THE MAN ROOSEVELT Copyright, 1903, \>y C. M. Boll Photographic Co. THEODORE ROOSEVELT TO-DAY. THE MAN ROOSEVELT A PORTRAIT SKETCH BY FRANCIS E. LEUPP ILLUSTRATED D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK MCMIX .-1 1 / COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Published, February, 1904 AUTHOR S PREFACE WHEN I was asked to write a book about Theodore Roosevelt I consented, with the stipulation that it should not be a biography. All I was willing to attempt was an unpreten tious portrait sketch of a man as he had re vealed himself to me not only under the lights of an exceptionally brilliant public career, but by a long period of pretty close personal con tact. The delicacy of such an undertaking I did not realize till several chapters had taken shape and I began to feel misgivings as to my right to put to literary use a knowledge which, though it was legitimately mine, had come to me through an intercourse untrammeled by any thought of type or printer s ink. But I per sisted and finished my task, in the hope that a friendship which had survived so many years of storm and stress, such differences of opinion, and so much plain speech on both sides might be trusted to save me from any very grave sins, v 256982 THE MAN ROOSEVELT and insure forgiveness of my lesser shortcom ings. In justice to all concerned it should be noted that no one but myself is responsible for the contents of this volume. Not a line of it has been submitted to Mr. Roosevelt for his ap proval; he is not my authority for a single state ment about himself or anybody else except where I have tried to quote him, and even my citations of his words are wholly from memory. If he has been misrepresented anywhere the fault is mine, not his, since I have scrupulously avoided consulting him on subjects which I could treat frankly on my own account, but which it might embarrass him to discuss. Moreover, in trying to state his position on public questions with absolute fairness, I would not be understood as always sharing it. The sole point kept in view has been to write facts, leaving the morals to draw themselves. Know ing that it is the subject, and not the author, in whom the public is interested, I have striven to keep my picture as free as possible from di dactic color. This series of disclaimers would be incom plete if I did not forestall the solicitude of sun dry critics by absolving the New York Evening vi AUTHOR S PREFACE Post from all accountability for my treatment of Mr. Roosevelt, his ideas and his methods. As the fruit of thirty years association with that journal editorially and as correspondent, I can pay it no higher tribute than to say that it is wholly sincere in its desire to give all sides a fair hearing, and that it looks to the trusted members of its staff for the same freedom of thought and candor of expression which it de mands as a right for itself. No one could be more sensible of the in adequacy of this book than he who wrote it at brief notice, and in the intervals of a most ab sorbing calling. That he has been able to turn out even so imperfect a product under such con ditions, his thanks are due to a little home circle whose members vied with each other in pro tecting him from needless interruptions and smoothing in their several ways the rough places in the path of authorship. F. E. L. WASHINGTON, January i, 1904. Vll CHRONOLOGY THEODORE ROOSEVELT, President of the United States, was de scended from Claes Martenzoon Van Rosevelt, who migrated from Holland to America in 1 649 ; through other ancestors acquired Scotch-Irish blood ; was the son of Theodore Roosevelt of New York city, and Martha Bulloch of Roswell, Ga. Born in New York city, October 27, 1858. Graduated at Harvard University, 1880. Served in the New York State Assembly, 1882, 1883, 1884. Chairman of New York delegation to Republican National Convention, 1884. Defeated as Republican candidate for Mayor of New York city, 1886. United States Civil-Service Commissioner, 1889 to 1895. President of Board of Police Commissioners, New York city, 1895 to 1897. Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 189798. Lieutenant- Colonel and Colonel of the First Volunteer Cavalry (" Rough Riders ") Regiment in the war with Spain, 1898. Governor of New York, 1899-1900. Vice- President of the United States, 1901. President of the United States since the death of President McKinley, September 14, 1901. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE KEY TO A REMARKABLE CAREER PAGE Reversing the tide of fate A good use for disappoint ments " Going ahead " The Isthmian imbroglio One of four alternatives Warning to Turkey A recipe for success 3 CHAPTER II AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS Republican crisis of 1884 First break with the Independ ents A party man still Running for Governor Why a program failed Second break with the Inde pendents A hitherto unpublished letter 16 CHAPTER III KNIGHT ERRANT OF CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM How Mr. Roosevelt became Commissioner Publicity for the merit system Bringing up the Southern quotas Tilts with Congress Competitive examinations and the police 32 xi CONTENTS CHAPTER IV A FEW FRIENDS PAGE Premature alarm of the conservatives Senator Lodge s rela tions with the President Other men who have helped "My regiment" Familiarity and faith The case of Ben Daniels 53 CHAPTER V PRESIDENT AND CABINET Official families by inheritance First break in the Roosevelt Cabinet What led to Mr. Gage s resignation A quaint tribute Other changes A new chair at the table, and how rilled 71 CHAPTER VI TWO COUNCILORS IN PARTICULAR Secretary Shaw s personality His rise in the world A Yankee who " gets there " Postmaster-General Payne The Cabinet politician Faulty training for an investi gator 83 CHAPTER VII " THE LARGER GOOD " AND " THE BEST HE COULD " The Cuban reciprocity fight Buying coalers for the navy An attorney rebuked New York liquor law enforce ment The Shidy case Keeping faith with a scamp . .103 xii CONTENTS CHAPTER VIII OUR BOSS SYSTEM AND MR. PLATT PACE Overgrowth of Senate influence A middle course Typ ical cases How bad selections are foisted on a Presi dent New York custom-house changes The Immigra tion Service controversy A clean sweep 121 CHAPTER IX SOME OF THE OTHER BOSSES State dictators in the Senate Quay and his machine The typical case of McClain and McCoach Cold comfort for warring bosses Addicksism, Byrne, and Miss Todd 137 CHAPTER X THE SECOND-TERM IDEA The President s desire for reelection Republican rivals who dropped out The Hanna "boom Real loyalty appreciated Cleveland, Gray, and the coal strike arbitration 156 CHAPTER XI A FIGHTER AND HIS METHODS "^X* Love ot matching skill and strength A generous adver sary The census spoilsmen s grievance Harun-aJ- Raschid and the police How a demonstration failed . .176 xiii CONTENTS CHAPTER XII WAR AND PEACE PAGE A much misunderstood philosophy Manly sports as a life preparation Mr. Roosevelt s attitude toward Spain The Monroe doctrine, the Hague court, and the Kishencv petition 193 CHAPTER XIII THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO Two questions that blend A policy never before tried Ideal conditions for inaugurating it The Booker Washington dinner incident A needless uproar Dr. Crum s collec- torship 213 CHAPTER XIV CAPITAL AND LABOR Combination in both fields Labor unions and the civil serv ice The Miller case Overlooked facts in the coal arbitration Things a demagogue would not have done 232 CHAPTER XV Why one corporation is sued and another not Prudential value of publicity Free-trader versus Republican A Philippine forecast sustained Tropical colonies and the flag 250 XIV CONTENTS CHAPTER XVI A CREATURE OF IMPULSE PACE Sudden whim or quick judgment ? How the coal arbitra tion was set afoot The franchise tax A Jew-baiting campaign flattened out Vigorous indorsement on a pardon petition 272 CHAPTER XVII THE MAN OF MANY PARTS A marvel of versatility Spoiling an embryo naturalist Perils of an emphatic style Masterful manners Mr. Roosevelt s work as an author Method of composi tion His newspaper reading 290 CHAPTER XVIII SOME CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS Horsemanship and hard tramps The family man at home Rollicking with the children A champion of chaste living White House hospitalities The religious life of the President 309 CHAPTER XIX CONCLUSION Unique feature of Mr. Roosevelt s career Purpose of this review The future 325 XV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TAG*. Theodore Roosevelt to-day. . . . Frontitpiece Theodore Roosevelt at twenty-four .... 20 Colonel of the Rough Riders . . . . .62 The President s home, Oyster Bay, Long Island . .100 The gun room at Sagamore Hill . . . .150 An afternoon gallop . . . . . . .198 Speaking to the people from a car platform . . . 252 The Roosevelt family . . . . . .314 xvii THE MAN ROOSEVELT CHAPTER I THE KEY TO A REMARKABLE CAREER Reversing the tide of rate A good use for disappointments- "Going ahead" The Isthmian imbroglio One of four alternatives Warning to Turkey A recipe for success. WHEN Senator Depew, in his speech nom inating Theodore Roosevelt for Vice-President, called him "an Eastern man with Western char acteristics," he stated only a half-truth. He might have described his candidate as the great est living all-around antithesis. Reared amid conditions which pointed to a life of leisure, Theodore Roosevelt voluntarily chose a life of hard work. Educated in a social atmosphere in which practical politics is numbered among the vices, he deliberately elected to become a politician. Physically a weakling in his boy hood, he has acquired, by Spartan training, a body like spring steel. Born with the mental and moral equipment of an independent, he has made of himself, by unremitting endeavor, a pretty good partizan. 3 THE MAN ROOSEVELT Let it be noted that these changes have been wrought by the sheer exercise of will. The man has conquered nature. Every fresh victory has strengthened his self-confidence, and this confidence has furnished the propulsive force for his next assault. It is said that Heaven helps him who helps himself. Heaven has certainly been very kind to Theodore Roosevelt; for in those few instances where he has helped himself to the best of his ability and failed, some other power has intervened to turn defeat into a sur prising success. Had he been elected Mayor of the city of New York when he ran in 1886, he would undoubtedly have followed the local fashion of the day and sought a reelection at the end of his term, and thus been carried too far out of the track of Federal politics to have become a candidate for Assistant Secretary of State under President Harrison. Had Secre tary Elaine favored his appointment as Assist ant Secretary of State, the President would un doubtedly have appointed him, with the result that he would have been kept in perpetual eclipse by the greater luminary at the head of the department, as Mr. Wharton was; instead, a Civil-Service commissionership was offered him and he accepted it, and the free swing he 4 GOOD USE FOR DISAPPOINTMENTS had in that place enabled him to become a national character and paved the way for his later promotions. His old thirst to have a hand in the government of his native city came back to him after he had passed six years at Wash ington, and he yielded to Mayor Strong s solici tation to become a member of the reorganized Police Commission. The result was disappoint ing, however; for, in spite of a series of notable reforms, the influence of one of his colleagues blocked so many of his projects for improve ment that he was glad of the chance afforded by President McKinley s election to go to Wash ington as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. In this position he was largely instrumental in bringing the Cuban controversy to a head and making ready for his experience as a soldier. Again observe the part played by mischance. If, when war came, he had obtained the place on the staff of General Fitzhugh Lee for which he originally applied, he would not have or ganized the Rough Riders and become the most picturesque figure in the volunteer army; and it was on his war record that he made his cam paign for the governorship of New York. Then came another bitter disappointment. He craved a second term as Governor. The 5 THE MAN ROOSEVELT Republican managers in the State at large were resolved that he should not have it; for this reason, and in defiance of his protests, they per sisted in pressing him for the vice-presidency. Never was honor forced upon an unwilling recipient as that was. He pleaded with his friends not to let him be sacrificed; he fought off every suggestion with declarations that he could not and would not accept the nomination; it was an open secret that neither Mr. McKin- ley nor the recognized leaders in the convention wished him on the ticket at the outset. But the New York delegation, for reasons of self-inter est, were bound that he should be nominated; and delegation after delegation from the Missis sippi Valley where, report said, Bryanism had taken a fresh lease of life seconded the efforts of New York on the ground that Roosevelt s was the only name they could conjure with in this emergency. He was elected to the office he did not wish, and had used every device except flight to avoid. Once more, though through a tragic and abhorrent medium, the hand of destiny performed its work, raising him to the highest place in a nation of eighty million people. Call these reversals "luck," if you will; the 6 "GOING AHEAD" fact remains that had Theodore Roosevelt, at any stage, been discouraged by a rebuff, he would never have reached his journey s end. It was by plunging ahead after every stumble, refusing to halt even long enough to count the stones in his path, and doing the best he could wherever he happened to be, that he gave op portunity its perfect play and lent himself to fortune. This is the epic value of his course through life. Its more commonplace interpre tation was unconsciously stated by him in his testimony before the Commission to Investigate the Conduct of the War with Spain. He had been describing an incident which ended in his finding himself suddenly alone in the midst of a forward movement, with nobody from whom to take orders. At this point he paused. "Well," said one of his inquisitors, who had been following the story with interest, "what then?" "Why," answered the witness, "I have al ways found it a good rule, when in doubt what to do, to go ahead. I went ahead." Within a few weeks we have witnessed an incident illustrative of this trait of directness in the President. I refer to the Panama episode. THE MAN ROOSEVELT It is not in my province to discuss this affair on either its moral or its legal side. Its only usefulness here is for the example it affords of the operation of a certain mental characteristic which has played a dominant part in shaping Mr. Roosevelt s career. We may dismiss at the outset the idea that the secession of Panama was a surprise to the rest of the world. For years the tie between this state and the main body of the republic of Colombia had been drawn so tense as to be liable to snap at any moment. The failure of the canal negotiations between Washington and Bogota was simply the last straw thrown upon an already perilous burden of discontent. Any one could have forecast the result, though with out being able to fix the precise date for the revolution. As long ago as the signing of the Hay-Herran treaty it was so well understood that either Colombia must ratify that instru ment or Panama would take the canal business into her own hands, that the diplomatists in Washington even discussed the impracticability of the Bogota Government s sending reenforce- ments overland to its army on the isthmus. President Marroquin knew what the alternative was; so did Minister Herran. That is the 8 THE ISTHMIAN IMBROGLIO reason both worked so hard to push the treaty through. When their efforts failed the expected hap pened. Panama set up in business for herself. Nobody in the administration at Washington made any pretense of regretting this turn of affairs. There were no hypocritical tears, no perfunctory messages of condolence. On the contrary, the President lost no time in recog nizing the new republic, which in its turn lost no time in entering upon treaty negotiations with the United States. Perhaps, as his critics assert, he showed indecent haste in warming over the funeral-baked meats to furnish forth the marriage tables. Be that as it may, what he did he did without concealment, without hesitancy, without quibbling, without apology. There was no secret plotting, no clandestine correspondence for his enemies to bring to light later. He was as little concerned in the revo lution as disconcerted by it. As President he had always refused to discuss the likelihood of its occurrence; as a man, in the freedom of in tercourse with his personal friends, he had never ignored the possibility that it would come. Every act of his in other emergencies had made it plain in advance how he would act in this one. 9 THE MAN ROOSEVELT "If the Colombian Government had held its own on the isthmus," said a member of the ad ministration to me after the overturn, "and the revolutionists had made the disorder, that dis order would have been suppressed forcibly and at once by the United States. As the Colombian army disintegrated, however, and the part that remained loyal to the Bogota Government em barked for home without so much as an ex change of shots, one of four courses lay open to the President. He might have done nothing, let events drift till our Congress had convened in special session, and then referred the whole subject to that body in a message; that would have satisfied the demands of decorum, but it would also have shifted responsibility from his shoulders to others. He might have put down the rebellion and restored to Colombia the authority her representatives had tamely sur rendered; that course would have fulfilled the letter of the guaranty in the treaty of 1846, but would have been open to the same line of attack as the retention of the Philippines the main tenance by force of a government without the consent of the governed. He might have taken our war-ships out of isthmian waters, and left the Bogota Government to send in its troops by 10 THE EXPECTED THAT HAPPENED sea and handle the rebellion as best it could; but that would have been the signal for a riot of bloodshed, the interruption of a transit as well guaranteed as the sovereignty of Colombia, and an added complication from French interven tion. Finally, he might have recognized any government that was for the time in peaceable possession of the isthmus and in a position to transact business; and this is precisely what he did." It was, according to this statement, the only direct course that offered, and the President followed it. There were no precedents, so he established one. Whether his conclusion was sober or ill digested may be open to dis pute between honest men and patriots; it was at least absolutely characteristic. Any body who knows the President must have foreseen just what would happen under such conditions as confronted him. Equally, no one who knows him need be told that he would not have lifted one of his fingers to bring the situation about. The end always in view was a canal through the isthmus; the revolution placed a fresh instrumentality next his hand, and he laid hold of it; where most others would have halted for caution s sake, he n THE MAN ROOSEVELT "went ahead." Posterity will be able to study this episode in the light of its remoter results. But, in any event, the President s directness and candor leave no mysteries for the his torian to uncover, and when his own genera tion passes judgment on his conduct for good or ill it will do so with the full knowledge of the facts. Last summer a rumor reached this country that Mr. Magelssen, the vice-consul of the United States at Beirut, Syria, had been assas sinated. Without waiting for particulars, which are proverbially long in coming when any thing happens in the Turkish dominions, Presi dent Roosevelt ordered a squadron of Ameri can war-ships to the scene of the supposed crime. The suddenness of this move astonished every one. Representatives of European powers had been assaulted and murdered without so quick action on the part of the governments concerned. Abroad, the President s course was set down to his impulsiveness; at home, to his jingoism. The friends of peace were alarmed lest it should bring on war. Others condemned it as a bluster which he would not attempt with a strong power, but which he felt he could safely try on poor, broken-down Turkey. 12 WARNING TO TURKEY No war followed. Fortunately, the original rumor was found to be almost groundless, so there would have been no cause for active hos tilities. It is true, moreover, that the same tac tics would not have been tried with England or France or Germany. But why? Because we could have got from either of those coun tries in three days* time fuller details of the Incident than we could get in three months from Turkey. England or France or Ger many, if found in the wrong, would have apolo gized at once and offered such other and more substantial reparation as the occasion seemed to call for. Turkey would have postponed as long as possible the investigation of the affair, and then the apology; and, when it came to money damages, she would have tried to make promises pass for piastres. We should have haggled and worried over this debt for five or six years, served a series of quasi-ultimata upon the Sul tan, scaled down the principal a little when he drew a poor mouth, consented to waive interest charges in consideration of prompt settlement of the remainder, and finally received as nearly nothing as he could squeeze or coddle us into accepting. Here was where the Presi dent s directness came into play again. He THE MAN ROOSEVELT knew that with such a debtor the creditor who acts quickly acts twice. The Turk was doubt less as much surprised as any of the disinter ested outsiders when he discovered that the United States Government was not deliberating what to do, but had already done it that its war-ships were where they could begin business without a moment s delay if a needless hitch occurred in the diplomatic correspondence. Granted that no other government has acted with such startling suddenness in a similar case; it is also true that no other government could have done so. The Sultan knew, and all the rest of mankind knew, that the errand of that squadron was precisely what it purported to be to support the American minister in his demand for immediate satisfaction for the mur der of the vice-consul, if it had occurred as reported; that behind this lay no ulterior pur pose on the part of the United States to find an excuse for a war or the seizure of Turkish territory. The motives of any other strong power would have been under suspicion. Pos sibly the order of the war-ships to Beirut was a hasty step ; of that, every critic must be his own judge. The best test of its wisdom, however, will be the comparative security of foreign lives A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS and property in Turkey for the rest of the pres ent administration. President Roosevelt is not a genius. He is a man of no extraordinary natural capacity. As author, lawmaker, administrator, huntsman, athlete, soldier, what you will, his record con tains nothing that might not have been accom plished by any man of sound physique and good intelligence. Such prestige as he enjoys above his fellows he has acquired partly by hard work and partly by using his mother-wit in his choice of tasks and his method of tackling them. He has simply taken up and completed what others have dropped in discouragement, sought better ways of doing what others have done before, labored always in the open, and remembered that the world moves. CHAPTER II AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS Republican crisis of 1884 First break with the Independents A party man still Running for Governor Why a program failed Second break with the Independents A hitherto un published letter. IN the summer of 1884 a man not yet twenty- six years old was faced with a problem the solution of which might affect the whole cur rent of his life. Though still a mere youth, he had acquired a reputation as wide as the coun try by his record as a reform legislator in his native State, New York. He had risen to the leadership of the Republican side in the Assem bly at Albany. His ability, his pluck, and, above all, his honest independence, had not only fixed the eyes of his fellow countrymen upon him, but forced his recognition by the party managers, so that he had been sent to the Repub lican national convention at Chicago as the head of the State delegation to take his first active part in the task of President-making. In 16 PARTING OF THE WAYS the convention he had fought hard for his can didate, George F. Edmunds, then regarded as the special champion of the independent ele ment in Republican politics, and had been defeated; James G. Elaine, the candidate against whom the whole weight of the reformers had been hurled, had been nominated. Not a few of Mr. Elaine s other opponents had declared in advance that in no event would they support him for President they would sooner go out of their party. The convention had accepted their challenge; the crucial hour had come, and they must now retreat or make good their threats. Already the press was bulging with manifestoes and open letters and interviews, put forth by lifelong Republicans who were aban doning the ticket to its fate. The young man was Theodore Roosevelt, and he was at the parting of the ways. On one side he saw George William Curtis, Carl Schurz in short, nearly all the prominent men on whose support he had most steadfastly counted taking the road that led toward the Democratic party, at least for the time. Be hind him lay the fruits of two years work in the New York Legislature hard work, sincere work, which had told its story for good gov- THE MAN ROOSEVELT ernment. It had been done not by the sole power of his own speech and vote, but by the combinations he had been able to form with others who thought and felt as he did, or who, lacking both logic and sentiment, were ready to follow him for discipline s sake or motives of expediency. Although individual initiative, direction, force, were essential to such under takings, and the successful combination was after all only a group of individual factors, yet he realized that his personal efforts could not have accomplished anything of themselves. Should he now turn his back upon the past, step out of the ranks of the political army in which he had been trained, and become an unattached sharpshooter? He could not -go over to the enemy; in principles and spirit they had prac tically nothing in common; there was no bond of sympathy between them except objection to one candidate. It was a serious dilemma. Though accus tomed to act on instinct in most emergencies, he hesitated just a little in the presence of this one. There were Republican dogmas which he had not yet digested. One of these which would probably figure largely in the campaign was the dogma of high protection, while his 18 WEIGHING THE REASONS Harvard schooling had been all in the direc tion of free trade. He was fully conscious that an administration brought into power by Re publican votes had carried the Union safely through the civil war, and molded a group of sovereign States into a solid unit, yet he was far from accepting the extreme views of a large element in the Republican party as to the con tinued penance which should be demanded of the South for the sin of secession. Neverthe less, the general tendencies of the party, its national aspirations, its disposition to test new measures in statecraft instead of rejecting them because they were new, appealed strongly to him on both his temperamental and his practi cal sides. It was the only party in which he felt at home, and with which, in spite of some differences in detail, he could work out his projects for the public advantage. Should he go out of the party and stay till the present storm had blown over, and then come back again? A good many men could have figured out such a program and deliber ately entered upon it; with him it would have been impossible. The only question he had to decide was: Stay in, or stay out? He had pledged himself to no course; he had raised not 9 THE MAN ROOSEVELT a hand, uttered not a word, to prevent any of his colleagues from following their own con sciences. When an old friend and fellow Re publican said, "I can not remain in the party and vote for Elaine; if the Democrats nom inate such a man as Grover Cleveland I must vote for him," Mr. Roosevelt, he tells me, not only made no effort to restrain him, but an swered: "Cleveland would be the best man the Democrats could name; still, if I felt as you do, I should support any proper Democratic nomination." All this was apart from the ques tion of what he should ultimately do himself; he felt very sure what that would be, but he wished to think it over before making an irrevocable decision. The agitated atmosphere surrounding him was not conducive to calm judgment. Away, therefore, he hastened for a brief interval of quiet, and on his Dakota ranch reviewed the whole situation in his mind; then he made an authoritative statement: "I intend to vote the Republican presiden tial ticket. A man can not act both without and within the party; he can do either, but he can not possibly do both. Each course has its advantages and each has its disadvantages, and one can not take the advantages or the disad- 20 THEODORE ROOSEVELT AT TWENTY-FOUR. A REPUBLICAN STILL vantages separately. I went in with my eyes open to do what I could within the party; I did my best and got beaten, and I propose to stand by the result. It is impossible to com bine the functions of a guerrilla chief with those of a colonel in the regular army; one has greater independence of action, the other is able to make what action he does take vastly more effective. In certain contingencies the one can do most good, in certain contingencies the other ; but there is no use in accepting a commission and then trying to play the game out on a lone hand. During the entire canvass for the nom ination Mr. Elaine received but two checks. I had a hand in both, and I could have had a hand in neither had not those Republicans who elected me the head of the New York State delegation supposed that I would in good faith support the man who was fairly made the Re publican nominee. I am by inheritance and by education a Republican; whatever good I have been able to accomplish in public life has been accomplished through the Republican party; I have acted with it in the past, and wish to act with it in the future." After his summer s recreation he was called upon for a few speeches. He had little to say, 21 THE MAN ROOSEVELT and nothing that was not kindly in purport, of his former associates who had parted company with him at Chicago, but one of his utterances should be quoted as throwing further light upon his attitude: "It has always been my luck in politics, and I suppose always will be, to offend some wing of the party generally the machine, but sometimes the independents. I should think little of myself should I permit the inde pendents to dictate to me any more than the machine." On his return from Cuba, after the Spanish War, a second crisis occurred in the career of Mr. Roosevelt. Politics in New York were in a state of upheaval. It was plain that Governor Black s administration would be followed by a Democratic sweep at the polls unless the Re publicans could find a candidate so popular on his own account as to pull the whole ticket through. There must be a stirring campaign, with plenty of cannon, cheers, flag-waving and red fire, but above all there must be some one to shout for. Apathetic quiet, or even half hearted noise, meant sure defeat. This was a contingency too serious to be calmly contem plated, for the party was split, and was only holding itself together by main force to con- 22 ANOTHER PARTY CRISIS ceal the rift from the public. Defeat at this juncture would compel the abdication of the old management and assure the installation of a new one, which had been waiting for some time for such a chance. There was a general settlement of the shrewder party lieutenants upon Roosevelt as their man, and they made no secret of it. Platt, Roosevelt s opposite pole in sentiment and methods, agreed with the lieu tenants, but was too old a campaigner to adver tise his opinion prematurely. On the other hand, the fact that this was a critical year for the Republicans had stimulated the independ ents to put up a candidate. If they could nom inate an ideal man one of the right character as well as the right running qualities they could drive Platt out of business as a boss, and this was the end toward which they had been working as long as most of them had been in terested in politics at all. Roosevelt seemed to be the very man they were seeking. With him as a candidate, backed by evidence of a large uprising of independent voters in his support throughout the State, they reasoned that the Platt machine would be forced into accepting him also as the Republican candidate, without pledges of any sort such as candidates are ex- 23 THE MAN ROOSEVELT pected to give to the parties who nominate them; that the Republican indorsement of an independent candidate for Governor would leave the rest of the Republican ticket with no support except the strict party vote; that, under these conditions, some or all of the machine nominees would be defeated by the Democrats, to the further demoralization of the machine; and that as Governor Mr. Roosevelt would have an unhampered initiative and a fine oppor tunity to break up certain abuses immemori- ally entrenched in the State government at Albany. Accounts differ as to what took place at the secret negotiations that followed. The inde pendent leaders asserted, in an address made public on September 25, 1898, that Roosevelt gave his approval to their plan, with the one stipulation that if it "should so far fail that he should not receive the Republican nomination, he must then be free to accept or decline the independent nomination"; that later he con ferred with them about the technical prelim inaries to launching their ticket; but that on September 20 they received word from him that he found himself in an "impossible posi tion" with respect to their nomination and this 24 BREAK WITH INDEPENDENTS was followed by a letter under date of Septem ber 22 cutting off further relations with their project. Mr. Roosevelt s version of the chain of con ditions leading up to this end was never given, I believe, in any newspaper interview or other authorized statement, but was freely quoted among his friends at the time. It was to the general effect that, although he had consented under certain contingencies to their use of his name, the independents themselves had insisted that he was not to give, and could not give, his acceptance of their nomination till it should be formally offered to him; that he did not under stand, when the subject was first broached to him, that such consent would involve his deser tion of the fortunes of any candidates who might be associated with him on the Republican State ticket; that a controversy having arisen as to something which the independent platform should contain, the independent managers sent him a written version of their original interview with him, marking in the margin a single pass age that covered the point at issue; that in his acknowledgment of receipt he indorsed this marked passage as containing a correct state ment of the facts, but that his indorsement was THE MAN ROOSEVELT construed by his correspondents as extending to everything in the enclosure; and that when, in the light of later utterances by the independ ents, he grasped their plan in all its bearings, he did not feel that he could afford to be placed in a false position before his party and the voters of the State, and made haste to notify the managers accordingly. His letter of Sep tember 22, already mentioned, put the gist of the matter thus: "The independent nomination has not been formally offered me, but I am now receiving so many questions as to my intentions in the matter that I am not willing to wait longer. "My name will probably be presented to the Republican State Convention at Saratoga on the 27th. If I am nominated, then it will be on the same ticket with those who are named for the other State offices. The Republican party will also have congressional and legisla tive tickets in the field. National issues are paramount this year; very few municipal offi cers are to be elected. The candidates will be my associates in the general effort to elect a Republican Governor, Republican Congress men to support President McKinley and the cause of sound money, and a Legislature which 26 CHANGING CANDIDATES will send to the Senate a Republican United States Senator. "It seems to me that I would not be acting in good faith toward my fellow candidates if I permitted my name to head a ticket designed for their overthrow; a ticket, moreover, which can not be put up because of objections to the character or fitness of any candidates, inasmuch as no candidates have yet been nominated. "I write this with great reluctance, for I wish the support of every independent. If elected Governor, I would strive to serve the State as a whole, and to serve my party by helping to serve the State. I should greatly like the aid of the independents, and I appreciate the im portance of the independent vote, but I can not accept a nomination on terms that would make me feel disloyal to the principles for which I stand, or at the cost of acting with what seems to me bad faith toward my associates." Although two or three conferences with the leaders of the independent movement had pre ceded the delivery of this letter, they had failed of any results in the direction of conciliation, and the independents went on and put a sepa rate ticket in the field containing the name of Theodore Bacon, of Rochester, a lawyer of 27 THE MAN ROOSEVELT note, for Governor. Some embarrassment and delay were occasioned by the fact that the ar rangement for nominating Roosevelt had been by a form prescribed in the statutes for certain cases a petition to the Secretary of State with a given number of signatures attached. The independents petition, circulated all over the State, had been signed by 8,000 persons a great many more than required by law. But these signatures were for an independent nomination of Roosevelt, not Bacon, and it took some time and trouble to provide for the substitution. The Republican Convention, meanwhile, had carried out its purpose of nominating Roose velt; there was nothing else for it to do. It had done so, moreover, without exacting a sin gle pledge from him, and this was all that the independents had aimed at. When the votes were counted on election night, Roosevelt was found with a plurality of 17,786 to his credit. It was not a very big plurality for New York with her 1,500,000 voters, but, like Mercutio s wound, twould serve. The interesting feature of the count was that it showed Roosevelt to have run several thou sand votes ahead of his ticket. Bacon s total was about 2,100. This number presumptively 28 AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER measured the strength of the independent move ment for independence s sole sake. The other 6,000 signers of the independent petition had probably been attracted to it by the hope it of fered of a chance to vote for Roosevelt whether the Republicans should nominate him or not; there is always a contingent of these whether-or- noes in the following of every party leader. When he accepted the Republican nomination and declined the independent, they went with him and swelled his plurality. They would have stuck to him just the same if he had sud denly blossomed out as a Prohibitionist or a Labor candidate. It was the man, not the poli tician, they were supporting. Right here I am going to trench on half- forbidden ground far enough to add my own particular mite to the literature of this inci dent. On September 3, 1898, Mr. Roosevelt wrote me from Montauk, Long Island, where the Rough Riders were in camp, about sundry matters in which we felt a joint interest. His letter bore evidences of hasty composition and bristled with interlineations, which are indi cated in the copy here given. Referring to some comments of mine on the talk of making him Governor, he said : 29 THE MAN ROOSEVELT I haven t bothered myself a particle about the nomi nation, and have no idea whether it will be made or not. In the first place, I would rather have led this regiment than be Governor of New York three times over. In the next place, while on the whole I should like the office of Governor and would not shirk it, the position will be one of such extreme difficulty, and I shall have to offend so many good friends of mine, that I should breathe a sigh of relief were it not offered to me. It is a party position. I should be one of the big party leaders if I should take it. This means that I should with have to treat A and work with the organization, and I should see and consult the leaders not once, but continu- earnestly on all important questions ously and A try to come to an agreement A with them ; and of course the mere fact of my doing so would alienate many of my friends whose friendship I value. On the other hand, when we come to a matter like the Canal, or Life Insurance, or anything touching the Eighth Com mandment and general decency, I could not allow any Consideration of party to Come in. And this would alienate those who, if not friends, were supporters. As for taking the honor without conditions or not at all, I do not believe anybody would so much as propose to mention conditions to me. Certainly I would not enter tain any conditions save those outlined in this very letter that, while a good party man who would honestly strive to to work with them, keep in with the leaders of the party organization, A and to bring the Republican party into a better shape for *.wo yet years hence, but in the last resort I should have to be my A 30 VALUE AS PROOF own master, and when a question of honesty or dishonesty have to arose I should A pay no further heed to party lines. Now, as I say, I haven t an idea about the nomina tion. I know that certain of the politicians some for or wholly bad good and doubtless some for less good A reasons are work- some I am glad ing for me, and that there are A (I may add, A to say, the worst) seffl who are working against me. I should say that the odds are against my nomination ; but I can also say, with all sincerity, that I don t care in the least. When the date of this letter is noted in con nection with its contents, and when we read it literally between the lines, using the auto graphic amendments as an index to the work ing of the writer s mind, its importance will appear. For it was written spontaneously in the confidence of friendship, at a time when nothing was further from the thought of either its author or its recipient than that it would ever be valuable as a means of refuting unjust insinuations. CHAPTER III KNIGHT ERRANT OF CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM How Mr. Roosevelt became Commissioner Publicity for the merit system Bringing up the Southern quotas Tilts with Congress Competitive examinations and the police. MR. ROOSEVELT S decision to remain a Re publican after Elaine s nomination for the presi dency brought about, as we have seen, a tem porary estrangement between him and a num ber of well-known men with whom he had worked in the past for civil-service reform. They lost no opportunity of making plain to the public the fact of the separation, and of the critical distance at which they should thenceforward scrutinize his conduct in public affairs. An insincere man might have seized such a state of armed truce as an excuse for dropping aggressive tactics in the reform propa ganda, and leaving his old associates to carry this on alone as best they could; but, so far from that, he became a more determined fighter than ever, and took especial pains to show his 32 CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSIONER contempt for party lines when it came to ad ministering the purely business branches of the governmental machine. His appointment in 1889 as Civil-Service Commissioner, though fraught with conse quences of such importance to his future, was more a happy accident than anything else. When the Harrison administration began he was taking great interest in foreign affairs, and aspired to be Assistant Secretary of State. Secretary Elaine, however, had recognized in him a certain impatience of restraint which boded danger for their relations as chief and subordinate. So the assistant secretaryship was given to William F. Wharton of Massachu setts, a more discreet young man, and to Mr. Roosevelt was tendered instead a position on the Civil-Service Commission. Many of his friends were surprised at his acceptance of the place, which seemed too narrow for his powers. Up to that time the commission had been re garded as a rather insignificant wheel in the administrative machine. Dorman B. Eaton of New York, its president, was the only man of national reputation who had had any con nection with it during the six years of its his tory, and his interest was wholly patriotic and 33 THE MAN ROOSEVELT philanthropic. He had devoted several years unselfishly to the study of the European sys tems and the siege of Congress, and deserved almost the sole credit for finally procuring the enactment of the organic legislation. Mr. Roosevelt, who had been his enthusiastic col league in the National Civil-Service Reform League, was the author of the bill which passed the Legislature of New York during Governor Cleveland s administration, about simultane ously with the Federal act. Mr. Eaton, a man of cautious temperament, had endeavored to efface himself while he re mained in office. He kept out of the way of the newspapers, and averted as far as possible all unnecessary publicity as to the acts of the commission. He felt that the merit system was still novel in the United States, while the old spoils interests were so well entrenched that every paragraph of news or comment in the press was more liable to damage the reform by stimu lating its foes to fresh endeavor than to help it by encouraging its friends. It was natural, therefore, for many superficial observers to assume that the policy of secretiveness would continue indefinitely, and that any prominent man who could be induced to take a place on 34 PUBLICITY FOR MERIT SYSTEM the commission would practically disappear from public view for the period of his service. Whoever expected Mr. Roosevelt to remain long hidden in any position, however insignifi cant, did not know the man. He had grown up in the sunlight and fresh air. Publicity had no terrors for him. He had always spoken his mind when and where he pleased. He gloried in a fight for any cause he had espoused, and his theory was that anything worth having was not too dear at the price of a few hard knocks provided always that he were in a situation to give back all he took, with interest. Hence it came about that on Mr. Roose velt s entrance into it the Civil-Service Com mission, for the first time since its foundation, threw open its office doors freely to all comers. This policy disarmed a part of the criticism which had formerly been rife, founded on the theory that there was some mystery connected with its workings. No member of Congress thereafter ventured a mistaken comment on the merit system, without receiving by the next mail a cordial invitation to come down to headquar ters and explore the whole business to his heart s content. No editorial mention of the commis sion or its work passed unheeded if it found its 35 THE MAN ROOSEVELT way to headquarters, and where the writer ap peared to have been honestly misled on any point he was promptly set right. The news paper correspondents in Washington were made welcome, and furnished with any in formation that could properly be given out. An effort was made to establish more than purely formal relations between the heads of departments and the commissioners, and to con vince the former that the spirit of the commis sion was cooperative rather than antipathetic. All the resources of Mr. Roosevelt s agile wit were taxed not only to meet new difficulties as they arose, but to devise means for extending the scope of the commission s usefulness and win popular confidence in the democratic and American character of the merit system. One day a paragraph appeared somewhere in the press which showed that there still lin gered in the public mind a notion that only Republicans need try to enter the Government service during a Republican administration. Like a flash came Mr. Roosevelt s response. He sent out invitations to all the representa tives of Southern newspapers in Washington to meet him at his office on a certain afternoon. "Now, gentlemen," said he, "I am going 36 BRINGING UP SOUTHERN QUOTAS to ask you to help me dispel this illusion, and at the same time aid your own people. I have been looking over the list of appointments from our registers, and, whereas the Northern and Western States have their quotas full and some of them overflowing, the South is short of its share. I wish each of you would publish in the most emphatic manner the statement that it is my desire that the young men of the South should come forward, irrespective of politics, and take our examinations. I assume, on gen eral principles, that most of your educated young men are Democrats; but you may give them my absolute guaranty that they will re ceive the same consideration in every respect as the young men in other parts of the country, that no one will inquire what their politics are, and that they will be appointed according to their deserts and in the regular order of ap portionment. This is an institution not for Re publicans, and not for Democrats, but for the whole American people. It belongs to them, and will be administered, as long as I stay here, in their interest without discrimination." The effect was magical. The examinations on the Southern routes began to swarm with bright young fellows, to whom, by the then 37 THE MAN ROOSEVELT modest standards of the South, a salary of $1,200 was riches. In spite of every effort, there were many members of Congress who refused either to take for granted that the system was good and hon estly handled or to come and see for themselves. These stubborn gentry, and a few others who wanted to carry water on both shoulders, would regularly, once a session, go through a stereo typed comedy in passing the civil-service appro priation. The great budget bills are consid ered, in the House of Representatives, first in committee of the whole, and then reported to the House and passed. In committee of the whole a vote is subject to a division and a count of heads, but the roll is never called. So, when the civil-service appropriation would come up, there would always be a division, and a majority would appear in favor of striking out the en tire grant and thereby starving the commission to death; but when the bill was reported to the House the friends of the merit system would demand a roll-call, and then a score or two of the very members who had helped to make a majority against the appropriation in committee would scuttle for the other side and have their names recorded as voting in its favor. Their 38 TILTS WITH CONGRESS first demonstration would usually be made to pique Mr. Roosevelt, who had once occupied a seat in the gallery when the committee debate was in progress; their second would be for the benefit of those of their constituents who were educated and intelligent enough to read the Congressional Record and the newspapers. Once the opponents of the merit system in Congress carried their horse-play a little too far, and, though not striking out the total grant, refused to give the commission all the money it needed for the expense of conducting exam inations. A meek man would have bowed to this snub. Not so Mr. Roosevelt. He sent for the schedule of examination routes as laid out, and prepared a revised version, chopping oft with one blow the districts represented by the men who had refused to vote the necessary money. He then informed the leading news paper correspondents of what had been done, so as to have it well advertised. He coupled with the news an explanation that, as long as the list must be cut down to keep it within the amount appropriated for expenses, and some districts had to be sacrificed, it was only com mon justice that those members who had voted against the necessary grant should be given the 39 THE MAN ROOSEVELT full benefit of the restriction they had them selves imposed. There was loud chatter about "impeachment" and " removal," and what-not, when this news reached the ears of the victims, but the bold stroke carried the day, and the commission got its money after that. When a member of either chamber per sisted in criticizing the commission unfairly after an invitation to inspect its methods and satisfy himself, he was apt to hear from Mr. Roosevelt in another way; and it made no difference what the offender s party affiliations or personal importance might be. Mr. Gor man, of Maryland, attacking the merit system one day in the Senate, told a story of "a bright young man in the city of Baltimore, an appli cant for the position of letter-carrier," who was required on his examination to tell "the most direct route from Baltimore to Japan," and on his failure to answer this and some other equally unpractical questions was rejected. On the day the speech was published Mr. Roosevelt sent the Senator a polite written request for the date and place of the examination, and also an in vitation to inspect all the examination papers for letter-carriers and find the obnoxious ques tion if it had ever been asked. In this instance, 40 AN ARCADIAN SENATOR Mr. Gorman explained afterward to his col leagues in the Senate, "I did what I do in the case of all interferences by impudent people who without warrant ask me about the dis charge of my duty: I took no notice of it." That brought out from Mr. Roosevelt a public letter, closing in this characteristic style: "High-minded, sensitive Mr. Gorman! Clinging, trustful Mr. Gorman! Nothing could shake his belief in that bright young man. Apparently, he did not even yet try to find out his name if he had a name; in fact, his name, like everything else about him, re mains to this day wrapped in the Stygian mantle of an abysmal mystery. Still less has Mr. Gor man tried to verify the statements made to him. It is enough for him that they were made. No harsh suspicion, no stern demand for evidence or proof, appeals to his artless and unspoiled soul. He believes whatever he is told, even when he has forgotten the name of the teller, or never knew it. It would indeed be difficult to find an instance of a more abiding confidence in human nature even in anonymous human nature. And this is the end of the tale of Arcadian Mr. Gorman and his elusive friend, the bright young man without a name!" 4 1 THE MAN ROOSEVELT James S. Clarkson, the present surveyor of the Port of New York, was formerly an Assist ant Postmaster-General, having for one of his duties the appointment and dismissal of fourth- class postmasters. As joint members of the ad ministration under President Harrison, he and Mr. Roosevelt had several clashes while this connection lasted, having been trained in di verse schools of ethics as regarded the civil service. Mr. Clarkson, when he had retired from office, contributed an article to the North American Review charging the commission with being more unfriendly to the Republican party under Harrison than it had been under Cleveland, denouncing the mugwumps as being insincere and merely Democrats in disguise, and insisting on the right of the Republicans when in power to fill the offices with persons of their own political faith. Mr. Roosevelt, in a speech delivered at St. Louis soon after the article appeared, met these complaints in a fashion all his own. "Mr. Clarkson," said he, "is suffering un der a confusion of ideas. He is mixing him self and his friends with the Republican party. The Civil-Service Commission is most un doubtedly hostile to Mr. Clarkson and the idea 42 REBUKING A SPOILSMAN which Mr. Clarkson represents. We should fail in our duty if we were not. We can no more retain the good-will of the spoilsmen than a policeman who does his duty can retain the good-will of the lawbreaker. "Mr. Clarkson says that the Democratic party purchased the mugwump edifice. I do not believe Mr. Clarkson means that. It is just as foolish to make that statement as it would be to make the statement that the Democratic party purchased Mr. Clarkson to write his article, which is more fitted to do damage to the Republican party than any possible mug wump editorial. "He represents civil-service reformers as saying that office-holding does not concern the people. On the contrary, we say that it does concern the people, and we take issue with Mr. Clarkson and his friends, who insist that it merely concerns the one small and not very clean caste of office-seekers and office-holders. "He says that he and his friends believe in Republican officers under Republican admin istrations. If this is not right, he says, then all political parties in America ought to dis band. In other words, he and his friends be lieve that if they can not get the offices the party 43 THE MAN ROOSEVELT ought to disband. That is to say, he and his friends believe that they ought to be paid for supporting the party. That sounds like a harsh way of putting it, but it is a perfectly just way. There is a certain difference between being paid with an office and being paid with money, ex actly as there is a certain difference between the savagery of an Ashantee and that of a Hotten tot, but it is small in amount." Mr. Roosevelt s belief in the reformed civil- service system was never the blind faith of a faddist, but always tempered with practical sense. Those of us who were watching his career as Police Commissioner recall very dis tinctly the groan that went up from many life long civil-service reformers when the news papers revealed the fact that he had taken his stand against a general competitive examina tion for promotion on the police force, and had caused a split in the board by his unex pected course. One of his colleagues drew his attention to the law, which provided that pro motions must be made through considerations of seniority, merit, and competitive examina tion. Mr. Roosevelt did not dispute this; but he defied his critic to show him anything in the law which threw the examinations open to 44 A COMMON-SENSE VIEW everybody, or forbade the board to pick out the men they wished to enter the competition. It took some time to settle that question, but when it was settled Mr. Roosevelt had carried his point. The commissioner s critics, of course, seized upon this as an evidence that he had gone over to the enemy, and become a believer in favorit ism on the police force as elsewhere. It was a bold position for a man to take when count ing on the support of an element in the com munity who had always insisted upon free and open competitive examinations as the one magical test of fitness for public office and em ployment. Most of these persons, Mr. Roose velt realized, would misunderstand his attitude, but he was sure that if they were capable of understanding it they would approve it. He was as stanch a believer as ever in unrestricted competition in its proper place. But he was able to keep in mind what a mere faddist rarely or never does, the fact that any civil-service ex amination is at best only a screen to keep out the unfit, not a mysterious instrument of selec tion like a divining-rod; that it had been sub stituted for free choice by the appointing officer, not because it possessed any sacred virtue of 45 THE MAN ROOSEVELT its own, but because it offered the only widely available refuge from a reign of political spoils and personal favoritism; and that the sole reason the reformers had made open competi tion the general rule was to give as democratic a character as possible to the merit system. In the case of the police force some con siderations seemed worthy of weight, which did not apply everywhere else. For an original appointment as patrolman rigid examinations were conducted and everybody was welcome to compete; the larger the number and variety of candidates the better pleased was the board. But when it came to promoting men who had already had an opportunity of showing what was in them, the use they had made of their opportunity was the first thing to be looked into. The primal demand was for courage- personal prowess. It goes without saying that a policeman might better be without legs to chase a ruffian than without the courage to tackle him when caught. After the heroes had been picked out, the board looked for the sober, steady, orderly, and intelligent men whom cir cumstances had never placed in a position to try their pluck. Although justice demanded that these men should not be forever kept back DIFFICULTIES OF CHOICE by conditions beyond their control, there were more misgivings about them than about the men who had already proved their quality. Sup pose that a man had been clothed with larger responsibilities on the strength of his record for sobriety and intelligence, but when sub jected to his first real ordeal he went down be fore it! Still, such cases did not present half so much difficulty of choice as a mixed class in which the physical and moral lines did not run parallel. Here and there would be a man whose daring and resourcefulness had never been challenged in vain, but whose shortcom ings in some other respects were terribly trying. Recklessness of discipline, uncertain habits, or a past record which, however well retrieved, made constant watchfulness advisable, might lie in the opposite scale to splendid strength and bravery. In such instances the question asked was whether the man s shortcomings were so serious that he could not be trusted. If so, he was ruled out; if not, he was given a fresh chance to show his mettle. Then came the competitive examination, last of all, to mark the order in which the candidates should be promoted. 5 47 THE MAN ROOSEVELT If competitive examinations of the scholastic sort had held the place in the tests for original selection or promotion of New York police men that most of the less practical friends of the merit system would have assigned them, there would have been some amusing but rather pitiful results; for the range of accomplish ments in book-learning, and even of knowledge of current history and affairs, was not wide among the men of brawn and courage. One of the tests put to a class of applicants was, "Give a brief statement of the life of Abraham Lincoln." Ten candidates described the great emancipator as the President of the Southern Confederacy; one said that he was assassinated by Thomas Jefferson, two by Jefferson Davis, one by Garfield, three by Guiteau, and one by Ballington Booth. Another question was, "Who is the chief officer of the United States?" One candidate answered "Parkhurst," one "Croker," and two "Roosevelt." A third test, "Name some of the States in the Southern Confederacy," brought out a geo graphical conglomerate like "Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada." Of the answers to a request to "Name five of the New England A TRIAL OF COURAGE States," one read, "New York, Albany, Phila delphia, Pennsylvania, and Delaware"; another, "England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Cork"; while still another duplicated this last except for substituting Belfast for Cork. Yet two of the men who made Lincoln President of the Southern Confederacy, getting in by a close shave on their other qualifications, proved among the best officers on the force. Valuable as examinations are as means of weed ing out the hopeless cases, and scrupulously as the law requiring them should be guarded against violation or neglect, Mr. Roosevelt s theory has always been that they are of more real importance to the public service in testing a candidate s intelligence than in discovering his erudition. No scholastic examination no paper test of any sort would have given his proper rank as a subject for promotion to one patrolman who was on the force when Mr. Roosevelt was Police Commissioner. One night, while on his uptown beat, this officer saw a man leap out of the window of a house and run down the street. He promptly gave chase. The man was a burglar, and armed. The policeman, however, dashed after him alone, and was overtaking him when they came to the 49 THE MAN ROOSEVELT New York Central Railroad tunnel. Through one of the big openings in the top of the tunnel the burglar plunged. It was a long leap, and there was danger from the trains underneath, but a man whose liberty is at stake will take a heavy risk. The patrolman was following close. He was inspired by nothing but duty. His liberty was not at stake, and he could not have been punished or reprimanded for failing to risk his neck by jumping into the tunnel. Neverthe less, jump he did. The burglar had the wind knocked out of him by the jump. The patrol man, more skilful or lucky in jumping, got off scot-free, seized the prisoner, brought him in, and thereby earned his promotion. The stand taken by so eminent a champion of the merit system against the conventional tests of fitness, where these tests were themselves unfit, naturally startled many good persons. Perhaps in the same category we might place the shock Mr. Roosevelt gave his more sedate associates in the civil-service-reform movement when he declared, in 1890, his belief that the corps of inspectors of customs on the Texas border might very well be recruited from the line-riders in the cattle country, by giving a large weight to athletic tests. To fill such a 50 ATHLETIC TESTS position most acceptably a man ought to know brands, be a first-rate horseman, and a good pistol-shot with both hands. If he were thor oughly qualified in these particulars, knew enough of reading, writing, and arithmetic to make an intelligible report, and could furnish substantial recommendations as to character, Mr. Roosevelt thought that he ought to make a pretty good inspector. The idea, at the time it was first broached, was made the subject for not a little censure as frivolous and undignified; its author was criti cized for letting his flippant humor run away with his sense of his serious obligations as ad viser to the President in setting the competitive merit system on its feet; and the newspaper paragraphers all over the country took merry shies at it. Yet after the lapse of only a few years we find an announcement published un der the auspices of the Civil-Service Commis sion in a Southwestern journal, that "an exam ination will be held in Brownsville, Texas, for the position of mounted inspector in the cus toms district of Brazos de Santiago, with head quarters at Brownsville. The examination will be of a light educational character, but appli cants will be required to file special vouchers THE MAN ROOSEVELT showing their knowledge of the Mexican lan guage and of the country embraced in the dis trict, as well as their ability to read brands and their experience in horsemanship and marks manship." CHAPTER IV A FEW FRIENDS Premature alarm of the conservatives Senator Lodge s relations with the President Other men who have helped " My regiment" Familiarity and faith The case of Ben Daniels. ON the day of President McKinley s death I met a number of gentlemen interested in the foreign relations of the United States. One question was on every lip : "Will not Senator Lodge be Secretary of State in President Roose velt s Cabinet?" They were evidently much alarmed. Mr. Lodge s premiership, they reasoned, would mean an aggressive foreign policy, the proba bility of another war before long with either Germany or England, and the acquisition of additional territory whenever and wherever possible by conquest. There was a general chorus of surprise when I reassured them by saying that Mr. Lodge would not become Sec retary of State. "You are perfectly certain of that?" they S3 THE MAN ROOSEVELT asked, adding, in a tone of misgiving, "Every Cabinet forecast we have seen puts Lodge in the first place." "You may take comfort from two facts," I answered: "first, that Mr. Roosevelt could not bully, coax, or drag Mr. Lodge out of the seat once filled by Daniel Webster and Charles Sum- ner in the United States Senate; and, second, that he would not try to. With both parties satisfied with the existing arrangement, it is hard to find the incentive for change." Although from what I knew of both Presi dent and Senator I felt perfectly sure of my ground, I was unaware at that moment of a telegram sent to the new President by Mr. Lodge the first advice offered by an old friend that he should leave the McKinley program undisturbed, but, above all, do nothing which could cause the retirement of Secretary Hay. My interrogators had simply made the common mistake of supposing that personal friendship, or a sympathetic view of great questions, would be the decisive consideration in Mr. Roose velt s mind when selecting men for office, and that the closeness of the tie would be the measure of the dignity conferred. As a mat ter of fact, no public man of our time has done 54 CLASSIFYING FRIENDSHIPS fewer of the things he was expected to do in this line, or more of the things which no one believed he would do. He has his own gen eral rules covering such matters, but they are not the rules most men in his position would lay down. I shall not attempt to formulate them except in a rough way, but I believe that I can convey to the reader at least the skeleton of their philosophy. At the outset I should divide his friends into two classes : those whose claim upon his regard has grown out of a natural affinity or long and pleasant social contact, and those whose place in his heart has been won by serv ice in emergencies. Here and there we might find the classes merged in some individual, but not often. Perhaps the most notable example of such merger is Henry Cabot Lodge. Lodge was an instructor at Harvard while Roosevelt was a student there, and many persons have drawn from that fact the inference that their friendship began in Cambridge. Strange to say, the very reverse is the case. Lodge scarcely knew Roosevelt while they were together at the university; and Roosevelt, though interested in history, shunned Lodge s classes and entertained a prejudice against the instructor because Lodge 55 THE MAN ROOSEVELT had .a severer system of marking than he con sidered fair. It was not till both became inter ested in the Edmunds movement and had occa sion to consult on means for bringing New York and Massachusetts together for the sup port of their chosen candidate, that they became acquainted. As their preliminary campaign advanced they grew friendly, and then intimate. At every stage of Roosevelt s career since that day Lodge has been at his side to assist in procuring for him the object of his ambition. When he was Civil-Service Commissioner Lodge led the fight yearly in Congress in favor of a larger scope for the commission s activities and more money to do business with. When the spoilsmen would make a raid upon the merit system on the floor, Lodge would be there, at the head of the defensive force, to receive the brunt of the attack. When work had to be done in the committees in advance of a contemplated onslaught, it was Lodge who undertook the diplomatic task. When a bill was so drawn as to hide a job of patronage and thereby rob the commission of a part of its prerogative, it was Lodge who planted himself in the path of the measure till it had been revised or withdrawn. When Roosevelt wished to be Assistant Secre- 56 WHEN JUDGMENTS CLASH tary of the Navy, Lodge camped at the White House till the President sent his friend s name to the Senate. One of the rare occasions where Lodge and Roosevelt differed as to what was best for the latter s fortunes was at the Repub lican National Convention of 1900. Roosevelt was bound not to take the vice-presidency, where he was sure he would be "shelved" for four years; Lodge insisted that he should take it, because there was no such thing as shelving a man like him. The sequel justified the Sen ator s judgment, though in a manner neither could then foresee. On other questions they often differ. The President would sacrifice his right arm for the Senator, but sacrificing a conviction is another matter: his heart may be his friend s, but his ideas are his own. "I am going to remove M to-morrow," he said to me one day, re ferring to an office-holder of whose misconduct he was satisfied, though without irrefutable evi dence. "Cabot has been here all the afternoon pleading with me to spare the fellow, whom he believes to be a model of righteousness. He has gone away convinced that I am a double- dyed ingrate, and that I m too stubborn to rec ognize resplendent virtue when I see it. I m 57 THE MAN ROOSEVELT sorry. I love Cabot; I d give him half I pos sess but I can t yield that point." This is typical of his attitude toward the best of his friends when it comes to a conflict of judgment. So the fear entertained of Mr. Lodge s malevolent influence if he had become Secretary of State had probably little founda tion. With Mr. Roosevelt the counsel of val ued associates is always welcome, but his de cisions he prefers to make himself. Neighbors of many years, family intimates, a few old school-fellows and college-mates, make up most of the first group of friends in my classification. Mr. Roosevelt has called upon one and another of them at times for some public service which involved hard work and insufficient remuneration. Such a summons is the patent of his faith in their patriotism. In the second category is gathered a motley collec tion of types. I remember well the scowl that crossed his brow when he read in the news papers that "Joe" Murray, a New York Repub lican ward worker, had introduced in a partizan organization a resolution which seemed to re flect upon the honorable conduct of the United States Civil-Service Commission when he Roosevelt was a member of it. "Why, Joe 58 A POLITICAL COACH Murray was the man who taught me my first lessons in practical politics!" he exclaimed. "He ought to know better than to be in such business." He gave the resolution the drubbing it de served, and forced the fighting until the organ ization had crawled through a small hole, and gladly, in its anxiety to retreat; but he never punished Murray personally, always preferring to believe that the poor fellow was misguided rather than vicious. The fact that Murray had given him his first coaching when he was thrown, a greenhorn, among old hands practised at the game, had bound the two men together not merely for the time or for a few months or years thereafter, but virtually for life. This limitless gratitude is undoubtedly a weakness on Mr. Roosevelt s part, but an amiable weak ness, which shows his extremely human side. One of his first thoughts as President was to find a place in the Federal service where Mur ray would fit, and put him into it. The posi tion that offered itself in due season, and was promptly filled, was the deputy commissioner- ship of immigration at Ellis Island. Another of his helpers in time of need who is now reaping the reward of their lucky con- 59 THE MAN ROOSEVELT tact is General Leonard Wood, the military governor of the Moro country in the Philip pines. Close as their companionship has since become, the two men did not know each other till the winter of 1897-98, a few months before the outbreak of the war with Spain. It had always been a fond dream of Roosevelt s to take part in a war. He had come upon the stage too late for the great struggle for the Union, but his assurance that Spain would one day have to be forced out of Cuba seemed on the verge of fulfilment about the time he met Wood, in whom he found a man of kindred faith and aspirations. They were nearly of an age, and both fond of hardy sports. Wood, though only an army surgeon, had enjoyed a military train ing in the field, which Roosevelt had not. Cir cumstances, moreover, had once placed Wood in command of troops an extraordinary acci dent for a medical staff-officer in the midst of an Indian campaign, and he had acquitted him self with credit. Anticipating a war in Cuba, he had visited the island and looked over some of the ground which it was supposed would be the site of active hostilities. All these things gave his companionship an added interest to Roosevelt, who, when President McKinley of- 60 MAKING THE SOLDIER fered him the command of a regiment, at once consented to take its lieutenant-colonelcy if the President would make Wood its colonel. This looks, at a first glance, more like Roose velt helping Wood than Wood helping Roose velt; but such an assumption leaves out of view the fact that Roosevelt, eager to be at the front but conscious of his own ignorance of practical military affairs, needed most of all a teacher, and that Wood was competent to teach him just what he would require to know. The idea of the Rough Rider regiment was Roosevelt s own. For years he had cherished the thought, as he watched the bold equestrianism of the cow boys in the West and the fox-hunters and polo- players in the East, that here was the finest material in the whole country from which to recruit a cavalry contingent in case of war. It was Roosevelt s name which attracted enlist ments everywhere; Wood s was almost or quite unknown. Wood had hardly put Roosevelt through his first paces in drill and field tactics, in the routine duties of command, and in the care of his men, when an accident placed Wood in charge of their brigade and raised Roosevelt to the head of the regiment. Here the future President s nominal rank corresponded for the 61 THE MAN ROOSEVELT first time with his actual prestige and authority, and he laid the foundation for the military ele ment which entered so largely into his political campaigning a few months later. Wood s advancement from a captain s grade in the army medical service to a full major- generalcy in five years is perhaps the most re markable recorded in our day. It places him where practically nothing can prevent his at taining the supreme place in his profession while he is still a comparatively young man. For his latest rise he has to thank President Roosevelt, who never has forgotten the helping hand held out in 1898. General S. B. M. Young also belongs in the list of useful friends. He and Roosevelt became acquainted in the West a good while before Wood came into view. Roosevelt was particularly attracted to him by his soldierly qualities. Not long before war was declared with Spain, at a luncheon in Washington where these three were present, the conversation turned upon the outlook, and Roosevelt and Wood told Young that they were laying their plans to get into the war if one came. "Then I will try to have you attached to my command, if I have one," said Young, "and I ll give you a chance 62 Copyright, 1902 . by G. G. Rockwood. COLONEL OF THE ROUGH RIDERS. HELPING THE OTHER HALF to see some fighting." He was as good as his word. The Rough Riders became part of his cavalry brigade. Young s attack of fever, in capacitating him for a time, was what devolved the command of the brigade on Wood and opened to Roosevelt his golden opportunity as colonel. Young forged ahead from that day forward, and has rounded out his career, by grace of President Roosevelt, as the last lieuten ant-general commanding the army and the first chief of the general staff. Jacob A. Riis was a police reporter on the Sun when Roosevelt went back to New York to become president of the Board of Police Commissioners. Not content with doing his daily stint of work and drawing his salary, Riis had addressed himself to the task of making more tolerable the condition of the poor people with whom his duties brought him into con tact. His book, How the Other Half Lives, arrested Roosevelt s attention, and the reporter was pleased and surprised at finding on his desk one day the card of the president of the board, with the scribbled sentence, "I have come to help." Roosevelt had discovered, through Riis s book, the man who could show him where a monumental reform might be accomplished, THE MAN ROOSEVELT and who would lend a hand at putting it through. By their joint efforts they ridded New York of scores of vile tenement-houses, opened clean breathing-places for the poor where filth and foul air had formerly held un disputed sway, compelled the police to do their duty even to the helpless denizens of the slums, and left the big city a much better place than they had found it when they entered on their program of improvement. Mr. Riis is still a plain citizen. Probably he will, of his own choice, always remain such, and win more glory from his achievements as one of the people than from all the official honors that could be heaped upon him; but when the project for the pur chase of the Danish West Indies was under way the President offered him the governorship of that colony. I have chosen these few illustrations as typical of many. I am conscious that so bald a presentation of them may leave Mr. Roose velt open to the charge of repaying favors done to him as a man, with offices which are com mitted to his trust as President. Such a theory, however, would rest only on a partial view of the facts. Just as Mr. Roosevelt s conception of duty ignores all sorts of magnificent ideals "MY REGIMENT" at long range and fastens itself upon the tasks which lie nearest his hand, so his judgment of men, and his faith in their ability to do certain things, are formed much more surely on their accomplishments under his own eyes than on any public reputation they may have gained elsewhere. He is a good appreciator. He knows when a job has been well done for him, and he would rather have that evidence of the workman s capacity for larger jobs than a hun dred testimonials to the excellence of the same man s work for others. It is doubtless this sense of personal famil iarity which accounts for the obtrusion of "my regiment" into almost every subject that comes before him. The Rough Riders were the joy of his heart. He had had virtually his pick of men ; and, realizing the chances of war, he had begun from the start a search for lieutenants who would do to make into captains, sergeants who could safely be raised to lieutenancies, corporals who deserved to be sergeants, and privates who had corporals stuff in them. Thus he became acquainted substantially with all the members of the regiment, certainly with all whose characteristics were in any wise pro nounced. As a result, he discovered qualities 65 THE MAN ROOSEVELT in them which many officers would have over looked, and these clung in his memory, so that he has since had a trooper story to fit every situation. It is worth noting, also, that he has had a trooper in the flesh to fit more than one. When an enterprise of particular difficulty or hazard is to be set afoot for the Government, his first thought is always of the men who went with him to Cuba. They were a resourceful lot, as well as fearless. For the less perilous positions, like those of Territorial governor, customs appraiser, postmaster, etc., he has selected a few; and in positions which com bine a peaceful purpose with an occasional per sonal risk, like forest rangers in the far West, a goodly number are making creditable records. One bitter disappointment awaited the Pres ident in his effort to make use of his soldier friends in civil office. A marshal was to be appointed for Arizona. The position is of the kind which calls for very little book-learning but a great deal of common sense, persistency, and courage. The politicians swarmed over the White House, recommendations in hand. This man was indorsed by the Republican Ter ritorial committee, that one had been a gen erous contributor to the campaign fund, a third 66 ROUGH BUT READY had once been favorably considered by Presi dent McKinley, and so on. "Thank you," said Mr. Roosevelt, "I have my man selected. His name is Ben Daniels. He has no political backing, but I know him clear through for a soldier who never received an order which he could not execute. He is dead game; and as a marshal, when he goes for a malefactor he will fetch him in, if it takes all the horses and all the ammunition in the Territory." "Daniels is a pretty rough character," ar gued the politicians. "Are you sure he ll pass muster?" "I ve seen smoother persons," responded the President, without wavering; "but it is not ex actly a polished gentleman I m looking for to hunt down desperate murderers and drag pro fessional highwaymen to justice." So in went the name of Benjamin Franklin Daniels to the Senate. The nomination was re ferred, in the regular order, to the Committee on Judiciary, of which Mr. Hoar of Massachu setts, the most scholarly and refined of Senators, is chairman. The choice for an important Fed eral office of just such a specimen an ex-deni zen of a Southwestern mining-camp who lacked THE MAN ROOSEVELT half an ear as a memento of an encounter with a "bad man" was not quite the customary thing; but it was allowed to pass till somebody came forward with the charge that Daniels was a hard drinker. This was brought to the notice of the President. "Daniels used to drink hard," he asserted. "He has told me all about that. But he s straight now." Then came an accuser with a story of the candidate s gambling propensities. "Quite true," responded the President, when questioned. "Ben never made any secret of that. He used to have an interest in a game, but it was a square one. The code of manners in the community where he grew up is not quite that of New England. A good many men of first-rate mettle in the pioneer West have drunk out of a bottle and paid their way at times from the proceeds of a poker-pot. These are not practises which we sterner moral ists should commend on general principles, but we have to judge such things comparatively, and in the light of the local environment. I never heard that Ben was a skin gambler, and in any event he has promised me that he will not touch a card while he remains in office." 68 A FATAL DISCOVERY Thus matters seemed to be moving fairly for the marshal-elect, when suddenly some one who had been following his life s trail made the startling announcement that a person named Benjamin Daniels had once served a term in the Wyoming Penitentiary for theft. The parallel between the convict Daniels and the Daniels who had been named for marshal of Arizona seemed complete in such particulars as age and appearance. The critics became inquisitive again, and this time their questions found the President perturbed in spirit. The prison record showed that, when the thief Daniels was sentenced, the court had taken cognizance of his youth and made his punishment lighter than it might, be cause it was plain that he had been led into his criminal escapade by older and more force ful men. But that was not the phase of the question uppermost in the President s mind. His one thought was: "Has Ben Daniels deceived me by holding back this fact when I asked him for a full and honest story of his life?" The telegraph was called into play. Daniels ad mitted his identity with the former convict. A pathetic letter followed his despatch of confes- THE MAN ROOSEVELT sion. It told of his effort to live down the past, and the hope he had cherished that his colonel s belief in him would open a new and better chapter in his career. But it was too late. His commission, already signed, was can celed. One thing Theodore Roosevelt can not brook: the discovery of bad faith where he has placed his trust. 70 CHAPTER V PRESIDENT AND CABINET Official families by inheritance First break in the Roosevelt Cabi net What led to Mr. Gage s resignation A quaint tribute Other changes A new chair at the table, and how filled. THE relations of Presidents with their Cab inets make an interesting chapter in the polit ical history of the country from the days of Washington down. Mr. Roosevelt s relation to his was unique. It came to him by inherit ance, but not as Arthur s descended; for Arthur had become Vice-President through a make shift move at the conclusion of the national convention of 1880, and represented, then and later, the element in his party antipodal to that which had supported Garfield. Roosevelt, on the other hand, had been nominated for Vice- President by the same united party that had nominated McKinley for a second term as President. He was easily the first choice of his whole party for the second place in the Government, just as he was the second choice THE MAN ROOSEVELT of his whole party for the first place. There was no personal antagonism between President and Vice-President. When McKinley fell, therefore, and Roosevelt stepped into the vacant office, his inauguration was in the nature of the acceptance of a trusteeship. He had but one course to follow the completion of the work McKinley had begun, with only such additions or emendations as the shifting tide of events during the next three years might de mand. Hence, what more natural than that he should try to keep at his side the same group of advisers whom McKinley had brought to gether to help execute the policies mapped out for a second and more memorable term? Mr. Roosevelt s invitation to the whole Cabinet to remain with him was offered almost at the bed side of the murdered President. It derived a special solemnity from its surroundings, and every one concerned was impressed by this. It was accepted as it was made, in entire good faith, and without reserve. The publicists of the country received it as a first earnest of the new President s conservatism and good sense; the people applauded it as his response to a generous impulse thoroughly characteristic of him. 72 MR. GAGE S RETIREMENT But human nature is only human nature. As one coat will not fit all men, so with one group of counselors. It was not long before circumstances seemed to make certain changes in the Cabinet imperative. Mr. Gage, the Secretary of the Treasury, was the first to drop out, after the unusual term of five years of service. The parting, which occasioned much comment at the time and has been made the subject of gross misrepresentation, was in the best of friendship, and yet there is no denying that the first suggestion of it came with the manifestation by the President of a trait pecul iarly his own. From the time he entered upon an executive career, it had been Mr. Roose velt s fortune to be thrown with men lacking his masterful ways, and he had fallen into the habit of taking charge of affairs himself, re gardless of what the specific relations of others might be to them. As President of the United States he was, of course, supreme in the Admin istration, and at liberty to do what he chose in the domain of officers whom he could appoint and remove. But President McKinley had al ways been punctilious about the formal cour tesies even with his own appointees. They had grown to expect a certain routine to be followed 73 THE MAN ROOSEVELT in all administrative work. Mr. Gage was himself a strict observer of the proprieties, and looked for them in others. This meant that when any information was desired by the Presi dent concerning a matter within the Treasury jurisdiction, he should make his request for it of the Secretary, who in turn would call upon the proper subordinate for the facts, and trans mit the subordinate s report, after revising it, to the President. The correspondence in such cases constitutes what is known in official phraseology as a "record," and a copy of it is kept on file. Mr. Roosevelt has always felt, however, ex cept as to business which involved the fixing of individual responsibility for an official act, that "records" were a good deal of a nuisance. Just as he discarded his sword in Cuba because it got in the way of his legs, so at an early stage of his career in office he discarded all routine methods where mere information was to be sought and obtained. As Civil-Service Com missioner he used to say that if he wished to learn how something was going on in an ex ecutive office, he could get more satisfaction out of a few minutes talk face to face with the clerk who had charge of the business itself 74 DISCIPLINE AT A DISCOUNT than from a fortnight s formal correspondence with the head of the department. This idea he carried into all his work from that time for ward. Red tape grew more and more hate ful to him. As President, therefore, when he wished to know something about the immigra tion service, and know it right away, he would send for the Commissioner-General of Immi gration, and in a half-hour s conversation go over the whole ground; or if he wished to as certain something definite about the conduct of a certain public officer, he would send for the chief of the Secret Service and instruct him orally whom to watch and what trails to pursue. Doubtless this did save a great deal of time and avoid much useless circumlocution, but it was not the "regular" thing to do. Moreover, strongly as it may appeal to the judgment of a majority of civilians in private life, every one conversant with official business knows that such a practise can not become general with out utterly demoralizing a service by under mining its discipline, since that must rest upon each subordinate s sense of responsibility to his immediate chief. It is hardly wonderful, there fore, that Secretary Gage soon grew restive un der the restraints of an office in which he was 75 THE MAN ROOSEVELT expected to defer always to his own superior, while his lieutenants were not expected to show like deference to him. I would not be understood as saying that this was the cause of Mr. Gage s retirement from the Cabinet. It was only the first of a group of contributory influences. The drop ping of George R. Bidwell and the appoint ment of Nevada N. Stranahan as Collector of Customs at New York in opposition to the wishes of the Secretary, who retained to the last his objection to any change, increased the tension of the situation pretty nearly to the breaking-point. But there were other consid erations involved also. Mr. Gage had made a wonderfully successful administration of the fiscal affairs of the Government. He had car ried the nation through a foreign war not only without impairing the quality of its currency, but with such credit as enabled him to begin refunding the public debt at 2 per cent, and to see even the 2-per-cent bonds quoted at a pre mium. He was at the zenith of his prestige as a financier; his name was as familiar as a household word on every bourse in the world. No higher honors were within his reach. Withal, he was advancing in years and nearing ADDITIONAL REASONS the crest from which all roads lead downward. The business of the country, unless the lessons of the past were misleading, was soon to enter the period of liquidation which surely follows an era of uncommon prosperity. To use his own homely phrase, "When that time comes, I m willing to let some other fellow walk the floor." If, therefore, Mr. Gage were to return to private life while still in condition to take a prominent part in its activities, the time to do so seemed to be at hand. A dozen most flat tering opportunities lay open before him. One of these he presently decided to accept, having first placed his resignation in the President s hands and asked to be released not later than a certain date. The President had urged him to remain, but, finding the Secretary s resolve unalterable, yielded to his request. Not an unpleasant word passed between the two men at any stage of their relations. The President knew Mr. Gage s value, but recog nized the wide difference in their training and the irreconcilable variance of their points of view on certain matters. Mr. Gage, though disagreeing with the President in more than one opinion and realizing the essential antagonism of their methods, cherished only admiration of 77 THE MAN ROOSEVELT his young chief s character and wished him every success. I remember that one day, just before his retirement, he was describing to me a vigorous stand the President had taken on a question called up in Cabinet; when, raising one clenched fist in air and bringing it down upon his office table with a resounding bang, he threw his head back and exclaimed in his quaint way: "Take him all around, there s the finest forty-year-older I ever saw!" Many persons, deceived by false reports of disaffection, assumed that Mr. Gage s resigna tion was the first symptom of a general disin tegration of the Cabinet. My own opinion, based upon the unwritten history of the period, was that, so far from being symptomatic of changes yet to come, this break simply fur nished an outlet for some of the administrative humors which might have resulted in a general eruption if they had been allowed to accumu late under the surface. In other words, it called sharply to the mind of the President a few possibilities which had not come seriously home to him before, and undoubtedly had the effect of modifying certain of his tendencies. Nothing can change his own directness into indirection, or soften his contempt for mere 78 TWO OTHER CHANGES bureaucratic routine; but if he has not wholly ceased his habit of reaching into a department over the head of its chief and negotiating with the subordinates face to face, he at least tries to remember to speak of the matter to the chief, so that the officer responsible for the manage ment of the department shall not be ignorant of what is passing therein. Two other changes in the Cabinet roster oc curred during the first year of Mr. Roosevelt s presidency. Both of these were free from even the suggestion of such preliminary friction as gave the prime impulse to Mr. Gage s retire ment. Charles Emory Smith, who resigned the postmaster-generalship, had planned to do this even if Mr. McKinley had remained President, as his private business interests demanded an attention which he could not give them while in office, and he could not afford to sacrifice his whole future to a longer stay in Washington. Secretary Long resigned the navy portfolio be cause he was thoroughly tired. The domestic bereavement and unremitting anxiety which had clouded the entire period of his Cabinet service could have only one effect upon a man with such a passion as his for home and family and peace. The associations of a public career 7 79 THE MAN ROOSEVELT at the capital became distasteful to him, and he longed for a chance to return to the quiet of his old life and occupations. Secretary Moody, who succeeded Mr. Long, formed while in Congress the pleasantest sort of an acquaintance with Mr. Roosevelt. They were fellow members of a little circle in Wash ington who saw a good deal of each other out of office hours. It was composed largely of Eastern men in the executive and legislative branches of the Government, who were bound together by their common youth and by the tie of active interest in the same subjects. Mr. Moody is essentially a man of the people, reared in a community of hardy fisher-folk on the Massachusetts coast; his climb to his present eminence has called into play all the bold and rugged traits in his composition, and this is the sort of thing that captures a heart like the President s. His service as a member of the House Committee on Appropriations and his interest in naval affairs seemed to give him a peculiar fitness for the head of a department which had before it the task of strengthening the sea power of the United States. Mr. Root, who was President McKinley s Secretary of War, remained under President 80 KNOX, ROOT, CORTELYOU Roosevelt till he had completed the reforms in the military establishment to which he had addressed himself at the start, and then resigned, greatly to the regret of all his associates. He, however, had been Mr. Roosevelt s close friend and adviser in New York politics before either came to Washington for his final triumph. In the Cabinet he and Mr. Knox, the Attorney- General, supplied an element which Mr. Roose velt lacked the faculty of cool and patient cal culation of technical problems into which no component of human personality entered. Of Secretary Cortelyou it suffices to say that his appointment as the first Secretary of Com merce was due to his display of a special tal ent for organization. He is not a discoverer or an inventor. He is not a trained economist. He has never shown any particular gifts for statecraft in its broader sense. But he is a rigidly upright man, and has certain practi cal virtues which the President admires vastly in others caution, method, and a genius for making minutiae count. Mr. Cortelyou might have been unequal to the perplexities of the Treasury administration, or those which Sec retary Root had to face in effecting his mili tary reforms; but of his ability to install a new 81 THE MAN ROOSEVELT department and set it running, to compose the differences between the existing mechanisms transferred to it, to man and equip the new bureaus created especially for it, to trim the overlapping functions of all these component parts and readjust their relations so as to re duce their friction to a minimum: of this there was no room for doubt. Moreover, the new department had been for years a dream of Mr. Roosevelt s. It was one of the progressive ideas advanced in his first message as President. Mr. Cortelyou had been closely associated with him throughout the period in which the dream ac quired substance, and Congress molded that substance into its final form. What had been in the President s mind had passed thence into Mr. Cortelyou s by daily contact. The factor knew just what ends his principal had in view, and the means by which he purposed to reach these, if possible. No one else, probably, could have executed his initial plans with so little hesitancy and so few mistakes. 82 CHAPTER VI TWO COUNCILORS IN PARTICULAR Secretary Shaw s personality His rise in the world A Yankee who "gets there " Postmaster- General Payne The Cabi net politician Faulty training for an investigator. LIMITS of space forbid my touching espe cially on any of the members of President Roosevelt s Cabinet except those who have gone out or come in during his term. The most notable of his own appointments are those of Secretary of the Treasury Shaw and Postmas ter-General Payne. Both were made while the young President was still somewhat new at his work, and the choice of men for two posi tions of so commanding importance affords us an interesting glimpse of his mental processes. Leslie M. Shaw was a lawyer and banker in a small interior town. He had acquired no repute as a financier. It is doubtful whether his name was recognized, when first mentioned by the press in connection with the succession to Lyman J. Gage, by ten readers in every hun- 83 THE MAN ROOSEVELT dred, and even the ten probably had vague and variegated notions of who he was. The Presi dent himself did not know him on his business side, but only as a conspicuous political figure in the Middle West. They had met a few times while Mr. Roosevelt was making one of his campaign dashes through the upper Missis sippi Valley; all the rest of their impressions of each other were absorbed from the atmos phere and an occasional anecdote. Shaw was genial and hearty in manner, a good story-teller, fond of his joke. But from behind his bluff and apparently careless ex terior he looked out upon the world through a pair of keen, shrewd, gray-blue eyes that saw a deal more than their owner always cared to speak about; and his quiet chuckle often had more significance in the ears of his intimate friends than his words. He was too self-poised to be a respecter of persons; the multimillion aire could no more unsettle his equanimity than the wage-laborer. He was candid enough, even when addressing a Republican audience, to praise President Cleveland for saving the public credit in the stormy days of 1893-94. Mr. Roosevelt took a fancy to him at their first meeting and retained a vivid memory of it. MR. SHAW S ORIGIN But why should this man have been chosen for Secretary of the Treasury? Thereby hangs a tale. Mr. Shaw was a Vermonter by birth. Early in life he had drifted to Iowa, where he had received his education for the bar and begun practise. Like a multitude of others begin ning in the same fashion, he found the law a hard taskmistress, and her prizes few and slow of dispensation. He struggled along for a while without complaint, but his Maker had not given him eyes and ears and a brain for nothing, and he began to consider whether there were not ways, outside of the narrow path of his profession, by which he could stimulate his lagging income. A visit to his boyhood home suggested a plan. The farms there were pretty well worn out, and mortgagors could not afford to pay more than 4 or 5 per cent interest on their loans; at that low rate, indeed, they often found themselves unable to keep up, and stories of foreclosure, discouragement and re moval were to be heard on every hand. But in Iowa, behold the difference: rich soil, heavy crops, well-packed granaries, a thrifty, con tented farming population, and yet loans on farm mortgages commanding 8 and 10 per cent. 85 THE MAN ROOSEVELT The difference was traceable, of course, to the fact that Vermont was an old community, long known in the haunts of capital as a next-door neighbor, whereas Iowa was a stranger at a dis tance, hazily confused in the minds of most of the Eastern money-lenders with the rest of a big Out West whence their loans sometimes came back and sometimes didn t. One bright morning young Shaw awoke with a start. "Why," said he, "should I not take some of the Eastern capital which is go ing begging at 4 and 5 per cent, and clap it into Iowa mortgages which will gladly yield 8 and 10, and pocket half the difference as my commission?" It did not take him long to put this ingenious scheme into execution. It worked to a charm. Without ceasing to be a lawyer, he became also a banker, making Iowa farm mortgages his spe cialty. His Western friends were delighted to have the means of enlarging their borders, put ting up additional buildings, buying new ma chinery. His Eastern friends were delighted at the increase of their revenues. His firm made money hand over fist. Then came the first threatening sign. Two or three bad-crop years wrought Kansas into 86 THE SILVER CRAZE a fever. The Farmers Alliance, starting as a cross-roads society, gathered unto it most of the malcontent elements in the agricultural and mining West, and they all with one accord began to concoct nostrums instead of giving nature a chance. The Populist movement took shape; the Democrats as a party marched into the Populist hospital. The free coinage of sil ver, once a mere factional fad, became the one great partizan issue before the whole country. The East, as a matter of course, took fright. It knew too little of the West to distinguish be tween the sound and the affected parts. It classed Iowa, the rich farming State with her trustworthy climate, her well-satisfied people, and her common-sense grip on the honest dollar, with some of her delirious neighbors. "Send us back our money," cried the East, "and look to us for no more till you can give us some assurance that the hundred cents which go out to you will return one hundred, and not fifty!" It was a sorry outlook for the banking sys tem established by Mr. Shaw. He saw that, in order to convince the East that Iowa was not smitten with the free-silver epidemic, heroic measures must be taken. He accordingly plunged into politics. Wherever he could get THE MAN ROOSEVELT a hearing he waked the echoes with his speeches for sound money. Not content with the plea for a conservative bimetalism with which more timid orators were trying to stay the spread of the scourge, he took the aggressive, and boldly demanded the single gold standard, scorning all evasions and mental reservations. He made a good fight. It caught and held popular atten tion. The mass of the voting population of Iowa liked it. In due season they seated him in the Governor s chair by a handsome majority. At Des Moines fortune favored him, and he made few bad errors. It was as Governor, with this record behind him, that he encountered Mr. Roosevelt, then running for Vice-Presi- dent. Neither of the twain could look into the future far enough to see what was in store for himself or for the other. Each cherished the hope that the highest place in the gift of the people might one day be his, and each had set 1904 as the date for their contest of strength. Then came the tragedy at Buffalo. From the hour when President McKinley breathed his last Mr. Shaw became a Roosevelt man for 1904. His own aspirations were shattered by Czolgosz s bullet. When Mr. Gage retired President Roosevelt s first thought turned to MAKING THE BEST OF IT the hero of the Iowa gold-standard campaign. He reasoned that the man who was not afraid to make such a fight for honest money as a State issue would not fail when the need came for self-assertion in a national crisis. Possibly occasions have arisen since that day to raise doubts in the President s mind as to the wisdom of his choice. Mr. Shaw s first radical departures from all the precedents of his office were made during Mr. Roosevelt s absence from Washington, and therefore with out consultation. The stir they created in financial circles was enough to cause some mis givings in even the stoutest heart. But the Secretary wore well. He proved to be, if not a great financial light, at least a man of expedi ents, true to his Yankee type. Measures had been introduced in Congress to relieve the con gestion of the surplus revenues in the Treasury vaults, but an obstinate opposition had pre vented their passage. Many lifelong currency reformers were discouraged, but Mr. Shaw said: "If we can not get new legislation, let us see whether we have yet exhausted the resources of the old." And with that he prepared his plan for restoring the surplus to the channels of trade by depositing in the banks all the THE MAN ROOSEVELT money that was not actually needed as a work ing balance for the Treasury. "You are bound to have your surplus gain on you, though," the reformers reminded him, "for the law requires that every dollar paid in for customs shall go into the Treasury and stay there; and every dollar paid in for internal taxes, though subject to deposit in the banks directly from the pocket of the taxpayer, must stay in the Treasury vaults, if it once gets bodily into them, till an act of Congress lifts it out again." "Not so," returned the Secretary. "The in ternal revenue receipts are always construc tively in the Treasury when they are on deposit in the banks. It makes no difference whether they have never gone into the Treasury, or whether I have taken them in first and then let them out. The whole transaction is a mere matter of bookkeeping." "We must have new legislation to make the currency system more elastic, so that its volume will increase and decrease in ready response to commercial needs," said the reformers. "Suppose we try existing law and see how far it will carry us," was the Secretary s answer. And he proceeded to release for use as security 90 PROBLEM OF ELASTICITY for bank-note circulation all the Government bonds which the banks had pledged as security for Federal deposits, letting the banks substi tute for these the soundest State and municipal bonds; for the law as he read it, although dis tinctly requiring United States bonds as security for bank-note issues, vested in the Secretary a rather wide discretion as to the collateral he might accept for Treasury deposits. So much for the quick and easy increase of circulation. "But elasticity involves also the ability of the banks to retire their notes just as quickly and easily," argued the reformers, "and the present law limits the total retirements of all the banks to three million dollars a month." "Tut!" was the Secretary s reply; "you ve read the statute carelessly. It limits not the retirement of bank circulation, but only the deposit of legal-tender notes in the Treasury with a view to redeeming it. The banks can retire their circulation as fast as they wish to, if they can put their hands on their notes." And so the play of objections and the coun- terplay of unsuspected ways and means has gone on. Whatever doubts the President may at first have entertained of the Secretary s breadth were long ago resolved by the discovery THE MAN ROOSEVELT of his sharpness. Mr. Roosevelt likes a man who wastes no time explaining why he can not do a thing, but does it; who, if he lacks the most suitable tools, seizes those which lie near est his hand and goes to work. Such a man he seems to have found in Leslie M. Shaw, thanks to an instinct which guided him straight when elaborate reasoning would probably have led him in another direction. Charles Emory Smith was succeeded as Postmaster-General by Henry C. Payne. This appointment occasioned the most wide-spread surprise. Mr. Roosevelt had a reputation throughout the world as a political reformer; Mr. Payne had a reputation throughout the country as a dyed-in-the-wool politician, with a politician s traditional contempt for reform. What could two such men have in common? It was because of something which they did not have in common that Mr. Payne was chosen. Mr. Roosevelt, self-confident in most situa tions, always harbored a feeling of ignorance and helplessness about politics in the narrower sense; and when Mr. Smith announced his pur pose to retire the President decided that now was the time to bring into the Cabinet an ele ment it utterly lacked. There was not a single 92 THE CABINET POLITICIAN practical politician in the group. This was not surprising in view of the fact that Mr. McKin- ley, who had called it together, was himself by far the ablest politician in the United States, and needed no aid in the line of his own spe cialty. Mr. Payne, who had a great name as a party manager and was understood to have a wonderful grasp of detail, was accordingly summoned to the vacant place. He was chair man of the Republican National Executive Committee, and it was expected that his coun sels at the Cabinet table would turn the scale on mooted points of policy where the argu ments pro and con seemed evenly balanced. The question would then be reduced to: "Other considerations being equal, what would be the expedient course to take?" And Mr. Payne s advice would settle it. But the plans of Presidents are no surer of execution than those of other men. Mr. Roose velt must soon have awakened to two truths which many of his friends had already tried in vain to impress upon him: first, that it re quires a different class of talents to handle the petty politics within a party and to handle the larger politics of a whole nation; and, second, that, in view of his unparalleled personal popu- 93 THE MAN ROOSEVELT larity, he could beat the professional politicians at their own game, two to one. Mr. Payne had been all his life a party man ager, but not a popular leader. The subordi nates in his own party organization to whom he issued an order knew that they must obey it without pausing to ask questions. If he favored seating one set of delegates and reject ing another set who were knocking at a con vention s doors, and he was able to sway the decision, that was the end of the matter. The result might excite some dissatisfaction within the party, or give a certain faction an advantage in the next primaries, but that did not mean necessarily a change of party fortunes at the polls. When he came into the Cabinet, how ever, a wider vista of possible consequences opened before every one of his official acts. Any policy he mapped out would affect not merely his party subordinates or a party fac tion but the whole American people, com prising all parties and all factions. One of the first problems which presented itself to Mr. Payne was the Indianola outrage. The post-office at Indianola, Miss., had been presided over for some years, and with entire acceptability as far as known, by Mrs. Minnie 94 INDIANOLA INCIDENT Cox, a colored woman of good repute. A re vival of race proscription which broke out in the winter of 1901-02 caused a mob to collect and threaten Mrs. Cox with violence unless she resigned her office. She was not conscious of any offense, but through fear sent her resigna tion to Washington and with her family fled from the town. All Mr. Payne s combativeness came to the surface at once. He was not only indignant at the poor woman s treatment, but he recognized the dramatic features of the situation. He was ready to proceed to any lengths in reasserting the majesty of the Federal Government. Had he been President, we should undoubtedly have seen Mrs. Cox drawn from her place of refuge and sent back to Indianola under a military escort, and a cordon of troops around the post- office would have protected its occupants and its business from further molestation till the ex citement had died down. He was not President, however. The man who was felt not a whit less indignant, but mani fested his sentiment in a way that, without any sacrifice of impressiveness, saved the dignity of the Government and raised no constitutional issues. He simply closed the post-office, and 8 9S THE MAN ROOSEVELT allowed the citizens of Indianola to pay for their folly by going five miles to the next office for their mail. The punishment fitted the crime to a dot: a community which had re lapsed into barbarism had no longer any claim upon the luxuries that accompany modern civi lization. No armed force was sent to compel it to be decent against its will; a privilege it had enjoyed while decent simply dropped out when it surrendered its self-respect. The next problem which came before Mr. Payne was the cleansing of his own executive household. I refer to the investigation of the scandals in the postal service which kept the American people under a stress of mingled curiosity and disgust for the better part of the year 1903. It is but just to say at the outset that Mr. Payne has borne in this matter a great deal of blame which he does not deserve. When the charges of fraud were first brought to his notice he carried them to the President and announced his purpose of investigating them and punish ing any wrongdoing he discovered. The only point on which the President and he appear to have disagreed in judgment was the method of proceeding, and here is where the essential dif- MR. PAYNE S TRAINING ference in the nature and training of the two men affected their points of view. Mr. Roose velt had been throughout his career fighting in the open and challenging all comers. Mr. Payne had never held public office, but had done all his work as a disciplinarian within the Republican organization and his fighting from behind the party breastworks. When a season of stump-speaking was to begin, he had pre pared the statistics of crime among the Demo crats and the history of numberless virtuous acts among the Republicans, with which to impress listening crowds; but never the reverse. If an investigation was to be made for the purpose of collecting material for the next campaign book, it was never his own party, but the other, that he caused to be investigated. He was puzzled to decide just how to go at the task of raking over the misdeeds of his Republican associates. Who could tell whither the trails might lead? Might not the revelations be seized by the Democrats and used as campaign capital? Would it not be best to have all the house-clean ing done by the family, and within the family, and its results known to the family alone? Grub out every rootlet and shred of dishonesty, by all means; but would not needless publicity 97 THE MAN ROOSEVELT give rise to scandals, and scandals damage the party? The President s theory was that no amount of publicity could possibly damage the party, or anybody connected with it, so much as a sus picion in the popular mind that the Admin istration was drawing a cloak over crime. The detective machinery must be set to work secretly, of course, lest some of the offenders take fright prematurely and spread the alarm among the rest, and those who were clever enough should be able to cover their tracks and baffle pursuit. But if, as seemed inevitable, the facts should leak out, no attempt must be made to deny or minimize them; to mislead the peo ple would be worse than advertising the whole business to the world at first. Mr. Payne s lifelong habit of sneering at accusations aimed against him and his, how ever, was too strong to be overcome in an in stant. Before he was fully aware of what he was doing he had begun throwing contempt upon the published accounts of the investiga tion in progress. When the charges of Sey mour W. Tulloch were filed, he set out with an assertion that they did not amount to any thing, and then, when their substance had found HOT-AIR" CHARGES its way into print in spite of him, jauntily dis missed them as merely "hot air." No extraordinary keenness of insight is needed to see the folly of such an attitude when assumed by the head of a great department toward a scandal which had tainted the whole atmosphere of that department. The time for discovering that the Tulloch charges were only "hot air" would have come when the charges had been examined and discredited by evi dence, or the lack of it. It was the same way at every stage of the proceedings. First Mr. Payne would talk to no one about what was going on, then he would go to the opposite ex treme and become loquacious. One day he would insist that the press had dragged up the whole miserable business for sensational pur poses, and was magnifying molehills into moun tains; the next, he would declare that, gross as were the iniquities already brought to light, he foresaw worse revelations yet to come. These shifts of position were attributed in some quar ters to bad faith and a purpose to deceive the public, in others to a frequent change of policy by the Administration. As a matter of fact, they were merely the fruit of Mr. Payne s idio syncrasies. He had been for years an invalid, 99 THE MAN ROOSEVELT whose illness took on changeful phases from day to day. It might find him in good spirits on waking, and leave him in deep dejection at bedtime. One week he needed all his will power to force himself through his regular routine of duty, the next would see him as eager as a fighting-cock. Time-tried campaigner as he was, the maker and destroyer of other men s political fortunes, he had a heart as tender as a woman s in the presence of distress; and a fresh discovery that some trusted employee had been leading a double life would throw over him a pall of depression of which he could not relieve himself for a fortnight. Through the whole of this trying period the single prominent figure that stood always in one place, with face turned in one direction, was the President s. His policy never wavered, his force of character overrode every obstacle. Even the indefatigable Bristow, the special in vestigator clothed with the powers of detective, judge, jury and executioner, seemed inclined to pause now and then in his work and turn aside for a moment when the train of testi mony bore too straight toward some public officer high in confidence; at once would come fresh orders from the White House, never fired 100 THE PRESIDENT S FIRMNESS into the air for the benefit of the outside multi tude, but shot right at the mark, like: "Follow up So-and-so"; "Do not let up on such-and- such a line of search"; "The enclosed news paper paragraph suggests a new lead; get your hands on everybody concerned." When the prosecution of the thieves and grafters seemed to lag a little more than circum stances justified, and the District Attorney ex plained that the delay was due to the immense burden of work thrown upon the law-officers of the Government, the President quietly reached out and brought to their aid two of the best lawyers he knew in private life: Charles J. Bonaparte, a sworn foe to spoilsmen everywhere and an unsparing critic of Federal administra tions in the past, and Holmes Conrad, a stanch Democrat of the old school, who could have no compunctions of any sort in hunting down Re publican rogues. All the "politics" of the situation, as far as Mr. Roosevelt could see, was the politics of capturing rascals and putting them into the penitentiary or the pillory, re gardless of who they were or by whom ap pointed, or what the particular influence that still stood at their backs. If damage were to come to the party, it would come, he believed, 101 THE MAN ROOSEVELT from having rottenness in the postal service, not from digging it out. Mr. Payne s unfortunate lack of discretion was revealed also in dealing with the Dela ware cases, where he involved the President quite needlessly in a snarl with the best people of the country. But that matter must be left for another chapter. 102 CHAPTER VII "THE LARGER GOOD" AND "THE BEST HE COULD" The Cuban reciprocity fight Buying coalers for the navy An attorney rebuked New York liquor law enforcement The Shidy case Keeping faith with a scamp. ON broad lines, Mr. Roosevelt is guided in his action by settled policies; as to the details of working these out, he turns to account what ever happens. He takes men as he finds them, bolts his disappointments, worships no fetishes. "Hitch your wagon to a star," he says, "but al ways remember your limitations. Strive up ward, but realize that your feet must touch the ground. In our Government you can only work successfully in conjunction with your fel lows." It would probably be safe to say that he never laid down a general rule which he was not prepared to break the instant he saw it blocking the path to an important accomplish ment, or what he calls "the larger good." He has a supreme contempt for a mere paper rec ord of consistency, as contrasted with an his- 103 THE MAN ROOSEVELT torical record of ends actually achieved; and he has no use for the public man who, finding it impossible to do ideally the best thing, has not cheerfully done "the best he could" and thanked God for that. President Roosevelt, in his first annual message, called upon Congress to enact a law authorizing a substantial reduction of the cus toms tariff on Cuban products imported into the United States. A President ambitious for a paper record simply would have made the recommendation and then thrown the blame upon Congress for the failure to carry it out. But he sought results, not reasons for the lack of them. When Congress seemed loath to do anything, he stirred it up with a special mes sage. In the first communication he had made a simple proposal based upon the idea of our winning and holding Cuban friendship; in the second, he based his plea on Cuba s own right to tariff concessions in exchange for what she had granted to us. Still there was no response. At the next session the plea was renewed in the annual message. When it became apparent that no new law could be passed, it was sug gested to him that a treaty might be negotiated. "Good," said he, "negotiate a treaty." It 104 END, NOT MEANS made no difference to him what form the mat ter took he had set out to get tariff concessions for Cuba, and he was bound to have them or find out why. Henry T. Oxnard, the North western beet magnate, who had been fighting against any concessions to cane-sugar, came to the White House one morning to see how the land lay. I was in the room when the Presi dent walked up to him and warned him, with considerable vigor of utterance, that the penalty of his obstructing the effort to procure justice for Cuba through reciprocity legislation would be a treaty, in which, of course, no provision would be made for the differential duties on sugar, about which Mr. Oxnard was supposed to feel some concern. "Are you opposed, Mr. President, to the abolition of the differentials?" inquired Mr. Oxnard. "As I have repeatedly said," was the Presi dent s answer, "it does not make one iota of dif ference to me whether they go off or stay on. What I want is to see the United States carry out its moral pledge to Cuba, and this fight will be kept up forever, if necessary!" It was in the same spirit that, after failing at two regular sessions to get what he felt was 105 THE MAN ROOSEVELT right and just, he called an extraordinary ses sion of the Senate and held it down to its work till it had voted its approval of a treaty con tingent only on the confirmatory action of Con gress as a whole. This accomplished, the Pres ident took pains to let it be widely known that he purposed convening Congress before the regular meeting day in December, and no pro test moved him from his plan. What Mr. Roosevelt got out of all this was not what he set out to get, but as much as Con gress would give him. He did "the best he could," and was content. He has been widely criticized for not compelling Congress to do its full duty by withholding patronage from those members who did not yield. Perhaps that would have been a shrewd move, but he would have felt awkward and out of place in making it. He took the course which com mended itself to him not necessarily the course which seemed best to others and for it he was willing to be responsible. This has always been his attitude toward public obligations. He has never hugged to his soul the vain delusion that he could accomplish moral miracles in an age whose saints and prophets do most of their crying in the wilderness. 106 POSSIBLE ALTERNATIVES As Assistant Secretary of the Navy it was a part of his duty to purchase coaling ships for the Spanish War. Persons with such craft to sell came to him with proposals which would have sickened a man with a weaker stomach. They knew that in this emergency they had the Government at their mercy. He knew it, too. The hulks they offered were in many cases fit only for a marine bone-yard, and they de manded fancy prices even for these. More over, it was "Take it, or leave it," with them; they were not in a mood to haggle with a purchaser whom they knew to be in dire straits. Alternative courses were open to Mr. Roose velt. He could reject all overtures and pub lish the names of the men, the quality of the vessels offered, and the prices, in a list which would be spread as a newspaper sensation from coast to coast. This would hold the whole buccaneering crew up to public obloquy for a while, but the chances were that it would not bring two boats down to a price commensurate with their value or attract any more decent bid ders. He would become theatrically famous as a "ring-smasher" and a "watch-dog" and all that; but the popular indignation, at a time so 107 THE MAN ROOSEVELT crowded with stirring events, would cool and be forgotten in forty-eight hours, leaving no solid results behind. And Heaven only knew, if these boats were refused, where any good ones were coming from to take their places. On the other hand, if he accepted the offers, it was with the full foreknowledge that when the war was over the hulks would have to be sold for anything they would bring, and that the difference between their cost and their selling price would be charged against the record of his administration. It might even happen that he would be accused, like many another ex ecutant as honest of purpose as he, of con nivance at working off worthless stuff upon the Government. He was not the man to waste much time figuring on the consequences in this way. The one fact which stared him in the face was that the Government must have coalers, and right away. So he bought what he could not avoid buying, and he paid what he was compelled to pay. But the fact that he did not exploit the situation in order to "make a record" when it would not only do no good but also give com fort to the enemy, did not mean that he was swallowing his official grievances without a 1 08 LECTURING AN ATTORNEY grimace. I burst in upon him one day at the department without warning, and found him in the middle of the floor, indulging in some very spirited talk to a visitor. As I was hastily withdrawing, he called me back. "Stay here," said he; "I want to see you." Then he abruptly turned from me and again faced the third party, in whom I recognized, as the light fell on his face, a lawyer of some prominence and an office-holder under a former administration. Mr. Roosevelt s teeth were set, and very much in evidence, in the peculiar way they always are when he is angry. His spectacle-lenses seemed to throw off electric sparks as his head moved quickly this way and that in speaking; and his right fist came down from time to time upon the opposite palm as if it were an adversary s face. And this was about the way he delivered himself: "Don t you feel ashamed to come to me to day with another offer, after what you did yes terday? Don t you think that to sell one rotten ship to the Government is enough for a single week? Are you in such a hurry that you couldn t wait even over Sunday to force your damaged goods upon the United States? Is it an excess of patriotism that brings you here 109 THE MAN ROOSEVELT day after day, in this way, or only your realiza tion of our necessities?" "Why, our clients " began the lawyer. "Yes, I know all about your clients," burst in the Assistant Secretary. "I congratulate them on having an attorney who will do work for them which he wouldn t have the face to do for himself. I should think, after having enjoyed the honors you have at the hands of the Government, you d feel a keen pride in your present occupation! No, I don t want any more of your old tubs. The one I bought yes terday is good for nothing except to sink some where in the path of the enemy s fleet. It will be God s mercy if she doesn t go down with brave men on her men who go to war and risk their lives, instead of staying home to sell rotten hulks to the Government." The air of the attorney as he bowed him self out was almost pitiable. The special glint did not fade from Mr. Roosevelt s glasses, nor did his jaws relax or his fist unclench, till the door closed on the retreating figure. Then his face lighted with a smile as he advanced to greet me. "You came just in time," he cried. "I wanted you to hear what I had to say to that no CLOSING SUNDAY SALOONS fellow; not" and here his voice rose on the high falsetto wave which is always a sign that he is enjoying an idea while framing it in words "not that it would add materially to the sum of your pleasure, but that it would humiliate him to have any one else present while I gave him his punishment. It is the only means I have of getting even." One of the enterprises on which Mr. Roose velt had set his heart when he accepted the Police Commissionership in New York was the closing of the saloons on Sunday. This was not because he was a teetotaler himself, or an extremist as to Sunday observance. But he was an out-and-out believer in the rule of law, and if a law was on the statute-book, and he was appointed a public agent to enforce it, enforced it should be. When the State got tired of the operation of any law, it was privileged to re peal it; but he would have no hand in keeping it alive but crippled. Moreover, the half-way measures formerly pursued had not only put a premium on law- breaking, but lent a certain dignity to black mail by making it an official trade. The saloon keepers who were able and willing to bribe the police, or produce so many votes on election 9 in THE MAN ROOSEVELT day, for the privilege of keeping a side-door open, had been allowed to do so, while those who were too decent or too poor were either compelled to close or brought under the heavy hand of the law. There was no uncertain ring about the course he took in breaking up this condition of things. It startled the machine politicians of his own party, who charged to it and to his general attitude toward the enforcement of the liquor laws the success of Tammany Hall in the fall elections that year. It is all very well to say, as they have said repeatedly, that such a reform as he instituted does no good in a city like New York, which, as soon as it passes un der another rule, slips back into its old course as if there had never been any interruption; but every thinking man knows that such reasoning is false. New York s police system has never got back to where it was before Mr. Roosevelt took hold of its administration. Till then good citizens had been beguiled with the plea that enforcement of the liquor laws was an impos sibility; he showed that it was not. He did not set up a perfect reform mechanism, one which would run itself; but he proved that cer tain limitations formerly accepted without ques- 112 TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN tion did not exist except in timid minds, and that all that was needed was a man at the helm with the strength and the nerve to disregard them and try for something better. Having demonstrated the fact that the liquor laws can be enforced a good deal more effectually than the laws against forgery or theft, Commissioner Roosevelt did leave his native city in better con dition than he found it. He had at least set a pace which none of his successors can shirk on the ground of its impracticability. It will probably never be possible to recon cile to the minds of many upright New York ers the means adopted by the Police Board dur ing this period, chiefly at the instance of Mr. Roosevelt, to obtain evidence against the saloon keepers who made a practise of selling liquor to minors. Here was another case where the lesser good, in his judgment, had to give way to the larger. The traffic in strong drink among children had swelled to hideous proportions. The best estimates the board could obtain indi cated that more than half the habitual drunk ards who figured in the New York police courts had become such before they had reached the age at which they could lawfully buy intoxi cants. Appalling crimes and catastrophes oc- "3 THE MAN ROOSEVELT curred continually which could be traced to the drunkenness of the child victims. A boy who was regularly sent to buy liquor for the operatives in the factory where he was employed acquired a taste for it himself, and, falling into a drunken stupor one day in an empty building, was eaten alive by rats. It was such horrible examples of the evil, together with the earnest pleas of good men and women who labored among the poor in the slums, that settled in Mr. Roosevelt s mind the purpose to root out the abuse by any device within his reach, however liable to misconstruction. Of course, the only way to do this was to capture the miscreants who habitually sold liquor to children and send them to prison, till enough had been punished to terrorize any other bar keepers who were liable to commit the same crime. Equally of course, an adult could not procure the necessary evidence unaided, neither could a child whom a dram-seller did not know and whom he might therefore suspect of being a spy. The only means open was to take a child who had formerly purchased liquor at a certain place, send it again on the same errand, and make it furnish the proof required as the basis of a warrant for the dealer. 114 THE REAL QUESTION One of the police magistrates delivered a severe lecture from the bench in condemnation of this method of breaking up the traffic, on the ground that the statute forbidding the sale made it an offense for any one to be a party to it, and that the Police Board was violating the law as much as the liquor seller. Construing the law by its letter rather than its spirit, that may have been true; but the alternative pro posed by this judge and other critics that an officer in citizen s clothing could plant himself in the saloon, watch when the children came in for their liquor, and pounce upon the bar keeper in the act of selling was obviously im practicable, and founded upon a false impres sion of the way such sales were conducted. The practise of the offending saloons was to admit child customers one by one into a narrow hallway, where they were out of sight of the ordinary patrons; this rendered it out of the question for any but a child who actually bought liquor to bring its seller to justice. The means which had to be employed was deplora ble ; but the question of morals to be settled was not whether it was right in itself to send a child after liquor, but whether it was better to do this a few times than to let the traffic go on indefi- "5 THE MAN ROOSEVELT nitely, as it had been going on for years in spite of all the legislation that could be invented for its suppression. When he was Civil-Service Commissioner Mr. Roosevelt often had occasion to call into play his faculty for discriminating between the larger and the lesser good. One day a Wash ington newspaper published a series of sensa tional charges against the commission, alleging among other things that Mr. Roosevelt had shown himself as bad a spoilsman as any of the objects of his criticism, having gone place-hunt ing for a man whom he knew to be a rogue. "I demand an investigation," was the commis sioner s prompt response, and he repeated it till he got what he wanted. The whole commis sion was under fire, as some of the charges were of the volley order. To recall all of these would make too long a story, but the one spe cially aimed at Mr. Roosevelt concerned his conduct in investigating the affairs of the post- office at Milwaukee, where trickery and fraud of the worst sort had been practised in the ap pointment of clerks without reference to the merit system. It did not take Mr. Roosevelt long, after entering on this inquiry, to discover that all the trails of guilt led right to the door 116 TELL THE TRUTH of one Shidy, a clerk and a member of the local Civil-Service Board who had access to the reg ister of eligibles. He therefore induced Shidy to meet him for a confidential talk. For some time they had a fruitless sparring match of ques tions and answers. The commissioner con vinced himself that the man knew more than he dared to tell, and, after exhausting other means of getting at this, came down upon him with a flat demand for a statement. "You are a servant of the Government," said he, "and it is your duty to stand by the Govern ment in its attempt to procure essential evi dence. I want nothing but the truth, but I want every word of that." "I am in ill health and poor," was Shidy s answer, "and I can not afford to lose my place in the post-office, as I certainly shall if I un bosom myself." "I will take care of that," replied Mr. Roosevelt. "You shall not be punished for tell ing the truth. Trust me to see that the Gov ernment does its duty by you, if you do your duty by the Government." The result of this colloquy was a complete confession by Shidy of a most appalling series of frauds practised upon the local civil-service 117 THE MAN ROOSEVELT system. The eligible registers had been "pad ded" with names which had no business there; the order of standing of candidates after ex amination had been altered so as to get this man into the service and bar that man out; and so forth. The worst of the whole matter was that Shidy unblushingly described just how he did these things himself. He professed to have done them at the instigation of the postmas ter; but the actual work of padding and shift ing had been performed by his own hands, with the collusive knowledge of certain other parties. The young commissioner, who had hardly expected such a revelation when he promised immunity to the witness, stood by his word, dis agreeable as it was to do so; and when Shidy, after paving the way for the postmaster s re moval, was himself dismissed from office, Mr. Roosevelt tried hard to have him reinstated. Failing in this, he went to Superintendent Por ter of the Census Office, and with the aid of his colleague, Mr. Thompson, procured a clerkship there for his protege. When the framework of this episode came out at the congressional investigation, Mr. Roosevelt s enemies believed that they had got 118 STANDING BY HIS RECORD him into a corner and that he would have to find some shuffling excuse for lending himself to a scheme to keep such a scamp in the Gov ernment s employ with a full knowledge of his guilt. On the contrary, the commissioner went upon the stand and freely told the whole story from beginning to end. He defended his course by saying that, without direct testimony, any investigation by the commission would be a waste of time ; the only way to get the neces sary evidence in this instance was to promise that a wrongdoer who knew the truth should not suffer for telling it; and however repugnant it might be to him personally to carry out such a pledge after ascertaining all the facts, he felt that it was his duty to the Government to do so. It was a case where the larger good overshad owed the lesser, and he was prepared to stand by his record. So impressed was the congressional com mittee with the candor and boldness of his atti tude, that it declared in its report that the con duct of Messrs. Roosevelt and Thompson was not exceptional, nor did it "tend to the demoral ization of the service. It would have been ground for criticism if, instead of keeping faith with the witness, they had permitted those who 119 THE MAN ROOSEVELT concealed the truth to escape and retain their positions, and had suffered Shidy, who had been instrumental in exposing the fraud and bring ing the truth to light, to be punished for so doing." 1 20 CHAPTER VIII OUR BOSS SYSTEM AND MR. PLATT Overgrowth of Senate influence A middle course Typical cases How bad selections are foisted on a President New York custom-house changes The Immigration Service controversy A clean sweep. WHEN Theodore Roosevelt became Presi dent there was a loud cry of joy among the civil-service reformers who had mourned the growing dominance of senatorial "bosses" in the matter of appointments. The day of boss- ism was ended, they exclaimed, for at last we had a man in the White House who would fight the Senate. They forgot, perhaps, that such an experiment cost President Johnson an impeach ment trial; that it cost Grant the loss of more than one Cabinet adviser; that it cost Garfield his life. Cleveland fought the most powerful of the Democratic Senators till his party went to pieces, though he was always morally right and the Senators wrong in the matters over which they quarreled. Roosevelt cherishes an 121 THE MAN ROOSEVELT almost morbid horror of doing anything to split his party. His theory of "the larger good" is dominant in that feeling as elsewhere. Hence he has been trying to take a middle course between the two extremes of subjection and defiance. He has received the Senators on an even footing, but not strictly on terms of equality; for, while willing to have their ad vice and to recognize their right to proffer it, he has by no means bound himself to accept it. He has kept steadily before his own eyes and theirs the fact that the Constitution vests in him, and in him alone, both the power and the re sponsibility of appointment. To the mind of an enthusiast this seems a subtle distinction; to one that comes daily into contact with the ma chinery of politics and statecraft it is entirely comprehensible. Ideally, the only policy for a high-minded President to pursue is to de mand perfection in his appointees and refuse to be moved till he gets it; practically, this is out of the question. In the first place, human perfection does not exist. In the second place, the Archangel Gabriel could not get the post- office at Pottstown if the two Senators from his State should oppose confirmation; for by the unwritten rule of senatorial courtesy all the 122 A MIDDLE COURSE other Senators would stand by these two. This might seriously embarrass matters in the Gov ernment, especially if the personage whom he was to replace happened to be Beelzebub or Apollyon. The President might stand on his rights to the end of his term, but somebody would have to run the office he was trying to fill; and that somebody must either be an un derling in which case the efficiency of its ad ministration would be doubtful or its hold over chief, with an excellent chance that its administration would be bad. Here is a sorry range of choice, but it is one with which a President is not infrequently faced. Mr. Roosevelt, who lacks by nature the peculiar kind of tact which smoothed so com fortably the relations of President McKinley with Congress, adopted at the outset a policy of candor with the Republican Senators who called to advise him, informing them that in matters of patronage he intended 1 i ) To consult them in advance as to selec tions from their several States; (2) To make his own selections, never theless, and be responsible to the people for these ; (3) To hold Senators answerable to him 123 THE MAN ROOSEVELT for the consequences where he accepted their advice, and to resent suitably any imposition on his confidence; (4) To require every subordinate of his administration to show a proper respect for the senatorial office, no matter who filled it. Some foreshadowing of this program had been given by his administration as Governor of New York. Before asking for the suffrages of the people for that office, he had taken pains to announce, so conspicuously that none should have an excuse for not knowing, his purpose to consult on all important undertakings with the recognized head of the Republican party in the State. If the people had understood his announcement to mean that, in voting for Roosevelt by name, they were voting for Sen ator Platt as the actual Governor of New York, there is little doubt that Roosevelt would have been defeated. As it was, it unquestionably cost the candidate some votes, for which his only compensation was the sense that he had dealt squarely with the people and not allowed them to cast their ballots under any misapprehension of his position. He shocked many of his admirers later by breakfasting with Platt. I never exactly un- 124 CONSULTING THE BOSS derstood why he wished to, unless it were to save time when they had something to talk over, for they are hardly to be rated as companion spirits socially; but neither could I understand why there should have been a commotion over the fact, any more than if he had invited "Ben" Tillman to dine privately at the White House or accepted the hospitalities of the Wild Man of Borneo. The atmosphere in which one takes one s physical sustenance does not neces sarily affect one s morals or manners. "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man," says the Good Book; and if one s diges tion is all right and the communications at table do not influence unfavorably one s later con duct, I do not see where any great damage is done by observing the common amenities. When it came to the business of the State, neither the preelection announcement nor the postelection breakfast appears to have put Gov ernor Roosevelt at a serious disadvantage. The Platt machine wanted to name Francis Hen- dricks for superintendent of public works; the Governor said: "No. He will fit some other place very well, but not that one. We must command unreserved public confidence for our rehabilitation of the State canal system. Mr. 125 THE MAN ROOSEVELT Hendricks comes from a neighborhood which was the center of activities of the old canal ring. However excellent his administration might be, a multitude of people would be prejudiced against it from the start." So he began his hunt for a practical en gineer. I happen to know that he tried to get General Francis V. Greene, but could not. Whom else he invited I can not say positively. The task offered might well have appalled a man with keen sensibilities, for it meant a thor ough cleaning up of the old regime before inau gurating the new. Finally he settled upon Colonel John N. Partridge, of Brooklyn, who, if not the ideal man for the place, was probably the best available. The Senator gave a hesita ting consent to the appointment, and then it was formally announced in the newspapers as made at his instance. The Governor entered no pro test; that was part of the game. "Lou" Payn, long a power in New York Republican politics and a permanent stand-by of Platt s, was superintendent of insurance. The Governor had no fancy for an office-holder of just Payn s antecedents, and felt satisfied that it was the part of wisdom as well as righteous ness to get rid of him. He accordingly called 126 FILLING STATE OFFICES the boss into consultation. The boss thought it would be a mistake to dismiss Payn. "That isn t the point," was the Governor s answer; "what I want to find out is who is the best man I can get to succeed him." If this didn t end the talk about Payn s re tention, Mr. Platt knew that the next sentence surely would, so he did not press the subject further. Between them they canvassed several names. Some suggested by the Governor were dropped when the boss assured him that they could not pass the Senate; some suggested by the boss were dropped because the Governor would not stand for them. Presently it was de cided that if the State machine regarded Fran cis Hendricks as good enough for one superin- tendency it ought to think him good enough for another; and if the only reason the Gov ernor had shied at him before was because of the public s nervousness over the canal question, there was no such obstacle in the way of his appointment to the Insurance Department. So in went Hendricks s name to the Senate, and was duly gazetted to the world as "presented by Senator Platt." Here again the Governor got "not the best, but the best he could." Such relations, to paraphrase his own say- 10 127 THE MAN ROOSEVELT ing, may not be the pleasantest, but they are the pleasantest a chief executive can hope for un der the existing system of divided control in matters of patronage. Moreover, the bosses are not alone to blame for the non-independence of the executive. Take the comparatively recent case of the assistant treasurership at New York city as an example. There was a great deal of adverse comment on the appointment of Will iam Plimley to this office, especially when the fact came out and it was a fact this time that Plimley was Platt s own choice and that the President knew nothing of him till the Sen ator proposed his name. How, cried the com mentators, could a President allow himself thus to be led by the nose, especially with respect to an office so identified with the financial wel fare of the Government! Most of the persons who found fault with Plimley s nomination were presumptively igno rant of the efforts the President had made to get somebody whom he did know to take the office. It is safe to say that not a word of ad verse criticism would have been passed upon the nomination of George R. Sheldon or of Robert Bacon; yet both these gentlemen were selected and invited, but declined to serve. 128 A LAST RESORT Meanwhile our most important Subtreasury was suffering for lack of a head. Every day was increasing the inconvenience of the situa tion. The President was in a corner. Mr. Platt came forward with the suggestion of a name. It was strange to the President s ears, but he was willing to take the Senator s word for Plimley s character and ability, especially when it was backed by letters from a former member of President McKinley s Cabinet and other eminent men. The commercial world in New York had made no suggestions, though its interests were more involved than any others in the choice of a model assistant treasurer. Plimley was there fore accepted by default, as it were. When the best citizens of any community can suspend their busy self-seeking long enough to counsel their chief magistrate themselves, and when men of standing are public-spirited enough to take office as a duty, we shall witness fewer Plimley fiascos and hear less about the evils of boss dictation. During his term as Governor Mr. Roose velt had always within reach one or more men who belonged politically to the same class with himself, and consulted with them 129 THE MAN ROOSEVELT as an antidote to his consultations with the machine. Elihu Root and Seth Low were both present at the council of Republicans he called in 1898 to consider the policy of the newly elected State administration. With Mr. Root he kept in close touch through the first stages of his governorship, and then Mr. Root went to Washington to become Secretary of War. The renewal of their relations in Wash ington two years later led them back, after a little, to the same intimate footing, the Secre tary becoming the President s most valued ad viser on general subjects and having quite as much to say as Mr. Platt about the distribu tion of New York patronage. The greatest clash between Messrs. Platt and Roosevelt after the latter became Presi dent occurred over that perennial source of fac tional controversy, the New York custom-house. George R. Bidwell, the Collector, was an organ ization man who had crossed swords with Mr. Roosevelt in the old times; he was a stanch supporter of Senator Platt. Wilbur F. Wake- man, the Appraiser, belonged to the "McKinley Republican" contingent of 1896 who stood out at the St. Louis Convention against the Platt machine. Bidwell, although having a strong 130 NEW YORK CUSTOM-HOUSE champion in Secretary Gage, did not enjoy President Roosevelt s confidence; Wakeman had made himself obnoxious to a large and influential element among the New York im porters by overzeal, and to the Secretary and Senator Platt by talking too freely to the news papers. The two customs officers were fre quently at odds with each other. The Presi dent announced to the Senator one day that he had decided to let Bidwell go. Mr. Platt insisted on his retention. The President was firm; the only concession he would make was to consider the Senator s advice as to the choice of a new collector. The Senator could not see why Bidwell should go and Wakeman be re tained. The President answered that the wel fare of the service would probably be promoted by a general clearing out, and that he should drop both men. Then they proceeded to can vass names for the collectorship. It was the old story of propose and reject, propose and reject, first on one side and then on the other. Finally the President named Nevada N. Stranahan, a member of the New York Legislature and a loyal organization man, but one who had stood by him well during his administration at Albany, showing intelligence, THE MAN ROOSEVELT personal honesty and public spirit. As a friend remarked on hearing who had been chosen, Mr. Stranahan was a man who would side with the President and against Mr. Platt every time an issue was fairly drawn between right and wrong and the President was in the right; when there was no such issue, but merely a question of tactical expediency, he would probably side with the Senator against the President. This was a condition with which the President was not disposed to quarrel, and when the Senator gave a reluctant consent to the change he was authorized to convey the President s formal invitation to Mr. Stranahan. The appraisership was filled soon afterward by a promotion within the service; George W. Whitehead, who had made a good record as an appraiser in Porto Rico, was called to New York. Both the appointees have given satis faction, and matters have run very smoothly at the custom-house since their installation. Two more changes at New York caused a little friction between the President and the Senator in passing. One was the appointment of James S. Clarkson as surveyor of the port. Clarkson was a politician of the old school, a former editor in Iowa, a member of a well- 132 OTHER DIFFERENCES known family of abolitionists, and a stalwart supporter of the reconstruction policy of Con gress in the Southern States. The news that he was to be appointed caused an equal com motion among the civil-service reformers and in the Platt camp. Clarkson had disposed of his Western interests some years before and re moved to New York, but had not become identi fied with the party organization in his new home; hence the protest of the machine. He had always been a rank opponent of the merit system, and Mr. Roosevelt had once, as de scribed in another chapter, been moved to ad minister to him publicly a stinging rebuke for his spoils proclivities; hence the amazement of the reformers. Clarkson, on account of his relations to the race question, had a large acquaintance among the negroes of the South. The theory was therefore advanced by the political prophets that the President intended making him the in strument of building up a "Roosevelt machine" among the negroes, in opposition to the machine which Mr. Hanna was believed to control. Those who know best the general policy of Mr. Roosevelt pay no attention to stories of his de sire for a personal machine of any sort. But 133 THE MAN ROOSEVELT it is fair to assume that Mr. Clarkson s famil iarity with the negroes may be made useful in counteracting the falsehood set afloat among the ignorant blacks, that the President is desert ing them in their hour of trial because he has refused to force negro appointees upon unwill ing white communities without regard to char acter or fitness for official responsibility. The other notable disagreement occurred over the reorganization of the immigration office in New York. The commissioner in charge of the station at Ellis Island, through which most of the poor and ignorant aliens come into the country, was Thomas Fitchie. No charges of misconduct had been filed against him, but conditions at the station were far from satisfactory, and the President did not regard him as a sufficiently energetic and aggressive man to carry through the reforms which it was plain would be needed soon. His deputy, Ed ward F. McSweeney, had been in office a long time and was the real chief executive. Mc Sweeney was entrenched very securely in the good-will of the steamship companies and of the local missionaries. But he had got into a wrangle with the Commissioner-General of Im migration, Terence V. Powderly; criminations IMMIGRATION SERVICE and recriminations were flying back and forth, and the Ellis Island station and the bureau in Washington were pulling so constantly in op posite directions that the service was becoming demoralized. The President resolved to apply his favorite panacea for such difficulties, a clean sweep. Powderly appealed to Quay, and Quay to the President. Meanwhile the friends of Fitchie and McSweeney, including not only Mr. Platt but Mr. Lodge and some of the other Senators who were most intimate personally with Mr. Roosevelt, were aroused in his behalf. The air fairly shook with the din of battle. The President, however, refused to be moved from the position he had taken. He had compara tively little difficulty in dealing with the Wash ington end of the complication, for the labor organizations, in whose interest Powderly had been appointed, were well satisfied with the choice of Frank P. Sargent, chief of the Broth erhood of Railway Firemen, to succeed him; but at the New York end there was serious trouble in finding just the man required to take charge of the station. The work there was bound to be disagreeable if faithfully per formed; resourcefulness, tact, humanity, pa- 133 THE MAN ROOSEVELT tience, were as essential as honesty, and the com pensation was pitifully small. The President went over nearly the entire list of his per sonal friends who possessed the necessary traits combined with an independent income, but he could find none whose patriotic altruism seemed equal to the test. At last an acquaintance who had been called to aid in the search suggested the name of Will iam Williams, a lawyer of good repute, young enough to adapt himself to the task, and with the grit to undertake a public service in which the duties were hard and the rewards few and uncertain. He was appointed commissioner, and the President s old friend Joseph E. Mur ray, who had been employed at the station once before, was installed as deputy. The former system, under which the chief of the office was the nominal and his assistant the active admin istrator, was reversed, and a place which had been a political snug harbor was swept, gar nished, and set in running order on a strict merit basis. 136 CHAPTER IX SOME OF THE OTHER BOSSES State dictators in the Senate Quay and his machine The typical case of McClain and McCoach Cold comfort for warring bosses Addicksism, Byrne, and Miss Todd. THE Republican bosses in the United States Senate, as we see their names paraded in the newspapers, are Platt of New York, Quay of Pennsylvania, Hanna of Ohio, Burton of Kansas, and a handful of lesser dignitaries. Hanna s bossism is held somewhat in check by the opposition of his colleague, Senator Foraker, and by the paramount boss-ship of the "King of Cincinnati," George B. Cox. Burton is com paratively little known in the East. Platt and Quay are the pair who challenge most atten tion from the average opponent of bossism on principle. He never can understand how a virtuous President can maintain any relations, personal or otherwise, with such men. On the other hand, the President feels that if his critics could stand in his place for a while and get a 37 THE MAN ROOSEVELT view of the whole situation instead of a sin gle part they would be less severe in their judgments. The Quay machine in Pennsylvania was disagreeably in evidence during the early part of the Roosevelt administration, to the con sternation of the anti-Quay Republicans and Independents. William H. Hicks, postmaster of Philadelphia, against whom the Civil- Service Commission had reported to President McKinley after an investigation of charges preferred through the agency of some of Mr. Quay s lieutenants, was dropped from his office. The same sort of negotiation was opened with Senators Quay and Penrose as we have seen conducted with Mr. Platt. The Senators were informed that the President had no disposition to quarrel with them, and that he would name a postmaster acceptable to them if they would settle upon a man who was unexceptionable personally. After some beating of the bushes, their choice finally fell upon Clayton Mc- Michael, a member of a highly respectable Philadelphia family, but one always associated in public affairs with the organization now controlled by Quay. Internal Revenue Col lector McClain gave way in like manner to one 138 McCLAIN AND McCOACH of Quay s most consistent and serviceable fol lowers, William McCoach. The Pennsylvania reformers generally were willing to ignore the McMichael appointment in view of the attitude of the Civil-Service Commission toward Hicks, but against the change from McClain to McCoach they re volted, McCoach having won their hostility by his career as one of the city fathers of Philadel phia. The version of the incident which found its way into the press was that the President had notified McClain, whose first four years were about expiring, that it would not be worth while to renew his official bond, as McCoach had been promised the collectorship all be cause McClain had bolted the regular Repub lican ticket at the late municipal election, and the Administration intended to "send bolters to the rear and keep none but stanch party men in office thereafter!" The absurdity of such a statement of the attitude of a man who has all his life insisted on the divorce of municipal from national poli tics hardly calls for serious comment; but jus tice demands that the truth have at least an equal showing with the falsehood. The first time this question arose during his term Presi- 139 THE MAN ROOSEVELT dent Roosevelt explained to his Cabinet very clearly his opinion as to the part Federal office holders should play in politics. They might vote just as they pleased, and they were not ex pected to keep their minds a blank, or sit by like mumchances while other men were tem perately discussing questions of policy about which the national parties differed; but as serv ants of the whole people they were expected to be civil even to their adversaries, to do noth ing which could be a cause of offense to the feelings of others, and in no way to obtrude their views where this would be indecorous. Above all, the rule was laid down that where a factional fight was going on within the Re publican party, not one of these men must do anything to embroil the Administration with the Senators and Representatives with whom it must live and do business for four years. Presently came along the municipal strug gle in Philadelphia. Simultaneously there was one in the President s home city, New York. The President kept his hands severely off both. Seth Low, who was making the campaign for mayor in New York, was his old and valued friend, and doubtless a hunt through Mr. Low s private letter-files would show whether or not 140 OFFICE-HOLDERS IN POLITICS Mr. Roosevelt, as a New Yorker, felt an in terest in the fusion movement; but the pub lic press and records might be searched in vain for a proof either pro or con. The luxury of participation which the President denied to himself and his Secretary of War in New York, was the measure of his restriction upon his subordinates in the Federal service in Phila delphia even upon Postmaster-General Smith, a Philadelphian; and any one who knows how keenly Mr. Roosevelt enjoys what he calls a "brush" now and then must appreciate the ex tent of this self-sacrifice. An officer of the postal service in Philadel phia who wished to go upon the stump in cham pionship of the Quay machine s municipal ticket, took the precaution to ask the Postmas ter-General s permission to do so. Mr. Smith answered that he must not; that he was at lib erty to cast any ballot he preferred, but he must keep out of the public fight. McClain also consulted Mr. Smith, as a Philadelphian and an anti-Quay Republican, as to whether he had better take part against the machine ticket. The Postmaster-General advised him strongly in the negative, saying that he should himself abstain, for motives of decorum, from active 141 THE MAN ROOSEVELT participation, though he should vote according to his conscience, and that every other Federal office-holder would be protected in the enjoy ment of the same privilege. McClain thought the matter over, decided to have a slash at the organization with which he had regularly trained till they quarreled, and entered the cam paign. The machine was victorious. When the time came to consider whether McClain should continue in office, Quay and his col league put in a protest. McClain, they in sisted, had gone out of his way to make himself offensive to them; the President, under the rule he had himself laid down to govern such cases, seemed to have but one thing left to do. Of course, McClain claimed to have been ill- treated. But he had been warned that one who draws the sword must not whimper if marked to perish by the sword; he had seen fit to ignore the warning, and by parity of reasoning the President disregarded the whimper. Who should take McClain s place? The Senators named a man. The President, who knew their candidate by reputation, dismissed the suggestion as not worth considering. Then McCoach was put forward. The President did not know him, so he allowed the name to 142 COLLEAGUES AT ODDS slip into the newspapers and waited some days to watch the effect; but no charges were filed against the proposed appointee, beyond a ref erence to the fact that he had long been a friend of Quay s. This, however unfavorably it might affect a private mind, could hardly be put down as a public offense, for it would dis qualify two-thirds of the United States Senate. Still, on general principles and without con senting to promise anything, the President re quired Quay and Penrose to bring him certifi cates of character for McCoach from prom inent Philadelphians. The testimonials were soon forthcoming, bearing signatures of judges and business men, and McCoach s commission went to him by an early mail. Once in a while the President gets tired of the bosses, whom, like the poor, he has always with him. It is bad enough when the Senators from a State agree in their recommendations, and he has to make himself accountable to the people of the country for the appointment of some man whom he has never seen, on the say-so of two other men whom he wishes he need not see so often. But when these two disagree in opinion and fall out personally, and run to him with their several grievances and backbitings, 11 H3 THE MAN ROOSEVELT his sarcasm is apt to come into play. One day a brace of such antagonists, whom I shall des ignate as A and B , came into his ante room and waited for him through a very long and tedious hour. When he appeared they rose and greeted him simultaneously. As their quarrel had reached a stage where they were scarcely on speaking terms, they had taken seats on opposite sides of the room. He looked quizzically from one to the other, as if trying to recall something. Then he addressed Sen ator A : "You have come to see me about that post- office?" "Yes, Mr. President," answered the Senator. "You still want Thompson appointed?" "I do." "Don t you know that Senator B ," ges turing with his thumb over his shoulder at A s hostile colleague, "says that Thomp son ought to be in the penitentiary, and that he can produce the facts to prove it?" "I know that, Mr. President; and I have here the evidence to show that Jones, whom my colleague is supporting, ought to be in the peni tentiary. We might as well drop the peniten tiary question." 144 A HAPPY SOLUTION "Oh, dear, no bless you, no!" cried the President, his face illuminated with its first gleam of pleasure since the interview began; "you have only just opened it. See here, B ," calling up the other Senator, "A says he has proof enough to lock up your friend Jones, and you say you have proof enough to lock up his friend Thompson. Now, we can settle this post-office fight in short order. If both of you will turn your papers over to the Attorney-General, we ll leave him to decide whether Thompson or Jones shall be prose cuted. If either man can manage to keep out of prison when Knox gets after him he must be a pretty good citizen, and I promise to give him the post-office. How is that?" But now and then I have heard him say of a boss, "On the whole, I ve come rather to like him"; or, "He s not such a bad fellow, I find, after you have cracked his shell" ; or of some special act of a boss, "That was pretty square, when you remember where it came from." For, to give the devil his due, even this class of gentry have their moments. The present writer has fought against bosses and bossism for one-third of a century, yet he is bound in truth to say that his experience has at times known 14S THE MAN ROOSEVELT some pleasant surprises. It was the late Daniel Manning, denominated by the Republican orators of his period u that prince royal of spoilsmen/ who tried to get Alexander Agassiz for superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. It was Senator Gorman who urged most assiduously the appointment of Oscar S. Straus as minister to Turkey. It was "Tom" Platt who stood out longest, single-handed, against the choice of a certain New York man for the Cabinet, objecting to him because he was a flatulent humbug although a notorious idolizer of Senators. I once knew "Matt" Quay to crawl out of a sick-bed and go in search of the Secretary of the Interior to prevent an appointment which would hurt the Indians, although he did not know the proposed ap pointee, had nothing against him personally, and was in no way concerned with the office or the rival candidates. Again and again I have seen appeals made with success to the good in stincts of bosses in Congress, and their advocacy of a worthy measure procured even against what appeared to be their selfish interests. I have known this to happen after vain efforts had been made to arouse some of the "unco guid" from their timid sluggishness. Polit- 146 DELAWARE POLITICS ical virtue and personal force are not always wedded; neither, by the same token, are con scienceless politics and humane impulse always divorced. A President often has more need to guard against a Senator s pity for some ineffective creature financially stranded than against having a corrupt man forced upon him. While the popular protest has been chiefly directed against the influence of the senatorial bosses, one boss who has never worn the toga, but has spent a lifetime chasing it, has given the President more trouble than all the others put together. This is J. Edward Addicks of Delaware. He is reputed to be very rich, and enjoys a unique distinction as an object of attack by the entire reform element in American politics, who charge him with keeping control of the Republican organization of his State by a liberal use of money. Thanks to the bitter ness of the feeling against him among the op posing faction, and to the fact that he had pressed his demand for a senatorship with such persistency, Delaware was for nearly four years without representation in the upper chamber of Congress; for the Legislature was steadily Republican, and, although he could not him THE MAN ROOSEVELT self command votes enough to elect, he would not let any one else have an election. There being thus no Senators from Dela ware to boss the patronage, Addicks has claimed the right to speak for the party as a Senator commonly would. He succeeded so far as to procure recognition for the delegates of his faction in the Republican national convention of 1900 which made the faction "regular" and he was able to show in 1902 that William M. Byrne, his candidate for Representative, running against another Republican nominated by the opposing faction, had rolled up a vote of nearly two to one. This was a demonstra tion of his strength, though the split among the Republicans sent a Democrat to Congress. It was inconceivable to the bulk of Presi dent Roosevelt s friends all over the Union that with his antecedents as a political reformer he could maintain any relations whatever with Addicks or the Addicks following; and the prophecy was freely made that, when the time should come for a formal alignment, the Presi dent would be found siding with the anti- Addicks Republicans. This view received some encouragement when, a vacancy occurring in the post-office at Wilmington, Mr. Roosevelt 148 THE BYRNE CASE appointed a member of the anti-Addicks fac tion postmaster. But a few months later an event occurred which set the whole country agog, in the nomination of Byrne, already men tioned, to be district attorney. The case had one peculiar feature. Byrne had formerly been district attorney by appoint ment of President McKinley as an anti-Addicks man, but had gone over to the other faction in the midst of his term. Prior to this defection no one had raised any objection to him. He was ambitious to enter Congress, and Addicks consented to his having the "regular" nom ination. President Roosevelt, though he had known Byrne for some years and liked him per sonally, warned him that if he were going to become a candidate for Congress he must resign his attorneyship, as it would be unseemly for him, in view of the quarrel within the party in Delaware, to take the stump in his own behalf while holding such an office. Byrne resigned and made a spirited cam paign. About that time the Washington Gov ernment was bending all its energies to getting rid of the rule of the friars in the Philippine Islands. It was most anxious to impress good Catholics everywhere with the fact that it was 149 THE MAN ROOSEVELT waging no war of religious proscription, but trying rather to help the missionary efforts of their Church by weeding out a vicious system which had done more than anything else to pro mote schism among the islanders. Byrne was a Catholic, and could talk to his fellow believ ers as no Protestant could. He improved the opportunity offered by his electioneering activi ties to explain and defend the Government s policy. This greatly pleased the President, who, when the campaign ended in his defeat, named him for restoration to his old place. The fact that he had become a supporter of Addicks and was nevertheless to be appointed to office excited all the uproar, and quite drowned out public consideration of any other circumstance in his career. Complaints of his neglect of his duties as district attorney under his former commission began to pour into Washington; the press rang with the incident for some weeks ; resolutions denunciatory of the President were adopted by various reform bod ies ; and in every way the popular feeling about Addicks and Addicksism made itself manifest. In the midst of the turmoil, which broke out during the President s temporary absence from the capital, Postmaster-General Payne, known 150 T^ttttl THE GUX EOOM AT SAGAMORE HILL. STICKING TO HIS MAN as the expert politician of the Cabinet, made the mistake of attempting to explain to the newspapers that the President was only treat ing Addicks to the same recognition accord ed to other heads of regular party organiza tions. Far from acting as a palliative, this state ment merely increased the excitement. Mr. Payne could not understand why it should. He had all his life been dealing with politicians on the cold business basis of so much recogni tion for so many votes; and he was aware that Mr. Roosevelt, whether gratified or not by the figures, had been astonished at the magnitude of the Addicks following as revealed by the latest election returns, although nearly every sop of Federal patronage had been thrown to the minority faction on the bare ground that Addicks was Addicks. The President, on his return to the White House, lost no time in making it known that reasons entirely disconnected with Byrne s fac tional affiliations would have moved him to make the reappointment in any event. As those reasons still remained potent in his mind, he did not change his purpose. As soon as Con gress assembled he sent Byrne s name to the THE MAN ROOSEVELT Senate. The Judiciary Committee voted to re port the nomination adversely. A short extra session of the Senate followed, and in went Byrne s name again, but once more came ad journment without confirmation. The Presi dent persisted and made a recess appointment, writing at the same time a letter to the appointee which said among other things: "Keep clear of factional politics. Confine your attention to making the best record as district attorney that has been made by any district attorney of Dela ware. Show neither fear nor favor in anything you do. I have liked you and I think well of you, but under the circumstances of your ap pointment and the way in which it was fought, I have a right to demand that you walk even more guardedly than the ordinary public offi cial walks, and that you show yourself a model officer in point of fearlessness and integrity, in dustry and ability." Byrne retained his office only a few months and then resigned without making any pub lication of his reasons. It is generally sup posed that he was tired of the controversy aroused by his case, and did not care to carry it into the Senate again at the next session. The uproar over Addicks broke out once 152 LOGIC OF THE TODD CASE more in the summer of 1903, when Postmaster- General Payne removed Miss Todd, the post master at Greenwood, Del., because she was distasteful to Senator Alice. Mr. Allee was one of two Senators elected early in that year through a truce between the Republican fac tions in the Legislature, each faction choos ing a Senator and Allee being the choice of the Addicksites. The male members of Miss Todd s family were rather conspicuously identi fied with the anti-Addicks element. Mr. Payne, in the same blundering way as before, began to issue "statements." He an nounced first that Miss Todd was a perfectly satisfactory postmaster, but that the two Sen ators from Delaware had arranged to divide the patronage between them on territorial lines, that this office fell within Mr. Alice s area, and that Mr. Allee had called for a new postmas ter. When this brought down upon his head a storm of popular criticism he fell back upon another excuse, saying that Miss Todd had allowed her office to be used as a political head quarters for the anti-Addicks factionists, to the damage of good discipline. She stoutly denied the charge, and the public at large sided with her, naturally assuming that the Postmaster- 153 THE MAN ROOSEVELT General would not have made two dissonant apologies for the same act if his conscience had been clear. Thus the matter stood when the attention of the President was called to it. He made some inquiries on his own account, and found two or three reputable witnesses who insisted that Miss Todd had shown disrespect to the Senator, while others of equal credibility stood ready to make oath that she had always be haved with perfect decorum. Such an abso lute conflict of testimony as this placed him in a most uncomfortable position. Had he been consulted before the Postmaster-General acted he would not have considered the case against Miss Todd strong enough to warrant her dismissal; as she was already out, however, and her place filled, he did not consider the evidence in her favor strong enough to demand her reinstatement. The whole effect of Mr. Payne s tactless performance was to bring un necessary public censure upon the President. Cabinet officers have relieved the situation by resigning on less ground than this; Mr. Payne is not one of the resigning kind, and he still sticks to his place. But one result of the inci dent has been that he has had his authority 154 THE NET RESULT questioned and will have to keep his fingers out of Delaware factional politics for the future. The President s patience is not limitless, and he hates fruitless quarrels. To Byrne s place he appointed John P. Nields, who had once served acceptably as district attorney ad in terim and understood the duties of the office. Nields was a pronounced anti-Addicks man. There was a brisk set-to between the Senators as to the successorship before the President set tled it, and he was disgusted to the point of vigorous protest at the substitution of two quar relsome bosses for one who did not quarrel but was universally quarreled with. He read the two men a lecture on scandalizing his admin istration before the country and keeping him continually in hot water. The upshot of the Byrne and Todd cases is that he will take the patronage of Delaware wholly into his own hands till the two factions can make up their differences, or till Addicks shall quit active politics and remove the most serious obstacle to the permanent supremacy of his party in the little State. 155 CHAPTER X THE SECOND-TERM IDEA The President s desire for reelection Republican rivals who dropped out The Hanna "boom" Real loyalty appre ciated Cleveland, Gray, and the coal-strike arbitration. "I DO not believe in playing the hypocrite," Mr. Roosevelt wrote to a friend a few months ago. "Any strong man fit to be President would desire a renomination and reelection after his first term. Lincoln was President in so great a crisis that perhaps he neither could nor did feel any personal interest in his own reelection. I trust and believe that if the crisis were a serious one I should be incapable of considering my own well-being for a moment in such a contingency. But at present I should like to be elected President just precisely as John Quincy Adams, or McKinley, or Cleve land, or John Adams, or Washington himself desired to be elected. It is pleasant to think that one s countrymen believe well of one. But I shall not do anything whatever to secure THE ONE CONSIDERATION my nomination save to try to carry on the pub lic business in such shape that decent citizens will believe I have shown wisdom, integrity and courage. If they believe this with suffi cient emphasis to secure my nomination and election and on no other terms can I, or would I, be willing to secure either why, I shall be glad. If they do not I shall be sorry, but I shall not be very much cast down, because I shall feel that I have done the best that was in me, and that there is nothing I have yet done of which I have cause to be ashamed or which I have cause to regret; and that I can go out of office with the profound satisfaction of hav ing accomplished a certain amount of work that was both beneficial and honorable for the country." Substantially the same idea he had expressed to others from the day he succeeded to the presidency. Yet the newspapers have never ceased figuring upon his relations with this and that party magnate; and every time he has stirred or opened his mouth they have specu lated in all seriousness on the way his second- term aspirations would be affected thereby. Of course, his competitors would be from both the great parties: the Republicans would con- 157 THE MAN ROOSEVELT test the nomination with him, the Democrats the election. All the other Republicans who had been regarded as possible candidates up to 1901 quitted the field, as Mr. Shaw did, when Presi dent McKinley s death left Mr. Roosevelt heir to the executive chair. Marcus A. Hanna of Ohio was not one of them. He had never been counted among the presidential probabilities during President McKinley s lifetime, the ca reers of these two national figures being so blended in the popular mind that it seemed almost as if Mr. Hanna were already enjoying his presidency through the proxy of his friend at any rate, that all his own ambitions were satisfied in the honors heaped upon the man he loved best. But with McKinley s fall the whole outlook was changed. Of all men, here was the one whom circumstances had most en dowed with the capacity to carry out the dead President s designs. Roosevelt might try to, but Hanna surely could. Not a few political prophets, therefore, contemptuous enough in disposing of the potential candidacy of other notable Republicans, paused when they came to Hanna, and said: "Perhaps." Moreover, Mr. Hanna lent a color of like- MR. HANNA S ATTITUDE lihood to this suspicion by making no positive declarations to discredit it. True, when oc casionally a newspaper reporter approached him on the subject of his receiving the nomina tion for the presidency, he would shake his head and laugh at the suggestion as an absurd ity; but these disclaimers were never taken so seriously as to prevent Republican party gath erings now and then from cheering him as the next President of the United States; nor did he, when aware that resolutions were to be adopted making such use of his name, do any thing to head them off. Open letters, inter views and editorial paragraphs kept him con stantly before the public in the character of a candidate to be reckoned with, and he gave no sign of irritation with their authors. It was plain that the political wire-pullers, as well as a large multitude of ingenuous citizens who knew not politics, regarded him as coquettish rather than hostile toward the idea. But no one who was well acquainted with Mr. Hanna s personality was deceived as to where he stood. He was not of the presiden tial mold. The Senate suited his taste and his powers. He wanted a free hand. He hated infinitesimal worries. He lacked the patience 12 1 59 THE MAN ROOSEVELT necessary to deal with all sorts of men at once as a master and a supplicant. He loved au thority more than insignia. He would rather administer the affairs of a nation in the name of another than let others administer them in his name. Nature had marked him for a king maker, not a king. Bearing these facts in mind, it will not be so difficult to understand how he could dis courage the discussion of his candidacy by treating it as a joke, and yet permit his "boom" to survive when he could just as well crush it. There probably was never a moment when he felt the slightest temptation to enter the lists for the nomination, but neither was there a moment when he would have been willing to forego the power to award it to some one else. If Republican organizations anywhere saw fit to name him as their choice for President, why should he put obstacles in their way? He was entirely friendly to Roosevelt and looked to see him nominated; he would not accept the nomination himself if it were offered him, and he did not expect it to be offered; but to go into the convention with a large following at his back, and be able to prevent a bad mistake if it threatened, would be a great satisfaction. 1 60 LOYALTY APPRECIATED Politics he knew to be like fire, very un certain; no one could foretell where it would break out next. Everything and everybody might be going Roosevelt s way to-day, yet to morrow might witness a stampede toward an other candidate or a general break-up. The wise politician, he reasoned, is he who never takes anything for granted, but provides him self against all emergencies. The first case that brought the Roosevelt and Hanna "booms" into apparent collision was that of Judson W. Lyons, the Register of the Treasury appointed by President McKin- ley. As some of the published accounts of the incident have distorted it, I shall take a par ticipant s liberty in setting it right. Lyons was a Georgia negro. He owed his appointment to Senator Hanna s influence. He had acquitted himself creditably in office, and was generally respected at the Treasury De partment. As his four years of service were drawing to an end, a few gossips began to talk about his being dropped to make room for somebody else. His friend Booker T. Wash ington was calling on him one day, when Lyons remarked, in the course of their conversation, that, although he should value reappointment, 161 THE MAN ROOSEVELT he had not asked for it, and would not wish Mr. Roosevelt to act under any misapprehen sion; that he admired Mr. Roosevelt very much, and would support him against every body else except Mr. Hanna; but that Mr. Hanna, if a candidate for the presidency in 1904, could command his allegiance against any man living. Mr. Washington, a day or two afterward, mentioned the matter to me. I obtained his permission to repeat the story to the President. Mr. Roosevelt listened with interest. His eyes snapped as, at the close of the recital, he reached for a memorandum card and wrote Lyons s name on it, remarking: "I like Lyons, and had expected to reappoint him, but this settles the matter. A man who is loyal to his friends, and who will be so frank, when his own fortunes are in the balance, as to be un willing to profit through any misunderstand ing of his position, has the stuff in him of which good public servants are made. I wish you would say to Lyons for me that I shall lose no time in putting his reappointment be yond question." This is a fair sample of the basis of fact underlying half the stories which have been 162 OHIO S INDORSEMENT set in circulation about Senator Hanna and President Roosevelt, almost from the day the latter took his oath of office. While the polit ical quidnuncs were busiest inventing new the ories of their relations, and debating whether Hanna could possibly upset Roosevelt s pro gram and prevent his nomination, and whether Roosevelt could devise a way of side-tracking Hanna s schemes if he really addressed his mind to it, the two men were breakfasting to gether once a week on corned-beef hash and griddle cakes, and talking over affairs in Con gress and the country with as much composure as if such things as party conventions had never existed. But a day did come when they took oppo site views of the next thing to be done, and the public was treated to a short, sharp skirmish of wits, in which most of the fighting and all the success were on one side. The President was traveling in the far West in the spring of 1903. The Ohio Republican Convention was about to meet, and the contents of the platform were already under discussion. Senator Fora- ker favored the adoption of a plank approving Mr. Roosevelt s administration and pledging the State to his support in 1904. In Pennsyl- THE MAN ROOSEVELT vania and Kansas this had already been done. Senator Hanna opposed such a measure in Ohio on the technical ground that the only convention which has a right to commit a State to any candidate for the presidency is the one called for the purpose of choosing delegates for the presidential convention and instructing them. As such a convention would not be held in Ohio till 1904, he argued that the action of a 1903 convention would be nugatory. A tele gram to Mr. Roosevelt, practically leaving the question to him for settlement, drew forth the response, also by wire: "Those who favor my administration and nomination will indorse them, and those who do not will oppose them." This made the issue flat. It was supposed by many, and hoped by some, that Mr. Hanna would accept the challenge and fight the mat ter out in the convention; but he did not. On the contrary, he simply shrugged his shoulders and let the plank go through unobstructed. The people who had been thirsting for a quar rel said: a Oh, it s all fair on the surface; that s for political effect. But their personal friend ship will never stand such a strain." Ten days later they saw the President dropping his regu- 164 DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES lar round of duties and speeding across the country to attend the wedding of Senator Han- na s daughter in Cleveland a compliment al most unique of its kind. It takes a good deal more than an honest opposition and plain speech to drag President Roosevelt into a snarl with a man he really likes, and he likes "Mark" Hanna. Toward possible Democratic candidates for the presidency Mr. Roosevelt s demeanor has been perfectly pleasant as long as they have met him on a fair footing. With Bryan he has naturally had little to do, as their paths have not crossed except during campaigns. With Gorman he has maintained a polite but armed truce ever since their clash in old times over civil-service reform, described on another page. Of Hill he once expressed his opinion in un measured terms as "belonging to the type of so-called practical politicians who care nothing for principles but everything for votes," "the champion of the lawbreaker and the ally of the criminal," and the like. Messrs. Gorman and Hill are men of long memories. When Olney was Attorney-General, Roosevelt used to quar rel with him officially in the morning over the construction of the civil-service law, and play THE MAN ROOSEVELT tennis with him all the afternoon, keeping up the controversy between sets. With Judge Gray of Delaware and Grover Cleveland Mr. Roosevelt has always been on excellent terms. Cleveland was Governor while Roosevelt was in the New York Legis lature, and they acquired a high respect for each other while working together on measures for civic reform. It is also worth noting that on one of the rare occasions when they dif fered on non-political questions, Roosevelt made what was in some respects the most re markable speech ever delivered in the Assem bly. A bill was passed in 1884 to reduce the fare on the elevated railroads of New York city from ten cents, which was permissible under their charters and had been charged up to that time, to five cents. The Governor vetoed it on the ground of unconstitutional- ity, because it violated the State s implied con tract on the strength of which the stockhold ers had subscribed their money to build the roads. Of course, the veto was highly unpopular. The corporations were hated on general anti- monopoly principles, and also because they were under control of Jay Gould and his Wall 1 66 A NOTABLE SPEECH Street coparceners. Moreover, they had been so overbearing in their methods as to increase the hostility of their compulsory patrons. Mr. Roosevelt himself had fought them because he was convinced that they had debauched the courts in order to hold fast to certain unlawful privileges. When the five-cent-fare bill had first come up in the Assembly he had voted for it, and he was now looked to as the natural leader of the movement to repass it over the veto. To the astonishment of every one he an nounced his intention to sustain the veto, and explained his position thus: "I have to say with shame that when I voted for this bill I did not act as I think I ought to have acted on the floor of this house. For the only time, I did at that time vote contrary to what I think to be honestly right. I have to confess that I weakly yielded, partly to a vin dictive feeling toward the infernal thieves who have those railroads in charge and partly to the popular voice in New York. For the man agers of the elevated railroads I have as little feeling as any man here, and if it were pos sible I should be willing to pass a bill of attainder against Gould and all of his asso ciates. I realize that they have done the most THE MAN ROOSEVELT incalculable harm in this community, with their hired stock-jobbing newspaper, with their corruption of the judiciary, and with their cor ruption of this house. It is not a question of doing right to them, for they are merely com mon thieves. As to the resolution" a petition handed in by the directors of the company "signed by Gould and his son, I would pay more attention to a petition signed by Barney Aaron, Owney Geoghegan, and Billy McGlory than I would pay to that paper, because I re gard these men as part of an infinitely danger ous order the wealthy criminal class." This speech, which a hundred prophets were ready to swear would be Mr. Roosevelt s valedictory in politics because of the popular antagonism it would excite against him, did just two things : it established the speaker more firmly in the confidence of his constituency, who discovered that they had a representative with courage enough to take an unpopular stand if he- saw plainly that it was right, even at the cost of humiliating himself by an apol ogy; and it gave to the politico-social vocabu lary a new and striking phrase. "The wealthy criminal class" became a fixture in the lan guage. It was quoted again and again when, 1 68 INGENIOUS FICTION two years later, its author made a campaign for mayor of New York city. He was defeated through the peculiar complications of a three- sided contest; but he carried with him the largest percentage of the whole vote cast for any Republican candidate for mayor who up to that time had made the fight with three tickets in the field. The mention of Gray recalls the coal-strike arbitration, over which he presided. That epi sode has furnished a text for an exceptionally large number of perversions of history, but for none which surpasses in picturesque quality this widely copied newspaper skit: When he made up his list of the members of the commission for submission to the coal operators and to President Mitchell, President Roosevelt did not have the name of Judge Gray at the top. He had there the name of Grover Cleveland. Mr. Cleveland had been commu nicated with and had consented to serve. The President was delighted with this selection for chairman. He believed the appearance of the former President at the head of the strike-set tling body would command the respect and admiration of the American people. There fore he was much surprised when one of his advisers suggested that the selection of Mr. 169 THE MAN ROOSEVELT Cleveland might be a political mistake. The President asked what he meant by that. "I mean," said the gentleman, "that Mr. Cleveland is a presidential possibility. If he serves at the head of this commission it will bring him very prominently before the public, and may end in making him the Democratic nominee in 1904." "Nonsense!" exclaimed the President. At that moment Secretary Root appeared, and the President asked him what he thought of it. Mr. Root stroked his chin during a few moments of meditation, and then replied, "I agree with the gentleman who has just spoken." Without another word President Roosevelt grabbed a lead-pencil and drew a line through the name of Grover Cleveland. As every one knows that the President had nothing to do with the appointment of the chairman or "head" of the commission as such, but left the members free to select him from among themselves, it seems strange that this story could have gained any considerable cre dence. Again, when the names appeared Judge Gray s stood not at the top, but down in the body of the list. These preliminary errors, of course, might be attributable to the exercise of 170 ACTUAL FACTS the story-teller s license; but it is on the main fact that the narrator has gone most sadly astray. It had been in the President s mind for some time to have the whole subject of the strike investigated and the grievances adjusted if possible; he had accordingly made out a list of persons he deemed available for a board of inquiry and conciliation, and in some cases ob tained their consent to serve. Later he revised his plan, and decided to call in the warring parties and let them have most to say about the selection of their judges. In his original list he had included Mr. Cleveland, whose par ticipation he regarded as almost an essential to the success of the scheme, and when the method of selection was changed he still clung most tenaciously to this one name. He felt that he had a right in such an emergency to take ad vantage of the wide-spread regard in which Mr. Cleveland was held. He had a high patriotic purpose in mind; this effort for the restoration of industrial peace and the salva tion of the country from suffering could suc ceed only by the backing of public sentiment; and he believed that the combination of the President and the one living ex-President, sepa- 171 THE MAN ROOSEVELT rated in political faith but united in an un selfish undertaking for the common welfare, would carry weight with the mass of good citizens. When he called in the representatives of the miners and the operators they demanded that the commission of arbitration should be com posed of members of certain specified classes and callings an army or naval engineer, a sociologist, a United States judge, etc. For the judge s place the President had selected Will iam R. Day, the bosom friend of the late Presi dent McKinley and now a justice of the Su preme Court. But the conference decided that it would be better to have a judge from the Third Circuit, which embraced the scene of the controversy, than from the Sixth, where Judge Day was serving; so Judge Gray was put on in the place to which Day had first been assigned. That disposes of the story that Gray was substituted for Cleveland, for Gray did not figure in the program at all till the judge s place had been reached and Day had been ruled out on grounds of locality. When it came to selecting the military engineer, the President exerted himself to the utmost to induce the withdrawal of this de- 172 WHO DID OBJECT mand and the substitution of the single name of Grover Cleveland. Some of the parties present expressed a doubt whether the ex-Presi dent would take kindly to the idea of settling the strike by such means; but Mr. Roosevelt showed them a letter in which Mr. Cleve land expressed his hearty approval of the course proposed. The operators present then refused to consider the suggestion at all. The Presi dent nevertheless was so persistent that tele phonic communication was opened with the companies offices in New York, so that the com mittee in Washington could ascertain positively whether they were carrying out the wishes of their principals. No argument or plea had the slightest effect upon the capitalists ; they would not accept Mr. Cleveland as an arbitrator on any pretext; and with intense reluctance the President had to let go the most valued feature of his plan. It is too bad to spoil so pretty a story as the one quoted, especially its picture of Secre tary Root rubbing his chin and the President grabbing a lead-pencil in his feverish haste to retrieve an error of thoughtlessness which might have given Mr. Cleveland so much pres tige as a candidate against him in 1904; but THE MAN ROOSEVELT pencil and chin, rubbing and grabbing, will have to go, as the President s plan did. With them, I fear, must be sacrificed on the altar of historic truth a bevy of other pleasing and dra matic fictions concerning Mr. Roosevelt s treat ment of possible competitors in the coming campaign. The simplest form of statement to cover the whole case is that, if two courses were open to the President, one of which would rule all his rivals out of the contest while the other would double their multitude, he would choose the latter. This he would do partly from an in stinct of generosity which makes him some times appear almost quixotic, and partly to gratify a taste that comes near being a mania with him the love of matching his strength and cleverness against those of other men. Even the characteristic despatch concerning his indorsement by the Ohio convention was sent without a moment s deliberation, and merely in the quaint phrase of one of his inti mates "for the fun of taking a fall out of Uncle Mark." If there had been no talk about it, he would not have cared a snap of his fin gers whether the platform touched on 1904 or let it alone. Mr. Hanna lacked his usual 174 TASTE FOR CONTEST shrewdness in letting the issue be raised; for he must have known that as surely as he did so he would rouse in Mr. Roosevelt a spirit which would not be appeased till a battle had been fought out and one side or the other routed. 13 175 CHAPTER XI A FIGHTER AND HIS METHODS Love of matching skill and strength A generous adversary The census spoilsmen s grievance Harun-al-Raschid and the police How a demonstration failed. THE subject of this chapter naturally grows out of certain incidents mentioned in the last, which have shown us how Mr. Roosevelt bears himself toward competitors and antagonists in the larger field of politics. Elsewhere have appeared specimens of his manner of meeting the criticisms passed upon the work of the Civil-Service Commission while he was con nected with it. Other illustrations are needed, however, to complete his portrait as a fighter. From his boyhood at least from that point in it at which he resolved to make himself strong and take his share in the active sports of other boys he appears to have most enjoyed those forms of exercise which matched him against his mates. He did not always defeat his opponents in such struggles; he did not 176 TYPICAL METHODS expect to. It was enough for him to get the enjoyment of the contest; and he was ready to "let the best fellow win," and accept the fortunes of war in good part whichever way they went. At college boxing was always his favorite amusement. A classmate who remembers well his exercise with the gloves says that, although Roosevelt was a light-weight, not naturally mus cular, and suffered from a handicap of imper fect vision which would have checked most other men, he was keen for the sport, and used to spar with a pair of large spectacles literally lashed to his head. He risked the total loss of his sight with every bout, as an unlucky blow from the other party might have smashed his glasses and driven them into his eyes; but in spite of that he was always the attacker. He aimed to offset his own weak point by leading swiftly and heavily, so that his adversary should be kept too busy with defensive tactics to gather his wits and put in any offensive work. Some one else I think it is Owen Wister describes his first glimpse of Roosevelt as a college pugilist, when, in the midst of a rattling exchange of blows, the umpire called "time." Roosevelt at once dropped his hands, but just 177 THE MAN ROOSEVELT as the other student, under the full momentum of the fight, landed a fist squarely on his nose. A loud chorus of "Foul!" arose from the by standers. In an instant, his face streaming with blood, Roosevelt ran forward with a ges ture of deprecation, crying out: "Stop! He didn t hear! He didn t hear!" and then shook hands warmly with the author of his misfortune to prove his belief that the blow was an accident. How well these early phenomena forecast the methods Mr. Roosevelt would pursue as a fighter in public life, every one familiar with his career must recognize. He has gone his own way as peaceably as possible, but has never dodged a collision where the other fellow was bound to have one and had come out in search of it. His first important victory in politics was won in 1884, m the Republican State Con vention at Utica, N. Y., where he appeared at the head of a little group of Edmunds men from New York city. In his home district he had won his right to go to Utica by defeating the veteran boss, "Jake" Hess, who had for merly swung things there to suit himself, and who laughed at the idea that "a youngster and a dude, with no support except from the swells of Murray Hill," could effect anything HIS FIRST CONVENTION against a local party machine run by practical workers. At Utica he crossed swords with Senator Warner Miller, then at the height of his pres tige. Miller wished to go to the national con vention at Chicago as one of the delegates at large to support Elaine. But the Utica con vention was divided ; Roosevelt s little group of delegates, though constituting only one-seventh of the total vote, was numerous enough to hold the balance of power, and its leader had the shrewdness to see how to use this. So Miller was ingloriously beaten, Roosevelt not only go ing to Chicago in his stead, but taking with him three other delegates at large of his own way of thinking. Miller had used his influence at Al bany the previous winter to prevent Roosevelt s election as Speaker of the Assembly. After his triumph in the State convention, Roose velt met Miller in the lobby of their hotel at Utica, and tapping him pleasantly on the shoul der remarked: "Senator, I forgive you. Time makes all things even." Miller s sense of humor, never of the best, was not equal to the appreciation of this reference; but Roosevelt enjoyed it enough for two. In the spring of 1902 Congress consented to 179 THE MAN ROOSEVELT a plan recommended by the President in his message and framed a bill establishing a per manent census bureau. But it tried at the same time a trick. The temporary force whose work was then drawing to a close had been selected on the patronage plan, without competitive ex amination. The desire of the spoilsmen was to bring this whole body of employees into the classified service by legislation, so that as fast as the work was cleared up and the force re duced the proteges could be transferred to other positions under the Government. Such a plan would, of course, have been a gross injustice to other eligibles who had fairly earned their places by competitive examination. Senate and House vied with each other in trying to load down the new bill with pro visions which would accomplish the desired end by indirection. President Roosevelt, how ever, warned his friends in both chambers that if the bill came to him full of possible abuses he should veto it, even at the cost of losing the permanent bureau on which he had so set his heart. The bill, with its full burden of poten tial spoils, went to conference, where the advo cates of the various schemes locked horns and fought their battle out; the result was the evo- 180 CENSUS SPOILS PROGRAM lution of a paragraph which simply authorized the director of the census, with the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, to appoint to the permanent census office such members of the old force as he chose, placed these persons in the classified service by virtue of such ap pointment, and required that all subsequent ap pointments should be made through the usual machinery of the Civil-Service Commission. In this form the conference bill went through both houses with a rush, the spoilsmen believ ing that they had got, in effect, what they had started for. The President saw his chance and lost not a moment in improving it. In an official let ter to the Secretary of the Interior, who was entirely sympathetic with his purposes, he stated the interpretation he wished put upon the civil-service paragraph. Then he signed the bill. The next morning the spoils Con gressmen awoke to the fact that instead of tricking the President they had tricked them selves. The paragraph they had passed, with his perfectly legitimate interpretation of it, tied up the whole business so that the director of the census would have to drop between 1,500 and 2,000 of the congressional proteges within 181 THE MAN ROOSEVELT the succeeding four months, and any additions he might need to make to his staff thereafter would have to be drawn from the registers of the Civil-Service Commission. A favorite maxim of Roosevelt s is the old Norse viking s commentary on a short sword: "If you go in close enough, your sword will be long enough." His own sword is short, but he walks up to his subject so directly that his thrusts reach its heart. When he was engaged in reforming the police establishment in New York cautious friends warned him that other commissioners with virtuous intentions had tried the same thing, but that the force was so honeycombed with petty jealousies and favor itism and blackmail that the board could never ascertain the truth about what the men were doing. "We ll see," he remarked, and he used the words literally. That day, at the close of office hours, he privately invited one of the doubters to accompany him on an early stroll through part of the East Side the following morning. "How early?" asked his friend. "Half past two. Meet me at Third Ave nue and Forty-second Street." The friend found the commissioner at the 182 WE LL SEE" appointed place and hour, armed only with a little stick and a written list of the patrolmen s posts in the district which was to be visited. They walked over each beat separately. In the first three beats they found only one man on post. One of the others had gone to assist the man on the third, but there was no trace of the third man s whereabouts. They went over to Second Avenue, where they came upon a patrolman seated on a box with a woman. "Patrolman," asked the commissioner, "are you doing your duty on post 27?" The fellow jumped up in a hurry. This pedestrian, though unknown to him, was obvi ously familiar with police matters; so he stam mered out, with every attempt to be obsequious: "Yes, sir; I am, sir." "Is it all right for you to sit down?" in quired the mysterious stranger. "Yes, sir no, sir well, sir, I wasn t sitting down. I was just waiting for my partner, the patrolman on the next beat. Really, I wasn t sitting down." "Very well," said the stranger, cutting him short and starting on. The officer ran along, explaining again with much volubility that he had not been sit- 183 THE MAN ROOSEVELT ting down he had just been leaning a little against something while he waited. "That will do; you are following me off post. Go back to your beat now and present yourself before me at headquarters at half past nine this morning. I am Commissioner Roosevelt." Another three blocks and the strollers came upon a patrolman chatting with a man and a woman. They passed the group, went a lit tle way, and returned; the woman was gone, but the patrolman and the man were still there, and deep in conversation. The talk was inter rupted to enable the officer to answer the com missioner s questions. The man seized the op portunity to slip off. "They were drunk, sir, a little intoxicated, sir," was the patrolman s excuse, as he caught an inkling of the situation. "I was just trying to quiet them down a bit. Fm sorry, sir, very sorry." "That s enough. Come to Commissioner Roosevelt s office at half past nine." In search of the roundsman the commissioner started, to call him to account for all this laxity of discipline. The roundsman was found gos siping with two patrolmen on another beat. 184 HARUN-AL-RASCHID " Which of you men belongs here?" de manded the commissioner, addressing the pa trolmen. They and their companion met the inquiry defiantly. One of the trio retorted: "What business is that of yours?" The commissioner made no response except to repeat his question in another form: "Which one of you is covering beat 31?" It was now plain that they were in trouble. By the light of a neighboring gas-lamp the roundsman recognized the interrogator s face. He cast a significant look at one of his com panions, who answered, meekly enough, "It s me, sir. 7 The other told where he belonged and left quickly for his post, while the roundsman made a poor fist of explaining that he was "just ad monishing the patrolmen to move around and do their duty" when the commissioner came up. "You may call on me at half past nine and tell me all about it," was the response; "I haven t time now to listen." And so on till daylight. A little allevia tion was once given to the discouragement of these discoveries when the commissioner moved into a precinct where he found everything run- THE MAN ROOSEVELT ning smoothly and in good order. The captain who had charge of it was ordered to call at headquarters that day, but to receive an expres sion of approval, not a reprimand like the others. The crestfallen culprits, at their hear ing at half past nine, offered every possible ex cuse for their shortcomings. Some of them further assured the commissioner that that was the only night they had been derelict. "Take care that there is never another," was his response. "I am going to see with my own eyes how you men employ your time." Here was a case of the short sword which was long enough when used at close range. He had set out to fight corruption, laziness, and in competence on the police force till he drove them out. His methods were novel, but what he saw himself was vastly more convincing than anything others could tell him. The United Societies for Liberal Sunday Laws held a monster parade in New York while Mr. Roosevelt was in the midst of his en forcement of the excise law. Several of the city fathers and a few men prominently connected with the brewing and distillery interests were invited to review the procession. A perfunc tory invitation was sent, of course, to the pres- 186 SURPRISED REMONSTRANTS ident of the Police Board, but with no suspicion that he would accept, as the whole demonstra tion was designed as a protest against his alleged tyranny. It was a mistaken assumption. At the hour designated the tyrant promptly mounted the reviewing-stand, greeting the others there with smiles and bows. Some of them did not know him by sight, and one, presently hearing the name Roosevelt on the lips of his com panions, remarked to an affable stranger near him: "I wish Roosevelt hadn t pushed this excise business so far." "I pushed it only to the extent of enforcing the law as I found it," was the good-tempered answer; "I didn t make the law." The reviewer was almost as much startled by the contretemps as was one of the reviewed a while later. He was a sturdy veteran of the Franco-Prussian War who had turned out to make the welkin ring for free beer. As his de tachment of paraders approached the stand the old fellow waved his arm impressively toward the advancing host and their banners, and shouted, with all the sarcasm possible concen trated in his tone: u Nun, wo ist der Roosevelt!" THE MAN ROOSEVELT And was struck dumb by the vision of a smiling round face leaning over the rail toward him with the response: "Hier bin ich! Was willst du, Kamarad?" As soon as the veteran could command his voice again he led a cheer for the man he had set out to denounce. Presently came along a carriage bearing a transparency: u Roosevelt s Razzle-dazzle Re form Racket." It was soon followed by an other: "Send the Police Czar to Russia." The Czar greeted both with a laugh, and sent a policeman after the carriages to beg the gift of the two signs as souvenirs. The occupants were too surprised to refuse, and went over the rest of the route without any sneering insignia. Before the parade ended the news of the com missioner s presence on the stand, and the way he was enjoying the sport, had passed all the way down the line, and the cheering became general, punctuated with such approving calls as "Bully for Teddy!" "He s all right!" "Good boy!" "Have you had fun, commissioner?" one of the last stragglers asked, as the review drew to a close. "Never better in my life," was the cheery 1 88 FALSEHOOD REBUKED answer. "I wonder which side the joke was on?" A New York newspaper came out with a bitter attack on the Police Board, charging it with inefficiency, and publishing in proof there of "A Catalogue of the Principal Highway Robberies and Burglaries of the Preceding Fifty Days." It had been the custom of public functionaries in New York to ignore that sort of criticism as unworthy of notice, or merely return abuse for abuse. But such was not Roosevelt s style. He took up the alleged cases one by one and sifted them, and then met the charges with the deadly parallel in a rival news paper. He put in one column the catalogue, and in the next item opposite item the true stories; showing whether the event had actually occurred, and, if so, what the police had done, how the booty had been recovered, and what had happened to the criminals. Out of the forty-four robberies listed, all but four proved to be u fakes" or failures. But the answer did not end the defense. It added statistics to show that, comparing the fifty days under scrutiny with the correspond ing period under the last preceding police ad ministration, the number of felonies committed 189 THE MAN ROOSEVELT had diminished by 16 and the number of felons arrested increased by 15 per cent. Then it turned its artillery upon former misstatements in the same newspaper, and concluded the merciless exposure with a quotation from Ma- caulay s essay on the Memoirs of Barere: "In him the qualities which are the proper objects of hatred and the qualities which are the proper objects of contempt preserve an ex quisite and absolute harmony. As soon as he ceases to write trifles he begins to write lies; and such lies! A man who has never been in the tropics does not know what a thunder-storm means ; a man who has never looked on Niagara has but a faint idea of a cataract; and he who has not read Barere s Memoirs may be said not to know what it is to lie. . . . We have now gibbeted the carrion; and from its eminence of infamy it will not be easily taken down." Even the judiciary was not spared when occasion demanded that it be handled frankly. Judge Cowing having, in a charge to the grand jury, once commented upon the in crease of crime in New York in phrases that seemed to reflect somewhat upon the Police Department, Mr. Roosevelt seized the oppor tunity offered by an address before a conference 190 REPRIMANDLNG THE BENCH of Methodist ministers to answer: u The judge s apprehensions were unfounded. In the aggre gate there has been no increase of crime; there has been a decrease. In the next place, the most effective way to reduce crime is for the judges and magistrates to impose heavier sen tences on criminals. The police do their duty well ; but if the courts let the criminals go with inadequate sentences, the effect of the labor of the police is largely wasted. When I speak of inadequate sentences I mean such sentences as those imposed in the last six months by Judge Cowing and his associates. . . . Most of these criminals, guilty of highway robbery, burglary, grand larceny, and the like, are already free again, and the police must begin once more to watch over their deeds and to try to protect decent citizens against them. There is an ur gent need that in their warfare against the crim inal classes the police should receive help from the judiciary. ... I should not speak of this at all, if one of the judges had not himself in voked the comparison." The criticism which most unprejudiced commentators pass upon Mr. Roosevelt s way of carrying the fighting over into his adversary s corner is that so many of his retorts begin 14 191 THE MAN ROOSEVELT like Horace Greeley s: "You lie! you villain, you lie!" At the same time it must be ad mitted that, other things being equal, such can dor does a good deal to clear the air before the real battle opens. I remember once hearing Mr. Roosevelt, as Civil-Service Commissioner, discredit a certain Cabinet member s truthful ness to his face. Another person who was pres ent a mild-mannered man with an ingenuous soul seemed deeply pained by the scene while it lasted, and afterward said to me: "It was very discourteous treatment for Commissioner Roosevelt to visit upon an officer of so much higher rank. Why, he actually accused him of lying." And then, after a moment s pause, but with no indication of seeing anything funny in the remark, he added: "And what was worse, my dear sir, he went on and proved it." 192 CHAPTER XII WAR AND PEACE A much misunderstood philosophy Manly sports as a life prepara tion Mr. Roosevelt s attitude toward Spain The Monroe doctrine, the Hague court, and the Kishenev petition. "WHENEVER on any point we come in con tact with a foreign power, I hope that we shall always strive to speak courteously and respect fully of that foreign power. Let us make it evident that we intend to do justice. Then let us make it equally evident that we will not tolerate injustice being done us in return. Let us further make it evident that we use no words which we are not prepared to back up with deeds, and that while our speech is always moderate we are ready and willing to make it good. Such an attitude will be the surest pos sible guarantee of that self-respecting peace, the attainment of which is and must ever be the prime aim of a self-governing people." Without these words, publicly uttered, to support me, I should doubtless have astonished 193 THE MAN ROOSEVELT many readers when I said that Theodore Roose velt, whose lips frame the word "war" so fre quently, is not a lover of war for war s own sake. No one realizes the horrors, the demor alization, the nameless cruelties, attendant on an armed conflict between nations and parts of nations, more than he. To go to Cuba he tore himself away from a convalescent wife and a young babe. None loves his home and family more dearly, or appreciates more keenly what it means when husbands and lovers, fathers, sons and brothers are cut off in their ripe man hood, and the women and little ones dependent on them are thrown upon the mercies of the world. Yet multitudes of Americans shudder at his philosophy, because often it treats peace with scorn and places war among the most im portant levers of civilization nay, in a sense, the supreme test of the worth of a people. Analysis could reduce it to certain elementary propositions, which may be roughly stated thus: (i) Were human nature perfect, a state of perpetual and wholly honorable peace would be possible, because no one group of human beings would force any other group into a posi tion from which there is no peaceful escape without dishonor. 194 PHILOSOPHY OF WAR (2) Human nature being still very imper fect, strong nations continue to prey upon weak ones, bullying nations to impose upon those which will submit to such treatment, and dis satisfied elements within a nation to rebel with out reason against the constituted authority. (3) Peace, bought at the price of conces sions to force which has only injustice behind it, is as unrighteous as war waged for the delib erate purpose of imposing injustice upon others. (4) The nation which falls into the habit of valuing peace above all other things and of purchasing it at any price, has its moral vitality so sapped thereby, and its instinct of right and wrong so dulled, that it soon drops out of the van of the higher civilization. (5) This habit is easily formed by over looking one and another case where the exer cise of force would right a wrong, and resort ing to diplomacy when that will afford only a palliative. (6) A nation which acquires a reputation for avoiding war at any cost comes to be recog nized as an easy mark, and invites indignities and even outrages which no other nation would think of visiting upon it if it were famous for its prompt punishment of such offenses. 195 THE MAN ROOSEVELT (7) In order to be always in a position to defend itself and assert its rights, a nation must maintain an army and navy in a condition of efficiency at all times, and this means constant practise of the arts of war in times of peace. There is the whole matter in a nutshell. Those of us who can not assent to all Mr. Roose velt s philosophy think it leaves out of account the train of moral evils which follow in the physical wake of war: the enlarged sense, in ill- balanced minds, of the value of violence, and the diminished sense of the value of self- restraint; the distorted popular view of what constitutes justice in emergencies; the wide spread notion that honesty and responsibility are elastic ideals, to be measured by the remote ness or the imminence of a crisis. But he would say no; all these things are discounted, not ig nored. His theory is that they are outweighed in importance by the larger interests in the op posite scale. War and the chase are occupations insepa rably associated in the activities of primitive man. Mr. Roosevelt does not believe in get ting too far away from primitive man. His theory of human progress involves not the wholesale surrender of the old order as prelim- 196 IMPORTANCE OF EXERCISE inary to taking up the new, but the retention of all that is best in the old as a foundation for the new to build upon. Yet no one ever saw Theodore Roosevelt shooting at pigeons let out of a trap at so many paces. No one ever knew him to leave a wounded beast suffering in the tracks where he had shot it down. No one ever found in him the least trace of cruelty, as he sees it, in dealing with an animal either wild or tame. His home swarms with pets of all sorts, from horses and dogs to tropical birds of prey; his children are brought up among them, and encouraged to play with them fearlessly; but the father s mandate, back of everything, is unchangeable: "Be kind." Where Mr. Roosevelt differs from most men who call themselves sportsmen is that sport with him is only a means to an end. He does not ride and hunt to kill time, but to prepare himself for the larger things of his career. Physical soundness he puts at the basis of all effective effort in the world. The man who lets his bodily force be dissipated by idleness he regards as almost as criminal as one who wrecks his system by a deliberate course of vice. Pres ident McKinley s friends used to attribute his ability to endure worry and abuse as well as he 197 THE MAN ROOSEVELT did, to his habit of dropping the day s cares with the day itself and carrying no troubles to bed with him. Mr. Roosevelt gets too health ily tired by bedtime to have his rest broken, but the secret of his thriving so well under his many burdens is his refusal to let anything whatever interfere with his daily exercise in the open air. No affair of state, no social entertainment, no phase of the weather has power to postpone this part of the President s program of duty. For a duty he thinks it, quite as important as the duty of studying out economic problems and satisfying politicians. He feels that his sound physique is one of the assets on which his fellow citizens banked when they bespoke his services, and that to let it deteriorate would be to rob them of their dues to that extent. Moreover, hunting big game, hard riding, bouts with the gloves and foils, twenty-mile tramps over rough roads, scaling mountain crags, polo, football, wrestling, are to the individual, in Mr. Roosevelt s view, what occasional stimulation of the war spirit is to the nation. They harden his muscles, im prove his wind and steady his nerves. They bring him face to face with danger till he learns to despise it. They sharpen his senses. They 108 AN AFTEEXOON GALLOP. PERPETUAL READINESS make him resourceful almost in spite of him self. They quicken his wit and strengthen his will. They teach him self-care, self-control, self-confidence. And no man knows, till he has been actually tested, how he would act in emergencies. It is on his belief in perpetual readiness not on any liking for the attitude of the bully that Mr. Roosevelt founds his assurance that manly sports, and especially sports involving competition and struggle, are an essential part of every man s training for life. What is true of the individual he regards as true of the na tion. No people, he believes, ever kept them selves in condition for doing their best work in the world by going out of their way to avoid trouble which was bound to come sooner or later. Among schoolboys the most efficient peacemaker is he who first by gentle words strives to soothe the passions of two combatants, but, if they do not yield, is able to seize both by the hair and knock their heads together till they consent to listen to reason. Mr. Roosevelt s anxiety for intervention in Cuba, even at the cost of a war, was founded on his belief that Spain would never compose the troubles there, and that as long as she re- 199 THE MAN ROOSEVELT tained her hold on the island we should con tinue to have almost within gunshot of our southern coast corrupt government, official cruelty, revolts, bloodshed, a birthplace of plagues and a refuge for runaway criminals. It was too much like living next door to a pest- house; and if the authors of the nuisance had shown by all their past history an unwilling ness to change their ways except under compul sion, he thought that the sooner the compulsion were applied the better. Having made up his mind that Spain, with her duelist s sense of honor, would not yield without a fight, he was impatient for the con summation. One Sunday morning in March, 1898, we were sitting in his library discussing the significance of the news that Cervera s squadron was about to sail for Cuba, when he suddenly rose and brought his two hands to gether with a resounding clap. "If I could do what I pleased," he ex claimed, "I would send Spain notice to-day that we should consider her despatch of that squadron a hostile act. Then, if she didn t heed the warning, she would have to take the conse quences." "You are sure," I asked, "that it is with un- 200 OUR CASE AGAINST SPAIN friendly intent that she is sending the squad ron?" "What else can it be? The Cubans have no navy; therefore the squadron can not be coming to fight the insurgents. The only naval power interested in Cuban affairs is the United States. Spain is simply forestalling the brush which she knows, as we do, is coming sooner or later." "And if she refused to withdraw the orders to Cervera " "I should send out a squadron to meet his on the high seas and smash it! Then I would force the fighting from that day to the end of the war." It was an open secret, even then, that the Cabinet was divided on the war question. Sec retaries Gage and Long represented the peace party, and Secretaries Alger and Bliss the other. Secretary Sherman, who as premier would nor mally have exerted great influence in the ex ecutive councils as a champion of diplomatic methods, had become too enfeebled to take any effective interest in what was going on. President McKinley, having heard that Mr. Roosevelt entertained some decided views on the demands of the situation, sent for him one 201 THE MAN ROOSEVELT morning and listened to his exposition of them. Later on the same day, when the subject came up in the Cabinet, the President said with a smile: "Gentlemen, not one of you has put half so much vigor into your expression of opinion as Mr. Roosevelt, our Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He has the whole program of the war mapped out." "Couldn t you get him to make a report in writing for our guidance?" inquired one of the party, adopting the President s jocose tone. "Better than that: I can call him in and let you hear for yourselves," answered the President. There was a general chorus of approval, and Mr. Roosevelt was sent for. He responded at once. Mr. McKinley propounded a few ques tions to set him going, and the whole Cabinet leaned back in their chairs and listened to a second edition of what the President had al ready heard, but delivered with increased em phasis and annotated with many characteristic gestures. When the speech was finished, the orator retired. The President looked around with an amused expression; three or four of the others laughed aloud. Those who did not laugh were restrained by the seriousness of the 202 CORROBORATIVE TESTIMONY crisis, though finding something funny in what seemed to them the overwrought enthusiasm and the very radical proposals of the young Assistant Secretary. Before the afternoon was over, the scene in the Cabinet chamber had be come the day s gossip at the Washington clubs. It seemed too good to keep.* * The whole record of this incident was long ago transcribed from notes made by me in the spring of 1898, with the idea of some possible historical use to be made of them later. I therefore feel the greatest assurance of their correctness, as there was no chance for my memory to play me tricks with the lapse of time. I have lifted the passage bodily into this book, in the shape in which it stood a great while before ex- Secretary Long published his recollections. With all deference to Mr. Long, and entire faith in his sincerity of purpose, I am bound to believe that he overlooked one essential feature of the story. He represents Mr. Roosevelt as anxious to crush Cervera s fleet on the high seas in- stanter, and without notice; whereas my notes show that Mr. Roose velt s plan involved, as a preliminary, a warning to Spain that she must take the responsibility for whatever followed. To confirm my recollection of what seems to me the vital element in this matter, I have before me as I write a recent letter from a colleague of Mr. Long s in President McKinley s Cabinet, who says that he " re calls distinctly Mr. Roosevelt s response to the invitation to lay his views before the whole Administration " ; that Mr. Roosevelt "declared em phatically that the Spanish fleet should not be allowed to come " ; and that when "President McKinley remarked that we were still at peace with Spain, and to interfere with this fleet would be an act of war, Mr. Roosevelt replied that Spain should be given to understand that the sending of that fleet here would be considered an act of war, and that we would govern ourselves accordingly if it were sent." A comparison of this description of what occurred in the Cabinet room, with my quotation of Mr. Roosevelt s language at our interview in his house, seems to me to make the proof of Mr. Roosevelt s real po sition as strong as it could be made, especially as the corroborating letter was written without any knowledge of what I had prepared for print. 203 THE MAN ROOSEVELT Yet the same statesmen who gave vent most heartily to their merriment at the council-table, and let the story leak out as a choice tidbit, were among those who cheered aloud the news of Dewey s victory at Manila two months later. They seemed quite oblivious of the fact that the principle of a first master-stroke was the same that Roosevelt had set forth, with other names and circumstances, in his speech to the Cabinet; that the despatch sending Dewey to the Philippines was signed by Roosevelt; and that the officer who obeyed the order with such splendid Yankee dash was the man on whom Roosevelt had fixed his eye for this very job before any one knew positively that war was coming. The victory over Spain, the liberation of Cuba, the acquisition of an ungrateful burden in the Philippines, were only secondary results of the war. The largest was the standing our own nation suddenly assumed before the world. That Congress voted, with no partizan division, a preliminary $50,000,000 to be spent at the unlimited discretion of the President for the national defense; that when a popular loan of $200,000,000 was called for it was sevenfold oversubscribed; that, although the free-coinage 204 A NEW WORLD POWER ghost had been only about one year laid, the national finances did not go to a silver basis; and that the whole war practically consisted of our two victories on the sea, both exhibiting gunnery unexampled in naval annals: these facts aroused Europe to a realization that there was a new world power to be reckoned with in every international undertaking thereafter. The first proof came with the campaign to relieve the besieged legations in Peking. Our Government astonished its allies by the humane attitude it maintained throughout that episode, and by which it saved China from summary partition as the result of the Boxer insurrection. That a nation commonly described as mer cenary in spirit and devoid of the finer senti ments should thus lead all Christendom in mag nanimity, was a revelation. Mr. McKinley was President during the Chinese episode. In the establishment of The Hague tribunal of arbitration, however, the bulk of the active work fell upon the shoulders of President Roosevelt. A man as eager for bloodletting as he is represented to be would hardly have lent his efforts to the support of such a peace project. The truth is that no one is more willing than he to meet others in the 205 THE MAN ROOSEVELT spirit of compromise where the question at issue is one that will admit of mutual conces sions. He merely distinguishes between arbi trating questions open to dispute and arbitra ting those of which the merits are already plain. Everything possible to arbitrate without injus tice, such as the measure of damages for injuries inflicted in one country upon the citizens of an other, he would send without cavil to The Hague. Questions of taking away land that belongs to another he would not. For that reason he induced Venezuela and the European claimants to carry the issues in dispute between them to the great international court, but set up a special commission to review the Alaska boundary case. His theory was that the United States had no concessions to make, but was willing that the other side should thor oughly convince itself of the hollowness of its claims before surrendering them. As he said once, a good while before he became President: "If England wishes to settle the Alaska ques tion for good, I should answer: By all means. But before we begin to talk, gentlemen, here is our map! The sequel of the Alaska discus sion appears to have justified his position. The Venezuela incident, by the way, 206 MONROE DOCTRINE brought into striking prominence the attitude of Mr. Roosevelt toward the group of Ameri can republics to the south of ours. For years he had been known as a vigorous champion of the Monroe doctrine, and no louder voice than his was heard in the popular chorus of approval which greeted President Cleveland s Venezuela message of 1895. On this apparently favorable disposition President Castro doubtless traded in his earlier dealings with the European claim ants, and it was some such consideration which made him so anxious to name Mr. Roosevelt as sole arbitrator. But here he was counting without his host. Mr. Roosevelt s conception of the duty of the United States to defend the southern republics from partition or absorption by any Old World power includes a strong sense of the obligation of these republics to abstain from gratuitously embroiling the United States with other na tions. If the little republics expect the big re public s aid, they must conduct themselves in a manner to deserve it. No Central or South American state has a right to treat foreigners unjustly, and then run to the United States for protection as soon as their victims threaten to retaliate. The United States would not tol ls 207 THE MAN ROOSEVELT erate the seizure of an inch of American terri tory as a retaliatory measure; but if a Euro pean power sees fit to give the offending little fire-eater a sound spanking, it is not in Mr. Roosevelt s code that our Government must interfere. This is his well-balanced view of the Monroe doctrine, and there is real kindliness of spirit behind it. At the same time that he was re fusing to act as arbitrator himself and was main taining a complacent demeanor in the presence of the foreign naval demonstration, he was giv ing not only his consent but his encouragement to the plan by which Herbert W. Bowen, our own minister at Caracas, should become Vene zuela s plenipotentiary in the negotiations with the allies. It was an extraordinary concession for a professedly neutral power to make to a party in interest in such a controversy. At the Easter season in 1903 the Jews in Kishenev, Russia, were attacked by mobs, and slain or beaten and driven from their homes without discrimination as to age or sex. The news of the outrages was so rigorously sup pressed by the local authorities that it did not reach the outside world till some of the sufferers had fled to this country for refuge and told their 208 KISHENEV MASSACRE story to gatherings of their coreligionists in New York and elsewhere. It is doubtful, in deed, whether the Czar learned what had hap pened till the harrowing details drifted back to Russia from other countries. Everything in dicates that as soon as he did he took prompt measures to punish the ringleaders, and also the governor of the province and other official func tionaries whose seeming indifference had en couraged the rioters. The Jews of the United States and western Europe were naturally much incensed, and wished to have their respective governments make suitable representations to Russia of the abhorrence felt throughout Christendom for the outrages, in the hope that such a united pro test would stimulate the Czar to extra exertions for the protection of his helpless subjects. To this end they drew up memorials for signa ture by benevolent people of all castes and religions, which could be presented at the court of St. Petersburg through the usual diplomatic agencies. The wide publication of these projects moved the Russian Government to convey in formally to the other governments, and espe cially to that of the United States, an intima- 209 THE MAN ROOSEVELT tion that it could not consent to receive such representations from any source whatever, as the subject-matter was exclusively a domestic interest. The European governments there fore dropped the whole business. Not so the Government at Washington. President Roose velt gave the Russian ambassador every oppor tunity to put into formal shape the intimation already informally thrown out, and when this was not done he told the Jews that he would undertake to bring their paper to the notice of the Czar. In about a fortnight the memorial, signed by a multitude of prominent citizens, in cluding public officers, educators, business men of note, and clergymen of all faiths, was in his hands. Onlookers in the Old World held their breath at his temerity. The press in this coun try discussed the situation from every point of view. Would the presentation of the memorial under the circumstances be considered by Rus sia an affront which she must resent? Would the refusal of the Russian Government to re ceive the memorial be an affront which we must resent? Would the President force the me morial upon the Czar s attention in spite of everything? Would the incident lead to war, 210 JEWISH MEMORIAL or, at any rate, to a suspension of diplomatic relations for some time? All surmises proved vain. The incident was as unexciting as possible. The Russian Government declined to receive the memorial, as was expected. But no affront was given or assumed. Our representative at St. Petersburg visited the Foreign Office and came away with out meeting with so much as a scowl of dis approval. Yet, by the clever handling of the affair, all had been done that any one set out to do; for the letter from Secretary Hay, in which our charge was instructed to inquire whether the Russian Government would re ceive the memorial, itself recited the full text of that document. The cause for which the American Jews were pleading had been pre sented in their own chosen form not only to Russia but to the great tribunal of the world s opinion. The voice of American humanity had spoken, and without offense, while the dread of a fatal breach of etiquette was silencing all Europe. It is such a position that President Roose velt would have the United States occupy in the sisterhood of nations, as the great peace maker, yet at the same time the fearless cham- 211 THE MAN ROOSEVELT pion of justice; the leader of the world in com merce and the useful arts, yet never flinching at the menace of war when a righteous cause demands aggression or requires defense. If war must come to us at any stage as an incident of this program, he would welcome it as a na tional inspiration; if it were forced upon us when not necessary, he would deplore it; as an end in itself, or as a means to an unworthy achievement, he would resist it as stoutly as he denounces peace bought at the price of dishonor. 212 CHAPTER XIII THE SOUTH AND THE NEGRO Two questions that blend A policy never before tried Ideal conditions for inaugurating it The Washington dinner inci dent A needless uproar Dr. Crum s collectorship. THE Southern question in American poli tics since the reconstruction era has been sim ply the negro question under a larger name. At least the negro has been so far the dominant element in the Southern question as to obscure all the other elements. The fact that, although economic issues of great importance have come up for discussion and settlement in every polit ical campaign, the menace of negro supremacy has been too serious to admit of any trifling, has kept a large majority of Southern white men of all shades of opinion banded together for mutual protection. This is what is known as the Solid South. The Democratic party, as the only generally recognized opponent of the party to which the negroes belonged, has extended its 213 THE MAN ROOSEVELT name over the heterogeneous group, regardless of the historic meaning of Democracy. All Republican Presidents since Grant had found the Southern question the most trouble some in the foreground of the administrative field. All had been embarrassed by the fact that the votes of the negro leaders, good and bad alike, had been sought and used in the last national convention, and would be in the next, since they counted for just as much as an equal number of votes of white delegates. The man ner in which Mr. Roosevelt came to the presi dency, however, left him with a free hand. He owed nothing to any delegations, negro or white, Northern or Southern, in the Philadel phia convention of 1900; for he had spent all his time there not in seeking the nomination for Vice-President, but in trying to ward it off. He had welcomed any aid he could get toward throwing the nomination to somebody else; the delegates who were most enthusiastic for him provoked his displeasure rather than his favor, and he did everything he could to nullify their efforts. On his accession to the presidency just one thought possessed his mind respecting the South: If he could not in his own term break its solidity, he could at least set the solvent 214 REHABILITATING THE SOUTH forces at work so that this section would take its place politically with the others under some succeeding administration. On the day of President McKinley s obse quies in Washington I sat for an hour with Mr. Roosevelt in his temporary home, going over with him his plans for the future. It was strictly a friendly talk, free from the profes sional savor on either side. A month or so later, discussing the Southern-patronage ques tion in the New York Evening Post, I wrote: The President, as a man who believes in parties, will prefer Republicans to Democrats, and strong party men to those who are uncer tain and indifferent. But if it came to a ques tion between an unfit Republican and a fit Democrat, he would not hesitate a moment to choose the Democrat. It has always been Mr. Roosevelt s desire to see the South back in full communion with the other sections in conduct ing the National Government, instead of stand ing on the outside whenever a Republican ad ministration is installed at Washington. This is not the case with any ofner section, and he would take great pride in breaking it up in the South. And the negro? He must take his chances like the rest. If he be a man who has earned the respect of his white neighbors by his efforts 215 THE MAN ROOSEVELT to be a good citizen, by avoiding disreputable associations and trying to be helpful in the com munity where he lives, he has nothing to fear from President Roosevelt because of his color; but if he has led a loose life, ignored his obli gations to his fellow men individually and to society and the law, he will have no favor what ever because he is black or because he is a Re publican. The standard of personal character and civic virtue which the President will set up for the negro s emulation is better embodied in Booker T. Washington than in any other man of color known to the public. By this measure every negro who aspires to office will be tested. By the degree in which he ap proaches or falls short of it he will be judged fit or unfit. Of course, such a policy in the South meant only one thing as far as Mr. Roosevelt s imme diate prospects were concerned. It was revolu tionary, and flung the gage of battle squarely in the face of Southern Republicanism, or what had passed for it up to that time. It said to the leaders in effect: "I have no use for any so-called party which exists for revenue only. I may be nominated for a second term or I may not, but if I am I shall be under no obligations to such an one for votes. The idea that, in 216 INDEPENDENT APPOINTMENTS States which have never given a Republican majority and have none in sight, the forms of partizan organization shall be kept up merely as an excuse for distributing Federal patronage, is repugnant to the principles of popular gov ernment; and the admission of a troop of such office-holders to a Republican national conven tion once in four years on a footing of equality with the delegates representing legitimate con stituencies, is a fraud. Hereafter the South shall be governed in its Federal relations by the best men I can get from either race or either party." This idea President Roosevelt began to hammer home by making appointments which fairly electrified the South. He was in the midst of his task in October, 1901, and winning golden opinions on every side, when he enter tained Booker Washington at dinner at the White House. It has been widely remarked that, in the light of his present knowledge, neither party to the incident would repeat it were he to live the same period over. I do not believe that any one has authority to make such a statement. Certainly neither participant has any apology to offer on grounds of propriety or feels the 217 THE MAN ROOSEVELT slightest compunction or regret on moral grounds. Mr. Washington is one of the men whom President Roosevelt most admires, and whom he is proudest to number among his friends. They meet on terms of frank equality, except inasmuch as the presidential office itself confers a special dignity upon its occupant which all patriotic Americans recognize. The most that a commentator could claim in deroga tion of the dinner incident is that things which are right in themselves are sometimes inexpe dient because the conditions are not ripe for them. I happen to know that this affair was not of Mr. Washington s seeking. He had been sent for because the President wished to con sult him on a special subject. Realizing that any needless publicity given to his relations with the President might lay him open to the suspicion of having political ends to serve and thus interfere with his educational work, he wished to avoid newspaper mention of his visits to the capital as far as possible. To that end one of his friends came to me in his behalf for advice as to how he could get into and out of the city and make his brief call at the White House without meeting any reporters. I sug- 218 WASHINGTON DINNER gested a plan which worked admirably as far as it went, but failed at its final stage because we could not very well make the President a party to it. Mr. Washington escaped the dreaded inter viewers, but fell a victim to the routine of the executive mansion. It was a custom, devised for the convenience of the local press, to fur nish to the doorkeepers the names of all guests received by the President out of office hours, and the doorkeepers communicated this list to any reporter who called in the evening. The uniform practise was followed in this instance, and the next morning s Washington Post con tained a two-line paragraph, in an obscure place at the bottom of an inside page: "Booker T. Washington, of Tuskegee, Ala., dined with the President last evening." These facts appear here for the first time in print, because I feel that their correct statement is only just to both parties to the dinner episode. It was highly creditable to Mr. Washington that he did noth ing to promote, but everything in his power to prevent, the exploitation of the honor shown him; and no more contemptible slander was ever cast upon the President than the charge that he arranged the whole business for polit- 219 THE MAN ROOSEVELT ical effect, in order to hold the rank and file of the negro vote in spite of his deposal of sundry leaders. Had the perfunctory announcement I have quoted been never so widely copied, but allowed to stand without comment, no trouble would have resulted. The South has only itself or its torrential journalism to thank for the com motion aroused among the negroes by the news. Mr. Washington was not the only negro who had enjoyed the hospitalities of the White House. Moreover, Mr. Roosevelt was the first Republican President since the civil war, not excepting Mr. Hayes, who had gone vigor ously into the work of restoring the South to its heritage of full membership in the Union, with due regard for the wish of the superior race to rule. He was a Caucasian to the tips of his fingers. He was of Southern ancestry on his mother s side, and proud of it. Having been still in pinafores when Richmond fell, no bitterness lurked in his soul for the Confeder ates of forty years ago. He was hoping to mark his administration in history by leaving the South politically regenerated; this stood, in fact, first among the ambitions he cherished for his purely domestic policy. No man could 220 UPROAR IN THE SOUTH have been more ideally adapted for the work he had in view, if the people for whom he was laboring had let him carry out his plans in his own way. They did not. A few hysterical Southern newspapers took up the subject of the Wash ington dinner as if it had been intended for a challenge, instead of a mere incident of the usual routine of life at the White House. They began by declaring that this one act had set at naught every good thing the President had done in the South; that it proved him a hypocrite in his pretensions of sympathy with the South ern people; that it had raised a sectional bar rier which could not now be removed till an other administration had been installed at the seat of government; that henceforth the peo ple of the South were warned that Roosevelt- ism "meant nigger supremacy as surely as Grantism did"; and so forth. Some of the clergy echoed this silly chatter, and mixed poli tics and sectionalism with their religious teachings. Even Mrs. Roosevelt was not spared; for a long time I kept on my desk as a curios ity an illustration of a stripe of chivalry for which the higher latitudes have no room ex- 221 THE MAN ROOSEVELT cept in the hospitals a cartoon representing the President and his wife at table, his face wearing a broad smile of delight while she assiduously pressed dainties upon a hideous black savage seated between them. This, I am informed, was suppressed soon after its issue, when an attempt was made to circulate it gra tuitously in a political campaign, but the better element in the local Democratic management rebelled at the idea of using such weapons. Of course, though intelligent negroes of the Washington type were not thrown off their bal ance by all this upheaval among the whites of the South, it could have only one effect upon the ignorant and impressionable element. They saw in it a sign that a second Lincoln had come to the rescue of their race that as the great emancipator had stricken the shackles from their bodies, so his successor had broken through the wall of color caste and put them upon social equality with their white neigh bors, which they would only have to assert thereafter in order to compel recognition. Washington himself had the good sense to pass the whole matter by without a word beyond his usual counsels to his people, of patience, for bearance, gentleness, persistence in well-doing. 222 ADVICE FROM ALL SIDES The President made no public utterance what ever, and in private conversation with his friends showed no anger, but only pity for the folly of a few hotheads which was bound to bring trouble in its train for the sane and sober majority. The White House mails, however, were flooded with correspondence on the subject. So-called friends wrote to urge the President to take the South at its word and give it negro supremacy with a vengeance from that day for ward; others admonished him that the uproar had been raised by Southern politicians with a design of frightening decent Democrats out of accepting office at his hands thereafter, and advised that he avoid humiliation by building up a white Republican organization through out the South. Anonymous scrawls served notice on him that he must never attempt to set his foot on Southern soil again for the rest of his term, and that he must keep all mem bers of his family in the North also, if he would save himself and them from insult or worse. These letters, friendly, unfriendly and in different, went together into the waste-basket. The President changed not a tittle of his pro- 16 THE MAN ROOSEVELT gram in response to them. He had begun by appointing to a Federal judgeship in Alabama, on Booker Washington s advice, Ex-Governor Thomas G. Jones, a Democrat, an ex-Confed erate, and a citizen of the highest personal worth and honor. He had followed this with the choice of Edgar S. Wilson, a white Demo crat of recognized position, for marshal of the northern district of Mississippi. He had no backward step to take, and he went on doing as before, selecting his South ern appointees by the same standards, and meet ing nowhere a rebuff from a high-minded and educated white Democrat. Men like Robert C. Lee in Mississippi and Thomas R. Roulhac in Alabama were not frightened by the pass ing flurry. It was soon plain that the half- civilized prophets who had forecast the down fall of Mr. Roosevelt s policy did not know the better people of their own section. He visited Nashville, Tenn., to assist in welcoming home Vice-Governor Luke E. Wright from the Philippine Islands; but, beyond a few cat-calls and growls which greeted his carriage in one of the slums of the city, no unpleasant mani festation was made in any quarter. He went to Charleston at the invitation of leading citi- 224 COURTEOUS TREATMENT zens to present a sword to his late comrade- in-arms, Major Micah Jenkins; nothing oc curred to mar the decorum of the occasion or to indicate any decline in the local sentiment of respect for the chief magistrate. A hunt ing expedition was organized for his benefit in Mississippi, and neither there nor on the jour neys back and forth was there any show of hos tile feeling. In all these instances members of the suite who accompanied him thought they discovered a subdued quality in the popular en thusiasm by comparison with other receptions of presidential parties in the South, but this was far from being a serious drawback, and there was certainly not enough of a change to dampen the enjoyment of the President himself. A fresh outbreak of excitement occurred after the Charleston visit, when, at the end of a long inquiry into the merits of the respective candidates, the President appointed Dr. Will iam D. Crum, a colored physician, collector of customs at that port. Crum was a citizen of character and standing. He was an edu cated man, and at the head of his profession among his own people. The whites all spoke well of him, especially of his unobtrusiveness and generally self-respecting attitude. Any 225 THE MAN ROOSEVELT note bearing his indorsement was readily dis counted at the banks. He was prominent in the local colored charities. In every way he ranked as the leading negro in his part of the South. The white men who had most vigor ously pressed the opposition to him were of the old school of Southern Republicans with whom the President was wholly out of sym pathy. In other parts of the South notably in Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi Mr. Roosevelt had commissioned or recommissioned a few negroes of the higher type to offices where least objection could be raised by the white people. These appointments had met some times with pronounced approval, sometimes with a discreet reserve, always with a sensible recognition of the situation. Compared with other Republican Presidents, he had made a very sparing use of his prerogative, measured by the percentage of negroes in the local Re publican contingent. In South Carolina there was a paucity of offices that carried any dignity with them. Practically the list consisted of the postmastership and the collectorship of cus toms at Charleston, the district attorneyship and the collectorship of internal revenue. The cen- 226 CHARLESTON COLLECTORSHIP sus of the State showed nearly 20,000 more negroes than whites of voting age in the popu lation. One office in the four of any conse quence, therefore, seemed to the President not an undue proportion to be accredited to the negroes, even admitting the wide prevalence of illiteracy among them. The office which a negro could hold presumptively with least lia bility to offend his white neighbors was the col- lectorship of customs. The others would be likely to bring him into bodily contact with the whites; the routine duties of this one could be administered through a deputy and subordi nates, the collector himself occupying an inner room of the custom-house. Here he could read his mail, dictate letters, revise and sign docu ments prepared for him by trained clerks; the port s business, in short, might be transacted from year s end to year s end without any out sider s discovering whether the collector was tall or short, good-looking or ugly, deaf, dumb, blind or normal, white, black or copper-colored. Hardly, however, had the report gone forth that the President intended appointing Crum, before the White House was deluged with let ters and telegrams and marked newspapers from a little group of Charlestonians who assumed, 227 THE MAN ROOSEVELT after the Tooley Street precedent, to speak for all the people. Chief among the remonstrants was one who asserted that the President during his visit to the Charleston exposition in the spring of 1902 had pledged his word to three prominent white citizens that he would never appoint a negro to office in that city. The fallacy of this charge was, of course, perfectly plain to every one in the President s confidence, who knew what plan he was consistently carry ing out in the South and what relation the South Carolina offices bore to this. But set ting aside all considerations of the insult in tended, Mr. Roosevelt wrote to one of the trio concerned : "How any one could have gained the idea that I had said that I would not appoint repu table and upright colored men to office when objection was made to them on account of their color, I confess I am wholly unable to under stand. At the time of my visit to Charleston last spring I had made, and since that time I have made, a number of such appointments from several States in which there is a consid erable colored population. . . . These appoint ments of colored men have in no State made more than a small proportion of the total num- 228 DOOR OF HOPE her of appointments. I am unable to see how I can legitimately be asked to make an excep tion for South Carolina. "So far as I legitimately can I shall always endeavor to pay regard to the wishes and feel ings of the people of each locality, but I can not consent to take the position that the door of hope the door of opportunity is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color." Before dropping this subject I can not for bear citing a few facts which throw an inter esting side-light upon the commotion raised in the South by the President s attitude toward the negro. Elsewhere some mention is made of the Indianola incident, in which a mob in a Mis sissippi village drove an unoffending colored woman out of her place as postmaster because the white citizens could not bear to receive their mail from the hands of a negress. The Post master-General closed the office, thereby com pelling its patrons to send several miles to an other office for their mail. The messenger em ployed for this service, and paid by the patrons out of their own purses, is a negro; so that their mail actually comes to them now from a pair of black hands, the only difference being that the 229 THE MAN ROOSEVELT hands are those of a privately hired man instead of a woman with a Government commission. A young Southerner of blue blood, good education, and generally progressive ideas, and a warm friend and admirer of Mr. Roosevelt s withal, said to me one day: "I love that man; I would do anything in the world for him, follow him anywhere. But the one thing in his career which I shall never get over is the Booker Washington incident. Understand me : I do not disparage Washington s work I ap preciate it as much as you do. I admit all that you say of his personal worth. He has been in my mother s parlor, and invited to sit down there. I don t know that I should have had any feeling about the President s asking him to a lunch or dinner by themselves. But to invite him to the table with ladies that is what no Southerner can brook!" But last and best, note this: In the fall of 1903 there was a gathering of bishops and clergy of the Protestant Episcopal ministry in Wash ington to celebrate an important event in the history of the diocese. The President had con sented to take part in the ceremonies, and in his turn gave a reception at the White House to the visiting delegates. He had no share in 230 SUBTLE DISTINCTIONS making out the list of invitations, but left all such details to the managers of the affair, who were largely Southern clergymen. Among those who responded were a negro archdeacon from North Carolina, with his wife, and the negro rector of a flourishing parish in Mary land. All met on an outwardly equal footing under the President s roof; all joined in par taking of the refreshments spread for them, eating from the same set of plates and drinking from the same set of glasses, some sitting and some standing, but with no social or race lines apparently drawn between any classes in the assemblage. Yet the Southern ministers and bishops did not seem to be at all disconcerted, and not a Southern newspaper raised its protest at their share in this crime against Caucasian civilization! Is it wonderful that even so discerning a mind as the President s is unable to grasp the subtle distinctions which his social censors have tried to force upon him? 231 CHAPTER XIV CAPITAL AND LABOR Combination in both fields Labor unions and the civil service The Miller case Overlooked facts in the coal arbitration Things a demagogue would not have done. IT is no uncommon thing to hear Theodore Roosevelt denounced as a demagogue because of his attitude toward what is known as the labor problem. Now, the term demagogue is rather hard to define. To my mind it seems to mean a man of higher intelligence bending his judgment hypocritically to the passing whims of the mob in order to win its favor. Mr. Roosevelt s views on labor questions, how ever, are a necessary outgrowth from his funda mental opinions on economics and politics at large. This statement, which seems only his due, I offer with the greater cheerfulness be cause there is no subject of difference between us which makes the sparks fly more actively when we get into a discussion of it. I have already spoken of Mr. Roosevelt s 232 EQUAL RIGHTS unqualified belief in combination and organ ization as a means of accomplishing results in public fields of activity. What he believes in for politics, for religion, for trade, for legisla tion, he believes in equally for labor. He has never discouraged combinations among capital ists except where they have violated the law, and has advocated no laws of repression except such as would prevent inhumanity in the treat ment of some helpless class ; by parity of reason ing he not only has not discouraged, but has freely encouraged, combinations among wage- workers, though always drawing the line sharply at the point where, in his opinion, they tended to substitute tyranny for fair play or lawless ness for honorable self-assertion. The diffi culty of locating that point in certain cases leaves a considerable margin for ethical debate and criticism. To that extent Mr. Roosevelt has sometimes laid himself open to attack on the score of misjudgment; but I have never heard his sincerity of motive successfully as sailed. Take the case of the typographical unions and their kindred organizations for an illus tration. As Civil-Service Commissioner, it was his constant endeavor to have the Government 233 THE MAN ROOSEVELT Printing Office brought under the merit sys tem. A good many opponents of the plan re minded him of the difficulty of dealing with a mechanical trade, so largely governed by com binations, in the same way as with clerical labor, which was unorganized. Mr. Roosevelt brushed these objections aside. The unions, he declared, ought to be the best possible friends of the merit system if their claim were honest that they existed for the improvement of their craft. The requirement of a merit test for admission to the Government Printing Office would tend to raise the standard of public serv ice in the typographic and allied arts, and he should ask the most expert craftsmen to help him in his effort, even to the extent of prepar ing the rules for examining applicants. When warned that this meant the permanent control of the office by the unions, he answered that, if the Government obtained better service as a consequence, he could not see what question could be raised as to the element in control; but that if an attempt were ever made which he did not expect to exercise such control im properly, it could and would be checked at once. An appeal was accordingly made to the best 234 MILLER CASE practical printers within reach to lend a hand at the organization of the office on a merit basis. It did not succeed at once, and the formal classification was delayed till Mr. Roose velt had been some time separated from the Civil-Service Commission. When the change was made, however, it was on the lines he had laid down. The first effect, as had been predicted, was to establish the unions firmly as the dominant force in the office. Prac tically this made no difference in existing con ditions, for the printers, binders, engineers, etc., who in the past had been appointed to places there as a matter of political favor, had always been either members of the unions or candidates for membership ; no politician of influence enough to command such patronage had dared go outside of the unions and their waiting lists in choosing its beneficiaries. Matters went along smoothly enough till the Miller case came up last summer. William A. Miller, assistant foreman in the bindery branch of the office, was a non-union man. He had formerly belonged to the union, but had been expelled because, in defiance of the rules of Xhe union, he had pointed the way for the Government s use of cheaper methods of manu- 235 THE MAN ROOSEVELT facture, thus effecting a saving estimated at $8,000 a year. From the day of their split the union opened a systematic warfare upon him with the purpose of driving him from his place. It succeeded at last by threatening to strike unless he were removed. Miller s protest was carried to President Roosevelt, who, on the facts as presented that Miller was a competent workman, but had been dismissed from public employ because the union had expelled him ordered his reinstatement in a letter which also said : "There is no objection to the employees of the Government Printing Office constituting themselves into a union if they so desire; but no rules or resolutions of that union can be permitted to override the laws of the United States, which it is my sworn duty to enforce." In a later communication the President quoted the judgment of the An thracite Coal Strike Commission, "that no per son shall be refused employment or in any way be discriminated against on account of mem bership or non-membership in any labor organ ization," and added: "I heartily approved of this award and judgment by the commission appointed by me, which itself included a mem ber of a labor union. This commission was 236 OATH OR RESIGNATION dealing with labor organizations working for private employers. It is, of course, mere ele mentary decency to require that all the Gov ernment departments shall be handled in ac cordance with the principle thus clearly and fearlessly enunciated." The union yielded the point, but in a dis satisfied and resentful spirit. Rumors reached the President s ears that there would be a gen eral strike presently throughout the Govern ment Printing Office as an expression of sym pathy with the defeated binders. His response to that was an order that every employee in the big establishment should be regularly sworn into the service. Those who did not care to be sworn had the privilege of resigning. All sub scribed to the oath, which wiped out the last danger of an embarrassing revolt. To clinch this business, Mr. Roosevelt ac cepted an invitation to visit Syracuse, N. Y., on Labor Day and review the parade of the labor unions of that city and the surrounding towns. It was an extraordinary compliment for a President of the United States to pay to a single community and a single element in that community; the invitation was undoubt edly accepted for the double purpose of show- 237 THE MAN ROOSEVELT ing that the Government Printing-Office epi sode must not be interpreted as indicative of the President s hostility to organized labor in its proper field, and also as a challenge to cer tain loud-mouthed agitators who had declared that because of the stand he had taken in the Miller case the working people of the country would thenceforth turn their backs upon him. The visit was a success. No such labor parade had ever been witnessed in the neighborhood, and the enthusiasm of the paraders was unques tionable. The binders union now began to attack Miller from a new quarter. One reason why he had been driven out of their organization, they declared, was that he was morally worth less; and they insisted that his record, if searched, would show him to be a bigamist and otherwise an unfit associate for respectable men and women. The reservation of this consid eration till the other had been disposed of was a shrewd but not very reputable bit of tac tics. Its purpose was revealed by a preamble and resolutions adopted by the Central Labor Union of Washington, D. C., and mailed broad cast to labor unions all over the country, in which, among other things, it was declared that 238 CONFUSING THE ISSUES "whereas the President of the United States has seen fit to reinstate W. A. Miller . . . notwith standing the overwhelming evidence of his moral turpitude, and has also committed him self to the policy of the open shop, . . . the order of the President can not be regarded in any but an unfriendly light/ and organized labor everywhere was "urged to petition the President of the United States to modify his order of no discrimination, and order W. A. Miller s dismissal from the Government serv ice." Here, as will be seen, an effort was de liberately made to confuse the public mind by merging two wholly separate issues. The President had never passed upon Miller s pri vate morals, for no such subject had been pre sented to him for adjudication. He had be fore him only the question whether a man who was trying to earn his living at a legitimate trade, and the quality of whose craftsmanship had not been assailed, should be ousted from Government employ for no better reason than that he was not a member of a labor union. The dragging up of Miller s alleged unlawful domestic relations was absolutely foreign to the matter in hand. It was either an afterthought 17 THE MAN ROOSEVELT on the part of his accusers, or else had been designedly kept back for the purpose of en trapping the President. The resolutions of the Central Labor Union, if accepted at their face value by other unions and the public, would convict the President of having wittingly stood sponsor for a man of bad character for the sake of putting an affront upon organized labor, when nothing could have been further from the truth. Many a man would have been so disgusted by such double-dealing as to throw over all efforts to deal courteously or even considerately with its perpetrators. Mr. Roosevelt, on the contrary, feeling that a few schemers should not be allowed to damage the cause of a mul titude of deserving men, has maintained as friendly an attitude as before toward the great body of workingmen. Those who have tried to make political capital of the Miller incident would be interested in reading a correspond ence between the President and a timid friend who was much concerned over his future. The friend adjured him to throw Miller over board on any pretext, as otherwise the whole force in the Government Printing Office would go out on strike, and this would complicate 240 QUICK WORK the politics of the situation dreadfully. Mr. Roosevelt s answer contained this rather plain English: "Of course I will not for one moment submit to dictation by the labor unions any more than by the trusts, no matter what the effect on the presidential election may be. . . . I will proceed upon the only plan possible for a self-respecting American President, and treat each man on his merits as a man. The labor unions shall have a square deal, and the cor porations shall have a square deal, and, in addi tion, all private citizens shall have a square deal. ... If those labor-union men strike, not one of them will do another stroke of Govern ment work while I am President." The same spirit was shown in the case of the Arizona mining strike riots in 1903, when the Governor notified the President of the in ability of the civil authorities to control the mob. Within thirty minutes from the receipt of this telegram a detachment of United States troops was on its way to the scene of disorder. The anthracite-coal strike illustrated in still another fashion Mr. Roosevelt s method of meeting a labor crisis. That the crisis ex isted could not be doubted by any one who saw the letters and telegrams which came to 241 THE MAN ROOSEVELT the White House from the Governor of Mas sachusetts, the Mayor of New York, the Mayor of Chicago, the Mayor of Detroit, the New York Board of Trade, the managers of mills and factories, and others. The remedies sug gested were various. Not a few eminent men of usually sound and conservative judgment had been carried away by the idea of seizing the mines under the Government s right of eminent domain. Indeed, if the whole story were written, ex-Senator Hill s socialistic plank in the New York Democratic platform of 1902 would be found to have been no isolated freak of sentiment. One man of means and influence wrote: "The coal strike must end at once. If the operators persist in refusing to arbitrate, they will strengthen the socialists in their efforts to secure Government control." Another tele graphed: "If the disputants will not themselves find some way of supplying, without delay, what is really a necessary of life, some way will have to be found to make them!" A prom inent citizen of New York, whose name is known all over the world, said, in the course of a long written review of the situation: "Within a month coal will be as much of a 242 NO DEMAGOGUE necessity for all the inhabitants of the States north of the Mason and Dixon line as food or milk or water, and the persons who stand in the way of its supply at reasonable rates will be the enemies of all the people, with a crimi nality nothing short of murder." A demagogue in Mr. Roosevelt s place would have listened to only one side of the quarrel between the operators and the miners; if he had interfered at all, it would have been by convening Congress in extraordinary session in the midst of a political campaign. In these circumstances, clear thinking and unbiased action would have been well-nigh impossible, for every member of either house would have come to Washington charged with admoni tions from the labor organizations at his home to stand by the coal-field workers in their struggle. A man who was not actually a dema gogue, but merely timid, would have waited till Congress assembled and shifted to its shoul ders the responsibility of dealing with the strike; but Congress would not assemble till December, and by that time the whole North ern country would have made its plunge into a winter without fuel. The step taken by the President in this 243 THE MAN ROOSEVELT crisis was a bold one. He had no more prece dent for it than he had the next year for his Panama policy. It is an open secret that most of the lawyers and public men with whom he counseled advised him that his authority to organize a board of arbitration was at least doubtful, if indeed it had any foundation what ever. What assurance had he that Congress would sanction his action, and vote the money for the expenses of the arbitration? How could he so choose the membership of the board as to satisfy both sides, so that neither would re fuse to submit its case? Finally, when the arbitrators had finished their work, how could he make certain that all parties would carry out their obligations under the aw&rd in good faith? Instead of convening Congress, he called together the leaders of both the warring ele ments. He reasoned, and soundly, that what ever all these men agreed to, Congress could not refuse to ratify on any specious ground of partizanship, and he would have the sanction of the law after the fact if not in advance of it. The membership of the board should be de scribed, even if not personally named, by the same gathering. And before the first decisive 244 "SOCIOLOGIST" DEFINED move were made in any direction, he would pledge all the parties in interest to an honest ful filment of the decree of the arbitrators, whether for or against themselves. This plan he carried out to the letter. Of course, he did not escape criticism. A part of the press which was al ready committed against any concession to the miners, right or wrong, charged him with the usurpation of extra-constitutional powers; oth ers attacked, some humorously and some seri ously, the personnel of the arbitration com mission. For example, the representatives of the operators and of the miners had jointly decided that the commission should comprise an army or navy engineer, a mining engineer, a judge of a United States court, a sociologist, and a man who had been actively engaged in mining and selling coal and was familiar with the business. The rest of this descriptive list was easy enough to select, but the sociologist presented a puzzle. Who would come under that head? The Century Dictionary defined a sociologist as "one who treats of or devotes himself to the study of sociology," and soci ology as "the science which investigates the laws regulating human society" and treats of "the progress of civilization." 245 THE MAN ROOSEVELT It seemed, for various reasons, undesirable to load down so practical a commission with a mere theorist or doctrinaire, and the profes sional sociologists who actually mixed with men and studied their subject at first hand were few and far between. So the President adopted a definition of his own, and laid his hand at once upon the man whom he believed it best fitted. This was E. E. Clark, a railway conduc tor. If any person in any occupation had had an opportunity to study humankind in groups, and under nearly all conditions calculated to bring out their peculiarities, it was one in Mr. Clark s calling. Apart from this considera tion, moreover, Mr. Clark bore the name of a fair-minded man. Above all, he was an officer of one of the leading trade-unions in the coun try, with a membership of exceptional charac ter and intelligence, the Brotherhood of Rail way Conductors. This was the shrewd feature of the whole affair: whatever report Mr. Clark concurred in was bound to be conservative of the rights of the unions, and hence acceptable to organized labor everywhere. So, while newspaper writers and stump ora tors were poking fun at the President for his peculiar application of the term "sociologist," 246 ANOTHER ILLUSTRATION he laughed with them outwardly, but at them in secret; for he knew what he was about, and they did not. Subsequent events, as we have seen, have vindicated his wisdom. The report of the commission, which was not signed and delivered till it had been put into a shape where every member could unite in it, not only settled this particular strike, but fixed a point of de parture for the treatment of any labor questions with which the Government might be called upon to deal thereafter. It was hardly the act of a demagogue that visit of Police Commissioner Roosevelt to Clarendon Hall in New York during a par ticularly trying strike period to meet a body of representative workingmen. The police had been in more or less trouble with the restless element daily, and blood had flowed some times when officers had interfered with the ef forts of strikers to "persuade" their scab sub stitutes to drop work. The commissioner had got tired of waiting for the difficulty to com pose itself. He fancied that if all the facts were brought out by a good-tempered inquiry it might be possible for the city government to do something toward restoring quiet. So he arranged to have a talk with the strikers face 247 THE MAN ROOSEVELT to face. When he came to the hall he found as one might have guessed a group of men determined to get all they could and yield noth ing. They had quite misinterpreted his friendly advance. Why should he, a politician, come among them at this juncture except to cajole them for votes? And if he was to have the votes, he should pay a handsome price for them. So they dragged out their grievances and paraded them before him, and when they saw that he was listening intently they played their second card threats. A change passed over his face and manner. The appearance of sympathetic interest gave way, first to one of astonished curiosity, as if he were not sure that he had heard aright, and then to a settled expression of sternness. "Wait a moment!" he exclaimed, in a tone of com mand that brought the proceedings to a sudden standstill. "We came together to try to under stand each other better. I wanted to learn from your own lips what there really was be hind your trouble with your employers. I be gin to think that some of you have mistaken the purpose of my invitation. Remember this, please, before we go one step further: the man among you who advises or encourages violence 248 OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS is the enemy of all. We shall have order in this place and peace in this city before we have anything else; and the police will preserve it. Now, if the air is clearer, we can go on." The men who had been talking brute force came down once more to reason. They were cowed; and their companions, instead of be ing angry, cheered loudly the politician who wouldn t be bullied. Nor did it indicate a servile spirit when Commissioner Roosevelt made a speech of com mendation and congratulation to a roundsman whom he promoted for a specially good piece of work during the same season. There was much rioting in this officer s district. He was told to take six men and keep a certain line of street-railroad open. The mob had reached a point where it was sullen and dangerous; the roundsman therefore promptly took decisive measures charged it, clubbing right and left, and, without giving it a moment s chance to rally, drove it in headlong flight, and kept the whole railroad line clear. He had won his promotion to a sergeancy by a deed which was military in its efficiency, and Mr. Roosevelt recognized the fact without a moment s hesi tancy. 249 CHAPTER XV TRUSTS, TARIFF AND IMPERIALISM Why one corporation is sued and another not Prudential value of publicity Free-trader versus Republican A Philippine forecast sustained Tropical colonies and the flag. ABOUT the middle of February, 1902, Presi dent Roosevelt authorized the prosecution of the Northern Securities Company for violation of the Sherman anti-trust law, because he was advised by Attorney-General Knox that there was a fair reason for believing that the courts would sustain this action. The United States Steel Corporation had been marked by the pub lic as a probable target for this sort of attack; but it was not prosecuted, because the President was advised by the Attorney-General that a prosecution would probably not be sustained by the courts. Therein lies the whole story of Mr. Roose velt s attitude toward the great trade and com mercial combinations. The many explana tions offered by contemporary writers might 250 ABSURD EXPLANATION be boiled down into two : ( i ) That he was try ing to get even with sundry eminent capitalists who had criticized him; (2) that an attack on a Western combination would make votes for him among the farmers, while by lenity toward an Eastern combination he would keep on terms with certain New York capitalists whose friend ship he needed. The idea that the President had figured out an intricate anti-trust scheme so as to use a Federal law as a club for his personal revenges and a staff for his political advancement was plainly absurd. In truth, his mind so works along straight lines and on known angles that his conclusions are easier to forecast than those of perhaps any other man in public life to day. In his Minneapolis speech of Septem ber 2, 1901, he said: u The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of capital, which have marked the development of our industrial system, create new condi tions and necessitate a change from the old attitude of the State and the nation toward property. It is probably true that the large majority of the fortunes that now exist in this country have been amassed, not by injuring our people, but as an incident to the conferring 251 THE MAN ROOSEVELT of great benefit upon the community. There is but the scantiest justification for most of the outcry against the men of wealth as such; and it ought to be unnecessary to state that any appeal which directly or indirectly leads to suspicion and hatred among ourselves ... is an attack upon the fundamental properties of American citizenship. Our interests are at bot tom common; in the long run we go up or go down together. Yet more and more is it evi dent that the State, and if necessary the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations, which are its creatures; particularly as regards the great business combinations which derive a por tion of their importance from the existence of some monopolistic tendencies. The right should be exercised with caution and self- restraint, but it should exist so that it may be invoked if the need arise." This was before he had any thought that he should be, for at least three or four years, in a position to recommend legislation or direct its enforcement. His first message to Congress after he became President contained phrases which practically echoed his Minneapolis speech. There was nothing in either utterance 252 lopyrlght, 1903, l.y Underwood A- Underwood. SPEAKING TO THE PEOPLE FROM A CAR PLATFORM. PUBLICITY DEMANDED to alarm investors in industrial corporations, provided these concerns were keeping within the law. If they were not, then they were fairly warned to readjust their business so as to bring it within the law, or find no fault if the ma chinery of justice should overtake their enter prises. It has, moreover, always been Mr. Roose velt s belief that existing laws left untouched one evil which underlay all others the secrecy with which the business of great combinations is conducted. The people, who have granted extraordinary privileges to certain concerns en gaged in trade, have a right, he thinks, to know how those privileges are exercised. The Gov ernment, charged by the people with the duty of regulating such concerns, has a right to know whether they are transgressing the laws enacted for their regulation. Or, as he has put it him self: "Publicity can do no harm to the honest corporation, and we need not be overtender about sparing the dishonest corporation." Mr. Roosevelt s appeal to Congress for means with which to deal with the trusts was answered because it had public sentiment be hind it. The three measures enacted were not very drastic in effect, and perhaps only tenta- 253 THE MAN ROOSEVELT tive in purpose, but they furnished at least a basis for further action. A well-recognized source of trust aggrandizement has always been the favoritism shown to the great manufactur ing combinations by the railroad companies that transport their material and products; so one of the new enactments was an amendment to the existing interstate commerce law against rebates, whereby the receiver as well as the giver of a rebate is to be punished. Another provided for the special expedition of the anti trust suits instituted by the Attorney-General in the courts; the third created the Department of Commerce, with authority, through its bu reau of corporations, to procure for the Presi dent the information he desired about the busi ness affairs of corporate combinations, leaving to his discretion the amount of this information he shall give to the public. The whole trust policy of the President in a nutshell is: Enforce such laws as we have now because they are laws, and lay the founda tion for the just enforcement of these, and for their modification or improvement wherever necessary, by requiring the great industrial combinations to tell us just what they are do ing. It is a simple code. The humblest mind 254 UNWRITTEN HISTORY can grasp it, and no hidden meaning or motive lurks behind its plain expression. I can not leave this subject of trusts and the President s attitude toward them without tell ing a bit of inside history which I believe has never before seen print. In the winter of 1901-02 Andrew Carnegie carried into execu tion a long-cherished scheme for establishing an educational foundation which, without be ing itself a national university, should supple ment, under the auspices of the National Gov ernment, the work of all universities by afford ing means for the development of certain lines of scholarly research far past the point to which any existing resources could carry them. The idea appealed to the President strongly when Mr. Carnegie laid it before him. It was the benefactor s purpose to present his fund of $10,000,000, invested in first-lien bonds of the United States Steel Corporation, directly to the Government, the proceeds to be administered by the President, certain members of the Cabi net, and a board of directors comprising sev eral men of eminence in scientific and educa tional fields. With his usual enthusiasm for any project that combines patriotism and generosity, Mr. 18 255 THE MAN ROOSEVELT Roosevelt gave his hearty approval to this plan, and it was on the very eve of going through as originally designed, when a certain long-headed lawyer and warm friend of the President was brought into consultation and at once called a halt. "Do you realize what you are doing, Mr. President?" he demanded. "If you accept this endowment for the Government of the United States, you make the Government, and inci dentally your Administration, an underwriter of the premier securities of the Steel Trust I" The President saw the point, which till then had escaped his notice, obscured by his admira tion of the magnificence of the gift and the public benefit to be derived from it. Mr. Car negie was sent for, and a readjustment agreed upon, whereby the trusteeship of the fund was vested in an independent board. All that the people at large knew at the time was that a hitch had occurred in the arrangements pro viding for the administration of the Carnegie fund. In some quarters it was given out by the wiseacres that the Attorney- General had rendered an opinion that the United States could not lawfully accept such a gift. That is absurd. Gifts to the United States are not so 256 IN A FREE-TRADE CLUB very uncommon, and an act of Congress settles all details. But the awkwardness of the posi tion in which the President would have found himself if he had sent a message to Congress recommending the acceptance of this particu lar gift, and the difficulty of explaining to his critics that there was no connection between his attitude on this subject and Mr. Knox s dis crimination between combinations in the en forcement of the anti-trust law, will be appre ciated by the reader without comment. In or about the year 1881, with the economic doctrines emphasized by his university still fresh in his mind, Mr. Roosevelt became a member of the Free-Trade Club in New York. He found there congenial associations, the club consisting largely of educated young men like himself, full of public spirit and ambitious for a share in the world s activities. He remained a member through his entire legislative career. He was still a member when he headed his State delegation to the national convention that nominated Blaine for President; for, although nominally a Republican, he owed the support of his peculiar constituency not so much to any party connection as to his subordination of all 257 THE MAN ROOSEVELT partizan considerations to the single standard of respectability in public life. But when the time came for him to decide whether to remain the first independent in the United States and do what he could in that character, or to exchange a part of his inde pendence for an affiliation which would ulti mately open to him a larger field, he took a candid inventory of assets. If he became a straight-out party man, his free-trade interests would have to go the way of his mugwump friendships and his freedom to oppose on the stump any candidate whom he distrusted. To his mind, this phase of the question was eco nomic rather than moral. It involved no choice between right and wrong, but only between two paths leading to the same ultimate goal an unfettered commerce: the protective policy meant going around by a longer road and living by the way; the free-trade policy meant a short cut, with the rewards and the subsistence all at the end of the journey. His choice made, Mr. Roosevelt sent in his resignation as a member of the club. This was in 1885. His message contained neither an apology for the step he was taking, nor any trumped-up excuses for his original member- TARIFF REFORMER ship. It was a simple, straightforward state ment that he was "a Republican first, a free trader afterward." In this matter, as in the larger conflicts between the enthusiasms of his youth and the teachings of practical experi ence, he has come, with the passage of years, to take a more sympathetic view of his party s attitude. He still remains, however, a tariff reformer within Republican lines. Protection as a pol icy commands his support; but it never has held, and never can hold, the place of a fetish with him. It must always be a means to an end, not an end in itself. I do not believe he would condemn as a heresy the honest belief of a Republican that the party would be better without the protection clause in its creed. I do not think he would resent a Republican pro posal to supplant a prohibitory tariff with a tariff for revenue in which the protective ele ment shall be incidental only. But that does not mean that he would assent to its wisdom, considering always time and occasion. As he has sunk his own preferences in so many re spects for the sake of keeping at one with his party, he regards it as only fair that others should be willing to do the same. "We all go 259 THE MAN ROOSEVELT up or all go down together" is a favorite polit ical maxim of his, meaning that the first thought of each member of the party should be for the party as a whole and not for any individual interests. No measure of thoroughgoing tariff re vision, for the sake of reducing the burdens of the people directly, has come before Mr. Roose velt as President to put the fundaments of his economic faith to the test. The only forms in which the question has arisen have been projects for reciprocity arrangements to enlarge our commerce, which he has commended for general business reasons; a special reciprocity treaty with Cuba, which he urged as well because our national honor demands it; and proposals to use tariff reduction as a weapon against the trusts. On this last head, in a speech delivered at Cin cinnati in September, 1902, he said: "A remedy much advocated at the moment is to take off the tariff from all articles which are made by trusts. To do this it will be neces sary first to define trusts. The language com monly used by the advocates of this method im plies that they mean all articles made by large corporations, and that the changes in tariff are to be made with punitive intent toward these 260 TARIFF AND TRUSTS large corporations. Of course, if the tariff is to be changed in order to punish them, it should be changed so as to punish those that do ill, not merely those that are prosperous. If in any case the tariff is found to foster a monopoly which does ill, why, of course, no protectionist would object to a modification of the tariff sufficient to remedy the evil. But in very few cases does the so-called trust really monopolize the market. Take any very big corporation which controls, say, something over half the products of a given industry. Surely, in re arranging the schedules affecting such a big corporation, it would be necessary to consider the interests of its smaller competitors which control the remaining part." In his annual message to Congress later in the same year he said : "The only relation of the tariff to big corporations as a whole is that the tariff makes manufactures profitable, and the tariff remedy proposed would be in effect simply to make manufactures unprofitable. . . . Our aim should be not by unwise tariff changes to give foreign products the advantage over domestic products, but by proper regulation to give domestic competition a fair chance. "Stability of economic policy must always 261 THE MAN ROOSEVELT be the prime economic need of this country. This stability should not be fossilization. The country has acquiesced in the wisdom of the protective- tariff principle. It is exceedingly undesirable that this system should be destroyed, or that there should be violent and radical changes therein. ... It is better to endure for a time slight inconveniences and inequalities in some schedules. ... It is, perhaps, too much to hope that partizanship may be entirely ex cluded from consideration of the subject, but at least it can be made secondary to the business interests of the country that is, to the interests of our people as a whole. Unquestionably these business interests will best be served if together with fixity of principle as regards the tariff we combine a system which will permit us from time to time to make the necessary re- application of the principle to the shifting na tional needs. . . . There must never be any change which will jeopardize the standard of comfort, the standard of wages, of the Ameri can wage-worker." From these passages may be drawn the gist of the entire matter. Mr. Roosevelt carefully steers clear of any worship of our protective tariff as heaven-born, like most Republican ora- 262 FUTURE OF PHILIPPINES tors, but treats it merely as an artificial device adopted for a purpose. Does it seem unreason able to assume that when the disturbance of the elections of 1904 has subsided we shall see him heading a movement for tariff revision on the lines he has marked out above? Is he not committed to a non-political, conservative, and well-considered undertaking, in which no spe cial interests shall be favored at the expense of the rest, and none persecuted because they wear an obnoxious title, but in which the whole sys tem shall be treated as if the schedules were made for the people, not the people for the schedules? No one was ever authorized to expound to the public Mr. Roosevelt s views on the final disposition of the Philippine Islands, beyond the point to which he had carried such an exposi tion himself. It would therefore be presump tuous, in a volume like this, to do more than set forth the author s individual impressions, together with certain data from which each reader may draw his own inferences. I drew mine in a forecast of the President s general policies published a few days after his installa tion at the White House, and I can not better 263 THE MAN ROOSEVELT introduce the little I have now to say on the subject than by citing a brief extract from that article : The Philippine problem can not be solved for Mr. Roosevelt by any one else, nor would it be safe to say that he expects by the end of his three or four years in office to bring this to a definite and final solution. A better state ment of his views would doubtless be that in the course of four years the Filipinos can be carried a long distance forward on their way toward self-government. It is inconceivable that a man of Mr. Roose velt s moral type would favor the retention of colonies merely for the sake of retaining them, if majorities both of the colonists and of the citizens of the parent country frankly desired a separation; it is equally out of the question for any one who knows the workings of his mind to suppose him in favor of turning such a people as the Filipinos loose upon the sister hood of nations till they have been instructed in the ways of self-governing commonwealths. He would tell you that he is never an oppressor, always a civilizer; but he would hardly judge a people capable of passing upon the question of their permanent future form of government till they had tested what he regards as the ideal form. 264 OUR COLONIAL PROBLEM Reviewing this prophetic essay in the light of all that is known now, I do not care to change a single sentence. The Philippine problem, however easy of solution it may have seemed at first to the advo cates of our immediate relinquishment of the islands, bids fair not to be solved for several years to come. It certainly will not during the present administration of President Roosevelt, or the next either if he have another. There is little reason to suppose that it can be solved during his lifetime. This will account for the fact that we have not on record anywhere an utterance of his which deserves to be called a plan of settlement for this most complex of our national responsibilities. But of colonies peopled with an alien race, in a latitude where the pure Caucasian can not thrive, and on a side of the globe where they must be always separately defended by the mother country and can never help defend her in return, he expressed his opinion with great candor about two years before the battle of Manila harbor. "At best," said he, "the in habitants of a colony are in a cramped and unnatural state. At. the worst, the establish ment of a colony prevents any healthy popular 265 THE MAN ROOSEVELT growth. ... At present the only hope for a colony that wishes to attain full moral and mental growth is to become an independent state or part of an independent state. . . . If the colony is in a region where the col onizing race has to do its work by means of other inferior races the condition is much worse. From the standpoint of the race, little or nothing has been gained by the English con quest and colonization in Jamaica. Jamaica has merely been turned into a negro island, with a future seemingly much like that of San Do mingo. British Guiana, however well admin istered, is nothing but a colony where a few hundred or few thousand white men hold the superior positions, while the bulk of the popu lation is composed of Indians, negroes and Asiatics." Be it noted that he had chosen for his illus tration the extreme case of the best mother of colonies the world ever saw, a country which has stood in the forefront of human civilization longer than any we now know. Obviously, if even she had never been able to rear distant colonies to the normal stature of her own people, no other nation particularly one un trained to the business, and with a form of gov- 266 FORBEARANCE AND RESOLUTION ernment which does not lend itself readily to such a change seemed likely to succeed. Does not this view tally pretty well with his declara tion in his Minneapolis speech of September 2, 1901 : "We are not trying to subjugate a peo ple we are trying to develop them and make them a law-abiding, industrious and educated people, and, we hope, ultimately a self-govern ing people"? And we hear an echo of the same sentiment in his first message to Congress, three months later: "In dealing with the Philippine people we must show both patience and strength, for bearance and steadfast resolution. Our aim is high. We do not desire to do for the island ers merely what has elsewhere been done for tropic peoples by even the best foreign govern ments. We hope to do for them what has never before been done for any people of the tropics to make them fit for self-government after the fashion of the really free nations." Keeping these arguments in mind, let us pass to his next message, where we find him saying: "On July 4th last, the one hundred and twenty-sixth anniversary of the Declaration, peace and amnesty were promulgated in the Philippine Islands. . . . Civil government has 267 THE MAN ROOSEVELT now been introduced. Not only does each Filipino enjoy such rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as he has never before known during the recorded history of the islands, but the people, taken as a whole, now enjoy a measure of self-government greater than that granted to any other Orientals by any foreign power, and greater than that enjoyed by any other Orientals under their own gov ernments, save the Japanese alone. We have not gone too far in granting these rights of lib erty and self-government; but we have cer tainly gone to the limit that in the interest of the Philippine people themselves it was wise or just to go. To hurry matters, to go faster than we are now going, would entail calamity on the people of the islands." "But how," cry his critics, "can the Presi dent s stated assurances that he is working toward the end of complete self-government by the people of the Philippines be reconciled with his informal approval, from time to time, of references to our permanent retention of the islands?" Personally, I have never heard or read a word of his that showed his expectation of permanent retention. His saying which is most widely quoted by the advocates of that 268 VICISSITUDES OF THE FLAG idea is the conclusion of a speech to the Sons of the American Revolution in May, 1902, when a loud burst of applause had greeted his tribute to the courage and endurance of the American soldiers in suppressing the insurrec tion and restoring peace: "I thank you, fellow Americans. I think you make it evident that you intend that the flag shall stay put !" Can this single phrase, called forth as de scribed, be fairly cited as proof that he favors our occupation of the Philippines forever? It is a favorite sentimental declaration of a cer tain class of patriots that the American flag, once hoisted over a piece of territory, can never be lowered without dishonor; but Mr. Roose velt is aware, and has reminded such enthusi asts, that the flag has been hoisted and lowered again and again with entire credit to itself and the country, and that it will probably undergo this experience again and again in the future. To have failed to lower it in Cuba would have put the stamp of eternal dishonor upon the United States, and no one was more vigorously insistent on this point than Mr. Roosevelt him self when the annexationists were trying to un dermine our upright policy in quitting the island after our work there was finished. 269 THE MAN ROOSEVELT What the President does try to impress upon his countrymen is that the flag, once planted anywhere in accordance with the laws of war or a peaceful compact, shall never be forcibly hauled down by an element hostile to the prin ciples it represents. This rule he would apply equally against an external enemy or a domestic insurgent. According to the creed of the party of which he stands at the head, the authority of our Government is righteously established and now maintained in the Philippines. On this theory it makes no difference, for present purposes, whether we intend to continue it there till the end of time, or to relinquish it at the first honorable opportunity; the fact that it was there made it incumbent on the Federal authorities to put down everything which savored of rebellion by the natives subject to American sovereignty, just as they would promptly crush out any disorder on the part of the foreign residents, no matter to what power these owed allegiance and looked for protection. "One thing at a time" has always been Mr. Roosevelt s motto, and that one is the thing that lies next the hand. While the reign of blood shed continued in the Philippines, the next thing was the suppression of the insurrection 270 THE "NEXT THING" by the sharpest and therefore the shortest campaigning of which the army was capable. When the insurrection proper subsided and the reign of brigandage set in, the next thing was the exertion of all the strength of the Philippine civil government, backed by the military forces where necessary, to restore order. Wherever the conditions of peace have been established and the operation of the laws is no longer ob structed, the next thing is the education of the people in enlightened citizenship. This prob ably will be the longest of the series of evolu tionary processes. Where it will end, or when it will reach a stage at which a new question can be raised without confusion the question of independence God knows. 19 271 CHAPTER XVI A CREATURE OF IMPULSE Sudden whim or quick judgment? How the coal arbitration was set afoot The franchise tax A Jew-baiting campaign flat tened out Vigorous indorsement on a pardon petition. MANY persons who come into only super ficial contact with Mr. Roosevelt complain that he acts on impulse always, instead of consider ing a proposition. Their opinion may have a modicum of truth in it. My own experience with him, however, has led me to believe that his acts are never responsive to a mere blind whim, but are thought out at lightning speed. Two facts must be kept in view in judging of his rapid action : first, he does not always carry his consideration of a question of conduct so far as his best friends wish he would, for, when he has decided what is the course to take, in most cases he leaves the consequences entirely out of account; second, he has formed the habit, from his early youth, of following decision with action without the needless loss of a moment. His motto is : "Do it now !" 272 NO WASTE OF TIME While he was in college a horse in a stable near his lodgings made a loud noise one night that showed the poor beast to be in trouble- probably cast in the stall and choking to death. The note of alarm awakened a half dozen kind- hearted neighbors, who hastened to the rescue as soon as they could draw on clothes enough for decency and descend from their sleeping- rooms. They were in time only to lend a hand at the finish. Young Roosevelt had got to the spot already and relieved the first necessities of the horse. The promptness of his response was due to the fact that he had come as he was clad in nothing but a night-shirt and had dropped out of a second-story window to save the time of going down-stairs and through the house to the back door. In the summer of 1902, I went to him with the suggestion that, even if he did not feel justi fied yet in interfering in the coal strike and try ing to ward off a national calamity, he could at least acquaint himself with the facts of the situa tion so as to be ready to act promptly when the time came. "Who is the man to get me the facts?" he demanded, without a moment s hesitancy. "Carroll D. Wright," I answered, having 273 THE MAN ROOSEVELT already prepared myself for the question, and citing my authority from the Revised Statutes. "Find out for me whether he is in the city." With what I fondly fancied was speed, I made my way to Commissioner Wright s office. His secretary told me he was at Marblehead Neck, Mass. "We answered a telephone in quiry of the same sort a few minutes ago/ he added. "The President wanted his address, and in haste." I ran back to the White House only to find that a telegram had already gone to Mr. Wright, calling him to Washington for a conference. Thus quick was Mr. Roosevelt to act upon an idea which appealed to him on its first state ment. Mr. Wright s report set in motion the train of events leading up to the arbitration of the strike. Mr. Roosevelt always seems to be in a hurry, as soon as his mind is made up, to let the world know what he is going to do. But for this very reason I have never agreed with the commenta tors who describe him as a man of dramatic sur prises. A dramatic surprise, as I understand the term, is one in which the curtain is suddenly lifted on a completed fact. The theatrical ele ment is dissipated by long heralding, and Mr. 274 PREMATURE ANNOUNCEMENTS Roosevelt often sounds his warning a good while before he acts. His decision in Collector Bidwell s case became public in October, though the change was not to be made till the following spring. The announcement that Pension-Com missioner Evans was to be transferred to some other office was given out about April i, 1902, though the new place for him was not found till May, and Mr. Ware was not named as his suc cessor till still later. It was as early as July of the same year that news came from Oyster Bay that Augustus T. Wimberley was to retire from the Collectorship of Customs at New Orleans, although his current commission would not ex pire till December. These are a few notable instances chosen from a multitude. My own explanation of such premature announcements is that they serve a twofold purpose: they stop empty guessing and gossip, and they head off a great many importunities from professional office-seekers. Once in a while, too, they operate like marriage bans, encouraging all who have anything to say against the proposed change to say it and have done. The advance advertisement of his inten tions has thus, to my certain knowledge, saved the President once from giving an important 275 THE MAN ROOSEVELT office to a chronic drunkard, and once from ap pointing a negro-lyncher in the South. Now and then we hear stories of Mr. Roose velt s sudden and impulsive change of purpose, which on analysis lead back merely to one of his tricks of speech. In conversation, if he is at all interested, his mind keeps leaping ahead, and forecasting the conclusions aimed at by his com panion before the latter has fairly finished the major premise. This habit, by the way, often gets him into trouble when he is talking with men who are not familiar with his ways. His statement of another s conclusion, even with an indication of interest in it, does not mean that he accepts it himself. When he accompanies it with an ejaculation like, "Just so," or "I see," the comparative stranger is apt to confuse mere quick apprehension with cordial approval. This will account for the occasional appear ance in the press of some announcement that the President purposes doing so-and-so, followed promptly by a refutation, although the original news was evidently published in good faith and on reputable authority. No one is more aston ished than Mr. Roosevelt when one of these false reports gets into circulation. He has no con ception of his share in its authorship. 276 TRICKS OF SPEECH Another of his tricks of speech akin to this, but a trick merely, is that of echoing with assent a remark made by a companion, but inserting into his own version a qualifying word or phrase which, as his speech is very rapid, only an equally rapid sense is likely to catch. For ex ample, "The plan I have suggested is the only one open to us in this exigency," remarks a visit ing Congressman. "I quite agree with you," answers the President: "the plan you have sug gested is almost the only one open to us in this exigency." Then the Congressman hastens away to spread the news that he has induced the President to adopt his plan. He is astounded when the President denies it. The President is equally astounded that the Congressman should have made such a statement. He had spoken in all sincerity when he indorsed the spirit of the Congressman s remark first and modified its phraseology so slightly afterward. "Smith is the best man in the whole batch for District- Attorney," remarks a Senator, after going through a pile of application papers at the White House. "You are quite right," as sents the President: "in most respects, Smith is the best man in the batch." But later that day the President concludes that "most respects" 277 THE MAN ROOSEVELT do not include the one respect which he is spe cially trying to meet in that selection; so he decides upon Jones, who does fill the bill in that particular, though he may not in others. The Senator, who has meanwhile informed Smith s friends that their man is sure of appointment, goes about like a roaring lion when he hears of Jones s good fortune, alleging that the Presi dent has changed his mind without warning. As a matter of fact, the Senator was simply misled by his own ear, and the wish that was father to the thought. Some of his critics who lay to his impulsive ness everything in him which excites no respon sive thrill in themselves, charged to that trait Mr. Roosevelt s tactics as Governor, in press ing the corporation franchise tax bill. The trouble with this criticism is that it is based on a short memory. For years before he became Governor Mr. Roosevelt had insisted that one of the weak points in our American practise of government was the State s willingness to give away valuable assets which in any private busi ness transaction would command a great price. This fact seems to have been generally forgot ten, or else the professional politicians assumed that, like themselves, Mr. Roosevelt had one set 278 FRANCHISE TAX of ideas for the consumption of his friends and for discreet campaign use, and another set to govern his actual practise when the opportunity arrived. At any rate, as soon as it was discov ered that he really intended to embody his views in a message to the Legislature, and urge the enactment of a law taxing the monopolistic franchises of corporations, the Republican State machine remonstrated. No such promise had been made in the party platform, argued the leaders. "More s the pity," responded the Governor; "it was a sad oversight, but I ll try to make it good." The corporations have always come down liberally when the campaign hat has been passed, argued the leaders. "If you mean that they thought they were buying the Republican party," re sponded the Governor, "it is high time that we should undeceive them." The corporations deserve just as much consideration as any one else at the hands of the State, argued the lead ers. "And, conversely, are under just as great obligations to the State," responded the Gov ernor; "that s why I m trying to even things up." There is great danger that when untrained leg islators or assessors undertake a specialty like the valuation of franchises, they will blunder, 279 THE MAN ROOSEVELT argued the leaders. "Then we ll call in the experts to help us frame our bill or trim it into shape," responded the Governor; "we ll have hearings for the corporations, and they will be represented by the best talent their means can command." It was easy enough to have a bill introduced at the beginning of the session the framework of a measure which could be improved and fin ished at leisure; but when this presently stuck fast in a committee pigeonhole, how was it to be got out? It was easy enough to invite the corporations to come forward and be heard, but who could compel them to accept? The newspapers made a sensational spread on the news. Some warned the corporations that now was their time to move upon the Gov ernor before he had his fighting blood aroused. Others, perhaps a majority, treated the matter as if it were one of Mr. Roosevelt s so-called theatrical outbursts which would soon pass and be forgotten. The corporations shrugged their shoulders and said nothing. After the Governor had talked to a good many of the legislators, he reached the conclu sion that some influence was at work against him under the surface. Whether it was a cor- 280 A "LOST" MESSAGE poration lobby, or the party machine, or both, was hard to make out. He did not waste a great deal of time trying to analyze the obstruction himself, but made up his mind to apply the solvent of an aroused popular sentiment. The end of the session was at hand, and under the State Constitution the only way he could get that bill before the Legislature was by a special mes sage declaring the business urgent. He wrote the message. It was pretty temperate in tone, but contained, as his messages usually do, a very plain statement of facts. It was inter cepted and "lost" on its way to the Legis lature. The Governor was not satisfied with the explanation of its disappearance, so he prepared a duplicate and sent it in at once. This time he took precautions to see that it got safely into the hands of the Speaker of the Assembly, with a warning that if it were not read from the Speaker s desk, another copy would be read by a member on the floor. It was read from the desk. The laggard committeemen, rather than brave the chance of being skinned alive in the next campaign, voted the bill out. The members of both houses, actuated by the same patriotic motive, decided to let it come up for 281 THE MAN ROOSEVELT passage; enough of them voted "aye" to pass it, and the Legislature adjourned. Then the corporations ceased to shrug their shoulders and began to stir around. They sent in their belated acceptances of the Governor s invitation, and asked to be heard. "Certainly," was his cheerful answer, "I ll hear you with pleasure. Why didn t you speak before?" Of course, they didn t like the bill as it stood. "Well," said the Governor, "I don t know that I am entirely satisfied with it myself, but it was the best we could do under the cir cumstances." "Then you won t sign it? You will post pone the whole business till next session and try again?" pleaded the corporations. "One proposition at a time, gentlemen," said the Governor. "I m willing to recommend any proper amendments at the next session, but meanwhile well, you know the old proverb about the bird in the hand? I ve tried all win ter to get a bill ; now that I ve got one I don t think I d better let it slip away from me. I ll sign this bill, and then I ll sign any amendments passed next winter that commend themselves to my judgment." "But next winter is some distance away," the 282 CORPORATE DEFIANCE corporations persisted. "In the meantime the law will have gone into operation and irrepara ble damage been done. Let this bill drop, and call an extra session to pass one that will be fair all around. We ll help you." "If you really mean that," said the Gov ernor, "I will split the difference with you. I will sign this bill: that secures us something, in any event. Then I ll convene an extra session, and we can work together for such modifications as would be just and right." Seeing that he was not to be cajoled, the pleaders withdrew. He was as good as his word. The extra session met, some changes were made in the act, but not so radical as the corporations wished. "We ll fight your law in the courts," they thundered. "By all means," he answered imperturbably; "then we ll find out which side is right, and the next legislation we put through will avoid any mistakes the courts discover in this." The entire incident may have been, as the critics charge, the fruit of an impulsive tem perament insufficiently controlled; but most common folk will fancy that they can detect traces of deliberation and method in it. So they will in the Ahlwardt episode. 283 THE MAN ROOSEVELT Dr. Ahlwardt, the German anti-Semitic agi tator, visited the United States in 1895. Mr. Roosevelt was then Police Commissioner in New York. When it was advertised that Ahl wardt was coming to that city to make a pub lic address on his favorite subject, a number of the anti-Semites who had joined in this invita tion were startled by a sudden thought, and hastened to Police Headquarters to assure them selves that their guest would be protected from violence. They carried their application to the President of the Board. "What are you afraid of?" asked Mr. Roose velt. "Dr. Ahlwardt is often very bitter in his expressions," they answered. "The Jews may assemble at the hall and mob him." "That s nonsense," said the Commissioner; "there are no more peaceable citizens in New York than the Jews." "But we should feel better satisfied if you would give the Doctor a special guard of police on the evening of the lecture," urged the deputa tion. "Their appearance in the hall would awe the intending rioters." "Go home and ease your minds," said Mr. Roosevelt. "Dr. Ahlwardt shall have a special 284 A HEBREW BODY-GUARD guard of police, and it will be the most im pressive-looking body of men on the force." His visitors withdrew, with many expres sions of gratitude which he received with a sig nificant smile. He had already formed his plan, and sent for an inspector who was noted for his familiarity with the personnel of the rank and file. "I wish a list made of thirty good, trusty, in telligent men, all Jews," said the Commissioner. "Don t bother yourself to hunt up their religious antecedents; take those who have the most pro nounced Hebrew physiognomy the stronger their ancestral marking the better. When you have selected the detail, order them to report to me in a body." On the arrival of the Jewish officers, Mr. Roosevelt lined them up before him for scru tiny. The inspector had done his work thor oughly. A more Hebraic group of Hebrews probably never were gathered in one small room. St. Paul s Epistle could not have got past that open door if it had been shot out of a catapult. "Now," said the Commissioner, as he sur veyed the line with satisfaction gleaming through his big gold spectacles, "I am going to 285 THE MAN ROOSEVELT assign you men to the most honorable service you have ever done the protection of an enemy, and the defense of religious liberty and free speech in the chief city of the United States. You all know who and what Dr. Ahlwardt is. I am going to put you in charge of the hall where he lectures, and hold you responsible for perfect good order there throughout the even ing. I have no more sympathy with Jew-bait ing than you have. But this is a country where your people are free to think and speak and act as they choose in religious matters, as long as you do not interfere with the peace and comfort of your neighbors, and Dr. Ahlwardt is entitled to the same privilege. It should be your pride to see that he is protected in it; that will be the finest way of showing your appreciation of the liberty you yourselves enjoy under the Ameri can flag." Imagine the feelings of Dr. Ahlwardt s sup porters when they went to the hall on the even ing of his address prepared for a disturbance, but found planted like pillars at the doors, and caryatids inside, an array of police with features, coloring and accent that showed them to belong to the very race against whom the speaker was to declaim. There were Jews in the audience, 286 CHECKMATING AN AGITATOR too; but, whatever their impulse, their col leagues in uniform set them an example of per fect outward equanimity and self-control which could not pass unappreciated. Only one specta tor ventured to interrupt the proceedings; be fore he had had a chance to state which side he was on, he was suppressed by a stalwart officer with a rarely characteristic profile, and hustled ignominiously into the street. The rest of the show was as placid as a mill- pond. The most disappointed man in New York that night undoubtedly was the orator himself, who was so used to rousing his hearers to frenzy that he missed the inspiration of his customary turmoil. The quiet which reigned everywhere operated as a cold douche not only on that meeting, but on the entire anti- Semitic program mapped out for Ahlwardt s visit. Before leaving this subject, I ought to say that I do recall one case of "hot impulse" which perhaps deserves the designation. A low crea ture in the form of a man had been convicted in a Western State of unlawful use of the mails. Although well educated, worthily married, with a family growing up about him, he had led astray a young girl scarcely more than a child 20 287 THE MAN ROOSEVELT in maturity and then had written to her ex plicit instructions how to hide her shame by following folly with crime. The court had imposed a sentence of two years imprisonment upon him. He had appealed, but without ef fect, as the conviction was securely based. Before he had been in the penitentiary a month his friends got up a petition for his par don, and succeeded in inducing ten of the twelve jurors to sign it. The memorial set forth that "up to the time of his conviction," which of course included the period while he was com mitting his offenses, he had been "a man of good moral character and standing in the com munity" ; that a family was dependent upon him for support; that he had already been punished enough, and that his behavior in prison had been exemplary. On the other hand, the judge who tried the case, though consenting to let the petition go to the President, declared that the evidence showed that the fellow had been a "cal culating debaucher of female virtue and a wil ful and corrupt perjurer"; while the District Attorney added that the trial had proved the defendant to have taken advantage of his victim "in a most shocking manner," and that there was "not a single redeeming feature in his case and 288 CHARACTERISTIC INDORSEMENT absolutely nothing that would tend to excuse him or excite sympathy." Yet this brute was able to command the assistance of a multitude of the best citizens in the community where he had formerly lived, and the services of the entire Congressional delegation from his State to work for his par don. This final card was expected to prove the winning one, and it was played for its full effect; for the State would be needed by Mr. Roose velt in the campaign of 1904, and its Senators and Representatives would have a share in the convention that was expected to nominate him to succeed himself. The President scowled harder and harder as he read the pardon papers through. When he had finished the last one, he set his teeth, jabbed his pen into the ink with such force as almost to bend its nibs, and scribbled an in dorsement on the petition, of which the conclu sion ran thus : "I sincerely regret it is not in my power materially to increase the sentence of this scoun drel. THEODORE ROOSEVELT." 289 CHAPTER XVII THE MAN OF MANY PARTS A marvel of versatility Spoiling an embryo naturalist Perils of an emphatic style Masterful manners Mr. Roosevelt s work as an author Method of composition His newspaper reading. ELSEWHERE I have referred to Mr. Roose velt s many-sided quality. Even at long range this characteristic is observable, as shown by the skit in an English periodical which greeted his accession to the Presidency: A smack of Lord Cromer, Jeff Davis a touch of him ; A little of Lincoln, but not very much of him ; Kitchener, Bismarck, and Germany s Will, Jupiter, Chamberlain, Buffalo Bill. In all his varied characters he has been, and is, a marvel of energy. "A steam-engine in trousers" was what Senator Foraker dubbed him. "A volcano of electricity" was the phrase devised by the Populist Judge Doster, of Kansas. "Theodore the Sudden" was another title that 290 SPOILING A SCIENTIST stuck for a time. One of his biographers de scribes him in an introductory paragraph as "that amiable and gifted author, legislator, field- sportsman, soldier, reformer and executive." This is a pretty good postscript for one man s name, but it is not a complete catalogue, for in the making of a popular leader was un doubtedly spoiled a very good natural scientist. The most conspicuous ornaments of his room in college were skins and stuffed animals. His birds he mounted himself. Live insects and reptiles were always in evidence in his study; his chums tell a funny story of a scene when he accidentally let loose on the floor of a Boston street-car a bundle of lobsters he was carrying to his rooms in Cambridge for dissection; and some of the other occupants of his lodging-house were thrown into a panic one day on confront ing in an upper corridor an enormous tortoise which a friend had sent him from the South Seas, and which had escaped from his boot- closet and started for the bath-room in search of water. His graduating paper was an essay on natural history. The late "Tom" Reed of Maine, although full of appreciation of Roosevelt s sturdy vir tues, could not repress a bit of irony now and 291 THE MAN ROOSEVELT then at the expense of his peculiarities. "If there is one thing more than another for which I admire you, Theodore," he said once, "it is your original discovery of the Ten Command ments." This shot, of course, was aimed at Mr. Roosevelt s impressive way of stating well-set tled and familiar truths in argument. But that trick of speech is not more characteristic than another, which I have never seen mentioned in any of the printed sketches of him. His love of fair dealing forbids his leaving a proposi tion half-stated, waiting for comment or ques tions from some interested party to draw out the rest, but moves him always to adjust the equilibrium at the outset. For example, he never writes a line to de fend his negro policy because it is simple jus tice to the negro, without adding that it will prove the best possible thing for the white man also in the long run. The civilized public thor oughly enjoyed his recent letter on the atroci ties of lynch law, apropos of the frequency with which negroes were burned at the stake for the most hideous of crimes; but they had to read with it some equally wholesome comments on the crime itself and the punishment it deserved. His speeches on the right of labor to organize 292 BALANCING OPINIONS for its own protection have always been coupled with a reminder that this right does not justify the commission of violence of any sort; and when his Trust policy had exposed him to at tack as an enemy of capital, his answer was: "We shall find it necessary to shackle cunning as in the past we have shackled force." In tell ing an audience of something which he had done for a Catholic because the Catholic was a victim of religious proscription in the com munity where he lived, he took pains to add that he would have done just the same thing for a Protestant if the local situation had been reversed. This is an admirable practise in most cases, because it insures a well-balanced instead of one-sided presentation of any subject. But now and then the equilibrizing process seems to have been dragged in, as it were, from pure force of habit, and then it mars the best effect of what Mr. Roosevelt has to say; as where, in express ing the sorrow of the American people for the death of Queen Victoria, he adopted the cau tious prelude: "In view of the sympathy shown by the late Queen Victoria with our loss in the death of President McKinley," etc. And his description of the explosion of a Spanish shell 293 THE MAN ROOSEVELT among a group of his Rough Riders, resulting in the death of "a singularly gallant young Har vard fellow, Stanley Hollister," is rendered al most bathetic by the next sentence : "An equally gallant young fellow from Yale, Theodore Mil ler, had already been mortally wounded." Most men who have been in his position are famous for some single sentence, terse in itself and forcefully applicable to the exigency in which it was used. Mr. Roosevelt s name is associated with several such. Still, one who is familiar with his habit of speech might wonder whether he would not have lengthened Grant s "Let no guilty man escape" by an appendix, "but guard equally the innocent" ; and changed Cleveland s "Tell the truth" into "Tell both sides." The gift of ready expression with which Mr. Roosevelt is endowed by nature has hurt rather than helped what might have been an uncom monly good style. In both speaking and wri ting he knows what he wishes to say, and says it without hesitancy or reserve. But he has a positive genius for epigram and satire, and the possessor of such a faculty is apt to be led into extremes in speech. Mr. Roosevelt fairly lives in an atmosphere of superlatives. He will 294 SUPERLATIVE EXPRESSION speak of a "perfectly good man with a perfectly honest motive," where all that he intends to say is that the man is well-meaning. He is "de lighted" where most of us are pleased. The latest visitor is "just the very man I wanted to see," and "nothing I have heard in a long time has interested me so much" as the passing bit of information. Because of this habit of extreme expression I am sometimes asked whether I consider the President a fair judge of men. I should assent with the reservation: when he takes time to weigh his first suggestions. His danger lies two facts: first, his own natural candor, whicl / leads him to accept a man of aggressive mien at face value but makes him suspicious of hesi tancy of manner; second, the enormous variety of human types he has met in the course of his wanderings, and the amount of good he has found under many unpromising exteriors, so that the keenness of his original impressions has been somewhat dulled. He has a sanguine tem perament, and would rather find a stranger a "good fellow" than not, and the right sort of an introduction often prepares the way for a kindly judgment. On the other hand, I recall one case where 295 THE MAN ROOSEVELT he refused to be reconciled to the presence of a certain holdover in office, and the only reason he vouchsafed for his dislike was: "I had him in here the other day to ask him some questions, and he tried to doddle with me." Knowing the obnoxious officer as I did, I understood the phrase perfectly; and when I ran the matter down I found that his offending consisted in his hesitation to answer certain questions which he thought, in the interest of good discipline, ought to be asked of the head of his depart ment rather than of himself. While not a martinet in ordinary matters, Mr. Roosevelt can exercise the iron rule of a despot on occasion. He will accept no excuse from officers of high rank and education in either arm of the war service, when they per sist in squabbling to the scandal of their asso ciates and the demoralization of the rank and file. The Miles-Corbin feud was still linger ing when he became President. He brought his fist down with the order, "Stop it!" and it stopped. General Miles passed some unneces sary comments on the Sampson-Schley contro versy, of which the public had already had a nauseating dose; he was rebuked at once, and in a manner which showed that the President 296 CUTTING QUARRELS SHORT meant to adopt more serious measures if the General did not heed his first admonition. Two rear-admirals of the navy who, at the close of the court of inquiry in the same case, took ex ception to the mildness of the findings, received something as near a reprimand as the law would permit the President to administer except as the result of a trial. Edgar Stanton Maclay, an employee in the Brooklyn navy-yard who had written a history denouncing Schley as a caitiff and a coward, and something little short of a traitor, was dismissed summarily from his posi tion. But when Schley s partizans in Congress let it come to the President s ears that they thought of introducing a resolution flattering their hero and reflecting on his enemies, the President let it come to their ears in return that he should veto the resolution in a message which might result in mortification for somebody. No stated communications passed between the White House and the Capitol; there were no face-to-face consultations; everything was conducted in the same informal manner on the President s part as on that of the Congressmen, so that no one could complain afterward of threats or other unbecoming compulsions. But he gave them distinctly to understand that for 297 THE MAN ROOSEVELT decency s sake he had himself abstained from doing anything to keep alive this unfortunate quarrel; that he had treated both sides with equal justice throughout; and that he was re solved to throttle any attempt to drag him fur ther into the matter, or to prolong public dis cussion of it to the damage of an honorable service. That ended the folly. To muster a two-thirds vote aganist a veto by a highly popu lar President, issued in behalf of peace, was more of a task than the authors of the proposed resolution cared to tackle. With their retire ment from the field the Sampson-Schley con troversy, which had been carried on continu ously for three and one-half years, passed out of sight in a single night and forever, as all good citizens will devoutly hope. All his life he has been taking up lines of work which other men have followed, but hunt ing for something to do there which they have overlooked. As Assistant Secretary he found everything in the naval establishment at loose ends, so that the head of the department could not have acted quickly and on accurate informa tion in case of war. For example, the latest re vised list purporting to show the names, capacity, and size of crews of the merchant vessels which 298 PREPARING THE NAVY could be drafted into the auxiliary navy if needed, contained the names of three ships which had been destroyed or lost since the re port was made up, although one of these disas ters had filled whole pages of newspaper space about the time of its occurrence. The fact that such antiquated data had been allowed to re main among the live records of the depart ment showed that it had been made nobody s special business to keep the list abreast of the times. This and similar discoveries led Mr. Roose velt to order a general cleaning-up and the preparation of a complete property list. His plan aroused much criticism, nevertheless, both in and out of the service. Inside, it devolved extra hard duty for a while upon the clerical force in Washington and at the naval stations; outside, it smacked of jingoism because it could not be done in secret, and from the news that the United States navy was getting into con dition for war the natural inference was that war was expected. Yet throughout the period of greatest activity, and though absolutely con vinced in his own mind that war was coming and coming soon, Mr. Roosevelt lost no op portunity to discourage "war talk" among his 299 THE MAN ROOSEVELT subordinates. He would submit to no news paper interviews on the subject himself, and in every way did what he could to allay popular excitement. Only with his associates in the Government, or in company where he felt that his confidence would be respected, would he discuss his private views. A characteristic story is told of his insistence on constant target practise in the navy. Early in his administration he asked for and received an extraordinarily large appropriation for am munition. A few months later he called for another. This startled Congress. Questioned as to what had become of his first fund, he an swered: "Every cent of it has been spent for powder and shot, and every bit of powder and shot has been fired." And when asked what he intended doing with the additional amount: "I shall use every dollar of that, too, within the next thirty days in practise shooting. That s what ammunition is made for to burn." His impatience of red tape was a standing topic of comment at the department. The bureaucrats who surrounded him there were never able to understand why they should not be permitted to go on as they had, doing things by rote, no matter how much time might be 300 LITERARY ACTIVITIES consumed thereby to no purpose. One com mittee which had met with him daily for a week, and adjourned every afternoon without making any discernible progress, left him pacing the floor. "To-morrow," said one of the party as they went out, "we can do so- and-so." "To-morrow!" echoed Mr. Roosevelt, halt ing and gritting his teeth. "Gentlemen, if Noah had had to consult such a committee as this about building his ark, it wouldn t have been built yet!" No book about Theodore Roosevelt would be complete, of course, without at least a refer ence to his work as an author. As I have attempted in this volume no more serious task than the grouping of a few personal recollec tions and impressions, I must leave anything like criticism of his literary enterprises, or even a comprehensive bibliography, to other hands. Suffice it here to say that his chief activities in this field are represented by his "Naval War of 1812," which deserves mention by itself be cause it has always been regarded as the stand ard text-book on its subject, though published within two years of his graduation from Har vard; "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman"; biog- 301 THE MAN ROOSEVELT raphies of Thomas Hart Benton, Gouverneur Morris and Oliver Cromwell; "Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail"; "The Winning of the West," which ranks next to his story of 1812 as a monumental history; "The Wilderness Hunter" ; "New York" ; "The Rough Riders" ; and collections of essays entitled "American Ideals" and "The Strenuous Life." Besides these, he has produced several minor works, and collaborated as author, compiler and editor of composite volumes on historical and sporting topics. Although he realizes the value and popularity of many of his publications, he tells with glee of a visit he once paid to a book store in Idaho where he had noticed a copy of his "Winning of the West" in the window. Falling into conversation with the proprietor, he motioned with his thumb toward the history, inquiring with feigned curiosity: "Who is this man Roosevelt?" "Oh," was the answer, "he s a ranch-driver up in the cattle country." "What s your opinion of his work?" The dealer hesitated a moment and then remarked, meditatively: "Well, I ve always thought I d like to meet the author and tell him that if he d stuck to running ranches and not 302 A SPECIMEN PAGE 1> *+ <*Z UZ* ^Xr^^ o*xf ^f, 4jL**r*r*.0 <*~*~^-~ <*-&* <*iP. *~& ~~* CLOSING PARAGRAPH OF THE PRESIDENT S ESSAY ON "THE STRENUOUS LIFE," IN HIS OWN HANDWRITING. 81 303 THE MAN ROOSEVELT tried to write books, he d have cut a heap bigger figure at his trade." \ Mr. Roosevelt s methods in writing are his own. They are bound to be, if he would write at all; for a man who between necessity and choice spends so much of his time in the com pany of others, would stand a poor chance as a maker of books if he were obliged to seclude himself for several hours a day behind barred doors in his study. Fortunately for him and for the reading public, he has a faculty lacking in authors generally the ability to halt a piece of literary work anywhere, go about other busi ness, and then return to his composition and take up its threads where he had let them fall, never sacrificing his continuity of thought or rhetorical construction. Most of his original composing is done on his feet, pacing up and down the room and dic tating to a stenographer. He does not even see how his periods hang together till they have been reduced to typewritten form and the sheets laid upon his desk. Then, when an interval of reduced tension comes, his eye falls upon the manuscript and lingers there. If he is con versing, the closing words of the next sentence are uttered in a dreamy tone and die away 304 METHODS OF COMPOSITION almost with a drawl, as his glance sweeps across the uppermost page on the pile and he sidles absent-mindedly into his seat and bends over the table. His left hand lifts the top sheet while the right gropes for a pen, and in a moment the author is quite buried in his work, annotating between the lines as he reads. The friend who is with him probably re spects his mood and subsides into a sofa-corner, or warms his hands before the fire, or amuses himself at the window till the first force of ab sorption has spent itself and Mr. Roosevelt lifts his head to remark, "Now, here is where I be lieve I have made a point never before brought out," and proceeds to read aloud a passage and descant upon it. If this impromptu enlarge ment transcends certain bounds, the speaker is on his feet again in an instant and pacing the floor as he talks. Sentence follows sentence from his lips like shots from the muzzle of a magazine-gun all well-timed and well-aimed in spite of their swiftness of utterance. The chances are that one of them will recoil to im press its author afresh with its aptness, and back he will sidle into the vacant chair to put that idea into visible form with his pen and wedge it in between two others. 30S THE MAN ROOSEVELT Next to describing a hunting adventure or painting an historical picture for that is his style as a chronicler rather than parading a sequence of names and dates and events his greatest fondness is for reviewing books, and his services are in constant demand. I have rarely seen him engaged in this line of composition with the subject of his review bodily before him, though it is usually in the hands of his copyist with certain paragraphs marked for insertion in his manuscript. But he knows the book from a single reading, accomplished in less time than it would take most of us to struggle through twenty pages. As a reader, his mind operates almost like the automatic counter in a mint: to what it wants, or expects to find, it seems to be guided by unerring instinct; the rest it rejects quite as swiftly and surely. To watch him read a book, it appears as if he were merely running his eye down so many margins in a dictionary, to catch a title here and there of which he is especially in search. This method is probably the fruit of many years* experience in a variety of fields. As the old mariner knows how to scan a log without waste of time, and the trained scientist understands what to ignore as familiar and what 306 READING HABITS to exploit as a fresh discovery, so the intelli gence of this many-sided man responds mag netically to the presence of a new idea or a par ticularly vigorous presentation of an old one. He reads a newspaper article, by the way, in much the same manner, though naturally with still greater swiftness. Flash boom and his shot has struck the very central thought in a column of one thousand words. In thirty years observation of exchange-readers in newspaper offices, I have never seen anything to approach his celerity. Moreover, the answer to the argu ment, or the refutation of the charge, is out almost in the same breath that voices the closing sentence from the type. And speaking of newspapers, no misappre hension is more wide-spread than that Mr. Roosevelt is given to newspaper reading. On the contrary, his indulgence in this practise is sparing beyond that of almost any public man I have ever known. If he is doing something which is likely to create excitement in a certain neighborhood, he may direct one of his clerks to watch the comments of the local press and bring him any that are particularly trenchant. He has occasionally subscribed to a clippings bureau. But this is about as far as he goes. 307 THE MAN ROOSEVELT He does not object to criticism, as such. Even ridicule is welcome, if it be founded on fact and witty in form. The pictorial carica ture is his delight, which is not dampened by the fact that it may make him appear as a mere effigy composed of slouch-hat, top-boots, knot ted neckerchief, glistening spectacles and tomb stone teeth. The one thing he can not endure in print is a falsehood about himself. An ed itorial attack which assumes such a falsehood as true without inquiry, or which turns upon an obviously deliberate misconstruction of his words or acts, comes next in order as an in centive to his wrath. The force of the explo sion which follows depends upon circumstances, but it is safe to count on the explosion every time. 308 CHAPTER XVIII SOME CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS Horsemanship and hard tramps The family man at home Rol licking with the children A champion of chaste living White House hospitalities The religious life of the President. "Dm you go into literature with a view to making it your profession?" inquired an inter viewer who had worked his way into Mr. Roosevelt s library and found it about equally devoted to books, pictures, stuffed game and live pets. "No," answered the host, "I went into it because I liked it." "Did you not take the usual course of poetry, fiction, essays and criticism?" "No, I studied American history and hunt ing especially big game." "Then you do not care a great deal for our modern literature of psychological analysis?" "I should care a great deal more for a first- rate American literature of outdoor sports. But I don t include among sports mere attend- 39 THE MAN ROOSEVELT ance at a horse-race, for instance; the only kind I am interested in are those in which men take an active part themselves." This did not mean that he was indifferent to horses. From his cowboy days he has always had a lively taste for riding, and his steed must be one of spirit or he will have none of it. Soon after he became President he wished to add a few good saddle-horses to his stable, and com missioned an acquaintance to find them. The person thus honored was duly impressed with the gravity of the task, for it would never do, of course, to let a President of the United States break his neck. So he selected two animals dis tinguished as much for their dignity of deport ment as their excellence of pedigree, and sent them to the White House. The President or dered them out for trial. The first horse cara coled about with grace and precision, as if ac customed to being ridden in a procession; the second began by taking little mincing steps, and, when goaded by main force into a gallop and put at a three-foot hurdle, meekly stopped and smelt of the obstruction. With a deep sigh the rider alighted and threw his bridle to a groom. "Well, sir?" said the man, inquiringly. "Oh, for goodness sake, send them back," 310 AN AFTERNOON SPIN exclaimed the President. "I ordered horses not rabbits!" Next to horseback- riding as an outdoor ex ercise, Mr. Roosevelt esteems walking. But walking with him is not a leisurely stroll through the woods and fields or over beaten roads, but the strenuous sort which makes the nerves tingle as well as the blood. His great delight, when he needs a change from his usual canter, is to gather a group of congenial spirits and make a dash "on shanks trotters" through the country on the outskirts of Washington, coming in at their head on the return as fresh as a daisy, while his companions trudge off in search of bath and bed. It gives him particu lar pleasure, in organizing a walking party, to include at least one untried man. Such a tramp as he lays out enables him to measure the novi tiate s mettle. One fine day about two years ago, he in vited a few friends to an afternoon spin up the shore of the Potomac. A special invitation was extended to a newly appointed bureau chief on whom the President was depending for some courageous but delicate work. The chief was young, lithe of build, athletic in appearance, and it seemed desirable to put him to a test of 3" THE MAN ROOSEVELT endurance and ingenuity. Another person favored was an office-holder with a fair reputa tion for grit but too large a girth for his own good; the idea was to reduce this a little. The President, of course, set the pace with his long quick stride, and the rest ambled after as best they could. The shore path was pleasant enough and not too difficult till a point was reached where a stone-quarry jutted out into the river. The workmen had put a cable over one of the rocks which ran straight down into the water, to help them crawl around it; there was a boat at hand, also, for the use of any one who was afraid to trust himself to the cable. The party halted only a moment just long enough to see how the land lay. "The boat for me," said a Senator who, though proportioned for agility, was a little out of practise and had a great respect for his own dignity. "For me, too," said the stout office-holder, dropping in after the Senator and making a place ready for the President. "Meet me on the other side," laughed the President, and started across the sheer face of the rock, disdaining the aid of the cable, but using toes and finger-tips to clutch at the little niches left by the blasts. If he had missed his hold anywhere, he would have had a 312 HOME LIFE souse in ten feet of muddy water. But he didn t. His son Theodore and the new bureau chief followed where he led. All got home in safety some time after nightfall, and the next day the gossip of the town was their adventure at the big quarry rock. The minor members called it "scaling the Matte rhorn"; the President called it "bully." Mr. Roosevelt s love of family and home amounts to a passion. I remember one even ing when, to a party of friends around his table, he had been describing with his usual enthu siasm the delights of his life on the Western plains, and some one turned to him with the remark: "With your love of that free existence, I wonder you ever settled down in the hum drum East. Honestly, now, don t you wish you had been born and reared on a ranch?" An affirmative answer was on the tip of Mr. Roosevelt s tongue when he suddenly paused, and cast a quick glance, plainly involuntary and almost embarrassed, past the questioner, where it settled on our hostess with an expression which could not be mistaken. Then he began, hesi tatingly: "No, because " "I know why," exclaimed one of the ladies. 3*3 THE MAN ROOSEVELT "Why?" he asked, with an air of challenge. "Because you would not then have known Mrs. Roosevelt." "That was what I was going to say," he con fessed. It was a tribute straight from the heart. The persistency of his refusal to let anything interrupt his daily exercise in the open, is matched only by the unfailing regularity of the President s frolic with his children. Of the six, two have now passed beyond the age of rough-and-tumble play, but with the younger ones he can still be a child again for a little while each day. One of his favorite sports in the old times used to be the game of bear. It was played on the floor if in the house, or on the grass outdoors, and on all fours to preserve the dramatic realism. First he was a big bear with a terrifying growl, and the others were the young hunters; then, when they had killed or captured the object of their chase, they became bears in turn and he the hunter. A convenient table or a bush with space to crawl under made a model den for Bruin, and almost anything answered for firearms for his pursuers. The most uncomfortable feature of the new arrangement of the White House, with the ex ecutive offices so far removed from the family WITH THE CHILDREN quarters, is that the little people can not peep in from the next room and say good night when the father is burning the midnight oil over his work for the state. It has its advantages from another point of view, however; as there has been no necessity, since the change, for inter rupting a Cabinet meeting in order that the President might step into the corridor and "shoo" away two sturdy-lunged boys who were romping there. The family all have pets and are devoted to them. Archie, next to the youngest lad, has for his chief joy a pony, so ridiculously small that one looks to see the stalwart attendant who accompanies him pick it up and lift it over wet spots and hard places in the road. All the children are brought up to ride, from the time they are large enough to bestride a saddle. This is a part of the program of self-reliance and fearlessness mapped out for them. No veto is put upon their climbing propensities, and they make free with the trees and even with the architecture of the White House. The entire premises are theirs as long as they avoid being nuisances to persons who have business there. The President s letter on "race suicide," printed as a preface to Mrs. Van Vorst s book, 3*5 THE MAN ROOSEVELT "The Woman Who Toils," has been so per verted in meaning by some writers who have commented on it, that the mass of the public who have not read its text have obtained a very strange idea of his views. The kernel of this deliverance is to be found in two sentences : "If a man or woman, through no fault of his or hers, goes throughout life deprived of those highest of all joys which spring only from home life, from the having and bringing up of many healthy children, I feel for them deep and respectful sympathy. . . . But the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dislike children, is in effect a criminal against the race and should be an ob ject of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people." The letter is not, as so widely repre sented, an instigation to a riot of physical forces in mankind, but an appeal to the moral being. It is merely a protest against a form of selfish ness which robs nature of her perfect work. No better place than this, perhaps, can be found for mentioning one other trait of the President s which in our age of easy morals gives its possessor a certain distinction. It bore fruit in a general order issued to the army by CLEAN LIVING his direction in March, 1902, aimed against strong drink and licentiousness, and saying among other things: "It is the duty of regi mental and particularly of company officers, to try by precept and example to point out to the men under their control, and particularly to the younger men, the inevitable misery and dis aster which follow upon intemperance and upon moral uncleanliness and vicious living. The officers should, of course, remember always that the effect of what they say must depend largely upon the lives they themselves lead. As a na tion, we feel keen pride in the valor, discipline and steadfast endurance of our soldiers, and hand in hand with these qualities must go the virtues of self-restraint, self-respect and self- control." And in a speech delivered to young men at Oyster Bay he went further and declared: "I am addressing strong, vigorous men who are en gaged in the active, hard work of life, and there fore men who will count for good or for evil, and it is peculiarly incumbent upon you who have strength to set a right example to others. I ask you to remember that you can not retain your self-respect if you are loose and foul of tongue, and that a man who is to lead a clean 317 THE MAN ROOSEVELT and honorable life must inevitably suffer if his speech likewise is not clean and honorable." It will be a pleasant reflection for Americans that their President is one of those men with whom chastity of living and purity of mind are some thing more than a mere poetic ideal, and who believe that a race which has been made a little lower than the angels may still be a little higher than the beasts. Nothing quite like the domestic life of the White House under the present administration has been witnessed before in our generation. Both the President and Mrs. Roosevelt are fond of their kind. The gratification of their social instinct takes the form of making their home a meeting-ground for persons both interesting and interested. The conventional bounds of so- called "society" are unknown to them when it comes to bringing such persons together. Men and women with live qualities, those who have done or are doing some good work in the world, are their favorite guests. It may be to-day a clergyman whose pulpit fills the smallest place in his ambition and his "neighborhood club" the largest; to-morrow a labor leader whose organization has made itself respected not only by its fair treatment of the 318 WHITE HOUSE HOSPITALITY employer class but by its admirable discipline within its own membership ; the next day a pn> fessional musician, or an explorer who has brought to light something that escaped all his predecessors in the same field, or the author of an epoch-making book. All sorts and conditions of men, in short, gather at the President s round table of de mocracy. The social censors are becomingly shocked, of course. They can not but think that it cheapens the atmosphere of the first home in the land to bring so many persons into it, on a footing of equality, who are not familiar with the drawing-room code. They forget that achievement creates an aristocracy of its own, and that work for the world is the best breeding a man can enjoy, since it stimulates in him those traits of sincerity and self-forgetfulness which lie at the foundation of all good manners. Of the great receptions and state dinners it is needless to speak, as this class of functions varies from administration to administration only with the personalities of the men and women who attend them. The Roosevelts have improved upon precedent, it is true, by re ducing the "crushes" to endurable proportions and trying to make the political dinners a little 22 319 THE MAN ROOSEVELT less dreary. They have also introduced two novelties the periodical musicale in winter, and the garden-party in the season of green grass and flowers. The distinctive social feature of the administration is found in the private life of the Roosevelts. The hospitalities they dis pense there are as unpretentious as their guests. This enables them to "keep open house" all the time. Simple little dinners, confined to a half- dozen friends, are their favorite entertainments. Enough formality is observed in the invitations to enable the persons invited to accommodate their other engagements to these, but that is all, and the notice may be very short. Luncheon is informal in every respect, in cluding invitations. A morning caller who does not get through his talk may be invited on the spot to come back at half past one, and an order sent to the steward to lay an additional plate. A telephone message, out of a clear sky as it were, may summon another guest, if the President happens to think suddenly of some one with whom he wishes to have a few min utes chat away from the official environment. Scarcely a Cabinet day goes by without one or more members staying after the morning meet ing to lunch with the President. 320 PRIVATE FINANCES Nothing like this absolutely unconventional freedom has been known since the civil war raised the scale of living in the White House as everywhere else. If all his unofficial entertain ing were not done in the most modest fashion, Mr. Roosevelt s purse could not stand the drain, for in spite of the general impression otherwise, he is not a rich man and never was. His private means are an inheritance from his father. The father was a very well-to-do citizen for his day, but his day was one of smaller things, and his estate had to be divided between five children. Theodore, who had no start in the world but this, was not built for a money-maker. All his occupations have been such as consumed his sub stance, and he has always refused to recoup his expenditures by anything that savored of specu lation. To have done that would have violated a general scruple he entertains against gam bling. It might also have involved him, with however innocent intent, in enterprises liable to be helped or embarrassed by his action as a public officer. As it is, he is one of the few men in American political life who have been for twenty years unceasingly in the public eye, against whom not even a hint has been thrown out on this score. 321 THE MAN ROOSEVELT But for the constant demand the publishers have made upon him he would have been in financial discomfort more than once; and this regardless of the fact that in dress, house-rent, and other necessary objects of expenditure, his family have never practised any more extrava gance than in matters of pure luxury. Their habit has been to have that which was required by the passing conditions of their life, and as good of its kind as they could afford, and stop there; and they have carried into the White House the same generous but quiet manner of living which characterized them outside. Stories told about the President for the sake of making some particular trait conspicuous, often overshoot the mark. Not a few of these deal with him on his religious side. A clergy man, for example, is quoted as telling how Mr. Roosevelt, in the full bloom of his early man hood, left the Protestant Episcopal communion "because he had tired of its inanities," and was "attracted into the Reformed [Dutch] church by its robust virility." This narrative is inter esting, but it lacks certain essentials of veracious history: Mr. Roosevelt could not have quitted a church with which he never was connected, nor could he have left it to enter a church of which 322 UNIVERSAL CHRISTIANITY he was already a member. The records show that he joined the Middle Collegiate church, in Second Avenue near Seventh Street, New York City, on December 2, 1874, when he was six teen years old, and never withdrew from that connection. His father and grandfather were members of the same church, so that in a sense he may be considered to have been born into it. Mrs. Roosevelt was brought up a Protestant Episcopalian, and at various times in their mar ried life, while moving from place to place, they have attended Sunday services together. Since their last advent in Washington they have di vided, the President going to a Reformed church in Fifteenth Street, about ten minutes walk from the White House, and Mrs. Roose velt to old St. John s, just across Lafayette Square. Some of the children accompany one parent and some the other. Although the clergyman quoted went a good way astray on his facts, the idea he was trying to bring out was correct, that Mr. Roosevelt is contemptuous of mere formalism in religion as everywhere else. With ecclesiastical polemics he has as little patience as with cant. His name belongs somewhere in Abou Ben Adhem s list, with those whose first thought is practical hu- 323 THE MAN ROOSEVELT manity; and by this standard he measures the religious quality in others. It makes absolutely no difference to him whether the men with whom he has to do are Jews or Gentiles, Catho lics or Protestants, Christians, Deists or Agnos tics, as long as they live up to the best that is in them: he is with them then in spirit, whatever form or absence of form may distinguish their worship. He has no use for the devotee who praises God in the abstract and neglects his fel low man in the concrete. He professes Chris tianity himself, as he professes Republicanism, not because it is the only faith that draws good men to it, but because it contains most that ap peals to him; his is the sort of Christianity that embraces whatever is best in all religions, and derives its vitality from its moral rather than its ritual code. 324 CHAPTER XIX CONCLUSION Unique feature of Mr. Roosevelt s career Purpose of this review The future. "IN one respect the career of Theodore Roose velt is almost unique in our modern public life: the American people have watched him growJ Most of his contemporaries who have become powerful and famous have burst upon the notice of their fellow countrymen within a very short time of the attainment of their highest ambi tions. Lincoln had cut but a small figure in Congress before his nomination for President. Grant was earning a precarious livelihood in the back country when called to his first com mand in the civil war. Cleveland compassed the whole stride from mayor of an interior city to President-elect of the United States in two years. But thousands of citizens in remote quarters of the Union had heard, as long ago as 1883, of that curio in rough-and-tumble politics: 325 THE MAN ROOSEVELT the young "dude lawmaker" at Albany whose speeches were verbal cataracts bursting through clenched teeth, who hunted jobbery in term- time and grizzly bears in recess, and who was not too good or nice to hobnob with his col leagues of all classes. They had their interest quickened when they saw this extraordinary youngster of twenty-six heading his State delegation to the Republican national convention at Chicago, to resist in vain the nomination of Elaine for President. They recognized in him the true popular leader when he coined for the Erie Railroad ring and their corrupt coparceners the title, "the wealthy crim inal classes." They saw him come to the front in national affairs when as Civil Service Com missioner, the war-club of reform in hand, he dealt blow after blow on the heads of bigger men till he had made them respect the Commis sion and bow to its authority. They saw him later bring order into a chaotic naval establish ment, and prepare it for instant service in a war which was to restore its old prestige. They read of the Rough Riders campaign, and abated none of their liking for its author be cause, in his youthful enthusiasm, he felt as if the whole conquest of Cuba had been the 326 A NATIONAL FIGURE achievement of his regiment. They smiled a little at the whirlwind of felt hats and khaki breeches that swept over New York in the guise of a canvass for the Governorship, but were not sorry when the settling dust revealed the young soldier seated in the executive chair. Then came the unparalleled scenes at Philadelphia ending in his nomination for the Vice-Presi dency, and his novel methods, after election, as steersman of the Senate s deliberations. This series of events was but a long-drawn prelude to the drama of an administration quite as individual in its way as any of the traits of the picturesque figure at the head of it. It had prepared the people to know the man as no other President had been known. They felt almost as if they had been his neighbors from his childhood up. Though to his actual inti mates he was always Theodore, to the great mass of the populace he was "Teddy" the boy who had developed under their own eyes from a precocious beginner to a well-rounded man of affairs. It can not truthfully be said that such famil iarity is always of advantage to its object. The babe whose birth we recall never quite matures in our imagination. Any mistake of judgment 327 THE MAN ROOSEVELT he commits at forty-five we are apt to attribute to his general mental unripeness, almost as we did the follies of his infancy. Theodore Roose velt is in double danger of suffering injustice in this way, because his natural exuberance of manner intensifies the illusion of his youthful- ness. He is now really past the age which sci ence has fixed as the meridian of the human powers, yet in the popular fancy he is still, and probably will always remain, the breezy lad of the early nineties. Nevertheless, his growth has been real. He is a larger and broader man than he was when he began his Presidency. He was then labor ing under a sense of the tremendous responsi bility so suddenly thrust upon him, and the sobering effect of that experience added ten years to his maturity in as many days. Every succeeding twelvemonth has carried him fur ther in the same direction. He has made his mistakes ; he will make more of them, unless he ceases to be human which for his sake and ours alike may Heaven forfend, since his red-blooded humanity is what makes him lovable with all his faults. Calmly reviewing his career, the nation has cause to be devoutly thankful that he came to 328 SOBERING REALITIES its highest office over so terrible a road. The cloud of sorrow and shame that hung over the whole country was bound to be impressive in itself, but its effect on him was deepened by the realization that he had simply succeeded to a trust, to carry to completion the policies mapped out by his predecessor. This curbed the im petuous impulses which might have wrecked his administration had he originally entered the White House by virtue of a popular majority in his own right. The interval preceding his appearance as a candidate for the Presidency itself has been sufficient to cool his first ardor and readjust his point of view on many matters of grave public concern. As a man of con science and conviction, he doubtless would have got himself under some restraint in any event, but perhaps in no other circumstances under so much. My task is almost finished. The reader was duly warned in its preface that it was not to be a biography. It is not even a well-balanced and fully colored portrait. I have aimed merely to give Americans of the rank and file a little more vivid impression of the American at the front. Albeit the people have watched the develop ment of his career from the start, most of them 329 THE MAN ROOSEVELT have remained necessarily at a distance. I have tried to bring them closer to him, so that, with out losing their perspective view of the leader, they could see more of the man. For every one touch of nature that I have tried to put into the picture I have had to leave a dozen out. For instance, while I have made no attempt to minimize Mr. Roosevelt s mis takes, I might have gone further and shown how carefully he avoids making the same mistake twice. I have alluded to his versatility; but I did not mention the time I found him, while waiting for an important conference, refresh ing his mind for a few minutes with an Italian text of Dante in one hand and Carlyle s transla tion in the other. I have spoken of his con tempt for mere formalism; but I might have added that, though insisting upon all the respect due to the Presidential office as much when he as when another fills it, he has never yet become accustomed to taking precedence of Mrs. Roose velt or to going through a door before any woman. The stories printed about him are as the sands of the sea for multitude, and perhaps equally trustworthy as a foundation to build on. Sometimes their fault lies deep in their own con- 330 AMUSING FICTIONS stitution. A French journalist who had been traveling in the United States wrote for his dear public in Paris an account of a luncheon to which he was invited at the White House, and described the adjournment of the host and the male guests afterward to one of the parlors. The President, he said, was in the midst of his cigar and engaged in telling a good story, when one of the liveried lackeys reminded him that smoking was not allowed in that room. So the whole party was compelled to remove to a cor ridor, where the President, though meekly obedient, held forth with much eloquence on the nuisance of a system which gave the servants of the executive mansion so much authority over its official occupant. I regret to say that this entertaining narrative was widely copied, with the insignia of belief, in the American press. Its percentage of truth each reader may calcu late for himself, by bearing in mind that the White House has no liveried lackeys, and that the President never has used tobacco in his life. And yet this is as near as most of the stories get to the truth. Sometimes these tales are only half told, and it is usually the better half that is missing. When Mr. Roosevelt was Vice-President he 33i THE MAN ROOSEVELT violated all precedent by appointing a colored man a messenger in the Senate. The fact was published from Maine to California, but not the reason, which was far more interesting. This man he had found at Albany, a messenger in the Governor s office, holding over from the days of Roswell P. Flower. A boy baby was born to the messenger. Had he been a syco phant or a time-server, he would have remem bered that Mr. Flower was a Democrat and had ceased to be useful as a patron, while Mr. Roose velt was a Republican with possible favors to bestow ; but in defiance of the dictates of policy, he named the child in honor of Mr. Flower and frankly told Mr. Roosevelt that he had done this because Mr. Flower had been good to him. He had little suspicion of the impression that trifling incident made upon the mind of his new chief, with whom loyalty stands forth as the first among virtues. From that day the negro be came a fixture with Mr. Roosevelt, who brought him from Albany to Washington the instant a place could be found to put him into. Mr. Roosevelt has been represented as pretty nearly everything he is not: as "bidding for the labor vote" because the door of the White House now swings open as freely to the man who works 332 STANDARD OF JUDGMENT with his hands as to the man who works with his head; as the foe of capital, because he has demanded that the rich shall obey the law as well as the poor; as a negro-worshiper, because he has insisted that a black skin covers the same body of human rights as a white one; as the slave of a political machine, because, instead of destroying an agency which his next successor would only restore, he has tried to turn it to some purpose not unworthy; as a rash and hare brained youth, because he does what other men are thinking. In my endeavor to dispel some of these arbi trary misconceptions, I have aimed not to argue his cause, but simply to present as honest a sketch as I could of the Theodore Roosevelt I have known. In the end we must judge him by the use he has made of his own talents in the light of his own moral promptings, and this requires that we shall have before us an actuality, not an ideal; a living being, not a mere mental image conjured up by the politicians or by the capital ists or by the demagogues; a portrait, not of the man as he might have been, or of the man as we might have liked to find him, or of the man we think we should have been in his place, but of the man as he is. Of that man the real Man 333 THE MAN ROOSEVELT Roosevelt each reader must form his individ ual estimate. Almost as I am writing these last lines in a book which has been in the best sense a labor of love, the peace of the night is broken by the screech of steam whistles, the blare of horns, and the clang of many bells, while the deep-voiced clock in a neighboring room strikes the hour of twelve. The din outside is the city s welcome to a year just born. We do these things oddly. Our solemn times are those we greet with deafening clamor. Before this new year follows the old into the silent halls of history, we shall go through an other period of uproar. Amid bursting bombs, the roll of drums, the hiss of rockets and the crash of military bands, the citizens of our re public will be called to the most sacred duty that devolves on a free people the choice of a servant who shall be also their chief ruler. Upon whom will the honor fall? What form will it take? Will it be a summons to an untried hand, or a verdict of "Well done"? 334 INDEX Addicks, J. Edward, 146. Agassiz, Alexander, 145. Ahhvardt, Dr. Hermann, 284. Alaska boundary commission, 206. Alger, Russell A., 201. Alice, J. Frank, 152. Arbitration, coal strike, 169, 236, 241, 274; Hague Tribunal of, 205. Aristocracy of achievement, 319- Author s preface, v. Bacon, Robert, 127. Bacon, Theodore, 27. Beirut, squadron sent to, 12. "Best he could, the," 103. Bid well, George R., 76, 129, 275. Blaine, James G., 17, 33. Sliss, Cornelius N., 201. Bosses, political, in the Uni ted States Senate, 125, 136; on their better side, 144. Bowen, Herbert W., 208. Bristow, Joseph L., 100. Bryan, William J., 165. Burton, Joseph R., 136. Byrne, William M., 147. 23 Cabinet, President Roosevelt and his, 71, 83. Capital and labor, 232. Carnegie, Andrew, 255. Census spoilsmen s trick, 180. Cervera s squadron, 200. Chastity, admonition to, 317. Children, romping with, 314. Chronology of Theodore Roosevelt s career, ix. Civil Service Commission and Congress, 38, 116; Commission s new policy, 35 ; examinations for in spectors of customs, 50; examinations for New York police, 44; Southern quotas filled, 36. Clarendon Hall meeting, 247. Clark, E. E., 246. Clarkson, James S., 42, 131. Cleveland, Grover, 20, 120, 1 66, 169. Colonies, theory of, 265. Commerce, Department of, 81, 254. Congress and the Civil Serv ice Commission, 38, 116. Contents, table of, xi. Corbin, Henry C., 296. 335 THE MAN ROOSEVELT Cortelyou, George B., 81. Cox, George B., 136. Criticism, offensive and in offensive, 308. Crum, William D., 225. Cuban reciprocity, 102. Customs inspectors, civil- service examinations for, 50. Daniels, Benjamin F., 66. Day, William R., 172. Delaware politics, 102, 147. Dewey, George, 204. Disappointments turned into success, 4. "Doddling" defined, 296. Eaton, Dorman B., 33. Edmunds, George F., 17, 56, 178. Election of 1904, approach ing, 335- Evans, Henry Clay, 275. Exercise, robust, 198, 311. Fitchie, Thomas, 133. Five-cent-fare veto, 166. "Flag shall stay put, " 269. Flower, Roswell P., 332. Foraker, Joseph B., 136. Franchise tax legislation in New York, 278. Free-Trade Club in New York, 257. Gage, Lyman J., 73, 83, 129, 201. "Going ahead," 7. Gorman, Arthur P., 40, 145, 165. Government Printing Office, civil-service reform in, 234. Gray, George, 166, 169. Greene, Francis V., 125. Hanna, Marcus A., 136, 158, 174- Hendricks, Francis, 124. Hess, Jacob, 178. Hicks, William H., 137. Hill, David B., 165. "Horses, not rabbits," 310. Hunting, love of, 197. Illustrations, list of, xix. Immigration Office contro versy, 133. Imperialism, 250, 263. Impulse, a creature of, 272. Independents, first break with the, 16; second break with the, 25. Indianola post-office case, 94, 229. Jenkins, Micah, 225. Jew - baiting campaign checked, 284. Jewish protest to the Czar, 209. Jones, Thomas G., 224. Judges in New York re buked, 190. Kishenev massacre, 208. Knox, Philander C, 81. Labor and capital, 232. "Larger good," the, 103. Lee, Robert C., 224. 336 INDEX Letter, unpublished, of 1898, 30. Liquor-selling on Sunday, in, 1 86; to minors, 112. Literary enterprises, 302. Lodge, Henry Cabot, 53, 133- Long, John D.,79, 201, 203. Low, Seth, 128, 139. Loyalty appreciated, 161, 33?-. Lying, accusations of, 191. Lyons, Judsoxi W., 161. Maclay, Edgar Stanton, 297. Manning, Daniel, 145. McClain, Penrose A., 137. McCoach, William, 138. McKinley, William, 72, 73, 197, 201. McMichael, Clayton, 137. McSvveeney, Edward F., 133- Miles, Nelson A., 296. Miller, Warner, 179. Miller, William A., 235. Mitchell, John, 169. Monroe doctrine, 209. Moody, William H., 80. Murray, Joseph E., 58, 135- Navy, buying coalers for the, 107 ; prepared for war, 298. Negro question, 94, 213. Newspaper reading, rapid, 307- New York, Assistant Treas urer at, 127; governorship, 5, 28, 123, 278; mayor alty campaign of 1886, 4, 1 68 ; mayoralty campaign of 1901, 139; police, 5, 44, 49, 63, in, 182, 189, 247, 249, 284. Nields, John P., 154. Northern Securities Com pany, 250. Officeholders in politics, 138. Ohio Republican Convention indorsement, 163. Olney, Richard, 165. Oxnard, Henry T., 105. Panama, recognition of Re public of, 7. Pardon papers characteris tically indorsed, 287. Partridge, John N., 125. Payn, Louis F., 125. Payne, Henry C, 83, 92, H9, 151- Peking expedition of 1900, 205. Penrose, Boies, 137. Pets in the Roosevelt family, 197. Philippine Islands, 204, 263. Platt, Thomas C., 23, 120, 123, 136, 145. Plimley, William, 127. Police administration in New York charged with ineffi ciency, 189; and the civil service, 44; good work by, 49, 249; night visits to, 182. Postal scandals, 96. 337 THE MAN ROOSEVELT Powderly, Terence V., 133. Preface, author s, v. Presidency, aspiration for second term of, 155. Presidential campaign of 1884, 1 6, 56, 178; of 1898, 22; of 1904, 155, 326. Quarrels in army and navy, 296. Quay, Matthew S., 135, 137, 145- Race suicide, 316. Reed, Thomas B., 291. Religious faith and practise, 322. Riis, Jacob A., 63. Roosevelt, Theodore, chro nology of career, ix; an tithetical traits, 3 ; secret of success, 1 5 ; reasons for remaining a Republican, 20, 26; Governor of New York, 5, 28, 123, 278; Civil-Service Commission er, 33, 58, 115, 192; Po lice Commissioner, 44, 63, in, 182, 247, 284; classes of friends, 54; relations with Cabinet, 71, 83; im patience with red tape, 73, 296, 300; action in Indi- anola case, 95 ; and the postal scandals, 98, 100; and Delaware politics, IO2, 146; "the larger good" and "the best he could," 103 ; Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 5, 107, 200, 298; buying coalers for the navy, 107; enforcement of Sunday law in New York, 1 1 1 ; selling liquor to minors, 112; Shidy case, 116; re lations with Senatorial bosses, 120; breakfast with Platt, 123; appointments made as Governor, 124; Assistant Treasurership at New York, 127 ; New York Custom - House changes, 129; settling an Immigra tion Service quarrel, 133; experiences with the Quay machine, 137; disposing of warring bosses, 1 42 ; trou ble with J. E. Addicks, 146; and William M. Byrne, 148; conclusion in the Todd case, 153; sec ond-term aspirations, 155; withdrawal of rivals, 158; and the Hanna "boom," 158; appreciation of loy alty, 161, 332; indorse ment by Ohio convention, 164, 174; relations with Democratic candidates, 1 65 ; speech on the five- cent-fare veto, 1 66; defeat for mayoralty, 1 68 ; organ izing the coal-strike arbi tration, 169; fighting methods, 176; love of sparring, 177; and the Utica convention of 1884, 338 INDEX 178; outwitting the cen sus spoilsmen, 180; max im about tne short sword, 182; playing Harun-al- Raschid with the police, 1 82 ; review of anti-Roose velt parade, 186; hitting back at an accusing news paper, 189; rebuke to ju diciary, 190; favorite re tort, 191 ; and the lying Cabinet officer, 192; not a lover of wanton war, 194; habits in hunting, sports, and exercise, 198; expectation of war with Spain, 199; plan for in tercepting Cervera s squad ron, 200; address to Mc- Kinley Cabinet, 202 ; au thor of fateful order to Dewey, 204; ambition for United States as a world power, 205, 21 1 ; theories of international arbitra tion, 205 ; triumph of Alaskan policy, 206; atti tude toward Venezuela, 206; version of Monroe doctrine, 208; and the Kishenev incident, 208 ; plans for the South and the negro, 213; independent appointments, 215, 21 7; entertains Booker T. Washington, 217; assailed in the South, 221 ; visits to Tennessee. South Caro lina, and Mississippi, 224, 225; appointment of Col lector Crum, 225; answer to Charleston critics, 228 ; inconsistent treatment by Southern whites, 230 ; called a demagogue, 232; belief in organization cf labor, 233 ; and the Miller case, 235 ; and the Arizona miners riots, 241 ; and the anthracite coal strike, 241 ; meeting with strikers at Clarendon Hall, 247 ; treatment of trusts, 250; and the Carnegie founda tion, 255 ; former member ship of Free-Trade Club, 257; views on the tariff, 259; attitude toward re vision, 263 ; Philippine policy, 263 ; opinion of colonies, 265 ; speech to Sons of American Revolu tion, 269; accused of im pulsiveness, 272 ; rescue of a horse, 273 ; rapidity of action on coal strike, 274 ; premature announcement of purposes, 275 ; tricks of speech, 276; franchise tax policy, 278; and the Ahl- wardt episode, 2^4; in dorsing a scoundrel s par don papers, 287 ; a man of many parts, 200; fondness for natural history, 291 ; equilibrium of opinions, 292 ; superlative style, 294; judgment of men, 295; dislike of "dod- dling," 296; breaking up 339 THE MAN ROOSEVELT feuds, 296; preparing the navy for war, 298; as an author, 301 ; specimen of handwriting, 302 ; meth ods of composition, 304; book reviewing, 306 ; man ner of reading newspapers, 307 ; attitude toward criti cism, 308; habits of exer cise, 310; tribute to Mrs. Roosevelt, 313; romping with the children, 314; letter on race suicide, 316; personal morals, 317; do mestic and social life, 313, 318; private means, 321; religious affiliations, 322 ; growth watched by the people, 325 ; perils of boy ishness, 327 ; occupations of spare moments, 330; fictions about, 330; in the coming campaign, 335 ; what of the future? 335. Roosevelt, Mrs. Theodore, 194, 221, 313, 318. Root, Elihu, 80, 128, 170. Rough Riders, 61, 65. Roulhac, Thomas R., 224. Sampson, William T., 296. Sargent, Frank P., 134. Schley, Wmfield S., 206. Senate, bossism in United States, 125, 136. Shaw, Leslie M., 83. Sheldon, George R., 127. Shidy, Hamilton W., 116. Silver free coinage propa ganda, 87. Smith, Charles Emory, 79, 92. Social life at the White House, 318. "Sociologist" defined, 245. Sons of American Revolu tion, 269. Southern policy, 213. Spain, war with, 5, 199, 204. Speculative scandals un known, 321. Speech, tricks of, 276. Sports, manly, 197. Stranahan, Nevada N., 76, ^ 130. Straus, Oscar S., 146. Sunday closing in New York, in, 1 86. Superlative style, 294. Sword, maxim about the short, 182. Tariff question under Roose velt administration, 259. Thompson, Hugh S., 119. Todd, Huldah B., 151. Trusts, regulation of, 250. Unions, trade, 233. United States as a world power, 205, 21 1 ; Steel Corporation, 250, 255. Van Vorst, Mrs. John, 316. Venezuela troubles of 1903, 206, 707. Versatility, marvel of, 290. Vice-Presidency of United States, 6, 57, 33 1- 340 INDEX Wakeman, Wilbur F., 129. War and peace, 193. Ware, Eugene F., 275. Washington, Booker T., 161, 217. "Wealthy criminal class," 1 68. Wharton, William F., 33. Whitehead, George W., 131. White House entertain ments, 318. Williams, William, 135. Wilson, Edgar S., 224. Wimberley, Augustus T., 275- Wood, Leonard, 60. Wright, Carroll D., 274. Wright, Luke E., 224. Young, Samuel B. M ., 62. Youthfulness, perils of, 327. (4) THE END 341 BIOGRAPHY. The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1905. By JOHN FISKE, CARL SCHURZ, DANIEL C. OILMAN, WILLIAM WALTER PHELPS, ROBERT C. WINTHROP, GEORGE BANCROFT, JOHN HAY, OWEN WISTER, and Others. With 25 Steel Portraits, Facsimile Letters, and other Illus trations. Edited by Gen. JAMES GRANT WILSON. One volume, octavo. Price $3.50. It has been said that history is simply a series of biographies. In this view of the case the present volume must be admitted to be a historical work of great importance and high value, presenting as it does the lives of all our chief executives down to the present incumbent, thus covering the entire field of American history for the past one hundred and sixteen years. But these studies have a peculiar charm as biographies, because the study of each occupant of the White House has been written by one who has made a special study of him and his times. It is just the kind of book that the American who wishes to fix in his mind the varying phases of his country s history as it is woven on the warp of each adminis tration will find most helpful. The names of the foregoing writers are in themselves sufficient to guarantee adequacy of treatment and vivid narration, and it is safe to say that no such a succinct presentation of the complete portrait gallery of our Presidents, sketched with such unquestioned ability, has ever before been pub lished. Covering as it does the entire period of our national life, the work becomes a valuable review and summary of the history of the United States. " I know of no more satisfactory History of the United States than General Wilson s attractive illustrated volume." GROVER CLEVELAND. 44 These biographies of our Presidents, written by distinguished scholars, form a most valuable history of our country. The excellent steel engravings and vignettes add interest to the handsome octavo." JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. AN AMERICAN ADMIRAL. Forty-five Years Under the Flag. By WINFIELD SCOTT SCHLEY, Rear- Admiral, U. S. N. Illustrated. 8vo. Cloth, uncut edges, and gilt top, $3.00 net. About one-third of Admiral Schley s volume is devoted to the Spanish War, in which he became so great a figure. He tells his own story in simple and effective words. His recollections are constantly reinforced by references to dispatches and other documents. Readers will be surprised at the extent of Admiral Schley s experi ences. He left the Naval Academy just before the outbreak of the Civil War and saw service with Farragut in the Gulf. Three chapters are devoted to Civil War events. His next important service was rendered during the opening of Corea to the commerce of the world, and the chapter in which he describes the storming of the forts is one of thrilling interest. Another important expedition in his life was the rescue of Greely, to which three chapters are devoted. Two other chapters per tain to the Revolution in Chili, and the troubles growing out of the attack upon some of Admiral Schley s men in the streets of Valparaiso. Altogether the book contains thirty-eight chapters. It has been illus trated from material furnished by Admiral Schley and through his sug gestions, and makes an octavo volume of large size. It will appeal to every true-hearted American. The author says in his preface : " In times of danger and duty the writer endeavored to do the work set before him without fear of consequences. With this thought in mind, he has felt moved, as a duty to his wife, his children, and his name, to leave a record of his long professional life, which has not been without some prestige, at least for the flag he has loved and under which he has served the best years of his life. 1 " Rear- Admiral W. S. Schley s Forty-five Years Under the Flag is the most valuable contribution to the history of the American Navy that has been written in many a year." New York Times. 14 The author s career is well worthy of a book, and he has every reason for pride in telling of his forty-five active years in all parts of the world." Edwin L. Shuman in the Chicago Record-Herald, 4 It is a stirring story, told with the simple directness of a sailor. Its read ing carries the conviction of its truthfulness. The Admiral could not have hoped to accomplish more." Chicago Evening Post. " He has told his own story, in his own way, from his own viewpoint, and goes after his detractors, open and above board, with his big guns." Washington Post. " It is a work that will interest everyone, from the sixteen-year-old school boy who is studying history and loves tales of stirring adventure to the grand- sire whose blood still pulses hotly with patriotic pride at the recounting of valiant deeds of arms under our starry fag" Boston American "The Admiral tells the story well. His is a manly and straightforward tyle. He leaves nothing to doubt, nothing open to controversy." Baltimort Sun. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. VIVID, MOVING, SYMPATHETIC HUMOROUS. A Diary from Dixie. By MARY BOYKIN CHESNUT. Being her Diary from November, 1861, to August, 1865. Edited by Isabella D. Martin and Myrta Lockett Avary. Illustrated. 8vo. Orna mental Cloth, $2.50 net; postage additional. Mrs. Chesnut was the most brilliant woman that the South has ever produced, and the charm of her writing is such as to make all Southerners proud and all Northerners envious. She was the wife of James Chesnut, Jr., who was United States Senator from South Carolina from 1859 to 1861, and acted as an aid to President Jefferson Davis, and was subsequently a Brigadier-Gen eral in the Confederate Army. Thus it was that she was intimately acquainted with all the foremost men in the Southern cause. " In this diary is preserved the most moving and vivid record of the South ern Confederacy of which we have any knowledge. It is a piece of social history of inestimable value. It interprets to posterity the spirit in which the Southerners entered upon and struggled through the war that ruined them. It paints poignantly but with simplicity the wreck of that old world which had so much about it that was beautiful and noble as well as evil. Stucenls of American life have often smiled, and with reason, at the stilted and extrava gant fashion in which the Southern woman had been described south of Mason and Dixon s line the unconscious self-revelations of Mary Chesnut explain, if they do not justify, such extravagance. For here, we cannot but be ieve, is a creature of a fine type, a very woman, a very Beatrice, frank, impetuous, loving, full of sympathy, full of humor. Like her prototype, she had preju dices, and she knew little of the Northern people she criticised so severely ; but there is less bitterness in the^e pages than we might have expected. Per haps the editors have seen to that. However this may be they have done nothing to injure the writer s own nervous, unconventional style a style breathing character and temperament as the flower breathes fragrance." New York Tribune. "It is Britten straight from the heart, and with a natural grace of style that no amount of polishing could have imparted." Chicago Record- Herald. The editors are to be congratulated ; it is not every day that one comes on such material as this long-hidden diary." Louisville Evening Post. 41 It is a book that would have delighted Charles Lamb." Houston Chronicle. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 44 EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD READ IT." The News, Providence. The Life and Times of Thomas Jefferson. By THOMAS E. WATSON, Author of "The Story of France," " Napoleon," etc. Illustrated with many Portraits and Views. 8vo. Attractively bound, $2.50 net ; postage, 17 cents additional. Mr. Watson long since acquired a national reputation in connection with his political activities in Georgia. He startled the public soon afterward by the publication of a history of France, which at once attracted attention quite as marked, though different in kind. His book became interesting not alone as the production of a Southern man interested in politics, but as an entirely original conception of a great theme. There was no question that a life of Jefferson from the hands of such a writer would command very general attention, and the publishers had no sooner announced the work as in preparation than negotiations were begun with the author by two of the best-known newspapers in America for its publication in serial form. During the past summer the appearance of the story in this way has created widespread comment which has now been drawn to the book just published. Opinions by some of the Leading Papers. " A vastly entertaining polemic. It directs attention to many undoubtedly neglected facts which writers of the North have ignored or minimized." The New York Times Saturday Review of Books. "A noble work. It may well stand on the shelf beside Morley s Gladstone and other epochal biographical works that have come into prominence. It is deeply interesting and thoroughly fair and just." The Globe- Democrat, St. Louis. 11 The book shows great research and is as complete as it could possibly be, and every American should read it." The News, Providence. "A unique historical work." The Commercial Advertiser, New York. "Valuable as an historical document and as a witness to certain great facts in the past life of the South which have seldom been acknowledged by historians." The Post, Louisville. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK, HISTORIC LIVES SERIES. A series of popular biographies dealing with famous men of all times and countries, written in brief form and repre senting the latest knowledge on the subjects, each illus trated with appropriate full-page pictures, the authors being chosen for their special knowledge of the subjects. Each i2mo, Illustrated, Cloth, $1.00 net. Pottage, 10 cents additional. NO W READ Y. Father Marquette, the Explorer of the Mississippi. By REUBEN GOLD THWAITES, Editor of "The Jesuit Relations," etc. Daniel Boone. By REUBEN GOLD THWAITES, Editor of "The Jesuit Relations," " Father Marquette/ etc. Horace Greeley. By WILLIAM A. LINN, Author of "The Story of the Mormons." Sir William Johnson. By AUGUSTUS C. BUELL, Author of " Paul Jones, Founder of the American Navy." Anthony Wayne. By JOHN R. SPEARS. Champlain : The Founder of New France. By EDWIN ASA Dix, M.A., LL.D., Formerly Fellow in History in Princeton University ; Author of * Deacon Brad bury," * A Midsummer Drive through the Pyrenees," etc. James Oglethorpe : The Founder of Georgia. By HARRIET C. COOPER. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. By JOHN BACH McMASTER, PhJX History of the People of the United States, From the Revolution to the Civil War. By JOHN BACH MCMASTER. To be completed in seven volumes. Vols. I, II, III, IV, V, and VI now ready. 8vo. Cloth, gilt top, $2.50 each. 44 A history sui generis which has made and will keep its own place in our literature." New York Evening Post. " Those who can read between the lines may discover in these pages con stant evidences of care and skill and faithful labor, of which the old-time superficial essayists, compiling library notes on dates and striking events, had no conception." Philadelphia Telegraph. " Professor McMaster has more than fulfilled the promises made in his first volumes, and his work is constantly growing better and more valuable as he brings it nearer to our own time. His style is clear, simple, and idio matic, and there is just enough of the critical spirit in the narrative to guide the reader." Boston Herald. 44 Take it all in all, the History promises to be the ideal American his tory. Not so much given to dates and battles and great events as in the fact that it is like a great panorama of the people, revealing their inner life and action. It contains, with all Its sober facts, the spice of personalities and incidents, which relieves every page from dulness." Chicago Inter-Ocean. Professor McMaster has told us what no other historians have told. . . . The skill, the animation, the brightness, the force, and the charm with which he arrays the facts before us are such that we can hardly conceive of more interesting reading for an American citizen who cares to know the nature of those causes which have made not only him but his environment and the opportunities life has given him what they are." Neva York Times. With the Fathers. Studies in the History of the United States. 8vo. Cloth, $1.50. 44 Professor McMaster s essays possess in their diversity a breadth which covers most of the topics which are current as well as historical, and each is so scholarly in treatment and profound in judgment that the importance of their place in the library of political history can not be gainsaid." Washington Times. "The book is of great practical value, as many of the e?says throw a broad light over living questions of the day. Professor McMaster has a clear, simple style that is delightful. His facts are gathered with great care, and almirably interwoven to impress the subject under discussion upon the mind of the reader." Chicago Jnter-Ocean. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. AN INSPIRING BOOK. The Young Man and the World. By ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE, U. S. Senator from Indiana, Author of "The Russian Advance." i2mo. Ornamental Cloth, $1.50 net. This book will go into every household where there is a son and a mother. It is a talk with the young man about the young man of the young man s country by its most prominent young man. Plowboy at 12 ; logger at 14 ; graduated from college, De Pauw, at 23 ; plainsman, law clerk, lawyer ; U. S. Senator at 36 that is what Senator Beveridge, poor and without a pull, has done by sheer pluck and hard work. And his steady conservative work in the Senate has won him the equal regard of older men also. His name spells success. Bishop Charles C. McCabe says : " I wish that 20,000,000 copies of the book might be published." John Mitchell says : "I trust it may have a place in the life and in the home of every young man." Alfred Henry Lewis says : " It is a sparkling well-head of courage, optimism, and counsel." Senator William P. Frye says : "I have no hesitation in com mending it to the young men of our country." Speaker J. G. Cannon says : " It is a very interesting book by a very interesting man." Representative Champ Clark says : " It is very worthy the perusal of every youth in the land." David War field says : " If the reader heeds its precepts 1 It must follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man. Hamlet, Act 1, Sc. 8." James Rudolph Garfield says : " I have read it with a great deal of interest." President Edwin H. Hughes says : " Any young man who reads this book cannot fail to be made stronger and better." President IV. E. Stone says : " It is brim full of suggestions which every young man should know and heed." General Charles King says : " Here is a book our American youth may study with his Bible." A cowboy in Arizona writes : " It is the embodiment of every thing honorable, noble, and upright in life." D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. AN EXTRAORDINARY BOOK. The Unofficial Letters of an Official s Wife. By EDITH MOSES. i2mo. Cloth, gilt top, $1.50 net. This is a volume of actual letters which Mrs. Moses, the wife of Professor Moses, wrote from the Philippines to her relatives here in the United States. Professor Moses, who is connected with the University of California, was one of the five members of the first commission, of which Sec retary Taft was the head, sent out by the U. S. Government to organize the government of the Philippine Islands. The members of this commission were practically the first important Americans to go to the Philippines in a peaceful and a civil capacity. Mrs. Moses, therefore, saw the social, political, and home life in Manila as well as in the provinces and the different islands before American civilization had entered there to any extent. Her letters, while descriptive, have a very definite connection one with the other. They describe the arrival at the Philippines, the beginning of life there, housekeeping, the seemingly strange methods of daily life, servant problems, and so on, in Manila. Nothing like these letters has appeared in regard to the Philippine Islands at any time. It should be borne in mind, further more, that these letters are not in any way technical or having to do with the organization of the Philippine govern ment. They are, as the title suggests, quite " unofficial " letters of a lady who, because of her connection with offi cial circles, saw many things which an ordinary traveler never could see. D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. LIBRARY USE RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWE1 LOAN DEPT. -tlBRARTuSt AHK 1 4 Ib/l 5 1 LD 62A-30m-2, 69 (J6534slO)9412A A-32 General Library . University of California Berkeley YB 44925 U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 25698? hJh I