trouble. When he got back into the world again, he was as
+husky as almost any man I have ever seen who wasn't dependent on
+his arms for his livelihood. He weighed one hundred and fifty
+pounds, and was clear bone, muscle, and grit."
+
+This battle won by the force of sheer determination, the young
+Roosevelt never ceased fighting. He knew that the man who
+neglects exercise and training, no matter how perfect his
+physical trim, is certain to "go back." One day many years
+afterward on Twenty-third Street, on the way back from an Outlook
+editorial luncheon, I ran against his shoulder, as one often will
+with a companion on crowded city streets, and felt as if it were
+a massive oak tree into which I had bumped. Roosevelt the grown
+man of hardened physique was certainly a transformation from that
+"reed shaken with the wind" of his boyhood days.
+
+When Theodore Roosevelt left Harvard in 1880, he plunged promptly
+into a new fight--in the political arena. He had no need to earn
+his living; his father had left him enough money to take care of
+that. But he had no intention or desire to live a life of
+leisure. He always believed that the first duty of a man was to
+"pull his own weight in the boat"; and his irrepressible energy
+demanded an outlet in hard, constructive work. So he took to
+politics, and as a good Republican ("at that day" he said, "a
+young man of my bringing up and convictions, could only join the
+Republican party") he knocked at the door of the Twenty-first
+District Republican Association in the city of New York. His
+friends among the New Yorkers of cultivated taste and comfortable
+life disapproved of his desire to enter this new environment.
+They told him that politics were "low"; that the political
+organizations were not run by "gentlemen," and that he would find
+there saloonkeepers, horse-car conductors, and similar persons,
+whose methods he would find rough and coarse and unpleasant.
+Roosevelt merely replied that, if this were the case, it was
+those men and not his "silk-stocking" friends who constituted the
+governing class--and that he intended to be one of the governing
+class himself. If he could not hold his own with those who were
+really in practical politics, he supposed he would have to quit;
+but he did not intend to quit without making the experiment.
+
+At every step in his career Theodore Roosevelt made friends. He
+made them not "unadvisedly or lightly" but with the directness,
+the warmth, and the permanence that were inseparable from the
+Roosevelt character. One such friend he acquired at this stage of
+his progress. In that District Association, from which his
+friends had warned him away, he found a young Irishman who had
+been a gang leader in the rough-and-tumble politics of the East
+Side. Driven by the winter wind of man's ingratitude from Tammany
+Hall into the ranks of the opposite party, Joe Murray was at this
+time one of the lesser captains in "the Twenty-first" Roosevelt
+soon came to like him. He was "by nature as straight a man, as
+fearless, and as stanchly loyal," said Roosevelt, "as any one
+whom I have ever met, a man to be trusted in any position
+demanding courage, integrity, and good faith." The liking was
+returned by the eager and belligerent young Irishman, though he
+has confessed that he was first led to consider Roosevelt as a
+political ally from the point of view of his advantages as a
+vote-getter.
+
+The year after Roosevelt joined "the governing class" in Morton
+Hall, "a large barn-like room over a saloon," with furniture "of
+the canonical kind; dingy benches, spittoons, a dais at one end
+with a table and chair, and a stout pitcher for iced water, and
+on the walls pictures of General Grant, and of Levi P. Morton,"
+Joe Murray was engaged in a conflict with "the boss" and wanted a
+candidate of his own for the Assembly. He picked out Roosevelt,
+because he thought that with him he would be most likely to win.
+Win they did; the nomination was snatched away from the boss's
+man, and election followed. The defeated boss good-humoredly
+turned in to help elect the young silk-stocking who had been the
+instrument of his discomfiture.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. IN THE NEW YORK ASSEMBLY
+
+Roosevelt was twice reelected to the Assembly, the second time in
+1883, a year when a Republican success was an outstanding
+exception to the general course of events in the State. His
+career at Albany was marked by a series of fights for decency and
+honesty. Each new contest showed him a fearless antagonist, a
+hard hitter, and a man of practical common sense and growing
+political  wisdom. Those were the days of the famous "black horse
+cavalry" in the New York Legislature--a group of men whose votes
+could always be counted on by the special interests and those
+corporations whose managers proceeded on the theory that the way
+to get the legislation they wanted, or to block the legislation
+they did not want, was to buy the necessary votes. Perhaps
+one-third of the members of the Legislature, according  to
+Roosevelt's estimate, were purchasable. Others were timid. Others
+again were either stupid or honestly so convinced of the
+importance of "business" to the general welfare that they were
+blind to corporate faults. But Theodore Roosevelt was neither
+purchasable, nor timid, nor unable to distinguish between the
+legitimate requirements of business and its unjustifiable
+demands. He developed as a natural leader of the honest
+opposition to the "black horse cavalry."
+
+The situation was complicated by what were known as "strike
+bills." These were bills which, if passed, might or might not
+have been in the public interest, but would certainly have been
+highly embarrassing to the private interests involved. The
+purpose of their introduction was, of course, to compel the
+corporations to pay bribes to ensure their defeat. Roosevelt had
+one interesting and illuminating experience with the "black horse
+cavalry." He was Chairman of the Committee on Cities. The
+representatives of one of the great railways brought to him a
+bill to permit the extension of its terminal facilities in one of
+the big cities of the State, and asked him to take charge of it.
+Roosevelt looked into the proposed bill and found that it was a
+measure that ought to be passed quite as much in the public
+interest as is the interest of the railroad. He agreed to stand
+sponsor for the bill, provided he were assured that no money
+would be used to push it. The assurance was given. When the bill
+came before his committee for consideration, Roosevelt found that
+he could not get it reported out either favorably or unfavorably.
+So he decided to force matters. In accordance with his life-long
+practice, he went into the decisive committee meeting perfectly
+sure what he was going to do, and otherwise fully prepared.
+
+There was a broken chair in the room, and when he took his seat a
+leg of that chair was unobtrusively ready to his hand. He moved
+that the bill be reported favorably.
+
+The gang, without debate, voted "No." He moved that it be
+reported unfavorably. Again the gang voted "No."  Then he put
+the bill in his pocket and announced that he proposed to report
+it anyhow. There was almost a  riot. He was warned that his
+conduct would be exposed on the floor of the Assembly. He
+replied that in that case he would explain publicly in the
+Assembly the reasons which made him believe that the rest of
+the committee were trying, from motives of blackmail, to prevent
+any report of the bill. The bill was reported without further
+protest, and the threatened riot did not come off, partly, said
+Roosevelt, "because of the opportune production of the
+chair-leg." But the young fighter found that he was no farther
+along: the bill slumbered soundly on the calendar, and nothing
+that he could do availed to secure consideration of it. At last
+the representative of the railroad suggested that some older and
+more experienced leader might be able to get the bill passed
+where he had failed. Roosevelt could do nothing but assent. The
+bill was put in charge of an "old Parliamentary hand," and after
+a decent lapse of time, went through without opposition. The
+complete change of heart on the part of the black horsemen under
+the new leadership was vastly significant. Nothing could be
+proved; but much could be surmised.
+
+Another incident of Roosevelt's legislative career reveals the
+bull-dog tenacity of the man. Evidence had been procured that a
+State judge had been guilty of improper, if not of corrupt,
+relations with certain corporate interests. This judge had held
+court in a room of one of the "big business" leaders of that
+time. He had written in a letter to this financier, "I am
+willing to go to the very verge of judicial discretion to serve
+your vast interests." There was strong evidence that he had not
+stopped at the verge. The blood of the young Roosevelt boiled at
+the thought of this stain on the judicial ermine. His party
+elders sought patronizingly to reassure him; but he would have
+none of it. He rose in the Assembly and demanded the impeachment
+of the unworthy judge. With perfect candor and the naked vigor
+that in the years to come was to become known the world around he
+said precisely what he meant. Under the genial sardonic advice of
+the veteran Republican leader, who "wished to give young Mr.
+Roosevelt time to think about the wisdom of his course," the
+Assembly voted not to take up his "loose charges." It looked like
+ignominious defeat. But the next day the young firebrand was back
+to the attack again, and the next day, and the next. For eight
+days he kept up the fight; each day the reputation of this
+contest for a forlorn hope grew and spread throughout the State.
+On the eighth day he demanded that the resolution be voted on
+again, and the opposition collapsed. Only six votes were cast
+against his motion. It is true that the investigation ended in a
+coat of whitewash. But the evidence was so strong that no one
+could be in doubt that it WAS whitewash. The young legislator,
+whose party mentors had seen before him nothing but a ruined
+career, had won a smashing moral victory.
+
+Roosevelt was not only a fighter from his first day in public
+life to the last, but he was a fighter always against the same
+evils. Two incidents more than a quarter of a century apart
+illustrate this fact. A bill was introduced in the Assembly in
+those earlier days to prohibit the manufacture of cigars in
+tenement houses in New York City. It was proposed by the
+Cigar-Makers' Union. Roosevelt was appointed one of a committee
+of three to investigate the subject. Of the other two members,
+one did not believe in the bill but confessed privately that he
+must support it because the labor unions were strong in his
+district. The other, with equal frankness, confessed that he had
+to oppose the bill because certain interests who had a strong
+hold upon him disapproved it, but declared his belief that if
+Roosevelt would look into the matter he would find that the
+proposed legislation was good. Politics, and politicians, were
+like that in those days--as perhaps they still are in these. The
+young aristocrat, who was fast becoming a stalwart and aggressive
+democrat, expected to find himself against the bill; for, as he
+has said, the "respectable people" and the "business men" whom he
+knew did not believe in such intrusions upon the right even of
+workingmen to do what they would with their own. The laissez
+faire doctrine of economic life was good form in those days.
+
+But the only member of that committee that approached the
+question with an open mind found that his first impressions were
+wrong. He went down into the tenement houses to see for himself.
+He found cigars being made under conditions that were appalling.
+For example, he discovered an apartment of one room in which
+three men, two women, and several children--the members of two
+families and a male boarder--ate, slept, lived, and made cigars.
+"The tobacco was stowed about everywhere, alongside the foul
+bedding, and in a corner where there were scraps of food." These
+conditions were not exceptional; they were only a little worse
+than was usual.
+
+Roosevelt did not oppose the bill; he fought for it and it
+passed. Then he appeared before Governor Cleveland to argue for
+it on behalf of the Cigar-Makers' Union. The Governor hesitated,
+but finally signed it. The Court of Appeals declared it
+unconstitutional, in a smug and well-fed decision, which spoke
+unctuously of the "hallowed" influences of the "home." It was a
+wicked decision, because it was purely academic, and was removed
+as far as the fixed stars from the actual facts of life. But it
+had one good result. It began the making of Theodore Roosevelt
+into a champion of social justice, for, as he himself said, it
+was this case which first waked him "to a dim and partial
+understanding of the fact that the courts were not necessarily
+the best judges of what should be done to better social and
+industrial conditions."
+
+When, a quarter, of a century later, Roosevelt left the
+Presidency and became Contributing Editor of The Outlook, almost
+his first contribution to that journal was entitled "A Judicial
+Experience." It told the story of this law and its annullment by
+the court. Mr. William Travers Jerome wrote a letter to The
+Outlook, taking Roosevelt sharply to task for his criticism of
+the court. It fell to the happy lot of the writer as a cub editor
+to reply editorially to Mr. Jerome. I did so with gusto and with
+particularity. As Mr. Roosevelt left the office on his way to the
+steamer that was to take him to Africa to hunt non-political big
+game, he said to me, who had seen him only once before: "That was
+bully. You have done just what my Cabinet members used to do for
+me in Washington. When a question rose that demanded action, I
+used to act. Then I would tell Root or Taft to find out and tell
+me why what I had done was legal and justified. Well done,
+coworker." Is it any wonder that Theodore Roosevelt had made in
+that moment another ardent supporter?
+
+Those first years in the political arena were not only a fighting
+time, they were a formative time. The young Roosevelt had to
+discover a philosophy of political action which would satisfy
+him. He speedily found one that suited his temperament and his
+keen sense of reality. He found no reason to depart from it to
+the day of his death. Long afterward he told his good friend
+Jacob Riis how he arrived at it. This was the way of it:
+
+"I suppose that my head was swelled. It would not be strange if
+it was. I stood out for my own opinion, alone. I took the best
+mugwump stand: my own conscience, my own judgment, were to decide
+in all things. I would listen to no argument, no advice. I took
+the isolated peak on every issue, and my people left me. When I
+looked around, before the session was well under way, I found
+myself alone. I was absolutely deserted. The people didn't
+understand. The men from Erie, from Suffolk, from anywhere, would
+not work with me. 'He won't listen to anybody,' they said, and I
+would not. My isolated peak had become a valley; every bit of
+influence I had was gone. The things I wanted to do I was
+powerless to accomplish. What did I do? I looked the ground over
+and made up my mind that there were several other excellent
+people there, with honest opinions of the right, even though they
+differed from me. I turned in to help them, and they turned to
+and gave me a hand. And so we were able to get things done. We
+did not agree in all things, but we did in some, and those we
+pulled at together. That was my first lesson in real politics. It
+is just this: if you are cast on a desert island with only a
+screw-driver, a hatchet, and a chisel to make a boat with, why,
+go make the best one you can. It would be better if you had a
+saw, but you haven't. So with men. Here is my friend in Congress
+who is a good man, a strong man, but cannot be made to believe in
+some things which I trust. It is too bad that he doesn't look at
+it as I do, but he DOES NOT, and we have to work together as we
+can. There is a point, of course, where a man must take the
+isolated peak and break with it all for clear principle, but
+until it comes he must work, if he would be of use, with men as
+they are. As long as the good in them overbalances the evil, let
+him work with that for the best that can be got."
+
+>From the moment that he had learned this valuable lesson--and
+Roosevelt never needed to learn a lesson twice--he had his course
+in public life marked out before him. He believed ardently in
+getting things done. He was no theoretical reformer. He would
+never take the wrong road; but, if he could not go as far as he
+wanted to along the right road, he would go as far as he could,
+and bide his time for the rest. He would not compromise a hair's
+breadth on a principle; he would compromise cheerfully on a
+method which did not mean surrender of the principle. He
+perceived that there were in political life many bad men who were
+thoroughly efficient and many good men who would have liked to
+accomplish high results but who were thoroughly inefficient. He
+realized that if he wished to accomplish anything for the country
+his business was to combine decency and efficiency; to be a
+thoroughly practical man of high ideals who did his best to
+reduce those ideals to actual practice. This was the choice that
+he made in those first days, the companionable road of practical
+idealism rather than the isolated peak of idealistic
+ineffectiveness.
+
+A hard test of his political philosophy came in 1884 just after
+he had left the Legislature. He was selected as one of the four
+delegates at large from New York to the Republican National
+Convention. There he advocated vigorously the nomination of
+Senator George F. Edmunds for the Presidency. But the more
+popular candidate with the delegates was James G. Blaine.
+Roosevelt did not believe in Blaine, who was a politician of the
+professional type and who had a reputation that was not
+immaculate. The better element among the delegates fought hard
+against Blaine's nomination, with Roosevelt wherever the blows
+were shrewdest. But their efforts were of no avail. Too many
+party hacks had come to the Convention, determined to nominate
+Blaine, and they put the slate through with a whoop.
+
+Then, every Republican in active politics who was anything but a
+rubber stamp politician had a difficult problem to face. Should
+he support Blaine, in whom he could have no confidence and for
+whom he could have no respect, or should he "bolt"? A large group
+decided to bolt. They organized the Mugwump party--the epithet
+was flung at them with no friendly intent by Charles A. Dana of
+the New York Sun, but they made of it an honorable title--under
+the leadership of George William Curtis and Carl Schurz. Their
+announced purpose was to defeat the Republicans, from whose ranks
+they had seceded, and in this attempt they were successful.
+
+Roosevelt, however, made the opposite decision. Indeed, he had
+made the decision before he entered the Convention. It was
+characteristic of him not to wait until the choice was upon him
+but to look ahead and make up his mind just which course he would
+take if and when a certain contingency arose. I remember that
+once in the later days at Oyster Bay he said to me, "They say I
+am impulsive. It isn't true. The fact is that on all the
+important things that may come up for decision in my life, I have
+thought the thing out in advance and know what I will do. So when
+the moment comes, I don't have to stop to work it out then. My
+decision is already made. I have only to put it into action. It
+looks like impulsiveness. It is nothing of the sort."
+
+So, in 1884, when Roosevelt met his first problem in national
+politics, he already knew what he would do. He would support
+Blaine, for he was a party man. The decision wounded many of his
+friends. But it was the natural result of his political
+philosophy. He believed in political parties as instruments for
+securing the translation into action of the popular will. He
+perceived that the party system, as distinguished from the group
+system of the continental peoples, was the Anglo-Saxon, the
+American way of doing things. He wanted to get things done. There
+was only one thing that he valued more than achievement and that
+was the right. Therefore, until it became a clean issue between
+right and wrong, he would stick to the instrument which seemed to
+him the most efficient for getting things done. So he stuck to
+his party, in spite of his distaste for its candidate, and saw it
+go down in defeat.
+
+Roosevelt never changed his mind about this important matter. He
+was a party man to the end. In 1912 he left his old party on what
+he believed to be--and what was--a naked moral issue. But he did
+not become an independent. He created a new party.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE CHAMPION OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM
+
+The four years after the Cleveland-Blaine campaign were divided
+into two parts for Roosevelt by another political experience,
+which also resulted in defeat. He was nominated by the
+Republicans and a group of independents for Mayor of New York.
+His two opponents were Abram S. Hewitt, a business man of
+standing who had been inveigled, no one knows how, into lending
+respectability to the Tammany ticket in a critical moment, and
+Henry George, the father of the Single Tax doctrine, who had been
+nominated by a conference of some one hundred and seventy-five
+labor organizations. Roosevelt fought his best on a personal
+platform of "no class or caste" but "honest and economical
+government on behalf of the general wellbeing." But the
+inevitable happened. Tammany slipped in between its divided
+enemies and made off with the victory.
+
+The rest of the four years he spent partly in ranch life out in
+the Dakotas, partly in writing history and biography at home and
+in travel. The life on the ranch and in the hunting camps
+finished the business, so resolutely begun in the outdoor
+gymnasium on Twentieth Street, of developing a physical equipment
+adequate for any call he could make upon it. This sojourn on the
+plains gave him, too, an intimate knowledge of the frontier type
+of American. Theodore Roosevelt loved his fellow men. What is
+more, he was always interested in them, not abstractly and in the
+mass, but concretely and in the individual. He believed in them.
+He knew their strength and their virtues, and he rejoiced in
+them. He realized their weaknesses and their softnesses and
+fought them hard. It was all this that made him the thoroughgoing
+democrat that he was. "The average American," I have heard him
+say a hundred times to all kinds of audiences,"is a pretty good
+fellow, and his wife is a still better fellow." He not only
+enjoyed those years in the West to the full, but he profited by
+them as well. They broadened and deepened his knowledge of what
+the American people were and meant. They made vivid to him the
+value of the simple, robust virtues of self-reliance, courage,
+self-denial, tolerance, and justice. The influence of those
+hard-riding years was with him as a great asset to the end of his
+life.
+
+In the Presidential campaign of 1888, Roosevelt was on the firing
+line again, fighting for the Republican candidate, Benjamin
+Harrison. When Mr. Harrison was elected, he would have liked to
+put the young campaigner into the State Department. But Mr.
+Blaine, who became Secretary of State, did not care to have his
+plain-spoken opponent and critic under him. So the President
+offered Roosevelt the post of Civil Service Commissioner.
+
+The spoils system had become habitual and traditional in American
+public life by sixty years of practice. It had received its first
+high sanction in the cynical words of a New York politician, "To
+the victor belong the spoils." Politicians looked upon it as a
+normal accompaniment of their activities. The public looked upon
+it with indifference. But finally a group of irrepressible
+reformers succeeded in getting the camel's nose under the flap of
+the tent. A law was passed establishing a Commission which was to
+introduce the merit system. But even then neither the politicians
+nor the public, nor the Commission itself, took the matter very
+seriously. The Commission was in the habit of carrying on its
+functions perfunctorily and unobtrusively. But nothing could be
+perfunctory where Roosevelt was. He would never permit things to
+be done--or left undone unobtrusively, when what was needed was
+to obtrude the matter forcibly on the public mind. He was a
+profound believer in the value of publicity.
+
+When Roosevelt became Commissioner things began swiftly to
+happen. He had two firm convictions: that laws were made to be
+enforced, in the letter and in the spirit; and that the only
+thing worth while in the world was to get things done. He
+believed with a hot conviction in decency, honesty, and
+efficiency in public as in private life.
+
+For six years he fought and infused his fellow Commissioners with
+some of his fighting spirit. They were good men but easy-going
+until the right leadership came along. The first effort of the
+Commission under the new leadership was to secure the genuine
+enforcement of the law. The backbone of the merit system was the
+competitive examination. This was not because such examinations
+are the infallible way to get good public servants, but because
+they are the best way that has yet been devised to keep out bad
+public servants, selected for private reasons having nothing to
+do with the public welfare. The effort to make these examinations
+and the subsequent appointments of real service to the nation
+rather than to the politicians naturally brought the Commission
+into conflict with many men of low ideals, both in Congress and
+without. Roosevelt found a number of men in Congress--like
+Senator Lodge, Senator Davis of Minnesota, Senator Platt of
+Connecticut, and Congressman (afterward President) McKinley--who
+were sincerely and vigorously opposed to the spoils system. But
+there were numbers of other Senators and Congressmen who hated
+the whole reform--everything connected with it and everybody who
+championed it. "Sometimes," Roosevelt said of these men, "to use
+a legal phrase, their hatred was for cause, and sometimes it was
+peremptory--that is, sometimes the Commission interfered with
+their most efficient, and incidentally most corrupt and
+unscrupulous supporters, and at other times, where there was no
+such interference, a man nevertheless had an innate dislike of
+anything that tended to decency in government."
+
+Conflict with these men was inevitable. Sometimes their
+opposition took the form of trying to cut down the appropriation
+for the Commission.
+
+Then the Commission, on Roosevelt's suggestion, would try the
+effect of holding no examinations in the districts of the
+Senators or Congressmen who had voted against the appropriation.
+The response from the districts was instantaneous. Frantic
+appeals came to the Commission from aspirants for office. The
+reply would be suave and courteous. One can imagine Roosevelt
+dictating it with a glint in his eye and a snap of the jaw, and
+when it was typed, inserting a sting in the tail in the form of
+an interpolated sentence in his own vigorous and rugged script.
+Those added sentences, without which any typewritten Roosevelt
+letter might almost be declared to be a forgery, so uniformly did
+the impulse to add them seize him, were always the most
+interesting feature of a communication from him. The letter would
+inform the protesting one that unfortunately the appropriation
+had been cut, so that examinations could not be held in every
+district, and that obviously the Commission could not neglect the
+districts of those Congressmen who believed in the reform and
+therefore in the examinations. The logical next step for the
+hungry aspirant was to transfer the attack to his Congressman or
+Senator. In the long run, by this simple device of backfiring,
+which may well have been a reminiscence of prairie fire days in
+the West, the Commission obtained enough money to carry on.
+
+There were other forms of attack tried by the spoils-loving
+legislators. One was investigation by a congressional committee.
+But the appearance of Roosevelt before such an investigating body
+invariably resulted in a "bully time" for him and a peculiarly
+disconcerting time for his opponents.
+
+One of the Republican floor leaders in the House in those days
+was Congressman Grosvenor from Ohio. In an unwary moment Mr.
+Grosvenor attacked the Commission on the floor of the House in
+picturesque fashion. Roosevelt promptly asked that Mr. Grosvenor
+be invited to meet him before a congressional committee which was
+at that moment investigating the activities of the Commission.
+The Congressman did not accept the invitation until he heard that
+Roosevelt was leaving Washington for his ranch in the West. Then
+he notified the committee that he would be glad to meet
+Commissioner Roosevelt at one of its sessions. Roosevelt
+immediately postponed his journey and met him. Mr. Grosvenor,
+says Roosevelt in his Autobiography, "proved to be a person of
+happily treacherous memory, so that the simple expedient of
+arranging his statements in pairs was sufficient to reduce him to
+confusion." He declared to the committee, for instance, that he
+did not want to repeal the Civil Service Law and had never said
+so. Roosevelt produced one of Mr. Grosvenor's speeches in which
+he had said, "I will not only vote to strike out this provision,
+but I will vote to repeal the whole law." Grosvenor declared that
+there was no inconsistency between these two statements. At
+another point in his testimony, he asserted that a certain
+applicant for office, who had, as he put it, been fraudulently
+credited to his congressional district, had never lived in that
+district or in Ohio, so far as he knew. Roosevelt brought forth a
+letter in which the Congressman himself had categorically stated
+that the man in question was not only a legal resident of his
+district but was actually living there then. He explained, says
+Roosevelt, "first, that he had not written the letter; second,
+that he had forgotten he had written the letter; and, third, that
+he was grossly deceived when he wrote it." Grosvenor at length
+accused Roosevelt of a lack of humor in not appreciating that his
+statements were made "in a jesting way," and declared that "a
+Congressman making a speech on the floor of the House of
+Representatives was perhaps in a little different position from a
+witness on the witness stand." Finally he rose with dignity and,
+asserting his constitutional right not to be questioned elsewhere
+as to what he said on the floor of the House, withdrew, leaving
+Roosevelt and the Committee equally delighted with the opera
+bouffe in which he had played the leading part.
+
+In the Roosevelt days the Commission carried on its work, as of
+course it should, without thought of party. It can be imagined
+how it made the "good" Republicans rage when one of the results
+of the impartial application system was to put into office from
+the Southern States a hundred or two Democrats. The critics of
+the Commission were equally non-partisan; there was no politics
+in spoilsmanship. The case of Mr. Grosvenor was matched by that
+of Senator Gorman of Maryland, the Democratic leader in the
+Senate. Mr. Gorman told upon the floor of the Senate the
+affecting story of "a bright young man from Baltimore," a Sunday
+School scholar, well recommended by his pastor, who aspired to be
+a letter carrier. He appeared before the Commission for
+examination, and, according to Mr. Gorman, he was first asked to
+describe the shortest route from Baltimore to China. The "bright
+young man" replied brightly, according to Mr. Gorman, that he
+didn't want to go from Baltimore to China, and therefore had
+never concerned himself about the choice of routes. He was then
+asked, according to Mr. Gorman, all about the steamship lines
+from America to Europe; then came questions in geology, and
+finally in chemistry. The Commission thereupon turned the bright
+young applicant down. The Senator's speech was masterly. It must
+have made the spoilsmen chuckle and the friends of civil service
+reform squirm. It had neither of these effects on Roosevelt. It
+merely exploded him into action like a finger on a hair-trigger.
+First of all, he set about hunting down the facts. Facts were his
+favorite ammunition in a fight. They have such a powerful punch.
+A careful investigation of all the examination papers which the
+Commission had set revealed not a single question like those from
+which the "bright young man," according to Mr. Gorman, had
+suffered. So Roosevelt wrote to the Senator asking for the name
+of the" bright young man." There was no response. He also asked,
+in case Mr. Gorman did not care to reveal his identity, the date
+of the examination. Still no reply. Roosevelt offered to give to
+any representative whom Mr. Gorman would send to the Commission's
+offices all the aid he could in discovering in the files any such
+questions. The offer was ignored. But the Senator expressed
+himself as so shocked at this doubting of the word of his
+brilliant protege that he was unable to answer the letter at all.
+
+Roosevelt thereupon announced publicly that no such questions had
+ever been asked. Mr. Gorman was gravely injured by the whole
+incident. Later he declared in the Senate that he had received a
+"very impudent letter" from the young Commissioner, and that he
+had been "cruelly" called to account because he had tried to
+right a "great wrong" which the Commission had committed.
+Roosevelt's retort was to tell the whole story publicly, closing
+with this delightful passage:
+
+"High-minded, sensitive Mr. Gorman. Clinging, trustful Mr.
+Gorman. Nothing could shake his belief in the "bright young man."
+Apparently he did not even try to find out his name--if he had a
+name; in fact, his name like everything else about him, remains
+to this day wrapped in the Stygian mantle of an abysmal mystery.
+Still less has Mr. Gorman tried to verify the statements made to
+him. It is enough for him that they were made. No harsh
+suspicion, no stern demand for evidence or proof, appeals to his
+artless and unspoiled soul. He believes whatever he is told, even
+when he has forgotten the name of the teller, or never knew it.
+It would indeed be difficult to find an instance of a more
+abiding confidence in human nature--even in anonymous human
+nature. And this is the end of the tale of the Arcadian Mr.
+Gorman and his elusive friend, the bright young man without a
+name."
+
+Even so near the beginning of his career, Roosevelt showed
+himself perfectly fearless in attack. He would as soon enter the
+lists against a Senator as a Congressman, as soon challenge a
+Cabinet member as either. He did not even hesitate to make it
+uncomfortable for the President to whom he owed his continuance
+in office. His only concern was for the honor of the public
+service which he was in office to defend.
+
+One day he appeared at a meeting of the Executive Committee of
+the Civil Service Reform Association. George William Curtis was
+presiding, and Roosevelt's old friend, George Haven Putnam, who
+tells the story, was also present. Roosevelt began by hurling a
+solemn but hearty imprecation at the head of the Postmaster
+General. He went on to explain that his explosive wrath was due
+to the fact that that particular gentleman was the most
+pernicious of all the enemies of the merit system. It was one of
+the functions of the Civil Service Commission, as Roosevelt saw
+it, to put a stop to improper political activities by Federal
+employees. Such activities were among the things that the Civil
+Service law was intended to prevent. They strengthened the hands
+of the political machines and the bosses, and at the same time
+weakened the efficiency of the service. Roosevelt had from time
+to time reported to the Postmaster General what some of the Post
+Office employees were doing in political ways to the detriment of
+the service. His account of what happened was this:
+
+"I placed before the Postmaster-General sworn statements in
+regard to these political activities and the only reply I could
+secure was, 'This is all second-hand evidence.' Then I went up to
+Baltimore at the invitation of our good friend, a member of the
+National Committee, Charles J. Bonaparte. Bonaparte said that he
+could bring me into direct touch with some of the matters
+complained about. He took me to the primary meetings with some
+associate who knew by name the carriers and the customs
+officials. I was able to see going on the work of political
+assessments, and I heard the instructions given to the carriers
+and others in regard to the moneys that they were to collect. I
+got the names of some of these men recorded in my memorandum
+book. I then went back to Washington, swore myself in as a
+witness before myself as Commissioner, and sent the sworn
+statement to the Postmaster-General with the word, "This at least
+is firsthand evidence." I still got no reply, and after waiting a
+few days, I put the whole material before the President with a
+report. This report has been pigeonholed by the President, and I
+have now come to New York to see  what can be done to get the
+evidence before the public. You will understand that the head of
+a department, having  made a report to the President, can do
+nothing further with the material until the President permits."
+
+Roosevelt went back to Washington with the sage advice to ask the
+Civil Service Committee of the House to call upon him to give
+evidence in regard to the working of the Civil Service Act. He
+could then get into the record his first-hand evidence as well as
+a general statement of the bad practices which were going on.
+This evidence, when printed as a report of the congressional
+committee, could be circulated by the Association. Roosevelt
+bettered the advice by asking to have the Postmaster General
+called before the committee at the same time as himself. This was
+done, but that timid politician replied to the Chairman of the
+committee that "he would hold himself at the service of the
+Committee for any date on which Mr. Roosevelt was not to be
+present." The politicians with uneasy consciences were getting a
+little wary about face-to-face encounters with the young fighter.
+Nevertheless Roosevelt's testimony was given and circulated
+broadcast, as Major Putnam writes, "much to the dissatisfaction
+of the Postmaster General and probably of the President."
+
+The six years which Roosevelt spent on the Civil Service
+Commission were for him years of splendid training in the methods
+and practices of political life. What he learned then stood him
+in good stead when he came to the Presidency. Those years of
+Roosevelt's gave an impetus to the cause of civil reform which
+far surpassed anything it had received until his time. Indeed, it
+is probably not unfair to say that it has received no greater
+impulse since.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. HAROUN AL ROOSEVELT
+
+In 1895, at the age of thirty-six, Roosevelt was asked by Mayor
+Strong of New York City, who had just been elected on an
+anti-Tammany ticket, to become a member of his Administration.
+Mayor Strong wanted him for Street Cleaning Commissioner.
+Roosevelt definitely refused that office, on the ground that he
+had no special fitness for it, but accepted readily the Mayor's
+subsequent proposal that he should become President of the Police
+Commission, knowing that there was a job that he could do.
+
+There was plenty of work to be done in the Police Department. The
+conditions under which it must be done were dishearteningly
+unfavorable. In the first place, the whole scheme of things was
+wrong. The Police Department was governed by one of those
+bi-partisan commissions which well-meaning theorists are wont
+sometimes to set up when they think that the important thing in
+government is to have things arranged so that nobody can do
+anything harmful. The result often is that nobody can do anything
+at all. There were four Commissioners, two supposed to belong to
+one party and two to the other. There was also a Chief of Police,
+appointed by the Commission, who could not be removed without a
+trial subject to review by the courts. The scheme put a premium
+on intriguing and obstruction. It was far inferior to the present
+plan of a single Commissioner with full power, subject only to
+the Mayor who appoints him.
+
+But there is an interesting lesson to be learned from a
+comparison between the New York Police Department as it is today
+and as it was twenty-five years ago. Then the scheme of
+organization was thoroughly bad--and the department was at its
+high-water mark of honest and effective activity. Now the scheme
+of organization is excellent--but the less said about the way it
+works the better. The answer to the riddle is this: today the New
+York police force is headed by Tammany; the name of the
+particular Tammany man who is Commissioner does not matter. In
+those days the head was Roosevelt.
+
+There were many good men on the force then as now. What Roosevelt
+said of the men of his time is as true today: "There are no
+better men anywhere than the men of the New York police force;
+and when they go bad it is because the system is wrong, and
+because they are not given the chance to do the good work they
+can do and would rather do." The first fight that Roosevelt found
+on his hands was to keep politics and every kind of favoritism
+absolutely out of the force. During his six years as Civil
+Service Commissioner he had learned much about the way to get
+good men into the public service. He was now able to put his own
+theories into practice. His method was utterly simple and
+incontestably right. "As far as was humanly possible, the
+appointments and promotions were made without regard to any
+question except the fitness of the man and the needs of the
+service." That was all. "We paid," he said, "not the slightest
+attention to a man's politics or creed, or where he was born, so
+long as he was an American citizen." But it was not easy to
+convince either the politicians or the public that the Commission
+really meant what it said. In view of the long record of
+unblushing corruption in connection with every activity in the
+Police Department, and of the existence, which was a matter of
+common knowledge, of a regular tariff for appointments and
+promotions, it is little wonder that the news that every one on,
+or desiring to get on, the force would have a square deal was
+received with scepticism. But such was the fact. Roosevelt
+brought the whole situation out into the open, gave the widest
+possible publicity to what the Commission was doing, and went
+hotly after any intimation of corruption.
+
+One secret of his success here as everywhere else was that he did
+things himself. He knew things of his own knowledge. One evening
+he went down to the Bowery to speak at a branch of the Young
+Men's Christian Association. There he met a young Jew, named
+Raphael, who had recently displayed unusual courage and physical
+prowess in rescuing women and children from a burning building.
+Roosevelt suggested that he try the examination for entrance to
+the force. Young Raphael did so, was successful, and became a
+policeman of the best type. He and his family, said Roosevelt,
+"have been close friends of mine ever since." Another comment
+which he added is delicious and illuminating: "To show our
+community of feeling and our grasp of the facts of life, I may
+mention that we were almost the only men in the Police Department
+who picked Fitzsimmons as a winner against Corbett." There is
+doubtless much in this little incident shocking to the
+susceptibilities of many who would consider themselves among the
+"best" people. But Roosevelt would care little for that. He was a
+real democrat; and to his great soul there was nothing either
+incongruous or undesirable in having--and in admitting that he
+had--close friends in an East Side Jewish family just over from
+Russia. He believed, too, in "the strenuous life," in boxing and
+in prize fighting when it was clean. He could meet a subordinate
+as man to man on the basis of such a personal matter as their
+respective judgment of two prize fighters, without relaxing in
+the slightest degree their official relations. He was a man of
+realities, who knew how to preserve the real distinctions of life
+without insisting on the artificial ones.
+
+One of the best allies that Roosevelt had was Jacob A. Riis, that
+extraordinary man with the heart of a child, the courage of a
+lion, and the spirit of a crusader, who came from Denmark as an
+immigrant, tramped the streets of New York and the country roads
+without a place to lay his head, became one of the best police
+reporters New York ever knew, and grew to be a flaming force for
+righteousness in the city of his adoption. His book, "How the
+Other Half Lives", did more to clean up the worst slums of the
+city than any other single thing. When the book appeared,
+Roosevelt went to Mr. Riis's office, found him out, and left a
+card which said simply, "I have read your book. I have come down
+to help." When Roosevelt became Police Commissioner, Riis was in
+the Tribune Police Bureau in Mulberry Street, opposite Police
+Headquarters, already a well valued friend. Roosevelt took him
+for guide, and together they tramped about the dark spots of the
+city in the night hours when the underworld slips its mask and
+bares its arm to strike. Roosevelt had to know for himself. He
+considered that he had two duties as Police Commissioner: one to
+make the police force an honest and effective public servant; the
+other to use his position "to help in making the city a better
+place in which to live and work for those to whom the conditions
+of life and labor were hardest." These night wanderings of
+"Haroun al Roosevelt," as some one successfully ticketed him in
+allusion to the great Caliph's similar expeditions, were
+powerful aids to the tightening up of discipline and to the
+encouragement of good work by patrolmen and roundsmen. The
+unfaithful or the easy-going man on the beat, who allowed himself
+to be beguiled by the warmth and cheer of a saloon back-room, or
+to wander away from his duty for his own purposes, was likely to
+be confronted by the black slouch hat and the gleaming spectacles
+of a tough-set figure that he knew as the embodiment of
+relentless justice. But the faithful knew no less surely that he
+was their best friend and champion.
+
+In the old days of "the system," not only appointment to the
+force and promotion, but recognition of exceptional achievement
+went by favor. The policeman who risked his life in the pursuit
+of duty and accomplished some big thing against great odds could
+not be sure of the reward to which he was entitled unless he had
+political pull. It was even the rule in the Department that the
+officer who spoiled his uniform in rescuing man, woman, or child
+from the waters of the river must get a new one at his own
+expense. "The system" knew neither justice nor fair play. It knew
+nothing but the cynical phrase of Richard Croker, Tammany Hall's
+famous boss, "my own pocket all the time." But Roosevelt changed
+all that. He had not been in Mulberry Street a month before that
+despicable rule about the uniform was blotted out. His whole term
+of office on the Police Board was marked by acts of recognition
+of bravery and faithful service. Many times he had to dig the
+facts out for himself or ran upon them by accident. There was no
+practice in the Department of recording the good work done by the
+men on the force so that whoever would might read.
+
+Roosevelt enjoyed this part of his task heartily. He believed
+vigorously in courage, hardihood, and daring. What is more, he
+believed with his whole soul in men. It filled him with pure joy
+when he discovered a man of the true stalwart breed who held his
+own life as nothing when his duty was at stake.
+
+During his two years' service, he and his fellow Commissioners
+singled out more than a hundred men for special mention because
+of some feat of heroism. Two cases which he describes in his
+"Autobiography" are typical of the rest. One was that of an old
+fellow, a veteran of the Civil War, who was a roundsman.
+Roosevelt noticed one day that he had saved a woman from drowning
+and called him before him to investigate the matter. The veteran
+officer was not a little nervous and agitated as he produced his
+record. He had grown gray in the service and had performed feat
+after feat of heroism; but his complete lack of political backing
+had kept him from further promotion. In twenty-two years on the
+force he had saved some twenty-five persons from drowning, to say
+nothing of rescuing several from burning buildings. Twice
+Congress had passed special acts to permit the Secretary of the
+Treasury to give him a medal for distinguished gallantry in
+saving life. He had received other medals from the Life Saving
+Society and from the Police Department itself. The one thing that
+he could not achieve was adequate promotion, although his record
+was spotless. When Roosevelt's attention was attracted to him, he
+received his promotion then and there. "It may be worth
+mentioning," says Roosevelt, "that he kept on saving life after
+he was given his sergeantcy."
+
+The other case was that of a patrolman who seemed to have fallen
+into the habit of catching burglars. Roosevelt noticed that he
+caught two in successive weeks, the second time under unusual
+conditions. The policeman saw the burglar emerging from a house
+soon after midnight and gave chase. The fugitive ran toward Park
+Avenue. The New York Central Railroad runs under that avenue, and
+there is a succession of openings in the top of the tunnel. The
+burglar took a desperate chance by dropping through one of the
+openings, at the imminent risk of breaking his neck. "Now the
+burglar," says Roosevelt, "was running for his liberty, and it
+was the part of wisdom for him to imperil life and limb; but the
+policeman was merely doing his duty, and nobody could have blamed
+him for not taking the jump. However, he jumped; and in this
+particular case the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the
+unrighteous. The burglar had the breath knocked out of him, and
+the 'cop' didn't. When his victim could walk, the officer trotted
+him around to the station house." When Roosevelt had discovered
+that the patrolman's record showed him to be sober, trustworthy,
+and strictly attentive to duty, he secured his promotion at once.
+
+So the Police Commission, during those two years, under the
+driving force of Roosevelt's example and spirit, went about the
+regeneration of the force whose former proud title of "The
+Finest" had been besmirched by those who should have been its
+champions and defenders. Politics, favoritism, and corruption
+were knocked out of the department with all the thoroughness that
+the absurd bipartisan scheme of administration would permit.
+
+The most spectacular fight of all was against the illegal
+operations of the saloons. The excise law forbade the sale of
+liquor on Sunday. But the police, under orders from "higher up,"
+enforced the law with discretion. The saloons which paid
+blackmail, or which enjoyed the protection of some powerful
+Tammany chieftain, sold liquor on Sunday with impunity. Only
+those whose owners were recalcitrant or without influence were
+compelled to obey the law.
+
+Now a goodly proportion of the population of New York, as of any
+great city, objects strenuously to having its personal habits
+interfered with by the community. This is just as true now in the
+days of prohibition as it was then in the days of "Sunday
+closing." So when Roosevelt came into office with the simple,
+straightforward conviction that laws on the statute books were
+intended to be enforced and proceeded to close all the saloons on
+Sunday, the result was inevitable. The professional politicians
+foamed at the mouth. The yellow press shrieked and lied. The
+saloon-keepers and the sharers of their illicit profits wriggled
+and squirmed. But the saloons were closed. The law was enforced
+without fear or favor. The Sunday sale of liquor disappeared from
+the city, until a complaisant judge, ruling upon the provision of
+the law which permitted drink to be sold with a meal, decreed
+that one pretzel, even when accompanied by seventeen beers, made
+a "meal." No amount of honesty and fearlessness in the
+enforcement of the law could prevail against such judicial aid
+and comfort to the cause of nullification. The main purpose of
+Roosevelt's fight for Sunday closing, the stopping of blackmail,
+was, however, achieved. A standard of law enforcement was set
+which shows what can be done even with an unpopular law, and in
+New York City itself, if the will to deal honestly and without
+cowardice is there.
+
+So the young man who was "ever a fighter" went on his way,
+fighting evil to the death wherever he found it, achieving
+results, making friends eagerly and enemies blithely, learning,
+broadening, growing. Already he had made a distinct impression
+upon his times.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. FIGHTING AND BREAKFASTING WITH PLATT
+
+>From the New York Police Department Roosevelt was called by
+President McKinley to Washington in 1897, to become Assistant
+Secretary of the Navy. After a year there--the story of which
+belongs elsewhere in this volume--he resigned to go to Cuba as
+Lieutenant-Colonel of the Rough Riders. He was just as prominent
+in that war for liberty and justice as the dimensions of the
+conflict permitted. He was accustomed in after years to say with
+deprecating humor, when talking to veterans of the Civil War, "It
+wasn't much of a war, but it was all the war we had." It made him
+Governor of New York.
+
+When he landed with his regiment at Montauk Point from Cuba, he
+was met by two delegations. One consisted of friends from his own
+State who were political independents; the other came from the
+head of the Republican political machine.
+
+Both wanted him as a candidate for Governor. The independents
+were anxious to have him make a campaign against the Old Guard of
+both the standard parties, fighting Richard Croker, the cynical
+Tammany boss, on the one side, and Thomas C. Platt, the "easy
+boss" of the Republicans, on the other. Tom Platt did not want
+him at all. But he did want to win the election, and he knew that
+he must have something superlatively fine to offer, if he was to
+have any hope of carrying the discredited Republican party to
+victory. So he swallowed whatever antipathy he may have had and
+offered the nomination to Roosevelt. This was before the days
+when the direct primary gave the plain voters an opportunity to
+upset the calculations of a political boss.
+
+Senator Platt's emissary, Lemuel Ely Quigg, in a two hours'
+conversation in the tent at Montauk, asked some straight-
+from-the-shoulder questions. The answers he received were just as
+unequivocal. Mr. Quigg wanted a plain statement as to whether or
+not Roosevelt wanted the nomination. He wanted to know what
+Roosevelt's attitude would be toward the organization in the
+event of his election, whether or not he would "make war" on Mr.
+Platt and his friends, or whether he would confer with them and
+give fair consideration to their point of view as to party policy
+and public interest. In short, he wanted a frank definition of
+Roosevelt's attitude towards existing party conditions. He got
+precisely that. Here it is, in Roosevelt's own words:
+
+"I replied that I should like to be nominated, and if nominated
+would promise to throw myself into the campaign with all possible
+energy. I said that I should not make war on Mr. Platt or anybody
+else if war could be avoided; that what I wanted was to be
+Governor and not a faction leader; that I certainly would confer
+with the organization men, as with everybody else who seemed to
+me to have knowledge of and interest in public affairs, and that
+as to Mr. Platt and the organization leaders, I would do so in
+the sincere hope that there might always result harmony of
+opinion and purpose; but that while I would try to get on well
+with the organization, the organization must with equal sincerity
+strive to do what I regarded as essential for the public good;
+and that in every case, after full consideration of what
+everybody had to say who might possess real knowledge of the
+matter, I should have to act finally as my own judgment and
+conscience dictated and administer the State government as I
+thought it ought to be administered . . . . I told him to tell
+the Senator that while I would talk freely with him, and had no
+intention of becoming a factional leader with a personal
+organization, yet I must have direct personal relations with
+everybody, and get their views at first hand whenever I so
+desired, because I could not have one man speaking for all.*
+
+*Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 271-72.
+
+
+This was straight Roosevelt talk. It was probably the first time
+that the "easy boss" had received such a response to his
+overtures. History does not record how he liked it; but at least
+he accepted it. Subsequent events suggest that he was either
+unwilling to believe or incapable of understanding that the
+Colonel of the Rough Riders meant precisely what he said. But
+Platt found out his mistake. He was not the first or the last
+politician to have that experience.
+
+So Roosevelt was nominated, made a gruelling campaign, was
+elected by a small but sufficient majority, in a year when any
+other Republican candidate would probably have been "snowed
+under," and became Governor seventeen years after he entered
+public life. He was now forty years old.
+
+The governorship of Theodore Roosevelt was marked by a deal of
+fine constructive legislation and administration. But it was even
+more notable for the new standard which it set for the
+relationship in which the executive of a great State should stand
+to his office, to the public welfare, to private interests, and
+to the leaders of his party. Before Roosevelt's election there
+was need for a revision of the standard. In those days it was
+accepted as a matter of course, at least in practice, that the
+party boss was the overlord of the constitutional representatives
+of the people. Appointments were made primarily for the good of
+the party and only incidentally in the public interest. The
+welfare of the party was closely bound up with the profit of
+special interests, such as public service corporations and
+insurance companies. The prevalent condition of affairs was
+shrewdly summed up in a satiric paraphrase of Lincoln's
+conception of the American ideal: "Government of the people, by
+the bosses, for the special interests." The interests naturally
+repaid this zealous care for their well-being by contributions to
+the party funds.
+
+Platt was one of the most nearly absolute party bosses that the
+American system of machine politics has produced. In spite of the
+fair warning which he had already received, both directly from
+Roosevelt's own words, and indirectly from his whole previous
+career, he was apparently surprised and unquestionably annoyed
+when he found that he was not to be the new Governor's master.
+The trouble began before Roosevelt took office. At a conference
+one day Platt asked Roosevelt if there were any members of the
+Assembly whom he would like to have assigned to special
+committees. Roosevelt was surprised at the question, as he had
+not known that the Speaker of the Assembly, who appoints the
+committees, had yet been agreed upon by the Assemblymen-elect. He
+expressed his surprise. But Mr. Platt enlightened him, saying,
+"Of course, whoever we choose as Speaker will agree beforehand to
+make the appointments we wish." Roosevelt has recorded the mental
+note which he thereupon made, that if they tried the same process
+with the Governor-elect they would find themselves mistaken. In a
+few days they did try it--and discovered their mistake.
+
+Platt asked Roosevelt to come to see him. The Senator being an
+old and physically feeble man, Roosevelt went. Platt handed him a
+telegram from a certain man, accepting with pleasure his
+appointment as Superintendent of Public Works. This was one of
+the most important appointive offices in the State
+Administration. It was especially so at this time in view of the
+scandals which had arisen under the previous Administration over
+the Erie Canal, the most important responsibility of this
+department. Now, the man whom the boss had picked out was an
+excellent fellow, whom Roosevelt liked and whom, incidentally, he
+later appointed to an office which he filled in admirable
+fashion. But Roosevelt had no intention of having any one but
+himself select the members of his Administration. He said so
+frankly and simply. The Senator raged. He was unaccustomed to
+such independence of spirit. Roosevelt was courteous but firm.
+The irresistible force had met the immovable obstacle--and the
+force capitulated. The telegraphic acceptance was not accepted.
+The appointment was not made.
+
+Mr. Platt was a wise man, even if he was arrogant. He knew when
+he had met one whom he could not drive. So he did not break with
+the new Governor. Roosevelt was wise, too, although he was
+honest. So he did not break with the "easy boss." His failure to
+do so was a disappointment to his impractical friends and
+supporters, who were more concerned with theoretical goodness
+than with achievement.
+
+Roosevelt worked with Platt and the party machine whenever he
+could. He fought only when he must. When he fought, he won. In
+Senator Platt's "Autobiography", the old boss paid this tribute
+to the young fighter whom he had made Governor: "Roosevelt had
+from the first agreed that he would consult me on all questions
+of appointments, Legislature or party policy. He religiously
+fulfilled this pledge, although he frequently did just what he
+pleased."
+
+One of the things that particularly grieved the theoretical
+idealists and the chronic objectors was the fact that Roosevelt
+used on occasion to take breakfast with Senator Platt. They did
+not seem to think it possible that a Governor could accept the
+hospitality of a boss without taking orders from him. But Mr.
+Platt knew better, if they did not. He was never under any
+illusions as to the extent of his influence with Roosevelt. It
+vanished precisely at the point where the selfish interests of
+the party and the wishes of the boss collided with the public
+welfare. The facts about the famous breakfasts are plain enough.
+The Governor was in Albany, the Senator in Washington. Both found
+it easy to get to New York on Saturday. It was natural that they
+should from time to time have matters to discuss for both were
+leaders in their party. Mr. Platt was a feeble man, who found it
+difficult to get about. Roosevelt was a chivalrous man, who
+believed that courtesy and consideration were due to age and
+weakness. In addition, he liked to make every minute count. So he
+used to go, frankly and openly, to the Senator's hotel for
+breakfast. He was not one of that class which he has described
+as composed of "solemn reformers of the tom-fool variety, who,
+according to their custom, paid attention to the name and not the
+thing." He cared only for the reality; the appearance mattered
+little to him.
+
+The tom-fool reformers who criticized Roosevelt for meeting Platt
+at breakfast were not even good observers. If they had been, they
+would have realized that when Roosevelt breakfasted with Platt,
+it generally meant that he was trying to reconcile the Senator to
+something he was going to do which the worthy boss did not like.
+For instance, Roosevelt once wrote to Platt, who was trying to
+get him to promote a certain judge over the head of another
+judge: "There is a strong feeling among the judges and the
+leading members of the bar that Judge Y ought not to have Judge X
+jumped over his head, and I do not see my way clear to doing it.
+I am inclined to think that the solution I mentioned to you is
+the solution I shall have to adopt. Remember the breakfast at
+Douglas Robinson's at 8:30." It is probable that the Governor
+enjoyed that breakfast more than did the Senator. So it usually
+was with the famous breakfasts. "A series of breakfasts was
+always the prelude to some active warfare."
+
+For Roosevelt and Platt still had their pitched battles. The most
+epic of them all was fought over the reappointment of the State
+Superintendent of Insurance. The incumbent was Louis F. Payn, a
+veteran petty boss from a country district and one of Platt's
+right-hand men. Roosevelt discovered that Payn had been involved
+in compromising relations with certain financiers in New York
+with whom he "did not deem it expedient that the Superintendent
+of Insurance, while such, should have any intimate and
+money-making relations." The Governor therefore decided not to
+reappoint him. Platt issued an ultimatum that Payn must be
+reappointed or he would fight. He pointed out that in case of a
+fight Payn would stay in anyway, since the consent of the State
+Senate was necessary not only to appoint a man to office but to
+remove him from office. The Governor replied cheerfully that he
+had made up his mind and that Payn would not be retained. If he
+could not get his successor confirmed, he would make the
+appointment as soon as the Legislature adjourned, and the
+appointment would stand at least until the Legislature met again.
+Platt declared in turn that Payn would be reinstated as soon as
+the Legislature reconvened. Roosevelt admitted the possibility,
+but assured his opponent that the process would be repeated as
+soon as that session came to an end. He added his conviction
+that, while he might have an uncomfortable time himself, he would
+guarantee that his opponents would be made more uncomfortable
+still. Thus the matter stood in the weeks before final action
+could be taken. Platt was sure that Roosevelt must yield. But
+once more he did not know his man. It is curious how long it
+takes feudal overlords to get the measure of a fearless free man.
+
+The political power which the boss wielded was reinforced by
+pressure from big business interests in New York. Officials of
+the large insurance companies adopted resolutions asking for
+Payn's reappointment. But some of them privately and hastily
+assured the Governor that these resolutions were for public
+consumption only, and that they would be delighted to have Payn
+superseded. Roosevelt strove to make it clear again and again
+that he was not fighting the organization as such, and announced
+his readiness to appoint any one of several men who were good
+organization men--only he would not retain Lou Payn nor appoint
+any man of his type. The matter moved along to the final scene,
+which took place at the Union League Club in New York.
+
+Mr. Platt's chief lieutenant asked for a meeting with the
+Governor. The request was granted. The emissary went over the
+ground thoroughly. He declared that Platt would never yield. He
+explained that he was certain to win the fight, and that he
+wished to save Roosevelt from such a lamentable disaster as the
+end of his political career. Roosevelt again explained at length
+his position. After half an hour he rose to go. The "subsequent
+proceedings" he described as follows:
+
+"My visitor repeated that I had this last chance, and that ruin
+was ahead of me if I refused it; whereas, if I accepted,
+everything would be made easy. I shook my head and answered,
+'There is nothing to add to what I have already said.' He
+responded, 'You have made up your mind?' and I said, 'I have." He
+then said, 'You know it means your ruin?' and I answered, 'Well,
+we will see about that,' and walked toward the door. He said,
+'You understand, the fight will begin tomorrow and will be
+carried on to the bitter end.' I said, 'Yes,' and added, as I
+reached the door, 'Good night.' Then, as the door opened my
+opponent, or visitor, whichever one chooses to call him, whose
+face was as impassive and as inscrutable as that of Mr. John
+Hamlin in a poker game, said: 'Hold on! We accept. Send in
+so-and-so (the man I had named). The Senator is very sorry, but
+he will make no further opposition!" I never saw a bluff carried
+more resolutely through to the final limit."*
+
+* Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 293-94.
+
+
+One other Homeric fight with the machine was Roosevelt's portion
+during his Governorship. This time it was not directly with the
+boss himself but with the boss's liegemen in the Legislature. But
+the kernel of the whole matter was the same--the selfish
+interests of big corporations against the public good.
+
+In those days corporations were by common practice privileged
+creatures. They were accustomed to special treatment from
+legislatures and administrations. But when Roosevelt was elected
+Governor, he was determined that no corporation should get a
+valuable privilege from the State without paying for it. Before
+long he had become convinced that they ought also to pay for
+those which they already had, free gifts of the State in those
+purblind days when corporations were young and coddled. He
+proposed that public service corporations doing business on
+franchises granted by the State and by municipalities should be
+taxed upon the value of the privileges they enjoyed. The
+corporations naturally enough did not like the proposal. But it
+was made in no spirit or tone of antagonism to business or of
+demagogic outcry against those who were prosperous. All that the
+Governor demanded was a square deal. In his message to the
+Legislature, he wrote as follows:
+
+"There is evident injustice in the light taxation of
+corporations. I have not the slightest sympathy with the outcry
+against corporations as such, or against prosperous men of
+business. Most of the great material works by which the entire
+country benefits have been due to the action of individual men,
+or of aggregates of men, who made money for themselves by doing
+that which was in the interest of the people as a whole. From an
+armor plant to a street railway, no work which is really
+beneficial to the public can be performed to the best advantage
+of the public save by men of such business capacity that they
+will not do the work unless they themselves receive ample reward
+for doing it. The effort to deprive them of an ample reward
+merely means that they will turn their energies in some other
+direction; and the public will be just so much the loser . . . .
+But while I freely admit all this, it yet remains true that a
+corporation which derives its powers from the State should pay to
+the State a just percentage of its earnings as a return for the
+privileges it enjoys."
+
+This was quietly reasonable and uninflammatory doctrine. But the
+corporations would have none of it. The Republican machine, which
+had a majority in the Legislature, promptly repudiated it as
+well. The campaign contributions from the corporations were too
+precious to be jeopardized by legislation which the corporations
+did not want. The Governor argued, pleasantly and cheerfully. The
+organization balked sullenly. The corporations grinned knowingly.
+They had plenty of money with which to kill the bill, but they
+did not need to use it. The machine was working smoothly in their
+behalf. The bill was introduced and referred to a committee, and
+there it lay. No amount of argument and persuasion that the
+Governor could bring to bear availed to bring the bill out of
+hiding. So he sent in a special message, on almost the last day
+of the session. According to the rules of the New York Assembly,
+when the Governor sends in a special message on a given measure,
+the bill must be reported out and given consideration. But the
+machine was dazzled with its own arrogance. The Speaker would not
+have the message read. Some one actually tore it up.
+
+This was more than a crime--it was a blunder. The wise ones in
+the organization realized it. They had no desire to have the
+Governor appeal to the people with his torn message in his hand.
+Roosevelt saw the error too, and laughed happily. He wrote
+another message and sent it over with the curt statement that, if
+it were not read forthwith, he would come over and read it
+himself. They knew that he would! So the Speaker read the
+message, and the bill was reported and hastily passed on the last
+day of the session.
+
+Then the complacent corporations woke up. They had trusted the
+machine too far. What was more, they had underestimated the
+Governor's striking power. Now they came to him, hat in hand, and
+suggested some fault in the bill. He agreed with them. They asked
+if he would not call a special session to amend the bill. Again
+he agreed. The session was called, and the amendments were
+proposed. In addition, however, certain amendments that would
+have frustrated the whole purpose of the bill were suggested. The
+organization, still at its old tricks, tried to get back into its
+possession the bill already passed. But the Governor was not
+easily caught napping. He knew as well as they did that
+possession of the bill gave him the whip hand. He served notice
+that the second bill would contain precisely the amendments
+agreed upon and no others. Otherwise he would sign the first bill
+and let it become law, with all its imperfections on its head.
+Once more the organization and the corporations emulated Davy
+Crockett's coon and begged him not to shoot, for they would come
+down. The amended bill was passed and became law. But there was
+an epilogue to this little drama. The corporations proceeded to
+attack the constitutionality of the law on the ground of the very
+amendment for which they had so clamorously pleaded. But they
+failed. The Supreme Court of the United States, after Roosevelt
+had become President, affirmed the constitutionality of the law.
+
+The spectacular events of Roosevelt's governorship were incidents
+in this conflict between two political philosophies, the one held
+by Platt and his tribe, the other by Roosevelt. Extracts from two
+letters exchanged by the Senator and the Governor bring the
+contrast between these philosophies into clear relief. Platt
+wrote as follows:
+
+"When the subject of your nomination was under consideration,
+there was one matter that gave me real anxiety . . . . I had
+heard from a good many sources that you were a little loose on
+the relations of capital and labor, on trusts and combinations,
+and, indeed, on those numerous questions which have recently
+arisen in politics affecting the security of earnings and the
+right of a man to run his business in his own way, with due
+respect, of course, to the Ten Commandments and the Penal Code.
+Or, to get at it even more clearly, I understood from a number of
+business men, and among them many of your own personal friends,
+that you entertained various altruistic ideas, all very well in
+their way, but which before they could safely be put into law
+needed very profound consideration." *
+
+* Roosevelt, "Autobiography" (Scribner), p. 299.
+
+
+Roosevelt replied that he had known very well that the Senator
+had just these feelings about him, and then proceeded to set
+forth his own view of the matter. With his usual almost uncanny
+wisdom in human relations, he based his argument on party
+expediency, which he knew Platt would comprehend, rather than on
+abstract considerations of right and wrong, in which realm the
+boss would be sure to feel rather at sea. He wrote thus:
+
+"I know that when parties divide on such issues [as Bryanism] the
+tendency is to force everybody into one of two camps, and to
+throw out entirely men like myself, who are as strongly opposed
+to Populism in every stage as the greatest representative of
+corporate wealth but who also feel strongly that many of these
+representatives of enormous corporate wealth have themselves been
+responsible for a portion of the conditions against which
+Bryanism is in ignorant revolt. I do not believe that it is wise
+or safe for us as a party to take refuge in mere negation and to
+say that there are no evils to be corrected. It seems to me that
+our attitude should be one of correcting the evils and thereby
+showing that whereas the Populists, Socialists, and others do not
+correct the evils at all, or else do so at the expense of
+producing others in aggravated form, on the contrary we
+Republicans hold the just balance and set ourselves as resolutely
+against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against
+demagogy and mob rule on the other."*
+
+*Roosevelt, Autobiography (Scribner), p. 300.
+
+
+This was the fight that Roosevelt was waging in every hour of his
+political career. It was a middle-of-the-road fight, not because
+of any timidity or slack-fibered thinking which prevented a
+committal to one extreme or the other, but because of a stern
+conviction that in the golden middle course was to be found truth
+and the right. It was an inevitable consequence that first one
+side and then the other--and sometimes both at once--should
+attack him as a champion of the other. It became a commonplace of
+his experience to be inveighed against by reformers as a
+reactionary and to be assailed by conservatives as a radical. But
+this paradoxical experience did not disturb him at all. He was
+concerned only to have the testimony of his own mind and
+conscience that he was right.
+
+The contests which he had as Governor were spectacular and
+exhilarating; but they did not fill all the hours of his working
+days. A tremendous amount of spade work was actually
+accomplished. For example, he brought about the reenactment of
+the Civil Service Law, which under his predecessor had been
+repealed, and put through a mass of labor legislation for the
+betterment of conditions under which the workers carried on their
+daily lives. This legislation included laws to increase the
+number of factory inspectors, to create a tenement-house
+commission, to regulate sweatshop labor, to make the eight-hour
+and prevailing rate of wages law effective, to compel railways to
+equip freight trains with air brakes, to regulate the working
+hours of women, to protect women and children from dangerous
+machinery, to enforce good scaffolding provisions for workmen on
+buildings, to provide seats for the use of waitresses in hotels
+and restaurants, to reduce the hours of labor for drug-store
+clerks, to provide for the registration of laborers for municipal
+employment. He worked hard to secure an employers' liability law,
+but the time for this was not yet come.
+
+Many of these reforms are now matters of course that no employer
+would think of attempting to eliminate. But they were new ideas
+then; and it took vision and courage to fight for them.
+
+Roosevelt would have been glad to be elected Governor for a
+second term. But destiny, working through curious instruments,
+would not have it so. He left behind him in the Empire State, not
+only a splendid record of concrete achievement but something more
+than that. Jacob Riis has told how, some time after, an old State
+official at Albany, who had seen many Governors come and go,
+revealed this intangible something. Mr. Riis had said to him that
+he did not care much for Albany since Roosevelt had gone, and his
+friend replied: "Yes, we think so, many of us. The place seemed
+dreary when he was gone. But I know now that he left something
+behind that was worth our losing him to get. This past winter,
+for the first time, I heard the question spring up spontaneously,
+as it seemed, when a measure was up in the Legislature 'Is it
+right?' Not 'Is it expedient?' not 'How is it going to help me?'
+not 'What is it worth to the party?' Not any of these, but 'Is it
+right?' That is Roosevelt's legacy to Albany. And it was worth
+his coming and his going to have that."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. ROOSEVELT BECOMES PRESIDENT
+
+There was chance in Theodore Roosevelt's coming into the
+Presidency as he did, but there was irony as well. An evil chance
+dropped William McKinley before an assassin's bullet; but there
+was a fitting irony in the fact that the man who must step into
+his place had been put where he was in large measure by the very
+men who would least like to see him become President.
+
+The Republican convention of 1900 was a singularly unanimous
+body. President McKinley was renominated without a murmur of
+dissent. But there was no Vice-President to renominate, as Mr.
+Hobart had died in office. There was no logical candidate for the
+second place on the ticket. Senator Platt, however, had a man
+whom he wanted to get rid of, since Governor Roosevelt had made
+himself persona non grata alike to the machine politicians of his
+State and to the corporations allied with them. The Governor,
+however, did not propose to be disposed of so easily. His reasons
+were characteristic. He wrote thus to Senator Platt about the
+matter:
+
+"I can't help feeling more and more that the VicePresidency is
+not an office in which I could do anything and not an office in
+which a man who is still vigorous and not past middle life has
+much chance of doing anything . . . . Now, I should like to be
+Governor for another term, especially if we are able to take hold
+of the canals in serious shape. But, as Vice-President, I don't
+see there is anything I can do. I would be simply a presiding
+officer, and that I should find a bore."
+
+Now Mr. Platt knew that nothing but "sidetracking" could stop
+another nomination of Roosevelt for the Governorship, and this
+Rough Rider was a thorn in his flesh. So he went on his
+subterranean way to have him nominated for the most innocuous
+political berth in the gift of the American people. He secured
+the cooperation of Senator Quay of Pennsylvania and another boss
+or two of the same indelible stripe; but all their political
+strength would not have accomplished the desired result without
+assistance from quite a different source. Roosevelt had already
+achieved great popularity in the Middle and the Far West for the
+very reasons which made Mr. Platt want him out of the way. So,
+while the New York boss and his acquiescent delegates were
+stopped from presenting his name to the convention by
+Roosevelt's assurance that he would fight a l'outrance any
+movement from his own State to nominate him, other delegates took
+matters into their own hands and the nomination was finally made
+unanimously.
+
+Roosevelt gave great strength to the Republican ticket in the
+campaign which followed. William Jennings Bryan was again the
+Democratic candidate, but the "paramount issue" of his campaign
+had changed since four years before from free silver to
+anti-imperialism. President McKinley, according to his custom,
+made no active campaign; but Bryan and Roosevelt competed with
+each other in whirlwind speaking tours from one end of the
+country to the other. The war-cry of the Republicans was the
+"full dinner pail"; the keynote of Bryan's bid for popular
+support was opposition to the Republican policy of expansion and
+criticism of Republican tendencies toward plutocratic control.
+The success of the Republican ticket was overwhelming; McKinley
+and Roosevelt received nearly twice as many electoral votes as
+Bryan and Stevenson.
+
+When President McKinley was shot at Buffalo six months after his
+second term began, it looked for a time as though he would
+recover. So Roosevelt, after an immediate visit to Buffalo, went
+to join his family in the Adirondacks. The news of the
+President's impending death found him out in the wilderness on
+the top of Mount Tahawus, not far from the tiny Lake
+Tear-of-the-Clouds, the source of the Hudson River. A ten-mile
+dash down the mountain trail, in the course of which he
+outstripped all his companions but one; a wild forty-mile drive
+through the night to the railroad, the new President and his
+single companion changing the horses two or three times with
+their own hands; a fast journey by special train across the
+State--and on the evening of September 14, 1901, Theodore
+Roosevelt took the oath of office as the twenty-sixth President
+of the United States.
+
+Before taking the oath, Roosevelt announced that it would be his
+aim "to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President
+McKinley for the peace, prosperity, and honor of our beloved
+country." He immediately asked every member of the late
+President's Cabinet to continue in office. The Cabinet was an
+excellent one, and Mr. Roosevelt found it necessary to make no
+other changes than those that came in the ordinary course of
+events. The policies were not altered in broad general outline,
+for Roosevelt was as stalwart a Republican as McKinley himself,
+and was as firmly convinced of the soundness of the fundamentals
+of the Republican doctrine.
+
+But the fears of some of his friends that Roosevelt would seem,
+if he carried out his purpose of continuity, "a pale copy of
+McKinley" were not justified in the event. They should have known
+better. A copy of any one Roosevelt could neither be nor seem,
+and "pale" was the last epithet to be applied to him with
+justice. It could not be long before the difference in the two
+Administrations would appear in unmistakable terms. The one which
+had just passed was first of all a party Administration and
+secondly a McKinley Administration. The one which followed was
+first, last, and all the time a Roosevelt Administration. "Where
+Macgregor sits, there is the head of the table." Not because
+Roosevelt consciously willed it so, but because the force and
+power and magnetism of his vigorous mind and personality
+inevitably made it so. McKinley had been a great harmonizer. "He
+oiled the machinery of government with loving and imperturbable
+patience," said an observer of his time, "and the wheels ran with
+an ease unknown since Washington's first term of office." It had
+been a constant reproach of the critics of the former President
+that "his ear was always to the ground." But he kept it there
+because it was his sincere conviction that it belonged there,
+ready to apprize him of the vibrations of the popular will.
+Roosevelt was the born leader with an innate instinct of command.
+He did not scorn or flout the popular will; he had too confirmed
+a conviction of the sovereign right of the people to rule for
+that. But he did not wait pusillanimously for the popular mind to
+make itself up; he had too high a conception of the duty of
+leadership for that. He esteemed it his peculiar function as the
+man entrusted by a great people with the headship of their common
+affairs--to lead the popular mind, to educate it, to inspire it,
+sometimes to run before it in action, serene in the confidence
+that tardy popular judgment would confirm the rightness of the
+deed.
+
+By the end of Roosevelt's first Administration two of the three
+groups that had taken a hand in choosing him for the
+Vice-Presidency were thoroughly sick of their bargain. The
+machine politicians and the great corporations found that their
+cunning plan to stifle with the wet blanket of that depressing
+office the fires of his moral earnestness and pugnacious honesty
+had overreached itself. Fate had freed him and, once freed, he
+was neither to hold nor to bind. It was less than two years
+before Wall Street was convinced that he was "unsafe," and sadly
+shook its head over his "impetuosity." When Wall Street stamps a
+man "unsafe," the last word in condemnation has been said. It was
+an even shorter time before the politicians found him
+unsatisfactory. "The breach between Mr. Roosevelt and the
+politicians was, however, inevitable. His rigid insistence upon
+the maintenance and the extension of the merit system alone
+assured the discontent which precedes dislike," wrote another
+observer. "The era of patronage mongering in the petty offices
+ceased suddenly, and the spoilsmen had the right to say that in
+this respect the policy of McKinley had not been followed." It
+was true. When Roosevelt became President the civil service was
+thoroughly demoralized. Senators and Congressmen, by tacit
+agreement with the executive, used the appointing power for the
+payment of political debts, the reward of party services, the
+strengthening of their personal "fences." But within three months
+it was possible to say with absolute truth that "a marvelous
+change has already been wrought in the morale of the civil
+service." At the end of Roosevelt's first term an unusually acute
+and informed foreign journalist was moved to write, "No President
+has so persistently eliminated politics from his nominations,
+none has been more unbending in making efficiency his sole test."
+
+There was the kernel of the whole matter: the President's
+insistence upon efficiency. Roosevelt, however, did not snatch
+rudely away from the Congressmen and Senators the appointing
+power which his predecessors had allowed them gradually to usurp.
+He continued to consult each member of the Congress upon
+appointments in that member's State or district and merely
+demanded that the men recommended for office should be honest,
+capable, and fitted for the places they were to fill.
+
+President Roosevelt was not only ready and glad to consult with
+Senators but he sought and often took the advice of party leaders
+outside of Congress, and even took into consideration the
+opinions of bosses. In New York, for instance, the two Republican
+leaders, Governor Odell and Senator Platt, were sometimes in
+accord and sometimes in disagreement, but each was always
+desirous of being consulted. A letter written by Roosevelt in the
+middle of his first term to a friendly Congressman well
+illustrates his theory and practice in such cases:
+
+"I want to work with Platt. I want to work with Odell. I want to
+support both and take the advice of both. But, of course,
+ultimately I must be the judge as to acting on the advice given.
+When, as in the case of the judgeship, I am convinced that the
+advice of both is wrong, I shall act as I did when I appointed
+Holt. When I can find a friend of Odell's like Cooley, who is
+thoroughly fit for the position I desire to fill, it gives me the
+greatest pleasure to appoint him. When Platt proposes to me a man
+like Hamilton Fish, it is equally a pleasure to appoint him."
+
+This high-minded and common-sense course did not, however, seem
+to please the politicians, for dyed-in-the-wool politicians are
+curious persons to whom half a loaf is no consolation whatever,
+even when the other half of the loaf is to go to the
+people--without whom there would be no policies at all. Strangely
+enough, Roosevelt's policy was equally displeasing to those of
+the doctrinaire reformer type, to whom there is no word in the
+language more distasteful than "politician," unless it be the
+word "practical." But there was one class to whom the results of
+this common-sense brand of political action were eminently
+satisfactory, and this class made up the third group that had a
+part in the selection of Theodore Roosevelt for the
+Vice-Presidency. The plain people, especially in the more
+westerly portions of the country, were increasingly delighted
+with the honesty, the virility, and the effectiveness of the
+Roosevelt Administration. Just before the convention which was to
+nominate Roosevelt for the Presidency to succeed himself, an
+editorial writer expressed the fact thus: "The people at large
+are not oblivious of the fact that, while others are talking and
+carping, Mr. Roosevelt is carrying on in the White House a
+persistent and never-ending moral struggle with every powerful
+selfish and exploiting interest in the country."
+
+Oblivious of it? They were acutely conscious of it. They approved
+of it with heartiness. They liked it so well that, when the time
+came to nominate and elect another President, they swept aside
+with a mighty rush not only the scruples and antagonisms of the
+Republican politicians and the "special interests" but party
+lines as well, and chose Roosevelt with a unanimous voice in the
+convention and a majority of two and a half million votes at the
+polls.
+
+As President, Theodore Roosevelt achieved many concrete results.
+But his greatest contribution to the forward movement of the
+times was in the rousing of the public conscience, the
+strengthening of the nation's moral purpose, and the erecting of
+a new standard of public service in the management of the
+nation's affairs. It was no little thing that when Roosevelt was
+ready to hand over to another the responsibilities of his high
+office, James Bryce, America's best friend and keenest student
+from across the seas, was able to say that in a long life, during
+which he had studied intimately the government of many different
+countries, he had never in any country seen a more eager,
+high-minded, and efficient set of public servants, men more
+useful and more creditable to their country, than the men then
+doing the work of the American Government in Washington and in
+the field.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. THE SQUARE DEAL FOR BUSINESS
+
+During the times of Roosevelt, the American people were
+profoundly concerned with the trust problem. So was Roosevelt
+himself. In this important field of the relations between "big
+business" and the people he had a perfectly definite point of
+view, though he did not have a cut and dried programme. He was
+always more interested in a point of view than in a programme,
+for he realized that the one is lasting, the other shifting. He
+knew that if you stand on sound footing and look at a subject
+from the true angle, you may safely modify your plan of action as
+often and as rapidly as may be necessary to fit changing
+conditions. But if your footing is insecure or your angle of
+vision distorted, the most attractive programme in the world may
+come to ignominious disaster.
+
+There were, broadly speaking, three attitudes toward the trust
+problem which were strongly held by different groups in the
+United States. At one extreme was the threatening growl of big
+business, "Let us alone!" At the other pole was the shrill outcry
+of William Jennings Bryan and his fellow exhorters, "Smash the
+trusts!" In the golden middle ground was the vigorous demand of
+Roosevelt for a "square deal."
+
+In his first message to Congress, the President set forth his
+point of view with frankness and clarity. His comprehensive
+discussion of the matter may be summarized thus: The tremendous
+and highly complex industrial development which went on with
+great rapidity during the latter half of the nineteenth century
+produced serious social problems. The old laws and the old
+customs which had almost the binding force of law were once quite
+sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution of
+wealth. Since the industrial changes which have so enormously
+increased the productive power of mankind, these regulations are
+no longer sufficient. The process of the creation of great
+corporate fortunes has aroused much antagonism; but much of this,
+antagonism has been without warrant. There have been, it is true,
+abuses connected with the accumulation of wealth; yet no fortune
+can be accumulated in legitimate business except by conferring
+immense incidental benefits upon others. The men who have driven
+the great railways across the continent, who have built up
+commerce and developed manufactures, have on the whole done great
+good to the people at large. Without such men the material
+development of which Americans are so justly proud never could
+have taken place. They should therefore recognize the immense
+importance of this material development by leaving as unhampered
+as is compatible with the public good the strong men upon whom
+the success of business inevitably rests. It cannot too often be
+pointed out that to strike with ignorant violence at the
+interests of one set of men almost inevitably endangers the
+interests of all. The fundamental rule in American national life
+is that, on the whole and in the long run, we shall all go up or
+down together. Many of those who have made it their vocation to
+denounce the great industrial combinations appeal especially to
+the primitive instincts of hatred and fear. These are precisely
+the two emotions which unfit men for cool and steady judgment.
+The whole history of the world shows that legislation, in facing
+new industrial conditions, will generally be both unwise and
+ineffective unless it is undertaken only after calm inquiry and
+with sober self-restraint.
+
+This is one side of the picture as it was presented by the
+President in his message to Congress. It was characteristic that
+this aspect should be put first, for Roosevelt always insisted
+upon doing justice to the other side before he demanded justice
+for his own. But he then proceeded to set forth the other side
+with equal vigor: There is a widespread conviction in the minds
+of the American people that the great corporations are in certain
+of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare.
+It is true that real and grave evils have arisen, one of the
+chief of them being overcapitalization, with its many baleful
+consequences. This state of affairs demands that combination and
+concentration in business should be, not prohibited, but
+supervised and controlled. Corporations engaged in interstate
+commerce should be regulated if they are found to exercise a
+license working to the public injury. The first essential in
+determining how to deal with the great industrial combinations is
+knowledge of the facts. This is to be obtained only through
+publicity, which is the one sure remedy we can now invoke before
+it can be determined what further remedies are needed.
+Corporations should be subject to proper governmental
+supervision, and full and accurate information as to their
+operations should be made public at regular intervals. The nation
+should assume powers of supervision and regulation over all
+corporations doing an interstate business. This is especially
+true where the corporation derives a portion of its wealth from
+the existence of some monopolistic element or tendency in its
+business. The Federal Government should regulate the activities
+of corporations doing an interstate business, just as it
+regulates the activities of national banks, and, through the
+Interstate Commerce Commission, the operations of the railroads.
+
+Roosevelt was destined, however, not to achieve the full measure
+of national control of corporations that he desired. The elements
+opposed to his view were too powerful. There was a fortuitous
+involuntary partnership though it was not admitted and was even
+violently denied between the advocates of "Let us alone!" and of
+"Smash the trusts!" against the champion of the middle way. In
+his "Autobiography" Roosevelt has described this situation:
+
+"One of the main troubles was the fact that the men who saw the
+evils and who tried to remedy them attempted to work in two
+wholly different ways, and the great majority of them in a way
+that offered little promise of real betterment. They tried (by
+the Sherman law method) to bolster up an individualism already
+proved to be both futile and mischievous; to remedy by more
+individualism the concentration that was the inevitable result of
+the already existing individualism. They saw the evil done by the
+big combinations, and sought to remedy it by destroying them and
+restoring the country to the economic conditions of the middle of
+the nineteenth century. This was a hopeless effort, and those who
+went into it, although they regarded themselves as radical
+progressives, really represented a form of sincere rural toryism.
+They confounded monopolies with big business combinations, and in
+the effort to prohibit both alike, instead of where possible
+prohibiting one and drastically controlling the other, they
+succeeded merely in preventing any effective control of either.
+
+"On the other hand, a few men recognized that corporations and
+combinations had become indispensable in the business world, that
+it was folly to try to prohibit them, but that it was also folly
+to leave them without thoroughgoing control. These men realized
+that the doctrine of the old laissez faire economists, of the
+believers in unlimited competition, unlimited individualism,
+were, in the actual state of affairs, false and mischievous. They
+realized that the Government must now interfere to protect labor,
+to subordinate the big corporation to the public welfare, and to
+shackle cunning and fraud exactly as centuries before it had
+interfered to shackle the physical force which does wrong by
+violence. The big reactionaries of the business world and their
+allies and instruments among politicians and newspaper editors
+took advantage of this division of opinion, and especially of the
+fact that most of their opponents were on the wrong path; and
+fought to keep matters absolutely unchanged. These men demanded
+for themselves an immunity from government control which, if
+granted, would have been as wicked and as foolish as immunity to
+the barons of the twelfth century. Many of them were evil men.
+Many others were just as good men as were some of these same
+barons; but they were as utterly unable as any medieval
+castle-owner to understand what the public interest really was.
+There have been aristocracies which have played a great and
+beneficent part at stages in the growth of mankind; but we had
+come to a stage where for our people what was needed was a real
+democracy; and of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and
+the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a
+plutocracy."*
+
+* Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 424-25.
+
+
+When Roosevelt became President, there were three directions in
+which energy needed to be applied to the solution of the trust
+problem: in the more vigorous enforcement of the laws already on
+the statute books; in the enactment of necessary new laws on
+various phases of the subject; and in the arousing of an
+intelligent and militant public opinion in relation to the whole
+question. To each of these purposes the new President applied
+himself with characteristic vigor.
+
+The Sherman Anti-Trust law, which had already been on the Federal
+statute books for eleven years, forbade "combinations in
+restraint of trade" in the field of interstate commerce. During
+three administrations, eighteen actions had been brought by the
+Government for its enforcement. At the opening of the twentieth
+century it was a grave question whether the Sherman law was of
+any real efficacy in preventing the evils that arose from
+unregulated combination in business. A decision of the United
+States Supreme Court, rendered in 1895 in the so-called Knight
+case, against the American Sugar Refining Company, had, in the
+general belief, taken the teeth out of the Sherman law. In the
+words of Mr. Taft, "The effect of the decision in the Knight case
+upon the popular mind, and indeed upon Congress as well, was to
+discourage hope that the statute could be used to accomplish its
+manifest purpose and curb the great industrial trusts which, by
+the acquisition of all or a large percentage of the plants
+engaged in the manufacture of a commodity, by the dismantling of
+some and regulating the output of others, were making every
+effort to restrict production, control prices, and monopolize the
+business." It was obviously necessary that the Sherman act,
+unless it were to pass into innocuous desuetude, should have the
+original vigor intended by Congress restored to it by a new
+interpretation of the law on the part of the Supreme Court.
+Fortunately an opportunity for such a change presented itself
+with promptness. A small group of powerful financiers had
+arranged to take control of practically the entire system of
+railways in the Northwest, "possibly," Roosevelt has said, "as
+the first step toward controlling the entire railway system of
+the country." They had brought this about by organizing the
+Northern Securities Company to hold the majority of the stock of
+two competing railways, the Great Northern and the Northern
+Pacific. At the direction of President Roosevelt, suit was
+brought by the Government to prevent the merger. The defendants
+relied for protection upon the immunity afforded by the decision
+in the Knight case. But the Supreme Court now took more advanced
+ground, decreed that the Northern Securities Company was an
+illegal combination, and ordered its dissolution.
+
+By the successful prosecution of this case the Sherman act was
+made once more a potentially valuable instrument for the
+prevention of the more flagrant evils that flow from
+"combinations in restraint of trade." During the remaining years
+of the Roosevelt Administrations, this legal  instrument was used
+with aggressive force for the purpose  for which it was intended.
+In seven years and a half, forty-four prosecutions were brought
+under it by the Government, as compared with eighteen in the
+preceding eleven years. The two most famous trust cases, next to
+the Northern Securities case and even surpassing it in popular
+interest, because of the stupendous size of the corporations
+involved, were those against the Standard Oil Company and the
+American Tobacco Company. These companion cases were not finally
+decided in the Supreme Court until the Administration of
+President Taft; but their  prosecution was begun while Roosevelt
+was in office and by his direction. They were therefore a
+definite part of his  campaign for the solution of the vexed
+trust problem. Both cases were decided, by every court through
+which they passed, in favor of the Government. The Supreme
+Court finally in 1911 decreed that both the Standard Oil and the
+Tobacco trusts were in violation of the Sherman act and ordered
+their dissolution. There could now no longer be any question that
+the Government could in fact exercise its sovereign will over
+even the greatest and the most powerful of modern business
+organizations.
+
+The two cases had one other deep significance which at first
+blush looked like a weakening of the force of the anti-trust law
+but which was in reality a strengthening of it. There had been
+long and ardent debate whether the Sherman act should be held to
+apply to all restraints of trade or only to such as were
+unreasonable. It was held by some that it applied to ALL
+restraints and therefore should be amended to cover only
+unreasonable restraints. It was held by others that it applied to
+all restraints and properly so. It was held by still others that
+it applied only to unreasonable restraints. But the matter had
+never been decided by competent authority. The decision of the
+Supreme Court in these two outstanding cases, however, put an end
+to the previous uncertainty. Chief Justice White, in his two
+opinions, laid it down with definiteness that in construing and
+applying the law recourse must be had to the "rule of reason." He
+made clear the conviction of the court that it was "undue"
+restraints of trade which the law forbade and not incidental or
+inconsiderable ones. This definitive interpretation of the law,
+while it caused considerable criticism at the moment, in ultimate
+effect so cleared the air about the Sherman act as effectually to
+dispose of the demands for its amendment in the direction of
+greater leniency or severity.
+
+But the proving of the anti-trust law as an effective weapon
+against the flagrantly offending trusts, according to Roosevelt's
+conviction, was only a part of the battle. As he said,
+"monopolies can, although in rather cumbrous fashion, be broken
+up by lawsuits. Great business combinations, however, cannot
+possibly be made useful instead of noxious industrial agencies
+merely by lawsuits, and especially by lawsuits supposed to be
+carried on for their destruction and not for their control and
+regulation." He took, as usual, the constructive point of view.
+He saw both sides of the trust question--the inevitability and
+the beneficence of combination in modern business, and the danger
+to the public good that lay in the unregulated and uncontrolled
+wielding of great power by private individuals. He believed that
+the thing to do with great power was not to destroy it but to use
+it, not to forbid its acquisition but to direct its application.
+So he set himself to the task of securing fresh legislation
+regarding the regulation of corporate activities.
+
+Such legislation was not easy to get; for the forces of reaction
+were strong in Congress. But several significant steps in this
+direction were taken before Roosevelt went out of office. The new
+Federal Department of Commerce and Labor was created, and its
+head became a member of the Cabinet. The Bureau of Corporations
+was established in the same department. These new executive
+agencies were given no regulatory powers, but they did perform
+excellent service in that field of publicity on the value of
+which Roosevelt laid so much stress.
+
+In the year 1906 the passing of the Hepburn railway rate bill for
+the first time gave the Interstate Commerce Commission a measure
+of real control over the railways, by granting to the Commission
+the power to fix maximum rates for the transportation of freight
+in interstate commerce. The Commission had in previous years,
+under the authority of the act which created it and which
+permitted the Commission to decide in particular cases whether
+rates were just and reasonable, attempted to exercise this power
+to fix in these specific cases maximum rates. But the courts had
+decided that the Commission did not possess this right. The
+Hepburn act also extended the authority of the Commission over
+express companies, sleeping-car companies, pipe lines, private
+car lines, and private terminal and connecting lines. It
+prohibited railways from transporting in interstate commerce any
+commodities produced or owned by themselves. It abolished free
+passes and transportation except for railway employees and
+certain other small classes of persons, including the poor and
+unfortunate classes and those engaged in religious and charitable
+work. Under the old law, the Commission was compelled to apply to
+a Federal court on its own initiative for the enforcement of any
+order which it might issue. Under the Hepburn act the order went
+into effect at once; the railroad must begin to obey the order
+within thirty days; it must itself appeal to the court for the
+suspension and revocation of the order, or it must suffer a
+penalty of $5000 a day during the time that the order was
+disobeyed. The act further gave the Commission the power to
+prescribe accounting methods which must be followed by the
+railways, in order to make more difficult the concealment of
+illegal rates and improper favors to individual shippers. This
+extension and strengthening of the authority of the Interstate
+Commerce Commission was an extremely valuable forward step, not
+only as concerned the relations of the public and the railways,
+but in connection with the development of predatory corporations
+of the Standard Oil type. Miss Ida Tarbell, in her frankly
+revealing "History of the Standard Oil Company", which had been
+published in 1904, had shown in striking fashion how secret
+concessions from the railways had helped to build up that great
+structure of business monopoly. In Miss Tarbell's words, "Mr.
+Rockefeller's great purpose had been made possible by his
+remarkable manipulation of the railroads. It was the rebate which
+had made the Standard Oil trust, the rebate, amplified,
+systematized, glorified into a power never equalled before or
+since by any business of the country." The rebate was the device
+by which favored shippers--favored by the railways either
+voluntarily or under the compulsion of the threats of retaliation
+which the powerful shippers were able to make--paid openly the
+established freight rates on their products and then received
+back from the railways a substantial proportion of the charges.
+The advantage to the favored shipper is obvious. There were other
+more adroit ways in which the favoritism could be accomplished;
+but the general principle was the same. It was one important
+purpose--and effect--of the Hepburn act to close the door to this
+form of discrimination.
+
+One more step was necessary in order to eradicate completely this
+mischievous condition and to "keep the highway of commerce open
+to all on equal terms." It was imperative that the law relative
+to these abuses should be enforced. On this point Roosevelt's own
+words are significant: "Although under the decision of the courts
+the National Government had power over the railways, I found,
+when I became President, that this power was either not exercised
+at all or exercised with utter inefficiency. The law against
+rebates was a dead letter. All the unscrupulous railway men had
+been allowed to violate it with impunity; and because of this, as
+was inevitable, the scrupulous and decent railway men had been
+forced to violate it themselves, under penalty of being beaten by
+their less scrupulous rivals. It was not the fault of these
+decent railway men. It was the fault of the Government."
+
+Roosevelt did not propose that this condition should continue to
+be the fault of the Government while he was at its head, and he
+inaugurated a vigorous campaign against railways that had given
+rebates and against corporations that had accepted--or
+extorted-them. The campaign reached a spectacular peak in a
+prosecution of the Standard Oil Company, in which fines
+aggregating over $29,000,000 were imposed by Judge Kenesaw M.
+Landis of the United States District Court at Chicago for the
+offense of accepting rebates. The Circuit Court of Appeals
+ultimately determined that the fine was improperly large, since
+it had been based on the untenable theory that each shipment on
+which a rebate was paid constituted a separate offense. At the
+second trial the presiding judge ordered an acquittal. In spite,
+however, of the failure of this particular case, with its
+spectacular features, the net result of the rebate prosecutions
+was that the rebate evil was eliminated for good and all from
+American railway and commercial life.
+
+When Roosevelt demanded the "square deal" between business and
+the people, he meant precisely what he said. He had no intention
+of permitting justice to be required from the great corporations
+without insisting that justice be done to them in turn. The most
+interesting case in point was that of the Tennessee Coal and Iron
+Company. To this day the action which Roosevelt took in the
+matter is looked upon, by many of those extremists who can see
+nothing good in "big business," as a proof of his undue sympathy
+with the capitalist. But thirteen years later the United States
+Supreme Court in deciding the case against the United States
+Steel Corporation in favor of the Corporation, added an obiter
+dictum which completely justified Roosevelt's action.
+
+In the fall of 1907 the United States was in the grip of a
+financial panic. Much damage was done, and much more was
+threatened. One great New York trust company was compelled to
+close its doors, and others were on the verge of disaster. One
+evening in the midst of this most trying time, the President was
+informed that two representatives of the United States Steel
+Corporation wished to call upon him the next morning. As he was
+at breakfast the next day word came to him that Judge Gary and
+Mr. Frick were waiting in the Executive Office. The President
+went over at once, sending word to Elihu Root, then Secretary of
+State, to join him. Judge Gary and Mr. Frick informed the
+President that a certain great firm in the New York financial
+district was upon the point of failure. This firm held a large
+quantity of the stock of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. The
+Steel Corporation had been urged to purchase this stock in order
+to avert the failure. The heads of the Steel Corporation asserted
+that they did not wish to purchase this stock from the point of
+view of a business transaction, as the value which the property
+might be to the Corporation would be more than offset by the
+criticism to which they would be subjected. They said that they
+were sure to be charged with trying to secure a monopoly and to
+stifle competition. They told the President that it had been the
+consistent policy of the Steel Corporation to have in its control
+no more than sixty per cent of the steel properties of the
+country; that their proportion of those properties was in fact
+somewhat less than sixty per cent; and that the acquisition of
+the holdings of the Tennessee Company would raise it only a
+little above that point. They felt, however, that it would be
+extremely desirable for them to make the suggested purchase in
+order to prevent the damage which would result from the failure
+of the firm in question. They were willing to buy the stocks
+offered because in the best judgment of many of the strongest
+bankers in New York the transaction would be an influential
+factor in preventing a further extension of the panic. Judge Gary
+and Mr. Frick declared that they were ready to make the purchase
+with this end in view but that they would not act without the
+President's approval of their action.
+
+Immediate action was imperative. It was important that the
+purchase, if it were to be made, should be announced at the
+opening of the New York Stock Exchange at ten o'clock that
+morning. Fortunately Roosevelt never shilly-shallied when a
+crisis confronted him. His decision was instantaneous. He assured
+his callers that while, of course, he could not advise them to
+take the action, proposed, he felt that he had no public duty to
+interpose any objection.
+
+This assurance was quite sufficient. The pure chase was made and
+announced, the firm in question did not fail, and the panic was
+arrested. The immediate reaction of practically the whole country
+was one of relief. It was only later, when the danger was past,
+that critics began to make themselves heard. Any one who had
+taken the  trouble to ascertain the facts would have known beyond
+question that the acquisition of the Tennessee properties was not
+sufficient to change the status of the Steel Corporation under
+the anti-trust law. But the critics did not want to know the
+facts. They wanted--most of them, at least--to have a stick with
+which to beat Roosevelt. Besides, many of them did not hold
+Roosevelt's views about the square deal. Their belief was that
+whatever big business did was ipso facto evil and that it was the
+duty of public officials to find out what big business wanted to
+do and then prevent its accomplishment.
+
+Under a later Administration, Roosevelt was invited to come
+before a Congressional investigating committee to explain what he
+did in this famous case. There he told the complete story of the
+occurrence simply, frankly, and emphatically, and ended with this
+statement: "If I were on a sailboat, I should not ordinarily
+meddle with any of the gear; but if a sudden squall struck us,
+and the main sheet jammed, so that the boat threatened to
+capsize, I would unhesitatingly cut the main sheet, even though I
+were sure that the owner, no matter how grateful to me at the
+moment for having saved his life, would a few weeks later, when
+he had forgotten his danger and his fear, decide to sue me for
+the value of the cut rope. But I would feel a hearty contempt
+for the owner who so acted."
+
+Two laws passed during the second Roosevelt Administration had an
+important bearing on the conduct of American business, though in
+a different way from those which have already been considered.
+They were the Pure Food law, and the Meat Inspection act. Both
+were measures for the protection of the public health; but both
+were at the same time measures for the control of private
+business. The Pure Food law did three things: it prohibited the
+sale of foods or drugs which were not pure and unadulterated; it
+prohibited the sale of drugs which contained opium, cocaine,
+alcohol, and other narcotics unless the exact proportion of them
+in the preparation were stated on the package; and it prohibited
+the sale of foods and drugs as anything else than what they
+actually were. The Meat Inspection law required rigid inspection
+by Government officials of all slaughterhouses and packing
+concerns preparing meat food products for distribution in
+interstate commerce. The imperative need for the passage of this
+law was brought forcibly and vividly to the popular attention
+through a novel, "The Jungle", written by Upton Sinclair, in
+which the disgraceful conditions of  uncleanliness and revolting
+carelessness in the Chicago packing houses were described with
+vitriolic intensity. An official investigation ordered by the
+President confirmed the truth of these timely revelations.
+
+These achievements on the part of the Roosevelt Administrations
+were of high value. But, after all Roosevelt performed an even
+greater service in arousing the public mind to a realization of
+facts of national significance and stimulating the public
+conscience to a desire to deal with them vigorously and justly.
+>From the very beginning of his Presidential career he realized
+the gravity of the problems created by the rise of big business;
+and he began forthwith to impress upon the people with hammer
+blows the conditions as he saw them, the need for definite
+corrective action, and the absolute necessity for such treatment
+of the case as would constitute the "square deal." An interesting
+example of his method and of the response which it received is to
+be found in the report of an address which he made in 1907. It
+runs thus:
+
+"From the standpoint of our material prosperity there is only one
+other thing as important as the discouragement of a spirit of
+envy and hostility toward business men, toward honest men of
+means; this is the discouragement of dishonest business men.
+[Great applause.]
+
+"Wait a moment; I don't want you to applaud this part unless you
+are willing to applaud also the part I read first, to which you
+listened in silence. [Laughter and applause.] I want you to
+understand that I will stand just as straight for the rights of
+the honest man who wins his fortune by honest methods as I will
+stand against the dishonest man who wins a fortune by dishonest
+methods. And I challenge the right to your support in one
+attitude just as much as in the other. I am glad you applauded
+when you did, but I want you to go back now and applaud the other
+statement. I will  read a little of it over again. 'Every
+manifestation of ignorant envy and hostility toward honest men
+who acquire wealth  by honest means should be crushed at the
+outset by the weight of a sensible public opinion.' [Tremendous
+applause.] Thank you. Now I'll go on."
+
+
+Roosevelt's incessant emphasis was placed upon conduct as the
+proper standard by which to judge the actions of men. "We are,"
+he once said, "no respecters of persons. If a labor union does
+wrong, we oppose it as firmly as we oppose a corporation which
+does wrong; and we stand equally stoutly for the rights of the
+man of wealth and for the rights of the wage-worker. We seek to
+protect the property of every man who acts honestly, of every
+corporation that represents wealth honestly accumulated and
+honestly used. We seek to stop wrongdoing, and we desire to
+punish the wrongdoer only so far as is necessary to achieve this
+end."
+
+At another time he sounded the same note--sounded it indeed with
+a "damnable iteration" that only proved how deeply it was
+imbedded in his conviction
+
+Let us strive steadily to secure justice as between man and man
+without regard to the man's position, social or otherwise. Let us
+remember that justice can never be justice unless it is equal. Do
+justice to the rich man and exact justice from him; do justice to
+the poor man and exact justice from him--justice to the
+capitalist and justice to the wage-worker . . . . I have an
+equally hearty aversion for the reactionary and the demagogue;
+but I am not going to be driven out of fealty to my principles
+because certain of them are championed by the reactionary and
+certain others by the demagogue. The reactionary is always
+strongly for the rights of property; so am I . . . . I will not
+be driven away from championship of the rights of property upon
+which all our civilization rests because they happen to be
+championed by people who champion furthermore the abuses of
+wealth . . . . Most demagogues advocate some excellent popular
+principles, and nothing could be more foolish than for decent men
+to permit themselves to be put into an attitude of ignorant and
+perverse opposition to all reforms demanded in the name of the
+people because it happens that some of them are demanded by
+demagogues.
+
+Such an attitude on the part of a man like Roosevelt could not
+fail to be misunderstood, misinterpreted, and assailed. Toward
+the end of his Presidential career, when he was attacking with
+peculiar vigor the "malefactors of great wealth" whom the
+Government had found it necessary to punish for their predatory
+acts in corporate guise, it was gently intimated by certain
+defenders of privilege that he was insane. At other times, when
+he was insisting upon justice even to men who had achieved
+material success, he was placed by the more rabid of the radical
+opponents of privilege in the hierarchy of the worshipers of the
+golden calf. His course along the middle of the onward way
+exposed him peculiarly to the missiles of invective and scorn
+from the partisans on either side. But neither could drive him
+into the arms of the other.
+
+The best evidence of the soundness of the strategy with which he
+assailed the enemies of the common good, with whirling war-club
+but with scrupulous observance of the demands of justice and fair
+play, is to be found in the measure of what he actually achieved.
+He did arouse the popular mind and sting the popular conscience
+broad awake. He did enforce the law without fear or favor. He did
+leave upon the statute-book and in the machinery of government
+new means and methods for the control of business and for the
+protection of the general welfare against predatory wealth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE SQUARE DEAL FOR LABOR
+
+It should go without saying that Roosevelt was vigorously and
+deeply concerned with the relations between capital and labor,
+for he was interested in everything that concerned the men and
+women of America, everything that had to do with human relations.
+>From the very beginning of his public life he had been a
+champion
+of the workingman when the workingman needed defense against
+exploitation and injustice. But his advocacy of the workers'
+rights was never demagogic nor partial. In industrial relations,
+as in the relations between business and the community, he
+believed in the square deal. The rights of labor and the rights
+of capital must, he firmly held, be respected each by the other--
+and the rights of the public by both.
+
+Roosevelt believed thoroughly in trade unions. He realized that
+one of the striking accompaniments of the gigantic developments
+in business and industry of the past few generations was a gross
+inequality in the bargaining relation between the employer and
+the individual employee standing alone.
+
+Speaking of the great coal strike which occurred while he was
+President, he developed the idea in this way:
+
+"The great coal-mining and coal-carrying companies, which
+employed their tens of thousands, could easily dispense with the
+services of any particular miner. The miner, on the other hand,
+however expert, could not dispense with the companies. He needed
+a job; his wife and children would starve if he did not get one.
+What the miner had to sell--his labor--was a perishable
+commodity; the labor of today--if not sold today was lost
+forever. Moreover, his labor was not like most commodities--a
+mere thing; it was a part of a living, human being. The workman
+saw, and all citizens who gave earnest thought to the matter saw
+that the labor problem was not only an economic, but also a
+moral, a human problem. Individually the miners were impotent
+when they sought to enter a wage contract with the great
+companies; they could make fair terms only by uniting into trade
+unions to bargain collectively. The men were forced to cooperate
+to secure not only their economic, but their simple human rights.
+They, like other workmen, were compelled by the very conditions
+under which they lived to unite in unions of their industry or
+trade, and those unions were bound to grow in size, in strength,
+and in power for good and evil as the industries in which the men
+were employed grew larger and larger."*
+
+* Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 471-78.
+
+He was fond of quoting three statements of Lincoln's as
+expressing precisely what he himself believed about capital and
+labor. The first of these sayings was this: "Labor is prior to,
+and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor,
+and could never have existed if labor had not first existed.
+Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher
+consideration."
+
+This statement, Roosevelt used to say, would have made him, if it
+had been original with him, even more strongly denounced as a
+communist agitator than he already was! Then he would turn from
+this, which the capitalist ought to hear, to another saying of
+Lincoln's which the workingman ought to hear: "Capital has its
+rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights . .
+. . Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property.
+Property is the fruit of labor; . . . property is desirable; it
+is a positive good in the world."
+
+Then would come the final word from Lincoln, driven home by
+Roosevelt with all his usual vigor and fire: "Let not him who is
+houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work
+diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring
+that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
+
+In these three sayings, Roosevelt declared, Lincoln "showed the
+proper sense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital
+and labor, of human rights and property rights." Roosevelt's own
+most famous statement of the matter was made in an address which
+he delivered before the Sorbonne in Paris, on his way back from
+Africa: "In every civilized society property rights must be
+carefully safeguarded. Ordinarily, and in the great majority of
+cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in
+the long run identical; but when it clearly appears that there is
+a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper
+hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property."
+
+Several times it happened to Roosevelt to be confronted with the
+necessity of meeting with force the threat of violence on the
+part of striking workers. He never refused the challenge, and his
+firmness never lost him the respect of any but the worthless
+among the workingmen. When he was Police Commissioner, strikers
+in New York were coming into continual conflict with the police.
+Roosevelt asked the strike leaders to meet him in order to talk
+things over. These leaders did not know the man with whom they
+were dealing; they tried to bully him. They truculently announced
+the things that they would do if the police were not compliant to
+their wishes. But they did not get far in that direction.
+Roosevelt called a halt with a snap of his jaws. "Gentlemen!" he
+said, "we want to understand one another. That was my object in
+coming here. Remember, please, that he who counsels violence does
+the cause of labor the poorest service. Also, he loses his case.
+Understand distinctly that order will be kept. The police will
+keep it. Now, gentlemen!" There was surprised silence for a
+moment, and then smashing applause. They had learned suddenly
+what kind of a man Roosevelt was. All their respect was his.
+
+It was after he became President that his greatest opportunity
+occurred to put into effect his convictions about the industrial
+problem. In 1909. there was a strike which brought about a
+complete stoppage of work for several months in the anthracite
+coal regions. Both operators and workers were determined to make
+no concession. The coal famine became a national menace as the
+winter approached. "The big coal operators had banded together,"
+so Roosevelt has described the situation, "and positively refused
+to take any steps looking toward an accommodation. They knew that
+the suffering among the miners was great; they were confident
+that if order was kept, and nothing further done by the
+Government, they would win; and they refused to consider that the
+public had any rights in the matter."
+
+As the situation grew more and more dangerous, the President
+directed the head of the Federal Labor Bureau to make an
+investigation of the whole matter. From this investigation it
+appeared that the most feasible solution of the problem was to
+prevail upon both sides to agree to a commission of arbitration
+and promise to accept its findings. To this proposal the miners
+agreed; the mine owners insolently declined it. Nevertheless,
+Roosevelt persisted, and ultimately the operators yielded on
+condition that the commission, which was to be named by the
+President, should contain no representative of labor. They
+insisted that it should be composed of (1) an officer of the
+engineer corps of the army or navy, (2) a man with experience in
+mining, (3) a "man of prominence, eminent as a sociologist," (4)
+a Federal Judge of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and (5)
+a mining engineer. In the course of a long and grueling
+conference it looked as though a deadlock could be the only
+outcome, since the mine owners would have no representative of
+labor on any terms. But it suddenly dawned on Roosevelt that the
+owners were objecting not to the thing but to the name. He
+discovered that they would not object to the appointment of any
+man, labor man or not, so long as he was not appointed as a labor
+man or as a representative of labor. "I shall never forget," he
+says in his "Autobiography", "the mixture of relief and amusement
+I felt when I thoroughly grasped the fact that while they would
+heroically submit to anarchy rather than have Tweedledum, yet if
+I would call it Tweedledee they would accept with rapture." All
+that he needed to do was to "commit a technical and nominal
+absurdity with a solemn face." When he realized that this was the
+case, Roosevelt announced that he was glad to accept the terms
+laid down, and proceeded to appoint to the third position on the
+Commission the labor man whom he had wanted from the first to
+appoint, Mr. E. E. Clark, the head of the Brotherhood of Railway
+Conductors. He called him, however, an "eminent sociologist,"
+adding in his announcement of the appointment this explanation:
+"For the purposes of such a Commission, the term sociologist
+means a man who has thought and studied deeply on social
+questions and has practically applied his knowledge."
+
+The Commission as finally constituted was an admirable one. Its
+report, which removed every menace to peace in the coal industry,
+was an outstanding event in the history of the relations of labor
+and capital in the United States.
+
+But the most interesting and significant part of Roosevelt's
+relation to the great coal strike concerned something that did
+not happen. It illustrates his habit of seeing clearly through a
+situation to the end and knowing far in advance just what action
+he was prepared to take in any contingency that might possibly
+arise. He was determined that work should be resumed in the mines
+and that the country should have coal. He did not propose to
+allow the operators to maintain the deadlock by sheer refusal to
+make any compromise. In case he could not succeed in making them
+reconsider their position, he had prepared a definite and drastic
+course of action. The facts in regard to this plan did not become
+public until many years after the strike was settled, and then
+only when Roosevelt described it in his "Autobiography".
+
+The method of action which Roosevelt had determined upon in the
+last resort was to get the Governor of Pennsylvania to appeal to
+him as President to restore order. He had then determined to put
+Federal troops into the coal fields under the command of some
+first-rate general, with instructions not only to preserve order
+but to dispossess the mine operators and to run the mines as a
+receiver, until such time as the Commission should make its
+report and the President should issue further orders in view of
+that report. Roosevelt found an army officer with the requisite
+good sense, judgment, and nerve to act in such a crisis in the
+person of Major General Schofield. Roosevelt sent for the General
+and explained the seriousness of the crisis. "He was a fine
+fellow," says Roosevelt in his "Autobiography", "a most
+respectable-looking old boy, with side whiskers and a black
+skull-cap, without any of the outward aspect of the conventional
+military dictator; but in both nerve and judgment he was all
+right." Schofield quietly assured the President that if the order
+was given he would take possession of the mines, and would
+guarantee to open them and run them without permitting any
+interference either by the owners or by the strikers or by any
+one else, so long as the President told him to stay. Fortunately
+Roosevelt's efforts to bring about arbitration were ultimately
+successful and recourse to the novel expedient of having the army
+operate the coal mines proved unnecessary. No one was more
+pleased than Roosevelt himself at the harmonious adjustment of
+the trouble, for, as he said, "It is never well to take drastic
+action if the result can be achieved with equal efficiency in
+less drastic fashion." But there can be no question that the
+drastic action would have followed if the coal operators had not
+seen the light when they did.
+
+In other phases of national life Roosevelt made his influence
+equally felt. As President he found that there was little which
+the Federal Government could do directly for the practical
+betterment of living and working conditions among the mass of the
+people compared with what the State Governments could do. He
+determined, however, to strive to make the National Government an
+ideal employer. He hoped to make the Federal employee feel, just
+as much as did the Cabinet officer, that he was one of the
+partners engaged in the service of the public, proud of his work,
+eager to do it efficiently, and confident of just treatment. The
+Federal Government could act in relation to laboring conditions
+only in the Territories, in the District of Columbia, and in
+connection with interstate commerce. But in those fields it
+accomplished much.
+
+The eight-hour law for workers in the executive departments had
+become a mere farce and was continually violated by officials who
+made their subordinates work longer hours than the law
+stipulated. This condition the President remedied by executive
+action, at the same time seeing to it that the shirk and the
+dawdler received no mercy. A good law protecting the lives and
+health of miners in the Territories was passed; and laws were
+enacted for the District of Columbia, providing for the
+supervision of employment agencies, for safeguarding workers
+against accidents, and for the restriction of child labor. A
+workmen's compensation law for government employees, inadequate
+but at least a beginning, was put on the statute books. A similar
+law for workers on interstate railways was declared
+unconstitutional by the courts; but a second law was passed and
+stood the test.
+
+It was chiefly in the field of executive action, however, that
+Roosevelt was able to put his theories into practice. There he
+did not have to deal with recalcitrant, stupid, or
+medieval-minded politicians, as he so often did in matters of
+legislation. One case which confronted him found him on the side
+against the labor unions, but, being sure that he was right, he
+did not let that fact disturb him. A printer in the Government
+Printing Office, named Miller, had been discharged because he was
+a non-union man. The President immediately ordered him
+reinstated.
+
+Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor,
+with several members of its Executive Council, called upon him to
+protest. The President was courteous but inflexible. He answered
+their protest by declaring that, in the employment and dismissal
+of men in the Government service, he could no more recognize the
+fact that a man did or did not belong to a union as being for or
+against him, than he could recognize the fact that he was a
+Protestant or a Catholic, a Jew or a Gentile, as being for or
+against him. He declared his belief in trade unions and said that
+if he were a worker himself he would unquestionably join a union.
+He always preferred to see a union shop. But he could not allow
+his personal preferences to control his public actions. The
+Government was bound to treat union and non-union men exactly
+alike. His action in causing Miller to be reinstated was final.
+
+Another instance which illustrated Roosevelt's skill in handling
+a difficult situation occurred in 1908 when the Louisville and
+Nashville Railroad and certain other lines announced a reduction
+in wages. The heads of that particular road laid the necessity
+for the reduction at the door of "the drastic laws inimical to
+the interests of the railroads that have in the past year or two
+been enacted." A general strike, with all the attendant
+discomfort and disorder, was threatened in retaliation. The
+President wrote a letter to the Interstate Commerce Commission,
+in which he said:
+
+"These reductions in wages may be justified or they may not. As
+to this the public, which is a vitally interested party, can form
+no judgment without a more complete knowledge of the essential
+facts and real merits of the case than it now has or than it can
+possibly obtain from the special pleadings, certain to be put
+forth by each side in case their dispute should bring about
+serious interruption to traffic. If the reduction in wages is due
+to natural causes, the loss of business being such that the
+burden should be, and is, equitably distributed, between
+capitalist and wageworker, the public should know it. If it is
+caused by legislation, the public and Congress should know it;
+and if it is caused by misconduct in the past financial or other
+operations of any railroad, then everybody should know it,
+especially if the excuse of unfriendly legislation is advanced as
+a method of covering up past business misconduct by the railroad
+managers, or as a justification for failure to treat fairly the
+wage-earning employees of the company."
+
+The letter closed with a request to the Commission to investigate
+the whole matter with these points in view. But the investigation
+proved unnecessary; the letter was enough. The proposed reduction
+of wages was never heard of again. The strength of the
+President's position in a case of this sort was that he was
+cheerfully prepared to accept whatever an investigation should
+show to be right. If the reduction should prove to be required by
+natural causes, very well--let the reduction be made. If it was
+the result of unfair and unwise legislation, very well--repeal
+the legislation. If it was caused by misconduct on the part of
+railroad managers, very well--let them be punished. It was hard
+to get the better of a man who wanted only the truth, and was
+ready to act upon it, no matter which way it cut.
+
+In 1910, after his return from Africa, a speaking trip happened
+to take him to Columbus, Ohio, which had for months been in the
+grasp of a street railway strike. There had been much violence,
+many policemen had refused to do their duty, and many officials
+had failed in theirs. It was an uncomfortable time for an
+outsider to come and make a speech. But Roosevelt did not dodge.
+He spoke, and straight to the point. His speech had been
+announced as on Law and Order. When he rose to speak, however, he
+declared that he would speak on Law, Order, and Justice. Here are
+some of the incisive things that he said:
+
+"Now, the first requisite is to establish order; and the first
+duty of every official, in State and city alike, high and low, is
+to see that order obtains and that violence is definitely stopped
+. . . . I have the greatest regard for the policeman who does his
+duty. I put him high among the props of the State, but the
+policeman who mutinies, or refuses to perform his duty, stands on
+a lower level than that of the professional lawbreaker . . . . I
+ask, then, not only that civic officials perform their duties,
+but that you, the people, insist upon their performing them . . .
+. I ask this particularly of the wage-workers, and employees, and
+men on strike . . . . I ask them, not merely passively, but
+actively, to aid in restoring order. I ask them to clear their
+skirts of all suspicion of sympathizing with disorder, and, above
+all, the suspicion of sympathizing with those who commit brutal
+and cowardly assaults . . . . What I have said of the laboring
+men applies just as much to the capitalists and the capitalists'
+representatives . . . . The wage-workers and the representatives
+of the companies should make it evident that they wish the law
+absolutely obeyed; that there is no chance of saying that either
+the labor organization or the corporation favors lawbreakers or
+lawbreaking. But let your public servants trust, not in the good
+will of either side, but in the might of the civil arm, and see
+that law rules, that order obtains, and that every miscreant,
+every scoundrel who seeks brutally to assault any other
+man--whatever that man's status--is punished with the utmost
+severity . . . . When you have obtained law and order, remember
+that it is useless to have obtained them unless upon them you
+build a superstructure of justice. After finding out the facts,
+see that justice is done; see that injustice that has been
+perpetrated in the past is remedied, and see that the chance of
+doing injustice in the future is minimized."
+
+Now, any one might in his closet write an essay on Law, Order,
+and Justice, which would contain every idea that is here
+expressed. The essayist might even feel somewhat ashamed of his
+production on the ground that all the ideas that it contained
+were platitudes. But it is one thing to write an essay far from
+the madding crowd, and it was quite another to face an audience
+every member of which was probably a partisan of either the
+workers, the employers, or the officials, and give them straight
+from the shoulder simple platitudinous truths of this sort
+applicable to the situation in which they found themselves. Any
+one of them would have been delighted to hear these things said
+about his opponents; it was when they were addressed to himself
+and his associates that they stung. The best part of it, however,
+was the fact that those things were precisely what the situation
+needed. They were the truth; and Roosevelt knew it. His sword had
+a double edge, and he habitually used it with a sweep that cut
+both ways. As a result he was generally hated or feared by the
+extremists on both sides. But the average citizen heartily
+approved the impartiality of his strokes.
+
+In the year 1905 the Governor of Idaho was killed by a bomb as he
+was leaving his house. A former miner, who had been driven from
+the State six years before by United States troops engaged in
+putting down industrial disorder, was arrested and confessed the
+crime. In his confession he implicated three officers of the
+Western Federation of Miners, Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone.
+These three men were brought from Colorado into Idaho by a method
+that closely resembled kidnaping, though it subsequently received
+the sanction of the United States Supreme Court. While these
+prominent labor leaders were awaiting trial, Colorado, Idaho, and
+Nevada seethed and burst into eruption. Parts of the mining
+districts were transformed into two hostile armed camps. Violence
+was common. At this time Roosevelt coupled the name of a giant
+among American railroad financiers, with those of Moyer and
+Haywood, and described them all as "undesirable citizens." The
+outbursts of resentment from both sides were instantaneous and
+vicious. There was little to choose between them. Finally the
+President took advantage of a letter of criticism from a
+supporter of the accused labor leaders to reply to both groups of
+critics. He referred to the fact that certain representatives of
+the great capitalists had protested, because he had included a
+prominent financier with Moyer and Haywood, while certain
+representatives of labor had protested on precisely the opposite
+grounds. Then Roosevelt went on to say:
+
+"I am as profoundly indifferent to the condemnation in one case
+as in the other. I challenge as a right the support of all good
+Americans, whether wage-workers or capitalists, whatever their
+occupation or creed, or in whatever portion of the country they
+live, when I condemn both the types of bad citizenship which I
+have held up to reprobation . . . . You ask for a 'square deal'
+for Messrs. Moyer and Haywood. So do I. When I say 'square deal',
+I mean a square deal to every one; it is equally a violation of
+the policy of the square deal for a capitalist to protest against
+denunciation of a capitalist who is guilty of wrongdoing and for
+a labor leader to protest against the denunciation of a labor
+leader who has been guilty of wrongdoing. I stand for equal
+justice to both; and so far as in my power lies I shall uphold
+justice, whether the man accused of guilt has behind him the
+wealthiest corporation, the greatest aggregations of riches in
+the country, or whether he has behind him the most influential
+labor organizations in the country."
+
+It should be recorded for the sake of avoiding misapprehension
+that Roosevelt's denunciation of Moyer and Haywood was not based
+on the assumption that they were guilty of the death of the
+murdered' Governor, but was predicated on their general attitude
+and conduct in the industrial conflicts in the mining fields.
+
+The criticisms of Roosevelt because of his actions in the complex
+relations of capital and labor were often puerile. For instance,
+he was sternly taken to task on one or two occasions because he
+had labor leaders lunch with him at the White House. He replied
+to one of his critics with this statement of his position: "While
+I am President I wish the labor man to feel that he has the same
+right of access to me that the capitalist has; that the doors
+swing open as easily to the wageworker as to the head of a big
+corporation--AND NO EASIER."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. RECLAMATION AND CONSERVATION
+
+The first message of President Roosevelt to Congress contained
+these words: "The forest and water problems are perhaps the most
+vital internal questions of the United States." At that moment,
+on December 3, 1901, the impulse was given that was to add to the
+American vocabulary two new words, "reclamation" and
+"conservation," that was to create two great constructive
+movements for the preservation, the increase, and the utilization
+of natural resources, and that was to establish a new
+relationship on the part of the Federal Government to the
+nation's natural wealth.
+
+Reclamation and conservation had this in common: the purpose of
+both was the intelligent and efficient utilization of the natural
+resources of the country for the benefit of the people of the
+country. But they differed in one respect, and with conspicuous
+practical effects. Reclamation, which meant the spending of
+public moneys to render fertile and usable arid lands hitherto
+deemed worthless, trod on no one's toes. It took from no one
+anything that he had; it interfered with no one's enjoyment of
+benefits which it was not in the public interest that he should
+continue to enjoy unchecked. It was therefore popular from the
+first, and the new policy went through Congress as though on
+well-oiled wheels. Only six months passed between its first
+statement in the Presidential message and its enactment into law.
+Conservation, on the other hand, had to begin by withholding the
+natural resources from exploitation and extravagant use. It had,
+first of all, to establish in the national mind the principle
+that the forests and mines of the nation are not an inexhaustible
+grab-bag into which whosoever will may thrust greedy and wasteful
+hands, and by this new understanding to stop the squandering of
+vast national resources until they could be economically
+developed and intelligently used. So it was inevitable that
+conservation should prove unpopular, while reclamation gained an
+easy popularity, and that those who had been feeding fat off the
+country's stores of forest and mineral wealth should oppose, with
+tooth and nail, the very suggestion of conservation. It was on
+the first Sunday after he reached Washington as President, before
+he had moved into the White House, that Roosevelt discussed with
+two men, Gifford Pinchot and F. H. Newell, the twin policies that
+were to become two of the finest contributions to American
+progress of the Roosevelt Administrations. Both men were already
+in the Government service, both were men of broad vision and high
+constructive ability; with both Roosevelt had already worked when
+he was Governor of New York. The name of Newell, who became chief
+engineer of the Reclamation Service, ought to be better known
+popularly than it is in connection with the wonderful work that
+has been accomplished in making the desert lands of western
+America blossom and produce abundantly. The name of Pinchot, by a
+more fortunate combination of events, has become synonymous in
+the popular mind with the conservation movement.
+
+On the very day that the first Roosevelt message was read to the
+Congress, a committee of Western Senators and Congressmen was
+organized, under the leadership of Senator Francis G. Newlands of
+Nevada, to prepare a Reclamation Bill. The only obstacle to the
+prompt enactment of the bill was the undue insistence upon State
+Rights by certain Congressmen, "who consistently fought for local
+and private interests as against the interests of the people as a
+whole." In spite of this shortsighted opposition, the bill became
+law on June 17, 1902, and the work of reclamation began without
+an instant's delay. The Reclamation Act set aside the proceeds of
+the sale of public lands for the purpose of reclaiming the waste
+areas of the arid West.
+
+Lands otherwise worthless were to be irrigated and in those new
+regions of agricultural productivity homes were to be
+established. The money so expended was to be repaid in due course
+by the settlers on the land and the sums repaid were to be used
+as a revolving fund for the continuous prosecution of the
+reclamation work. Nearly five million dollars was made
+immediately available for the work. Within four years, twenty-six
+"projects" had been approved by the Secretary of the Interior and
+work was well under way on practically all of them. They were
+situated in fourteen States--Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas,
+Montana, Nebraska, Washington, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, North
+Dakota, Oregon, California, South Dakota. The individual projects
+were intended to irrigate areas of from eight thousand to two
+hundred thousand acres each; and the grand total of arid lands to
+which water was thus to be brought by canals, tunnels, aqueducts,
+and ditches was more than a million and a half acres.
+
+The work had to be carried out under the most difficult and
+adventurous conditions. The men of the Reclamation Service were
+in the truest sense pioneers, building great engineering works
+far from the railroads, where the very problem of living for the
+great numbers of workers required was no simple one. On the
+Shoshone in Wyoming these men built the highest dam in the world,
+310 feet from base to crest. They pierced a mountain range in
+Colorado and carried the waters of the Gunnison River nearly six
+miles to the Uncompahgre Valley through a tunnel in the solid
+rock. The great Roosevelt dam on the Salt River in Arizona with
+its gigantic curved wall of masonry 280 feet high, created a lake
+with a capacity of fifty-six billion cubic feet, and watered in
+1915 an area of 750,000 acres.
+
+The work of these bold pioneers was made possible by the fearless
+backing which they received from the Administration at
+Washington. The President demanded of them certain definite
+results and gave them unquestioning support. In Roosevelt's own
+words, "the men in charge were given to understand that they must
+get into the water if they would learn to swim; and, furthermore,
+they learned to know that if they acted honestly, and boldly and
+fearlessly accepted responsibility, I would stand by them to the
+limit. In this, as in every other case, in the end the boldness
+of the action fully justified itself."
+
+The work of reclamation was first prosecuted under the United
+States Geological Survey; but in the spring of 1908 the United
+States Reclamation Service was established to carry it on, under
+the direction of Mr. Newell, to whom the inception of the plan
+was due. Roosevelt paid a fine and well-deserved tribute to the
+man who originated and carried through this great national
+achievement when he said that "Newell's single-minded devotion to
+this great task, the constructive imagination which enabled him
+to conceive it, and the executive power and high character
+through which he and his assistant, Arthur P. Davis, built up a
+model service--all these made him a model servant. The final
+proof of his merit is supplied by the character and records of
+the men who later assailed him."
+
+The assault to which Roosevelt thus refers was the inevitable
+aftermath of great accomplishment. Reclamation was popular, when
+it was proposed, while it was being carried out, and when the
+water began to flow in the ditches, making new lands of fertile
+abundance for settlers and farmers. But the reaction of
+unpopularity came the minute the beneficiaries had to begin to
+pay for the benefits received. Then arose a concerted movement
+for the repudiation of the obligation of the settlers to repay
+the Government for what had been spent to reclaim the land. The
+baser part of human nature always seeks a scapegoat; and it might
+naturally be expected that the repudiators and their supporters
+should concentrate their attacks upon the head of the Reclamation
+Service, to whose outstanding ability and continuous labor they
+owed that for which they were now unwilling to pay. But no
+attack, not even the adverse report of an ill-humored
+congressional committee, can alter the fact of the tremendous
+service that Newell and his loyal associates in the Reclamation
+Service did for the nation and the people of the United States.
+By 1915 reclamation had added to the arable land of the country a
+million and a quarter acres, of which nearly eight hundred
+thousand acres were already "under water," and largely under
+tillage, producing yearly more than eighteen million dollars'
+worth of crops.
+
+When Roosevelt became President there was a Bureau of Forestry in
+the Department of Agriculture, but it was a body entrusted with
+merely the study of forestry problems and principles. It
+contained all the trained foresters in the employ of the
+Government; but it had no public forest lands whatever to which
+the knowledge and skill of these men could be applied. All the
+forest reserves of that day were in the charge of the Public Land
+Office in the Department of the Interior. This was managed by
+clerks who knew nothing of forestry, and most, if not all, of
+whom had never seen a stick of the timber or an acre of the
+woodlands for which they were responsible. The mapping and
+description of the timber lay with the Geological Survey. So the
+national forests had no foresters and the Government foresters no
+forests.
+
+It was a characteristic arrangement of the old days. More than
+that, it was a characteristic expression of the old attitude of
+thought and action on the part of the American people toward
+their natural resources. Dazzled and intoxicated by the
+inexhaustible riches of their bountiful land, they had concerned
+themselves only with the agreeable task of utilizing and
+consuming them. To their shortsighted vision there seemed always
+plenty more beyond. With the beginning of the twentieth century a
+prophet arose in the land to warn the people that the supply was
+not inexhaustible. He declared not only that the "plenty more
+beyond" had an end, but that the end was already in sight. This
+prophet was Gifford Pinchot. His warning went forth reinforced by
+all the authority of the Presidential office and all the
+conviction and driving power of the personality of Roosevelt
+himself. Pinchot's warning cry was startling:
+
+"The growth of our forests is but one-third of the annual cut;
+and we have in store timber enough for only twenty or thirty
+years at our present rate of use . . . . Our coal supplies are so
+far from being inexhaustible that if the increasing rate of
+consumption shown by the figures of the last seventy-five years
+continues to prevail, our supplies of anthracite coal will last
+but fifty years and of bituminous coal less than two hundred
+years . . . . Many oil and gas fields, as in Pennsylvania, West
+Virginia, and the Mississippi Valley, have already failed, yet
+vast quantities of gas continue to be poured into the air and
+great quantities of oil into the streams. Cases are known in
+which great volumes of oil were systematically burned in order to
+get rid of it . . . . In 1896, Professor Shaler, than whom no one
+has spoken with greater authority on this subject, estimated that
+in the upland regions of the States South of Pennsylvania, three
+thousand square miles of soil have been destroyed as the result
+of forest denudation, and that destruction was then proceeding at
+the rate of one hundred square miles of fertile soil per year . .
+. . The Mississippi River alone is estimated to transport yearly
+four hundred million tons of sediment, or about twice the amount
+of material to be excavated from the Panama Canal. This material
+is the most fertile portion of the richest fields, transformed
+from a blessing to a curse by unrestricted erosion . . . . The
+destruction of forage plants by overgrazing has resulted, in the
+opinion of men most capable of judging, in reducing the grazing
+value of the public lands by one-half."
+
+Here, then, was a problem of national significance, and it was
+one which the President attacked with his usual promptness and
+vigor. His first message to Congress called for the unification
+of the care of the forest lands of the public domain in a single
+body under the Department of Agriculture. He asked that legal
+authority be granted to the President to transfer to the
+Department of Agriculture lands for use as forest reserves. He
+declared that "the forest reserves should be set apart forever
+for the use and benefit of our people as a whole and not
+sacrificed to the shortsighted greed of a few." He supplemented
+this declaration with an explanation of the meaning and purpose
+of the forest policy which he urged should be adopted: "Wise
+forest protection does not mean the withdrawal of forest
+resources, whether of wood, water, or grass, from contributing
+their full share to the welfare of the people, but, on the
+contrary, gives the assurance of larger and more certain
+supplies. The fundamental idea of forestry is the perpetuation of
+forests by use. Forest protection is not an end in itself; it is
+a means to increase and sustain the resources of our country and
+the industries which depend upon them. The preservation of our
+forests is an imperative business necessity. We have come to see
+clearly that whatever destroys the forest, except to make way for
+agriculture, threatens our wellbeing."
+
+Nevertheless it was four years before Congress could be brought
+to the common-sense policy of administering the forest lands
+still belonging to the Government. Pinchot and his associates in
+the Bureau of Forestry spent the interval profitably, however, in
+investigating and studying the whole problem of national forest
+resources and in drawing up enlightened and effective plans for
+their protection and development. Accordingly, when the act
+transferring the National Forests to the charge of the newly
+created United States Forest Service in the Department of
+Agriculture was passed early in 1905, they were ready for the
+responsibility.
+
+The principles which they had formulated and which they now began
+to apply had been summed up by Roosevelt in the statement "that
+the rights of the public to the natural resources outweigh
+private rights and must be given the first consideration." Until
+the establishment of the Forest Service, private rights had
+almost always been allowed to overbalance public rights in
+matters that concerned not only the National Forests, but the
+public lands generally. It was the necessity of having this new
+principle recognized and adopted that made the way of the newly
+created Forest Service and of the whole Conservation movement so
+thorny. Those who had been used to making personal profit from
+free and unrestricted exploitation of the nation's natural
+resources would look only with antagonism on a movement which put
+a consideration of the general welfare first.
+
+The Forest Service nevertheless put these principles immediately
+into practical application. The National Forests were opened to a
+regulated use of all their resources. A law was passed throwing
+open to settlement all land in the National Forests which was
+found to be chiefly valuable for agriculture. Hitherto all such
+land had been closed to the settler. Regulations were established
+and enforced which favored the settler rather than the large
+stockowner. It was provided that, when conditions required the
+reduction in the number of head of stock grazed in any National
+Forest, the vast herds of the wealthy owner should be affected
+before the few head of the small man, upon which the living of
+his family depended. The principle which excited the bitterest
+antagonism of all was the rule that any one, except a bona fide
+settler on the land, who took public property for private profit
+should pay for what he got. This was a new and most unpalatable
+idea to the big stock and sheep raisers, who had been accustomed
+to graze their animals at will on the richest lands of the public
+forests, with no one but themselves a penny the better off
+thereby. But the Attorney-General of the United States declared
+it legal to make the men who pastured their cattle and sheep in
+the National Forests pay for this privilege; and in the summer of
+1906 such charges were for the first time made and collected. The
+trained foresters of the service were put in charge of the
+National Forests. As a result, improvement began to manifest
+itself in other ways. Within two years the fire prevention work
+alone had completely justified the new policy of forest
+regulation. Eighty-six per cent of the fires that did occur in
+the National Forests were held down to an area of five acres or
+less. The new service not only made rapid progress in saving the
+timber, but it began to make money for the nation by selling the
+timber. In 1905 the sales of timber brought in $60,000; three
+years later the return was $850,000.
+
+The National Forests were trebled in size during the two
+Roosevelt Administrations with the result that there were
+194,000,000 acres of publicly owned and administered forest lands
+when Roosevelt went out of office. The inclusion of these lands
+in the National Forests, where they were safe from the selfish
+exploitation of greedy private interests, was not accomplished
+without the bitterest opposition. The wisdom of the serpent
+sometimes had to be called into play to circumvent the adroit
+maneuvering of these interests and their servants in Congress. In
+1907, for example, Senator Charles W. Fulton of Oregon obtained
+an amendment to the Agricultural Appropriation Bill forbidding
+the President to set aside any additional National Forests in six
+Northwestern States.. But the President and the Forest Service
+were ready for this bold attempt to deprive the public of some
+16,000,000 acres for the benefit of land grabbers and special
+interests. They knew exactly what lands ought to be set aside in
+those States. So the President first unostentatiously signed the
+necessary proclamations to erect those lands into National
+Forests, and then quietly approved the Agricultural Bill. "The
+opponents of the Forest Service," said Roosevelt, "turned
+handsprings in their wrath; and dire were their threats against
+the Executive; but the threats could not be carried out, and were
+really only a tribute to the efficiency of our action."
+
+The development of a sound and enlightened forest policy
+naturally led to the consideration of a similar policy for
+dealing with the water power of the country which had hitherto
+gone to waste or was in the hands of private interests. It had
+been the immemorial custom that the water powers on the navigable
+streams, on the public domain, and in the National Forests should
+be given away for nothing, and practically without question, to
+the first comer. This ancient custom ran right athwart the newly
+enunciated principle that public property should not pass into
+private possession without being paid for, and that permanent
+grants, except for home-making, should not be made. The Forest
+Service now began to apply this principle to the water powers in
+the National Forests, granting permission for the development and
+use of such power for limited periods only and requiring payment
+for the privilege. This was the beginning of a general water
+power policy which, in the course of time, commended itself to
+public approval; but it was long before it ceased to be opposed
+by the private interests that wanted these rich resources for
+their own undisputed use.
+
+Out of the forest movement grew the conservation movement in its
+broader sense. In the fall of 1907 Roosevelt made a trip down the
+Mississippi River with the definite purpose of drawing general
+attention to the subject of the development of the national
+inland waterways. Seven months before, he had established the
+Inland Waterways Commission and had directed it to "consider the
+relations of the streams to the use of all the great permanent
+natural resources and their conservation for the making and
+maintenance of permanent homes." During the trip a letter was
+prepared by a group of men interested in the conservation
+movement and was presented to him, asking him to summon a
+conference on the conservation of natural resources. At a great
+meeting held at Memphis, Tennessee, Roosevelt publicly announced
+his intention of calling such a conference.
+
+In May of the following year the conference was held in the East
+Room of the White House. There were assembled there the
+President, the Vice-President, seven Cabinet members, the Supreme
+Court Justices, the Governors of thirty-four States and
+representatives of the other twelve, the Governors of all the
+Territories, including Alaska, Hawaii, and Porto Rico, the
+President of the Board of Commissioners of the District of
+Columbia, representatives of sixty-eight national societies, four
+special guests, William Jennings Bryan, James J. Hill, Andrew
+Carnegie, and John Mitchell, forty-eight general guests, and the
+members of the Inland Waterways Commission. The object of the
+conference was stated by the President in these words: "It seems
+to me time for the country to take account of its natural
+resources, and to inquire how long they are likely to last. We
+are prosperous now; we should not forget that it will be just as
+important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time."
+
+At the conclusion of the conference a declaration prepared by the
+Governors of Louisiana, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Utah, and South
+Carolina, was unanimously adopted. This Magna Charta of the
+conservation movement declared "that the great natural resources
+supply the material basis upon which our civilization must
+continue to depend and upon which the perpetuity of the nation
+itself rests," that "this material basis is threatened with
+exhaustion," and that "this conservation of our natural resources
+is a subject of transcendent importance, which should engage
+unremittingly the attention of the Nation, the States, and the
+people in earnest cooperation." It set forth the practical
+implications of Conservation in these words:
+
+"We agree that the land should be so used that erosion and soil
+wash shall cease; and that there should be reclamation of arid
+and semi-arid regions by means of irrigation, and of swamp and
+overflowed regions by means of drainage; that the waters should
+be so conserved and used as to promote navigation, to enable the
+arid regions to be reclaimed by irrigation, and to develop power
+in the interests of the people; that the forests which regulate
+our rivers, support our industries, and promote the fertility
+and productiveness of the soil should be preserved and
+perpetuated; that the minerals found so abundantly beneath the
+surface should be so used as to prolong their utility; that the
+beauty, healthfulness, and habitability of our country should be
+preserved and increased; that sources of national wealth exist
+for the benefit of the people, and that monopoly thereof should
+not be tolerated."
+
+The conference urged the continuation and extension of the forest
+policies already established; the immediate adoption of a wise,
+active, and thorough waterway policy for the prompt improvement
+of the streams, and the conservation of water resources for
+irrigation, water supply, power, and navigation; and the
+enactment of laws for the prevention of waste in the mining and
+extraction of coal, oil, gas, and other minerals with a view to
+their wise conservation for the use of the people. The
+declaration closed with the timely adjuration, "Let us conserve
+the foundations of our prosperity."
+
+As a result of the conference President Roosevelt created the
+National Conservation Commission, consisting of forty-nine men of
+prominence, about one-third of whom were engaged in politics,
+one-third in various industries, and one-third in scientific
+work. Gifford Pinchot was appointed chairman. The Commission
+proceeded to make an inventory of the natural resources of the
+United States. This inventory contains the only authentic
+statement as to the amounts of the national resources of the
+country, the degree to which they have already been exhausted,
+and their probable duration. But with this inventory there came
+to an end the activity of the Conservation Commission, for
+Congress not only refused any appropriation for its use but
+decreed by law that no bureau of the Government should do any
+work for any commission or similar body appointed by the
+President, without reference to the question whether such work
+was appropriate or not for such a bureau to undertake. Inasmuch
+as the invaluable inventory already made had been almost entirely
+the work of scientific bureaus of the Government instructed by
+the President to cooperate with the Commission, the purpose and
+animus of this legislation were easily apparent. Congress had
+once more shown its friendship for the special interests and its
+indifference to the general welfare.
+
+In February, 1909, on the invitation of President Roosevelt, a
+North American Conservation Conference, attended by
+representatives of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, was
+held at the White House. A declaration of principles was drawn up
+and the suggestion made that all the nations of the world should
+be invited to meet in a World Conservation Conference. The
+President forthwith addressed to forty-five nations a letter
+inviting them to assemble at The Hague for such a conference;
+but, as he has laconically expressed it, "When I left the White
+House the project lapsed."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. BEING WISE IN TIME
+
+Perhaps the most famous of Roosevelt's epigrammatic sayings is,
+"Speak softly and carry a big stick." The public, with its
+instinctive preference for the dramatic over the significant,
+promptly seized upon the "big stick" half of the aphorism and
+ignored the other half. But a study of the various acts of
+Roosevelt when he was President readily shows that in his mind
+the "big stick" was purely subordinate. It was merely the ultima
+ratio, the possession of which would enable a nation to "speak
+softly" and walk safely along the road of peace and justice and
+fair play.
+
+The secret of Roosevelt's success in foreign affairs is to be
+found in another of his favorite sayings: "Nine-tenths of wisdom
+is to be wise in time." He has himself declared that his whole
+foreign policy "was based on the exercise of intelligent
+foresight and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of
+any likely crisis to make it improbable that we would run into
+serious trouble."
+
+When Roosevelt became President, a perplexing controversy with
+Great Britain over the boundary line between Alaska and Canada
+was in full swing. The problem, which had become acute with the
+discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1897, had already been
+considered, together with eleven other subjects of dispute
+between Canada and the United States, by a Joint Commission which
+had been able to reach no agreement. The essence of the
+controversy was this: The treaty of 1825 between Great Britain
+and Russia had declared that the boundary, dividing British and
+Russian America on that five-hundred-mile strip of land which
+depends from the Alaskan elephant's head like a dangling halter
+rope, should be drawn "parallel to the windings of the coast" at
+a distance inland of thirty miles. The United States took the
+plain and literal interpretation of these words in the treaty.
+The Canadian contention was that within the meaning of the treaty
+the fiords or inlets which here break into the land were not part
+of the sea, and that the line, instead of following, at the
+correct distance inland, the indentations made by these arms of
+the sea, should leap boldly across them, at the agreed distance
+from the points of the headlands. This would give Canada the
+heads of several great inlets and direct access to the sea far
+north of the point where the Canadian coast had, always been
+assumed to end. Canada and the United States were equally
+resolute in upholding their claims. It looked as if the matter
+would end in a deadlock.
+
+John Hay, who had been Secretary of State in McKinley's Cabinet,
+as he now was in Roosevelt's, had done his best to bring the
+matter to a settlement, but had been unwilling to have the
+dispute arbitrated, for the very good reason that, as he said,
+"although our claim is as clear as the sun in heaven, we know
+enough of arbitration to foresee the fatal tendency of all
+arbitrators to compromise." Roosevelt believed that the "claim of
+the Canadians for access to deep water along any part of the
+Alaskan coast is just exactly as indefensible as if they should
+now claim the island of Nantucket." He was willing, however, to
+refer the question unconfused by other issues to a second Joint
+Commission of six. The commission was duly constituted. There was
+no odd neutral member of this body, as in an arbitration, but
+merely three representatives from each side. Of the British
+representatives two were Canadians and the third was the Lord
+Chief Justice of England, Lord Alverstone.
+
+But before the Commission met, the President took pains to have
+conveyed to the British Cabinet, in an informal but
+diplomatically correct way, his views and his intentions in the
+event of a disagreement. "I wish to make one last effort," he
+said, "to bring about an agreement through the Commission which
+will enable the people of both countries to say that the result
+represents the feeling of the representatives of both countries.
+But if there is a disagreement, I wish it distinctly understood,
+not only that there will be no arbitration of the matter, but
+that in my message to Congress I shall take a position which will
+prevent any possibility of arbitration hereafter." If this should
+seem to any one too vigorous flourishing of the "big stick," let
+him remember that it was all done through confidential diplomatic
+channels, and that the judgment of the Lord Chief Justice of
+England, when the final decision was made, fully upheld
+Roosevelt's position.
+
+The decision of the Commission was, with slight immaterial
+modifications, in favor of the United States. Lord Alverstone
+voted against his Canadian than colleagues. It was a just
+decision, as most well-informed Canadians knew at the time. The
+troublesome question was settled; the time-honored friendship of
+two great peoples had suffered no interruption; and Roosevelt
+had secured for his country its just due, without public  parade
+or bluster, by merely being wise--and inflexible--in time.
+
+During the same early period of his Presidency, Roosevelt found
+himself confronted with a situation in South America, which
+threatened a serious violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Venezuela
+was repudiating certain debts which the Venezuelan Government had
+guaranteed to European capitalists. German capital was chiefly
+involved, and Germany proposed to collect the debts by force.
+Great Britain and Italy were also concerned in the matter, but
+Germany was the ringleader and the active partner in the
+undertaking. Throughout the year 1902 a pacific blockade of the
+Venezuelan coast was maintained and in December of that year an
+ultimatum demanding the immediate payment of the debts was
+presented. When its terms were not complied with, diplomatic
+relations were broken off and the Venezuelan fleet was seized.
+At this point the United States entered upon the scene, but with
+no blare of trumpets.
+
+In fact, what really happened was not generally known until
+several years later.
+
+In his message of December, 1901, President Roosevelt had made
+two significant statements. Speaking of the Monroe Doctrine, he
+said, "We do not guarantee any state against punishment, if it
+misconducts itself." This was very satisfactory to Germany. But
+he added--"provided the punishment does not take the form of
+the acquisition of territory by any non-American power." This
+did not suit the German book so well. For a year the matter was
+discussed. Germany disclaimed any intention to make "permanent"
+acquisitions in Venezuela but contended for its right to make
+"temporary" ones. Now the world had already seen "temporary"
+acquisitions made in China, and it was a matter of common
+knowledge that this convenient word was often to be interpreted
+in a Pickwickian sense.
+
+When the "pacific blockade" passed into the stage of active
+hostilities, the patience of Roosevelt snapped. The German
+Ambassador, von Holleben, was summoned to the White House. The
+President proposed to him that Germany should arbitrate its
+differences with Venezuela. Von Holleben assured him that his
+"Imperial Master" would not hear of such a course. The President
+persisted that there must be no taking possession, even
+temporarily, of Venezuelan territory. He informed the Ambassador
+that Admiral Dewey was at that moment maneuvering in Caribbean
+waters, and that if satisfactory assurances did not come from
+Berlin in ten days, he would be ordered to proceed to Venezuela
+to see that no territory was seized by German forces. The
+Ambassador was firm in his conviction that no assurances would be
+forthcoming.
+
+A week later Von Holleben appeared at the White House to talk of
+another matter and was about to leave without mentioning
+Venezuela. The President stopped him with a question. No, said
+the Ambassador, no word had come from Berlin. Then, Roosevelt
+explained, it would not be necessary for him to wait the
+remaining three days. Dewey would be instructed to sail a day
+earlier than originally planned. He added that not a word of all
+this had been put upon paper, and that if the German Emperor
+would consent to arbitrate, the President would praise him
+publicly for his broadmindedness. The Ambassador was still
+convinced that no arbitration was conceivable.
+
+But just twelve hours later he appeared at the White House, his
+face wreathed in smiles. On behalf of his Imperial Master he had
+the honor to request the President of the United States to act as
+arbitrator between Germany and Venezuela. The orders to Dewey
+were never sent, the President publicly congratulated the Kaiser
+on his loyalty to the principle of arbitration, and, at
+Roosevelt's suggestion, the case went to The Hague. Not an
+intimation of the real occurrences came out till long after, not
+a public word or act marred the perfect friendliness of the two
+nations. The Monroe Doctrine was just as unequivocally invoked
+and just as inflexibly upheld as it had been by Grover Cleveland
+eight years before in another Venezuelan case. But the quiet
+private warning had been substituted for the loud public threat.
+
+The question of the admission of Japanese immigrants to the
+United States and of their treatment had long disturbed American
+international relations. It became acute in the latter part of
+1906, when the city of San Francisco determined to exclude all
+Japanese pupils from the public schools and to segregate them in
+a school of their own. This action seemed to the Japanese a
+manifest violation of the rights guaranteed by treaty. Diplomatic
+protests were instantly forthcoming at Washington; and popular
+demonstrations against the United States boiled up in Tokyo. For
+the third time there appeared splendid material for a serious
+conflict with a great power which might conceivably lead to
+active hostilities. From such beginnings wars have come before
+now.
+
+The President was convinced that the Californians were utterly
+wrong in what they had done, but perfectly right in the
+underlying conviction from which their action sprang. He saw that
+justice and good faith demanded that the Japanese in California
+be protected in their treaty rights, and that the Californians be
+protected from the immigration of Japanese laborers in mass. With
+characteristic promptness and vigor he set forth these two
+considerations and took action to make them effective. In his
+message to Congress in December he declared: "In the matter now
+before me, affecting the Japanese, everything that is in my power
+to do will be done and all of the forces, military and civil, of
+the United States which I may lawfully employ will be so employed
+. . . to enforce the rights of aliens under treaties." Here was
+reassurance for the Japanese. But he also added: "The Japanese
+would themselves not tolerate the intrusion into their country of
+a mass of Americans who would displace Japanese in the business
+of the land. The people of California are right in insisting that
+the Japanese shall not come thither in mass." Here was
+reassurance for the Californians.
+
+The words were promptly followed by acts. The garrison of Federal
+troops at San Francisco was reinforced and public notice was
+given that violence against Japanese would be put down. Suits
+were brought both in the California State courts and in the
+Federal courts there to uphold the treaty rights of Japan. Mr.
+Victor H. Metcalf, the Secretary of Commerce and Labor, himself a
+Californian, was sent to San Francisco to make a study of the
+whole situation. It was made abundantly clear to the people of
+San Francisco and the Coast that the provision of the Federal
+Constitution making treaties a part of the supreme law of the
+land, with which the Constitution and laws of no State can
+interfere, would be strictly enforced. The report of Secretary
+Metcalf showed that the school authorities of San Francisco had
+done not only an illegal thing but an unnecessary and a stupid
+thing.
+
+Meanwhile Roosevelt had been working with equal vigor upon the
+other side of the problem. He esteemed it precisely as important
+to protect the Californians from the Japanese as to protect the
+Japanese from the Californians. As in the Alaskan and Venezuelan
+cases, he proceeded without beat of drum or clash of cymbal. The
+matter was worked out in unobtrusive conferences between the
+President and the State Department and the Japanese
+representatives in Washington. It was all friendly, informal,
+conciliatory--but the Japanese did not fail to recognize the
+inflexible determination behind this courteous friendliness. Out
+of these conferences came an informal agreement on the part of
+the Japanese Government that no passports would be issued to
+Japanese workingmen permitting them to leave Japan for ports of
+the United States. It was further only necessary to prevent
+Japanese coolies from coming into the United States through
+Canada and Mexico. This was done by executive order just two days
+after the school authorities of San Francisco had rescinded their
+discriminatory school decree.
+
+The incident is eminently typical of Roosevelt's principles and
+practice: to accord full measure of justice while demanding full
+measure in return; to be content with the fact without care for
+the formality; to see quickly, to look far, and to act boldly.
+
+It had a sequel which rounded out the story. The President's
+ready willingness to compel California to do justice to the
+Japanese was misinterpreted in Japan as timidity. Certain
+chauvinistic elements in Japan began to have thoughts which were
+in danger of becoming inimical to the best interests of the
+United States. It seemed to President Roosevelt an opportune
+moment, for many reasons, to send the American battle fleet on a
+voyage around the world. The project was frowned on in this
+country and viewed with doubt in other parts of the world. Many
+said the thing could not be done, for no navy in the world had
+yet done it; but Roosevelt knew that it could. European observers
+believed that it would lead to war with Japan; but Roosevelt's
+conviction was precisely the opposite. In his own words, "I did
+not expect it; . . . I believed that Japan would feel as friendly
+in the matter as we did; but . . . if my expectations had proved
+mistaken, it would have been proof positive that we were going to
+be attacked anyhow, and . . . in such event it would have been an
+enormous gain to have had the three months' preliminary
+preparation which enabled the fleet to start perfectly equipped.
+In a personal interview before they left, I had explained to the
+officers in command that I believed the trip would be one of
+absolute peace, but that they were to take exactly the same
+precautions against sudden attack of any kind as if we were at
+war with all the nations of the earth; and that no excuse of any
+kind would be accepted if there were a sudden attack of any kind
+and we were taken unawares." Prominent inhabitants and newspapers
+of the Atlantic coast were deeply concerned over the taking away
+of the fleet from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The head of the
+Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, who hailed from the State of
+Maine, declared that the fleet should not and could not go
+because Congress would refuse to appropriate the money; Roosevelt
+announced in response that he had enough money to take the fleet
+around into the Pacific anyhow, that it would certainly go, and
+that if Congress did not choose to appropriate enough money to
+bring the fleet back, it could stay there. There was no further
+difficulty about the money.
+
+The voyage was at once a hard training trip and a triumphant
+progress. Everywhere the ships, their officers, and their men
+were received with hearty cordiality and deep admiration, and
+nowhere more so than in Japan. The nations of the world were
+profoundly impressed by the achievement. The people of the United
+States were thoroughly aroused to a new pride in their navy and
+an interest in its adequacy and efficiency. It was definitely
+established in the minds of Americans and foreigners that the
+United States navy is rightfully as much at home in the Pacific
+as in the Atlantic. Any cloud the size of a man's hand that may
+have been gathering above the Japanese horizon was forthwith
+swept away. Roosevelt's plan was a novel and bold use of the
+instruments of war on behalf of peace which was positively
+justified in the event.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. RIGHTS, DUTIES, AND REVOLUTIONS
+
+It was a favorite conviction of Theodore Roosevelt that  neither
+an individual nor a nation can possess rights which do not carry
+with them duties. Not long after the Venezuelan incident--in
+which the right of the United States, as set forth in the Monroe
+Doctrine, to prevent European powers from occupying territory in
+the Western Hemisphere was successfully upheld--an occasion arose
+nearer home not only to insist upon rights but to assume the
+duties involved. In a message to the Senate in February, 1905,
+Roosevelt thus outlined his conception  of the dual nature of the
+Monroe Doctrine:
+
+"It has for some time been obvious that those who profit by the
+Monroe Doctrine must accept certain responsibilities along with
+the rights which it confers, and that the same statement applies
+to those who uphold the doctrine . . . . An aggrieved nation can,
+without interfering with the Monroe Doctrine, take what action it
+sees fit in the adjustment of its disputes with American states,
+provided that action does not take the shape of interference with
+their form of government or of the despoilment of their territory
+under any disguise. But short of this, when the question is one
+of a money claim, the only way which remains finally to collect
+it is a blockade or bombardment or seizure of the custom houses,
+and this means . . . what is in effect a possession, even though
+only a temporary possession, of territory. The United States then
+becomes a party in interest, because under the Monroe Doctrine it
+cannot see any European power seize and permanently occupy the
+territory of one of these republics; and yet such seizure of
+territory, disguised or undisguised, may eventually offer the
+only way in which the power in question can collect its debts,
+unless there is interference on the part of the United States."
+
+Roosevelt had already found such interference necessary in the
+case of Germany and Venezuela. But it had been interference in a
+purely negative sense. He had merely insisted that the European
+power should not occupy American territory even temporarily. In
+the later case of the Dominican Republic he supplemented this
+negative interference with positive action based upon his
+conviction of the inseparable nature of rights and obligations.
+
+Santo Domingo was in its usual state of chronic revolution. The
+stakes for which the rival forces were continually fighting were
+the custom houses, for they were the only certain sources of
+revenue and their receipts were the only reliable security which
+could be offered to foreign capitalists in support of loans. So
+thoroughgoing was the demoralization of the Republic's affairs
+that at one time there were two rival "governments" in the island
+and a revolution going on against each. One of these governments
+was once to be found at sea in a small gunboat but still
+insisting that, as the only legitimate government, it was
+entitled to declare war or peace or, more particularly, to make
+loans. The national debt of the Republic had mounted to
+$32,280,000 of which some $22,000,000 was owed to European
+creditors. The interest due on it in the year 1905 was two and a
+half million dollars. The whole situation was ripe for
+intervention by one or more European governments.
+
+Such action President Roosevelt could not permit. But he could
+not ignore the validity of the debts which the Republic had
+contracted or the justice of the demand for the payment of at
+least the interest. "It cannot in the long run prove possible,"
+he said, "for the United States to protect delinquent American
+nations from punishment for the non-performance of their duties
+unless she undertakes to make them perform their duties." So he
+invented a plan, which, by reason of its success in the Dominican
+case and its subsequent application and extension by later
+administrations, has come to be a thoroughly accepted part of the
+foreign policy of the United States. It ought to be known as the
+Roosevelt Plan, just as the amplification of the Monroe Doctrine
+already outlined might well be known as the Roosevelt Doctrine.
+
+A naval commander in Dominican waters was instructed to see that
+no revolutionary fighting was permitted to endanger the custom
+houses. These instructions were carried out explicitly but
+without any actual use of force or shedding of blood. On one
+occasion two rival forces had planned a battle in a custom-house
+town. The American commander informed them courteously but firmly
+that they would not be permitted to fight there, for a battle
+might endanger the custom house. He had no objection, however, to
+their fighting. In fact he had picked out a nice spot for them
+outside the town where they might have their battle undisturbed.
+The winner could have the town. Would they kindly step outside
+for their fight. They would; they did. The American commander
+gravely welcomed the victorious faction as the rightful rulers of
+the town. So much for keeping the custom houses intact. But the
+Roosevelt Plan went much further. An agreement was entered into
+with those governmental authorities "who for the moment seemed
+best able to speak for the country" by means of which the custom
+houses were placed under American control. United States forces
+were to keep order and to protect the custom houses; United
+States officials were to collect the customs dues; forty-five per
+cent of the revenue was to be turned over to the Dominican
+Government, and fifty-five per cent put into a sinking fund in
+New York for the benefit of the creditors. The plan succeeded
+famously. The Dominicans got more out of their forty-five per
+cent than they had been wont to get when presumably the entire
+revenue was theirs. The creditors thoroughly approved, and their
+Governments had no possible pretext left for interference.
+Although the plan concerned itself not at all with the internal
+affairs of the Republic, its indirect influence was strong for
+good and the island enjoyed a degree of peace and prosperity such
+as it had not known before for at least a century. There was,
+however, strong opposition in the United States Senate to the
+ratification of the treaty with the Dominican Republic. The
+Democrats, with one or two exceptions, voted against
+ratification. A number of the more reactionary Republican
+Senators, also, who were violently hostile to President Roosevelt
+because of his attitude toward great corporations, lent their
+opposition. The Roosevelt Plan was further attacked by certain
+sections of the press, already antagonistic on other grounds, and
+by some of those whom Roosevelt called the "professional
+interventional philanthropists." It was two years before the
+Senate was ready to ratify the treaty, but meanwhile Roosevelt
+continued to carry it out "as a simple agreement on the part of
+the Executive which could be converted into a treaty whenever the
+Senate was ready to act."
+
+The treaty as finally ratified differed in some particulars from
+the protocol. In the protocol the United States agreed "to
+respect the complete territorial integrity of the Dominican
+Republic." This covenant was omitted in the final document in
+deference to Roosevelt's opponents who could see no difference
+between "respecting" the integrity of territory and
+"guaranteeing" it. Another clause pledging the assistance of the
+United States in the internal affairs of the Republic, whenever
+the judgment of the American Government deemed it to be wise, was
+also omitted. The provision of the protocol making it the duty of
+the United States to deal with the various creditors of the
+Dominican Republic in order to determine the amount which each
+was to receive in settlement of its claims was modified so that
+this responsibility remained with the Government of the Republic.
+In Roosevelt's opinion, these modifications in the protocol
+detracted nothing from the original plan. He ascribed the delay
+in the ratification of the treaty to partisanship and bitterness
+against himself; and it is certainly true that most of the
+treaty's opponents were his consistent critics on other grounds.
+
+A considerable portion of Roosevelt's success as a diplomat was
+the fruit of personality, as must be the case with any diplomat
+who makes more than a routine achievement. He disarmed suspicion
+by transparent honesty, and he impelled respect for his words by
+always promising or giving warning of not a hairsbreadth more
+than he was perfectly willing and thoroughly prepared to perform.
+He was always cheerfully ready to let the other fellow "save his
+face." He set no store by public triumphs. He was as exigent that
+his country should do justly as he was insistent that it should
+be done justly by. Phrases had no lure for him, appearances no
+glamour.
+
+It was inevitable that so commanding a personality should have an
+influence beyond the normal sphere of his official activities.
+Only a man who had earned the confidence and the respect of the
+statesmen of other nations could have performed such a service as
+he did in 1905 in bringing about peace between Russia and Japan
+in the conflict then raging in the Far East. It was high time
+that the war should end, in the interest of both contestants. The
+Russians had been consistently defeated on land and had lost
+their entire fleet at the battle of Tsushima. The Japanese were
+apparently on the highroad to victory. But in reality, Japan's
+success had been bought at an exorbitant price. Intelligent
+observers in the diplomatic world who were in a position to
+realize the truth knew that neither nation could afford to go on.
+
+On June 8, 1905, President Roosevelt sent to both Governments an
+identical note in which he urged them, "not only for their own
+sakes, but in the interest of the whole civilized world, to open
+direct negotiations for peace with each other." This was the
+first that the world heard of the proposal. But the President had
+already conducted, with the utmost secrecy, confidential
+negotiations with Tokyo and with St. Petersburg to induce both
+belligerents to consent to a face to face discussion of peace. In
+Russia he had found it necessary to go directly to the Czar
+himself, through the American Ambassador, George von Lengerke
+Meyer. Each Government was assured that no breath of the matter
+would be made public until both nations had signified their
+willingness to treat. Neither nation was to know anything of the
+other's readiness until both had committed themselves. These
+advances appear to have been made following a suggestion from
+Japan that Roosevelt should attempt to secure peace. He used to
+say, in discussing the matter, that, while it was not generally
+known or even suspected, Japan was actually "bled white" by the
+herculean efforts she had made. But Japan's position was the
+stronger, and peace was more important for Russia than for her
+antagonist. The Japanese were more clear-sighted than the selfish
+Russian bureaucracy; and they realized that they had gained so
+much already that there was nothing to be won by further
+fighting.
+
+When the public invitation to peace negotiations was extended,
+the conference had already been arranged and the confidential
+consent of both Governments needed only to be made formal. Russia
+wished the meeting of plenipotentiaries to take place at Paris,
+Japan preferred Chifu, in China. Neither liked the other's
+suggestion, and Roosevelt's invitation to come to Washington,
+with the privilege of adjourning to some place in New England if
+the weather was too hot, was finally accepted. The formal meeting
+between the plenipotentiaries took place at Oyster Bay on the 5th
+of August on board the Presidential yacht, the Mayflower.
+Roosevelt received his guests in the cabin and proposed a toast
+in these words: "Gentlemen, I propose a toast to which there will
+be no answer and which I ask you to drink in silence, standing. I
+drink to the welfare and prosperity of the sovereigns and the
+peoples of the two great nations whose representatives have met
+one another on this ship. It is my earnest hope and prayer, in
+the interest not only of these two great powers, but of all
+civilized mankind, that a just and lasting peace may speedily be
+concluded between them."
+
+The two groups of plenipotentiaries were carried, each on an
+American naval vessel, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and there at
+the Navy Yard began their conference. Two-thirds of the terms
+proposed by Japan were promptly accepted by the Russian envoys.
+But an irretrievable split on the remainder seemed inevitable.
+Japan demanded a money indemnity and the cession of the southern
+half of the island of Saghalien, which Japanese forces had
+already occupied. These demands the Russians refused.
+
+Then Roosevelt took a hand in the proceedings. He urged the
+Japanese delegates, through the Japanese Ambassador, to give up
+their demand for an indemnity. He pointed out that, when it came
+to "a question of rubles," the Russian Government and the Russian
+people were firmly resolved not to yield. To Baron Rosen, one of
+the Russian delegates, he recommended yielding in the matter of
+Saghalien, since the Japanese were already in possession and
+there were racial and historical grounds for considering the
+southern half of the island logically Japanese territory. The
+envoys met again, and the Japanese renewed their demands. The
+Russians refused. Then the Japanese offered to waive the
+indemnity if the Russians would yield on Saghalien. The offer was
+accepted, and the peace was made.
+
+Immediately Roosevelt was acclaimed by the world, including the
+Russians and the Japanese, as a great peacemaker. The Nobel Peace
+Prize of a medal and $40,000 was awarded to him. But it was not
+long before both in Russia and Japan public opinion veered to the
+point of asserting that he had caused peace to be made too soon
+and to the detriment of the interests of the nation in question.
+That was just what he expected. He knew human nature thoroughly;
+and from long experience he had learned to be humorously
+philosophical about such manifestations of man's ingratitude.
+
+In the next year the influence of Roosevelt's personality was
+again felt in affairs outside the traditional realm of American
+international interests. Germany was attempting to intrude in
+Morocco, where France by common consent had been the dominant
+foreign influence. The rattling of the Potsdam saber was
+threatening the tranquillity of the status quo. A conference of
+eleven European powers and the United States was held at
+Algeciras to readjust the treaty provisions for the protection of
+foreigners in the decadent Moroccan empire. In the words of a
+historian of America's foreign relations, "Although the United
+States was of all perhaps the least directly interested in the
+subject matter of dispute, and might appropriately have held
+aloof from the meeting altogether, its representatives were among
+the most influential of all, and it was largely owing to their
+sane and irenic influence that in the end a treaty was amicably
+made and signed."* But there was something behind all this. A
+quiet conference had taken place one day in the remote city of
+Washington. The President of the United States and the French
+Ambassador had discussed the approaching meeting at Algeciras.
+There was a single danger-point in the impending negotiations.
+The French must find a way around it. The Ambassador had come to
+the right man. He went out with a few words scratched on a card
+in the ragged Roosevelt handwriting containing a  proposal for a
+solution. **  The proposal went to Paris, then to Morocco. The
+solution was adopted by the conference, and the Hohenzollern
+menace to the peace of the world was averted for the moment. Once
+more Roosevelt had shown how being wise in time was the sure way
+to peace.
+
+*  Willie Fletcher Johnson, "America's Foreign Relations", vol.
+II, p. 376.
+
+** The author had this story direct from Mr. Roosevelt himself.
+
+
+Roosevelt's most important single achievement as President of the
+United States was the building of the Panama Canal. The
+preliminary steps which he took in order to make its building
+possible have been, of all his executive acts, the most
+consistently and vigorously criticized.
+
+It is not our purpose here to follow at length the history of
+American diplomatic relations with Colombia and Panama. We are
+primarily concerned with the part which Roosevelt played in
+certain international occurrences, of which the Panama incident
+was not the least interesting and significant. In after years
+Roosevelt said laconically, "I took Panama." In fact he did
+nothing of the sort. But it was like him to brush aside all
+technical defenses of any act of his and to meet his critics on
+their own ground. It was as though he said to them, "You roundly
+denounce me for what I did at the time of the revolution which
+established the Republic of Panama. You declare that my acts were
+contrary to international law and international morals. I have a
+splendid technical defense on the legal side; but I care little
+about technicalities when compared with reality. Let us admit
+that I did what you charge me with. I will prove to you that I
+was justified in so doing. I took Panama; but the taking was a
+righteous act."
+
+Fourteen years after that event, in a speech which he made in
+Washington, Roosevelt expressed his dissatisfaction with the way
+in which President Wilson was conducting the Great War. He
+reverted to what he had done in relation to Panama and contrasted
+his action with the failure of the Wilson Administration to take
+prompt possession of two hundred locomotives which had been built
+in this country for the late Russian Government. This is what he
+said:
+
+"What I think, of course, in my view of the proper governmental
+policy, should have been done was to take the two hundred
+locomotives and then discuss. That was the course that I
+followed, and to which I have ever since looked back with
+impenitent satisfaction, in reference to the Panama Canal. If you
+remember, Panama declared itself independent and wanted to
+complete the Panama Canal and opened negotiations with us. I had
+two courses open. I might have taken the matter under advisement
+and put it before the Senate, in which case we should have had a
+number of most able speeches on the subject. We would have had a
+number of very profound arguments, and they would have been going
+on now, and the Panama Canal would be in the dim future yet. We
+would have had half a century of discussion, and perhaps the
+Panama Canal. I preferred that we should have the Panama Canal
+first and the half century of discussion afterward. And now
+instead of discussing the canal before it was built, which would
+have been harmful, they merely discuss me--a discussion which I
+regard with benign interest."
+
+The facts of the case are simple and in the main undisputed.
+Shortly after the inauguration of Roosevelt as President, a
+treaty was negotiated with Colombia for the building of a canal
+at Panama. It provided for the lease to the United States of a
+strip six miles wide across the Isthmus, and for the payment to
+Colombia of $10,000,000 down and $250,000 a year, beginning nine
+years later. The treaty was promptly ratified by the United
+States Senate. A special session of the Colombian Senate spent
+the summer marking time and adjourned after rejecting the treaty
+by a unanimous vote. The dominant motive for the rejection was
+greed. An attempt was first made by the dictatorial government
+that held the Colombian Congress in its mailed hand to extort a
+large payment from the French Canal Company, whose rights and
+property on the Isthmus were to be bought by the United States
+for $40,000,000. Then $15,000,000 instead of $10,000,000 was
+demanded from the United States. Finally an adroit and
+conscienceless scheme was invented by which the entire rights of
+the French Canal Company were to be stolen by the Colombian
+Government. This last plot, however, would involve a delay of a
+year or so. The treaty was therefore rejected in order to provide
+the necessary delay.
+
+But the people of Panama wanted the Canal. They were tired of
+serving as the milch cow for the fattening of the Government at
+Bogota. So they quietly organized a revolution. It was a matter
+of common knowledge that it was coming. Roosevelt, as well as the
+rest of the world, knew it and, believing in the virtue of being
+wise in time, prepared for it. Several warships were dispatched
+to the Isthmus.
+
+The revolution came off promptly as expected. It was bloodless,
+for the American naval forces, fulfilling the treaty obligations
+of the United States, prevented the Colombian troops on one side
+of the Isthmus from using the Panama Railroad to cross to the
+other side where the revolutionists were. So the revolutionists
+were undisturbed. A republic was immediately declared and
+immediately recognized by the United States. A treaty with the
+new Republic, which guaranteed its independence and secured the
+cession of a zone ten miles wide across the Isthmus, was drawn up
+inside of two weeks and ratified by both Senates within three
+months. Six weeks later an American commission was on the ground
+to plan the work of construction. The Canal was built. The "half
+century of discussion" which Roosevelt foresaw is now more than a
+third over, and the discussion shows no sign of lagging. But the
+Panama Canal is in use.
+
+Was the President of the United States justified in preventing
+the Colombian Government from fighting on the Isthmus to put down
+the unanimous revolution of the people of Panama? That is
+precisely all that he did. He merely gave orders to the American
+admiral on the spot to "prevent the disembarkation of Colombian
+troops with hostile intent within the limits of the state of
+Panama." But that action was enough, for the Isthmus is separated
+from Colombia on the one hand by three hundred miles of sea, and
+on the other by leagues of pathless jungle.
+
+Roosevelt himself has summed up the action of the United States
+in this way:
+
+"From the beginning to the end our course was straightforward and
+in absolute accord with the highest of standards of international
+morality . . . . To have acted otherwise than I did would have
+been on my part betrayal of the interests of the United States,
+indifference to the interests of Panama, and recreancy to the
+interests of the world at large. Colombia had forfeited every
+claim to consideration; indeed, this is not stating the case
+strongly enough: she had so acted that yielding to her would have
+meant on our part that culpable form of weakness which stands on
+a level with wickedness . . . . We gave to the people of Panama,
+self-government, and freed them from subjection to alien
+oppressors. We did our best to get Colombia to let us treat her
+with more than generous justice; we exercised patience to beyond
+the verge of proper forbearance . . . . I deeply regretted, and
+now deeply regret, the fact that the Colombian Government
+rendered it imperative for me to take the action I took; but I
+had no alternative, consistent with the full performance of my
+duty to my own people, and to the nations of mankind."
+
+The final verdict will be given only in another generation by the
+historian and by the world at large. But no portrait of Theodore
+Roosevelt, and no picture of his times, can be complete without
+the bold, firm outlines of his Panama policy set as near as may
+be in their proper perspective.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. THE TAFT ADMINISTRATION
+
+In the evening of that election day in 1904 which saw Roosevelt
+made President in his own right, after three years of the
+Presidency given him by fate, he issued a brief statement, in
+which he said: "The wise custom which limits the President to two
+terms regards the substance and not the form, and under no
+circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another
+nomination." From this determination, which in his mind related
+to a third consecutive term, and to nothing else, he never
+wavered. Four years later, in spite of a widespread demand that
+he should be a candidate to succeed himself, he used the great
+influence and prestige of his position as President and leader of
+his party to bring about the nomination of his friend and close
+associate, William Howard Taft. The choice received general
+approval from the Republican party and from the country at large,
+although up to the very moment of the nomination in the
+convention at Chicago there was no certainty that a successful
+effort to stampede the convention for Roosevelt would not be made
+by his more irreconcilable supporters.
+
+Taft was elected by a huge popular plurality. His opponent was
+William Jennings Bryan, who was then making his third
+unsuccessful campaign for the Presidency. Taft's election, like
+his nomination, was assured by the unreserved and dynamic support
+accorded him by President Roosevelt. Taft, of course, was already
+an experienced statesman, high in the esteem of the nation for
+his public record as Federal judge, as the first civil Governor
+of the Philippines, and as Secretary of War in the Roosevelt
+Cabinet. There was every reason to predict for him a successful
+and effective Administration. His occupancy of the White House
+began under smiling skies. He had behind him a united party and a
+satisfied public opinion. Even his political opponents conceded
+that the country would be safe in his hands. It was expected that
+he would be conservatively progressive and progressively
+conservative. Everybody believed in him. Yet within a year of the
+day of his inauguration the President's popularity was sharply on
+the wane. Two years after his election the voters repudiated the
+party which he led. By the end of his Presidential term the
+career which had begun with such happy auguries had become a
+political tragedy. There were then those who recalled the words
+of the Roman historian, "All would have believed him capable of
+governing if only he had not come to govern."
+
+It was not that the Taft Administration was barren of
+achievement. On the contrary, its record of accomplishment was
+substantial. Of two amendments to the Federal Constitution
+proposed by Congress, one was ratified by the requisite number of
+States before Taft went out of office, and the other was finally
+ratified less than a month after the close of his term. These
+were the amendment authorizing the imposition of a Federal income
+tax and that providing for the direct election of United States
+Senators. Two States were admitted to the Union during Taft's
+term of office, New Mexico and Arizona, the last Territories of
+the United States on the continent, except Alaska.
+
+Other achievements of importance during Taft's Administration
+were the establishment of the parcels post and the postal savings
+banks; the requirement of publicity, through sworn statements of
+the candidates, for campaign contributions for the election of
+Senators and Representatives; the extension of the authority of
+the Interstate Commerce Commission over telephone, telegraph, and
+cable lines; an act authorizing the President to withdraw public
+lands from entry for the purpose of conserving the natural
+resources which they may contain--something which Roosevelt had
+already done without specific statutory authorization; the
+establishment of a Commerce Court to hear appeals from decisions
+of the Interstate Commerce Commission; the appointment of a
+commission, headed by President Hadley of Yale, to investigate
+the subject of railway stock and bond issues, and to propose a
+law for the Federal supervision of such railway securities; the
+Mann "white slave" act, dealing with the transfer of women from
+one State to another for immoral purposes; the establishment of
+the Children's Bureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor;
+the empowering of the Interstate Commerce Commission to
+investigate all railway accidents; the creation of Forest
+Reserves in the White Mountains and in the southern Appalachians.
+
+Taft's Administration was further marked, by economy in
+expenditure, by a considerable extension of the civil service law
+to cover positions in the executive departments hitherto free
+plunder for the spoilsmen, and by efforts on the part of the
+President to increase the efficiency and the economical
+administration of the public service.
+
+But this good record of things achieved was not enough to gain
+for Mr. Taft popular approval. Items on the other side of the
+ledger were pointed out. Of these the three most conspicuous were
+the Payne-Aldrich tariff, the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, and
+the insurgent movement in Congress.
+
+The Republican party was returned to power in 1908, committed to
+a revision of the tariff. Though the party platform did not so
+state, this was generally interpreted as a pledge of revision
+downward. Taft made it clear during his campaign that such was
+his own reading of the party pledge. He said, for instance, "It
+is my judgment that there are many schedules of the tariff in
+which the rates are excessive, and there are a few in which the
+rates are not sufficient to fill the measure of conservative
+protection. It is my judgment that a revision of the tariff in
+accordance with the pledge of the platform, will be, on the
+whole, a substantial revision downward, though there probably
+will be a few exceptions in this regard." Five months after
+Taft's inauguration the Payne-Aldrich bill became law with his
+signature. In signing it the President said, "The bill is not a
+perfect bill or a complete compliance with the promises made,
+strictly interpreted"; but he further declared that he signed it
+because he believed it to be "the result of a sincere effort on
+the part of the Republican party to make downward revision."
+
+This view was not shared by even all Republicans. Twenty of them
+in the House voted against the bill on its final passage, and
+seven of them in the Senate. They represented the Middle West and
+the new element and spirit in the Republican party. Their
+dissatisfaction with the performance of their party associates in
+Congress and in the White House was shared by their constituents
+and by many other Republicans throughout the country. A month
+after the signing of the tariff law, Taft made a speech at
+Winona, Minnesota, in support of Congressman James A. Tawney, the
+one Republican representative from Minnesota who had not voted
+against the bill. In the course of that speech he said; "This is
+the best tariff bill that the Republican party has ever passed,
+and, therefore, the best tariff bill that has been passed at
+all."
+
+He justified Mr. Tawney's action in voting for the bill and his
+own in signing it on the ground that "the interests of the
+country, the interests of the party" required the sacrifice of
+the accomplishment of certain things in the revision of the
+tariff which had been hoped for, "in order to maintain party
+solidity," which he believed to be much more important than the
+reduction of rates in one or two schedules of the tariff.
+
+A second disaster to the Taft Administration came in the famous
+Ballinger-Pinchot controversy. Louis R. Glavis, who bad served as
+a special agent of the General Land Office to investigate alleged
+frauds in certain claims to coal lands in Alaska, accused Richard
+Ballinger, the Secretary of the Interior, of favoritism toward
+those who were attempting to get public lands fraudulently. The
+charges were vigorously supported by Mr. Pinchot, who broadened
+the accusation to cover a general indifference on the part of the
+Secretary of the Interior to the whole conservation movement.
+President Taft, however, completely exonerated Secretary
+Ballinger from blame and removed Glavis for "filing a
+disingenuous statement unjustly impeaching the official integrity
+of his superior officer." Later Pinchot was also dismissed from
+the service. The charges against Secretary Ballinger were
+investigated by a joint committee of Congress, a majority of
+which exonerated the accused Cabinet officer. Nevertheless the
+whole controversy, which raged with virulence for many months,
+convinced many ardent supporters of the conservation movement,
+and especially many admirers of Mr. Pinchot and of Roosevelt,
+that the Taft Administration at the best was possessed of little
+enthusiasm for conservation. There was a widespread belief, as
+well, that the President had handled the whole matter maladroitly
+and that in permitting himself to be driven to a point where he
+had to deprive the country of the services of Gifford Pinchot,
+the originator of the conservation movement, he had displayed
+unsound judgment and deplorable lack of administrative ability.
+
+The first half of Mr. Taft's term was further marked by acute
+dissensions in the Republican ranks in Congress. Joseph G. Cannon
+was Speaker of the House, as he had been in three preceding
+Congresses. He was a reactionary Republican of the most
+pronounced type. Under his leadership the system of autocratic
+party control of legislation in the House had been developed to a
+high point of effectiveness. The Speaker's authority had become
+in practice almost unrestricted.
+
+In the congressional session of 1909-10 a strong movement of
+insurgency arose within the Republican party in Congress against
+the control of the little band of leaders dominated by the
+Speaker. In March, 1910, the Republican Insurgents, forty in
+number, united with the Democratic minority to overrule a formal
+decision of the Speaker. A four days' parliamentary battle
+resulted, culminating in a reorganization of the all-powerful
+Rules Committee, with the Speaker no longer a member of it. The
+right of the Speaker to appoint this committee was also taken
+away. When the Democrats came into control of the House in 1911,
+they completed the dethronement of the Speaker by depriving him
+of the appointment of all committees.
+
+The old system had not been without its advantages, when the
+power of the Speaker and his small group of associate party
+leaders was not abused. It at least concentrated responsibility
+in a few prominent members of the majority party. But it made it
+possible for these few men to perpetuate a machine and to ignore
+the desires of the rest of the party representatives and of the
+voters of the party throughout the country. The defeat of
+Cannonism put an end to the autocratic power of the Speaker and
+relegated him to the position of a mere presiding officer. It had
+also a wider significance, for it portended the division in the
+old Republican party out of which was to come the new Progressive
+party.
+
+When the mid-point of the Taft Administration was reached, a
+practical test was given of the measure of popular approval which
+the President and his party associates had achieved. The
+congressional elections went decidedly against the Republicans.
+The Republican majority of forty-seven in the House was changed
+to a Democratic majority of fifty-four. The Republican majority
+in the Senate was cut down from twenty-eight to ten. Not only
+were the Democrats successful in this substantial degree, but
+many of the Western States elected Progressive Republicans
+instead of Republicans of the old type. During the last two years
+of his term, the President was consequently obliged to work with
+a Democratic House and with a Senate in which Democrats and
+Insurgent Republicans predominated over the old-line Republicans.
+
+The second half of Taft's Presidency was productive of little but
+discord and dissatisfaction. The Democrats in power in the House
+were quite ready to harass the Republican President, especially
+in view of the approaching Presidential election. The Insurgents
+in House and Senate were not entirely unwilling to take a hand in
+the same game. Besides, they found themselves more and more in
+sincere disagreement with the President on matters of fundamental
+policy, though not one of them could fairly question his
+integrity of purpose, impugn his purity of character, or deny his
+charm of personality.
+
+Three weeks after Taft's inauguration, Roosevelt sailed for
+Africa, to be gone for a year hunting big game. He went with a
+warm feeling of friendship and admiration for the man whom he had
+done so much to make President. He had high confidence that Taft
+would be successful in his great office. He had no reason to
+believe that any change would come in the friendship between
+them, which had been peculiarly intimate. From the steamer on
+which he sailed for Africa, he sent a long telegram of cordial
+and hearty good wishes to his successor in Washington.
+
+The next year Roosevelt came back to the United States, after a
+triumphal tour of the capitals of Europe, to find his party
+disrupted and the progressive movement in danger of shipwreck. He
+had no intention of entering politics again. But he had no
+intention, either, of ceasing to champion the things in which he
+believed. This he made obvious, in his first speech after his
+return, to the cheering thousands who welcomed him at the
+Battery. He said:
+
+"I have thoroughly enjoyed myself; and now I am more glad than I
+can say to get home, to be back in my own country, back among
+people I love. And I am ready and eager to do my part so far as I
+am able, in helping solve problems which must be solved, if we of
+this, the greatest democratic republic upon which the sun has
+ever shone, are to see its destinies rise to the high level of
+our hopes and its opportunities. This is the duty of every
+citizen, but is peculiarly my duty; for any man who has ever been
+honored by being made President of the United States is thereby
+forever rendered the debtor of the American people and is bound
+throughout his life to remember this, his prime obligation."
+
+The welcome over, Roosevelt tried to take up the life of a
+private citizen. He had become Contributing Editor of The Outlook
+and had planned to give his energies largely to writing. But he
+was not to be let alone. The people who loved him demanded that
+they be permitted to see and to hear him. Those who were in the
+thick of the political fight on behalf of progress and
+righteousness called loudly to him for aid. Only a few days after
+Roosevelt had landed from Europe, Governor Hughes of New York met
+him at the Commencement exercises at Harvard and urged him to
+help in the fight which the Governor was then making for a direct
+primary law. Roosevelt did not wish to enter the lists again
+until he had had more time for orientation; but he always found
+it difficult to refuse a plea for help on behalf of a good cause.
+He therefore sent a vigorous telegram to the Republican
+legislators at Albany urging them to support Governor Hughes and
+to vote for the primary bill. But the appeal went in vain: the
+Legislature was too thoroughly boss-ridden. This telegram,
+however, sounded a warning to the usurpers in the house of the
+Republican Penelope that the fingers of the returned Odysseus had
+not lost their prowess with the heroic bow.
+
+During the summer of 1910, Roosevelt made a trip to the West and
+in a speech at Ossawattomie, Kansas, set forth what came to be
+described as the New Nationalism. It was his draft of a platform,
+not for himself, but for the nation. A few fragments from that
+speech will suggest what Roosevelt was thinking about in those
+days when the Progressive party was stirring in the womb. "At
+many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the
+men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have
+earned more than they possess is the central condition of
+progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of free men to
+gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special
+interests, who twist the methods of free government into
+machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and
+under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to
+equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and
+citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both
+to himself and to the commonwealth.
+
+"Every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is
+entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to
+representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees
+protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But
+it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.
+
+"The absence of effective state and, especially, national
+restraint upon unfair money getting has tended to create a small
+class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose
+chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need
+is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate
+power which it is not for the general welfare that they should
+hold or exercise.
+
+"We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of
+property to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of
+the rights of property as against the rights of men have been
+pushing their claims too far.
+
+"The State must be made efficient for the work which concerns
+only the people of the State; and the nation for that which
+concerns all the people. There must remain no neutral ground to
+serve as a refuge for lawbreakers, and especially for lawbreakers
+of great wealth, who can hire the vulpine legal cunning which
+will teach them how to avoid both jurisdictions.
+
+"I do not ask for overcentralization; but I do ask that we work
+in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we work
+for what concerns our people as a whole.
+
+"We must have the right kind of character--character that makes a
+man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, a good
+husband--that makes a man a good neighbor . . . . The prime
+problem of our nation is to get the right kind of good
+citizenship, and to get it, we must have progress, and our public
+men must be genuinely progressive.
+
+"I stand for the Square Deal. But when I say that I am for the
+square deal I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under
+the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those
+rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of
+opportunity and of reward for equally good service."
+
+These generalizations Roosevelt accompanied by specific
+recommendations. They included proposals for publicity of
+corporate affairs; prohibition of the use of corporate funds, for
+political purposes; governmental supervision of the
+capitalization of all corporations doing an interstate business;
+control and supervision of corporations and combinations
+controlling necessaries of life; holding the officers and
+directors of corporations personally liable when any corporation
+breaks the law; an expert tariff commission and revision of the
+tariff schedule by schedule; a graduated income tax and a
+graduated inheritance tax, increasing rapidly in amount with the
+size of the estate; conservation of natural resources and their
+use for the benefit of all rather than their monopolization for
+the benefit of the few; public accounting for all campaign funds
+before election; comprehensive workmen's compensation acts, state
+and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, the
+enforcement of sanitary conditions for workers and the compulsory
+use of safety appliances in industry.
+
+There was nothing in all these proposals that should have seemed
+revolutionary or extreme. But there was much that disturbed the
+reactionaries who were thinking primarily in terms of property
+and only belatedly or not at all of human rights. The Bourbons in
+the Republican party and their supporters among the special
+interests "viewed with, alarm" this frank attack upon their
+intrenched privileges. The Progressives, however, welcomed with
+eagerness this robust leadership. The breach in the Republican
+party was widening with steadily accelerating speed.
+
+In the fall of 1910 a new demand arose that Roosevelt should
+enter actively into politics. Though it came from his own State,
+he resisted it with energy and determination. Nevertheless the
+pressure from his close political associates in New York finally
+became too much for him, and he yielded. They wanted him to go as
+a delegate to the Republican State Convention at Saratoga and to
+be a candidate for Temporary Chairman of the Convention--the
+officer whose opening speech is traditionally presumed to sound
+the keynote of the campaign. Roosevelt went and, after a bitter
+fight with the reactionists in the party, led by William Barnes
+of Albany, was elected Temporary Chairman over Vice-President
+James S. Sherman. The keynote was sounded in no uncertain tones,
+while Mr. Barnes and his associates fidgeted and suffered.
+
+Then came a Homeric conflict, with a dramatic climax. The
+reactionary gang did not know that it was beaten. Its members
+resisted stridently an attempt to write a direct primary plank
+into the party platform. They wished to rebuke Governor Hughes,
+who was as little to their liking as Roosevelt himself, and they
+did not want the direct primary. After speeches by young James
+Wadsworth, later United States Senator, Job Hedges, and Barnes
+himself, in which they bewailed the impending demise of
+representative government and the coming of mob rule, it was
+clear that the primary plank was defeated. Then rose Roosevelt.
+In a speech that lashed and flayed the forces of reaction and
+obscurantism, he demanded that the party stand by the right of
+the people to rule. Single-handed he drove a majority of the
+delegates into line. The plank was adopted. Thenceforward the
+convention was his. It selected, as candidate for Governor, Henry
+W. Stimson, who had been a Federal attorney in New York under
+Roosevelt and Secretary of War in Taft's Cabinet. When this
+victory had been won, Roosevelt threw himself into the campaign
+with his usual abandon and toured the State, making fighting
+speeches in scores of cities and towns. But in spite of
+Roosevelt's best efforts, Stimson was defeated.
+
+All this active participation in local political conflicts
+seriously distressed many of Roosevelt's friends and associates.
+They felt that he was too big to fritter himself away on small
+matters from which he--and the cause whose great champion he
+was--had so little to gain and so much to lose. They wanted him
+to wait patiently for the moment of destiny which they felt sure
+would come. But it was never easy for Roosevelt to wait. It was
+the hardest thing in the world for him to decline an invitation
+to enter a fight--when the cause was a righteous one.
+
+So the year 1911 passed by, with the Taft Administration steadily
+losing prestige, and the revolt of the Progressives within the
+Republican party continually gathering momentum. Then came 1912,
+the year of the Glorious Failure.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY
+
+The Progressive party and the Progressive movement were two
+things. The one was born on a day, lived a stirring, strenuous
+span of life, suffered its fatal wound, lingered on for a few
+more years, and received its coup de grace. The other sprang like
+a great river system from a multitude of sources, flowed onward
+by a hundred channels, always converging and uniting, until a
+single mighty stream emerged to water and enrich and serve a
+broad country and a great people. The one was ephemeral,
+abortive--a failure. The other was permanent, creative--a
+triumph. The two were inseparable, each indispensable to the
+other. Just as the party would never have existed if there had
+been no movement, so the movement would not have attained such a
+surpassing measure of achievement so swiftly without the party.
+
+The Progressive party came into full being at the  convention
+held in Chicago on August 5, 1912 under  dramatic circumstances.
+Every drama must have a  beginning and this one had opened for
+the public when, on the 10th of February in the same year, the
+Republican  Governors of West Virginia, Nebraska, New Hampshire,
+Wyoming, Michigan, Kansas, and Missouri addressed a letter to
+Roosevelt, in which they declared that, in  considering what
+would best insure the continuation of the Republican party as a
+useful agency of good  government, they had reached the
+conclusion that a large  majority of the Republican voters of the
+country favored  Roosevelt's nomination, and a large majority of
+the people favored his election as the next President. They
+asserted their belief that, in view of this public demand, he
+should soon declare whether, if the nomination came to him
+unsolicited and unsought, he would accept it. They concluded
+their request with this paragraph:
+
+"In submitting this request we are not considering your personal
+interests. We do not regard it as proper to consider either the
+interest or the preference of any man as regards the nomination
+for the Presidency. We are expressing our sincere belief and best
+judgment as to what is demanded of you in the interests of the
+people as a whole. And we feel that you would be unresponsive to
+a plain public duty if you should decline to accept the
+nomination, coming as the voluntary expression of the wishes of a
+majority of the Republican voters of the United States, through
+the action of their delegates in the next National Convention."
+
+The sincerity and whole-heartedness of the convictions here
+expressed are in no wise vitiated by the fact that the letter was
+not written until the seven Governors were assured what the
+answer to it would be. For the very beginning of our drama, then,
+we must go back a little farther to that day in late January of
+1912 when Theodore Roosevelt himself came face to face with a
+momentous decision. On that day he definitely determined that his
+duty to the things in which he profoundly believed--and no less
+to the friends and associates who shared his beliefs--constrained
+him once more to enter the arena of political conflict and lead
+the fight.
+
+Roosevelt had come to this conclusion with extreme reluctance. He
+had no illusions as to the probable effect upon his personal
+fortunes. Twice he had been President once by the hand of fate,
+once by a great popular vote. To be President again could add
+nothing to his prestige or fame; it could only subject him for
+four years to the dangerous vagaries of the unstable popular
+mood. He had nothing to gain for himself by entering the ring of
+political conflict again; the chances for personal loss were
+great. His enemies, his critics, and his political adversaries
+would have it that he was eaten up with ambition, that he came
+back from his African and European trip eager to thrust himself
+again into the limelight of national political life and to demand
+for himself again a great political prize. But his friends, his
+associates, and those who, knowing him at close range, understood
+him, realized that this was no picture of the truth. He accepted
+what hundreds of Progressive leaders and followers throughout the
+country--for the man in the ranks had as ready access to him as
+the most prominent leader, and received as warm
+consideration--asserted was his clear duty and obligation.
+
+A letter which he had written two days before Christmas, 1911,
+shows unmistakably how his mind was working in those days of
+prologue to the great decision. The letter was entirely private,
+and was addressed to my father who was a publisher and a friend
+and not a politician. There is, therefore, no reason whatever why
+the letter should not be accepted as an accurate picture of Mr.
+Roosevelt's mind at that time: "Now for the message Harold gave
+me, that I should write you a little concerning political
+conditions. They are very, very mixed. Curiously enough, my
+article on the trusts was generally accepted as bringing me
+forward for the Presidential nomination. Evidently what really
+happened was that there had been a strong undercurrent of feeling
+about me, and that the talk concerning the article enabled this
+feeling to come to the surface. I do not think it amounts to
+anything. It merely means that a great many people do not get the
+leadership they are looking for from any of the prominent men in
+public life, and that under the circumstances they grasp at any
+one; and as my article on the McNamaras possessed at least the
+merit of being entirely clearcut and of showing that I knew my
+own mind and had definite views, a good many plain people turned
+longingly to me as a leader. Taft is very weak, but La Follette
+has not developed real strength east of the Mississippi River,
+excepting of course in Wisconsin. West of the River he has a
+large following, although there is a good deal of opposition to
+him even in States like Kansas, Washington, and California. East
+of the Mississippi, I believe he can only pick up a few delegates
+here and there. Taft will have most of the Southern delegates, he
+will have the officeholders, and also the tepid and acquiescent,
+rather than active, support of the ordinary people who do not
+feel very strongly one way or the other, and who think it is the
+usual thing to renominate a President. If there were a strong
+candidate against him, he would I believe be beaten, but there
+are plenty of men, many of the leaders not only here but in
+Texas, for instance, in Ohio, in New Hampshire and Illinois, who
+are against him, but who are even more against La Follette, and
+who regard themselves as limited to the alternative between the
+two. There is, of course, always the danger that there may be a
+movement for me, the danger coming partly because the men who may
+be candidates are very anxious that the ticket shall be
+strengthened and care nothing for the fate of the man who
+strengthens it, and partly because there is a good deal of honest
+feeling for me among plain simple people who wish leadership, but
+who will not accept leadership unless they believe it to be
+sincere, fearless, and intelligent. I most emphatically do not
+wish the nomination. Personally I should regard it as a calamity
+to be nominated. In the first place, I might very possibly be
+beaten, and in the next place, even if elected I should be
+confronted with almost impossible conditions out of which to make
+good results. In the tariff, for instance, I would have to face
+the fact that men would keep comparing what I did, not with what
+the Democrats would or could have done but with an ideal, or
+rather with a multitude of entirely separate and really
+incompatible ideals. I am not a candidate, I will never be a
+candidate; but I have to tell the La Follette men and the Taft
+men that while I am absolutely sincere in saying that I am not a
+candidate and do not wish the nomination, yet that I do not feel
+it would be right or proper for me to say that under no
+circumstances would I accept it if it came; because, while wildly
+improbable, it is yet possible that there might be a public
+demand which would present the matter to me in the light of a
+duty which I could not shirk. In other words, while I
+emphatically do not want office, and have not the slightest idea
+that any demand for me will come, yet if there were a real public
+demand that in the public interest I should do a given job, it
+MIGHT be that I would not feel like flinching from the task.
+However, this is all in the air, and I do not for one moment
+believe that it will be necessary for me even to consider the
+matter. As for the Democrats, they have their troubles too.
+Wilson, although still the strongest man the Democrats could
+nominate, is much weaker than he was. He has given a good many
+people a feeling that he is very ambitious and not entirely
+sincere, and his demand for the Carnegie pension created an
+unpleasant impression. Harmon is a good old solid Democrat, with
+the standards of political and commercial morality of twenty
+years ago, who would be eagerly welcomed by all the conservative
+crowd. Champ Clark is a good fellow, but impossible as President.
+
+"I think a good deal will depend upon what this Congress does.
+Taft may redeem himself. He was fairly strong at the end of the
+last session, but went off lamentably on account of his wavering
+and shillyshallying on so many matters during his speaking trip.
+His speeches generally hurt him, and rarely benefit him. But it
+is possible that the Democrats in Congress may play the fool, and
+give him the chance to appear as the strong leader, the man who
+must be accepted to oppose them."
+
+This was what Roosevelt at the end, of December sincerely
+believed would be the situation as time went on. But he
+underestimated the strength and the volume of the tide that was
+rising.
+
+The crucial decision was made on the 18th of January. I was in
+the closest possible touch with Roosevelt in those pregnant days,
+and I know, as well as any but the man himself could know, how
+his mind was working. An entry in my diary on that date shows the
+origin of the letter of the seven governors:
+
+"Senator Beveridge called on T. R. to urge him to make a public
+statement soon. T. R. impressed by his arguments and by letters
+just received from three Governors, Hadley, Glasscock, and Bass.
+Practically determined to ask these Governors, and Stubbs and
+Osborne, to send him a joint letter asking him to make a public
+statement to the effect that if there is a genuine popular demand
+for his nomination he will not refuse-in other words to say to
+him in a joint letter for publication just what they have each
+said to him in private letters. Such joint action would give him
+a proper reason--or occasion--for making a public declaration. T.
+R. telegraphed Frank Knox, Republican State Chairman of Michigan
+and former member of his regiment, to come down, with intention
+of asking him to see the various governors. H. H., at Ernest
+Abbott's suggestion, asked him not to make final decision till he
+has had conference--already arranged--with editorial staff. T. R.
+agrees, but the inevitableness of the matter is evident.
+
+After that day, things moved rapidly. Two days later the diary
+contains this record: "Everett Colby, William Fellowes Morgan,
+and Mark Sullivan call on T. R. All inclined to agree that time
+for statement is practically here. T. R.--"The time to use a man
+is when the people want to use him." M. S.--"The time to set a
+hen is when the hen wants to set." Frank Knox comes in response
+to telegram. Nat Wright also present at interview where Knox is
+informed of the job proposed for him. Gifford Pinchot also
+present at beginning of interview while T. R. tells how he views
+the situation, but leaves (at T. R.'s suggestion) before real
+business of conference begins. Plan outlined to Knox, who likes
+it, and subsequently, in H. H.'s office, draws up letter for
+Governors. Draft shown to T. R., who suggests a couple of added
+sentences emphasizing that the nomination must come as a real
+popular demand, and declaring that the Governors are taking their
+action not for his sake, but for the sake of the country. Knox
+takes copy of letter and starts for home, to go out to see
+Governors as soon as possible."
+
+On the 22d of January the Conference with The Outlook editorial
+staff took place and is thus described in my diary:
+
+"T. R. had long conference with entire staff. All except R. D. T.
+[Mr. Townsend, Managing Editor of The Outlook] and H. H. inclined
+to deprecate a public statement now. T. R.--"I have had all the
+honor the American public can give me. If I should be elected I
+would go back not so young as I once was, with all the first fine
+flavor gone, and take up the horrible task of going in and out,
+in and out, of the same hole over and over again. But I cannot
+decline the call. Too many of those who have fought with me the
+good fight for the things we believe in together, declare that at
+this critical moment I am the instrument that ought to be used to
+make it possible for me to refuse. I BELIEVE I SHALL BE BROKEN IN
+THE USING. But I cannot refuse to permit myself to be used. I am
+not going to get those good fellows out on the end of a limb and
+then saw off the limb." R. D. T. suggested that it be said
+frankly that the Governors wrote the joint letter at T. R.'s
+request. T. R. accepted like a shot. Went into H. H.'s room,
+dictated two or three sentences to that effect, which H. H. later
+incorporated in letter. [This plan was later given up, I believe
+on the urging of some or all of the Governors involved.]
+T. R.--"I can't go on telling my friends in private letters what
+my position is, but asking them not to make it public, without
+seeming furtive." In afternoon H. H. suggests that T. R. write
+first draft of his letter of reply soon as possible to give all
+possible time for consideration and revision. T. R. has two
+inspirations--to propose presidential primaries in order to be
+sure of popular demand, and to use statement made at Battery when
+he returned home from Europe."
+
+The next day's entry reads as follows:
+
+"Sent revised letter to Knox. T. R. said, "Not to make a public
+statement soon would be to violate my cardinal principle--never
+hit if you can help it, but when you have to, hit hard. NEVER hit
+soft. You'll never get any thanks for hitting soft." McHarg
+called with three men from St. Louis. T. R. said exactly the same
+thing as usual--he would never accept the nomination if it came
+as the result of an intrigue, only if it came as the result of a
+genuine and widespread popular demand. The thing he wants to be
+sure of is that there is this widespread popular demand that he
+"do a job," and that the demand is genuine."
+
+Meanwhile Frank Knox was consulting the seven Governors, each one
+of whom was delighted to have an opportunity to say to Roosevelt
+in this formal, public way just what they had each said to him
+privately and forcefully. The letter was signed and delivered to
+T. R. On the 24th of February Roosevelt replied to the letter of
+the seven Governors in unequivocal terms, "I will accept the
+nomination for President if it is tendered to me, and I will
+adhere to this decision until--the convention has expressed its
+preference." He added the hope that so far as possible the people
+might be given the chance, through direct primaries, to record
+their wish as to who should be the nominee. A month later, in a
+great address at Carnegie Hall in New York, he gave voice
+publicly to the same thought that he had expressed to his friends
+in that editorial conference: "The leader for the time being,
+whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken
+and then cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no
+more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where
+his life is forfeit that the victory may be won. In the long
+fight for righteousness the watchword for all is, 'Spend and be
+spent.' It is of little matter whether any one man fails or
+succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is the cause of
+mankind."
+
+The decision once made, Roosevelt threw himself into the contest
+for delegates to the nominating convention with his unparalleled
+vigor and forcefulness. His main opponent was, of course, the man
+who had been his friend and associate and whom he had done more
+than any other single force to make President as his successor.
+William Howard Taft had the undivided support of the national
+party organization; but the Progressive Republicans the country
+over thronged to Roosevelt's support with wild enthusiasm. The
+campaign for the nomination quickly developed two aspects, one of
+which delighted every Progressive in the Republican party, the
+other of which grieved every one of Roosevelt's levelheaded
+friends. It became a clean-cut conflict between progress and
+reaction, between the interests of the people, both as rulers and
+as governed, and the special interests, political and business.
+But it also became a bitter conflict of personalities between the
+erstwhile friends. The breach between the two men was afterwards
+healed, but it was several years after the reek of the battle had
+drifted away before even formal relations were restored between
+them.
+
+A complicating factor in the campaign was the candidacy of
+Senator La Follette of Wisconsin. In July, 1911, La Follette had
+begun, at the earnest solicitation of many Progressive leaders in
+Congress and out, an active campaign for the Republican
+nomination. Progressive organizations were perfected in numerous
+States and "in less than three months," as La Follette has
+written in his Autobiography, his candidacy "had taken on
+proportions which compelled recognition." Four months later a
+conference of some three hundred Progressives from thirty States,
+meeting in Chicago, declared that La Follette was, because of
+his record, the logical candidate for the Presidency. Following
+this conference he continued to campaign with increasing vigor,
+but concurrently the enthusiasm of some of his leading supporters
+began to cool and their support of his candidacy to weaken.
+Senator La Follette ascribes this effect to the surreptitious
+maneuvering of Roosevelt, whom he credits with an overwhelming
+appetite for another Presidential term, kept in check only by his
+fear that he could not be nominated or elected. But there is no
+evidence of any value whatever that Roosevelt was conducting
+underground operations or that he desired to be President again.
+The true explanation of the change in those Progressives who had
+favored the candidacy of La Follette and yet had gradually ceased
+to support him, is to be found in their growing conviction that
+Taft and the reactionary forces in the Republican party which he
+represented could be defeated only by one man--and that not the
+Senator from Wisconsin. In any event the La Follette candidacy
+rapidly declined until it ceased to be a serious element in the
+situation. Although the Senator, with characteristic consistency
+and pertinacity, stayed in the fight till the end, he entered the
+Convention with the delegates of but two States, his own
+Wisconsin and North Dakota, pledged to support him.
+
+The pre-convention campaign was made unusually dramatic by the
+fact that, for the first time in the history of Presidential
+elections, the voters of thirteen States were privileged not only
+to select the delegates to the Convention by direct primary vote
+but to instruct them in the same way as to the candidate for whom
+they should cast their ballots. There were 388 such popularly
+instructed delegates from California, Georgia, Illinois,
+Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota,
+Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. It was
+naturally in these States that the two candidates concentrated
+their campaigning efforts. The result of the selection of
+delegates and of the preferential vote in these States was the
+best possible evidence of the desire of the rank and file of the
+party as to the Presidential candidate. Of these 388 delegates,
+Senator La Follette secured 36; President Taft 71--28 in Georgia,
+2 in Illinois, 18 in Massachusetts, 14 in Ohio, and 9 in
+Pennsylvania; and Roosevelt 281--26 in California, 56 in
+Illinois, 16 in Maryland, 18 in Massachusetts, 16 in Nebraska, 28
+in New Jersey, 34 in Ohio, 10 in Oregon, 67 in Pennsylvania, and
+10 in South Dakota. Roosevelt therefore, in those States where
+the voters could actually declare at primary elections which
+candidate they preferred, was the expressed choice of more than
+five times as many voters as Taft.
+
+When the Republican convention met in Chicago an interesting and
+peculiar situation presented itself. There were 1078 seats in the
+Convention. Of the delegates elected to those seats Taft had
+committed to him the vast majority of the delegates from the
+States which have never cast an electoral vote for a Republican
+candidate for President since there was a Republican party.
+Roosevelt had in support of him the great majority of the
+delegates from the States which are normally Republican and which
+must be relied upon at election time if a Republican President is
+to be chosen. Of the 1078 seats more than 200 were contested.
+Aside from these contested seats, neither candidate had a
+majority of the delegates. The problem that confronted each side
+was to secure the filling of a sufficient number of the disputed
+seats with its retainers to insure a majority for its candidate.
+In the solution of this problem the Taft forces had one
+insuperable advantage. The temporary roll of a nominating
+convention is made up by the National Committee of the party. The
+Republican National Committee had been selected at the close of
+the last national convention four years before. It accordingly
+represented the party as it had then stood, regardless of the
+significant changes that three and a quarter years of Taft's
+Presidency had wrought in party opinion.
+
+In the National Committee the Taft forces had a strength of more
+than two to one; and all but an insignificant number of the
+contests were decided out of hand in favor of Mr. Taft. The
+temporary roll of the Convention therefore showed a distinct
+majority against Roosevelt. From the fall of the gavel, the
+Roosevelt forces fought with vigor and determination for what
+they described as the "purging of the roll" of those Taft
+delegates whose names they declared had been placed upon it by
+fraud. But at every turn the force of numbers was against them;
+and the Taft majority which the National Committee had
+constituted in the Convention remained intact, an impregnable
+defense against the Progressive attack.
+
+These preliminary engagements concerned with the determination of
+the final membership of the Convention had occupied several days.
+Meanwhile the temper of the Roosevelt delegates had burned hotter
+and hotter. Roosevelt was present, leading the fight in
+person--not, of course, on the floor of the Convention, to which
+he was not a delegate, but at headquarters in the Congress Hotel.
+There were not wanting in the Progressive forces counsels of
+moderation and compromise. It was suggested by those of less
+fiery mettle that harmony might be arrived at on the basis of the
+elimination of both Roosevelt and Taft and the selection of a
+candidate not unsatisfactory to either side. But Roosevelt,
+backed by the majority of the Progressive delegates, stood firm
+and immovable on the ground that the "roll must be purged" and
+that he would consent to no traffic with a Convention whose
+make-up contained delegates holding their seats by virtue of
+fraud. "Let them purge the roll," he declared again and again,
+"and I will accept any candidate the Convention may name." But
+the organization leaders knew that a yielding to this demand for
+a reconstitution of the personnel of the Convention would result
+in but one thing--the nomination for Roosevelt--and this was the
+one thing they were resolved not to permit.
+
+As the hours of conflict and turmoil passed, there grew steadily
+and surely in the Roosevelt ranks a demand for a severance of
+relations with the fraudulent Convention and the formation of a
+new party devoted, without equivocation or compromise, to
+Progressive principles. A typical incident of these days of
+confusion and uncertainty was the drawing up of a declaration of
+purpose by a Progressive alternate from New Jersey, disgusted
+with the progress of the machine steam roller and disappointed at
+the delayed appearance of a positive Progressive programme of
+action. Circulated privately, with the knowledge and approval of
+Roosevelt, it was promptly signed by dozens of Progressive
+delegates. It read as follows:
+
+"We, the undersigned, in the event that the Republican National
+Convention as at present constituted refuses to purge its roll of
+the delegates fraudulently placed upon it by the action of the
+majority of the Republican National Committee, pledge ourselves,
+as American citizens devoted to the progressive principles of
+genuine popular rule and social justice, to join in the
+organization of a new party founded upon those principles, under
+the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt."
+
+The first signer of the declaration was Governor Hiram W. Johnson
+of California, the second, Governor Robert S. Vessey of South
+Dakota, the third, Governor Joseph M. Carey of Wyoming, and
+farther down the list were the names of Gifford and Amos Pinchot,
+James R. Garfield, ex-Governor John Franklin Fort of New Jersey,
+with Everett Colby and George L. Record of the same State,
+Matthew Hale of Massachusetts, "Jack" Greenway of Arizona, Judge
+Ben B. Lindsey of Colorado, Medill McCormick of Illinois, George
+Rublee of New Hampshire, and Elon Huntington Hooker, of New York,
+who was to become the National Treasurer of the new party. The
+document was, of course, a purely informal assertion of purpose;
+but it was the first substantial straw to predict the whirlwind
+which the masters of the convention were to reap.
+
+When at last it had become unmistakably clear that the Taft
+forces were and would remain to the end in control of the
+Convention, the Progressive delegates, with a few exceptions,
+united in dramatic action. Speaking for them with passion and
+intensity Henry J. Allen of Kansas announced their intention to
+participate no longer in the actions of a convention vitiated by
+fraud. The Progressive delegates would, he declared, remain in
+their places but they would neither vote nor take any part
+whatever in the proceedings. He then read, by permission of the
+Convention, a statement from Roosevelt, in which he pronounced
+the following indictment:
+
+"The Convention has now declined to purge the roll of the
+fraudulent delegates placed thereon by the defunct National
+Committee, and the majority which has thus indorsed the fraud was
+made a majority only because it included the fraudulent delegates
+themselves who all sat as judges on one another's cases . . . .
+The Convention as now composed has no claim to represent the
+voters of the Republican party . . . . Any man nominated by the
+Convention as now constituted would merely be the beneficiary of
+this successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditable for any
+man to accept the Convention's nomination under these
+circumstances; and any man thus accepting it would have no claim
+to the support of any Republican on party grounds and would have
+forfeited the right to ask the support of any honest man of any
+party on moral grounds."
+
+So while most of the Roosevelt delegates sat in ominous quiet and
+refused to vote, the Convention proceeded to nominate Taft for
+President by the following vote: Taft 561--21 votes more than a
+majority; Roosevelt 107; La Follette 41; Cummins 17; Hughes 2;
+absent 6; present and not voting 344.
+
+Then the Taft delegates went home to meditate on the fight which
+they had won and the more portentous fight which they must wage
+in the coming months on a broader field. The Roosevelt delegates,
+on the other hand, went out to Orchestra Hall, and in an exalted
+mood of passionate devotion to their cause and their beloved
+leader proceeded to nominate Theodore Roosevelt for the
+Presidency and Hiram Johnson for the Vice-Presidency. A committee
+was sent to notify Roosevelt of the nomination and when he
+appeared in the hall all precedents of spontaneous enthusiasm
+were broken. This was no conventional--if the double entendre may
+be permitted--demonstration. It had rather the quality of
+religious exaltation.
+
+Roosevelt made a short speech, in which he adjured his hearers to
+go to their several homes "to find out the sentiment of the
+people at home and then again come together, I suggest by mass
+convention, to nominate for the Presidency a Progressive on a
+Progressive platform that will enable us to appeal to Northerner
+and Southerner, Easterner and Westerner, Republican and Democrat
+alike, in the name of our common American citizenship. If you
+wish me to make the fight I will make it, even if only one State
+should support me."
+
+Thus ended the first act in the drama. The second opened with the
+gathering of some two thousand men and women at Chicago on August
+5, 1912. It was a unique gathering. Many of the delegates were
+women; one of the "keynote" speeches was delivered by Miss Jane
+Addams of Hull House. The whole tone and atmosphere of the
+occasion seemed religious rather than political. The old-timers
+among the delegates, who found themselves in the new party for
+diverse reasons, selfish, sincere, or mixed, must have felt
+astonishment at themselves as they stood and shouted out Onward
+Christian Soldiers as the battle-hymn of their new allegiance.
+The long address which Roosevelt made to the Convention he
+denominated his "Confession of Faith." The platform which the
+gathering adopted was entitled "A Contract with the People." The
+sessions of the Convention seethed with enthusiasm and burned hot
+with earnest devotion to high purpose. There could be no doubt in
+the mind of any but the most cynical of political reactionaries
+that here was the manifestation of a new and revivifying force to
+be reckoned with in the future development of American political
+life.
+
+The platform adopted by the Progressive Convention was no less a
+novelty. Its very title--even the fact that it had a title marked
+it off from the pompous and shopworn documents emanating from the
+usual nominating Convention--declared a reversal of the
+time-honored view of a platform as, like that of a street-car,
+"something to get in on, not something to stand on." The
+delegates to that Convention were perfectly ready to have their
+party sued before the bar of public opinion for breach of
+contract if their candidates when elected did not do everything
+in their power to carry out the pledges of the platform. The
+planks of the platform grouped themselves into three main
+sections: political reforms, control of trusts and combinations,
+and measures of "social and industrial justice."
+
+In the first section were included direct primaries, nation-wide
+preferential primaries for the selection of candidates for the
+Presidency, direct popular election of United States Senators,
+the short ballot, the initiative, referendum and recall, an
+easier method of amending the Federal constitution, woman
+suffrage, and the recall of judicial decisions in the form of a
+popular review of any decision annulling a law passed under the
+police power of the State.
+
+The platform in the second place opposed vigorously the
+indiscriminate dissolution of trusts and combinations, on the
+ground that combination in the business field was not only
+inevitable but necessary and desirable for the promotion of
+national and international efficiency. It condemned the evils of
+inflated capitalization and unfair competition; and it proposed,
+in order to eliminate those is evils while preserving the
+unquestioned advantages that flow from combination, the
+establishment of a strong Federal commission empowered and
+directed to maintain permanent active supervision over industrial
+corporations engaged in interstate commerce, doing for them what
+the Federal Government now does for the national banks and,
+through the Interstate Commerce Commission, for the
+transportation lines.
+
+Finally in the field of social justice the platform pledged the
+party to the abolition of child labor, to minimum wage laws, the
+eight-hour day, publicity in regard to working conditions,
+compensation for industrial accidents, continuation schools for
+industrial education, and to legislation to prevent industrial
+accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary
+unemployment, and other injurious effects incident to modern
+industry.
+
+To stand upon this platform and to carry out the terms of this
+"contract with the people," the Convention nominated without
+debate or dissent Theodore Roosevelt for President and Hiram W.
+Johnson of California for Vice-President. Governor Johnson was an
+appropriate running mate for Roosevelt. In his own State he had
+led one of the most virile and fast moving of the local
+Progressive movements. He burned with a white-hot enthusiasm for
+the democratic ideal and the rights of man as embodied in
+equality of opportunity, freedom of individual development, and
+protection from the "dark forces" of special privilege, political
+autocracy and concentrated wealth. He was a brilliant and fiery
+campaigner where his convictions were enlisted.
+
+So passed the second act in the drama of the Progressive party.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. THE GLORIOUS FAILURE
+
+The third act in the drama of the Progressive party was filled
+with the campaign for the Presidency. It was a three-cornered
+fight. Taft stood for Republican conservatism and clung to the
+old things. Roosevelt fought for the progressive rewriting of
+Republican principles with added emphasis on popular government
+and social justice as defined in the New Nationalism. The
+Democratic party under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson espoused
+with more or less enthusiasm the old Democratic principles
+freshly interpreted and revivified in the declaration they called
+the New Freedom. The campaign marked the definite entrance of the
+nation upon a new era. One thing was clear from the beginning:
+the day of conservatism and reaction was over; the people of the
+United States had definitely crossed their Rubicon and had
+committed themselves to spiritual and moral progress.
+
+The campaign had one dramatic incident. On the 14th of October,
+just before entering the Auditorium at Milwaukee, Roosevelt was
+shot by a fanatic. His immediate action was above everything
+characteristic. Some time later in reply to a remark that he had
+been foolhardy in going on with his speech just after the attack,
+Roosevelt said, "Why, you know, I didn't think I had been
+mortally wounded. If I had been mortally wounded, I would have
+bled from the lungs. When I got into the motor I coughed hard
+three times, and put my hand up to my mouth; as I did not find
+any blood, I thought that I was not seriously hurt, and went on
+with my speech."
+
+The opening words of the speech which followed were equally
+typical:
+
+"Friends, I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don't
+know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but
+it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose . . . . The bullet
+is in me now, so that I cannot make a very long speech, but I
+will try my best . . . . First of all, I want to say this about
+myself; I have altogether too important things to think of to
+feel any concern over my own death; and now I cannot speak
+insincerely to you within five minutes of being shot. I am
+telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for
+many other things. It is not in the least for my own life. I want
+you to understand that I am ahead of the game anyway. No man has
+had a happier life than I have led; a happier life in every way.
+I have been able to do certain things that I greatly wished to
+do, and I am interested in doing other things. I can tell you
+with absolute truthfulness that I am very much uninterested in
+whether I am shot or not. It was just as when I was colonel of my
+regiment. I always felt that a private was to be excused for
+feeling at times some pangs of anxiety about his personal safety,
+but I cannot understand a man fit to be a colonel who can pay any
+heed to his personal safety when he is occupied as he ought to be
+occupied with the absorbing desire to do his duty."
+
+There was a great deal of self-revelation in these words. Even
+the critic accustomed to ascribe to Roosevelt egotism and love of
+gallery applause must concede the courage, will-power, and
+self-forgetfulness disclosed by the incident.
+
+The election was a debacle for reaction, a victory for Democracy,
+a triumph in defeat for the Progressive party. Taft carried two
+States, Utah and Vermont, with eight electoral votes; Woodrow
+Wilson carried forty States, with 435 electoral votes; and
+Roosevelt carried five States, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania,
+South Dakota, and Washington, and eleven out of the thirteen
+votes of California, giving him 88 electoral votes. Taft's
+popular vote was 3,484,956; Wilson's was 6,293,019; while
+Roosevelt's was 4,119,507. The fact that Wilson was elected by a
+minority popular vote is not the significant thing, for it is far
+beyond the capability of any political observer to declare what
+would have been the result if there had been but two parties in
+the field. The triumph for the Progressive party lay in the
+certainty that its emergence had compelled the election of a
+President whose face was toward the future. If the Roosevelt
+delegates at Chicago in June had acquiesced in the result of the
+steam-roller Convention, it is highly probable that Woodrow
+Wilson would not have been the choice of the Democratic
+Convention that met later at Baltimore.
+
+During the succeeding four years the Progressive party, as a
+national organization, continued steadily to "dwindle, peak, and
+pine." More and more of its members and supporters slipped or
+stepped boldly back to the Republican party. Its quondam
+Democratic members had largely returned to their former
+allegiance with Wilson, either at the election or after it.
+Roosevelt once more withdrew from active participation in public
+life, until the Great War, with its gradually increasing
+intrusions upon American interests and American rights, aroused
+him to vigorous and aggressive utterance on American
+responsibility and American duty. He became a vigorous critic of
+the Administration.
+
+Once more a demand began to spring up for his nomination for the
+Presidency; the Progressive party began to show signs of reviving
+consciousness. There had persisted through the years a little
+band of irreconcilables who were Progressives or nothing. They
+wanted a new party of radical ideas regardless of anything in the
+way of reformation and progress that the old parties might
+achieve. There were others who preferred to go back to the
+Republican party rather than to keep up the Progressive party as
+a mere minority party of protest, but who hoped in going back to
+be able to influence their old party along the lines of progress.
+There were those who were Rooseveltians pure and simple and who
+would follow him wherever he led.
+
+All these groups wanted Roosevelt as President. They united to
+hold a convention of the Progressive party at Chicago in 1916 on
+the same days on which the Republican Convention met there. Each
+convention opened with a calculating eye upon the activities of
+the other. But both watched with even more anxious surmise for
+some sign of intention from the Progressive leader back at Oyster
+Bay. He held in his single hand the power of life and death for
+the Progressive party. His decision as to cooperative action with
+the Republicans or individual action as a Progressive would be
+the most important single factor in the campaign against Woodrow
+Wilson, who was certain of renomination. Three questions
+confronted and puzzled the two bodies of delegates: Would the
+Republicans nominate Roosevelt or another? If another, what would
+Roosevelt do? If another, what would the Progressives do?
+
+For three days the Republican National Convention proceeded
+steadily and stolidly upon its appointed course. Everything had
+been done in the stereotyped way on the stereotyped time-table in
+the stereotyped language. No impropriety or infelicity had been
+permitted to mar the smooth texture of its surface. The temporary
+chairman in his keynote speech had been as mildly oratorical, as
+diffusely patriotic, and as nobly sentimental as any Fourth of
+July orator of a bygone day. The whole tone of the Convention had
+been subdued and decorous with the decorum of incertitude and
+timidity. That Convention did not know what it wanted. It only
+knew that there was one thing that it did not want and that it
+was afraid of, and another thing it would rather not have and was
+afraid it would have to take. It wanted neither Theodore
+Roosevelt nor Charles E. Hughes, and its members were distinctly
+uncomfortable at the thought that they might have to take one or
+the other. It was an old-fashioned convention of the hand-picked
+variety. It smacked of the former days when the direct primary
+had not yet introduced the disturbing thought that the voters and
+not the office-holders and party leaders ought to select their
+candidates.
+
+It was a docile, submissive convention, not because it was ruled
+by a strong group of men who knew what they wanted and proposed
+to compel their followers to give it to them, but because it was
+composed of politicians great and small to whom party regularity
+was the breath of their nostrils. They were ready to do the
+regular thing; but the only two things in sight were confoundedly
+irregular.
+
+Two drafts were ready for their drinking and they dreaded both.
+They could nominate one of two men, and to nominate either of
+them was to fling open the gates of the citadel of party
+regularity and conformity and let the enemy in. Was it to be
+Roosevelt or Hughes? Roosevelt they would not have. Hughes they
+would give their eye teeth not to take. No wonder they were
+subdued and inarticulate. No wonder they suffered and were
+unhappy. So they droned along through their stereotyped routine,
+hoping dully against fate.
+
+The hot-heads in the Progressive Convention wanted no delay, no
+compromise. They would have nominated Theodore Roosevelt out of
+hand with a whoop, and let the Republican Convention take him or
+leave him. But the cooler leaders realized the importance of
+union between the two parties and knew, or accurately guessed,
+what the attitude of Roosevelt would be. With firm hand they kept
+the Convention from hasty and irrevocable action. They proposed
+that overtures be made to the Republican Convention with a view
+to harmonious agreement. A conference was held between committees
+of the two conventions to see if common ground could be
+discovered. At the first session of the joint committee it
+appeared that there was sincere desire on both sides to get
+together, but that the Progressives would have no one but
+Roosevelt, while the Republicans would not have him but were
+united on no one else. When the balloting began in the Republican
+Convention, the only candidate who received even a respectable
+block of votes was Hughes, but his total was hardly more than
+half of the necessary majority. For several ballots there was no
+considerable gain for any of the numerous candidates, and when
+the Convention adjourned late Friday night the outcome was as
+uncertain as ever. But by Saturday morning the Republican leaders
+and delegates had resigned themselves to the inevitable, and the
+nomination of Hughes was assured. When the Progressive Convention
+met that morning, the conference committee reported that the
+Republican members of the committee had proposed unanimously the
+selection of Hughes as the candidate of both parties.
+
+Thus began the final scene in the Progressive drama, and a more
+thrilling and intense occasion it would be difficult to imagine.
+It was apparent that the Progressive delegates would have none of
+it. They were there to nominate their own beloved leader and they
+intended to do it. A telegram was received from Oyster Bay
+proposing Senator Lodge as the compromise candidate, and the
+restive delegates in the Auditorium could with the greatest
+difficulty be held back until the telegram could be received and
+read at the Coliseum. A direct telephone wire from the Coliseum
+to a receiver on the stage of the Auditorium kept the Progressive
+body in instant touch with events in the other Convention. In the
+Auditorium the atmosphere was electric. The delegates bubbled
+with excitement. They wanted to nominate Roosevelt and be done
+with it. The fear that the other Convention would steal a march
+on them and make its nomination first set them crazy with
+impatience. The hall rumbled and sputtered and fizzed and
+detonated. The floor looked like a giant corn popper with the
+kernels jumping and exploding like mad.
+
+The delegates wanted action; the leaders wanted to be sure that
+they had kept faith with Roosevelt and with the general situation
+by giving the Republican delegates a chance to hear his last
+proposal. Bainbridge Colby, of New York, put Roosevelt in
+nomination with brevity and vigor; Hiram Johnson seconded the
+nomination with his accustomed fire. Then, as the word came over
+the wire that balloting had been resumed in the Coliseum, the
+question was put at thirty-one minutes past twelve, and every
+delegate and every alternate in the Convention leaped to his feet
+with upstretched arm and shouted "Aye."
+
+Doubtless more thrilling moments may come to some men at some
+time, somewhere, but you will hardly find a delegate of that
+Progressive Convention to believe it. Then the Convention
+adjourned, to meet again at three to hear what the man they had
+nominated would say.
+
+At five o'clock in the afternoon, after a couple of hours of
+impatient and anxious marking time with routine matters, the
+Progressive delegates received the reply from their leader. It
+read thus:
+
+"I am very grateful for the honor you confer upon me by
+nominating me as President. I cannot accept it at this time. I do
+not know the attitude of the candidate of the Republican party
+toward the vital questions of the day. Therefore, if you desire
+an immediate decision, I must decline the nomination.
+
+"But if you prefer to wait, I suggest that my conditional refusal
+to run be placed in the hands of the Progressive National
+Committee. If Mr. Hughes's statements, when he makes them, shall
+satisfy the committee that it is for the interest of the country
+that he be elected, they can act accordingly and treat my refusal
+as definitely accepted.
+
+"If they are not satisfied, they can so notify the Progressive
+party, and at the same time they can confer with me, and then
+determine on whatever action we may severally deem appropriate to
+meet the needs of the country.
+
+"THEODORE ROOSEVELT."
+
+Puzzled, disheartened, overwhelmed, the Progressive delegates
+went away. They could not then see how wise, how farsighted, how
+inevitable Roosevelt's decision was. Some of them will never see
+it. Probably few of them as they went out of those doors realized
+that they had taken part in the last act of the romantic and
+tragic drama of the National Progressive party. But such was the
+fact, for the march of events was too much for it. Fate, not its
+enemies, brought it to an end.
+
+So was born, lived a little space, and died the Progressive
+party. At its birth it caused the nomination, by the Democrats,
+and the election, by the people, of Woodrow Wilson. At its death
+it brought about the nomination of Charles E. Hughes by the
+Republicans. It forced the writing into the platforms of the more
+conservative parties of principles and programmes of popular
+rights and social regeneration. The Progressive party never
+attained to power, but it wielded a potent power. It was a
+glorious failure.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. THE FIGHTING EDGE
+
+Theodore Roosevelt was a prodigious coiner of phrases. He added
+scores of them, full of virility, picturesqueness, and flavor to
+the every-day speech of the American people. They stuck, because
+they expressed ideas that needed expressing and because they
+expressed them so well that no other combinations of words could
+quite equal them. One of the best, though not the most popular,
+of his phrases is contained in the following quotation:
+
+"One of the prime dangers of civilization has always been its
+tendency to cause the loss of virile fighting virtues, of the
+fighting edge. When men get too comfortable and lead too
+luxurious lives, there is always danger lest the softness eat
+like an acid into their manliness of fiber."
+
+He used the same phrase many times. Here is another instance:
+
+"Unjust war is to be abhorred; but woe to the nation that does
+not make ready to hold its own in time of need against all who
+would harm it! And woe, thrice over, to the nation in which the
+average man loses the fighting edge, loses the power to serve as
+a soldier if the day of need should arise!"
+
+That was it--THE FIGHTING EDGE. Roosevelt had it, if ever man
+had. The conviction of the need for that combination of physical
+and spiritual qualities that this represented, if a man is to
+take his place and keep it in the world, became an inseparable
+part of his consciousness early in life. It grew in strength and
+depth with every year that he lived. He learned the need of
+preparedness on that day in Maine when he found himself helpless
+before the tormenting of his young fellow travelers. In the
+gymnasium on Twentieth Street, within the boxing ring at Harvard,
+in the New York Assembly, in the conflicts with the spoilsmen in
+Washington, on the frontier in cowboy land, in Mulberry Street
+and on Capitol Hill, and in the jungle before Santiago, the
+lesson was hammered into him by the stern reality of events. The
+strokes fell on malleable metal.
+
+In the spring of 1897, Roosevelt had been appointed Assistant
+Secretary of the Navy, largely through the efforts of his friend,
+Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts. The appointment was
+excellent from every point of view. Though Roosevelt had received
+no training for the post so far as technical education was
+concerned, he brought to his duties a profound belief in the navy
+and a keen interest in its development. His first published book
+had been "The Naval War of 1812"; and the lessons of that war had
+not been lost upon him. It was indeed a fortuitous circumstance
+that placed him in this branch of the national service just as
+relations between Spain and the United States were reaching the
+breaking point. When the battleship Maine was sunk in Havana
+Harbor, his reaction to that startling event was instantaneous.
+He was convinced that the sinking of the Maine made war
+inevitable, but he had long been certain that war ought to come.
+He believed that the United States had a moral duty toward the
+Cuban people, oppressed, abused, starved, and murdered at the
+hands of Spain.
+
+He was not the head of the Navy Department, but that made little
+difference. The Secretary was a fine old gentleman, formerly
+president of the Massachusetts Peace Society, and by temperament
+indisposed to any rapid moves toward war. But he liked his
+Assistant Secretary and did not put too stern a curb upon his
+impetuous activity and Roosevelt's activity was vigorous and
+unceasing. Secretary Long has described it, rather with justice
+than with enthusiasm.
+
+"His activity was characteristic. He was zealous in the work of
+putting the navy in condition for the apprehended struggle. His
+ardor sometimes went faster than the President or the Department
+approved . . . . He worked indefatigably, frequently
+incorporating his views in memoranda which he would place every
+morning on my desk. Most of his suggestions had, however, so far
+as applicable, been already adopted by the various bureaus, the
+chiefs of which were straining every nerve and leaving nothing
+undone. When I suggested to him that some future historian
+reading his memoranda, if they were put on record, would get the
+impression that the bureaus were inefficient, he accepted the
+suggestion with the generous good nature which is so marked in
+him. Indeed, nothing could be pleasanter than our relations. He
+was heart and soul in his work. His typewriters had no rest. He,
+like most of us, lacks the rare knack of brevity. He was
+especially stimulating to the younger officers who gathered about
+him and made his office as busy as a hive. He was especially
+helpful in the purchasing of ships and in every line where he
+could push on the work of preparation for war."
+
+One suspects that the Secretary may have been more complacently
+convinced of the forehandedness of the bureau chiefs than was his
+impatient associate. For, while the navy was apparently in better
+shape than the army in those days, there must have been, even in
+the Department where Roosevelt's typewriters knew no rest, some
+of that class of desk-bound officers whom he met later when he
+was organizing the Rough Riders. His experience with one such
+officer in the War Department was humorous. This bureaucrat was
+continually refusing Roosevelt's applications because they were
+irregular. In each case Roosevelt would appeal to the Secretary
+of War, with whom he was on the best of terms, and would get from
+him an order countenancing the irregularity. After a number of
+experiences of this kind, the harassed slave of red tape threw
+himself back in his chair and exclaimed, "Oh, dear! I had this
+office running in such good shape--and then along came the war
+and upset everything!"
+
+But there were plenty of good men in the navy; and one of them
+was Commodore George Dewey. Roosevelt had kept his eye on him for
+some time as an officer who "could be relied upon to prepare in
+advance, and to act promptly, fearlessly, and on his own
+responsibility when the emergency arose." When he began to
+foresee the probability of war, Roosevelt succeeded in having
+Dewey sent to command the Asiatic squadron; and just ten days
+after the Maine was blown up this cablegram went from Washington
+to Hong Kong:
+
+"DEWEY, Hong Kong:
+
+"Order the squadron, except the Monocacy, to Hong Kong. Keep full
+of coal. In the event of declaration of war Spain, your duty will
+be to see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic
+coast, and then offensive operations in Philippine Islands. Keep
+Olympia until further orders. Roosevelt."
+
+The declaration of war lagged on for nearly two months, but when
+it finally came, just one week elapsed between the sending of an
+order to Dewey to proceed at once to the Philippines and to
+"capture vessels or destroy" and the elimination of the sea power
+of Spain in the Orient. The battle of Manila Bay was a practical
+demonstration of the value of the "fighting edge," as exemplified
+in an Assistant Secretary who fought procrastination, timidity,
+and political expedience at home and in a naval officer who
+fought the enemy's ships on the other side of the world.
+
+When war actually came, Roosevelt could not stand inactivity in
+Washington. He was a fighter and he must go where the real
+fighting was. With Leonard Wood, then a surgeon in the army, he
+organized the First United States Volunteer Cavalry. He could
+have been appointed Colonel, but he knew that Wood knew more
+about the soldier's job than he, and he insisted upon taking the
+second place. The Secretary of War thought him foolish to step
+aside thus and suggested that Roosevelt become Colonel and Wood
+Lieutenant-Colonel, adding that Wood would do the work anyway.
+But that was not the Roosevelt way. He replied that he did not
+wish to rise on any man's shoulders, that he hoped to be given
+every chance that his deeds and his abilities warranted, that he
+did not wish what he did not earn, and that, above all, he did
+not wish to hold any position where any one else did the work.
+Lieutenant-Colonel he was made.
+
+The regiment, which will always be affectionately known as the
+Rough Riders, was "raised, armed, equipped, drilled, mounted,
+dismounted, kept for two weeks on a transport, and then put
+through two victorious aggressive fights, in which it lost a
+third of the officers, and a fifth of the enlisted men, all
+within a little over fifty days." Roosevelt began as second in
+command, went through the battle of San Juan Hill as Colonel, and
+ended the war in command of a brigade, with the brevet of
+Brigadier-General. The title of Colonel stuck to him all his
+life.
+
+When he became President, his instinctive commitment to the
+necessity of being prepared had been stoutly reinforced by his
+experience in what he called "the war of America the Unready."
+His first message to Congress was a long and exhaustive paper,
+dealing with many matters of importance. But almost one-fifth of
+it was devoted to the army and the navy. "It is not possible," he
+said, "to improvise a navy after war breaks out. The ships must
+be built and the men trained long in advance." He urged that
+Congress forthwith provide for several additional battleships and
+heavy armored cruisers, together with the proportionate number of
+smaller craft, and he pointed out the need for many more officers
+and men. He declared that "even in time of peace a warship should
+be used until it wears out, for only so can it be kept fit to
+respond to any emergency. The officers and men alike should be
+kept as much as possible on blue water, for it is there only they
+can learn their duties as they should be learned." But his most
+vigorous insistence was upon gunnery. "In battle," he said once
+to the graduates of the Naval Academy, "the only shots that count
+are those that hit, and marksmanship is a matter of long practice
+and intelligent reasoning." To this end he demanded "unceasing"
+gunnery practice.
+
+In every succeeding message to Congress for seven years he
+returned to the subject of the navy, demanding ships, officers,
+men, and, above all, training. His insistence on these essentials
+brought results, and by the time the cruise of the battle fleet
+around the world had been achieved, the American navy, ship for
+ship, was not surpassed by any in the world. Perhaps it would be
+more accurate to say, ship's crew for ship's crew; for it was the
+officers and men of the American navy who made it possible for
+the world cruise to be made without the smallest casualty.
+
+The question of marksmanship had been burned into Roosevelt's
+mind in those days when the Spanish War was brewing. He has
+related in his "Autobiography" how it first came to his attention
+through a man whose name has in more recent years become known
+the world over in connection with the greatest task of the
+American navy. Roosevelt's account is as follows:
+
+"There was one deficiency . . . which there was no time to
+remedy, and of the very existence of which, strange to say, most
+of our best men were ignorant. Our navy had no idea how low our
+standard of marksmanship was. We had not realized that the modern
+battleship had become such a complicated piece of mechanism that
+the old methods of training in marksmanship were as obsolete as
+the old muzzle-loading broadside guns themselves. Almost the only
+man in the navy who fully realized this was our naval attach at
+Paris, Lieutenant Sims. He wrote letter after letter pointing out
+how frightfully backward we were in marksmanship. I was much
+impressed by his letters . . . . As Sims proved to be mistaken in
+his belief that the French had taught the Spaniards how to shoot,
+and as the Spaniards proved to be much worse even than we were,
+in the service generally Sims was treated as an alarmist. But
+although I at first partly acquiesced in this view, I grew uneasy
+when I studied the small proportion of hits to shots made by our
+vessels in battle. When I was President I took up the matter, and
+speedily became convinced that we needed to revolutionize our
+whole training in marksmanship. Sims was given the lead in
+organizing and introducing the new system; and to him more than
+to any other one man was due the astonishing progress made by our
+fleet in this respect, a progress which made the fleet, gun for
+gun, at least three times as effective, in point of fighting
+efficiency, in 1908, as it was in 1902"*.
+
+*Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 212-13.
+
+Theodore Roosevelt was a thoroughgoing, bred-in-the-bone
+individualist, but not as the term is ordinarily understood. He
+continually emphasized not the rights of the individual, but his
+duties, obligations, and opportunities. He knew that human
+character is the greatest thing in the world and that men and
+women are the real forces that move and sway the world's affairs.
+So in all his preaching and doing on behalf of a great and
+efficient navy, the emphasis that he always laid was upon the men
+of the navy, their efficiency and their spirit. He once remarked,
+"I believe in the navy of the United States primarily because I
+believe in the intelligence, the patriotism, and the fighting
+edge of the average man of the navy." To the graduating class at
+Annapolis, he once said:
+
+"There is not one of you who is not derelict in his duty to the
+whole Nation if he fails to prepare himself with all the strength
+that in him lies to do his duty should the occasion arise; and
+one of your great duties is to see that shots hit. The result is
+going to depend largely upon whether you or your adversary hits.
+I expect you to be brave. I rather take that for granted . . . .
+But, in addition, you have got to prepare yourselves in advance.
+Every naval action that has taken place in the last twenty years
+. . . has shown, as a rule, that the defeated party has suffered
+not from lack of courage, but because it could not make the best
+use of its weapons, or had not been given the right weapons . . .
+. I want every one here to proceed upon the assumption that any
+foe he may meet will have the courage. Of course, you have got to
+show the highest degree of courage yourself or you will be beaten
+anyhow, and you will deserve to be; but in addition to that you
+must prepare yourselves by careful training so that you may make
+the best possible use of the delicate and formidable mechanism of
+a modern warship."
+
+Theodore Roosevelt was an apostle of preparedness from the hour
+that he began to think at all about affairs of public moment--
+and that hour came to him earlier in life than it does to most
+men. In the preface to his history of the War of 1812, which he
+wrote at the age of twenty-four, this sentence appears: "At
+present people are beginning to realize that it is folly for the
+great English-speaking Republic to rely for defense upon a navy
+composed partly of antiquated hulks, and partly of new vessels
+rather more worthless than the old." His prime interest, from the
+point of view of preparedness, lay in the navy. His sense of
+proportion told him that the navy was the nation's first line of
+defense. He knew that without an efficient navy a nation situated
+as the United States was would be helpless before an aggressive
+enemy, and that, given a navy of sufficient size and
+effectiveness, the nation could dispense with a great army. For
+the army he demanded not size but merely efficiency. One of his
+principal points of attack in his criticism of the army was the
+system of promotion for officers. He assailed sharply the
+existing practice of "promotion by mere seniority." In one of his
+messages to Congress he pointed out that a system of promotion by
+merit existed in the Military Academy at West Point. He then went
+on to say that from the time of the graduation of the cadets into
+the army "all effort to find which man is best or worst and
+reward or punish him accordingly, is abandoned: no brilliancy, no
+amount of hard work, no eagerness in the performance of duty, can
+advance him, and no slackness or indifference, that falls short
+of a court-martial offense, can retard him. Until this system is
+changed we cannot hope that our officers will be of as high grade
+as we have a right to expect, considering the material from which
+we draw. Moreover, when a man renders such service as Captain
+Pershing rendered last spring in the Moro campaign, it ought to
+be possible to reward him without at once jumping him to the
+grade of brigadier-general."
+
+It is not surprising to find in this message also a name that was
+later to become famous in the Great War. Roosevelt had an uncanny
+gift of prophecy.
+
+More than once, as President, he picked out for appreciation and
+commendation the very men who were to do the big things for
+America when the critical hour came.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI. THE LAST FOUR YEARS
+
+When the Great War broke out in August, 1914, Roosevelt instantly
+stiffened to attention. He immediately began to read the lessons
+that were set for the world by the gigantic conflict across the
+sea and it was not long before he was passing them on to the
+American people. Like every other good citizen, he extended
+hearty support to the President in his conduct of America's
+foreign relations in the crisis. At the same time, however, he
+recognized the possibility that a time might come when it would
+be a higher moral duty to criticize the Administration than to
+continue unqualified support. Three weeks after war had begun,
+Roosevelt wrote in "The Outlook":
+
+"In common with the immense majority of our fellow countrymen, I
+shall certainly stand by not only the public servants in control
+of the Administration at Washington, but also all other public
+servants, no matter of what party, during this crisis; asking
+only that they with wisdom and good faith endeavor to take every
+step that can be taken to safeguard the honor and interest of the
+United States, and, so far as the opportunity offers, to promote
+the cause of peace and justice throughout the world. My hope, of
+course, is that in their turn the public servants of the people
+will take no action so fraught with possible harm to the future
+of the people as to oblige farsighted and patriotic men to
+protest against it."
+
+One month later, in a long article in "The Outlook", Roosevelt
+reiterated this view in these words:
+
+". . . . We, all of us, without regard to party differences, must
+stand ready loyally to support the Administration, asking nothing
+except that the policy be one that in truth and in fact tells for
+the honor and interest of our Nation and in truth and in fact is
+helpful to the cause of a permanent and righteous world peace."
+
+In the early months of the war, Roosevelt thus scrupulously
+endeavored to uphold the President's hands, to utter no criticism
+that might hamper him, and to carry out faithfully the
+President's adjuration to neutrality. He recognized clearly,
+however, the price that we must pay for neutrality, and he set it
+forth in the following passage from the same article: "A
+deputation of Belgians has arrived in this country to invoke our
+assistance in the time of their dreadful need. What action our
+Government can or will take I know not. It has been announced
+that no action can be taken that will interfere with our entire
+neutrality. It is certainly eminently desirable that we should
+remain entirely neutral, and nothing but urgent need would
+warrant breaking our neutrality and taking sides one way or the
+other. Our first duty is to hold ourselves ready to do whatever
+the changing circumstances demand in order to protect our own
+interests in the present and in the future; although, for my own
+part, I desire to add to this statement the proviso that under no
+circumstances must we do anything dishonorable, especially toward
+unoffending weaker nations. Neutrality may be of prime necessity
+in order to preserve our own interests, to maintain peace in so
+much of the world as is not affected by the war, and to conserve
+our influence for helping toward the reestablishment of general
+peace when the time comes; for if any outside Power is able at
+such time to be the medium for bringing peace, it is more likely
+to be the United States than any other. But we pay the penalty of
+this action on behalf of peace for ourselves, and possibly for
+others in the future, by forfeiting our right to do anything on
+behalf of peace for the Belgians in the present. We can maintain
+our neutrality only by refusal to do anything to aid unoffending
+weak powers which are dragged into the gulf of bloodshed and
+misery through no fault of their own. Of course it would be folly
+to jump into the gulf ourselves to no good purpose; and very
+probably nothing that we could have done would have helped
+Belgium. We have not the smallest responsibility for what has
+befallen her, and I am sure that the sympathy of this country for
+the men, women, and children of Belgium is very real.
+Nevertheless, this sympathy is compatible with full
+acknowledgment of the unwisdom of our uttering a single word of
+official protest unless we are prepared to make that protest
+effective; and only the clearest and most urgent national duty
+would ever justify us in deviating from our rule of neutrality
+and noninterference. But it is a grim comment on the professional
+pacifist theories as hitherto developed that our duty to preserve
+peace for ourselves may necessarily mean the abandonment of all
+effective efforts to secure peace for other unoffending nations
+which through no fault of their own are dragged into the War."
+
+The rest of the article concerned itself with the lessons taught
+by the war, the folly of pacifism, the need for preparedness if
+righteousness is not to be sacrificed for peace, the
+worthlessness of treaties unsanctioned by force, and the
+desirability of an association of nations for the prevention of
+war. On this last point Roosevelt wrote as follows:
+
+"But in view of what has occurred in this war, surely the time
+ought to be ripe for the nations to consider a great world
+agreement among all the civilized military powers TO BACK
+RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FORCE. Such an agreement would establish an
+efficient World League for the Peace of Righteousness. Such an
+agreement could limit the amount to be spent on armaments and,
+after defining carefully the inalienable rights of each nation
+which were not to be transgressed by any other, could also
+provide that any cause of difference among them, or between one
+of them and one of a certain number of designated outside
+non-military nations, should be submitted to an international
+court, including citizens of all these nations, chosen not as
+representatives of the nations, BUT AS JUDGES and perhaps in any
+given case the particular judges could be chosen by lot from the
+total number. To supplement and make this effectual it should be
+solemnly covenanted that if any nation refused to abide by the
+decision of such a court the others would draw the sword on
+behalf of peace and justice, and would unitedly coerce the
+recalcitrant nation. This plan would not automatically bring
+peace, and it may be too soon to hope for its adoption; but if
+some such scheme could be adopted, in good faith and with a
+genuine purpose behind it to make it effective, then we would
+have come nearer to the day of world peace. World peace will not
+come save in some such manner as that whereby we obtain peace
+within the borders of each nation; that is, by the creation of
+reasonably impartial judges and by putting an efficient police
+power--that is, by putting force in efficient fashion--behind the
+decrees of the judges. At present each nation must in the last
+resort trust to its own strength if it is to preserve all that
+makes life worth having. At present this is imperative. This
+state of things can be abolished only when we put force, when we
+put the collective armed power of civilization, behind some body
+which shall with reasonable justice and equity represent the
+collective determination of civilization to do what is right."
+
+>From this beginning Roosevelt went on vigorously preaching
+preparedness against war; and the Great War had been raging for a
+scant seven months when he was irresistibly impelled to utter
+open criticism of President Wilson. In April, 1915, in The
+Metropolitan Magazine, to which he had transferred his writings,
+he declared that "the United States, thanks to Messrs. Wilson and
+Bryan, has signally failed in its duty toward Belgium." He
+maintained that the United States, under the obligations assumed
+by the signature of The Hague Conventions, should have protested
+to Germany against the invasion of Belgium.
+
+For two years thereafter, while Germany slapped America first on
+one cheek and then on the other, and treacherously stabbed her
+with slinking spies and dishonored diplomats, Roosevelt preached,
+with growing indignation and vehemence, the cause of preparedness
+and national honor. He found it impossible to support the
+President further. In February, 1916, he wrote:
+
+"Eighteen months have gone by since the Great War broke out. It
+needed no prescience, no remarkable statesmanship or gift of
+forecasting the future, to see that, when such mighty forces were
+unloosed, and when it had been shown that all treaties and other
+methods hitherto relied upon for national protection and for
+mitigating the horror and circumscribing the area of war were
+literally "scraps of paper," it had become a vital necessity that
+we should instantly and on a great and adequate scale prepare for
+our own defense. Our men, women, and children--not in isolated
+cases, but in scores and hundreds of cases--have been murdered by
+Germany and Mexico; and we have tamely submitted to wrongs from
+Germany and Mexico of a kind to which no nation can submit
+without impairing its own self-respect and incurring the contempt
+of the rest of mankind. Yet, during these eighteen months not one
+thing has been done . . . . Never in the country's history has
+there been a more stupendous instance of folly than this crowning
+folly of waiting eighteen months after the elemental crash of
+nations took place before even making a start in an effort--and
+an utterly inefficient and insufficient effort-for some kind of
+preparation to ward off disaster in the future.
+
+"If President Wilson had shown the disinterested patriotism,
+courage, and foresight demanded by this stupendous crisis, I
+would have supported him with hearty enthusiasm. But his action,
+or rather inaction, has been such that it has become a matter of
+high patriotic duty to oppose him . . . . No man can support Mr.
+Wilson without at the same time supporting a policy of criminal
+inefficiency as regards the United States Navy, of short-sighted
+inadequacy as regards the army, of abandonment of the duty owed
+by the United States to weak and well-behaved nations, and of
+failure to insist on our just rights when we are ourselves
+maltreated by powerful and unscrupulous nations."
+
+Theodore Roosevelt could not, without violating the integrity of
+his own soul, go on supporting either positively by word or
+negatively by silence the man who had said, on the day after the
+Lusitania was sunk, "There is such a thing as a nation being too
+proud to fight," and who later called for a "peace without
+victory." He could have nothing but scorn for an Administration
+whose Secretary of War could say, two months after the United
+States had actually entered the war, that there was "difficulty .
+. . disorder and confusion . . . in getting things started," and
+could then add, "but it is a happy confusion. I delight in the
+fact that when we entered this war we were not like our
+adversary, ready for it, anxious for it, prepared for it, and
+inviting it."
+
+Until America entered the war Roosevelt used his voice and his
+pen with all his native energy and fire to convince the American
+people of three things that righteousness demanded that the
+United States forsake its supine neutrality and act; that the
+United States should prepare itself thoroughly for any emergency
+that might arise; and that the hyphenated Americanism of those
+who, while enjoying the benefits of American citizenship,
+"intrigue and conspire against the United States, and do their
+utmost to promote the success of Germany and to weaken the
+defense of this nation" should be rigorously curbed. The sermons
+that he preached on this triple theme were sorely needed. No
+leadership in this phase of national life was forthcoming from
+the quarter where the American people had every right to look for
+leadership. The White House had its face set in the opposite
+direction.
+
+In August, 1915, an incident occurred which set the contrast
+between the Rooseveltian and Wilsonian lines of thought in bold
+relief. Largely through the initiative of General Leonard Wood
+there had been organized at Plattsburg, New York, an officers'
+training camp where American business men were given an all too
+brief course of training in the art and duty of leading soldiers
+in camp and in the field. General Wood was in command of the
+Plattsburg camp. He invited Roosevelt to address the men in
+training. Roosevelt accepted gladly, and in the course of his
+speech made these significant statements:
+
+"For thirteen months America has played an ignoble part among the
+nations. We have tamely submitted to seeing the weak, whom we
+have covenanted to protect, wronged. We have seen our men, women,
+and children murdered on the high seas without protest. We have
+used elocution as a substitute for action.
+
+"During this time our government has not taken the smallest step
+in the way of preparedness to defend our own rights. Yet these
+thirteen months have made evident the lamentable fact that force
+is more dominant now in the affairs of the world than ever
+before, that the most powerful of modern military nations is
+utterly brutal and ruthless in its disregard of international
+morality, and that righteousness divorced from force is utterly
+futile. Reliance upon high sounding words, unbacked by deeds, is
+proof of a mind that dwells only in the realm of shadow and of
+sham.
+
+"It is not a lofty thing, on the contrary, it is an evil thing,
+to practise a timid and selfish neutrality between right and
+wrong. It is wrong for an individual. It is still more wrong for
+a nation.
+
+"Therefore, friends, let us shape our conduct as a nation in
+accordance with the highest rules of international morality. Let
+us treat others justly and keep the engagements we have made,
+such as these in The Hague conventions, to secure just treatment
+for others. But let us remember that we shall be wholly unable to
+render service to others and wholly unable to fulfill the prime
+law of national being, the law of self-preservation, unless we
+are thoroughly prepared to hold our own. Let us show that a free
+democracy can defend itself successfully against any organized
+and aggressive military despotism."
+
+The men in the camp heard him gladly and with enthusiasm. But the
+next day the Secretary of War sent a telegram of censure to
+General Wood in which he said:
+
+"I have just seen the reports in the newspapers of the speech
+made by ex-President Roosevelt at the Plattsburg camp. It is
+difficult to conceive of anything which could have a more
+detrimental effect upon the real value of this experiment than
+such an incident . . . . No opportunity should have been
+furnished to any one to present to the men any matter excepting
+that which was essential to the necessary training they were to
+receive. Anything else could only have the effect of distracting
+attention from the real nature of the experiment, diverting
+consideration to issues which excite controversy, antagonism, and
+ill feeling and thereby impairing if not destroying, what
+otherwise would have been so effective."
+
+On this telegram Roosevelt's comment was pungent: "If the
+Administration had displayed one-tenth the spirit and energy in
+holding Germany and Mexico to account for the murder of men,
+women, and children that it is now displaying in the endeavor to
+prevent our people from being taught the need of preparation to
+prevent the repetition of such murders in the future, it would be
+rendering a service to the people of the country."
+
+Theodore Roosevelt could have little effect upon the material
+preparedness of the United States for the struggle which it was
+ultimately to enter. But he could and did have a powerful effect
+upon the spiritual preparedness of the American people for the
+efforts, the trials, and the sacrifices of that struggle. No
+voice was raised more persistently or more consistently than his.
+No personality was thrown with more power and more effect into
+the task of arousing the people of the United States to their
+duty to take part in the struggle against Prussianism. No man, in
+public or private life, urged so vigorously and effectively the
+call to arms against evil and for the right. His was the "voice
+crying in the wilderness," and to him the American spirit
+hearkened and awoke.
+
+At last the moment came. Roosevelt had but one desire and one
+thought. He wanted to get to the firing-line. This was no
+impulse, no newly formed project. For two months he had been in
+correspondence with the Secretary of War on the subject. A year
+or more before that he had offered, in case America went into the
+war, to raise a volunteer force, train it, and take it across to
+the front. The idea was not new to him, even then. As far back as
+1912 he had said on several different occasions, "If the United
+States should get into another war, I should raise a brigade of
+cavalry and lead it as I did my regiment in Cuba." It never
+occurred to him in those days that a former Commander-in-Chief of
+the United States Army, with actual experience in the field,
+would be refused permission to command troops in an American war.
+The idea would hardly have occurred to any one else. But that is
+precisely what happened.
+
+On February 2, 1917, Roosevelt wrote to the Secretary of War
+reminding him that his application for permission to raise a
+division of infantry was already on file in the Department,
+saying that he was about to sail for Jamaica, and asking the
+Secretary to inform him if he believed there would be war and a
+call for volunteers, for in that case he did not intend to sail.
+Secretary Baker replied, "No situation has arisen which would
+justify my suggesting a postponement of the trip you propose."
+Before this reply was received Roosevelt had written a second
+letter saying that, as the President had meanwhile broken off
+diplomatic relations with Germany, he should of course not sail.
+He renewed his request for permission to raise a division, and
+asked if a certain regular officer whom he would like to have for
+his divisional Chief of Staff, if the division were authorized,
+might be permitted to come to see him with a view to "making all
+preparations that are possible in advance." To this the Secretary
+replied, "No action in the direction suggested by you can be
+taken without the express sanction of Congress. Should the
+contingency Occur which you have in mind, it is to be expected
+that Congress will complete its legislation relating to volunteer
+forces and provide, under its own conditions, for the appointment
+of officers for the higher commands."
+
+Roosevelt waited five weeks and then earnestly renewed his
+request. He declared his purpose to take his division, after some
+six weeks of preliminary training, direct to France for intensive
+training so that it could be sent to the front in the shortest
+possible time. Secretary Baker replied that no additional armies
+could be raised without the consent of Congress, that a plan for
+a much larger army was ready for the action of Congress when ever
+required, and that the general officers for all volunteer forces
+were to be drawn from the regular army. To this Roosevelt replied
+with the respectful suggestion that, as a retired
+Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army, he was eligible to
+any position of command over American troops. He recounted also
+his record of actual military experience and referred the
+Secretary to his immediate superiors in the field in Cuba as to
+his fitness for command of troops.
+
+When war had been finally declared, Secretary Baker and Roosevelt
+conferred together at length about the matter. Thereafter Mr.
+Baker wrote definitely, declaring that he would be obliged to
+withhold his approval from an expedition of the sort proposed.
+The grounds which he gave for the decision were that the soldiers
+sent across must not be "deprived . . . of the most experienced
+leadership available, in deference to any mere sentimental
+consideration," and that it should appear from every aspect of
+the expeditionary force, if one should be sent over (a point not
+yet determined upon) that "military considerations alone had
+determined its composition."
+
+To this definite refusal on the part of the Secretary of War
+Roosevelt replied at length. In his letter was a characteristic
+passage commenting upon Secretary Baker's reference to
+"sentimental considerations":
+
+"I have not asked you to consider any "sentimental value" in this
+matter. I am speaking of moral effect, not of sentimental value.
+Sentimentality is as different from morality as Rousseau's life
+from Abraham Lincoln's. I have just received a letter from James
+Bryce urging "the dispatch of an American force to the theater of
+war," and saying, "The moral effect of the appearance in the war
+line of an American force would be immense." From representatives
+of the French and British Governments and of the French, British,
+and Canadian military authorities, I have received statements to
+the same effect, in even more emphatic form, and earnest hopes
+that I myself should be in the force. Apparently your military
+advisers in this matter seek to persuade you that a "military
+policy" has nothing to do with "moral effect." If so, their
+militarism is like that of the Aulic Council of Vienna in the
+Napoleonic Wars, and not like that of Napoleon, who stated that
+in war the moral was to the material as two to one. These
+advisers will do well to follow the teachings of Napoleon and not
+those of the pedantic militarists of the Aulic Council, who were
+the helpless victims of Napoleon."
+
+Secretary Baker replied with a reiteration of his refusal.
+Roosevelt made one further attempt. When the Draft Law passed
+Congress, carrying with it the authorization to use volunteer
+forces, he telegraphed the President asking permission to raise
+two divisions, and four if so directed. The President replied
+with a definite negative, declaring that his conclusions were
+"based entirely upon imperative considerations of public policy
+and not upon personal or private choice." Meanwhile applications
+had been received from over three hundred thousand men desirous
+of joining Roosevelt's volunteer force, of whom it was estimated
+that at least two hundred thousand were physically fit, double
+the number needed for four divisions. That a single private
+citizen, by "one blast upon his bugle horn" should have been able
+to call forth three hundred thousand volunteers, all over draft
+age, was a tremendous testimony to his power. If his offer had
+been accepted when it was first made, there would have been an
+American force on the field in France long before one actually
+arrived there. It was widely believed, among men of intelligence
+and insight, not only in America but in Great Britain and France,
+that the arrival of such a force, under the command of a man
+known, admired, and loved the world over, would have been a
+splendid reinforcement to the Allied morale and a sudden blow to
+the German confidence. But the Administration would not have it
+so.
+
+I shall never forget one evening with Theodore Roosevelt on a
+speaking tour which he was making through the South in 1912.
+There came to our private car for dinner Senator Clarke of
+Arkansas and Jack Greenway, young giant of football fame and
+experience with the Rough Riders in Cuba. After dinner, Jack, who
+like many giants, is one of the most diffident men alive, said
+hesitatingly:
+
+"Colonel, I've long wanted to ask you something."
+
+"Go right ahead," said T. R., "what is it?"
+
+"Well, Colonel," said Jack, "I've always believed that it was
+your ambition to die on the field of battle."
+
+T. R. brought his hand down on the table with a crash that must
+have hurt the wood.
+
+"By Jove," said he, "how did you know that?"
+
+"Well, Colonel," said Jack, "do you remember that day in Cuba,
+when you and I were going along a trail and came upon ____ [one
+of the regiment] propped against a tree, shot through the
+abdomen? It was evident that he was done for. But instead of
+commiserating him, you grabbed his hand and said something like
+this, 'Well, old man, isn't this splendid!' Ever since then I've
+been sure you would be glad to die in battle yourself."
+
+T. R.'s face sobered a little.
+
+"You're right, Jack," he said. "I would."
+
+The end of Theodore Roosevelt's life seemed to come to him not in
+action but in quietness. But the truth was other than that. For
+it, let us turn again to Browning's lines:
+
+I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
+
+The best and the last!
+
+I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
+
+And bade me creep past.
+
+On the fifth of January in 1919, after sixty years of life, full
+of unwearied fighting against evil and injustice and falseness,
+he "fell on sleep." The end came peacefully in the night hours at
+Sagamore Hill. But until he laid him down that night, the fight
+he waged had known no relaxation. Nine months before he had
+expected death, when a serious mastoid operation had drained his
+vital forces. Then his one thought had been, not for himself, but
+for his sons to whom had been given the precious privilege,
+denied to him, of taking part in their country's and the world's
+great fight for righteousness. His sister, Mrs. Corinne Douglas
+Robinson, tells how in those shadowy hours he beckoned her to him
+and in the frailest of whispers said, "I'm glad it's I that lie
+here and that my boys are in the fight over there."
+
+His last, best fight was worthy of all the rest. With voice and
+pen he roused the minds and the hearts of his countrymen to their
+high mission in defense of human rights. It was not given to him
+to fall on the field of battle. But he went down with his face to
+the forces of evil with which he had never sought a truce.
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+The reader who is primarily interested in the career and
+personality of Roosevelt would do well to begin with his own
+volume, "Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography". But it was
+written in 1912, before the great campaign which produced the
+Progressive party.
+
+"Theodore Roosevelt the Citizen" (1904), by Jacob A. Riis, was
+published just after Roosevelt became President. It is an
+intimate and naively enthusiastic portrait by a man who was an
+intimate friend and an ardent admirer.
+
+There are two lives written since his death that are complete and
+discriminating. They are "The Life of Theodore Roosevelt" (1919),
+by William Draper Lewis, and "Theodore Roosevelt, an Intimate
+Biography" (1919), by William Roscoe Thayer.
+
+"Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt" (1919) is a volume of
+first-hand experiences, written by Lawrence F. Abbott of "The
+Outlook". The author was closely associated with Roosevelt on
+"The Outlook"; and after the African hunting trip met him at
+Khartum and went with him on his tour of the capitals of Europe.
+
+A small volume by Charles G. Washburn,"Theodore Roosevelt, the
+Logic of His Career" (1916), contains the interpretation of a
+long-time friend and sincere admirer.
+
+Collections of Roosevelt's writings and speeches covering the
+years from his becoming Governor of New York to the end of his
+Presidential terms are found in "The Roosevelt Policy", 2 vols.
+(1908) and "Presidential Addresses and State Papers", 4 vols.
+(1904). "The New Nationalism" (1910) is a collection of his
+speeches delivered between his return from Africa and the
+beginning of the Progressive campaign. His writings and speeches
+during the Great War are found in several volumes: "America and
+the World War" (1915); "Fear God and Take Your Own Part" (1916);
+"The Foes of Our Own Household" (1917); "The Great Adventure"
+(1919).
+
+Material on the Progressive movement and the Progressive party
+are to be found in "The Progressive Movement" (1915), by Benjamin
+Parke De Witt, "The Progressive Movement, Its Principles and Its
+Programme" (1913), by S. J. Duncan-Clark, "Presidential
+Nominations and Elections" (1916), by Joseph Bucklin Bishop, and
+"Third Party Movements" (1916), by Fred E. Haynes. The story of
+La Follette is set forth at greater length in his "Autobiography;
+A Personal Narrative of Political Experiences" (1918). Three
+other autobiographies contribute to an understanding of politics:
+"The Autobiography of Thomas C. Platt" (1910); J. B. Foraker,
+"Notes of a Busy Life", 2 vols. (1916). S. M. Cullom, "Fifty
+Years of Public Service" (1911).
+
+The history of the country during the years when Roosevelt became
+a national figure is recounted by J. H. Latane in "America as a
+World Power" and by F. A. Ogg in "National Progress", both
+volumes in the "American Nation" Series. Briefer summaries of the
+general history of at least a part of the period treated in the
+present volume are to be found in Frederic L. Paxson's "The New
+Nation" (1915), and Charles A. Beard's "Contemporary American
+History" (1914).
+
+The prosecution of the trusts may be followed in "Trust Laws and
+Unfair Competition" (Government Printing Office, 1916). Much
+useful material is contained in "Trusts, Pools and Corporations",
+edited by W. Z. Ripley (1916). W. H. Taft in "The Anti-Trust Law
+and the Supreme Court" (1914) defends the Sherman Act as
+interpreted by the courts during his administration.
+
+The progress of social and industrial justice is outlined in
+"Principles of Labor Legislation" (1916), by John R. Commons and
+John B. Andrews. The problems of conservation and the history of
+governmental policy are set forth by C. R. Van Hise in "The
+Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States" (1910).
+
+The "American Year Book" for the years 1910 to 1919 and the "New
+International Year Book" for the years 1907 to 1919 are
+invaluable sources of accurate and comprehensive information on
+the current history of the United States for the period which
+they cover.
+
+Willis Fletcher Johnson's "America's Foreign Relations", 2 vols.
+(1915) is a history of the relations of the United States to the
+rest of the world. A shorter account is given in C. R. Fish's
+"American Diplomacy" (1915).
+
+But much of the best material for the historical study of the
+first decade and a half of the twentieth century is to be found
+in the pages of the magazines and periodicals published during
+those years. "The Outlook", "The Independent", "The Literary
+Digest", "Collier's", "The Review of Reviews", "The World's
+Work", "Current Opinion", "The Nation", "The Commoner", La
+Follette's "Weekly"--all these are sources of great value. The
+Outlook is of especial usefulness because of Mr. Roosevelt's
+connection with it as Contributing Editor during the years
+between 1909 and 1914.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Theodore Roosevelt and His Times, by Howland
+
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