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 TheodoreRoosevelt: "I WAS EVER A FIGHTER. " That was the essence of the man, thatthe 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 thefull weight of his finality against it. He never capitulated, neversidestepped, never fought foul. He carried the fight to the enemy. 

His first fight was for health and bodily vigor. It began, at the ageof nine. Physically he was a weakling, his thin and ill-developed bodyracked with asthma. But it was only the physical power that was wanting, never the intellectual or the spiritual. He owed to his father, thefirst Theodore, the wise counsel that launched him on his determinedcontest against ill health. On the third floor of the house on EastTwentieth Street in New York where he was born, October 27, 1858, hisfather had constructed an outdoor gymnasium, fitted with all the usualparaphernalia. It was an impressive moment, Roosevelt used to say inlater years, when his father first led him into that gymnasium and saidto him, "Theodore, you have the brains, but brains are of comparativelylittle use without the body; you have got to make your body, and it lieswith you to make it. It's dull, hard work, but you can do it. " The boyknew that his father was right; and he set those white, powerful teethof his and took up the drudgery of daily, monotonous exercise with barsand rings and weights. "I can see him now, " says his sister, "faithfullygoing through various exercises, at different times of the day, tobroaden the chest narrowed by this terrible shortness of breath, tomake the limbs and back strong, and able to bear the weight of what wascoming to him later in life. "

All through his boyhood the young Theodore Roosevelt kept up his fightfor strength. He was too delicate to attend school, and was taught byprivate tutors. He spent many of his summers, and sometimes some ofthe winter months, in the woods of Maine. These outings he thoroughlyenjoyed, but it is certain that the main motive which sent him into therough life of the woods to hunt and tramp, to paddle and row and swingan axe, was the obstinate determination to make himself physically fit. 

His fight for bodily power went on through his college course at Harvardand during the years that he spent in ranch life in the West. He wasalways intensely interested in boxing, although he was never of anythinglike championship caliber in the ring. His first impulse to learn todefend himself with his hands had a characteristic birth. 

During one of his periodical attacks of asthma he was sent alone toMoosehead Lake in Maine. On the stagecoach that took him the last stageof the journey he met two boys of about his own age. They quicklyfound, he says, in his "Autobiography", that he was "a foreordained andpredestined victim" for their rough teasing, and they "industriouslyproceeded to make life miserable" for their fellow traveler. At lastyoung Roosevelt could endure their persecutions no loner, and tried tofight. Great was his discomfiture when he discovered that either of themalone could handle him "with easy contempt. " They hurt him little, but, what was doubtless far more humiliating, they prevented him from doingany damage whatever in return. 

The experience taught the boy, better than any good advice could havedone, that he must learn to defend himself. Since he had little naturalprowess, he realized that he must supply its place by training. Hesecured his father's approval for a course of boxing lessons, upon whichhe entered at once. He has described himself as a "painfully slow andawkward pupil, " who worked for two or three years before he made anyperceptible progress. 

In college Roosevelt kept at boxing practice. Even in those days noantagonist, no matter how much his superior, ever made him "quit. " Inhis ranching days, that training with his fists stood him in good stead. Those were still primitive days out in the Dakotas, though now, asRoosevelt has said, that land of the West has "'gone, gone with the lostAtlantis, ' gone to the isle of ghosts and of strange dead memories. " Aman 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 abovea loft with fifteen or twenty beds in it. When he entered the bar-roomlate in the evening--it was a cold night and there was nowhere elseto go--a would-be "bad man, " with a cocked revolver in each hand, wasstriding up and down the floor, talking with crude profanity. There wereseveral bullet holes in the clock face, at which he had evidently beenshooting. This bully greeted the newcomer as "Four Eyes, " in referenceto his spectacles, and announced, "Four Eyes is going to treat. "Roosevelt joined in the laugh that followed and sat down behind thestove, thinking to escape notice. But the "bad man" followed him, andin spite of Roosevelt's attempt to pass the matter over as a joke, stoodover him, with a gun in each hand and using the foulest language. "Hewas foolish, " said Roosevelt, in describing the incident, "to stand sonear, and moreover, his heels were closer together, so that his positionwas 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 withhis right fist just to the left side of the point of the jaw, and, as hestraightened up hit with his left, and again with his right. The bully'sguns 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 thestation and left on a freight. " It was eminently characteristic ofRoosevelt that he tried his best to avoid trouble, but that, when hecould 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 anaccident, 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 andoptical disabilities. A young artillery captain, with whom he was boxingin the White House, cross-countered him on the left eye, and the blowbroke the little blood-vessels. Ever afterward, the sight of that eyewas dim; and, as he said, "if it had been the right eye I should havebeen entirely unable to shoot. " To "a mighty hunter before the Lord"like Theodore Roosevelt, such a result would have been a cardinalcalamity. 

By the time his experiences in the West were over, Roosevelt's fightfor health had achieved its purpose. Bill Sewall, the woodsman who hadintroduced 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, sufferingfrom 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 dependenton 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 Rooseveltnever ceased fighting. He knew that the man who neglects exercise andtraining, no matter how perfect his physical trim, is certain to "goback. " One day many years afterward on Twenty-third Street, on the wayback from an Outlook editorial luncheon, I ran against his shoulder, asone often will with a companion on crowded city streets, and felt as ifit were a massive oak tree into which I had bumped. Roosevelt the grownman of hardened physique was certainly a transformation from that "reedshaken with the wind" of his boyhood days. 

When Theodore Roosevelt left Harvard in 1880, he plunged promptly intoa 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 nointention or desire to live a life of leisure. He always believed thatthe first duty of a man was to "pull his own weight in the boat"; andhis 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 theRepublican party") he knocked at the door of the Twenty-first DistrictRepublican Association in the city of New York. His friends among theNew Yorkers of cultivated taste and comfortable life disapproved of hisdesire 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 andunpleasant. Roosevelt merely replied that, if this were the case, itwas those men and not his "silk-stocking" friends who constituted thegoverning class--and that he intended to be one of the governing classhimself. If he could not hold his own with those who were really inpractical politics, he supposed he would have to quit; but he did notintend to quit without making the experiment. 

At every step in his career Theodore Roosevelt made friends. He madethem 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 thatDistrict Association, from which his friends had warned him away, he found a young Irishman who had been a gang leader in therough-and-tumble politics of the East Side. Driven by the winter windof man's ingratitude from Tammany Hall into the ranks of the oppositeparty, Joe Murray was at this time one of the lesser captains in "theTwenty-first" Roosevelt soon came to like him. He was "by nature asstraight a man, as fearless, and as staunchly loyal, " said Roosevelt, "as any one whom I have ever met, a man to be trusted in any positiondemanding courage, integrity, and good faith. " The liking was returnedby the eager and belligerent young Irishman, though he has confessedthat he was first led to consider Roosevelt as a political ally from thepoint 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 canonicalkind; dingy benches, spittoons, a dais at one end with a table andchair, and a stout pitcher for iced water, and on the walls picturesof General Grant, and of Levi P. Morton, " Joe Murray was engaged ina conflict with "the boss" and wanted a candidate of his own for theAssembly. He picked out Roosevelt, because he thought that with him hewould be most likely to win. Win they did; the nomination was snatchedaway from the boss's man, and election followed. The defeated bossgood-humoredly turned in to help elect the young silk-stocking who hadbeen 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 thegeneral course of events in the State. His career at Albany was markedby a series of fights for decency and honesty. Each new contest showedhim a fearless antagonist, a hard hitter, and a man of practical commonsense and growing political wisdom. Those were the days of the famous"black horse cavalry" in the New York Legislature--a group of men whosevotes could always be counted on by the special interests and thosecorporations whose managers proceeded on the theory that the way to getthe legislation they wanted, or to block the legislation they did notwant, was to buy the necessary votes. Perhaps one-third of the membersof the Legislature, according to Roosevelt's estimate, were purchasable. Others were timid. Others again were either stupid or honestly soconvinced of the importance of "business" to the general welfare thatthey were blind to corporate faults. But Theodore Roosevelt was neitherpurchasable, nor timid, nor unable to distinguish between the legitimaterequirements of business and its unjustifiable demands. He developed asa 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 thepublic interest, but would certainly have been highly embarrassing tothe private interests involved. The purpose of their introduction was, of course, to compel the corporations to pay bribes to ensure theirdefeat. Roosevelt had one interesting and illuminating experience withthe "black horse cavalry. " He was Chairman of the Committee on Cities. The representatives of one of the great railways brought to him a billto permit the extension of its terminal facilities in one of the bigcities of the State, and asked him to take charge of it. Rooseveltlooked into the proposed bill and found that it was a measure that oughtto be passed quite as much in the public interest as is the interest ofthe railroad. He agreed to stand sponsor for the bill, provided he wereassured that no money would be used to push it. The assurance was given. When the bill came before his committee for consideration, Rooseveltfound that he could not get it reported out either favorably orunfavorably. So he decided to force matters. In accordance withhis life-long practice, he went into the decisive committee meetingperfectly 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 ofthat chair was unobtrusively ready to his hand. He moved that the billbe reported favorably. 

The gang, without debate, voted "No. " He moved that it be reportedunfavorably. Again the gang voted "No. " Then he put the bill in hispocket and announced that he proposed to report it anyhow. There wasalmost a riot. He was warned that his conduct would be exposed on thefloor of the Assembly. He replied that in that case he would explainpublicly in the Assembly the reasons which made him believe that therest of the committee were trying, from motives of blackmail, to preventany 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 youngfighter found that he was no farther along: the bill slumbered soundlyon the calendar, and nothing that he could do availed to secureconsideration of it. At last the representative of the railroadsuggested that some older and more experienced leader might be able toget the bill passed where he had failed. Roosevelt could do nothing butassent. The bill was put in charge of an "old Parliamentary hand, "and after a decent lapse of time, went through without opposition. Thecomplete change of heart on the part of the black horsemen under thenew leadership was vastly significant. Nothing could be proved; but muchcould be surmised. 

Another incident of Roosevelt's legislative career reveals the bull-dogtenacity of the man. Evidence had been procured that a State judgehad been guilty of improper, if not of corrupt, relations with certaincorporate 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 thisfinancier, "I am willing to go to the very verge of judicial discretionto serve your vast interests. " There was strong evidence that he hadnot stopped at the verge. The blood of the young Roosevelt boiled at thethought of this stain on the judicial ermine. His party elders soughtpatronizingly to reassure him; but he would have none of it. He rose inthe Assembly and demanded the impeachment of the unworthy judge. Withperfect candor and the naked vigor that in the years to come was tobecome known the world around he said precisely what he meant. Under thegenial sardonic advice of the veteran Republican leader, who "wished togive young Mr. Roosevelt time to think about the wisdom of his course, "the Assembly voted not to take up his "loose charges. " It looked likeignominious defeat. But the next day the young firebrand was back to theattack again, and the next day, and the next. For eight days he kept upthe fight; each day the reputation of this contest for a forlorn hopegrew and spread throughout the State. On the eighth day he demanded thatthe resolution be voted on again, and the opposition collapsed. Only sixvotes were cast against his motion. It is true that the investigationended in a coat of whitewash. But the evidence was so strong that noone could be in doubt that it WAS whitewash. The young legislator, whoseparty mentors had seen before him nothing but a ruined career, had won asmashing moral victory. 

Roosevelt was not only a fighter from his first day in public lifeto the last, but he was a fighter always against the same evils. Twoincidents more than a quarter of a century apart illustrate this fact. A bill was introduced in the Assembly in those earlier days to prohibitthe manufacture of cigars in tenement houses in New York City. It wasproposed by the Cigar-Makers' Union. Roosevelt was appointed one of acommittee of three to investigate the subject. Of the other two members, one did not believe in the bill but confessed privately that he mustsupport it because the labor unions were strong in his district. Theother, with equal frankness, confessed that he had to oppose the billbecause certain interests who had a strong hold upon him disapproved it, but declared his belief that if Roosevelt would look into the matterhe would find that the proposed legislation was good. Politics, andpoliticians, were like that in those days--as perhaps they still arein these. The young aristocrat, who was fast becoming a stalwart andaggressive democrat, expected to find himself against the bill; for, as he has said, the "respectable people" and the "business men" whomhe knew did not believe in such intrusions upon the right even ofworkingmen to do what they would with their own. The laissez fairedoctrine of economic life was good form in those days. 

But the only member of that committee that approached the question withan open mind found that his first impressions were wrong. He went downinto the tenement houses to see for himself. He found cigars being madeunder conditions that were appalling. For example, he discoveredan apartment of one room in which three men, two women, and severalchildren--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 offood. " These conditions were not exceptional; they were only a littleworse than was usual. 

Roosevelt did not oppose the bill; he fought for it and it passed. Thenhe appeared before Governor Cleveland to argue for it on behalf of theCigar-Makers' Union. The Governor hesitated, but finally signed it. TheCourt of Appeals declared it unconstitutional, in a smug and well-feddecision, which spoke unctuously of the "hallowed" influences of the"home. " It was a wicked decision, because it was purely academic, andwas removed as far as the fixed stars from the actual facts of life. Butit had one good result. It began the making of Theodore Roosevelt intoa champion of social justice, for, as he himself said, it was this casewhich first waked him "to a dim and partial understanding of the factthat the courts were not necessarily the best judges of what should bedone to better social and industrial conditions. "

When, a quarter, of a century later, Roosevelt left the Presidency andbecame Contributing Editor of The Outlook, almost his first contributionto that journal was entitled "A Judicial Experience. " It told the storyof this law and its annulment by the court. Mr. William Travers Jeromewrote a letter to The Outlook, taking Roosevelt sharply to task for hiscriticism of the court. It fell to the happy lot of the writer as a cubeditor to reply editorially to Mr. Jerome. I did so with gusto andwith particularity. As Mr. Roosevelt left the office on his way to thesteamer 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. Youhave 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 wouldtell Root or Taft to find out and tell me why what I had done was legaland justified. Well done, coworker. " Is it any wonder that TheodoreRoosevelt had made in that moment another ardent supporter?

Those first years in the political arena were not only a fightingtime, they were a formative time. The young Roosevelt had to discovera philosophy of political action which would satisfy him. He speedilyfound 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. Longafterward he told his good friend Jacob Riis how he arrived at it. Thiswas 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: myown conscience, my own judgment, were to decide in all things. I wouldlisten to no argument, no advice. I took the isolated peak on everyissue, and my people left me. When I looked around, before the sessionwas well under way, I found myself alone. I was absolutely deserted. The people didn't understand. The men from Erie, from Suffolk, fromanywhere, would not work with me. 'He won't listen to anybody, ' theysaid, and I would not. My isolated peak had become a valley; every bitof influence I had was gone. The things I wanted to do I was powerlessto accomplish. What did I do? I looked the ground over and made up mymind that there were several other excellent people there, with honestopinions of the right, even though they differed from me. I turned in tohelp them, and they turned to and gave me a hand. And so we were able toget things done. We did not agree in all things, but we did in some, andthose 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 ascrew-driver, a hatchet, and a chisel to make a boat with, why, gomake the best one you can. It would be better if you had a saw, but youhaven't. So with men. Here is my friend in Congress who is a good man, astrong 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, andwe have to work together as we can. There is a point, of course, wherea man must take the isolated peak and break with it all for clearprinciple, but until it comes he must work, if he would be of use, withmen as they are. As long as the good in them overbalances the evil, lethim work with that for the best that can be got. "

From the moment that he had learned this valuable lesson--and Rooseveltnever needed to learn a lesson twice--he had his course in public lifemarked out before him. He believed ardently in getting things done. Hewas no theoretical reformer. He would never take the wrong road; but, ifhe could not go as far as he wanted to along the right road, he wouldgo as far as he could, and bide his time for the rest. He wouldnot compromise a hair's breadth on a principle; he would compromisecheerfully on a method which did not mean surrender of the principle. He perceived that there were in political life many bad men whowere thoroughly efficient and many good men who would have liked toaccomplish high results but who were thoroughly inefficient. He realizedthat if he wished to accomplish anything for the country his businesswas to combine decency and efficiency; to be a thoroughly practicalman of high ideals who did his best to reduce those ideals to actualpractice. This was the choice that he made in those first days, thecompanionable road of practical idealism rather than the isolated peakof idealistic ineffectiveness. 

A hard test of his political philosophy came in 1884 just after he hadleft the Legislature. He was selected as one of the four delegates atlarge from New York to the Republican National Convention. There headvocated vigorously the nomination of Senator George F. Edmunds for thePresidency. But the more popular candidate with the delegates was JamesG. Blaine. Roosevelt did not believe in Blaine, who was a politician ofthe professional type and who had a reputation that was not immaculate. The better element among the delegates fought hard against Blaine'snomination, with Roosevelt wherever the blows were shrewdest. Buttheir efforts were of no avail. Too many party hacks had come to theConvention, determined to nominate Blaine, and they put the slatethrough with a whoop. 

Then, every Republican in active politics who was anything but a rubberstamp politician had a difficult problem to face. Should he supportBlaine, in whom he could have no confidence and for whom he could haveno respect, or should he "bolt"? A large group decided to bolt. Theyorganized the Mugwump party--the epithet was flung at them with nofriendly intent by Charles A. Dana of the New York Sun, but they made ofit an honorable title--under the leadership of George William Curtis andCarl Schurz. Their announced purpose was to defeat the Republicans, fromwhose ranks they had seceded, and in this attempt they were successful. 

Roosevelt, however, made the opposite decision. Indeed, he had made thedecision before he entered the Convention. It was characteristic of himnot to wait until the choice was upon him but to look ahead and makeup his mind just which course he would take if and when a certaincontingency arose. I remember that once in the later days at Oyster Bayhe said to me, "They say I am impulsive. It isn't true. The fact is thaton all the important things that may come up for decision in my life, Ihave thought the thing out in advance and know what I will do. So whenthe moment comes, I don't have to stop to work it out then. My decisionis already made. I have only to put it into action. It looks likeimpulsiveness. 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 wasa party man. The decision wounded many of his friends. But it was thenatural result of his political philosophy. He believed in politicalparties as instruments for securing the translation into action of thepopular will. He perceived that the party system, as distinguished fromthe group system of the continental peoples, was the Anglo-Saxon, theAmerican way of doing things. He wanted to get things done. There wasonly one thing that he valued more than achievement and that was theright. Therefore, until it became a clean issue between right and wrong, he would stick to the instrument which seemed to him the most efficientfor getting things done. So he stuck to his party, in spite of hisdistaste for its candidate, and saw it go down in defeat. 

Roosevelt never changed his mind about this important matter. He was aparty man to the end. In 1912 he left his old party on what he believedto be--and what was--a naked moral issue. But he did not become anindependent. He created a new party. 

CHAPTER III. THE CHAMPION OF CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

The four years after the Cleveland-Blaine campaign were divided into twoparts for Roosevelt by another political experience, which alsoresulted in defeat. He was nominated by the Republicans and a groupof independents for Mayor of New York. His two opponents were Abram S. Hewitt, a business man of standing who had been inveigled, no one knowshow, into lending respectability to the Tammany ticket in a criticalmoment, and Henry George, the father of the Single Tax doctrine, whohad been nominated by a conference of some one hundred and seventy-fivelabor organizations. Roosevelt fought his best on a personal platform of"no class or caste" but "honest and economical government on behalf ofthe general wellbeing. " But the inevitable happened. Tammany slipped inbetween its divided enemies and made off with the victory. 

The rest of the four years he spent partly in ranch life out in theDakotas, 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, ofdeveloping a physical equipment adequate for any call he could make uponit. This sojourn on the plains gave him, too, an intimate knowledge ofthe frontier type of American. Theodore Roosevelt loved his fellow men. What is more, he was always interested in them, not abstractly and inthe mass, but concretely and in the individual. He believed in them. He knew their strength and their virtues, and he rejoiced in them. Herealized their weaknesses and their softnesses and fought them hard. Itwas all this that made him the thoroughgoing democrat that he was. "Theaverage American, " I have heard him say a hundred times to all kindsof audiences, "is a pretty good fellow, and his wife is a still betterfellow. " He not only enjoyed those years in the West to the full, but heprofited by them as well. They broadened and deepened his knowledgeof what the American people were and meant. They made vivid to himthe value of the simple, robust virtues of self-reliance, courage, self-denial, tolerance, and justice. The influence of those hard-ridingyears was with him as a great asset to the end of his life. 

In the Presidential campaign of 1888, Roosevelt was on the firing lineagain, fighting for the Republican candidate, Benjamin Harrison. When Mr. Harrison was elected, he would have liked to put the youngcampaigner into the State Department. But Mr. Blaine, who becameSecretary of State, did not care to have his plain-spoken opponent andcritic under him. So the President offered Roosevelt the post of CivilService Commissioner. 

The spoils system had become habitual and traditional in American publiclife by sixty years of practice. It had received its first high sanctionin the cynical words of a New York politician, "To the victor belong thespoils. " Politicians looked upon it as a normal accompaniment of theiractivities. The public looked upon it with indifference. But finally agroup of irrepressible reformers succeeded in getting the camel's noseunder the flap of the tent. A law was passed establishing a Commissionwhich was to introduce the merit system. But even then neither thepoliticians nor the public, nor the Commission itself, took the mattervery seriously. The Commission was in the habit of carrying on itsfunctions perfunctorily and unobtrusively. But nothing could beperfunctory where Roosevelt was. He would never permit things to bedone--or left undone unobtrusively, when what was needed was to obtrudethe matter forcibly on the public mind. He was a profound believer inthe value of publicity. 

When Roosevelt became Commissioner things began swiftly to happen. Hehad two firm convictions: that laws were made to be enforced, in theletter and in the spirit; and that the only thing worth while in theworld was to get things done. He believed with a hot conviction indecency, honesty, and efficiency in public as in private life. 

For six years he fought and infused his fellow Commissioners with someof his fighting spirit. They were good men but easy-going until theright leadership came along. The first effort of the Commission underthe new leadership was to secure the genuine enforcement of the law. Thebackbone of the merit system was the competitive examination. This wasnot because such examinations are the infallible way to get good publicservants, but because they are the best way that has yet been devisedto keep out bad public servants, selected for private reasons havingnothing to do with the public welfare. The effort to make theseexaminations and the subsequent appointments of real service to thenation rather than to the politicians naturally brought the Commissioninto conflict with many men of low ideals, both in Congress and without. Roosevelt found a number of men in Congress--like Senator Lodge, SenatorDavis of Minnesota, Senator Platt of Connecticut, and Congressman(afterward President) McKinley--who were sincerely and vigorouslyopposed to the spoils system. But there were numbers of other Senatorsand Congressmen who hated the whole reform--everything connected withit and everybody who championed it. "Sometimes, " Roosevelt said of thesemen, "to use a legal phrase, their hatred was for cause, and sometimesit was peremptory--that is, sometimes the Commission interfered withtheir most efficient, and incidentally most corrupt and unscrupuloussupporters, and at other times, where there was no such interference, a man nevertheless had an innate dislike of anything that tended todecency in government. "

Conflict with these men was inevitable. Sometimes their opposition tookthe form of trying to cut down the appropriation for the Commission. 

Then the Commission, on Roosevelt's suggestion, would try the effect ofholding no examinations in the districts of the Senators or Congressmenwho had voted against the appropriation. The response from the districtswas instantaneous. Frantic appeals came to the Commission from aspirantsfor office. The reply would be suave and courteous. One can imagineRoosevelt 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 aninterpolated sentence in his own vigorous and rugged script. Those addedsentences, without which any typewritten Roosevelt letter might almostbe declared to be a forgery, so uniformly did the impulse to add themseize him, were always the most interesting feature of a communicationfrom him. The letter would inform the protesting one that unfortunatelythe appropriation had been cut, so that examinations could not be heldin every district, and that obviously the Commission could not neglectthe districts of those Congressmen who believed in the reform andtherefore in the examinations. The logical next step for the hungryaspirant was to transfer the attack to his Congressman or Senator. Inthe long run, by this simple device of backfiring, which may well havebeen a reminiscence of prairie fire days in the West, the Commissionobtained 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 appearanceof Roosevelt before such an investigating body invariably resulted ina "bully time" for him and a peculiarly disconcerting time for hisopponents. 

One of the Republican floor leaders in the House in those days wasCongressman Grosvenor from Ohio. In an unwary moment Mr. Grosvenorattacked the Commission on the floor of the House in picturesquefashion. Roosevelt promptly asked that Mr. Grosvenor be invited tomeet him before a congressional committee which was at that momentinvestigating the activities of the Commission. The Congressman didnot accept the invitation until he heard that Roosevelt was leavingWashington for his ranch in the West. Then he notified the committeethat he would be glad to meet Commissioner Roosevelt at one of itssessions. Roosevelt immediately postponed his journey and met him. Mr. Grosvenor, says Roosevelt in his Autobiography, "proved to be a personof happily treacherous memory, so that the simple expedient of arranginghis statements in pairs was sufficient to reduce him to confusion. " Hedeclared to the committee, for instance, that he did not want to repealthe Civil Service Law and had never said so. Roosevelt produced one ofMr. Grosvenor's speeches in which he had said, "I will not only voteto strike out this provision, but I will vote to repeal the whole law. "Grosvenor declared that there was no inconsistency between these twostatements. At another point in his testimony, he asserted that acertain applicant for office, who had, as he put it, been fraudulentlycredited to his congressional district, had never lived in that districtor in Ohio, so far as he knew. Roosevelt brought forth a letter inwhich the Congressman himself had categorically stated that the man inquestion was not only a legal resident of his district but was actuallyliving there then. He explained, says Roosevelt, "first, that he hadnot written the letter; second, that he had forgotten he had writtenthe letter; and, third, that he was grossly deceived when he wroteit. " Grosvenor at length accused Roosevelt of a lack of humor in notappreciating that his statements were made "in a jesting way, " anddeclared that "a Congressman making a speech on the floor of the Houseof Representatives was perhaps in a little different position froma witness on the witness stand. " Finally he rose with dignity and, asserting his constitutional right not to be questioned elsewhere as towhat he said on the floor of the House, withdrew, leaving Roosevelt andthe Committee equally delighted with the opera bouffe in which he hadplayed the leading part. 

In the Roosevelt days the Commission carried on its work, as of courseit should, without thought of party. It can be imagined how it madethe "good" Republicans rage when one of the results of the impartialapplication system was to put into office from the Southern States ahundred or two Democrats. The critics of the Commission were equallynon-partisan; there was no politics in spoilsmanship. The case ofMr. Grosvenor was matched by that of Senator Gorman of Maryland, theDemocratic leader in the Senate. Mr. Gorman told upon the floor of theSenate the affecting story of "a bright young man from Baltimore, " aSunday School scholar, well recommended by his pastor, who aspired tobe a letter carrier. He appeared before the Commission for examination, and, according to Mr. Gorman, he was first asked to describe theshortest route from Baltimore to China. The "bright young man" repliedbrightly, according to Mr. Gorman, that he didn't want to go fromBaltimore to China, and therefore had never concerned himself about thechoice of routes. He was then asked, according to Mr. Gorman, all aboutthe steamship lines from America to Europe; then came questions ingeology, and finally in chemistry. The Commission thereupon turned thebright young applicant down. The Senator's speech was masterly. It musthave made the spoilsmen chuckle and the friends of civil service reformsquirm. It had neither of these effects on Roosevelt. It merely explodedhim into action like a finger on a hair-trigger. First of all, he setabout hunting down the facts. Facts were his favorite ammunition in afight. They have such a powerful punch. A careful investigation ofall the examination papers which the Commission had set revealed not asingle question like those from which the "bright young man, " accordingto Mr. Gorman, had suffered. So Roosevelt wrote to the Senator askingfor the name of the "bright young man. " There was no response. He alsoasked, in case Mr. Gorman did not care to reveal his identity, the dateof the examination. Still no reply. Roosevelt offered to give to anyrepresentative whom Mr. Gorman would send to the Commission's officesall the aid he could in discovering in the files any such questions. Theoffer was ignored. But the Senator expressed himself as so shocked atthis doubting of the word of his brilliant protege that he was unable toanswer the letter at all. 

Roosevelt thereupon announced publicly that no such questions had everbeen asked. Mr. Gorman was gravely injured by the whole incident. Laterhe declared in the Senate that he had received a "very impudent letter"from the young Commissioner, and that he had been "cruelly" calledto account because he had tried to right a "great wrong" which theCommission had committed. Roosevelt's retort was to tell the whole storypublicly, 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 hedid not even try to find out his name--if he had a name; in fact, hisname like everything else about him, remains to this day wrapped in theStygian mantle of an abysmal mystery. Still less has Mr. Gorman tried toverify the statements made to him. It is enough for him that they weremade. No harsh suspicion, no stern demand for evidence or proof, appealsto his artless and unspoiled soul. He believes whatever he is told, evenwhen he has forgotten the name of the teller, or never knew it. It wouldindeed be difficult to find an instance of a more abiding confidence inhuman nature--even in anonymous human nature. And this is the end of thetale of the Arcadian Mr. Gorman and his elusive friend, the bright youngman without a name. "

Even so near the beginning of his career, Roosevelt showed himselfperfectly fearless in attack. He would as soon enter the lists against aSenator as a Congressman, as soon challenge a Cabinet member as either. He did not even hesitate to make it uncomfortable for the President towhom he owed his continuance in office. His only concern was for thehonor of the public service which he was in office to defend. 

One day he appeared at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the CivilService Reform Association. George William Curtis was presiding, andRoosevelt's old friend, George Haven Putnam, who tells the story, wasalso present. Roosevelt began by hurling a solemn but hearty imprecationat the head of the Postmaster General. He went on to explain that hisexplosive wrath was due to the fact that that particular gentleman wasthe most pernicious of all the enemies of the merit system. It was oneof 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 wasintended to prevent. They strengthened the hands of the politicalmachines and the bosses, and at the same time weakened the efficiency ofthe service. Roosevelt had from time to time reported to the PostmasterGeneral what some of the Post Office employees were doing in politicalways to the detriment of the service. His account of what happened wasthis:

"I placed before the Postmaster-General sworn statements in regard tothese political activities and the only reply I could secure was, 'This is all second-hand evidence. ' Then I went up to Baltimore atthe invitation of our good friend, a member of the National Committee, Charles J. Bonaparte. Bonaparte said that he could bring me into directtouch with some of the matters complained about. He took me to theprimary meetings with some associate who knew by name the carriers andthe customs officials. I was able to see going on the work of politicalassessments, and I heard the instructions given to the carriers andothers in regard to the moneys that they were to collect. I got thenames of some of these men recorded in my memorandum book. I thenwent back to Washington, swore myself in as a witness before myself asCommissioner, and sent the sworn statement to the Postmaster-Generalwith the word, 'This at least is firsthand evidence. ' I still got noreply, and after waiting a few days, I put the whole material beforethe President with a report. This report has been pigeonholed by thePresident, and I have now come to New York to see what can be done toget the evidence before the public. You will understand that the headof a department, having made a report to the President, can do nothingfurther with the material until the President permits. "

Roosevelt went back to Washington with the sage advice to ask the CivilService Committee of the House to call upon him to give evidence inregard to the working of the Civil Service Act. He could then get intothe record his first-hand evidence as well as a general statement ofthe bad practices which were going on. This evidence, when printed asa report of the congressional committee, could be circulated by theAssociation. Roosevelt bettered the advice by asking to have thePostmaster General called before the committee at the same time ashimself. This was done, but that timid politician replied to theChairman of the committee that "he would hold himself at the serviceof the Committee for any date on which Mr. Roosevelt was not to bepresent. " The politicians with uneasy consciences were getting a littlewary about face-to-face encounters with the young fighter. NeverthelessRoosevelt's testimony was given and circulated broadcast, as MajorPutnam writes, "much to the dissatisfaction of the Postmaster Generaland probably of the President. "

The six years which Roosevelt spent on the Civil Service Commissionwere for him years of splendid training in the methods and practicesof political life. What he learned then stood him in good stead when hecame to the Presidency. Those years of Roosevelt's gave an impetus tothe cause of civil reform which far surpassed anything it had receiveduntil his time. Indeed, it is probably not unfair to say that it hasreceived no greater impulse since. 

CHAPTER IV. HAROUN AL ROOSEVELT

In 1895, at the age of thirty-six, Roosevelt was asked by Mayor Strongof New York City, who had just been elected on an anti-Tammany ticket, to become a member of his Administration. Mayor Strong wanted him forStreet Cleaning Commissioner. Roosevelt definitely refused that office, on the ground that he had no special fitness for it, but acceptedreadily the Mayor's subsequent proposal that he should become Presidentof 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. Theconditions under which it must be done were dishearteningly unfavorable. In the first place, the whole scheme of things was wrong. The PoliceDepartment was governed by one of those bi-partisan commissions whichwell-meaning theorists are wont sometimes to set up when they think thatthe important thing in government is to have things arranged so thatnobody can do anything harmful. The result often is that nobody can doanything at all. There were four Commissioners, two supposed to belongto 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 trialsubject to review by the courts. The scheme put a premium on intriguingand obstruction. It was far inferior to the present plan of a singleCommissioner with full power, subject only to the Mayor who appointshim. 

But there is an interesting lesson to be learned from a comparisonbetween the New York Police Department as it is today and as it wastwenty-five years ago. Then the scheme of organization was thoroughlybad--and the department was at its high-water mark of honest andeffective activity. Now the scheme of organization is excellent--but theless said about the way it works the better. The answer to the riddle isthis: today the New York police force is headed by Tammany; the name ofthe particular Tammany man who is Commissioner does not matter. In thosedays the head was Roosevelt. 

There were many good men on the force then as now. What Rooseveltsaid of the men of his time is as true today: "There are no better menanywhere than the men of the New York police force; and when they go badit is because the system is wrong, and because they are not given thechance to do the good work they can do and would rather do. " The firstfight that Roosevelt found on his hands was to keep politics and everykind of favoritism absolutely out of the force. During his six years asCivil Service Commissioner he had learned much about the way to get goodmen into the public service. He was now able to put his own theoriesinto practice. His method was utterly simple and incontestably right. "As far as was humanly possible, the appointments and promotions weremade without regard to any question except the fitness of the man andthe needs of the service. " That was all. "We paid, " he said, "not theslightest 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 convinceeither the politicians or the public that the Commission really meantwhat it said. In view of the long record of unblushing corruption inconnection with every activity in the Police Department, and of theexistence, which was a matter of common knowledge, of a regular tarifffor appointments and promotions, it is little wonder that the news thatevery one on, or desiring to get on, the force would have a square dealwas received with scepticism. But such was the fact. Roosevelt broughtthe whole situation out into the open, gave the widest possiblepublicity to what the Commission was doing, and went hotly after anyintimation of corruption. 

One secret of his success here as everywhere else was that he did thingshimself. He knew things of his own knowledge. One evening he wentdown to the Bowery to speak at a branch of the Young Men's ChristianAssociation. There he met a young Jew, named Raphael, who had recentlydisplayed unusual courage and physical prowess in rescuing women andchildren from a burning building. Roosevelt suggested that he trythe examination for entrance to the force. Young Raphael did so, wassuccessful, and became a policeman of the best type. He and his family, said Roosevelt, "have been close friends of mine ever since. " Anothercomment which he added is delicious and illuminating: "To show ourcommunity of feeling and our grasp of the facts of life, I may mentionthat we were almost the only men in the Police Department who pickedFitzsimmons as a winner against Corbett. " There is doubtless much inthis little incident shocking to the susceptibilities of many who wouldconsider themselves among the "best" people. But Roosevelt would carelittle for that. He was a real democrat; and to his great soul there wasnothing either incongruous or undesirable in having--and in admittingthat he had--close friends in an East Side Jewish family just over fromRussia. He believed, too, in "the strenuous life, " in boxing and inprize fighting when it was clean. He could meet a subordinate as man toman on the basis of such a personal matter as their respective judgmentof two prize fighters, without relaxing in the slightest degree theirofficial relations. He was a man of realities, who knew how to preservethe real distinctions of life without insisting on the artificial ones. 

One of the best allies that Roosevelt had was Jacob A. Riis, thatextraordinary man with the heart of a child, the courage of a lion, andthe spirit of a crusader, who came from Denmark as an immigrant, trampedthe streets of New York and the country roads without a place to lay hishead, became one of the best police reporters New York ever knew, and grew to be a flaming force for righteousness in the city of hisadoption. His book, "How the Other Half Lives", did more to clean upthe worst slums of the city than any other single thing. When the bookappeared, Roosevelt went to Mr. Riis's office, found him out, and lefta card which said simply, "I have read your book. I have come downto help. " When Roosevelt became Police Commissioner, Riis was in theTribune Police Bureau in Mulberry Street, opposite Police Headquarters, already a well valued friend. Roosevelt took him for guide, and togetherthey tramped about the dark spots of the city in the night hours whenthe underworld slips its mask and bares its arm to strike. Roosevelthad to know for himself. He considered that he had two duties as PoliceCommissioner: one to make the police force an honest and effectivepublic servant; the other to use his position "to help in making thecity a better place in which to live and work for those to whom theconditions of life and labor were hardest. " These night wanderings of"Haroun al Roosevelt, " as some one successfully ticketed him in allusionto the great Caliph's similar expeditions, were powerful aids to thetightening up of discipline and to the encouragement of good work bypatrolmen and roundsmen. The unfaithful or the easy-going man on thebeat, who allowed himself to be beguiled by the warmth and cheer of asaloon 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 gleamingspectacles of a tough-set figure that he knew as the embodiment ofrelentless justice. But the faithful knew no less surely that he wastheir best friend and champion. 

In the old days of "the system, " not only appointment to the force andpromotion, but recognition of exceptional achievement went by favor. Thepoliceman who risked his life in the pursuit of duty and accomplishedsome big thing against great odds could not be sure of the reward towhich he was entitled unless he had political pull. It was even the rulein the Department that the officer who spoiled his uniform in rescuingman, woman, or child from the waters of the river must get a new oneat his own expense. "The system" knew neither justice nor fair play. Itknew nothing but the cynical phrase of Richard Croker, Tammany Hall'sfamous boss, "my own pocket all the time. " But Roosevelt changed allthat. He had not been in Mulberry Street a month before that despicablerule about the uniform was blotted out. His whole term of office on thePolice Board was marked by acts of recognition of bravery and faithfulservice. Many times he had to dig the facts out for himself or ran uponthem by accident. There was no practice in the Department of recordingthe good work done by the men on the force so that whoever would mightread. 

Roosevelt enjoyed this part of his task heartily. He believed vigorouslyin courage, hardihood, and daring. What is more, he believed with hiswhole soul in men. It filled him with pure joy when he discovered a manof the true stalwart breed who held his own life as nothing when hisduty was at stake. 

During his two years' service, he and his fellow Commissioners singledout more than a hundred men for special mention because of some feat ofheroism. Two cases which he describes in his "Autobiography" are typicalof 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 womanfrom drowning and called him before him to investigate the matter. Theveteran officer was not a little nervous and agitated as he produced hisrecord. He had grown gray in the service and had performed feat afterfeat of heroism; but his complete lack of political backing had kept himfrom further promotion. In twenty-two years on the force he had savedsome twenty-five persons from drowning, to say nothing of rescuingseveral from burning buildings. Twice Congress had passed specialacts to permit the Secretary of the Treasury to give him a medal fordistinguished gallantry in saving life. He had received other medalsfrom the Life Saving Society and from the Police Department itself. Theone thing that he could not achieve was adequate promotion, although hisrecord 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 hissergeantcy. "

The other case was that of a patrolman who seemed to have fallen intothe habit of catching burglars. Roosevelt noticed that he caught twoin successive weeks, the second time under unusual conditions. Thepoliceman saw the burglar emerging from a house soon after midnight andgave chase. The fugitive ran toward Park Avenue. The New York CentralRailroad runs under that avenue, and there is a succession of openingsin the top of the tunnel. The burglar took a desperate chance bydropping through one of the openings, at the imminent risk of breakinghis neck. "Now the burglar, " says Roosevelt, "was running for hisliberty, and it was the part of wisdom for him to imperil life andlimb; but the policeman was merely doing his duty, and nobody couldhave blamed him for not taking the jump. However, he jumped; and in thisparticular case the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the unrighteous. Theburglar had the breath knocked out of him, and the 'cop' didn't. Whenhis victim could walk, the officer trotted him around to the stationhouse. " When Roosevelt had discovered that the patrolman's record showedhim to be sober, trustworthy, and strictly attentive to duty, he securedhis promotion at once. 

So the Police Commission, during those two years, under the drivingforce of Roosevelt's example and spirit, went about the regeneration ofthe force whose former proud title of "The Finest" had been besmirchedby those who should have been its champions and defenders. Politics, favoritism, and corruption were knocked out of the department with allthe thoroughness that the absurd bipartisan scheme of administrationwould permit. 

The most spectacular fight of all was against the illegal operations ofthe saloons. The excise law forbade the sale of liquor on Sunday. But the police, under orders from "higher up, " enforced the law withdiscretion. The saloons which paid blackmail, or which enjoyed theprotection of some powerful Tammany chieftain, sold liquor on Sundaywith impunity. Only those whose owners were recalcitrant or withoutinfluence were compelled to obey the law. 

Now a goodly proportion of the population of New York, as of any greatcity, objects strenuously to having its personal habits interfered withby the community. This is just as true now in the days of prohibition asit was then in the days of "Sunday closing. " So when Roosevelt cameinto office with the simple, straightforward conviction that laws on thestatute books were intended to be enforced and proceeded to close allthe saloons on Sunday, the result was inevitable. The professionalpoliticians foamed at the mouth. The yellow press shrieked and lied. The saloon-keepers and the sharers of their illicit profits wriggled andsquirmed. But the saloons were closed. The law was enforced without fearor favor. The Sunday sale of liquor disappeared from the city, until acomplaisant judge, ruling upon the provision of the law which permitteddrink to be sold with a meal, decreed that one pretzel, even whenaccompanied by seventeen beers, made a "meal. " No amount of honesty andfearlessness in the enforcement of the law could prevail against suchjudicial aid and comfort to the cause of nullification. The main purposeof Roosevelt's fight for Sunday closing, the stopping of blackmail, was, however, achieved. A standard of law enforcement was set which showswhat can be done even with an unpopular law, and in New York Cityitself, 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 evilto the death wherever he found it, achieving results, making friendseagerly and enemies blithely, learning, broadening, growing. Already hehad made a distinct impression upon his times. 

CHAPTER V. FIGHTING AND BREAKFASTING WITH PLATT

From the New York Police Department Roosevelt was called by PresidentMcKinley to Washington in 1897, to become Assistant Secretary of theNavy. After a year there--the story of which belongs elsewhere in thisvolume--he resigned to go to Cuba as Lieutenant-Colonel of the RoughRiders. He was just as prominent in that war for liberty and justiceas the dimensions of the conflict permitted. He was accustomed in afteryears to say with deprecating humor, when talking to veterans of theCivil War, "It wasn't much of a war, but it was all the war we had. " Itmade him Governor of New York. 

When he landed with his regiment at Montauk Point from Cuba, he was metby two delegations. One consisted of friends from his own State who werepolitical independents; the other came from the head of the Republicanpolitical machine. 

Both wanted him as a candidate for Governor. The independents wereanxious to have him make a campaign against the Old Guard of both thestandard parties, fighting Richard Croker, the cynical Tammany boss, onthe 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 winthe election, and he knew that he must have something superlativelyfine to offer, if he was to have any hope of carrying the discreditedRepublican party to victory. So he swallowed whatever antipathy he mayhave had and offered the nomination to Roosevelt. This was before thedays when the direct primary gave the plain voters an opportunity toupset the calculations of a political boss. 

Senator Platt's emissary, Lemuel Ely Quigg, in a two hours' conversationin the tent at Montauk, asked some straight-from-the-shoulder questions. The answers he received were just as unequivocal. Mr. Quigg wanted aplain statement as to whether or not Roosevelt wanted the nomination. He wanted to know what Roosevelt's attitude would be toward theorganization in the event of his election, whether or not he would "makewar" on Mr. Platt and his friends, or whether he would confer with themand give fair consideration to their point of view as to partypolicy and public interest. In short, he wanted a frank definition ofRoosevelt's attitude towards existing party conditions. He got preciselythat. Here it is, in Roosevelt's own words:

"I replied that I should like to be nominated, and if nominated wouldpromise to throw myself into the campaign with all possible energy. I said that I should not make war on Mr. Platt or anybody else ifwar could be avoided; that what I wanted was to be Governor and not afaction leader; that I certainly would confer with the organizationmen, as with everybody else who seemed to me to have knowledge ofand interest in public affairs, and that as to Mr. Platt and theorganization leaders, I would do so in the sincere hope that there mightalways result harmony of opinion and purpose; but that while I would tryto get on well with the organization, the organization must with equalsincerity strive to do what I regarded as essential for the public good;and that in every case, after full consideration of what everybody hadto say who might possess real knowledge of the matter, I should have toact finally as my own judgment and conscience dictated and administerthe State government as I thought it ought to be administered. .. . I toldhim to tell the Senator that while I would talk freely with him, andhad no intention of becoming a factional leader with a personalorganization, yet I must have direct personal relations with everybody, and get their views at first hand whenever I so desired, because I couldnot have one man speaking for all. " *

 *Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 271-72. 

This was straight Roosevelt talk. It was probably the first time thatthe "easy boss" had received such a response to his overtures. Historydoes not record how he liked it; but at least he accepted it. Subsequentevents suggest that he was either unwilling to believe or incapable ofunderstanding that the Colonel of the Rough Riders meant precisely whathe said. But Platt found out his mistake. He was not the first or thelast politician to have that experience. 

So Roosevelt was nominated, made a gruelling campaign, was elected bya small but sufficient majority, in a year when any other Republicancandidate would probably have been "snowed under, " and became Governorseventeen years after he entered public life. He was now forty yearsold. 

The governorship of Theodore Roosevelt was marked by a deal of fineconstructive legislation and administration. But it was even morenotable for the new standard which it set for the relationship in whichthe executive of a great State should stand to his office, to the publicwelfare, to private interests, and to the leaders of his party. BeforeRoosevelt's election there was need for a revision of the standard. Inthose days it was accepted as a matter of course, at least inpractice, that the party boss was the overlord of the constitutionalrepresentatives of the people. Appointments were made primarily forthe good of the party and only incidentally in the public interest. Thewelfare of the party was closely bound up with the profit of specialinterests, such as public service corporations and insurance companies. The prevalent condition of affairs was shrewdly summed up in a satiricparaphrase of Lincoln's conception of the American ideal: "Governmentof the people, by the bosses, for the special interests. " The interestsnaturally repaid this zealous care for their well-being by contributionsto the party funds. 

Platt was one of the most nearly absolute party bosses that the Americansystem of machine politics has produced. In spite of the fair warningwhich he had already received, both directly from Roosevelt's ownwords, and indirectly from his whole previous career, he was apparentlysurprised and unquestionably annoyed when he found that he was not tobe the new Governor's master. The trouble began before Roosevelt tookoffice. At a conference one day Platt asked Roosevelt if there were anymembers of the Assembly whom he would like to have assigned to specialcommittees. Roosevelt was surprised at the question, as he had not knownthat the Speaker of the Assembly, who appoints the committees, had yetbeen agreed upon by the Assemblymen-elect. He expressed his surprise. But Mr. Platt enlightened him, saying, "Of course, whoever we chooseas Speaker will agree beforehand to make the appointments we wish. "Roosevelt has recorded the mental note which he thereupon made, thatif they tried the same process with the Governor-elect they would findthemselves mistaken. In a few days they did try it--and discovered theirmistake. 

Platt asked Roosevelt to come to see him. The Senator being an old andphysically feeble man, Roosevelt went. Platt handed him a telegram froma certain man, accepting with pleasure his appointment as Superintendentof Public Works. This was one of the most important appointive officesin the State Administration. It was especially so at this time in viewof the scandals which had arisen under the previous Administration overthe Erie Canal, the most important responsibility of this department. Now, the man whom the boss had picked out was an excellent fellow, whomRoosevelt liked and whom, incidentally, he later appointed to an officewhich he filled in admirable fashion. But Roosevelt had no intention ofhaving any one but himself select the members of his Administration. Hesaid so frankly and simply. The Senator raged. He was unaccustomedto such independence of spirit. Roosevelt was courteous but firm. The irresistible force had met the immovable obstacle--and theforce capitulated. The telegraphic acceptance was not accepted. Theappointment was not made. 

Mr. Platt was a wise man, even if he was arrogant. He knew when hehad met one whom he could not drive. So he did not break with the newGovernor. Roosevelt was wise, too, although he was honest. So he did notbreak with the "easy boss. " His failure to do so was a disappointmentto his impractical friends and supporters, who were more concerned withtheoretical 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 fighterwhom he had made Governor: "Roosevelt had from the first agreed that hewould consult me on all questions of appointments, Legislature or partypolicy. He religiously fulfilled this pledge, although he frequently didjust what he pleased. "

One of the things that particularly grieved the theoretical idealistsand the chronic objectors was the fact that Roosevelt used on occasionto take breakfast with Senator Platt. They did not seem to think itpossible that a Governor could accept the hospitality of a boss withouttaking orders from him. But Mr. Platt knew better, if they did not. Hewas never under any illusions as to the extent of his influencewith Roosevelt. It vanished precisely at the point where the selfishinterests of the party and the wishes of the boss collided with thepublic welfare. The facts about the famous breakfasts are plain enough. The Governor was in Albany, the Senator in Washington. Both found iteasy to get to New York on Saturday. It was natural that they shouldfrom time to time have matters to discuss for both were leaders in theirparty. Mr. Platt was a feeble man, who found it difficult to getabout. Roosevelt was a chivalrous man, who believed that courtesy andconsideration were due to age and weakness. In addition, he liked tomake every minute count. So he used to go, frankly and openly, to theSenator's hotel for breakfast. He was not one of that class which he hasdescribed as composed of "solemn reformers of the tom-fool variety, who, according to their custom, paid attention to the name and not thething. " He cared only for the reality; the appearance mattered little tohim. 

The tom-fool reformers who criticized Roosevelt for meeting Platt atbreakfast were not even good observers. If they had been, they wouldhave realized that when Roosevelt breakfasted with Platt, it generallymeant that he was trying to reconcile the Senator to something he wasgoing to do which the worthy boss did not like. For instance, Rooseveltonce wrote to Platt, who was trying to get him to promote a certainjudge over the head of another judge: "There is a strong feeling amongthe judges and the leading members of the bar that Judge Y ought notto have Judge X jumped over his head, and I do not see my way clear todoing it. I am inclined to think that the solution I mentioned to youis the solution I shall have to adopt. Remember the breakfast at DouglasRobinson's at 8:30. " It is probable that the Governor enjoyed thatbreakfast more than did the Senator. So it usually was with the famousbreakfasts. "A series of breakfasts was always the prelude to someactive warfare. "

For Roosevelt and Platt still had their pitched battles. The mostepic of them all was fought over the reappointment of the StateSuperintendent of Insurance. The incumbent was Louis F. Payn, a veteranpetty boss from a country district and one of Platt's right-handmen. Roosevelt discovered that Payn had been involved in compromisingrelations with certain financiers in New York with whom he "did not deemit expedient that the Superintendent of Insurance, while such, shouldhave any intimate and money-making relations. " The Governor thereforedecided not to reappoint him. Platt issued an ultimatum that Payn mustbe reappointed or he would fight. He pointed out that in case of a fightPayn would stay in anyway, since the consent of the State Senate wasnecessary not only to appoint a man to office but to remove him fromoffice. The Governor replied cheerfully that he had made up his mindand that Payn would not be retained. If he could not get his successorconfirmed, he would make the appointment as soon as the Legislatureadjourned, and the appointment would stand at least until theLegislature met again. Platt declared in turn that Payn would bereinstated as soon as the Legislature reconvened. Roosevelt admitted thepossibility, but assured his opponent that the process would be repeatedas soon as that session came to an end. He added his conviction that, while he might have an uncomfortable time himself, he would guaranteethat his opponents would be made more uncomfortable still. Thus thematter stood in the weeks before final action could be taken. Platt wassure 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 afearless free man. 

The political power which the boss wielded was reinforced by pressurefrom big business interests in New York. Officials of the largeinsurance companies adopted resolutions asking for Payn's reappointment. But some of them privately and hastily assured the Governor that theseresolutions were for public consumption only, and that they would bedelighted to have Payn superseded. Roosevelt strove to make it clearagain and again that he was not fighting the organization as such, andannounced his readiness to appoint any one of several men who were goodorganization men--only he would not retain Lou Payn nor appoint any manof his type. The matter moved along to the final scene, which took placeat the Union League Club in New York. 

Mr. Platt's chief lieutenant asked for a meeting with the Governor. Therequest was granted. The emissary went over the ground thoroughly. Hedeclared that Platt would never yield. He explained that he was certainto win the fight, and that he wished to save Roosevelt from such alamentable disaster as the end of his political career. Roosevelt againexplained 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 wasahead of me if I refused it; whereas, if I accepted, everything wouldbe made easy. I shook my head and answered, 'There is nothing to add towhat 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 Ianswered, 'Well, we will see about that, ' and walked toward the door. Hesaid, 'You understand, the fight will begin tomorrow and will be carriedon to the bitter end. ' I said, 'Yes, ' and added, as I reached thedoor, 'Good night. ' Then, as the door opened my opponent, or visitor, whichever one chooses to call him, whose face was as impassive and asinscrutable 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 verysorry, but he will make no further opposition!' I never saw a bluffcarried more resolutely through to the final limit. " *

 * Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 293-94. 

One other Homeric fight with the machine was Roosevelt's portion duringhis Governorship. This time it was not directly with the boss himselfbut with the boss's liegemen in the Legislature. But the kernel of thewhole matter was the same--the selfish interests of big corporationsagainst the public good. 

In those days corporations were by common practice privileged creatures. They were accustomed to special treatment from legislatures andadministrations. But when Roosevelt was elected Governor, he wasdetermined that no corporation should get a valuable privilege from theState without paying for it. Before long he had become convinced thatthey ought also to pay for those which they already had, free giftsof the State in those purblind days when corporations were young andcoddled. He proposed that public service corporations doing business onfranchises granted by the State and by municipalities should betaxed upon the value of the privileges they enjoyed. The corporationsnaturally enough did not like the proposal. But it was made in no spiritor tone of antagonism to business or of demagogic outcry against thosewho 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. Ihave not the slightest sympathy with the outcry against corporations assuch, or against prosperous men of business. Most of the great materialworks by which the entire country benefits have been due to theaction of individual men, or of aggregates of men, who made money forthemselves by doing that which was in the interest of the people as awhole. From an armor plant to a street railway, no work which is reallybeneficial to the public can be performed to the best advantage of thepublic save by men of such business capacity that they will not dothe work unless they themselves receive ample reward for doing it. Theeffort to deprive them of an ample reward merely means that they willturn their energies in some other direction; and the public will be justso much the loser. .. . But while I freely admit all this, it yet remainstrue that a corporation which derives its powers from the State shouldpay to the State a just percentage of its earnings as a return for theprivileges it enjoys. "

This was quietly reasonable and uninflammatory doctrine. But thecorporations would have none of it. The Republican machine, which hada majority in the Legislature, promptly repudiated it as well. Thecampaign contributions from the corporations were too precious to bejeopardized by legislation which the corporations did not want. TheGovernor argued, pleasantly and cheerfully. The organization balkedsullenly. The corporations grinned knowingly. They had plenty of moneywith which to kill the bill, but they did not need to use it. Themachine was working smoothly in their behalf. The bill was introducedand referred to a committee, and there it lay. No amount of argument andpersuasion that the Governor could bring to bear availed to bring thebill out of hiding. So he sent in a special message, on almost the lastday of the session. According to the rules of the New York Assembly, when the Governor sends in a special message on a given measure, thebill must be reported out and given consideration. But the machine wasdazzled with its own arrogance. The Speaker would not have the messageread. Some one actually tore it up. 

This was more than a crime--it was a blunder. The wise ones in theorganization realized it. They had no desire to have the Governor appealto the people with his torn message in his hand. Roosevelt saw the errortoo, and laughed happily. He wrote another message and sent it over withthe curt statement that, if it were not read forthwith, he would comeover and read it himself. They knew that he would! So the Speaker readthe message, and the bill was reported and hastily passed on the lastday of the session. 

Then the complacent corporations woke up. They had trusted the machinetoo far. What was more, they had underestimated the Governor's strikingpower. Now they came to him, hat in hand, and suggested some fault inthe bill. He agreed with them. They asked if he would not call a specialsession to amend the bill. Again he agreed. The session was called, andthe amendments were proposed. In addition, however, certain amendmentsthat would have frustrated the whole purpose of the bill were suggested. The organization, still at its old tricks, tried to get back into itspossession the bill already passed. But the Governor was not easilycaught napping. He knew as well as they did that possession of the billgave him the whip hand. He served notice that the second bill wouldcontain precisely the amendments agreed upon and no others. Otherwisehe would sign the first bill and let it become law, with all itsimperfections on its head. Once more the organization and thecorporations emulated Davy Crockett's coon and begged him not to shoot, for they would come down. The amended bill was passed and becamelaw. But there was an epilogue to this little drama. The corporationsproceeded to attack the constitutionality of the law on the ground ofthe very amendment for which they had so clamorously pleaded. But theyfailed. The Supreme Court of the United States, after Roosevelt hadbecome President, affirmed the constitutionality of the law. 

The spectacular events of Roosevelt's governorship were incidents inthis conflict between two political philosophies, the one held byPlatt and his tribe, the other by Roosevelt. Extracts from two lettersexchanged by the Senator and the Governor bring the contrast betweenthese philosophies into clear relief. Platt wrote as follows:

"When the subject of your nomination was under consideration, there wasone matter that gave me real anxiety. .. . I had heard from a good manysources that you were a little loose on the relations of capital andlabor, on trusts and combinations, and, indeed, on those numerousquestions which have recently arisen in politics affecting the securityof 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 PenalCode. Or, to get at it even more clearly, I understood from a number ofbusiness men, and among them many of your own personal friends, that youentertained various altruistic ideas, all very well in their way, butwhich before they could safely be put into law needed very profoundconsideration. " *

* Roosevelt, "Autobiography" (Scribner), p. 299. 

Roosevelt replied that he had known very well that the Senator had justthese feelings about him, and then proceeded to set forth his own viewof the matter. With his usual almost uncanny wisdom in human relations, he based his argument on party expediency, which he knew Platt wouldcomprehend, rather than on abstract considerations of right and wrong, in which realm the boss would be sure to feel rather at sea. He wrotethus:

"I know that when parties divide on such issues [as Bryanism] thetendency is to force everybody into one of two camps, and to throw outentirely men like myself, who are as strongly opposed to Populism inevery stage as the greatest representative of corporate wealth butwho also feel strongly that many of these representatives of enormouscorporate wealth have themselves been responsible for a portion ofthe conditions against which Bryanism is in ignorant revolt. I do notbelieve that it is wise or safe for us as a party to take refuge in merenegation and to say that there are no evils to be corrected. It seems tome that our attitude should be one of correcting the evils and therebyshowing that whereas the Populists, Socialists, and others do notcorrect the evils at all, or else do so at the expense of producingothers in aggravated form, on the contrary we Republicans hold thejust balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporateinfluence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on theother. "*

*Roosevelt, Autobiography (Scribner), p. 300. 

This was the fight that Roosevelt was waging in every hour of hispolitical career. It was a middle-of-the-road fight, not because of anytimidity or slack-fibered thinking which prevented a committal to oneextreme or the other, but because of a stern conviction that in thegolden middle course was to be found truth and the right. It was aninevitable consequence that first one side and then the other--andsometimes both at once--should attack him as a champion of the other. It became a commonplace of his experience to be inveighed against byreformers as a reactionary and to be assailed by conservatives as aradical. But this paradoxical experience did not disturb him at all. Hewas concerned only to have the testimony of his own mind and consciencethat 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 tremendousamount of spade work was actually accomplished. For example, hebrought about the reenactment of the Civil Service Law, which underhis predecessor had been repealed, and put through a mass of laborlegislation for the betterment of conditions under which the workerscarried on their daily lives. This legislation included laws to increasethe number of factory inspectors, to create a tenement-house commission, to regulate sweatshop labor, to make the eight-hour and prevailing rateof wages law effective, to compel railways to equip freight trains withair brakes, to regulate the working hours of women, to protect womenand children from dangerous machinery, to enforce good scaffoldingprovisions for workmen on buildings, to provide seats for the use ofwaitresses in hotels and restaurants, to reduce the hours of laborfor drug-store clerks, to provide for the registration of laborers formunicipal employment. He worked hard to secure an employers' liabilitylaw, but the time for this was not yet come. 

Many of these reforms are now matters of course that no employer wouldthink of attempting to eliminate. But they were new ideas then; and ittook 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 ofconcrete achievement but something more than that. Jacob Riis has toldhow, some time after, an old State official at Albany, who had seen manyGovernors come and go, revealed this intangible something. Mr. Riis hadsaid to him that he did not care much for Albany since Roosevelt hadgone, and his friend replied: "Yes, we think so, many of us. The placeseemed dreary when he was gone. But I know now that he left somethingbehind that was worth our losing him to get. This past winter, for thefirst time, I heard the question spring up spontaneously, as it seemed, when a measure was up in the Legislature 'Is it right?' Not 'Is itexpedient?' not 'How is it going to help me?' not 'What is it worth tothe party?' Not any of these, but 'Is it right?' That is Roosevelt'slegacy to Albany. And it was worth his coming and his going to havethat. "

CHAPTER VI. ROOSEVELT BECOMES PRESIDENT

There was chance in Theodore Roosevelt's coming into the Presidencyas he did, but there was irony as well. An evil chance dropped WilliamMcKinley before an assassin's bullet; but there was a fitting irony inthe fact that the man who must step into his place had been put wherehe was in large measure by the very men who would least like to see himbecome President. 

The Republican convention of 1900 was a singularly unanimous body. President McKinley was renominated without a murmur of dissent. Butthere was no Vice-President to renominate, as Mr. Hobart had died inoffice. There was no logical candidate for the second place on theticket. Senator Platt, however, had a man whom he wanted to get rid of, since Governor Roosevelt had made himself persona non grata alike tothe machine politicians of his State and to the corporations alliedwith them. The Governor, however, did not propose to be disposed of soeasily. His reasons were characteristic. He wrote thus to Senator Plattabout the matter:

"I can't help feeling more and more that the Vice-Presidency is not anoffice in which I could do anything and not an office in which a manwho is still vigorous and not past middle life has much chance ofdoing 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 wouldbe simply a presiding officer, and that I should find a bore. "

Now Mr. Platt knew that nothing but "sidetracking" could stop anothernomination of Roosevelt for the Governorship, and this Rough Rider wasa thorn in his flesh. So he went on his subterranean way to have himnominated for the most innocuous political berth in the gift ofthe American people. He secured the cooperation of Senator Quay ofPennsylvania and another boss or two of the same indelible stripe; butall their political strength would not have accomplished the desiredresult without assistance from quite a different source. Roosevelt hadalready achieved great popularity in the Middle and the Far West for thevery reasons which made Mr. Platt want him out of the way. So, while theNew York boss and his acquiescent delegates were stopped from presentinghis name to the convention by Roosevelt's assurance that he would fighta l'outrance any movement from his own State to nominate him, otherdelegates took matters into their own hands and the nomination wasfinally made unanimously. 

Roosevelt gave great strength to the Republican ticket in the campaignwhich followed. William Jennings Bryan was again the Democraticcandidate, but the "paramount issue" of his campaign had changed sincefour years before from free silver to anti-imperialism. PresidentMcKinley, according to his custom, made no active campaign; but Bryanand Roosevelt competed with each other in whirlwind speaking tours fromone end of the country to the other. The war-cry of the Republicans wasthe "full dinner pail"; the keynote of Bryan's bid for popular supportwas opposition to the Republican policy of expansion and criticism ofRepublican tendencies toward plutocratic control. The success of theRepublican ticket was overwhelming; McKinley and Roosevelt receivednearly twice as many electoral votes as Bryan and Stevenson. 

When President McKinley was shot at Buffalo six months after hissecond term began, it looked for a time as though he would recover. SoRoosevelt, after an immediate visit to Buffalo, went to join his familyin the Adirondacks. The news of the President's impending death foundhim out in the wilderness on the top of Mount Tahawus, not far from thetiny Lake Tear-of-the-Clouds, the source of the Hudson River. A ten-miledash down the mountain trail, in the course of which he outstripped allhis companions but one; a wild forty-mile drive through the night to therailroad, the new President and his single companion changing the horsestwo or three times with their own hands; a fast journey by special trainacross the State--and on the evening of September 14, 1901, TheodoreRoosevelt took the oath of office as the twenty-sixth President of theUnited States. 

Before taking the oath, Roosevelt announced that it would be his aim "tocontinue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for thepeace, prosperity, and honor of our beloved country. " He immediatelyasked every member of the late President's Cabinet to continue inoffice. The Cabinet was an excellent one, and Mr. Roosevelt found itnecessary to make no other changes than those that came in the ordinarycourse of events. The policies were not altered in broad generaloutline, for Roosevelt was as stalwart a Republican as McKinley himself, and was as firmly convinced of the soundness of the fundamentals of theRepublican doctrine. 

But the fears of some of his friends that Roosevelt would seem, if hecarried out his purpose of continuity, "a pale copy of McKinley" werenot justified in the event. They should have known better. A copy of anyone Roosevelt could neither be nor seem, and "pale" was the last epithetto be applied to him with justice. It could not be long before thedifference in the two Administrations would appear in unmistakableterms. The one which had just passed was first of all a partyAdministration and secondly a McKinley Administration. The one whichfollowed was first, last, and all the time a Roosevelt Administration. "Where Macgregor sits, there is the head of the table. " Not becauseRoosevelt consciously willed it so, but because the force and power andmagnetism of his vigorous mind and personality inevitably made itso. McKinley had been a great harmonizer. "He oiled the machinery ofgovernment with loving and imperturbable patience, " said an observer ofhis time, "and the wheels ran with an ease unknown since Washington'sfirst term of office. " It had been a constant reproach of the criticsof the former President that "his ear was always to the ground. " Buthe kept it there because it was his sincere conviction that it belongedthere, ready to apprize him of the vibrations of the popular will. Roosevelt was the born leader with an innate instinct of command. He didnot scorn or flout the popular will; he had too confirmed a convictionof the sovereign right of the people to rule for that. But he did notwait pusillanimously for the popular mind to make itself up; he had toohigh a conception of the duty of leadership for that. He esteemed ithis peculiar function as the man entrusted by a great people with theheadship of their common affairs--to lead the popular mind, to educateit, to inspire it, sometimes to run before it in action, serene in theconfidence that tardy popular judgment would confirm the rightness ofthe deed. 

By the end of Roosevelt's first Administration two of the three groupsthat had taken a hand in choosing him for the Vice-Presidency werethoroughly sick of their bargain. The machine politicians and thegreat corporations found that their cunning plan to stifle with the wetblanket of that depressing office the fires of his moral earnestness andpugnacious honesty had overreached itself. Fate had freed him and, oncefreed, he was neither to hold nor to bind. It was less than two yearsbefore Wall Street was convinced that he was "unsafe, " and sadly shookits head over his "impetuosity. " When Wall Street stamps a man "unsafe, "the last word in condemnation has been said. It was an even shorter timebefore the politicians found him unsatisfactory. "The breach betweenMr. Roosevelt and the politicians was, however, inevitable. His rigidinsistence upon the maintenance and the extension of the merit systemalone assured the discontent which precedes dislike, " wrote anotherobserver. "The era of patronage mongering in the petty offices ceasedsuddenly, and the spoilsmen had the right to say that in this respectthe policy of McKinley had not been followed. " It was true. WhenRoosevelt became President the civil service was thoroughly demoralized. Senators and Congressmen, by tacit agreement with the executive, usedthe appointing power for the payment of political debts, the reward ofparty services, the strengthening of their personal "fences. " Butwithin three months it was possible to say with absolute truth that "amarvelous change has already been wrought in the morale of the civilservice. " At the end of Roosevelt's first term an unusually acute andinformed foreign journalist was moved to write, "No President has sopersistently eliminated politics from his nominations, none has beenmore unbending in making efficiency his sole test. "

There was the kernel of the whole matter: the President's insistenceupon efficiency. Roosevelt, however, did not snatch rudely away from theCongressmen and Senators the appointing power which his predecessors hadallowed them gradually to usurp. He continued to consult each member ofthe Congress upon appointments in that member's State or district andmerely 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 Senatorsbut he sought and often took the advice of party leaders outside ofCongress, and even took into consideration the opinions of bosses. InNew York, for instance, the two Republican leaders, Governor Odell andSenator Platt, were sometimes in accord and sometimes in disagreement, but each was always desirous of being consulted. A letter written byRoosevelt in the middle of his first term to a friendly Congressman wellillustrates his theory and practice in such cases:

"I want to work with Platt. I want to work with Odell. I want to supportboth and take the advice of both. But, of course, ultimately I must bethe judge as to acting on the advice given. When, as in the case of thejudgeship, I am convinced that the advice of both is wrong, I shall actas I did when I appointed Holt. When I can find a friend of Odell'slike Cooley, who is thoroughly fit for the position I desire to fill, itgives me the greatest pleasure to appoint him. When Platt proposes to mea man like Hamilton Fish, it is equally a pleasure to appoint him. "

This high-minded and common-sense course did not, however, seem toplease the politicians, for dyed-in-the-wool politicians are curiouspersons to whom half a loaf is no consolation whatever, even when theother half of the loaf is to go to the people--without whom there wouldbe no policies at all. Strangely enough, Roosevelt's policy was equallydispleasing to those of the doctrinaire reformer type, to whom there isno word in the language more distasteful than "politician, " unless itbe the word "practical. " But there was one class to whom the results ofthis common-sense brand of political action were eminently satisfactory, and this class made up the third group that had a part in the selectionof Theodore Roosevelt for the Vice-Presidency. The plain people, especially in the more westerly portions of the country, wereincreasingly delighted with the honesty, the virility, and theeffectiveness of the Roosevelt Administration. Just before theconvention which was to nominate Roosevelt for the Presidency to succeedhimself, an editorial writer expressed the fact thus: "The people atlarge are not oblivious of the fact that, while others are talking andcarping, Mr. Roosevelt is carrying on in the White House a persistentand never-ending moral struggle with every powerful selfish andexploiting interest in the country. "

Oblivious of it? They were acutely conscious of it. They approved ofit with heartiness. They liked it so well that, when the time came tonominate and elect another President, they swept aside with a mightyrush not only the scruples and antagonisms of the Republican politiciansand the "special interests" but party lines as well, and chose Rooseveltwith a unanimous voice in the convention and a majority of two and ahalf million votes at the polls. 

As President, Theodore Roosevelt achieved many concrete results. But hisgreatest contribution to the forward movement of the times was in therousing of the public conscience, the strengthening of the nation'smoral purpose, and the erecting of a new standard of public service inthe management of the nation's affairs. It was no little thing that whenRoosevelt was ready to hand over to another the responsibilities of hishigh office, James Bryce, America's best friend and keenest student fromacross the seas, was able to say that in a long life, during which hehad studied intimately the government of many different countries, hehad never in any country seen a more eager, high-minded, and efficientset of public servants, men more useful and more creditable to theircountry, than the men then doing the work of the American Government inWashington and in the field. 

CHAPTER VII. THE SQUARE DEAL FOR BUSINESS

During the times of Roosevelt, the American people were profoundlyconcerned with the trust problem. So was Roosevelt himself. In thisimportant field of the relations between "big business" and the peoplehe had a perfectly definite point of view, though he did not have a cutand dried programme. He was always more interested in a point of viewthan in a programme, for he realized that the one is lasting, the othershifting. He knew that if you stand on sound footing and look at asubject from the true angle, you may safely modify your plan of actionas often and as rapidly as may be necessary to fit changing conditions. But if your footing is insecure or your angle of vision distorted, themost attractive programme in the world may come to ignominious disaster. 

There were, broadly speaking, three attitudes toward the trust problemwhich were strongly held by different groups in the United States. Atone extreme was the threatening growl of big business, "Let us alone!"At the other pole was the shrill outcry of William Jennings Bryan andhis fellow exhorters, "Smash the trusts!" In the golden middle groundwas the vigorous demand of Roosevelt for a "square deal. "

In his first message to Congress, the President set forth his point ofview with frankness and clarity. His comprehensive discussion ofthe matter may be summarized thus: The tremendous and highly complexindustrial development which went on with great rapidity during thelatter half of the nineteenth century produced serious social problems. The old laws and the old customs which had almost the binding forceof law were once quite sufficient to regulate the accumulation anddistribution of wealth. Since the industrial changes which have soenormously increased the productive power of mankind, these regulationsare no longer sufficient. The process of the creation of great corporatefortunes has aroused much antagonism; but much of this, antagonism hasbeen without warrant. There have been, it is true, abuses connectedwith the accumulation of wealth; yet no fortune can be accumulated inlegitimate business except by conferring immense incidental benefitsupon others. The men who have driven the great railways across thecontinent, who have built up commerce and developed manufactures, haveon the whole done great good to the people at large. Without such menthe material development of which Americans are so justly proud nevercould have taken place. They should therefore recognize the immenseimportance of this material development by leaving as unhampered as iscompatible with the public good the strong men upon whom the success ofbusiness inevitably rests. It cannot too often be pointed out that tostrike with ignorant violence at the interests of one set of men almostinevitably endangers the interests of all. The fundamental rule inAmerican national life is that, on the whole and in the long run, weshall all go up or down together. Many of those who have made it theirvocation to denounce the great industrial combinations appeal especiallyto the primitive instincts of hatred and fear. These are precisely thetwo emotions which unfit men for cool and steady judgment. The wholehistory of the world shows that legislation, in facing new industrialconditions, will generally be both unwise and ineffective unless it isundertaken only after calm inquiry and with sober self-restraint. 

This is one side of the picture as it was presented by the President inhis message to Congress. It was characteristic that this aspect shouldbe put first, for Roosevelt always insisted upon doing justice to theother side before he demanded justice for his own. But he then proceededto set forth the other side with equal vigor: There is a widespreadconviction in the minds of the American people that the greatcorporations are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful tothe general welfare. It is true that real and grave evils have arisen, one of the chief of them being overcapitalization, with its manybaleful consequences. This state of affairs demands that combination andconcentration in business should be, not prohibited, but supervisedand controlled. Corporations engaged in interstate commerce should beregulated if they are found to exercise a license working to the publicinjury. The first essential in determining how to deal with the greatindustrial combinations is knowledge of the facts. This is to beobtained only through publicity, which is the one sure remedy we cannow invoke before it can be determined what further remedies are needed. Corporations should be subject to proper governmental supervision, andfull and accurate information as to their operations should be madepublic at regular intervals. The nation should assume powers ofsupervision and regulation over all corporations doing an interstatebusiness. This is especially true where the corporation derives aportion of its wealth from the existence of some monopolistic elementor tendency in its business. The Federal Government should regulatethe activities of corporations doing an interstate business, just as itregulates the activities of national banks, and, through the InterstateCommerce Commission, the operations of the railroads. 

Roosevelt was destined, however, not to achieve the full measure ofnational control of corporations that he desired. The elements opposedto his view were too powerful. There was a fortuitous involuntarypartnership though it was not admitted and was even violently deniedbetween the advocates of "Let us alone!" and of "Smash the trusts!"against the champion of the middle way. In his "Autobiography" Roosevelthas described this situation:

"One of the main troubles was the fact that the men who saw the evilsand who tried to remedy them attempted to work in two wholly differentways, and the great majority of them in a way that offered littlepromise of real betterment. They tried (by the Sherman law method)to bolster up an individualism already proved to be both futile andmischievous; to remedy by more individualism the concentration that wasthe inevitable result of the already existing individualism. Theysaw the evil done by the big combinations, and sought to remedy it bydestroying them and restoring the country to the economic conditions ofthe middle of the nineteenth century. This was a hopeless effort, andthose who went into it, although they regarded themselves as radicalprogressives, really represented a form of sincere rural toryism. Theyconfounded monopolies with big business combinations, and in the effortto prohibit both alike, instead of where possible prohibiting one anddrastically controlling the other, they succeeded merely in preventingany effective control of either. 

"On the other hand, a few men recognized that corporations andcombinations had become indispensable in the business world, that it wasfolly to try to prohibit them, but that it was also folly to leave themwithout thoroughgoing control. These men realized that the doctrineof the old laissez faire economists, of the believers in unlimitedcompetition, unlimited individualism, were, in the actual state ofaffairs, false and mischievous. They realized that the Government mustnow interfere to protect labor, to subordinate the big corporationto the public welfare, and to shackle cunning and fraud exactly ascenturies before it had interfered to shackle the physical force whichdoes wrong by violence. The big reactionaries of the business world andtheir allies and instruments among politicians and newspaper editorstook advantage of this division of opinion, and especially of the factthat most of their opponents were on the wrong path; and fought tokeep matters absolutely unchanged. These men demanded for themselves animmunity from government control which, if granted, would have been aswicked 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 weresome of these same barons; but they were as utterly unable as anymedieval castle-owner to understand what the public interest really was. There have been aristocracies which have played a great and beneficentpart at stages in the growth of mankind; but we had come to a stagewhere for our people what was needed was a real democracy; and of allforms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyrannyof mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy. " *

 * Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 424-25. 

When Roosevelt became President, there were three directions in whichenergy needed to be applied to the solution of the trust problem: in themore vigorous enforcement of the laws already on the statute books; inthe enactment of necessary new laws on various phases of the subject;and in the arousing of an intelligent and militant public opinionin relation to the whole question. To each of these purposes the newPresident applied himself with characteristic vigor. 

The Sherman Anti-Trust law, which had already been on the Federalstatute books for eleven years, forbade "combinations in restraintof trade" in the field of interstate commerce. During threeadministrations, eighteen actions had been brought by the Government forits enforcement. At the opening of the twentieth century it was a gravequestion whether the Sherman law was of any real efficacy in preventingthe evils that arose from unregulated combination in business. Adecision of the United States Supreme Court, rendered in 1895 in theso-called Knight case, against the American Sugar Refining Company, had, in the general belief, taken the teeth out of the Sherman law. In thewords of Mr. Taft, "The effect of the decision in the Knight case uponthe popular mind, and indeed upon Congress as well, was to discouragehope that the statute could be used to accomplish its manifest purposeand curb the great industrial trusts which, by the acquisition of allor a large percentage of the plants engaged in the manufacture of acommodity, by the dismantling of some and regulating the output ofothers, were making every effort to restrict production, control prices, and monopolize the business. " It was obviously necessary that theSherman act, unless it were to pass into innocuous desuetude, shouldhave the original vigor intended by Congress restored to it by a newinterpretation of the law on the part of the Supreme Court. Fortunatelyan opportunity for such a change presented itself with promptness. A small group of powerful financiers had arranged to take control ofpractically the entire system of railways in the Northwest, "possibly, "Roosevelt has said, "as the first step toward controlling the entirerailway system of the country. " They had brought this about byorganizing the Northern Securities Company to hold the majority of thestock of two competing railways, the Great Northern and the NorthernPacific. At the direction of President Roosevelt, suit was broughtby the Government to prevent the merger. The defendants relied forprotection upon the immunity afforded by the decision in the Knightcase. But the Supreme Court now took more advanced ground, decreed thatthe Northern Securities Company was an illegal combination, and orderedits dissolution. 

By the successful prosecution of this case the Sherman act was made oncemore a potentially valuable instrument for the prevention of the moreflagrant evils that flow from "combinations in restraint of trade. "During the remaining years of the Roosevelt Administrations, this legalinstrument was used with aggressive force for the purpose for which itwas intended. In seven years and a half, forty-four prosecutions werebrought under it by the Government, as compared with eighteen in thepreceding eleven years. The two most famous trust cases, next to theNorthern Securities case and even surpassing it in popular interest, because of the stupendous size of the corporations involved, were thoseagainst the Standard Oil Company and the American Tobacco Company. Thesecompanion cases were not finally decided in the Supreme Court until theAdministration of President Taft; but their prosecution was begun whileRoosevelt was in office and by his direction. They were thereforea definite part of his campaign for the solution of the vexed trustproblem. Both cases were decided, by every court through which theypassed, in favor of the Government. The Supreme Court finally in 1911decreed that both the Standard Oil and the Tobacco trusts were inviolation of the Sherman act and ordered their dissolution. There couldnow no longer be any question that the Government could in fact exerciseits sovereign will over even the greatest and the most powerful ofmodern business organizations. 

The two cases had one other deep significance which at first blushlooked like a weakening of the force of the anti-trust law but which wasin reality a strengthening of it. There had been long and ardent debatewhether the Sherman act should be held to apply to all restraints oftrade or only to such as were unreasonable. It was held by some that itapplied to ALL restraints and therefore should be amended to cover onlyunreasonable restraints. It was held by others that it applied to allrestraints and properly so. It was held by still others that it appliedonly to unreasonable restraints. But the matter had never been decidedby competent authority. The decision of the Supreme Court in these twooutstanding cases, however, put an end to the previous uncertainty. Chief Justice White, in his two opinions, laid it down with definitenessthat 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 orinconsiderable ones. This definitive interpretation of the law, whileit caused considerable criticism at the moment, in ultimate effect socleared the air about the Sherman act as effectually to dispose ofthe demands for its amendment in the direction of greater leniency orseverity. 

But the proving of the anti-trust law as an effective weapon against theflagrantly offending trusts, according to Roosevelt's conviction, wasonly a part of the battle. As he said, "monopolies can, although inrather cumbrous fashion, be broken up by lawsuits. Great businesscombinations, however, cannot possibly be made useful instead of noxiousindustrial agencies merely by lawsuits, and especially by lawsuitssupposed to be carried on for their destruction and not for theircontrol and regulation. " He took, as usual, the constructive point ofview. He saw both sides of the trust question--the inevitability andthe beneficence of combination in modern business, and the danger tothe public good that lay in the unregulated and uncontrolled wieldingof great power by private individuals. He believed that the thing to dowith great power was not to destroy it but to use it, not to forbid itsacquisition but to direct its application. So he set himself to thetask of securing fresh legislation regarding the regulation of corporateactivities. 

Such legislation was not easy to get; for the forces of reaction werestrong in Congress. But several significant steps in this direction weretaken before Roosevelt went out of office. The new Federal Departmentof Commerce and Labor was created, and its head became a member ofthe Cabinet. The Bureau of Corporations was established in the samedepartment. These new executive agencies were given no regulatorypowers, but they did perform excellent service in that field ofpublicity on the value of which Roosevelt laid so much stress. 

In the year 1906 the passing of the Hepburn railway rate bill for thefirst time gave the Interstate Commerce Commission a measure of realcontrol over the railways, by granting to the Commission the powerto fix maximum rates for the transportation of freight in interstatecommerce. The Commission had in previous years, under the authority ofthe act which created it and which permitted the Commission to decidein particular cases whether rates were just and reasonable, attemptedto exercise this power to fix in these specific cases maximum rates. Butthe courts had decided that the Commission did not possess this right. The Hepburn act also extended the authority of the Commission overexpress companies, sleeping-car companies, pipe lines, private carlines, and private terminal and connecting lines. It prohibited railwaysfrom transporting in interstate commerce any commodities produced orowned by themselves. It abolished free passes and transportation exceptfor railway employees and certain other small classes of persons, including the poor and unfortunate classes and those engaged inreligious and charitable work. Under the old law, the Commission wascompelled to apply to a Federal court on its own initiative for theenforcement of any order which it might issue. Under the Hepburn actthe order went into effect at once; the railroad must begin to obey theorder within thirty days; it must itself appeal to the court for thesuspension and revocation of the order, or it must suffer a penaltyof $5000 a day during the time that the order was disobeyed. The actfurther gave the Commission the power to prescribe accounting methodswhich must be followed by the railways, in order to make more difficultthe concealment of illegal rates and improper favors to individualshippers. This extension and strengthening of the authority of theInterstate 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 theStandard Oil type. Miss Ida Tarbell, in her frankly revealing "Historyof the Standard Oil Company", which had been published in 1904, hadshown in striking fashion how secret concessions from the railways hadhelped to build up that great structure of business monopoly. In MissTarbell's words, "Mr. Rockefeller's great purpose had been made possibleby his remarkable manipulation of the railroads. It was the rebate whichhad made the Standard Oil trust, the rebate, amplified, systematized, glorified into a power never equalled before or since by any businessof the country. " The rebate was the device by which favoredshippers--favored by the railways either voluntarily or under thecompulsion of the threats of retaliation which the powerful shipperswere able to make--paid openly the established freight rates ontheir products and then received back from the railways a substantialproportion of the charges. The advantage to the favored shipper isobvious. There were other more adroit ways in which the favoritism couldbe accomplished; but the general principle was the same. It was oneimportant purpose--and effect--of the Hepburn act to close the door tothis form of discrimination. 

One more step was necessary in order to eradicate completely thismischievous condition and to "keep the highway of commerce open to allon equal terms. " It was imperative that the law relative to these abusesshould be enforced. On this point Roosevelt's own words are significant:"Although under the decision of the courts the National Government hadpower over the railways, I found, when I became President, thatthis power was either not exercised at all or exercised with utterinefficiency. The law against rebates was a dead letter. All theunscrupulous railway men had been allowed to violate it with impunity;and because of this, as was inevitable, the scrupulous and decentrailway men had been forced to violate it themselves, under penalty ofbeing beaten by their less scrupulous rivals. It was not the fault ofthese decent railway men. It was the fault of the Government. "

Roosevelt did not propose that this condition should continue to be thefault of the Government while he was at its head, and he inaugurated avigorous campaign against railways that had given rebates and againstcorporations that had accepted--or extorted-them. The campaign reached aspectacular peak in a prosecution of the Standard Oil Company, in whichfines aggregating over $29, 000, 000 were imposed by Judge Kenesaw M. Landis of the United States District Court at Chicago for the offenseof accepting rebates. The Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately determinedthat the fine was improperly large, since it had been based onthe untenable theory that each shipment on which a rebate was paidconstituted a separate offense. At the second trial the presidingjudge ordered an acquittal. In spite, however, of the failure of thisparticular case, with its spectacular features, the net result of therebate prosecutions was that the rebate evil was eliminated for good andall from American railway and commercial life. 

When Roosevelt demanded the "square deal" between business and thepeople, he meant precisely what he said. He had no intention ofpermitting justice to be required from the great corporations withoutinsisting that justice be done to them in turn. The most interestingcase in point was that of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. To thisday the action which Roosevelt took in the matter is looked upon, bymany of those extremists who can see nothing good in "big business, " asa proof of his undue sympathy with the capitalist. But thirteen yearslater the United States Supreme Court in deciding the case against theUnited States Steel Corporation in favor of the Corporation, added anobiter dictum which completely justified Roosevelt's action. 

In the fall of 1907 the United States was in the grip of a financialpanic. Much damage was done, and much more was threatened. One great NewYork trust company was compelled to close its doors, and others wereon the verge of disaster. One evening in the midst of this most tryingtime, the President was informed that two representatives of the UnitedStates Steel Corporation wished to call upon him the next morning. As hewas 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 atonce, sending word to Elihu Root, then Secretary of State, to join him. Judge Gary and Mr. Frick informed the President that a certain greatfirm 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 andIron Company. The Steel Corporation had been urged to purchase thisstock in order to avert the failure. The heads of the Steel Corporationasserted that they did not wish to purchase this stock from the point ofview of a business transaction, as the value which the property might beto the Corporation would be more than offset by the criticism to whichthey would be subjected. They said that they were sure to be chargedwith trying to secure a monopoly and to stifle competition. They toldthe President that it had been the consistent policy of the SteelCorporation to have in its control no more than sixty per cent ofthe steel properties of the country; that their proportion of thoseproperties was in fact somewhat less than sixty per cent; and that theacquisition of the holdings of the Tennessee Company would raise itonly a little above that point. They felt, however, that it would beextremely desirable for them to make the suggested purchase in order toprevent the damage which would result from the failure of the firm inquestion. They were willing to buy the stocks offered because inthe best judgment of many of the strongest bankers in New York thetransaction would be an influential factor in preventing a furtherextension of the panic. Judge Gary and Mr. Frick declared that they wereready to make the purchase with this end in view but that they would notact without the President's approval of their action. 

Immediate action was imperative. It was important that the purchase, ifit were to be made, should be announced at the opening of the New YorkStock Exchange at ten o'clock that morning. Fortunately Rooseveltnever shilly-shallied when a crisis confronted him. His decision wasinstantaneous. He assured his callers that while, of course, he couldnot advise them to take the action, proposed, he felt that he had nopublic duty to interpose any objection. 

This assurance was quite sufficient. The pure chase was made andannounced, the firm in question did not fail, and the panic wasarrested. The immediate reaction of practically the whole country wasone of relief. It was only later, when the danger was past, that criticsbegan to make themselves heard. Any one who had taken the troubleto ascertain the facts would have known beyond question that theacquisition of the Tennessee properties was not sufficient to changethe status of the Steel Corporation under the anti-trust law. But thecritics did not want to know the facts. They wanted--most of them, atleast--to have a stick with which to beat Roosevelt. Besides, many ofthem did not hold Roosevelt's views about the square deal. Their beliefwas that whatever big business did was ipso facto evil and that it wasthe duty of public officials to find out what big business wanted to doand then prevent its accomplishment. 

Under a later Administration, Roosevelt was invited to come before aCongressional investigating committee to explain what he did in thisfamous case. There he told the complete story of the occurrence simply, frankly, and emphatically, and ended with this statement: "If I were ona sailboat, I should not ordinarily meddle with any of the gear; but ifa sudden squall struck us, and the main sheet jammed, so that the boatthreatened to capsize, I would unhesitatingly cut the main sheet, eventhough I were sure that the owner, no matter how grateful to me at themoment for having saved his life, would a few weeks later, when he hadforgotten his danger and his fear, decide to sue me for the value ofthe cut rope. But I would feel a hearty contempt for the owner who soacted. "

Two laws passed during the second Roosevelt Administration had animportant bearing on the conduct of American business, though in adifferent way from those which have already been considered. They werethe Pure Food law, and the Meat Inspection act. Both were measures forthe protection of the public health; but both were at the same timemeasures for the control of private business. The Pure Food law didthree things: it prohibited the sale of foods or drugs which were notpure and unadulterated; it prohibited the sale of drugs which containedopium, cocaine, alcohol, and other narcotics unless the exact proportionof them in the preparation were stated on the package; and it prohibitedthe sale of foods and drugs as anything else than what they actuallywere. The Meat Inspection law required rigid inspection by Governmentofficials of all slaughterhouses and packing concerns preparing meatfood products for distribution in interstate commerce. The imperativeneed for the passage of this law was brought forcibly and vividly tothe popular attention through a novel, "The Jungle", written by UptonSinclair, in which the disgraceful conditions of uncleanliness andrevolting carelessness in the Chicago packing houses were described withvitriolic intensity. An official investigation ordered by the Presidentconfirmed the truth of these timely revelations. 

These achievements on the part of the Roosevelt Administrations were ofhigh value. But, after all Roosevelt performed an even greater servicein arousing the public mind to a realization of facts of nationalsignificance and stimulating the public conscience to a desire todeal with them vigorously and justly. From the very beginning of hisPresidential career he realized the gravity of the problems created bythe rise of big business; and he began forthwith to impress upon thepeople with hammer blows the conditions as he saw them, the needfor definite corrective action, and the absolute necessity for suchtreatment of the case as would constitute the "square deal. " Aninteresting example of his method and of the response which it receivedis to be found in the report of an address which he made in 1907. Itruns thus:

"From the standpoint of our material prosperity there is only oneother thing as important as the discouragement of a spirit of envy andhostility toward business men, toward honest men of means; this is thediscouragement of dishonest business men. [Great applause. ]

"Wait a moment; I don't want you to applaud this part unless you arewilling to applaud also the part I read first, to which you listened insilence. [Laughter and applause. ] I want you to understand that I willstand just as straight for the rights of the honest man who wins hisfortune by honest methods as I will stand against the dishonest man whowins a fortune by dishonest methods. And I challenge the right to yoursupport in one attitude just as much as in the other. I am glad youapplauded when you did, but I want you to go back now and applaudthe other statement. I will read a little of it over again. 'Everymanifestation of ignorant envy and hostility toward honest men whoacquire wealth by honest means should be crushed at the outset by theweight of a sensible public opinion. ' [Tremendous applause. ] Thank you. Now I'll go on. "

Roosevelt's incessant emphasis was placed upon conduct as the properstandard 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 asfirmly as we oppose a corporation which does wrong; and we stand equallystoutly for the rights of the man of wealth and for the rights of thewage-worker. We seek to protect the property of every man who actshonestly, of every corporation that represents wealth honestlyaccumulated and honestly used. We seek to stop wrongdoing, and we desireto punish the wrongdoer only so far as is necessary to achieve thisend. "

At another time he sounded the same note--sounded it indeed with a"damnable iteration" that only proved how deeply it was imbedded in hisconviction. 

"Let us strive steadily to secure justice as between man and man withoutregard to the man's position, social or otherwise. Let us remember thatjustice can never be justice unless it is equal. Do justice to the richman and exact justice from him; do justice to the poor man andexact justice from him--justice to the capitalist and justice to thewage-worker. .. . I have an equally hearty aversion for the reactionaryand the demagogue; but I am not going to be driven out of fealty to myprinciples because certain of them are championed by the reactionary andcertain others by the demagogue. The reactionary is always stronglyfor the rights of property; so am I. .. . I will not be driven away fromchampionship of the rights of property upon which all our civilizationrests because they happen to be championed by people who championfurthermore the abuses of wealth. .. . Most demagogues advocate someexcellent popular principles, and nothing could be more foolish than fordecent men to permit themselves to be put into an attitude of ignorantand perverse opposition to all reforms demanded in the name of thepeople 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 tobe misunderstood, misinterpreted, and assailed. Toward the end of hisPresidential career, when he was attacking with peculiar vigor the"malefactors of great wealth" whom the Government had found it necessaryto punish for their predatory acts in corporate guise, it was gentlyintimated by certain defenders of privilege that he was insane. At othertimes, when he was insisting upon justice even to men who had achievedmaterial success, he was placed by the more rabid of the radicalopponents of privilege in the hierarchy of the worshipers of thegolden calf. His course along the middle of the onward way exposed himpeculiarly to the missiles of invective and scorn from the partisans oneither side. But neither could drive him into the arms of the other. 

The best evidence of the soundness of the strategy with which heassailed the enemies of the common good, with whirling war-club but withscrupulous observance of the demands of justice and fair play, is tobe found in the measure of what he actually achieved. He did arousethe popular mind and sting the popular conscience broad awake. Hedid enforce the law without fear or favor. He did leave upon thestatute-book and in the machinery of government new means and methodsfor the control of business and for the protection of the generalwelfare against predatory wealth. 

CHAPTER VIII. THE SQUARE DEAL FOR LABOR

It should go without saying that Roosevelt was vigorously and deeplyconcerned with the relations between capital and labor, for he wasinterested in everything that concerned the men and women of America, everything that had to do with human relations. From the very beginningof his public life he had been a champion of the workingman when theworkingman needed defense against exploitation and injustice. But hisadvocacy of the workers' rights was never demagogic nor partial. Inindustrial relations, as in the relations between business and thecommunity, he believed in the square deal. The rights of labor andthe rights of capital must, he firmly held, be respected each by theother--and the rights of the public by both. 

Roosevelt believed thoroughly in trade unions. He realized that one ofthe striking accompaniments of the gigantic developments in businessand industry of the past few generations was a gross inequality in thebargaining relation between the employer and the individual employeestanding 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 employedtheir tens of thousands, could easily dispense with the services of anyparticular miner. The miner, on the other hand, however expert, couldnot dispense with the companies. He needed a job; his wife and childrenwould starve if he did not get one. What the miner had to sell--hislabor--was a perishable commodity; the labor of today--if not sold todaywas lost forever. Moreover, his labor was not like most commodities--amere thing; it was a part of a living, human being. The workman saw, andall citizens who gave earnest thought to the matter saw that the laborproblem was not only an economic, but also a moral, a human problem. Individually the miners were impotent when they sought to enter a wagecontract with the great companies; they could make fair terms only byuniting into trade unions to bargain collectively. The men were forcedto cooperate to secure not only their economic, but their simple humanrights. They, like other workmen, were compelled by the very conditionsunder 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 powerfor good and evil as the industries in which the men were employed grewlarger and larger. " *

 * Autobiography (Scribner), pp. 471-78. 

He was fond of quoting three statements of Lincoln's as expressingprecisely what he himself believed about capital and labor. The first ofthese sayings was this: "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed iflabor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, anddeserves much the higher consideration. "

This statement, Roosevelt used to say, would have made him, if it hadbeen original with him, even more strongly denounced as a communistagitator than he already was! Then he would turn from this, which thecapitalist ought to hear, to another saying of Lincoln's which theworkingman ought to hear: "Capital has its rights, which are as worthyof protection as any other rights. . . . Nor should this lead to a warupon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor;. .. Propertyis desirable; it is a positive good in the world. "

Then would come the final word from Lincoln, driven home by Rooseveltwith all his usual vigor and fire: "Let not him who is houseless pulldown the house of another, but let him work diligently and build onefor himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe fromviolence when built. "

In these three sayings, Roosevelt declared, Lincoln "showed the propersense of proportion in his relative estimates of capital and labor, ofhuman rights and property rights. " Roosevelt's own most famous statementof the matter was made in an address which he delivered before theSorbonne in Paris, on his way back from Africa: "In every civilizedsociety property rights must be carefully safeguarded. Ordinarily, andin the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights arefundamentally and in the long run identical; but when it clearly appearsthat there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have theupper hand, for property belongs to man and not man to property. "

Several times it happened to Roosevelt to be confronted with thenecessity of meeting with force the threat of violence on the part ofstriking workers. He never refused the challenge, and his firmness neverlost him the respect of any but the worthless among the workingmen. When he was Police Commissioner, strikers in New York were coming intocontinual conflict with the police. Roosevelt asked the strike leadersto meet him in order to talk things over. These leaders did not knowthe man with whom they were dealing; they tried to bully him. Theytruculently announced the things that they would do if the policewere not compliant to their wishes. But they did not get far in thatdirection. Roosevelt called a halt with a snap of his jaws. "Gentlemen!"he said, "we want to understand one another. That was my object incoming here. Remember, please, that he who counsels violence does thecause of labor the poorest service. Also, he loses his case. Understanddistinctly that order will be kept. The police will keep it. Now, gentlemen!" There was surprised silence for a moment, and then smashingapplause. 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 occurredto put into effect his convictions about the industrial problem. In1909. There was a strike which brought about a complete stoppage of workfor several months in the anthracite coal regions. Both operators andworkers were determined to make no concession. The coal famine becamea national menace as the winter approached. "The big coal operatorshad banded together, " so Roosevelt has described the situation, "andpositively refused to take any steps looking toward an accommodation. They knew that the suffering among the miners was great; they wereconfident that if order was kept, and nothing further done by theGovernment, they would win; and they refused to consider that the publichad any rights in the matter. "

As the situation grew more and more dangerous, the President directedthe head of the Federal Labor Bureau to make an investigation of thewhole matter. From this investigation it appeared that the most feasiblesolution of the problem was to prevail upon both sides to agree to acommission of arbitration and promise to accept its findings. To thisproposal the miners agreed; the mine owners insolently declined it. Nevertheless, Roosevelt persisted, and ultimately the operatorsyielded on condition that the commission, which was to be named by thePresident, should contain no representative of labor. They insisted thatit should be composed of (1) an officer of the engineer corps ofthe army or navy, (2) a man with experience in mining, (3) a "manof prominence, eminent as a sociologist, " (4) a Federal Judge of theEastern District of Pennsylvania, and (5) a mining engineer. In thecourse of a long and grueling conference it looked as though adeadlock could be the only outcome, since the mine owners would haveno representative of labor on any terms. But it suddenly dawned onRoosevelt that the owners were objecting not to the thing but to thename. He discovered that they would not object to the appointment of anyman, labor man or not, so long as he was not appointed as a labor manor as a representative of labor. "I shall never forget, " he says inhis "Autobiography", "the mixture of relief and amusement I felt when Ithoroughly grasped the fact that while they would heroically submit toanarchy rather than have Tweedledum, yet if I would call it Tweedledeethey would accept with rapture. " All that he needed to do was to "commita technical and nominal absurdity with a solemn face. " When he realizedthat this was the case, Roosevelt announced that he was glad to acceptthe terms laid down, and proceeded to appoint to the third positionon the Commission the labor man whom he had wanted from the firstto appoint, Mr. E. E. Clark, the head of the Brotherhood of RailwayConductors. He called him, however, an "eminent sociologist, " adding inhis announcement of the appointment this explanation: "For the purposesof such a Commission, the term sociologist means a man who has thoughtand studied deeply on social questions and has practically applied hisknowledge. "

The Commission as finally constituted was an admirable one. Its report, which removed every menace to peace in the coal industry, was anoutstanding event in the history of the relations of labor and capitalin the United States. 

But the most interesting and significant part of Roosevelt's relationto the great coal strike concerned something that did not happen. Itillustrates his habit of seeing clearly through a situation to the endand knowing far in advance just what action he was prepared to take inany contingency that might possibly arise. He was determined that workshould be resumed in the mines and that the country should have coal. Hedid not propose to allow the operators to maintain the deadlock by sheerrefusal to make any compromise. In case he could not succeed in makingthem reconsider their position, he had prepared a definite and drasticcourse of action. The facts in regard to this plan did not becomepublic until many years after the strike was settled, and then only whenRoosevelt described it in his "Autobiography". 

The method of action which Roosevelt had determined upon in the lastresort was to get the Governor of Pennsylvania to appeal to him asPresident to restore order. He had then determined to put Federal troopsinto the coal fields under the command of some first-rate general, with instructions not only to preserve order but to dispossess the mineoperators and to run the mines as a receiver, until such time as theCommission should make its report and the President should issue furtherorders in view of that report. Roosevelt found an army officer with therequisite good sense, judgment, and nerve to act in such a crisis in theperson of Major General Schofield. Roosevelt sent for the General andexplained the seriousness of the crisis. "He was a fine fellow, " saysRoosevelt in his "Autobiography", "a most respectable-looking old boy, with side whiskers and a black skull-cap, without any of the outwardaspect of the conventional military dictator; but in both nerve andjudgment he was all right. " Schofield quietly assured the President thatif the order was given he would take possession of the mines, and wouldguarantee to open them and run them without permitting any interferenceeither by the owners or by the strikers or by any one else, so long asthe President told him to stay. Fortunately Roosevelt's efforts to bringabout arbitration were ultimately successful and recourse to the novelexpedient of having the army operate the coal mines proved unnecessary. No one was more pleased than Roosevelt himself at the harmoniousadjustment of the trouble, for, as he said, "It is never well to takedrastic action if the result can be achieved with equal efficiency inless drastic fashion. " But there can be no question that the drasticaction would have followed if the coal operators had not seen the lightwhen they did. 

In other phases of national life Roosevelt made his influence equallyfelt. As President he found that there was little which the FederalGovernment could do directly for the practical betterment of living andworking conditions among the mass of the people compared with what theState Governments could do. He determined, however, to strive to makethe National Government an ideal employer. He hoped to make the Federalemployee feel, just as much as did the Cabinet officer, that he was oneof the partners engaged in the service of the public, proud of his work, eager to do it efficiently, and confident of just treatment. The FederalGovernment could act in relation to laboring conditions only in theTerritories, in the District of Columbia, and in connection withinterstate commerce. But in those fields it accomplished much. 

The eight-hour law for workers in the executive departments had becomea mere farce and was continually violated by officials who made theirsubordinates work longer hours than the law stipulated. This conditionthe President remedied by executive action, at the same time seeingto it that the shirk and the dawdler received no mercy. A good lawprotecting the lives and health of miners in the Territories was passed;and laws were enacted for the District of Columbia, providing for thesupervision of employment agencies, for safeguarding workers againstaccidents, and for the restriction of child labor. A workmen'scompensation law for government employees, inadequate but at least abeginning, was put on the statute books. A similar law for workers oninterstate railways was declared unconstitutional by the courts; but asecond law was passed and stood the test. 

It was chiefly in the field of executive action, however, that Rooseveltwas able to put his theories into practice. There he did not have todeal with recalcitrant, stupid, or medieval-minded politicians, as he sooften did in matters of legislation. One case which confronted him foundhim on the side against the labor unions, but, being sure that he wasright, he did not let that fact disturb him. A printer in the GovernmentPrinting Office, named Miller, had been discharged because he was anon-union man. The President immediately ordered him reinstated. 

Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor, withseveral members of its Executive Council, called upon him to protest. The President was courteous but inflexible. He answered their protest bydeclaring that, in the employment and dismissal of men in the Governmentservice, he could no more recognize the fact that a man did or did notbelong to a union as being for or against him, than he could recognizethe 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 andsaid that if he were a worker himself he would unquestionably join aunion. He always preferred to see a union shop. But he could not allowhis personal preferences to control his public actions. The Governmentwas bound to treat union and non-union men exactly alike. His action incausing Miller to be reinstated was final. 

Another instance which illustrated Roosevelt's skill in handling adifficult situation occurred in 1908 when the Louisville and NashvilleRailroad and certain other lines announced a reduction in wages. Theheads of that particular road laid the necessity for the reduction atthe door of "the drastic laws inimical to the interests of the railroadsthat have in the past year or two been enacted. " A general strike, with all the attendant discomfort and disorder, was threatened inretaliation. The President wrote a letter to the Interstate CommerceCommission, in which he said:

"These reductions in wages may be justified or they may not. As to thisthe public, which is a vitally interested party, can form no judgmentwithout a more complete knowledge of the essential facts and real meritsof the case than it now has or than it can possibly obtain from thespecial pleadings, certain to be put forth by each side in case theirdispute should bring about serious interruption to traffic. If thereduction in wages is due to natural causes, the loss of business beingsuch that the burden should be, and is, equitably distributed, betweencapitalist and wageworker, the public should know it. If it is caused bylegislation, the public and Congress should know it; and if it is causedby misconduct in the past financial or other operations of any railroad, then everybody should know it, especially if the excuse of unfriendlylegislation is advanced as a method of covering up past businessmisconduct by the railroad managers, or as a justification for failureto treat fairly the wage-earning employees of the company. "

The letter closed with a request to the Commission to investigate thewhole matter with these points in view. But the investigation provedunnecessary; the letter was enough. The proposed reduction of wages wasnever heard of again. The strength of the President's position in a caseof this sort was that he was cheerfully prepared to accept whatever aninvestigation should show to be right. If the reduction should prove tobe required by natural causes, very well--let the reduction be made. Ifit was the result of unfair and unwise legislation, very well--repealthe legislation. If it was caused by misconduct on the part of railroadmanagers, very well--let them be punished. It was hard to get the betterof a man who wanted only the truth, and was ready to act upon it, nomatter which way it cut. 

In 1910, after his return from Africa, a speaking trip happened totake him to Columbus, Ohio, which had for months been in the grasp of astreet railway strike. There had been much violence, many policemen hadrefused to do their duty, and many officials had failed in theirs. Itwas an uncomfortable time for an outsider to come and make a speech. ButRoosevelt did not dodge. He spoke, and straight to the point. His speechhad 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 aresome of the incisive things that he said:

"Now, the first requisite is to establish order; and the first duty ofevery official, in State and city alike, high and low, is to see thatorder obtains and that violence is definitely stopped . .. . I have thegreatest regard for the policeman who does his duty. I put him highamong the props of the State, but the policeman who mutinies, orrefuses to perform his duty, stands on a lower level than that of theprofessional lawbreaker. .. . I ask, then, not only that civic officialsperform their duties, but that you, the people, insist upon theirperforming them. .. . I ask this particularly of the wage-workers, andemployees, and men on strike. .. . I ask them, not merely passively, butactively, to aid in restoring order. I ask them to clear their skirtsof all suspicion of sympathizing with disorder, and, above all, thesuspicion of sympathizing with those who commit brutal and cowardlyassaults. .. . What I have said of the laboring men applies just asmuch to the capitalists and the capitalists' representatives. .. . Thewage-workers and the representatives of the companies should make itevident that they wish the law absolutely obeyed; that there is nochance of saying that either the labor organization or the corporationfavors 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--whateverthat man's status--is punished with the utmost severity. .. . Whenyou have obtained law and order, remember that it is useless to haveobtained them unless upon them you build a superstructure of justice. After finding out the facts, see that justice is done; see thatinjustice that has been perpetrated in the past is remedied, and seethat the chance of doing injustice in the future is minimized. "

Now, any one might in his closet write an essay on Law, Order, andJustice, which would contain every idea that is here expressed. Theessayist might even feel somewhat ashamed of his production on theground that all the ideas that it contained were platitudes. But it isone thing to write an essay far from the madding crowd, and it wasquite another to face an audience every member of which was probablya partisan of either the workers, the employers, or the officials, andgive them straight from the shoulder simple platitudinous truths of thissort applicable to the situation in which they found themselves. Any oneof them would have been delighted to hear these things said about hisopponents; it was when they were addressed to himself and his associatesthat they stung. The best part of it, however, was the fact that thosethings were precisely what the situation needed. They were the truth;and Roosevelt knew it. His sword had a double edge, and he habituallyused it with a sweep that cut both ways. As a result he was generallyhated or feared by the extremists on both sides. But the average citizenheartily approved the impartiality of his strokes. 

In the year 1905 the Governor of Idaho was killed by a bomb as he wasleaving his house. A former miner, who had been driven from the Statesix years before by United States troops engaged in putting downindustrial disorder, was arrested and confessed the crime. In hisconfession he implicated three officers of the Western Federation ofMiners, Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone. These three men were brought fromColorado into Idaho by a method that closely resembled kidnaping, thoughit subsequently received the sanction of the United States SupremeCourt. While these prominent labor leaders were awaiting trial, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada seethed and burst into eruption. Parts ofthe mining districts were transformed into two hostile armed camps. Violence was common. At this time Roosevelt coupled the name of a giantamong American railroad financiers, with those of Moyer and Haywood, and described them all as "undesirable citizens. " The outbursts ofresentment from both sides were instantaneous and vicious. There waslittle to choose between them. Finally the President took advantage ofa letter of criticism from a supporter of the accused labor leaders toreply to both groups of critics. He referred to the fact that certainrepresentatives of the great capitalists had protested, because he hadincluded a prominent financier with Moyer and Haywood, while certainrepresentatives of labor had protested on precisely the oppositegrounds. Then Roosevelt went on to say:

"I am as profoundly indifferent to the condemnation in one case as inthe 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 thetypes of bad citizenship which I have held up to reprobation. .. . You askfor a 'square deal' for Messrs. Moyer and Haywood. So do I. When Isay 'square deal', I mean a square deal to every one; it is equally aviolation of the policy of the square deal for a capitalist to protestagainst denunciation of a capitalist who is guilty of wrongdoing and fora labor leader to protest against the denunciation of a labor leader whohas been guilty of wrongdoing. I stand for equal justice to both; and sofar as in my power lies I shall uphold justice, whether the man accusedof guilt has behind him the wealthiest corporation, the greatestaggregations of riches in the country, or whether he has behind him themost influential labor organizations in the country. "

It should be recorded for the sake of avoiding misapprehension thatRoosevelt's denunciation of Moyer and Haywood was not based on theassumption that they were guilty of the death of the murdered' Governor, but was predicated on their general attitude and conduct in theindustrial conflicts in the mining fields. 

The criticisms of Roosevelt because of his actions in the complexrelations of capital and labor were often puerile. For instance, hewas sternly taken to task on one or two occasions because he had laborleaders lunch with him at the White House. He replied to one of hiscritics with this statement of his position: "While I am President Iwish the labor man to feel that he has the same right of access to methat the capitalist has; that the doors swing open as easily to thewageworker 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 thesewords: "The forest and water problems are perhaps the most vitalinternal questions of the United States. " At that moment, on December 3, 1901, the impulse was given that was to add to the American vocabularytwo new words, "reclamation" and "conservation, " that was to create twogreat constructive movements for the preservation, the increase, andthe utilization of natural resources, and that was to establish a newrelationship on the part of the Federal Government to the nation'snatural wealth. 

Reclamation and conservation had this in common: the purpose of both wasthe intelligent and efficient utilization of the natural resourcesof the country for the benefit of the people of the country. Butthey differed in one respect, and with conspicuous practical effects. Reclamation, which meant the spending of public moneys to render fertileand 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'senjoyment of benefits which it was not in the public interest that heshould continue to enjoy unchecked. It was therefore popular from thefirst, and the new policy went through Congress as though on well-oiledwheels. Only six months passed between its first statement in thePresidential message and its enactment into law. Conservation, on theother hand, had to begin by withholding the natural resources fromexploitation and extravagant use. It had, first of all, to establish inthe national mind the principle that the forests and mines of the nationare not an inexhaustible grab-bag into which whosoever will may thrustgreedy and wasteful hands, and by this new understanding to stop thesquandering of vast national resources until they could be economicallydeveloped and intelligently used. So it was inevitable that conservationshould prove unpopular, while reclamation gained an easy popularity, andthat those who had been feeding fat off the country's stores offorest and mineral wealth should oppose, with tooth and nail, the verysuggestion of conservation. It was on the first Sunday after he reachedWashington as President, before he had moved into the White House, thatRoosevelt discussed with two men, Gifford Pinchot and F. H. Newell, thetwin policies that were to become two of the finest contributionsto American progress of the Roosevelt Administrations. Both men werealready in the Government service, both were men of broad vision andhigh constructive ability; with both Roosevelt had already workedwhen he was Governor of New York. The name of Newell, who became chiefengineer of the Reclamation Service, ought to be better known popularlythan it is in connection with the wonderful work that has beenaccomplished in making the desert lands of western America blossom andproduce abundantly. The name of Pinchot, by a more fortunate combinationof events, has become synonymous in the popular mind with theconservation movement. 

On the very day that the first Roosevelt message was read to theCongress, a committee of Western Senators and Congressmen was organized, under the leadership of Senator Francis G. Newlands of Nevada, toprepare a Reclamation Bill. The only obstacle to the prompt enactmentof the bill was the undue insistence upon State Rights by certainCongressmen, "who consistently fought for local and private interestsas against the interests of the people as a whole. " In spite of thisshortsighted opposition, the bill became law on June 17, 1902, and thework of reclamation began without an instant's delay. The ReclamationAct set aside the proceeds of the sale of public lands for the purposeof reclaiming the waste areas of the arid West. 

Lands otherwise worthless were to be irrigated and in those new regionsof agricultural productivity homes were to be established. The money soexpended was to be repaid in due course by the settlers on the land andthe sums repaid were to be used as a revolving fund for the continuousprosecution of the reclamation work. Nearly five million dollars wasmade immediately available for the work. Within four years, twenty-six"projects" had been approved by the Secretary of the Interior and workwas well under way on practically all of them. They were situated infourteen 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 areasof from eight thousand to two hundred thousand acres each; and the grandtotal of arid lands to which water was thus to be brought by canals, tunnels, aqueducts, and ditches was more than a million and a halfacres. 

The work had to be carried out under the most difficult and adventurousconditions. The men of the Reclamation Service were in the truest sensepioneers, building great engineering works far from the railroads, wherethe very problem of living for the great numbers of workers required wasno simple one. On the Shoshone in Wyoming these men built the highestdam in the world, 310 feet from base to crest. They pierced a mountainrange in Colorado and carried the waters of the Gunnison River nearlysix miles to the Uncompahgre Valley through a tunnel in the solid rock. The great Roosevelt dam on the Salt River in Arizona with its giganticcurved wall of masonry 280 feet high, created a lake with a capacityof fifty-six billion cubic feet, and watered in 1915 an area of 750, 000acres. 

The work of these bold pioneers was made possible by the fearlessbacking which they received from the Administration at Washington. The President demanded of them certain definite results and gave themunquestioning support. In Roosevelt's own words, "the men in chargewere given to understand that they must get into the water if they wouldlearn to swim; and, furthermore, they learned to know that if they actedhonestly, and boldly and fearlessly accepted responsibility, I wouldstand by them to the limit. In this, as in every other case, in the endthe boldness of the action fully justified itself. "

The work of reclamation was first prosecuted under the United StatesGeological Survey; but in the spring of 1908 the United StatesReclamation Service was established to carry it on, under the directionof Mr. Newell, to whom the inception of the plan was due. Roosevelt paida fine and well-deserved tribute to the man who originated and carriedthrough this great national achievement when he said that "Newell'ssingle-minded devotion to this great task, the constructive imaginationwhich enabled him to conceive it, and the executive power and highcharacter through which he and his assistant, Arthur P. Davis, built upa model service--all these made him a model servant. The final proof ofhis merit is supplied by the character and records of the men who laterassailed him. "

The assault to which Roosevelt thus refers was the inevitable aftermathof great accomplishment. Reclamation was popular, when it was proposed, while it was being carried out, and when the water began to flow in theditches, making new lands of fertile abundance for settlers and farmers. But the reaction of unpopularity came the minute the beneficiarieshad to begin to pay for the benefits received. Then arose a concertedmovement for the repudiation of the obligation of the settlers to repaythe Government for what had been spent to reclaim the land. The baserpart of human nature always seeks a scapegoat; and it might naturallybe expected that the repudiators and their supporters should concentratetheir attacks upon the head of the Reclamation Service, to whoseoutstanding ability and continuous labor they owed that for which theywere now unwilling to pay. But no attack, not even the adverse reportof an ill-humored congressional committee, can alter the fact ofthe tremendous service that Newell and his loyal associates in theReclamation Service did for the nation and the people of the UnitedStates. By 1915 reclamation had added to the arable land of the countrya million and a quarter acres, of which nearly eight hundred thousandacres were already "under water, " and largely under tillage, producingyearly more than eighteen million dollars' worth of crops. 

When Roosevelt became President there was a Bureau of Forestry in theDepartment of Agriculture, but it was a body entrusted with merely thestudy of forestry problems and principles. It contained all the trainedforesters in the employ of the Government; but it had no public forestlands whatever to which the knowledge and skill of these men could beapplied. All the forest reserves of that day were in the charge of thePublic Land Office in the Department of the Interior. This was managedby clerks who knew nothing of forestry, and most, if not all, of whomhad never seen a stick of the timber or an acre of the woodlands forwhich they were responsible. The mapping and description of the timberlay with the Geological Survey. So the national forests had no forestersand 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 thoughtand action on the part of the American people toward their naturalresources. Dazzled and intoxicated by the inexhaustible riches of theirbountiful land, they had concerned themselves only with the agreeabletask of utilizing and consuming them. To their shortsighted vision thereseemed always plenty more beyond. With the beginning of the twentiethcentury a prophet arose in the land to warn the people that the supplywas not inexhaustible. He declared not only that the "plenty morebeyond" had an end, but that the end was already in sight. This prophetwas Gifford Pinchot. His warning went forth reinforced by all theauthority of the Presidential office and all the conviction and drivingpower of the personality of Roosevelt himself. Pinchot's warning cry wasstartling:

"The growth of our forests is but one-third of the annual cut; andwe have in store timber enough for only twenty or thirty years atour present rate of use. .. . Our coal supplies are so far from beinginexhaustible that if the increasing rate of consumption shown bythe figures of the last seventy-five years continues to prevail, oursupplies of anthracite coal will last but fifty years and of bituminouscoal less than two hundred years. .. . Many oil and gas fields, as inPennsylvania, West Virginia, and the Mississippi Valley, have alreadyfailed, yet vast quantities of gas continue to be poured into the airand great quantities of oil into the streams. Cases are known in whichgreat volumes of oil were systematically burned in order to get ridof it. .. . In 1896, Professor Shaler, than whom no one has spoken withgreater authority on this subject, estimated that in the upland regionsof the States South of Pennsylvania, three thousand square miles ofsoil have been destroyed as the result of forest denudation, and thatdestruction was then proceeding at the rate of one hundred square milesof fertile soil per year. . . . The Mississippi River alone is estimatedto transport yearly four hundred million tons of sediment, or abouttwice the amount of material to be excavated from the Panama Canal. Thismaterial is the most fertile portion of the richest fields, transformedfrom a blessing to a curse by unrestricted erosion. .. . The destructionof forage plants by overgrazing has resulted, in the opinion of men mostcapable of judging, in reducing the grazing value of the public lands byone-half. "

Here, then, was a problem of national significance, and it was one whichthe President attacked with his usual promptness and vigor. His firstmessage to Congress called for the unification of the care of the forestlands of the public domain in a single body under the Department ofAgriculture. He asked that legal authority be granted to the Presidentto transfer to the Department of Agriculture lands for use as forestreserves. He declared that "the forest reserves should be set apartforever for the use and benefit of our people as a whole and notsacrificed to the shortsighted greed of a few. " He supplemented thisdeclaration with an explanation of the meaning and purpose of the forestpolicy which he urged should be adopted: "Wise forest protection doesnot mean the withdrawal of forest resources, whether of wood, water, orgrass, from contributing their full share to the welfare of the people, but, on the contrary, gives the assurance of larger and more certainsupplies. The fundamental idea of forestry is the perpetuation offorests by use. Forest protection is not an end in itself; it is a meansto increase and sustain the resources of our country and the industrieswhich depend upon them. The preservation of our forests is an imperativebusiness necessity. We have come to see clearly that whateverdestroys the forest, except to make way for agriculture, threatens ourwellbeing. "

Nevertheless it was four years before Congress could be brought to thecommon-sense policy of administering the forest lands still belongingto the Government. Pinchot and his associates in the Bureau of Forestryspent the interval profitably, however, in investigating and studyingthe whole problem of national forest resources and in drawing upenlightened and effective plans for their protection and development. Accordingly, when the act transferring the National Forests to thecharge of the newly created United States Forest Service in theDepartment of Agriculture was passed early in 1905, they were ready forthe responsibility. 

The principles which they had formulated and which they now began toapply had been summed up by Roosevelt in the statement "that the rightsof the public to the natural resources outweigh private rights and mustbe given the first consideration. " Until the establishment of the ForestService, private rights had almost always been allowed to overbalancepublic rights in matters that concerned not only the National Forests, but the public lands generally. It was the necessity of having this newprinciple recognized and adopted that made the way of the newly createdForest Service and of the whole Conservation movement so thorny. Thosewho had been used to making personal profit from free and unrestrictedexploitation of the nation's natural resources would look only withantagonism on a movement which put a consideration of the generalwelfare first. 

The Forest Service nevertheless put these principles immediately intopractical application. The National Forests were opened to a regulateduse of all their resources. A law was passed throwing open to settlementall land in the National Forests which was found to be chiefly valuablefor agriculture. Hitherto all such land had been closed to the settler. Regulations were established and enforced which favored the settlerrather than the large stockowner. It was provided that, when conditionsrequired the reduction in the number of head of stock grazed in anyNational Forest, the vast herds of the wealthy owner should be affectedbefore the few head of the small man, upon which the living of hisfamily depended. The principle which excited the bitterest antagonism ofall 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 sheepraisers, who had been accustomed to graze their animals at will on therichest lands of the public forests, with no one but themselves a pennythe better off thereby. But the Attorney-General of the United Statesdeclared it legal to make the men who pastured their cattle and sheep inthe National Forests pay for this privilege; and in the summer of 1906such charges were for the first time made and collected. The trainedforesters of the service were put in charge of the National Forests. Asa result, improvement began to manifest itself in other ways. Within twoyears the fire prevention work alone had completely justified the newpolicy of forest regulation. Eighty-six per cent of the fires that didoccur in the National Forests were held down to an area of five acres orless. 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 1905the 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 RooseveltAdministrations with the result that there were 194, 000, 000 acres ofpublicly owned and administered forest lands when Roosevelt went out ofoffice. The inclusion of these lands in the National Forests, where theywere safe from the selfish exploitation of greedy private interests, was not accomplished without the bitterest opposition. The wisdom of theserpent sometimes had to be called into play to circumvent the adroitmaneuvering of these interests and their servants in Congress. In 1907, for example, Senator Charles W. Fulton of Oregon obtained an amendmentto the Agricultural Appropriation Bill forbidding the President to setaside any additional National Forests in six Northwestern States. . Butthe President and the Forest Service were ready for this bold attemptto deprive the public of some 16, 000, 000 acres for the benefit of landgrabbers and special interests. They knew exactly what lands ought tobe set aside in those States. So the President first unostentatiouslysigned the necessary proclamations to erect those lands into NationalForests, and then quietly approved the Agricultural Bill. "The opponentsof the Forest Service, " said Roosevelt, "turned handsprings in theirwrath; and dire were their threats against the Executive; but thethreats could not be carried out, and were really only a tribute to theefficiency of our action. "

The development of a sound and enlightened forest policy naturally ledto the consideration of a similar policy for dealing with the waterpower of the country which had hitherto gone to waste or was in thehands of private interests. It had been the immemorial custom that thewater powers on the navigable streams, on the public domain, and inthe National Forests should be given away for nothing, and practicallywithout question, to the first comer. This ancient custom ran rightathwart the newly enunciated principle that public property should notpass into private possession without being paid for, and that permanentgrants, except for home-making, should not be made. The Forest Servicenow began to apply this principle to the water powers in the NationalForests, granting permission for the development and use of such powerfor limited periods only and requiring payment for the privilege. Thiswas the beginning of a general water power policy which, in the courseof time, commended itself to public approval; but it was long beforeit ceased to be opposed by the private interests that wanted these richresources for their own undisputed use. 

Out of the forest movement grew the conservation movement in its broadersense. In the fall of 1907 Roosevelt made a trip down the MississippiRiver with the definite purpose of drawing general attention to thesubject of the development of the national inland waterways. Sevenmonths before, he had established the Inland Waterways Commission andhad directed it to "consider the relations of the streams to the use ofall the great permanent natural resources and their conservation for themaking and maintenance of permanent homes. " During the trip a letter wasprepared by a group of men interested in the conservation movementand was presented to him, asking him to summon a conference on theconservation of natural resources. At a great meeting held at Memphis, Tennessee, Roosevelt publicly announced his intention of calling such aconference. 

In May of the following year the conference was held in the East Roomof the White House. There were assembled there the President, theVice-President, seven Cabinet members, the Supreme Court Justices, theGovernors of thirty-four States and representatives of the other twelve, the Governors of all the Territories, including Alaska, Hawaii, andPorto Rico, the President of the Board of Commissioners of the Districtof Columbia, representatives of sixty-eight national societies, fourspecial guests, William Jennings Bryan, James J. Hill, Andrew Carnegie, and John Mitchell, forty-eight general guests, and the members of theInland Waterways Commission. The object of the conference was stated bythe President in these words: "It seems to me time for the country totake account of its natural resources, and to inquire how long they arelikely to last. We are prosperous now; we should not forget that it willbe just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time. "

At the conclusion of the conference a declaration prepared by theGovernors of Louisiana, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Utah, and South Carolina, was unanimously adopted. This Magna Charta of the conservation movementdeclared "that the great natural resources supply the material basisupon which our civilization must continue to depend and upon which theperpetuity of the nation itself rests, " that "this material basis isthreatened with exhaustion, " and that "this conservation of our naturalresources is a subject of transcendent importance, which should engageunremittingly the attention of the Nation, the States, and the peoplein earnest cooperation. " It set forth the practical implications ofConservation in these words:

"We agree that the land should be so used that erosion and soil washshall cease; and that there should be reclamation of arid and semi-aridregions by means of irrigation, and of swamp and overflowed regions bymeans of drainage; that the waters should be so conserved and used asto promote navigation, to enable the arid regions to be reclaimed byirrigation, and to develop power in the interests of the people; thatthe forests which regulate our rivers, support our industries, andpromote the fertility and productiveness of the soil should be preservedand perpetuated; that the minerals found so abundantly beneath thesurface should be so used as to prolong their utility; that the beauty, healthfulness, and habitability of our country should be preserved andincreased; that sources of national wealth exist for the benefit of thepeople, and that monopoly thereof should not be tolerated. "

The conference urged the continuation and extension of the forestpolicies 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 ofwaste in the mining and extraction of coal, oil, gas, and other mineralswith a view to their wise conservation for the use of the people. Thedeclaration closed with the timely adjuration, "Let us conserve thefoundations of our prosperity. "

As a result of the conference President Roosevelt created the NationalConservation Commission, consisting of forty-nine men of prominence, about one-third of whom were engaged in politics, one-third in variousindustries, and one-third in scientific work. Gifford Pinchot wasappointed chairman. The Commission proceeded to make an inventory of thenatural resources of the United States. This inventory contains the onlyauthentic statement as to the amounts of the national resources of thecountry, the degree to which they have already been exhausted, and theirprobable duration. But with this inventory there came to an end theactivity of the Conservation Commission, for Congress not only refusedany appropriation for its use but decreed by law that no bureau ofthe Government should do any work for any commission or similar bodyappointed by the President, without reference to the question whethersuch work was appropriate or not for such a bureau to undertake. Inasmuch as the invaluable inventory already made had been almostentirely the work of scientific bureaus of the Government instructed bythe President to cooperate with the Commission, the purpose and animusof this legislation were easily apparent. Congress had once more shownits friendship for the special interests and its indifference to thegeneral welfare. 

In February, 1909, on the invitation of President Roosevelt, a NorthAmerican Conservation Conference, attended by representatives of theUnited States, Canada, and Mexico, was held at the White House. Adeclaration of principles was drawn up and the suggestion made thatall the nations of the world should be invited to meet in a WorldConservation Conference. The President forthwith addressed to forty-fivenations a letter inviting them to assemble at The Hague for such aconference; but, as he has laconically expressed it, "When I left theWhite 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 instinctivepreference for the dramatic over the significant, promptly seized uponthe "big stick" half of the aphorism and ignored the other half. Buta study of the various acts of Roosevelt when he was President readilyshows that in his mind the "big stick" was purely subordinate. It wasmerely the ultima ratio, the possession of which would enable a nationto "speak softly" and walk safely along the road of peace and justiceand fair play. 

The secret of Roosevelt's success in foreign affairs is to be found inanother of his favorite sayings: "Nine-tenths of wisdom is to be wise intime. " He has himself declared that his whole foreign policy "wasbased on the exercise of intelligent foresight and of decisive actionsufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis to make it improbablethat we would run into serious trouble. "

When Roosevelt became President, a perplexing controversy with GreatBritain over the boundary line between Alaska and Canada was in fullswing. The problem, which had become acute with the discovery of gold inthe Klondike in 1897, had already been considered, together with elevenother subjects of dispute between Canada and the United States, by aJoint Commission which had been able to reach no agreement. The essenceof the controversy was this: The treaty of 1825 between Great Britainand Russia had declared that the boundary, dividing British and RussianAmerica on that five-hundred-mile strip of land which depends from theAlaskan elephant's head like a dangling halter rope, should be drawn"parallel to the windings of the coast" at a distance inland of thirtymiles. The United States took the plain and literal interpretation ofthese words in the treaty. The Canadian contention was that within themeaning of the treaty the fiords or inlets which here break into theland were not part of the sea, and that the line, instead of following, at the correct distance inland, the indentations made by these arms ofthe sea, should leap boldly across them, at the agreed distance fromthe points of the headlands. This would give Canada the heads of severalgreat inlets and direct access to the sea far north of the point wherethe Canadian coast had, always been assumed to end. Canada and theUnited States were equally resolute in upholding their claims. It lookedas if the matter would end in a deadlock. 

John Hay, who had been Secretary of State in McKinley's Cabinet, ashe now was in Roosevelt's, had done his best to bring the matter to asettlement, but had been unwilling to have the dispute arbitrated, forthe very good reason that, as he said, "although our claim is as clearas the sun in heaven, we know enough of arbitration to foresee the fataltendency of all arbitrators to compromise. " Roosevelt believed that the"claim of the Canadians for access to deep water along any part of theAlaskan coast is just exactly as indefensible as if they should nowclaim the island of Nantucket. " He was willing, however, to refer thequestion unconfused by other issues to a second Joint Commission of six. The commission was duly constituted. There was no odd neutral member ofthis body, as in an arbitration, but merely three representatives fromeach side. Of the British representatives two were Canadians and thethird was the Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Alverstone. 

But before the Commission met, the President took pains to have conveyedto the British Cabinet, in an informal but diplomatically correct way, his views and his intentions in the event of a disagreement. "I wish tomake one last effort, " he said, "to bring about an agreement through theCommission which will enable the people of both countries to saythat the result represents the feeling of the representatives ofboth countries. But if there is a disagreement, I wish it distinctlyunderstood, not only that there will be no arbitration of the matter, but that in my message to Congress I shall take a position which willprevent any possibility of arbitration hereafter. " If this should seemto any one too vigorous flourishing of the "big stick, " let him rememberthat it was all done through confidential diplomatic channels, andthat the judgment of the Lord Chief Justice of England, when the finaldecision was made, fully upheld Roosevelt's position. 

The decision of the Commission was, with slight immaterialmodifications, in favor of the United States. Lord Alverstone votedagainst his Canadian than colleagues. It was a just decision, as mostwell-informed Canadians knew at the time. The troublesome question wassettled; the time-honored friendship of two great peoples had sufferedno interruption; and Roosevelt had secured for his country its justdue, without public parade or bluster, by merely being wise--andinflexible--in time. 

During the same early period of his Presidency, Roosevelt found himselfconfronted with a situation in South America, which threatened a seriousviolation of the Monroe Doctrine. Venezuela was repudiating certaindebts which the Venezuelan Government had guaranteed to Europeancapitalists. German capital was chiefly involved, and Germany proposedto collect the debts by force. Great Britain and Italy were alsoconcerned in the matter, but Germany was the ringleader and the activepartner in the undertaking. Throughout the year 1902 a pacific blockadeof the Venezuelan coast was maintained and in December of that year anultimatum demanding the immediate payment of the debts was presented. When its terms were not complied with, diplomatic relations were brokenoff and the Venezuelan fleet was seized. At this point the United Statesentered upon the scene, but with no blare of trumpets. 

In fact, what really happened was not generally known until severalyears later. 

In his message of December, 1901, President Roosevelt had made twosignificant statements. Speaking of the Monroe Doctrine, he said, "We donot guarantee any state against punishment, if it misconducts itself. "This was very satisfactory to Germany. But he added--"provided thepunishment does not take the form of the acquisition of territory by anynon-American power. " This did not suit the German book so well. For ayear the matter was discussed. Germany disclaimed any intention to make"permanent" acquisitions in Venezuela but contended for its rightto make "temporary" ones. Now the world had already seen "temporary"acquisitions made in China, and it was a matter of common knowledge thatthis 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 thatGermany should arbitrate its differences with Venezuela. Von Hollebenassured him that his "Imperial Master" would not hear of such a course. The President persisted that there must be no taking possession, eventemporarily, of Venezuelan territory. He informed the Ambassador thatAdmiral Dewey was at that moment maneuvering in Caribbean waters, andthat if satisfactory assurances did not come from Berlin in ten days, he would be ordered to proceed to Venezuela to see that no territory wasseized by German forces. The Ambassador was firm in his conviction thatno assurances would be forthcoming. 

A week later Von Holleben appeared at the White House to talk ofanother matter and was about to leave without mentioning Venezuela. ThePresident stopped him with a question. No, said the Ambassador, noword had come from Berlin. Then, Roosevelt explained, it would notbe necessary for him to wait the remaining three days. Dewey would beinstructed to sail a day earlier than originally planned. He added thatnot a word of all this had been put upon paper, and that if the GermanEmperor would consent to arbitrate, the President would praise himpublicly for his broadmindedness. The Ambassador was still convincedthat no arbitration was conceivable. 

But just twelve hours later he appeared at the White House, his facewreathed in smiles. On behalf of his Imperial Master he had the honor torequest the President of the United States to act as arbitratorbetween Germany and Venezuela. The orders to Dewey were never sent, the President publicly congratulated the Kaiser on his loyalty to theprinciple of arbitration, and, at Roosevelt's suggestion, the case wentto The Hague. Not an intimation of the real occurrences came out tilllong after, not a public word or act marred the perfect friendliness ofthe two nations. The Monroe Doctrine was just as unequivocally invokedand just as inflexibly upheld as it had been by Grover Cleveland eightyears before in another Venezuelan case. But the quiet private warninghad been substituted for the loud public threat. 

The question of the admission of Japanese immigrants to the UnitedStates and of their treatment had long disturbed American internationalrelations. It became acute in the latter part of 1906, when the city ofSan Francisco determined to exclude all Japanese pupils from the publicschools and to segregate them in a school of their own. This actionseemed to the Japanese a manifest violation of the rights guaranteed bytreaty. Diplomatic protests were instantly forthcoming at Washington;and popular demonstrations against the United States boiled up inTokyo. For the third time there appeared splendid material for a seriousconflict with a great power which might conceivably lead to activehostilities. From such beginnings wars have come before now. 

The President was convinced that the Californians were utterly wrongin what they had done, but perfectly right in the underlying convictionfrom which their action sprang. He saw that justice and good faithdemanded that the Japanese in California be protected in their treatyrights, and that the Californians be protected from the immigration ofJapanese laborers in mass. With characteristic promptness and vigorhe set forth these two considerations and took action to make themeffective. In his message to Congress in December he declared: "In thematter now before me, affecting the Japanese, everything that is in mypower to do will be done and all of the forces, military and civil, ofthe United States which I may lawfully employ will be so employed . .. Toenforce the rights of aliens under treaties. " Here was reassurance forthe Japanese. But he also added: "The Japanese would themselves nottolerate the intrusion into their country of a mass of Americans whowould displace Japanese in the business of the land. The people ofCalifornia are right in insisting that the Japanese shall not comethither in mass. " Here was reassurance for the Californians. 

The words were promptly followed by acts. The garrison of Federaltroops at San Francisco was reinforced and public notice was given thatviolence against Japanese would be put down. Suits were brought both inthe California State courts and in the Federal courts there to upholdthe treaty rights of Japan. Mr. Victor H. Metcalf, the Secretary ofCommerce and Labor, himself a Californian, was sent to San Francisco tomake a study of the whole situation. It was made abundantly clear to thepeople of San Francisco and the Coast that the provision of the FederalConstitution making treaties a part of the supreme law of the land, with which the Constitution and laws of no State can interfere, wouldbe strictly enforced. The report of Secretary Metcalf showed that theschool authorities of San Francisco had done not only an illegal thingbut an unnecessary and a stupid thing. 

Meanwhile Roosevelt had been working with equal vigor upon the otherside of the problem. He esteemed it precisely as important to protectthe Californians from the Japanese as to protect the Japanese fromthe Californians. As in the Alaskan and Venezuelan cases, he proceededwithout beat of drum or clash of cymbal. The matter was worked out inunobtrusive conferences between the President and the State Departmentand the Japanese representatives in Washington. It was all friendly, informal, conciliatory--but the Japanese did not fail to recognize theinflexible determination behind this courteous friendliness. Out ofthese conferences came an informal agreement on the part of the JapaneseGovernment that no passports would be issued to Japanese workingmenpermitting them to leave Japan for ports of the United States. It wasfurther only necessary to prevent Japanese coolies from coming intothe United States through Canada and Mexico. This was done by executiveorder just two days after the school authorities of San Francisco hadrescinded their discriminatory school decree. 

The incident is eminently typical of Roosevelt's principles andpractice: to accord full measure of justice while demanding full measurein 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 readywillingness to compel California to do justice to the Japanese wasmisinterpreted in Japan as timidity. Certain chauvinistic elements inJapan began to have thoughts which were in danger of becoming inimicalto the best interests of the United States. It seemed to PresidentRoosevelt an opportune moment, for many reasons, to send the Americanbattle fleet on a voyage around the world. The project was frowned onin this country and viewed with doubt in other parts of the world. Manysaid the thing could not be done, for no navy in the world had yet doneit; but Roosevelt knew that it could. European observers believedthat it would lead to war with Japan; but Roosevelt's conviction wasprecisely the opposite. In his own words, "I did not expect it;. .. Ibelieved that Japan would feel as friendly in the matter as we did;but. .. If my expectations had proved mistaken, it would have been proofpositive that we were going to be attacked anyhow, and. .. In suchevent it would have been an enormous gain to have had the three months'preliminary preparation which enabled the fleet to start perfectlyequipped. In a personal interview before they left, I had explainedto the officers in command that I believed the trip would be one ofabsolute peace, but that they were to take exactly the same precautionsagainst sudden attack of any kind as if we were at war with all thenations of the earth; and that no excuse of any kind would be acceptedif there were a sudden attack of any kind and we were taken unawares. "Prominent inhabitants and newspapers of the Atlantic coast were deeplyconcerned over the taking away of the fleet from the Atlantic to thePacific. The head of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, who hailedfrom the State of Maine, declared that the fleet should not and couldnot go because Congress would refuse to appropriate the money; Rooseveltannounced in response that he had enough money to take the fleetaround into the Pacific anyhow, that it would certainly go, and that ifCongress did not choose to appropriate enough money to bring the fleetback, it could stay there. There was no further difficulty about themoney. 

The voyage was at once a hard training trip and a triumphant progress. Everywhere the ships, their officers, and their men were received withhearty cordiality and deep admiration, and nowhere more so than inJapan. The nations of the world were profoundly impressed by theachievement. The people of the United States were thoroughly arousedto a new pride in their navy and an interest in its adequacy andefficiency. It was definitely established in the minds of Americans andforeigners that the United States navy is rightfully as much at home inthe Pacific as in the Atlantic. Any cloud the size of a man's hand thatmay have been gathering above the Japanese horizon was forthwith sweptaway. Roosevelt's plan was a novel and bold use of the instruments ofwar 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 anindividual nor a nation can possess rights which do not carry with themduties. Not long after the Venezuelan incident--in which the rightof the United States, as set forth in the Monroe Doctrine, to preventEuropean powers from occupying territory in the Western Hemisphere wassuccessfully upheld--an occasion arose nearer home not only to insistupon rights but to assume the duties involved. In a message to theSenate in February, 1905, Roosevelt thus outlined his conception of thedual nature of the Monroe Doctrine:

"It has for some time been obvious that those who profit by the MonroeDoctrine must accept certain responsibilities along with the rightswhich it confers, and that the same statement applies to those whouphold the doctrine. .. . An aggrieved nation can, without interferingwith the Monroe Doctrine, take what action it sees fit in the adjustmentof its disputes with American states, provided that action does nottake the shape of interference with their form of government or of thedespoilment of their territory under any disguise. But short of this, when the question is one of a money claim, the only way which remainsfinally to collect it is a blockade or bombardment or seizure of thecustom houses, and this means. .. What is in effect a possession, eventhough only a temporary possession, of territory. The United States thenbecomes a party in interest, because under the Monroe Doctrine it cannotsee any European power seize and permanently occupy the territory ofone of these republics; and yet such seizure of territory, disguisedor undisguised, may eventually offer the only way in which the power inquestion can collect its debts, unless there is interference on the partof the United States. "

Roosevelt had already found such interference necessary in the case ofGermany and Venezuela. But it had been interference in a purely negativesense. He had merely insisted that the European power should not occupyAmerican territory even temporarily. In the later case of the DominicanRepublic he supplemented this negative interference with positiveaction based upon his conviction of the inseparable nature of rights andobligations. 

Santo Domingo was in its usual state of chronic revolution. The stakesfor which the rival forces were continually fighting were the customhouses, for they were the only certain sources of revenue and theirreceipts were the only reliable security which could be offered toforeign capitalists in support of loans. So thoroughgoing was thedemoralization of the Republic's affairs that at one time there weretwo rival "governments" in the island and a revolution going on againsteach. One of these governments was once to be found at sea in a smallgunboat but still insisting that, as the only legitimate government, it was entitled to declare war or peace or, more particularly, to makeloans. The national debt of the Republic had mounted to $32, 280, 000 ofwhich some $22, 000, 000 was owed to European creditors. The interest dueon it in the year 1905 was two and a half million dollars. The wholesituation was ripe for intervention by one or more European governments. 

Such action President Roosevelt could not permit. But he could notignore the validity of the debts which the Republic had contracted orthe justice of the demand for the payment of at least the interest. "Itcannot in the long run prove possible, " he said, "for the UnitedStates to protect delinquent American nations from punishment for thenon-performance of their duties unless she undertakes to make themperform their duties. " So he invented a plan, which, by reason ofits success in the Dominican case and its subsequent application andextension by later administrations, has come to be a thoroughly acceptedpart of the foreign policy of the United States. It ought to be knownas the Roosevelt Plan, just as the amplification of the Monroe Doctrinealready outlined might well be known as the Roosevelt Doctrine. 

A naval commander in Dominican waters was instructed to see that norevolutionary fighting was permitted to endanger the custom houses. These instructions were carried out explicitly but without any actualuse of force or shedding of blood. On one occasion two rival forces hadplanned a battle in a custom-house town. The American commander informedthem courteously but firmly that they would not be permitted tofight there, for a battle might endanger the custom house. He had noobjection, however, to their fighting. In fact he had picked out anice spot for them outside the town where they might have their battleundisturbed. The winner could have the town. Would they kindly stepoutside for their fight. They would; they did. The American commandergravely welcomed the victorious faction as the rightful rulers of thetown. So much for keeping the custom houses intact. But the RooseveltPlan went much further. An agreement was entered into with thosegovernmental authorities "who for the moment seemed best able to speakfor the country" by means of which the custom houses were placed underAmerican control. United States forces were to keep order and to protectthe custom houses; United States officials were to collect the customsdues; forty-five per cent of the revenue was to be turned over to theDominican Government, and fifty-five per cent put into a sinking fund inNew York for the benefit of the creditors. The plan succeeded famously. The Dominicans got more out of their forty-five per cent than they hadbeen wont to get when presumably the entire revenue was theirs. Thecreditors thoroughly approved, and their Governments had no possiblepretext left for interference. Although the plan concerned itself notat all with the internal affairs of the Republic, its indirect influencewas strong for good and the island enjoyed a degree of peace andprosperity such as it had not known before for at least a century. There was, however, strong opposition in the United States Senate to theratification of the treaty with the Dominican Republic. The Democrats, with one or two exceptions, voted against ratification. A number of themore reactionary Republican Senators, also, who were violentlyhostile to President Roosevelt because of his attitude toward greatcorporations, lent their opposition. The Roosevelt Plan was furtherattacked by certain sections of the press, already antagonistic on othergrounds, and by some of those whom Roosevelt called the "professionalinterventional philanthropists. " It was two years before the Senate wasready to ratify the treaty, but meanwhile Roosevelt continued to carryit out "as a simple agreement on the part of the Executive which couldbe converted into a treaty whenever the Senate was ready to act. "

The treaty as finally ratified differed in some particulars from theprotocol. In the protocol the United States agreed "to respect thecomplete territorial integrity of the Dominican Republic. " This covenantwas omitted in the final document in deference to Roosevelt's opponentswho could see no difference between "respecting" the integrity ofterritory and "guaranteeing" it. Another clause pledging the assistanceof the United States in the internal affairs of the Republic, wheneverthe judgment of the American Government deemed it to be wise, was alsoomitted. The provision of the protocol making it the duty of the UnitedStates to deal with the various creditors of the Dominican Republic inorder to determine the amount which each was to receive in settlementof its claims was modified so that this responsibility remained with theGovernment of the Republic. In Roosevelt's opinion, these modificationsin the protocol detracted nothing from the original plan. He ascribedthe delay in the ratification of the treaty to partisanship andbitterness against himself; and it is certainly true that most of thetreaty's opponents were his consistent critics on other grounds. 

A considerable portion of Roosevelt's success as a diplomat was thefruit of personality, as must be the case with any diplomat who makesmore than a routine achievement. He disarmed suspicion by transparenthonesty, and he impelled respect for his words by always promising orgiving warning of not a hairsbreadth more than he was perfectly willingand thoroughly prepared to perform. He was always cheerfully readyto let the other fellow "save his face. " He set no store by publictriumphs. He was as exigent that his country should do justly as he wasinsistent 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 aninfluence beyond the normal sphere of his official activities. Only aman who had earned the confidence and the respect of the statesmen ofother nations could have performed such a service as he did in 1905in bringing about peace between Russia and Japan in the conflict thenraging in the Far East. It was high time that the war should end, inthe interest of both contestants. The Russians had been consistentlydefeated on land and had lost their entire fleet at the battle ofTsushima. The Japanese were apparently on the highroad to victory. Butin reality, Japan's success had been bought at an exorbitant price. Intelligent observers in the diplomatic world who were in a position torealize the truth knew that neither nation could afford to go on. 

On June 8, 1905, President Roosevelt sent to both Governments anidentical note in which he urged them, "not only for their own sakes, but in the interest of the whole civilized world, to open directnegotiations for peace with each other. " This was the first that theworld heard of the proposal. But the President had already conducted, with the utmost secrecy, confidential negotiations with Tokyo and withSt. Petersburg to induce both belligerents to consent to a face to facediscussion of peace. In Russia he had found it necessary to go directlyto the Czar himself, through the American Ambassador, George vonLengerke Meyer. Each Government was assured that no breath of the matterwould be made public until both nations had signified their willingnessto treat. Neither nation was to know anything of the other's readinessuntil both had committed themselves. These advances appear to have beenmade following a suggestion from Japan that Roosevelt should attempt tosecure peace. He used to say, in discussing the matter, that, whileit was not generally known or even suspected, Japan was actually "bledwhite" by the herculean efforts she had made. But Japan's positionwas the stronger, and peace was more important for Russia than forher antagonist. The Japanese were more clear-sighted than the selfishRussian bureaucracy; and they realized that they had gained so muchalready that there was nothing to be won by further fighting. 

When the public invitation to peace negotiations was extended, theconference had already been arranged and the confidential consentof both Governments needed only to be made formal. Russia wished themeeting of plenipotentiaries to take place at Paris, Japan preferredChifu, in China. Neither liked the other's suggestion, and Roosevelt'sinvitation to come to Washington, with the privilege of adjourningto some place in New England if the weather was too hot, was finallyaccepted. The formal meeting between the plenipotentiaries took placeat Oyster Bay on the 5th of August on board the Presidential yacht, theMayflower. Roosevelt received his guests in the cabin and proposed atoast in these words: "Gentlemen, I propose a toast to which there willbe no answer and which I ask you to drink in silence, standing. I drinkto the welfare and prosperity of the sovereigns and the peoples of thetwo great nations whose representatives have met one another on thisship. It is my earnest hope and prayer, in the interest not only ofthese two great powers, but of all civilized mankind, that a just andlasting peace may speedily be concluded between them. "

The two groups of plenipotentiaries were carried, each on an Americannaval vessel, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and there at the Navy Yardbegan their conference. Two-thirds of the terms proposed by Japan werepromptly accepted by the Russian envoys. But an irretrievable split onthe remainder seemed inevitable. Japan demanded a money indemnity andthe cession of the southern half of the island of Saghalien, whichJapanese forces had already occupied. These demands the Russiansrefused. 

Then Roosevelt took a hand in the proceedings. He urged the Japanesedelegates, through the Japanese Ambassador, to give up their demandfor an indemnity. He pointed out that, when it came to "a questionof rubles, " the Russian Government and the Russian people were firmlyresolved not to yield. To Baron Rosen, one of the Russian delegates, herecommended yielding in the matter of Saghalien, since the Japanese werealready in possession and there were racial and historical groundsfor considering the southern half of the island logically Japaneseterritory. The envoys met again, and the Japanese renewed their demands. The Russians refused. Then the Japanese offered to waive the indemnityif the Russians would yield on Saghalien. The offer was accepted, andthe peace was made. 

Immediately Roosevelt was acclaimed by the world, including the Russiansand the Japanese, as a great peacemaker. The Nobel Peace Prize of amedal and $40, 000 was awarded to him. But it was not long before both inRussia and Japan public opinion veered to the point of asserting thathe had caused peace to be made too soon and to the detriment of theinterests of the nation in question. That was just what he expected. Heknew human nature thoroughly; and from long experience he had learnedto be humorously philosophical about such manifestations of man'singratitude. 

In the next year the influence of Roosevelt's personality was againfelt in affairs outside the traditional realm of American internationalinterests. Germany was attempting to intrude in Morocco, where France bycommon consent had been the dominant foreign influence. The rattling ofthe Potsdam saber was threatening the tranquillity of the status quo. Aconference of eleven European powers and the United States was heldat Algeciras to readjust the treaty provisions for the protection offoreigners in the decadent Moroccan empire. In the words of a historianof America's foreign relations, "Although the United States was of allperhaps 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 itwas largely owing to their sane and irenic influence that in the end atreaty was amicably made and signed. " * But there was something behindall this. A quiet conference had taken place one day in the remotecity of Washington. The President of the United States and the FrenchAmbassador had discussed the approaching meeting at Algeciras. Therewas a single danger-point in the impending negotiations. The French mustfind a way around it. The Ambassador had come to the right man. Hewent out with a few words scratched on a card in the ragged Roosevelthandwriting containing a proposal for a solution. ** The proposal wentto Paris, then to Morocco. The solution was adopted by the conference, and the Hohenzollern menace to the peace of the world was averted forthe moment. Once more Roosevelt had shown how being wise in time was thesure 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 UnitedStates was the building of the Panama Canal. The preliminary steps whichhe took in order to make its building possible have been, of all hisexecutive acts, the most consistently and vigorously criticized. 

It is not our purpose here to follow at length the history of Americandiplomatic relations with Colombia and Panama. We are primarilyconcerned with the part which Roosevelt played in certain internationaloccurrences, of which the Panama incident was not the least interestingand significant. In after years Roosevelt said laconically, "I tookPanama. " In fact he did nothing of the sort. But it was like him tobrush aside all technical defenses of any act of his and to meet hiscritics on their own ground. It was as though he said to them, "Youroundly denounce me for what I did at the time of the revolution whichestablished the Republic of Panama. You declare that my acts werecontrary to international law and international morals. I have asplendid technical defense on the legal side; but I care little abouttechnicalities when compared with reality. Let us admit that I didwhat you charge me with. I will prove to you that I was justified in sodoing. I took Panama; but the taking was a righteous act. "

Fourteen years after that event, in a speech which he made inWashington, Roosevelt expressed his dissatisfaction with the way inwhich President Wilson was conducting the Great War. He reverted to whathe had done in relation to Panama and contrasted his action with thefailure of the Wilson Administration to take prompt possession of twohundred locomotives which had been built in this country for the lateRussian 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 thendiscuss. That was the course that I followed, and to which I have eversince looked back with impenitent satisfaction, in reference to thePanama Canal. If you remember, Panama declared itself independent andwanted to complete the Panama Canal and opened negotiations with us. Ihad two courses open. I might have taken the matter under advisement andput it before the Senate, in which case we should have had a number ofmost able speeches on the subject. We would have had a number of veryprofound arguments, and they would have been going on now, and thePanama Canal would be in the dim future yet. We would have had half acentury of discussion, and perhaps the Panama Canal. I preferred thatwe should have the Panama Canal first and the half century of discussionafterward. And now instead of discussing the canal before it was built, which would have been harmful, they merely discuss me--a discussionwhich I regard with benign interest. "

The facts of the case are simple and in the main undisputed. Shortlyafter the inauguration of Roosevelt as President, a treaty wasnegotiated with Colombia for the building of a canal at Panama. Itprovided for the lease to the United States of a strip six miles wideacross the Isthmus, and for the payment to Colombia of $10, 000, 000 downand $250, 000 a year, beginning nine years later. The treaty was promptlyratified by the United States Senate. A special session of the ColombianSenate spent the summer marking time and adjourned after rejecting thetreaty by a unanimous vote. The dominant motive for the rejection wasgreed. An attempt was first made by the dictatorial government that heldthe Colombian Congress in its mailed hand to extort a large payment fromthe French Canal Company, whose rights and property on the Isthmus wereto be bought by the United States for $40, 000, 000. Then $15, 000, 000instead of $10, 000, 000 was demanded from the United States. Finally anadroit and conscienceless scheme was invented by which the entirerights of the French Canal Company were to be stolen by the ColombianGovernment. This last plot, however, would involve a delay of a year orso. The treaty was therefore rejected in order to provide the necessarydelay. 

But the people of Panama wanted the Canal. They were tired of servingas the milch cow for the fattening of the Government at Bogota. So theyquietly organized a revolution. It was a matter of common knowledge thatit 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. Severalwarships were dispatched to the Isthmus. 

The revolution came off promptly as expected. It was bloodless, for theAmerican naval forces, fulfilling the treaty obligations of the UnitedStates, prevented the Colombian troops on one side of the Isthmusfrom using the Panama Railroad to cross to the other side where therevolutionists were. So the revolutionists were undisturbed. A republicwas immediately declared and immediately recognized by the UnitedStates. A treaty with the new Republic, which guaranteed itsindependence and secured the cession of a zone ten miles wide across theIsthmus, was drawn up inside of two weeks and ratified by both Senateswithin three months. Six weeks later an American commission was on theground to plan the work of construction. The Canal was built. The "halfcentury of discussion" which Roosevelt foresaw is now more than a thirdover, and the discussion shows no sign of lagging. But the Panama Canalis in use. 

Was the President of the United States justified in preventing theColombian Government from fighting on the Isthmus to put down theunanimous revolution of the people of Panama? That is precisely all thathe did. He merely gave orders to the American admiral on the spot to"prevent the disembarkation of Colombian troops with hostile intentwithin the limits of the state of Panama. " But that action was enough, for the Isthmus is separated from Colombia on the one hand by threehundred miles of sea, and on the other by leagues of pathless jungle. 

Roosevelt himself has summed up the action of the United States in thisway:

"From the beginning to the end our course was straightforward andin absolute accord with the highest of standards of internationalmorality. .. . To have acted otherwise than I did would have been on mypart betrayal of the interests of the United States, indifference tothe interests of Panama, and recreancy to the interests of the world atlarge. Colombia had forfeited every claim to consideration; indeed, thisis not stating the case strongly enough: she had so acted that yieldingto her would have meant on our part that culpable form of weakness whichstands on a level with wickedness. .. . We gave to the people of Panama, self-government, and freed them from subjection to alien oppressors. Wedid our best to get Colombia to let us treat her with more thangenerous justice; we exercised patience to beyond the verge of properforbearance. .. . I deeply regretted, and now deeply regret, the factthat the Colombian Government rendered it imperative for me to takethe action I took; but I had no alternative, consistent with the fullperformance of my duty to my own people, and to the nations of mankind. "

The final verdict will be given only in another generation by thehistorian and by the world at large. But no portrait of TheodoreRoosevelt, and no picture of his times, can be complete without thebold, firm outlines of his Panama policy set as near as may be in theirproper perspective. 

CHAPTER XIII. THE TAFT ADMINISTRATION

In the evening of that election day in 1904 which saw Roosevelt madePresident in his own right, after three years of the Presidency givenhim by fate, he issued a brief statement, in which he said: "The wisecustom which limits the President to two terms regards the substance andnot the form, and under no circumstances will I be a candidate for oraccept another nomination. " From this determination, which in his mindrelated to a third consecutive term, and to nothing else, he neverwavered. Four years later, in spite of a widespread demand that heshould be a candidate to succeed himself, he used the great influenceand prestige of his position as President and leader of his party tobring about the nomination of his friend and close associate, WilliamHoward Taft. The choice received general approval from the Republicanparty and from the country at large, although up to the very moment ofthe nomination in the convention at Chicago there was no certainty thata successful effort to stampede the convention for Roosevelt would notbe made by his more irreconcilable supporters. 

Taft was elected by a huge popular plurality. His opponent was WilliamJennings Bryan, who was then making his third unsuccessful campaign forthe Presidency. Taft's election, like his nomination, was assured bythe unreserved and dynamic support accorded him by President Roosevelt. Taft, of course, was already an experienced statesman, high in theesteem of the nation for his public record as Federal judge, as thefirst civil Governor of the Philippines, and as Secretary of War inthe Roosevelt Cabinet. There was every reason to predict for him asuccessful and effective Administration. His occupancy of the WhiteHouse began under smiling skies. He had behind him a united party and asatisfied public opinion. Even his political opponents conceded thatthe country would be safe in his hands. It was expected that he wouldbe conservatively progressive and progressively conservative. Everybodybelieved in him. Yet within a year of the day of his inauguration thePresident's popularity was sharply on the wane. Two years after hiselection the voters repudiated the party which he led. By the end of hisPresidential term the career which had begun with such happy augurieshad become a political tragedy. There were then those who recalled thewords of the Roman historian, "All would have believed him capable ofgoverning 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 twoamendments to the Federal Constitution proposed by Congress, one wasratified by the requisite number of States before Taft went out ofoffice, and the other was finally ratified less than a month after theclose of his term. These were the amendment authorizing the impositionof a Federal income tax and that providing for the direct election ofUnited States Senators. Two States were admitted to the Union duringTaft's term of office, New Mexico and Arizona, the last Territories ofthe United States on the continent, except Alaska. 

Other achievements of importance during Taft's Administration were theestablishment of the parcels post and the postal savings banks; therequirement of publicity, through sworn statements of the candidates, for campaign contributions for the election of Senators andRepresentatives; the extension of the authority of the InterstateCommerce Commission over telephone, telegraph, and cable lines; an actauthorizing the President to withdraw public lands from entry forthe purpose of conserving the natural resources which they maycontain--something which Roosevelt had already done without specificstatutory authorization; the establishment of a Commerce Court tohear appeals from decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission; theappointment of a commission, headed by President Hadley of Yale, toinvestigate the subject of railway stock and bond issues, and to proposea law for the Federal supervision of such railway securities; the Mann"white slave" act, dealing with the transfer of women from one State toanother for immoral purposes; the establishment of the Children'sBureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor; the empowering of theInterstate Commerce Commission to investigate all railway accidents; thecreation of Forest Reserves in the White Mountains and in the southernAppalachians. 

Taft's Administration was further marked, by economy in expenditure, bya considerable extension of the civil service law to cover positions inthe executive departments hitherto free plunder for the spoilsmen, andby efforts on the part of the President to increase the efficiency andthe economical administration of the public service. 

But this good record of things achieved was not enough to gain forMr. Taft popular approval. Items on the other side of the ledger werepointed out. Of these the three most conspicuous were the Payne-Aldrichtariff, the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, and the insurgent movement inCongress. 

The Republican party was returned to power in 1908, committed to arevision of the tariff. Though the party platform did not so state, thiswas generally interpreted as a pledge of revision downward. Taft madeit clear during his campaign that such was his own reading of the partypledge. He said, for instance, "It is my judgment that there are manyschedules of the tariff in which the rates are excessive, and thereare a few in which the rates are not sufficient to fill the measure ofconservative protection. It is my judgment that a revision of the tariffin accordance with the pledge of the platform, will be, on the whole, a substantial revision downward, though there probably will be a fewexceptions in this regard. " Five months after Taft's inauguration thePayne-Aldrich bill became law with his signature. In signing it thePresident said, "The bill is not a perfect bill or a complete compliancewith the promises made, strictly interpreted"; but he further declaredthat he signed it because he believed it to be "the result of a sincereeffort on the part of the Republican party to make downward revision. "

This view was not shared by even all Republicans. Twenty of them in theHouse voted against the bill on its final passage, and seven of themin the Senate. They represented the Middle West and the new elementand spirit in the Republican party. Their dissatisfaction with theperformance of their party associates in Congress and in the WhiteHouse was shared by their constituents and by many other Republicansthroughout the country. A month after the signing of the tariff law, Taft made a speech at Winona, Minnesota, in support of Congressman JamesA. Tawney, the one Republican representative from Minnesota who had notvoted against the bill. In the course of that speech he said; "This isthe 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 ownin signing it on the ground that "the interests of the country, theinterests of the party" required the sacrifice of the accomplishment ofcertain things in the revision of the tariff which had been hoped for, "in order to maintain party solidity, " which he believed to be much moreimportant than the reduction of rates in one or two schedules of thetariff. 

A second disaster to the Taft Administration came in the famousBallinger-Pinchot controversy. Louis R. Glavis, who bad served as aspecial agent of the General Land Office to investigate alleged fraudsin certain claims to coal lands in Alaska, accused Richard Ballinger, the Secretary of the Interior, of favoritism toward those who wereattempting to get public lands fraudulently. The charges were vigorouslysupported by Mr. Pinchot, who broadened the accusation to cover ageneral indifference on the part of the Secretary of the Interior tothe whole conservation movement. President Taft, however, completelyexonerated Secretary Ballinger from blame and removed Glavis for "filinga disingenuous statement unjustly impeaching the official integrityof his superior officer. " Later Pinchot was also dismissed from theservice. The charges against Secretary Ballinger were investigated by ajoint committee of Congress, a majority of which exonerated the accusedCabinet officer. Nevertheless the whole controversy, which raged withvirulence for many months, convinced many ardent supporters of theconservation movement, and especially many admirers of Mr. Pinchot andof Roosevelt, that the Taft Administration at the best was possessed oflittle enthusiasm for conservation. There was a widespread belief, aswell, that the President had handled the whole matter maladroitly andthat in permitting himself to be driven to a point where he had todeprive the country of the services of Gifford Pinchot, the originatorof the conservation movement, he had displayed unsound judgment anddeplorable lack of administrative ability. 

The first half of Mr. Taft's term was further marked by acutedissensions in the Republican ranks in Congress. Joseph G. Cannon wasSpeaker of the House, as he had been in three preceding Congresses. He was a reactionary Republican of the most pronounced type. Under hisleadership the system of autocratic party control of legislation in theHouse had been developed to a high point of effectiveness. The Speaker'sauthority had become in practice almost unrestricted. 

In the congressional session of 1909-10 a strong movement of insurgencyarose within the Republican party in Congress against the control ofthe little band of leaders dominated by the Speaker. In March, 1910, the Republican Insurgents, forty in number, united with the Democraticminority to overrule a formal decision of the Speaker. A four days'parliamentary battle resulted, culminating in a reorganization of theall-powerful Rules Committee, with the Speaker no longer a member of it. The right of the Speaker to appoint this committee was also takenaway. When the Democrats came into control of the House in 1911, theycompleted the dethronement of the Speaker by depriving him of theappointment of all committees. 

The old system had not been without its advantages, when the powerof the Speaker and his small group of associate party leaders was notabused. It at least concentrated responsibility in a few prominentmembers of the majority party. But it made it possible for these fewmen to perpetuate a machine and to ignore the desires of the rest ofthe party representatives and of the voters of the party throughout thecountry. The defeat of Cannonism put an end to the autocratic powerof the Speaker and relegated him to the position of a mere presidingofficer. It had also a wider significance, for it portended the divisionin the old Republican party out of which was to come the new Progressiveparty. 

When the mid-point of the Taft Administration was reached, a practicaltest was given of the measure of popular approval which the Presidentand his party associates had achieved. The congressional electionswent decidedly against the Republicans. The Republican majority offorty-seven in the House was changed to a Democratic majority offifty-four. The Republican majority in the Senate was cut down fromtwenty-eight to ten. Not only were the Democrats successful in thissubstantial degree, but many of the Western States elected ProgressiveRepublicans instead of Republicans of the old type. During the last twoyears of his term, the President was consequently obliged to work witha Democratic House and with a Senate in which Democrats and InsurgentRepublicans predominated over the old-line Republicans. 

The second half of Taft's Presidency was productive of little butdiscord and dissatisfaction. The Democrats in power in the House werequite ready to harass the Republican President, especially in viewof the approaching Presidential election. The Insurgents in House andSenate were not entirely unwilling to take a hand in the same game. Besides, they found themselves more and more in sincere disagreementwith the President on matters of fundamental policy, though not one ofthem could fairly question his integrity of purpose, impugn his purityof 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 offriendship and admiration for the man whom he had done so much to makePresident. He had high confidence that Taft would be successful in hisgreat office. He had no reason to believe that any change would come inthe friendship between them, which had been peculiarly intimate. Fromthe steamer on which he sailed for Africa, he sent a long telegram ofcordial and hearty good wishes to his successor in Washington. 

The next year Roosevelt came back to the United States, after atriumphal tour of the capitals of Europe, to find his party disruptedand the progressive movement in danger of shipwreck. He had no intentionof entering politics again. But he had no intention, either, of ceasingto champion the things in which he believed. This he made obvious, in his first speech after his return, to the cheering thousands whowelcomed him at the Battery. He said:

"I have thoroughly enjoyed myself; and now I am more glad than I can sayto get home, to be back in my own country, back among people I love. AndI am ready and eager to do my part so far as I am able, in helping solveproblems which must be solved, if we of this, the greatest democraticrepublic upon which the sun has ever shone, are to see its destiniesrise to the high level of our hopes and its opportunities. This is theduty of every citizen, but is peculiarly my duty; for any man whohas ever been honored by being made President of the United States isthereby forever rendered the debtor of the American people and is boundthroughout his life to remember this, his prime obligation. "

The welcome over, Roosevelt tried to take up the life of a privatecitizen. He had become Contributing Editor of The Outlook and hadplanned to give his energies largely to writing. But he was not to belet alone. The people who loved him demanded that they be permitted tosee and to hear him. Those who were in the thick of the political fighton behalf of progress and righteousness called loudly to him for aid. Only a few days after Roosevelt had landed from Europe, Governor Hughesof New York met him at the Commencement exercises at Harvard and urgedhim to help in the fight which the Governor was then making for a directprimary law. Roosevelt did not wish to enter the lists again until hehad had more time for orientation; but he always found it difficult torefuse a plea for help on behalf of a good cause. He therefore sent avigorous telegram to the Republican legislators at Albany urging them tosupport Governor Hughes and to vote for the primary bill. But the appealwent in vain: the Legislature was too thoroughly boss-ridden. Thistelegram, however, sounded a warning to the usurpers in the house of theRepublican Penelope that the fingers of the returned Odysseus had notlost their prowess with the heroic bow. 

During the summer of 1910, Roosevelt made a trip to the West and in aspeech at Ossawattomie, Kansas, set forth what came to be described asthe New Nationalism. It was his draft of a platform, not for himself, but for the nation. A few fragments from that speech will suggest whatRoosevelt was thinking about in those days when the Progressive partywas stirring in the womb. "At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned andthe men who have earned more than they possess is the central conditionof progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of free men to gainand hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeatingthe popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, theessence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highestpossible value both to himself and to the commonwealth. 

"Every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitledto a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation inany public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right ofsuffrage to any corporation. 

"The absence of effective state and, especially, national restraint uponunfair money getting has tended to create a small class of enormouslywealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold andincrease their power. The prime need is to change the conditions whichenable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the generalwelfare that they should hold or exercise. 

"We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of propertyto human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights ofproperty as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims toofar. 

"The State must be made efficient for the work which concerns only thepeople of the State; and the nation for that which concerns all thepeople. There must remain no neutral ground to serve as a refuge forlawbreakers, and especially for lawbreakers of great wealth, who canhire the vulpine legal cunning which will teach them how to avoid bothjurisdictions. 

"I do not ask for overcentralization; but I do ask that we work ina spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we work for whatconcerns our people as a whole. 

"We must have the right kind of character--character that makes aman, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, a goodhusband--that makes a man a good neighbor. .. . The prime problem of ournation is to get the right kind of good citizenship, and to get it, wemust 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 squaredeal I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the presentrules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so asto work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward forequally good service. "

These generalizations Roosevelt accompanied by specific recommendations. They included proposals for publicity of corporate affairs; prohibitionof the use of corporate funds, for political purposes; governmentalsupervision of the capitalization of all corporations doing aninterstate business; control and supervision of corporations andcombinations controlling necessaries of life; holding the officers anddirectors of corporations personally liable when any corporation breaksthe law; an expert tariff commission and revision of the tariff scheduleby schedule; a graduated income tax and a graduated inheritance tax, increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate; conservationof natural resources and their use for the benefit of all rather thantheir monopolization for the benefit of the few; public accounting forall campaign funds before election; comprehensive workmen's compensationacts, state and national laws to regulate child labor and work forwomen, the enforcement of sanitary conditions for workers and thecompulsory use of safety appliances in industry. 

There was nothing in all these proposals that should have seemedrevolutionary or extreme. But there was much that disturbed thereactionaries who were thinking primarily in terms of property and onlybelatedly or not at all of human rights. The Bourbons in the Republicanparty and their supporters among the special interests "viewedwith, alarm" this frank attack upon their intrenched privileges. TheProgressives, however, welcomed with eagerness this robust leadership. The breach in the Republican party was widening with steadilyaccelerating speed. 

In the fall of 1910 a new demand arose that Roosevelt should enteractively into politics. Though it came from his own State, he resistedit with energy and determination. Nevertheless the pressure from hisclose political associates in New York finally became too much for him, and he yielded. They wanted him to go as a delegate to the RepublicanState Convention at Saratoga and to be a candidate for TemporaryChairman of the Convention--the officer whose opening speech istraditionally presumed to sound the keynote of the campaign. Rooseveltwent and, after a bitter fight with the reactionists in the party, led by William Barnes of Albany, was elected Temporary Chairman overVice-President James S. Sherman. The keynote was sounded in no uncertaintones, while Mr. Barnes and his associates fidgeted and suffered. 

Then came a Homeric conflict, with a dramatic climax. The reactionarygang did not know that it was beaten. Its members resisted stridentlyan attempt to write a direct primary plank into the party platform. Theywished to rebuke Governor Hughes, who was as little to their likingas Roosevelt himself, and they did not want the direct primary. Afterspeeches by young James Wadsworth, later United States Senator, JobHedges, and Barnes himself, in which they bewailed the impending demiseof representative government and the coming of mob rule, it was clearthat the primary plank was defeated. Then rose Roosevelt. In a speechthat lashed and flayed the forces of reaction and obscurantism, hedemanded that the party stand by the right of the people to rule. Single-handed he drove a majority of the delegates into line. The plankwas adopted. Thenceforward the convention was his. It selected, ascandidate for Governor, Henry W. Stimson, who had been a Federalattorney in New York under Roosevelt and Secretary of War in Taft'sCabinet. When this victory had been won, Roosevelt threw himselfinto the campaign with his usual abandon and toured the State, makingfighting speeches in scores of cities and towns. But in spite ofRoosevelt's best efforts, Stimson was defeated. 

All this active participation in local political conflicts seriouslydistressed many of Roosevelt's friends and associates. They felt that hewas too big to fritter himself away on small matters from which he--andthe cause whose great champion he was--had so little to gain and so muchto lose. They wanted him to wait patiently for the moment of destinywhich they felt sure would come. But it was never easy for Rooseveltto wait. It was the hardest thing in the world for him to decline aninvitation to enter a fight--when the cause was a righteous one. 

So the year 1911 passed by, with the Taft Administration steadily losingprestige, and the revolt of the Progressives within the Republican partycontinually gathering momentum. Then came 1912, the year of the GloriousFailure. 

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 receivedits coup de grace. The other sprang like a great river system froma multitude of sources, flowed onward by a hundred channels, alwaysconverging and uniting, until a single mighty stream emerged to waterand enrich and serve a broad country and a great people. The one wasephemeral, abortive--a failure. The other was permanent, creative--atriumph. The two were inseparable, each indispensable to the other. Justas the party would never have existed if there had been no movement, so the movement would not have attained such a surpassing measure ofachievement so swiftly without the party. 

The Progressive party came into full being at the convention held inChicago on August 5, 1912 under dramatic circumstances. Every drama musthave a beginning and this one had opened for the public when, on the10th of February in the same year, the Republican Governors of WestVirginia, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Michigan, Kansas, andMissouri addressed a letter to Roosevelt, in which they declared that, in considering what would best insure the continuation of the Republicanparty as a useful agency of good government, they had reached theconclusion that a large majority of the Republican voters of the countryfavored Roosevelt's nomination, and a large majority of the peoplefavored his election as the next President. They asserted their beliefthat, in view of this public demand, he should soon declare whether, ifthe 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 personalinterests. We do not regard it as proper to consider either theinterest or the preference of any man as regards the nomination for thePresidency. We are expressing our sincere belief and best judgment as towhat is demanded of you in the interests of the people as a whole. Andwe feel that you would be unresponsive to a plain public duty ifyou should decline to accept the nomination, coming as the voluntaryexpression of the wishes of a majority of the Republican voters ofthe United States, through the action of their delegates in the nextNational Convention. "

The sincerity and whole-heartedness of the convictions here expressedare in no wise vitiated by the fact that the letter was not writtenuntil 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 littlefarther to that day in late January of 1912 when Theodore Roosevelthimself came face to face with a momentous decision. On that day hedefinitely determined that his duty to the things in which he profoundlybelieved--and no less to the friends and associates who shared hisbeliefs--constrained him once more to enter the arena of politicalconflict and lead the fight. 

Roosevelt had come to this conclusion with extreme reluctance. He had noillusions as to the probable effect upon his personal fortunes. Twicehe had been President once by the hand of fate, once by a great popularvote. To be President again could add nothing to his prestige or fame;it could only subject him for four years to the dangerous vagariesof the unstable popular mood. He had nothing to gain for himself byentering the ring of political conflict again; the chances for personalloss were great. His enemies, his critics, and his political adversarieswould have it that he was eaten up with ambition, that he came back fromhis African and European trip eager to thrust himself again into thelimelight of national political life and to demand for himself again agreat political prize. But his friends, his associates, and those who, knowing him at close range, understood him, realized that this was nopicture of the truth. He accepted what hundreds of Progressive leadersand followers throughout the country--for the man in the ranks had asready access to him as the most prominent leader, and received as warmconsideration--asserted was his clear duty and obligation. 

A letter which he had written two days before Christmas, 1911, showsunmistakably how his mind was working in those days of prologue to thegreat decision. The letter was entirely private, and was addressed to myfather who was a publisher and a friend and not a politician. There is, therefore, no reason whatever why the letter should not be accepted asan accurate picture of Mr. Roosevelt's mind at that time: "Now for themessage Harold gave me, that I should write you a little concerningpolitical conditions. They are very, very mixed. Curiously enough, myarticle on the trusts was generally accepted as bringing me forward forthe Presidential nomination. Evidently what really happened was thatthere had been a strong undercurrent of feeling about me, and that thetalk 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 manypeople do not get the leadership they are looking for from any of theprominent men in public life, and that under the circumstances theygrasp at any one; and as my article on the McNamaras possessed at leastthe merit of being entirely clearcut and of showing that I knew my ownmind and had definite views, a good many plain people turned longinglyto me as a leader. Taft is very weak, but La Follette has not developedreal strength east of the Mississippi River, excepting of course inWisconsin. West of the River he has a large following, although there isa good deal of opposition to him even in States like Kansas, Washington, and California. East of the Mississippi, I believe he can only pick upa few delegates here and there. Taft will have most of the Southerndelegates, he will have the officeholders, and also the tepid andacquiescent, rather than active, support of the ordinary people who donot feel very strongly one way or the other, and who think it is theusual thing to renominate a President. If there were a strong candidateagainst 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 evenmore against La Follette, and who regard themselves as limited to thealternative between the two. There is, of course, always the danger thatthere may be a movement for me, the danger coming partly because themen who may be candidates are very anxious that the ticket shall bestrengthened and care nothing for the fate of the man who strengthensit, and partly because there is a good deal of honest feeling for meamong plain simple people who wish leadership, but who will notaccept leadership unless they believe it to be sincere, fearless, andintelligent. I most emphatically do not wish the nomination. PersonallyI should regard it as a calamity to be nominated. In the first place, Imight very possibly be beaten, and in the next place, even if elected Ishould be confronted with almost impossible conditions out of which tomake good results. In the tariff, for instance, I would have to facethe fact that men would keep comparing what I did, not with what theDemocrats would or could have done but with an ideal, or rather with amultitude of entirely separate and really incompatible ideals. I amnot a candidate, I will never be a candidate; but I have to tell theLa Follette men and the Taft men that while I am absolutely sincere insaying that I am not a candidate and do not wish the nomination, yetthat I do not feel it would be right or proper for me to say that underno circumstances would I accept it if it came; because, while wildlyimprobable, it is yet possible that there might be a public demand whichwould present the matter to me in the light of a duty which I could notshirk. In other words, while I emphatically do not want office, and havenot the slightest idea that any demand for me will come, yet if therewere a real public demand that in the public interest I should do agiven job, it MIGHT be that I would not feel like flinching from thetask. However, this is all in the air, and I do not for one momentbelieve that it will be necessary for me even to consider the matter. Asfor the Democrats, they have their troubles too. Wilson, although stillthe strongest man the Democrats could nominate, is much weaker than hewas. He has given a good many people a feeling that he is very ambitiousand not entirely sincere, and his demand for the Carnegie pensioncreated an unpleasant impression. Harmon is a good old solid Democrat, with the standards of political and commercial morality of twenty yearsago, who would be eagerly welcomed by all the conservative crowd. ChampClark is a good fellow, but impossible as President. 

"I think a good deal will depend upon what this Congress does. Taft mayredeem himself. He was fairly strong at the end of the last session, butwent off lamentably on account of his wavering and shillyshallying on somany matters during his speaking trip. His speeches generally hurthim, and rarely benefit him. But it is possible that the Democrats inCongress may play the fool, and give him the chance to appear as thestrong leader, the man who must be accepted to oppose them. "

This was what Roosevelt at the end, of December sincerely believed wouldbe the situation as time went on. But he underestimated the strength andthe volume of the tide that was rising. 

The crucial decision was made on the 18th of January. I was in theclosest possible touch with Roosevelt in those pregnant days, and Iknow, as well as any but the man himself could know, how his mind wasworking. An entry in my diary on that date shows the origin of theletter of the seven governors:

"Senator Beveridge called on T. R. To urge him to make a publicstatement soon. T. R. Impressed by his arguments and by letters justreceived from three Governors, Hadley, Glasscock, and Bass. Practicallydetermined to ask these Governors, and Stubbs and Osborne, to send him ajoint letter asking him to make a public statement to the effect thatif there is a genuine popular demand for his nomination he will notrefuse-in other words to say to him in a joint letter for publicationjust what they have each said to him in private letters. Such jointaction would give him a proper reason--or occasion--for making a publicdeclaration. T. R. Telegraphed Frank Knox, Republican State Chairman ofMichigan and former member of his regiment, to come down, with intentionof asking him to see the various governors. H. H. , at Ernest Abbott'ssuggestion, asked him not to make final decision till he has hadconference--already arranged--with editorial staff. T. R. Agrees, butthe inevitableness of the matter is evident. "

After that day, things moved rapidly. Two days later the diary containsthis record: "Everett Colby, William Fellowes Morgan, and MarkSullivan call on T. R. All inclined to agree that time for statement ispractically here. T. R. --The time to use a man is when the people wantto use him. " M. S. --"The time to set a hen is when the hen wants toset. " Frank Knox comes in response to telegram. Nat Wright also presentat interview where Knox is informed of the job proposed for him. GiffordPinchot also present at beginning of interview while T. R. Tells howhe views the situation, but leaves (at T. R. 's suggestion) before realbusiness of conference begins. Plan outlined to Knox, who likes it, andsubsequently, in H. H. 's office, draws up letter for Governors. Draftshown to T. R. , who suggests a couple of added sentences emphasizingthat the nomination must come as a real popular demand, and declaringthat the Governors are taking their action not for his sake, but for thesake of the country. Knox takes copy of letter and starts for home, togo out to see Governors as soon as possible. 

On the 22d of January the Conference with The Outlook editorial stafftook 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 todeprecate a public statement now. T. R. --'I have had all the honor theAmerican public can give me. If I should be elected I would go back notso young as I once was, with all the first fine flavor gone, and take upthe horrible task of going in and out, in and out, of the same hole overand over again. But I cannot decline the call. Too many of thosewho have fought with me the good fight for the things we believe intogether, declare that at this critical moment I am the instrument thatought to be used to make it possible for me to refuse. I BELIEVE I SHALLBE 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 andthen saw off the limb. ' R. D. T. Suggested that it be said frankly thatthe Governors wrote the joint letter at T. R. 's request. T. R. Acceptedlike a shot. Went into H. H. 's room, dictated two or three sentences tothat effect, which H. H. Later incorporated in letter. [This plan waslater given up, I believe on the urging of some or all of the Governorsinvolved. ] T. R. --'I can't go on telling my friends in private letterswhat my position is, but asking them not to make it public, withoutseeming furtive. ' In afternoon H. H. Suggests that T. R. Write firstdraft of his letter of reply soon as possible to give all possible timefor consideration and revision. T. R. Has two inspirations--to proposepresidential primaries in order to be sure of popular demand, and to usestatement 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 publicstatement soon would be to violate my cardinal principle--never hit ifyou can help it, but when you have to, hit hard. NEVER hit soft. You'llnever get any thanks for hitting soft. " McHarg called with three menfrom St. Louis. T. R. Said exactly the same thing as usual--he wouldnever accept the nomination if it came as the result of an intrigue, only if it came as the result of a genuine and widespread populardemand. The thing he wants to be sure of is that there is thiswidespread popular demand that he "do a job, " and that the demand isgenuine. "

Meanwhile Frank Knox was consulting the seven Governors, each one ofwhom was delighted to have an opportunity to say to Roosevelt in thisformal, public way just what they had each said to him privately andforcefully. The letter was signed and delivered to T. R. On the 24thof February Roosevelt replied to the letter of the seven Governors inunequivocal terms, "I will accept the nomination for President if it istendered to me, and I will adhere to this decision until--the conventionhas expressed its preference. " He added the hope that so far as possiblethe people might be given the chance, through direct primaries, torecord their wish as to who should be the nominee. A month later, in agreat address at Carnegie Hall in New York, he gave voice publicly tothe same thought that he had expressed to his friends in that editorialconference: "The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is butan instrument, to be used until broken and then cast aside; and if heis worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than a soldiercares when he is sent where his life is forfeit that the victory maybe 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 failsor succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is the cause ofmankind. "

The decision once made, Roosevelt threw himself into the contest fordelegates to the nominating convention with his unparalleled vigor andforcefulness. His main opponent was, of course, the man who had beenhis friend and associate and whom he had done more than any other singleforce to make President as his successor. William Howard Taft hadthe undivided support of the national party organization; but theProgressive Republicans the country over thronged to Roosevelt's supportwith wild enthusiasm. The campaign for the nomination quickly developedtwo aspects, one of which delighted every Progressive in the Republicanparty, the other of which grieved every one of Roosevelt's levelheadedfriends. 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 becamea bitter conflict of personalities between the erstwhile friends. Thebreach between the two men was afterwards healed, but it was severalyears after the reek of the battle had drifted away before even formalrelations were restored between them. 

A complicating factor in the campaign was the candidacy of Senator LaFollette of Wisconsin. In July, 1911, La Follette had begun, at theearnest solicitation of many Progressive leaders in Congress and out, anactive campaign for the Republican nomination. Progressive organizationswere perfected in numerous States and "in less than three months, " as LaFollette has written in his Autobiography, his candidacy "had taken onproportions which compelled recognition. " Four months later a conferenceof some three hundred Progressives from thirty States, meeting inChicago, declared that La Follette was, because of his record, thelogical candidate for the Presidency. Following this conference hecontinued to campaign with increasing vigor, but concurrently theenthusiasm of some of his leading supporters began to cool and theirsupport of his candidacy to weaken. Senator La Follette ascribes thiseffect to the surreptitious maneuvering of Roosevelt, whom he creditswith an overwhelming appetite for another Presidential term, kept incheck only by his fear that he could not be nominated or elected. Butthere is no evidence of any value whatever that Roosevelt was conductingunderground operations or that he desired to be President again. Thetrue explanation of the change in those Progressives who had favored thecandidacy of La Follette and yet had gradually ceased to support him, is to be found in their growing conviction that Taft and the reactionaryforces in the Republican party which he represented could be defeatedonly by one man--and that not the Senator from Wisconsin. In any eventthe La Follette candidacy rapidly declined until it ceased to bea serious element in the situation. Although the Senator, withcharacteristic consistency and pertinacity, stayed in the fight till theend, he entered the Convention with the delegates of but two States, hisown Wisconsin and North Dakota, pledged to support him. 

The pre-convention campaign was made unusually dramatic by the factthat, for the first time in the history of Presidential elections, the voters of thirteen States were privileged not only to select thedelegates to the Convention by direct primary vote but to instruct themin the same way as to the candidate for whom they should cast theirballots. There were 388 such popularly instructed delegates fromCalifornia, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, NewJersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, andWisconsin. It was naturally in these States that the two candidatesconcentrated their campaigning efforts. The result of the selectionof delegates and of the preferential vote in these States was the bestpossible evidence of the desire of the rank and file of the party as tothe Presidential candidate. Of these 388 delegates, Senator La Follettesecured 36; President Taft 71--28 in Georgia, 2 in Illinois, 18 inMassachusetts, 14 in Ohio, and 9 in Pennsylvania; and Roosevelt 281--26in California, 56 in Illinois, 16 in Maryland, 18 in Massachusetts, 16 in Nebraska, 28 in New Jersey, 34 in Ohio, 10 in Oregon, 67 inPennsylvania, and 10 in South Dakota. Roosevelt therefore, in thoseStates where the voters could actually declare at primary electionswhich candidate they preferred, was the expressed choice of more thanfive times as many voters as Taft. 

When the Republican convention met in Chicago an interesting andpeculiar situation presented itself. There were 1078 seats in theConvention. Of the delegates elected to those seats Taft had committedto him the vast majority of the delegates from the States which havenever cast an electoral vote for a Republican candidate for Presidentsince there was a Republican party. Roosevelt had in support of himthe great majority of the delegates from the States which are normallyRepublican and which must be relied upon at election time if aRepublican President is to be chosen. Of the 1078 seats more than 200were contested. Aside from these contested seats, neither candidate hada majority of the delegates. The problem that confronted each side wasto secure the filling of a sufficient number of the disputed seats withits retainers to insure a majority for its candidate. In the solutionof this problem the Taft forces had one insuperable advantage. Thetemporary roll of a nominating convention is made up by the NationalCommittee of the party. The Republican National Committee had beenselected at the close of the last national convention four years before. It accordingly represented the party as it had then stood, regardlessof the significant changes that three and a quarter years of Taft'sPresidency had wrought in party opinion. 

In the National Committee the Taft forces had a strength of more thantwo to one; and all but an insignificant number of the contests weredecided out of hand in favor of Mr. Taft. The temporary roll of theConvention therefore showed a distinct majority against Roosevelt. From the fall of the gavel, the Roosevelt forces fought with vigor anddetermination for what they described as the "purging of the roll" ofthose Taft delegates whose names they declared had been placed upon itby fraud. But at every turn the force of numbers was against them; andthe Taft majority which the National Committee had constituted inthe Convention remained intact, an impregnable defense against theProgressive attack. 

These preliminary engagements concerned with the determination of thefinal membership of the Convention had occupied several days. Meanwhilethe 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, butat headquarters in the Congress Hotel. There were not wanting inthe Progressive forces counsels of moderation and compromise. It wassuggested by those of less fiery mettle that harmony might be arrivedat on the basis of the elimination of both Roosevelt and Taft andthe selection of a candidate not unsatisfactory to either side. ButRoosevelt, backed by the majority of the Progressive delegates, stoodfirm and immovable on the ground that the "roll must be purged" and thathe would consent to no traffic with a Convention whose make-up containeddelegates holding their seats by virtue of fraud. "Let them purge theroll, " he declared again and again, "and I will accept any candidate theConvention may name. " But the organization leaders knew that a yieldingto this demand for a reconstitution of the personnel of the Conventionwould result in but one thing--the nomination for Roosevelt--and thiswas the one thing they were resolved not to permit. 

As the hours of conflict and turmoil passed, there grew steadily andsurely in the Roosevelt ranks a demand for a severance of relationswith the fraudulent Convention and the formation of a new party devoted, without equivocation or compromise, to Progressive principles. A typicalincident of these days of confusion and uncertainty was the drawing upof a declaration of purpose by a Progressive alternate from New Jersey, disgusted with the progress of the machine steam roller and disappointedat 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 asfollows:

"We, the undersigned, in the event that the Republican NationalConvention as at present constituted refuses to purge its roll of thedelegates fraudulently placed upon it by the action of the majorityof the Republican National Committee, pledge ourselves, as Americancitizens devoted to the progressive principles of genuine popular ruleand social justice, to join in the organization of a new party foundedupon those principles, under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt. "

The first signer of the declaration was Governor Hiram W. Johnson ofCalifornia, the second, Governor Robert S. Vessey of South Dakota, thethird, Governor Joseph M. Carey of Wyoming, and farther down thelist were the names of Gifford and Amos Pinchot, James R. Garfield, ex-Governor John Franklin Fort of New Jersey, with Everett Colby andGeorge L. Record of the same State, Matthew Hale of Massachusetts, "Jack" Greenway of Arizona, Judge Ben B. Lindsey of Colorado, MedillMcCormick of Illinois, George Rublee of New Hampshire, and ElonHuntington Hooker, of New York, who was to become the National Treasurerof the new party. The document was, of course, a purely informalassertion of purpose; but it was the first substantial straw to predictthe whirlwind which the masters of the convention were to reap. 

When at last it had become unmistakably clear that the Taft forceswere and would remain to the end in control of the Convention, theProgressive delegates, with a few exceptions, united in dramatic action. Speaking for them with passion and intensity Henry J. Allen of Kansasannounced their intention to participate no longer in the actions ofa convention vitiated by fraud. The Progressive delegates would, hedeclared, remain in their places but they would neither vote nor takeany part whatever in the proceedings. He then read, by permission ofthe Convention, a statement from Roosevelt, in which he pronounced thefollowing indictment:

"The Convention has now declined to purge the roll of the fraudulentdelegates placed thereon by the defunct National Committee, and themajority which has thus indorsed the fraud was made a majority onlybecause it included the fraudulent delegates themselves who all sat asjudges on one another's cases. .. . The Convention as now composed hasno claim to represent the voters of the Republican party. .. . Any mannominated by the Convention as now constituted would merely be thebeneficiary of this successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditablefor any man to accept the Convention's nomination under thesecircumstances; and any man thus accepting it would have no claim to thesupport of any Republican on party grounds and would have forfeitedthe right to ask the support of any honest man of any party on moralgrounds. "

So while most of the Roosevelt delegates sat in ominous quiet andrefused to vote, the Convention proceeded to nominate Taft for Presidentby the following vote: Taft 561--21 votes more than a majority;Roosevelt 107; La Follette 41; Cummins 17; Hughes 2; absent 6; presentand not voting 344. 

Then the Taft delegates went home to meditate on the fight which theyhad won and the more portentous fight which they must wage in the comingmonths on a broader field. The Roosevelt delegates, on the otherhand, went out to Orchestra Hall, and in an exalted mood of passionatedevotion to their cause and their beloved leader proceeded to nominateTheodore Roosevelt for the Presidency and Hiram Johnson for theVice-Presidency. A committee was sent to notify Roosevelt of thenomination and when he appeared in the hall all precedents ofspontaneous enthusiasm were broken. This was no conventional--if thedouble entendre may be permitted--demonstration. It had rather thequality of religious exaltation. 

Roosevelt made a short speech, in which he adjured his hearers to go totheir several homes "to find out the sentiment of the people at home andthen again come together, I suggest by mass convention, to nominate forthe Presidency a Progressive on a Progressive platform that will enableus to appeal to Northerner and Southerner, Easterner and Westerner, Republican and Democrat alike, in the name of our common Americancitizenship. If you wish me to make the fight I will make it, even ifonly one State should support me. "

Thus ended the first act in the drama. The second opened with thegathering of some two thousand men and women at Chicago on August 5, 1912. It was a unique gathering. Many of the delegates were women; oneof the "keynote" speeches was delivered by Miss Jane Addams of HullHouse. The whole tone and atmosphere of the occasion seemed religiousrather than political. The old-timers among the delegates, who foundthemselves in the new party for diverse reasons, selfish, sincere, or mixed, must have felt astonishment at themselves as they stood andshouted out Onward Christian Soldiers as the battle-hymn of their newallegiance. The long address which Roosevelt made to the Convention hedenominated his "Confession of Faith. " The platform which the gatheringadopted was entitled "A Contract with the People. " The sessions of theConvention seethed with enthusiasm and burned hot with earnest devotionto high purpose. There could be no doubt in the mind of any but the mostcynical of political reactionaries that here was the manifestation of anew and revivifying force to be reckoned with in the future developmentof American political life. 

The platform adopted by the Progressive Convention was no less anovelty. Its very title--even the fact that it had a title marked itoff from the pompous and shopworn documents emanating from the usualnominating Convention--declared a reversal of the time-honored view ofa platform as, like that of a street-car, "something to get in on, notsomething to stand on. " The delegates to that Convention were perfectlyready to have their party sued before the bar of public opinionfor breach of contract if their candidates when elected did not doeverything 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-widepreferential primaries for the selection of candidates for thePresidency, direct popular election of United States Senators, theshort ballot, the initiative, referendum and recall, an easier methodof amending the Federal constitution, woman suffrage, and the recallof judicial decisions in the form of a popular review of any decisionannulling a law passed under the police power of the State. 

The platform in the second place opposed vigorously the indiscriminatedissolution of trusts and combinations, on the ground that combinationin the business field was not only inevitable but necessary anddesirable for the promotion of national and international efficiency. Itcondemned the evils of inflated capitalization and unfair competition;and it proposed, in order to eliminate those is evils whilepreserving the unquestioned advantages that flow from combination, theestablishment of a strong Federal commission empowered and directedto maintain permanent active supervision over industrial corporationsengaged in interstate commerce, doing for them what the FederalGovernment now does for the national banks and, through the InterstateCommerce Commission, for the transportation lines. 

Finally in the field of social justice the platform pledged the party tothe abolition of child labor, to minimum wage laws, the eight-hour day, publicity in regard to working conditions, compensation for industrialaccidents, continuation schools for industrial education, and tolegislation to prevent industrial accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurious effects incidentto modern industry. 

To stand upon this platform and to carry out the terms of this "contractwith the people, " the Convention nominated without debate or dissentTheodore Roosevelt for President and Hiram W. Johnson of California forVice-President. Governor Johnson was an appropriate running mate forRoosevelt. In his own State he had led one of the most virile and fastmoving of the local Progressive movements. He burned with a white-hotenthusiasm for the democratic ideal and the rights of man as embodiedin equality of opportunity, freedom of individual development, andprotection from the "dark forces" of special privilege, politicalautocracy and concentrated wealth. He was a brilliant and fierycampaigner 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 thecampaign for the Presidency. It was a three-cornered fight. Taft stoodfor Republican conservatism and clung to the old things. Rooseveltfought for the progressive rewriting of Republican principles with addedemphasis on popular government and social justice as defined in the NewNationalism. The Democratic party under the leadership of Woodrow Wilsonespoused with more or less enthusiasm the old Democratic principlesfreshly interpreted and revivified in the declaration they called theNew Freedom. The campaign marked the definite entrance of the nationupon a new era. One thing was clear from the beginning: the day ofconservatism and reaction was over; the people of the United Stateshad definitely crossed their Rubicon and had committed themselves tospiritual and moral progress. 

The campaign had one dramatic incident. On the 14th of October, justbefore entering the Auditorium at Milwaukee, Roosevelt was shot by afanatic. His immediate action was above everything characteristic. Sometime later in reply to a remark that he had been foolhardy in going onwith his speech just after the attack, Roosevelt said, "Why, you know, I didn't think I had been mortally wounded. If I had been mortallywounded, I would have bled from the lungs. When I got into the motor Icoughed hard three times, and put my hand up to my mouth; as I did notfind any blood, I thought that I was not seriously hurt, and went onwith 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 knowwhether you fully understand that I have just been shot; but it takesmore than that to kill a Bull Moose. .. . The bullet is in me now, so thatI cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best. .. . First ofall, I want to say this about myself; I have altogether too importantthings to think of to feel any concern over my own death; and now Icannot speak insincerely to you within five minutes of being shot. Iam telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for manyother things. It is not in the least for my own life. I want you tounderstand that I am ahead of the game anyway. No man has had a happierlife than I have led; a happier life in every way. I have been able todo certain things that I greatly wished to do, and I am interested indoing other things. I can tell you with absolute truthfulness that I amvery much uninterested in whether I am shot or not. It was just as whenI was colonel of my regiment. I always felt that a private was to beexcused for feeling at times some pangs of anxiety about his personalsafety, but I cannot understand a man fit to be a colonel who can payany heed to his personal safety when he is occupied as he ought to beoccupied with the absorbing desire to do his duty. "

There was a great deal of self-revelation in these words. Even thecritic accustomed to ascribe to Roosevelt egotism and love of galleryapplause must concede the courage, will-power, and self-forgetfulnessdisclosed by the incident. 

The election was a debacle for reaction, a victory for Democracy, atriumph in defeat for the Progressive party. Taft carried two States, Utah and Vermont, with eight electoral votes; Woodrow Wilson carriedforty States, with 435 electoral votes; and Roosevelt carried fiveStates, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Washington, and eleven out of the thirteen votes of California, giving him 88electoral votes. Taft's popular vote was 3, 484, 956; Wilson's was6, 293, 019; while Roosevelt's was 4, 119, 507. The fact that Wilson waselected by a minority popular vote is not the significant thing, for itis far beyond the capability of any political observer to declare whatwould have been the result if there had been but two parties in thefield. The triumph for the Progressive party lay in the certainty thatits emergence had compelled the election of a President whose face wastoward the future. If the Roosevelt delegates at Chicago in June hadacquiesced in the result of the steam-roller Convention, it is highlyprobable that Woodrow Wilson would not have been the choice of theDemocratic Convention that met later at Baltimore. 

During the succeeding four years the Progressive party, as a nationalorganization, continued steadily to "dwindle, peak, and pine. " More andmore of its members and supporters slipped or stepped boldly back to theRepublican party. Its quondam Democratic members had largely returned totheir 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 uponAmerican interests and American rights, aroused him to vigorous andaggressive utterance on American responsibility and American duty. Hebecame a vigorous critic of the Administration. 

Once more a demand began to spring up for his nomination for thePresidency; the Progressive party began to show signs of revivingconsciousness. There had persisted through the years a little band ofirreconcilables who were Progressives or nothing. They wanted a newparty of radical ideas regardless of anything in the way of reformationand progress that the old parties might achieve. There were others whopreferred to go back to the Republican party rather than to keep up theProgressive party as a mere minority party of protest, but who hoped ingoing back to be able to influence their old party along the lines ofprogress. There were those who were Rooseveltians pure and simple andwho would follow him wherever he led. 

All these groups wanted Roosevelt as President. They united to hold aconvention of the Progressive party at Chicago in 1916 on the same dayson which the Republican Convention met there. Each convention openedwith a calculating eye upon the activities of the other. But bothwatched with even more anxious surmise for some sign of intention fromthe Progressive leader back at Oyster Bay. He held in his single handthe power of life and death for the Progressive party. His decision asto cooperative action with the Republicans or individual action as aProgressive would be the most important single factor in the campaignagainst Woodrow Wilson, who was certain of renomination. Threequestions confronted and puzzled the two bodies of delegates: Wouldthe Republicans nominate Roosevelt or another? If another, what wouldRoosevelt do? If another, what would the Progressives do?

For three days the Republican National Convention proceeded steadilyand stolidly upon its appointed course. Everything had been done inthe stereotyped way on the stereotyped time-table in the stereotypedlanguage. No impropriety or infelicity had been permitted to mar thesmooth texture of its surface. The temporary chairman in his keynotespeech had been as mildly oratorical, as diffusely patriotic, and asnobly sentimental as any Fourth of July orator of a bygone day. Thewhole tone of the Convention had been subdued and decorous with thedecorum of incertitude and timidity. That Convention did not know whatit wanted. It only knew that there was one thing that it did not wantand that it was afraid of, and another thing it would rather nothave and was afraid it would have to take. It wanted neither TheodoreRoosevelt nor Charles E. Hughes, and its members were distinctlyuncomfortable at the thought that they might have to take one or theother. It was an old-fashioned convention of the hand-picked variety. It smacked of the former days when the direct primary had notyet introduced the disturbing thought that the voters and not theoffice-holders and party leaders ought to select their candidates. 

It was a docile, submissive convention, not because it was ruled by astrong group of men who knew what they wanted and proposed to compeltheir followers to give it to them, but because it was composed ofpoliticians great and small to whom party regularity was the breath oftheir nostrils. They were ready to do the regular thing; but the onlytwo things in sight were confoundedly irregular. 

Two drafts were ready for their drinking and they dreaded both. Theycould nominate one of two men, and to nominate either of them was tofling open the gates of the citadel of party regularity and conformityand let the enemy in. Was it to be Roosevelt or Hughes? Roosevelt theywould not have. Hughes they would give their eye teeth not to take. Nowonder they were subdued and inarticulate. No wonder they suffered andwere unhappy. So they droned along through their stereotyped routine, hoping dully against fate. 

The hot-heads in the Progressive Convention wanted no delay, nocompromise. They would have nominated Theodore Roosevelt out of handwith a whoop, and let the Republican Convention take him or leave him. But the cooler leaders realized the importance of union between the twoparties and knew, or accurately guessed, what the attitude of Rooseveltwould be. With firm hand they kept the Convention from hasty andirrevocable action. They proposed that overtures be made to theRepublican Convention with a view to harmonious agreement. A conferencewas held between committees of the two conventions to see if commonground could be discovered. At the first session of the joint committeeit appeared that there was sincere desire on both sides to get together, but that the Progressives would have no one but Roosevelt, while theRepublicans would not have him but were united on no one else. When theballoting began in the Republican Convention, the only candidate whoreceived even a respectable block of votes was Hughes, but his totalwas hardly more than half of the necessary majority. For several ballotsthere was no considerable gain for any of the numerous candidates, and when the Convention adjourned late Friday night the outcome was asuncertain as ever. But by Saturday morning the Republican leaders anddelegates had resigned themselves to the inevitable, and the nominationof Hughes was assured. When the Progressive Convention met that morning, the conference committee reported that the Republican members of thecommittee had proposed unanimously the selection of Hughes as thecandidate of both parties. 

Thus began the final scene in the Progressive drama, and a morethrilling and intense occasion it would be difficult to imagine. It wasapparent that the Progressive delegates would have none of it. They werethere to nominate their own beloved leader and they intended to do it. A telegram was received from Oyster Bay proposing Senator Lodge as thecompromise candidate, and the restive delegates in the Auditorium couldwith the greatest difficulty be held back until the telegram could bereceived and read at the Coliseum. A direct telephone wire fromthe Coliseum to a receiver on the stage of the Auditorium kept theProgressive body in instant touch with events in the other Convention. In the Auditorium the atmosphere was electric. The delegates bubbledwith excitement. They wanted to nominate Roosevelt and be done with it. The fear that the other Convention would steal a march on them and makeits nomination first set them crazy with impatience. The hall rumbledand sputtered and fizzed and detonated. The floor looked like a giantcorn popper with the kernels jumping and exploding like mad. 

The delegates wanted action; the leaders wanted to be sure that they hadkept faith with Roosevelt and with the general situation by giving theRepublican delegates a chance to hear his last proposal. BainbridgeColby, 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 theColiseum, the question was put at thirty-one minutes past twelve, andevery delegate and every alternate in the Convention leaped to his feetwith 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 ProgressiveConvention to believe it. Then the Convention adjourned, to meet againat three to hear what the man they had nominated would say. 

At five o'clock in the afternoon, after a couple of hours of impatientand anxious marking time with routine matters, the Progressive delegatesreceived the reply from their leader. It read thus:

"I am very grateful for the honor you confer upon me by nominating me asPresident. I cannot accept it at this time. I do not know the attitudeof the candidate of the Republican party toward the vital questions ofthe day. Therefore, if you desire an immediate decision, I must declinethe nomination. 

"But if you prefer to wait, I suggest that my conditional refusal torun be placed in the hands of the Progressive National Committee. IfMr. Hughes's statements, when he makes them, shall satisfy the committeethat it is for the interest of the country that he be elected, they canact 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 onwhatever action we may severally deem appropriate to meet the needs ofthe country. 

"THEODORE ROOSEVELT. "

Puzzled, disheartened, overwhelmed, the Progressive delegates wentaway. They could not then see how wise, how farsighted, how inevitableRoosevelt's decision was. Some of them will never see it. Probably fewof them as they went out of those doors realized that they had takenpart in the last act of the romantic and tragic drama of the NationalProgressive party. But such was the fact, for the march of events wastoo much for it. Fate, not its enemies, brought it to an end. 

So was born, lived a little space, and died the Progressive party. Atits birth it caused the nomination, by the Democrats, and the election, by the people, of Woodrow Wilson. At its death it brought about thenomination of Charles E. Hughes by the Republicans. It forced thewriting into the platforms of the more conservative parties ofprinciples and programmes of popular rights and social regeneration. The Progressive party never attained to power, but it wielded a potentpower. It was a glorious failure. 

CHAPTER XV. THE FIGHTING EDGE

Theodore Roosevelt was a prodigious coiner of phrases. He added scoresof them, full of virility, picturesqueness, and flavor to the every-dayspeech of the American people. They stuck, because they expressed ideasthat needed expressing and because they expressed them so well that noother combinations of words could quite equal them. One of the best, though not the most popular, of his phrases is contained in thefollowing quotation:

"One of the prime dangers of civilization has always been its tendencyto cause the loss of virile fighting virtues, of the fighting edge. Whenmen get too comfortable and lead too luxurious lives, there is alwaysdanger lest the softness eat like an acid into their manliness offiber. "

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 makeready 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 thefighting edge, loses the power to serve as a soldier if the day of needshould arise!"

That was it--THE FIGHTING EDGE. Roosevelt had it, if ever man had. Theconviction of the need for that combination of physical and spiritualqualities that this represented, if a man is to take his place and keepit in the world, became an inseparable part of his consciousness earlyin 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 foundhimself helpless before the tormenting of his young fellow travelers. Inthe gymnasium on Twentieth Street, within the boxing ring at Harvard, in the New York Assembly, in the conflicts with the spoilsmen inWashington, on the frontier in cowboy land, in Mulberry Street and onCapitol Hill, and in the jungle before Santiago, the lesson was hammeredinto him by the stern reality of events. The strokes fell on malleablemetal. 

In the spring of 1897, Roosevelt had been appointed Assistant Secretaryof the Navy, largely through the efforts of his friend, Senator HenryCabot Lodge of Massachusetts. The appointment was excellent from everypoint of view. Though Roosevelt had received no training for the postso far as technical education was concerned, he brought to his duties aprofound belief in the navy and a keen interest in its development. Hisfirst published book had been "The Naval War of 1812"; and the lessonsof that war had not been lost upon him. It was indeed a fortuitouscircumstance that placed him in this branch of the national servicejust as relations between Spain and the United States were reaching thebreaking point. When the battleship Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor, his reaction to that startling event was instantaneous. He was convincedthat the sinking of the Maine made war inevitable, but he had long beencertain that war ought to come. He believed that the United States hada moral duty toward the Cuban people, oppressed, abused, starved, andmurdered at the hands of Spain. 

He was not the head of the Navy Department, but that made littledifference. The Secretary was a fine old gentleman, formerly presidentof the Massachusetts Peace Society, and by temperament indisposed to anyrapid moves toward war. But he liked his Assistant Secretary and didnot put too stern a curb upon his impetuous activity and Roosevelt'sactivity 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 puttingthe navy in condition for the apprehended struggle. His ardor sometimeswent faster than the President or the Department approved. .. . He workedindefatigably, frequently incorporating his views in memoranda whichhe would place every morning on my desk. Most of his suggestions had, however, so far as applicable, been already adopted by the variousbureaus, the chiefs of which were straining every nerve and leavingnothing undone. When I suggested to him that some future historianreading his memoranda, if they were put on record, would get theimpression that the bureaus were inefficient, he accepted the suggestionwith the generous good nature which is so marked in him. Indeed, nothingcould be pleasanter than our relations. He was heart and soul in hiswork. His typewriters had no rest. He, like most of us, lacks the rareknack of brevity. He was especially stimulating to the younger officerswho gathered about him and made his office as busy as a hive. He wasespecially helpful in the purchasing of ships and in every line where hecould push on the work of preparation for war. "

One suspects that the Secretary may have been more complacentlyconvinced of the forehandedness of the bureau chiefs than was hisimpatient associate. For, while the navy was apparently in bettershape than the army in those days, there must have been, even in theDepartment where Roosevelt's typewriters knew no rest, some of thatclass of desk-bound officers whom he met later when he was organizingthe Rough Riders. His experience with one such officer in the WarDepartment was humorous. This bureaucrat was continually refusingRoosevelt's applications because they were irregular. In each caseRoosevelt would appeal to the Secretary of War, with whom he was onthe best of terms, and would get from him an order countenancing theirregularity. After a number of experiences of this kind, the harassedslave 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 camethe war and upset everything!"

But there were plenty of good men in the navy; and one of them wasCommodore George Dewey. Roosevelt had kept his eye on him for some timeas an officer who "could be relied upon to prepare in advance, andto act promptly, fearlessly, and on his own responsibility when theemergency arose. " When he began to foresee the probability of war, Roosevelt succeeded in having Dewey sent to command the Asiaticsquadron; and just ten days after the Maine was blown up this cablegramwent from Washington to Hong Kong:

"DEWEY, Hong Kong:

"Order the squadron, except the Monocacy, to Hong Kong. Keep full ofcoal. In the event of declaration of war Spain, your duty will be tosee that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and thenoffensive operations in Philippine Islands. Keep Olympia until furtherorders. Roosevelt. "

The declaration of war lagged on for nearly two months, but when itfinally came, just one week elapsed between the sending of an order toDewey to proceed at once to the Philippines and to "capture vessels ordestroy" and the elimination of the sea power of Spain in the Orient. The battle of Manila Bay was a practical demonstration of the value ofthe "fighting edge, " as exemplified in an Assistant Secretary who foughtprocrastination, timidity, and political expedience at home and in anaval officer who fought the enemy's ships on the other side of theworld. 

When war actually came, Roosevelt could not stand inactivity inWashington. 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 FirstUnited States Volunteer Cavalry. He could have been appointed Colonel, but he knew that Wood knew more about the soldier's job than he, and heinsisted upon taking the second place. The Secretary of War thought himfoolish to step aside thus and suggested that Roosevelt become Coloneland 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 torise on any man's shoulders, that he hoped to be given every chance thathis deeds and his abilities warranted, that he did not wish what hedid not earn, and that, above all, he did not wish to hold any positionwhere any one else did the work. Lieutenant-Colonel he was made. 

The regiment, which will always be affectionately known as the RoughRiders, was "raised, armed, equipped, drilled, mounted, dismounted, kept for two weeks on a transport, and then put through two victoriousaggressive fights, in which it lost a third of the officers, and a fifthof the enlisted men, all within a little over fifty days. " Rooseveltbegan as second in command, went through the battle of San Juan Hill asColonel, and ended the war in command of a brigade, with the brevet ofBrigadier-General. The title of Colonel stuck to him all his life. 

When he became President, his instinctive commitment to the necessity ofbeing prepared had been stoutly reinforced by his experience in what hecalled "the war of America the Unready. " His first message toCongress was a long and exhaustive paper, dealing with many matters ofimportance. But almost one-fifth of it was devoted to the army and thenavy. "It is not possible, " he said, "to improvise a navy afterwar breaks out. The ships must be built and the men trained longin advance. " He urged that Congress forthwith provide for severaladditional battleships and heavy armored cruisers, together with theproportionate number of smaller craft, and he pointed out the need formany more officers and men. He declared that "even in time of peace awarship should be used until it wears out, for only so can it be keptfit to respond to any emergency. The officers and men alike should bekept as much as possible on blue water, for it is there only they canlearn their duties as they should be learned. " But his most vigorousinsistence was upon gunnery. "In battle, " he said once to the graduatesof the Naval Academy, "the only shots that count are those that hit, andmarksmanship is a matter of long practice and intelligent reasoning. " Tothis end he demanded "unceasing" gunnery practice. 

In every succeeding message to Congress for seven years he returned tothe subject of the navy, demanding ships, officers, men, and, above all, training. His insistence on these essentials brought results, and by thetime 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'screw; for it was the officers and men of the American navy who made itpossible for the world cruise to be made without the smallest casualty. 

The question of marksmanship had been burned into Roosevelt's mindin those days when the Spanish War was brewing. He has related in his"Autobiography" how it first came to his attention through a man whosename has in more recent years become known the world over in connectionwith the greatest task of the American navy. Roosevelt's account is asfollows:

"There was one deficiency. .. Which there was no time to remedy, and ofthe very existence of which, strange to say, most of our best men wereignorant. Our navy had no idea how low our standard of marksmanshipwas. We had not realized that the modern battleship had become sucha complicated piece of mechanism that the old methods of training inmarksmanship were as obsolete as the old muzzle-loading broadside gunsthemselves. Almost the only man in the navy who fully realized this wasour naval attach at Paris, Lieutenant Sims. He wrote letter after letterpointing out how frightfully backward we were in marksmanship. I wasmuch impressed by his letters. .. . As Sims proved to be mistaken in hisbelief that the French had taught the Spaniards how to shoot, and asthe Spaniards proved to be much worse even than we were, in the servicegenerally Sims was treated as an alarmist. But although I at firstpartly acquiesced in this view, I grew uneasy when I studied the smallproportion of hits to shots made by our vessels in battle. When I wasPresident I took up the matter, and speedily became convinced that weneeded to revolutionize our whole training in marksmanship. Sims wasgiven the lead in organizing and introducing the new system; and to himmore than to any other one man was due the astonishing progress made byour fleet in this respect, a progress which made the fleet, gun for gun, at least three times as effective, in point of fighting efficiency, in1908, 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 emphasizednot the rights of the individual, but his duties, obligations, andopportunities. He knew that human character is the greatest thing in theworld and that men and women are the real forces that move and sway theworld's affairs. So in all his preaching and doing on behalf of a greatand efficient navy, the emphasis that he always laid was upon the menof the navy, their efficiency and their spirit. He once remarked, "Ibelieve in the navy of the United States primarily because I believe inthe intelligence, the patriotism, and the fighting edge of the averageman 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 wholeNation if he fails to prepare himself with all the strength that in himlies to do his duty should the occasion arise; and one of your greatduties is to see that shots hit. The result is going to depend largelyupon whether you or your adversary hits. I expect you to be brave. I rather take that for granted. .. . But, in addition, you have got toprepare yourselves in advance. Every naval action that has taken placein the last twenty years . .. Has shown, as a rule, that the defeatedparty has suffered not from lack of courage, but because it couldnot make the best use of its weapons, or had not been given the rightweapons. .. . I want every one here to proceed upon the assumption thatany foe he may meet will have the courage. Of course, you have gotto show the highest degree of courage yourself or you will be beatenanyhow, and you will deserve to be; but in addition to that you mustprepare yourselves by careful training so that you may make the bestpossible use of the delicate and formidable mechanism of a modernwarship. "

Theodore Roosevelt was an apostle of preparedness from the hour that hebegan to think at all about affairs of public moment--and that hour cameto him earlier in life than it does to most men. In the preface to hishistory of the War of 1812, which he wrote at the age of twenty-four, this sentence appears: "At present people are beginning to realize thatit is folly for the great English-speaking Republic to rely for defenseupon a navy composed partly of antiquated hulks, and partly of newvessels rather more worthless than the old. " His prime interest, from the point of view of preparedness, lay in the navy. His senseof proportion told him that the navy was the nation's first line ofdefense. He knew that without an efficient navy a nation situated asthe United States was would be helpless before an aggressive enemy, and that, given a navy of sufficient size and effectiveness, the nationcould dispense with a great army. For the army he demanded not sizebut merely efficiency. One of his principal points of attack in hiscriticism of the army was the system of promotion for officers. Heassailed sharply the existing practice of "promotion by mere seniority. "In one of his messages to Congress he pointed out that a system ofpromotion by merit existed in the Military Academy at West Point. Hethen went on to say that from the time of the graduation of the cadetsinto the army "all effort to find which man is best or worst and rewardor punish him accordingly, is abandoned: no brilliancy, no amount ofhard work, no eagerness in the performance of duty, can advance him, and no slackness or indifference, that falls short of a court-martialoffense, can retard him. Until this system is changed we cannot hopethat 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 manrenders such service as Captain Pershing rendered last spring in theMoro campaign, it ought to be possible to reward him without at oncejumping him to the grade of brigadier-general. "

It is not surprising to find in this message also a name that was laterto become famous in the Great War. Roosevelt had an uncanny gift ofprophecy. 

More than once, as President, he picked out for appreciation andcommendation the very men who were to do the big things for America whenthe critical hour came. 

CHAPTER XVI. THE LAST FOUR YEARS

When the Great War broke out in August, 1914, Roosevelt instantlystiffened to attention. He immediately began to read the lessons thatwere set for the world by the gigantic conflict across the sea and itwas not long before he was passing them on to the American people. Likeevery other good citizen, he extended hearty support to the Presidentin his conduct of America's foreign relations in the crisis. At the sametime, however, he recognized the possibility that a time might come whenit would be a higher moral duty to criticize the Administration than tocontinue unqualified support. Three weeks after war had begun, Rooseveltwrote in "The Outlook":

"In common with the immense majority of our fellow countrymen, I shallcertainly stand by not only the public servants in control of theAdministration at Washington, but also all other public servants, nomatter of what party, during this crisis; asking only that they withwisdom and good faith endeavor to take every step that can be taken tosafeguard the honor and interest of the United States, and, so faras the opportunity offers, to promote the cause of peace and justicethroughout the world. My hope, of course, is that in their turn thepublic servants of the people will take no action so fraught withpossible harm to the future of the people as to oblige farsighted andpatriotic men to protest against it. "

One month later, in a long article in "The Outlook", Rooseveltreiterated this view in these words:

". .. . We, all of us, without regard to party differences, must standready loyally to support the Administration, asking nothing except thatthe policy be one that in truth and in fact tells for the honor andinterest of our Nation and in truth and in fact is helpful to the causeof a permanent and righteous world peace. "

In the early months of the war, Roosevelt thus scrupulously endeavoredto uphold the President's hands, to utter no criticism that mighthamper him, and to carry out faithfully the President's adjuration toneutrality. He recognized clearly, however, the price that we must payfor neutrality, and he set it forth in the following passage from thesame article: "A deputation of Belgians has arrived in this country toinvoke our assistance in the time of their dreadful need. What actionour Government can or will take I know not. It has been announced thatno action can be taken that will interfere with our entire neutrality. It is certainly eminently desirable that we should remain entirelyneutral, and nothing but urgent need would warrant breaking ourneutrality and taking sides one way or the other. Our first duty is tohold ourselves ready to do whatever the changing circumstances demandin 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 provisothat under no circumstances must we do anything dishonorable, especiallytoward unoffending weaker nations. Neutrality may be of prime necessityin order to preserve our own interests, to maintain peace in so much ofthe world as is not affected by the war, and to conserve our influencefor helping toward the reestablishment of general peace when the timecomes; for if any outside Power is able at such time to be the mediumfor bringing peace, it is more likely to be the United States than anyother. But we pay the penalty of this action on behalf of peace forourselves, and possibly for others in the future, by forfeiting ourright 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 aidunoffending weak powers which are dragged into the gulf of bloodshedand misery through no fault of their own. Of course it would be follyto jump into the gulf ourselves to no good purpose; and very probablynothing that we could have done would have helped Belgium. We have notthe smallest responsibility for what has befallen her, and I am surethat the sympathy of this country for the men, women, and children ofBelgium is very real. Nevertheless, this sympathy is compatible withfull acknowledgment of the unwisdom of our uttering a single word ofofficial protest unless we are prepared to make that protest effective;and only the clearest and most urgent national duty would ever justifyus in deviating from our rule of neutrality and noninterference. Butit is a grim comment on the professional pacifist theories as hithertodeveloped that our duty to preserve peace for ourselves may necessarilymean the abandonment of all effective efforts to secure peace for otherunoffending nations which through no fault of their own are dragged intothe War. "

The rest of the article concerned itself with the lessons taught by thewar, the folly of pacifism, the need for preparedness if righteousnessis not to be sacrificed for peace, the worthlessness of treatiesunsanctioned by force, and the desirability of an association ofnations for the prevention of war. On this last point Roosevelt wrote asfollows:

"But in view of what has occurred in this war, surely the time ought tobe ripe for the nations to consider a great world agreement among allthe civilized military powers TO BACK RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FORCE. Such anagreement would establish an efficient World League for the Peace ofRighteousness. Such an agreement could limit the amount to be spent onarmaments and, after defining carefully the inalienable rights ofeach nation which were not to be transgressed by any other, could alsoprovide that any cause of difference among them, or between one of themand one of a certain number of designated outside non-military nations, should be submitted to an international court, including citizens ofall these nations, chosen not as representatives of the nations, BUTAS JUDGES and perhaps in any given case the particular judges couldbe chosen by lot from the total number. To supplement and make thiseffectual it should be solemnly covenanted that if any nation refused toabide by the decision of such a court the others would draw the sword onbehalf of peace and justice, and would unitedly coerce the recalcitrantnation. This plan would not automatically bring peace, and it may be toosoon 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 peacewill not come save in some such manner as that whereby we obtainpeace within the borders of each nation; that is, by the creationof reasonably impartial judges and by putting an efficient policepower--that is, by putting force in efficient fashion--behind thedecrees of the judges. At present each nation must in the last resorttrust to its own strength if it is to preserve all that makes lifeworth having. At present this is imperative. This state of things can beabolished only when we put force, when we put the collective armed powerof civilization, behind some body which shall with reasonable justiceand equity represent the collective determination of civilization to dowhat is right. "

From this beginning Roosevelt went on vigorously preaching preparednessagainst war; and the Great War had been raging for a scant seven monthswhen he was irresistibly impelled to utter open criticism of PresidentWilson. In April, 1915, in The Metropolitan Magazine, to which he hadtransferred his writings, he declared that "the United States, thanksto Messrs. Wilson and Bryan, has signally failed in its duty towardBelgium. " He maintained that the United States, under the obligationsassumed by the signature of The Hague Conventions, should have protestedto Germany against the invasion of Belgium. 

For two years thereafter, while Germany slapped America first on onecheek and then on the other, and treacherously stabbed her with slinkingspies and dishonored diplomats, Roosevelt preached, with growingindignation 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 neededno prescience, no remarkable statesmanship or gift of forecasting thefuture, to see that, when such mighty forces were unloosed, and when ithad been shown that all treaties and other methods hitherto relied uponfor national protection and for mitigating the horror and circumscribingthe area of war were literally 'scraps of paper, ' it had become a vitalnecessity that we should instantly and on a great and adequate scaleprepare for our own defense. Our men, women, and children--not inisolated cases, but in scores and hundreds of cases--have been murderedby Germany and Mexico; and we have tamely submitted to wrongs fromGermany and Mexico of a kind to which no nation can submit withoutimpairing its own self-respect and incurring the contempt of the restof mankind. Yet, during these eighteen months not one thing has beendone. .. . Never in the country's history has there been a more stupendousinstance of folly than this crowning folly of waiting eighteen monthsafter the elemental crash of nations took place before even makinga start in an effort--and an utterly inefficient and insufficienteffort-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 supportedhim with hearty enthusiasm. But his action, or rather inaction, hasbeen such that it has become a matter of high patriotic duty tooppose him. .. . No man can support Mr. Wilson without at the same timesupporting a policy of criminal inefficiency as regards the UnitedStates Navy, of short-sighted inadequacy as regards the army, of abandonment of the duty owed by the United States to weak andwell-behaved nations, and of failure to insist on our just rights whenwe are ourselves maltreated by powerful and unscrupulous nations. "

Theodore Roosevelt could not, without violating the integrity of hisown soul, go on supporting either positively by word or negatively bysilence 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 wholater called for a "peace without victory. " He could have nothing butscorn for an Administration whose Secretary of War could say, two monthsafter 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 factthat when we entered this war we were not like our adversary, ready forit, anxious for it, prepared for it, and inviting it. "

Until America entered the war Roosevelt used his voice and his pen withall his native energy and fire to convince the American people of threethings that righteousness demanded that the United States forsake itssupine neutrality and act; that the United States should prepare itselfthoroughly for any emergency that might arise; and that the hyphenatedAmericanism of those who, while enjoying the benefits of Americancitizenship, "intrigue and conspire against the United States, and dotheir utmost to promote the success of Germany and to weaken thedefense of this nation" should be rigorously curbed. The sermons that hepreached on this triple theme were sorely needed. No leadership inthis phase of national life was forthcoming from the quarter where theAmerican people had every right to look for leadership. The White Househad its face set in the opposite direction. 

In August, 1915, an incident occurred which set the contrast betweenthe Rooseveltian and Wilsonian lines of thought in bold relief. Largelythrough the initiative of General Leonard Wood there had been organizedat Plattsburg, New York, an officers' training camp where Americanbusiness men were given an all too brief course of training in the artand duty of leading soldiers in camp and in the field. General Wood wasin command of the Plattsburg camp. He invited Roosevelt to address themen in training. Roosevelt accepted gladly, and in the course of hisspeech made these significant statements:

"For thirteen months America has played an ignoble part among thenations. We have tamely submitted to seeing the weak, whom we havecovenanted to protect, wronged. We have seen our men, women, andchildren murdered on the high seas without protest. We have usedelocution as a substitute for action. 

"During this time our government has not taken the smallest step in theway of preparedness to defend our own rights. Yet these thirteen monthshave made evident the lamentable fact that force is more dominant nowin the affairs of the world than ever before, that the most powerful ofmodern military nations is utterly brutal and ruthless in its disregardof international morality, and that righteousness divorced from force isutterly futile. Reliance upon high sounding words, unbacked by deeds, isproof 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, topractise a timid and selfish neutrality between right and wrong. It iswrong for an individual. It is still more wrong for a nation. 

"Therefore, friends, let us shape our conduct as a nation in accordancewith the highest rules of international morality. Let us treat othersjustly and keep the engagements we have made, such as these in The Hagueconventions, to secure just treatment for others. But let us rememberthat we shall be wholly unable to render service to others andwholly unable to fulfill the prime law of national being, the law ofself-preservation, unless we are thoroughly prepared to hold our own. Let us show that a free democracy can defend itself successfully againstany organized and aggressive military despotism. "

The men in the camp heard him gladly and with enthusiasm. But the nextday the Secretary of War sent a telegram of censure to General Wood inwhich he said:

"I have just seen the reports in the newspapers of the speech madeby ex-President Roosevelt at the Plattsburg camp. It is difficult toconceive of anything which could have a more detrimental effect upon thereal value of this experiment than such an incident. .. . No opportunityshould have been furnished to any one to present to the men any matterexcepting that which was essential to the necessary training they wereto receive. Anything else could only have the effect of distractingattention from the real nature of the experiment, divertingconsideration to issues which excite controversy, antagonism, and illfeeling and thereby impairing if not destroying, what otherwise wouldhave been so effective. "

On this telegram Roosevelt's comment was pungent: "If the Administrationhad displayed one-tenth the spirit and energy in holding Germany andMexico to account for the murder of men, women, and children that it isnow displaying in the endeavor to prevent our people from being taughtthe need of preparation to prevent the repetition of such murders in thefuture, it would be rendering a service to the people of the country. "

Theodore Roosevelt could have little effect upon the materialpreparedness of the United States for the struggle which it wasultimately to enter. But he could and did have a powerful effect uponthe spiritual preparedness of the American people for the efforts, thetrials, and the sacrifices of that struggle. No voice was raised morepersistently or more consistently than his. No personality was thrownwith more power and more effect into the task of arousing the peopleof the United States to their duty to take part in the struggle againstPrussianism. No man, in public or private life, urged so vigorously andeffectively the call to arms against evil and for the right. His wasthe "voice crying in the wilderness, " and to him the American spirithearkened 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 newlyformed project. For two months he had been in correspondence with theSecretary of War on the subject. A year or more before that he hadoffered, 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 tohim, even then. As far back as 1912 he had said on several differentoccasions, "If the United States should get into another war, I shouldraise a brigade of cavalry and lead it as I did my regiment in Cuba. " Itnever occurred to him in those days that a former Commander-in-Chief ofthe United States Army, with actual experience in the field, would berefused permission to command troops in an American war. The ideawould hardly have occurred to any one else. But that is precisely whathappened. 

On February 2, 1917, Roosevelt wrote to the Secretary of War remindinghim that his application for permission to raise a division of infantrywas already on file in the Department, saying that he was about to sailfor Jamaica, and asking the Secretary to inform him if he believed therewould be war and a call for volunteers, for in that case he did notintend to sail. Secretary Baker replied, "No situation has arisen whichwould justify my suggesting a postponement of the trip you propose. "Before this reply was received Roosevelt had written a second lettersaying that, as the President had meanwhile broken off diplomaticrelations with Germany, he should of course not sail. He renewed hisrequest for permission to raise a division, and asked if a certainregular officer whom he would like to have for his divisional Chief ofStaff, if the division were authorized, might be permitted to come tosee him with a view to "making all preparations that are possible inadvance. " To this the Secretary replied, "No action in the directionsuggested by you can be taken without the express sanction of Congress. Should the contingency Occur which you have in mind, it is to beexpected that Congress will complete its legislation relating tovolunteer forces and provide, under its own conditions, for theappointment 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 ofpreliminary training, direct to France for intensive training so thatit could be sent to the front in the shortest possible time. SecretaryBaker replied that no additional armies could be raised without theconsent of Congress, that a plan for a much larger army was ready forthe action of Congress when ever required, and that the general officersfor all volunteer forces were to be drawn from the regular army. Tothis Roosevelt replied with the respectful suggestion that, as a retiredCommander-in-Chief of the United States Army, he was eligible to anyposition of command over American troops. He recounted also hisrecord of actual military experience and referred the Secretary to hisimmediate superiors in the field in Cuba as to his fitness for commandof troops. 

When war had been finally declared, Secretary Baker and Rooseveltconferred together at length about the matter. Thereafter Mr. Bakerwrote definitely, declaring that he would be obliged to withhold hisapproval from an expedition of the sort proposed. The grounds which hegave for the decision were that the soldiers sent across must not be"deprived. .. Of the most experienced leadership available, in deferenceto any mere sentimental consideration, " and that it should appear fromevery aspect of the expeditionary force, if one should be sent over (apoint not yet determined upon) that "military considerations alone haddetermined its composition. "

To this definite refusal on the part of the Secretary of War Rooseveltreplied at length. In his letter was a characteristic passage commentingupon Secretary Baker's reference to "sentimental considerations":

"I have not asked you to consider any "sentimental value" in thismatter. I am speaking of moral effect, not of sentimental value. Sentimentality is as different from morality as Rousseau's life fromAbraham 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 Americanforce would be immense. " From representatives of the French andBritish Governments and of the French, British, and Canadian militaryauthorities, I have received statements to the same effect, in even moreemphatic form, and earnest hopes that I myself should be in the force. Apparently your military advisers in this matter seek to persuade youthat a "military policy" has nothing to do with "moral effect. " If so, their militarism is like that of the Aulic Council of Vienna in theNapoleonic Wars, and not like that of Napoleon, who stated that in warthe moral was to the material as two to one. These advisers will dowell to follow the teachings of Napoleon and not those of the pedanticmilitarists of the Aulic Council, who were the helpless victims ofNapoleon. "

Secretary Baker replied with a reiteration of his refusal. Rooseveltmade one further attempt. When the Draft Law passed Congress, carryingwith it the authorization to use volunteer forces, he telegraphed thePresident asking permission to raise two divisions, and four if sodirected. The President replied with a definite negative, declaring thathis conclusions were "based entirely upon imperative considerationsof public policy and not upon personal or private choice. " Meanwhileapplications had been received from over three hundred thousandmen desirous of joining Roosevelt's volunteer force, of whom it wasestimated that at least two hundred thousand were physically fit, doublethe number needed for four divisions. That a single private citizen, by "one blast upon his bugle horn" should have been able to call forththree hundred thousand volunteers, all over draft age, was a tremendoustestimony to his power. If his offer had been accepted when it was firstmade, there would have been an American force on the field in Francelong before one actually arrived there. It was widely believed, amongmen of intelligence and insight, not only in America but in GreatBritain and France, that the arrival of such a force, under the commandof a man known, admired, and loved the world over, would have been asplendid reinforcement to the Allied morale and a sudden blow to theGerman confidence. But the Administration would not have it so. 

I shall never forget one evening with Theodore Roosevelt on a speakingtour which he was making through the South in 1912. There came to ourprivate car for dinner Senator Clarke of Arkansas and Jack Greenway, young giant of football fame and experience with the Rough Riders inCuba. After dinner, Jack, who like many giants, is one of the mostdiffident 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 yourambition to die on the field of battle. "

T. R. Brought his hand down on the table with a crash that must havehurt the wood. 

"By Jove, " said he, "how did you know that?"

"Well, Colonel, " said Jack, "do you remember that day in Cuba, when youand 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 hewas done for. But instead of commiserating him, you grabbed his handand said something like this, 'Well, old man, isn't this splendid!' Eversince 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 actionbut in quietness. But the truth was other than that. For it, let us turnagain 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 ofunwearied fighting against evil and injustice and falseness, he "fell onsleep. " 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 norelaxation. Nine months before he had expected death, when a seriousmastoid operation had drained his vital forces. Then his one thoughthad been, not for himself, but for his sons to whom had been given theprecious privilege, denied to him, of taking part in their country'sand the world's great fight for righteousness. His sister, Mrs. CorinneDouglas Robinson, tells how in those shadowy hours he beckoned her tohim and in the frailest of whispers said, "I'm glad it's I that lie hereand that my boys are in the fight over there. "

His last, best fight was worthy of all the rest. With voice and pen heroused the minds and the hearts of his countrymen to their high missionin defense of human rights. It was not given to him to fall on the fieldof battle. But he went down with his face to the forces of evil withwhich he had never sought a truce. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The reader who is primarily interested in the career and personalityof Roosevelt would do well to begin with his own volume, "TheodoreRoosevelt, An Autobiography". But it was written in 1912, before thegreat campaign which produced the Progressive party. 

"Theodore Roosevelt the Citizen" (1904), by Jacob A. Riis, was publishedjust after Roosevelt became President. It is an intimate and naivelyenthusiastic portrait by a man who was an intimate friend and an ardentadmirer. 

There are two lives written since his death that are complete anddiscriminating. They are "The Life of Theodore Roosevelt" (1919), byWilliam Draper Lewis, and "Theodore Roosevelt, an Intimate Biography"(1919), by William Roscoe Thayer. 

"Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt" (1919) is a volume of first-handexperiences, written by Lawrence F. Abbott of "The Outlook". The authorwas closely associated with Roosevelt on "The Outlook"; and after theAfrican hunting trip met him at Khartum and went with him on his tour ofthe capitals of Europe. 

A small volume by Charles G. Washburn, "Theodore Roosevelt, the Logic ofHis Career" (1916), contains the interpretation of a long-time friendand sincere admirer. 

Collections of Roosevelt's writings and speeches covering the years fromhis becoming Governor of New York to the end of his Presidential termsare found in "The Roosevelt Policy", 2 vols. (1908) and "PresidentialAddresses and State Papers", 4 vols. (1904). "The New Nationalism"(1910) is a collection of his speeches delivered between his return fromAfrica and the beginning of the Progressive campaign. His writings andspeeches during the Great War are found in several volumes: "America andthe World War" (1915); "Fear God and Take Your Own Part" (1916); "TheFoes of Our Own Household" (1917); "The Great Adventure" (1919). 

Material on the Progressive movement and the Progressive party are to befound in "The Progressive Movement" (1915), by Benjamin Parke De Witt, "The Progressive Movement, Its Principles and Its Programme" (1913), byS. J. Duncan-Clark, "Presidential Nominations and Elections" (1916), byJoseph 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, "Notesof a Busy Life", 2 vols. (1916). S. M. Cullom, "Fifty Years of PublicService" (1911). 

The history of the country during the years when Roosevelt became anational figure is recounted by J. H. Latane in "America as a WorldPower" and by F. A. Ogg in "National Progress", both volumes in the"American Nation" Series. Briefer summaries of the general history of atleast a part of the period treated in the present volume are to be foundin 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 UnfairCompetition" (Government Printing Office, 1916). Much useful materialis 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 hisadministration. 

The progress of social and industrial justice is outlined in "Principlesof Labor Legislation" (1916), by John R. Commons and John B. Andrews. The problems of conservation and the history of governmental policy areset forth by C. R. Van Hise in "The Conservation of Natural Resources inthe United States" (1910). 

The "American Year Book" for the years 1910 to 1919 and the "NewInternational Year Book" for the years 1907 to 1919 are invaluablesources of accurate and comprehensive information on the current historyof 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 theworld. 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 firstdecade and a half of the twentieth century is to be found in the pagesof the magazines and periodicals published during those years. "TheOutlook", "The Independent", "The Literary Digest", "Collier's", "TheReview of Reviews", "The World's Work", "Current Opinion", "The Nation", "The Commoner", La Follette's "Weekly"--all these are sources of greatvalue. The Outlook is of especial usefulness because of Mr. Roosevelt'sconnection with it as Contributing Editor during the years between 1909and 1914.