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Title: Theodore Roosevelt
An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt
Author: Theodore Roosevelt
Release Date: April 5, 2006 [EBook #3335]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEODORE ROOSEVELT ***
Produced by Dagny; John Bickers; David Widger
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT
By Theodore Roosevelt
PREPARER'S NOTE
This Etext was prepared from a 1920 edition,
published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
The book was first published in 1913.
CONTENTS
Forward
Boyhood and Youth
The Vigor of Life
Practical Politics
In Cowboy Land
Applied Idealism
The New York Police
The War of America the Unready
The New York Governorship
Outdoors and Indoors
The Presidency; Making an Old Party Progressive
The Natural Resources of the Nation
The Big Stick and the Square Deal
Social and Industrial Justice
The Monroe Doctrine and the Panama Canal
The Peace of Righteousness
FOREWORD
Naturally, there are chapters of my autobiography which cannot now be
written.
It seems to me that, for the nation as for the individual, what is most
important is to insist on the vital need of combining certain sets
of qualities, which separately are common enough, and, alas, useless
enough. Practical efficiency is common, and lofty idealism not uncommon;
it is the combination which is necessary, and the combination is rare.
Love of peace is common among weak, short-sighted, timid, and lazy
persons; and on the other hand courage is found among many men of evil
temper and bad character. Neither quality shall by itself avail. Justice
among the nations of mankind, and the uplifting of humanity, can be
brought about only by those strong and daring men who with wisdom love
peace, but who love righteousness more than peace. Facing the immense
complexity of modern social and industrial conditions, there is need to
use freely and unhesitatingly the collective power of all of us; and
yet no exercise of collective power will ever avail if the average
individual does not keep his or her sense of personal duty, initiative,
and responsibility. There is need to develop all the virtues that have
the state for their sphere of action; but these virtues are as dust in a
windy street unless back of them lie the strong and tender virtues of
a family life based on the love of the one man for the one woman and on
their joyous and fearless acceptance of their common obligation to the
children that are theirs. There must be the keenest sense of duty, and
with it must go the joy of living; there must be shame at the thought of
shirking the hard work of the world, and at the same time delight in
the many-sided beauty of life. With soul of flame and temper of steel we
must act as our coolest judgment bids us. We must exercise the largest
charity towards the wrong-doer that is compatible with relentless war
against the wrong-doing. We must be just to others, generous to others,
and yet we must realize that it is a shameful and a wicked thing not to
withstand oppression with high heart and ready hand. With gentleness and
tenderness there must go dauntless bravery and grim acceptance of labor
and hardship and peril. All for each, and each for all, is a good motto;
but only on condition that each works with might and main to so maintain
himself as not to be a burden to others.
We of the great modern democracies must strive unceasingly to make our
several countries lands in which a poor man who works hard can
live comfortably and honestly, and in which a rich man cannot live
dishonestly nor in slothful avoidance of duty; and yet we must judge
rich man and poor man alike by a standard which rests on conduct and not
on caste, and we must frown with the same stern severity on the mean and
vicious envy which hates and would plunder a man because he is well off
and on the brutal and selfish arrogance which looks down on and exploits
the man with whom life has gone hard.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
SAGAMORE HILL, October 1, 1913.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
CHAPTER I
BOYHOOD AND YOUTH
My grandfather on my father's side was of almost purely Dutch blood.
When he was young he still spoke some Dutch, and Dutch was last used
in the services of the Dutch Reformed Church in New York while he was a
small boy.
About 1644 his ancestor Klaes Martensen van Roosevelt came to New
Amsterdam as a "settler"--the euphemistic name for an immigrant who
came over in the steerage of a sailing ship in the seventeenth century
instead of the steerage of a steamer in the nineteenth century. From
that time for the next seven generations from father to son every one of
us was born on Manhattan Island.
My father's paternal ancestors were of Holland stock; except that there
was one named Waldron, a wheelwright, who was one of the Pilgrims who
remained in Holland when the others came over to found Massachusetts,
and who then accompanied the Dutch adventurers to New Amsterdam.
My father's mother was a Pennsylvanian. Her forebears had come to
Pennsylvania with William Penn, some in the same ship with him; they
were of the usual type of the immigration of that particular place and
time. They included Welsh and English Quakers, an Irishman,--with a
Celtic name, and apparently not a Quaker,--and peace-loving Germans,
who were among the founders of Germantown, having been driven from their
Rhineland homes when the armies of Louis the Fourteenth ravaged
the Palatinate; and, in addition, representatives of a by-no-means
altogether peaceful people, the Scotch Irish, who came to Pennsylvania
a little later, early in the eighteenth century. My grandmother was a
woman of singular sweetness and strength, the keystone of the arch in
her relations with her husband and sons. Although she was not herself
Dutch, it was she who taught me the only Dutch I ever knew, a baby
song of which the first line ran, "Trippe troppa tronjes." I always
remembered this, and when I was in East Africa it proved a bond of union
between me and the Boer settlers, not a few of whom knew it, although at
first they always had difficulty in understanding my pronunciation--at
which I do not wonder. It was interesting to meet these men whose
ancestors had gone to the Cape about the time that mine went to America
two centuries and a half previously, and to find that the descendants
of the two streams of emigrants still crooned to their children some at
least of the same nursery songs.
Of my great-grandfather Roosevelt and his family life a century and over
ago I know little beyond what is implied in some of his books that have
come down to me--the Letters of Junius, a biography of John Paul Jones,
Chief Justice Marshall's "Life of Washington." They seem to indicate
that his library was less interesting than that of my wife's
great-grandfather at the same time, which certainly included such
volumes as the original _Edinburgh Review_, for we have them now on our
own book-shelves. Of my grandfather Roosevelt my most vivid childish
reminiscence is not something I saw, but a tale that was told me
concerning him. In _his_ boyhood Sunday was as dismal a day for small
Calvinistic children of Dutch descent as if they had been of Puritan or
Scotch Covenanting or French Huguenot descent--and I speak as one proud
of his Holland, Huguenot, and Covenanting ancestors, and proud that the
blood of that stark Puritan divine Jonathan Edwards flows in the veins
of his children. One summer afternoon, after listening to an unusually
long Dutch Reformed sermon for the second time that day, my grandfather,
a small boy, running home before the congregation had dispersed, ran
into a party of pigs, which then wandered free in New York's streets. He
promptly mounted a big boar, which no less promptly bolted and carried
him at full speed through the midst of the outraged congregation.
By the way, one of the Roosevelt documents which came down to me
illustrates the change that has come over certain aspects of public life
since the time which pessimists term "the earlier and better days of
the Republic." Old Isaac Roosevelt was a member of an Auditing Committee
which shortly after the close of the Revolution approved the following
bill:
The State of New York, to John Cape Dr.
To a Dinner Given by His Excellency the Governor
and Council to their Excellencies the Minnister of
France and General Washington & Co.
1783
December
To 120 dinners at 48: 0:0
To 135 Bottles Madira 54: 0:0
" 36 ditto Port 10:16:0
" 60 ditto English Beer 9: 0:0
" 30 Bouls Punch 9: 0:0
" 8 dinners for Musick 1:12:0
" 10 ditto for Sarvts 2: 0:0
" 60 Wine Glasses Broken 4:10:0
" 8 Cutt decanters Broken 3: 0:0
" Coffee for 8 Gentlemen 1:12:0
" Music fees &ca 8: 0:0
" Fruit & Nuts 5: 0:0
156:10:0
By Cash . . . 100:16:0
55:14:0
WE a Committee of Council having examined
the above account do certify it (amounting to
one hundred and fifty-six Pounds ten Shillings)
to be just.
December 17th 1783.
ISAAC ROOSEVELT
JAS. DUANE
EGBT. BENSON
FRED. JAY
Received the above Contents in full
New York 17th December 1783
JOHN CAPE
Think of the Governor of New York now submitting such a bill for such an
entertainment of the French Ambassador and the President of the United
States! Falstaff's views of the proper proportion between sack and bread
are borne out by the proportion between the number of bowls of punch and
bottles of port, Madeira, and beer consumed, and the "coffee for eight
gentlemen"--apparently the only ones who lasted through to that stage
of the dinner. Especially admirable is the nonchalant manner in which,
obviously as a result of the drinking of said bottles of wine and
bowls of punch, it is recorded that eight cut-glass decanters and sixty
wine-glasses were broken.
During the Revolution some of my forefathers, North and South, served
respectably, but without distinction, in the army, and others rendered
similar service in the Continental Congress or in various local
legislatures. By that time those who dwelt in the North were for the
most part merchants, and those who dwelt in the South, planters.
My mother's people were predominantly of Scotch, but also of Huguenot
and English, descent. She was a Georgian, her people having come to
Georgia from South Carolina before the Revolution. The original Bulloch
was a lad from near Glasgow, who came hither a couple of centuries ago,
just as hundreds of thousands of needy, enterprising Scotchmen have gone
to the four quarters of the globe in the intervening two hundred
years. My mother's great-grandfather, Archibald Bulloch, was the first
Revolutionary "President" of Georgia. My grandfather, her father, spent
the winters in Savannah and the summers at Roswell, in the Georgia
uplands near Atlanta, finally making Roswell his permanent home. He
used to travel thither with his family and their belongings in his own
carriage, followed by a baggage wagon. I never saw Roswell until I was
President, but my mother told me so much about the place that when I did
see it I felt as if I already knew every nook and corner of it, and as
if it were haunted by the ghosts of all the men and women who had lived
there. I do not mean merely my own family, I mean the slaves. My mother
and her sister, my aunt, used to tell us children all kinds of stories
about the slaves. One of the most fascinating referred to a very old
darky called Bear Bob, because in the early days of settlement he had
been partially scalped by a black bear. Then there was Mom' Grace, who
was for a time my mother's nurse, and whom I had supposed to be dead,
but who greeted me when I did come to Roswell, very respectable, and
apparently with years of life before her. The two chief personages of
the drama that used to be repeated to us were Daddy Luke, the Negro
overseer, and his wife, Mom' Charlotte. I never saw either Daddy Luke
or Mom' Charlotte, but I inherited the care of them when my mother died.
After the close of the war they resolutely refused to be emancipated
or leave the place. The only demand they made upon us was enough money
annually to get a new "critter," that is, a mule. With a certain lack of
ingenuity the mule was reported each Christmas as having passed away,
or at least as having become so infirm as to necessitate a successor--a
solemn fiction which neither deceived nor was intended to deceive, but
which furnished a gauge for the size of the Christmas gift.
My maternal grandfather's house was on the line of Sherman's march to
the sea, and pretty much everything in it that was portable was taken by
the boys in blue, including most of the books in the library. When I
was President the facts about my ancestry were published, and a
former soldier in Sherman's army sent me back one of the books with
my grandfather's name in it. It was a little copy of the poems of "Mr.
Gray"--an eighteenth-century edition printed in Glasgow.
On October 27, 1858, I was born at No. 28 East Twentieth Street, New
York City, in the house in which we lived during the time that my two
sisters and my brother and I were small children. It was furnished
in the canonical taste of the New York which George William Curtis
described in the _Potiphar Papers_. The black haircloth furniture in the
dining-room scratched the bare legs of the children when they sat on
it. The middle room was a library, with tables, chairs, and bookcases of
gloomy respectability. It was without windows, and so was available only
at night. The front room, the parlor, seemed to us children to be a room
of much splendor, but was open for general use only on Sunday evening
or on rare occasions when there were parties. The Sunday evening family
gathering was the redeeming feature in a day which otherwise we children
did not enjoy--chiefly because we were all of us made to wear clean
clothes and keep neat. The ornaments of that parlor I remember now,
including the gas chandelier decorated with a great quantity of
cut-glass prisms. These prisms struck me as possessing peculiar
magnificence. One of them fell off one day, and I hastily grabbed it and
stowed it away, passing several days of furtive delight in the treasure,
a delight always alloyed with fear that I would be found out and
convicted of larceny. There was a Swiss wood-carving representing a very
big hunter on one side of an exceedingly small mountain, and a herd
of chamois, disproportionately small for the hunter and large for the
mountain, just across the ridge. This always fascinated us; but there
was a small chamois kid for which we felt agonies lest the hunter might
come on it and kill it. There was also a Russian moujik drawing a gilt
sledge on a piece of malachite. Some one mentioned in my hearing that
malachite was a valuable marble. This fixed in my mind that it was
valuable exactly as diamonds are valuable. I accepted that moujik as
a priceless work of art, and it was not until I was well in middle age
that it occurred to me that I was mistaken.
Now and then we children were taken round to our grandfather's house;
a big house for the New York of those days, on the corner of Fourteenth
Street and Broadway, fronting Union Square. Inside there was a large
hall running up to the roof; there was a tessellated black-and-white
marble floor, and a circular staircase round the sides of the hall, from
the top floor down. We children much admired both the tessellated floor
and the circular staircase. I think we were right about the latter, but
I am not so sure as to the tessellated floor.
The summers we spent in the country, now at one place, now at another.
We children, of course, loved the country beyond anything. We disliked
the city. We were always wildly eager to get to the country when spring
came, and very sad when in the late fall the family moved back to town.
In the country we of course had all kinds of pets--cats, dogs, rabbits,
a coon, and a sorrel Shetland pony named General Grant. When my younger
sister first heard of the real General Grant, by the way, she was much
struck by the coincidence that some one should have given him the same
name as the pony. (Thirty years later my own children had _their_ pony
Grant.) In the country we children ran barefoot much of the time,
and the seasons went by in a round of uninterrupted and enthralling
pleasures--supervising the haying and harvesting, picking apples,
hunting frogs successfully and woodchucks unsuccessfully, gathering
hickory-nuts and chestnuts for sale to patient parents, building wigwams
in the woods, and sometimes playing Indians in too realistic manner by
staining ourselves (and incidentally our clothes) in liberal fashion
with poke-cherry juice. Thanksgiving was an appreciated festival, but it
in no way came up to Christmas. Christmas was an occasion of literally
delirious joy. In the evening we hung up our stockings--or rather the
biggest stockings we could borrow from the grown-ups--and before dawn we
trooped in to open them while sitting on father's and mother's bed;
and the bigger presents were arranged, those for each child on its own
table, in the drawing-room, the doors to which were thrown open after
breakfast. I never knew any one else have what seemed to me such
attractive Christmases, and in the next generation I tried to reproduce
them exactly for my own children.
My father, Theodore Roosevelt, was the best man I ever knew. He
combined strength and courage with gentleness, tenderness, and great
unselfishness. He would not tolerate in us children selfishness or
cruelty, idleness, cowardice, or untruthfulness. As we grew older he
made us understand that the same standard of clean living was demanded
for the boys as for the girls; that what was wrong in a woman could
not be right in a man. With great love and patience, and the most
understanding sympathy and consideration, he combined insistence on
discipline. He never physically punished me but once, but he was the
only man of whom I was ever really afraid. I do not mean that it was
a wrong fear, for he was entirely just, and we children adored him. We
used to wait in the library in the evening until we could hear his key
rattling in the latch of the front hall, and then rush out to greet him;
and we would troop into his room while he was dressing, to stay there as
long as we were permitted, eagerly examining anything which came out
of his pockets which could be regarded as an attractive novelty. Every
child has fixed in his memory various details which strike it as of
grave importance. The trinkets he used to keep in a little box on his
dressing-table we children always used to speak of as "treasures."
The word, and some of the trinkets themselves, passed on to the next
generation. My own children, when small, used to troop into my room
while I was dressing, and the gradually accumulating trinkets in the
"ditty-box"--the gift of an enlisted man in the navy--always excited
rapturous joy. On occasions of solemn festivity each child would receive
a trinket for his or her "very own." My children, by the way, enjoyed
one pleasure I do not remember enjoying myself. When I came back from
riding, the child who brought the bootjack would itself promptly get
into the boots, and clump up and down the room with a delightful feeling
of kinship with Jack of the seven-league strides.
The punishing incident I have referred to happened when I was four years
old. I bit my elder sister's arm. I do not remember biting her arm, but
I do remember running down to the yard, perfectly conscious that I had
committed a crime. From the yard I went into the kitchen, got some dough
from the cook, and crawled under the kitchen table. In a minute or two
my father entered from the yard and asked where I was. The warm-hearted
Irish cook had a characteristic contempt for "informers," but although
she said nothing she compromised between informing and her conscience
by casting a look under the table. My father immediately dropped on all
fours and darted for me. I feebly heaved the dough at him, and, having
the advantage of him because I could stand up under the table, got
a fair start for the stairs, but was caught halfway up them. The
punishment that ensued fitted the crime, and I hope--and believe--that
it did me good.
I never knew any one who got greater joy out of living than did my
father, or any one who more whole-heartedly performed every duty; and no
one whom I have ever met approached his combination of enjoyment of life
and performance of duty. He and my mother were given to a hospitality
that at that time was associated more commonly with southern than
northern households; and, especially in their later years when they
had moved up town, in the neighborhood of Central Park, they kept a
charming, open house.
My father worked hard at his business, for he died when he was
forty-six, too early to have retired. He was interested in every social
reform movement, and he did an immense amount of practical charitable
work himself. He was a big, powerful man, with a leonine face, and his
heart filled with gentleness for those who needed help or protection,
and with the possibility of much wrath against a bully or an oppressor.
He was very fond of riding both on the road and across the country, and
was also a great whip. He usually drove four-in-hand, or else a spike
team, that is, a pair with a third horse in the lead. I do not suppose
that such a team exists now. The trap that he drove we always called the
high phaeton. The wheels turned under in front. I have it yet. He drove
long-tailed horses, harnessed loose in light American harness, so that
the whole rig had no possible resemblance to anything that would be seen
now. My father always excelled in improving every spare half-hour or
three-quarters of an hour, whether for work or enjoyment. Much of his
four-in-hand driving was done in the summer afternoons when he would
come out on the train from his business in New York. My mother and one
or perhaps two of us children might meet him at the station. I can see
him now getting out of the car in his linen duster, jumping into
the wagon, and instantly driving off at a rattling pace, the duster
sometimes bagging like a balloon. The four-in-hand, as can be gathered
from the above description, did not in any way in his eyes represent
possible pageantry. He drove it because he liked it. He was always
preaching caution to his boys, but in this respect he did not practice
his preaching overmuch himself; and, being an excellent whip, he liked
to take chances. Generally they came out all right. Occasionally they
did not; but he was even better at getting out of a scrape than into
it. Once when we were driving into New York late at night the leaders
stopped. He flicked them, and the next moment we could dimly make out
that they had jumped. It then appeared that the street was closed and
that a board had been placed across it, resting on two barrels, but
without a lantern. Over this board the leaders had jumped, and there was
considerable excitement before we got the board taken off the barrels
and resumed our way. When in the city on Thanksgiving or Christmas, my
father was very apt to drive my mother and a couple of friends up to the
racing park to take lunch. But he was always back in time to go to the
dinner at the Newsboys' Lodging-House, and not infrequently also to
Miss Sattery's Night School for little Italians. At a very early age we
children were taken with him and were required to help. He was a staunch
friend of Charles Loring Brace, and was particularly interested in the
Newsboys' Lodging-House and in the night schools and in getting the
children off the streets and out on farms in the West. When I was
President, the Governor of Alaska under me, Governor Brady, was one of
these ex-newsboys who had been sent from New York out West by Mr. Brace
and my father. My father was greatly interested in the societies to
prevent cruelty to children and cruelty to animals. On Sundays he had
a mission class. On his way to it he used to drop us children at our
Sunday-school in Dr. Adams's Presbyterian Church on Madison Square; I
remember hearing my aunt, my mother's sister, saying that when he walked
along with us children he always reminded her of Greatheart in Bunyan.
Under the spur of his example I taught a mission class myself for three
years before going to college and for all four years that I was in
college. I do not think I made much of a success of it. But the other
day on getting out of a taxi in New York the chauffeur spoke to me and
told me that he was one of my old Sunday-school pupils. I remembered him
well, and was much pleased to find that he was an ardent Bull Mooser!
My mother, Martha Bulloch, was a sweet, gracious, beautiful Southern
woman, a delightful companion and beloved by everybody. She was entirely
"unreconstructed" to the day of her death. Her mother, my grandmother,
one of the dearest of old ladies, lived with us, and was distinctly
overindulgent to us children, being quite unable to harden her heart
towards us even when the occasion demanded it. Towards the close of the
Civil War, although a very small boy, I grew to have a partial but alert
understanding of the fact that the family were not one in their views
about that conflict, my father being a strong Lincoln Republican; and
once, when I felt that I had been wronged by maternal discipline during
the day, I attempted a partial vengeance by praying with loud fervor
for the success of the Union arms, when we all came to say our prayers
before my mother in the evening. She was not only a most devoted mother,
but was also blessed with a strong sense of humor, and she was too much
amused to punish me; but I was warned not to repeat the offense, under
penalty of my father's being informed--he being the dispenser of serious
punishment. Morning prayers were with my father. We used to stand at the
foot of the stairs, and when father came down we called out, "I speak
for you and the cubby-hole too!" There were three of us young children,
and we used to sit with father on the sofa while he conducted morning
prayers. The place between father and the arm of the sofa we called the
"cubby-hole." The child who got that place we regarded as especially
favored both in comfort and somehow or other in rank and title. The two
who were left to sit on the much wider expanse of sofa on the other side
of father were outsiders for the time being.
My aunt Anna, my mother's sister, lived with us. She was as devoted to
us children as was my mother herself, and we were equally devoted to her
in return. She taught us our lessons while we were little. She and
my mother used to entertain us by the hour with tales of life on
the Georgia plantations; of hunting fox, deer, and wildcat; of the
long-tailed driving horses, Boone and Crockett, and of the riding
horses, one of which was named Buena Vista in a fit of patriotic
exaltation during the Mexican War; and of the queer goings-on in the
Negro quarters. She knew all the "Br'er Rabbit" stories, and I was
brought up on them. One of my uncles, Robert Roosevelt, was much struck
with them, and took them down from her dictation, publishing them in
_Harper's_, where they fell flat. This was a good many years before a
genius arose who in "Uncle Remus" made the stories immortal.
My mother's two brothers, James Dunwoodie Bulloch and Irvine Bulloch,
came to visit us shortly after the close of the war. Both came under
assumed names, as they were among the Confederates who were at that time
exempted from the amnesty. "Uncle Jimmy" Bulloch was a dear old retired
sea-captain, utterly unable to "get on" in the worldly sense of that
phrase, as valiant and simple and upright a soul as ever lived, a
veritable Colonel Newcome. He was an Admiral in the Confederate navy,
and was the builder of the famous Confederate war vessel Alabama. My
uncle Irvine Bulloch was a midshipman on the _Alabama_, and fired
the last gun discharged from her batteries in the fight with the
_Kearsarge_. Both of these uncles lived in Liverpool after the war.
My uncle Jimmy Bulloch was forgiving and just in reference to the
Union forces, and could discuss all phases of the Civil War with entire
fairness and generosity. But in English politics he promptly became a
Tory of the most ultra-conservative school. Lincoln and Grant he could
admire, but he would not listen to anything in favor of Mr. Gladstone.
The only occasions on which I ever shook his faith in me were when I
would venture meekly to suggest that some of the manifestly preposterous
falsehoods about Mr. Gladstone could not be true. My uncle was one of
the best men I have ever known, and when I have sometimes been tempted
to wonder how good people can believe of me the unjust and impossible
things they do believe, I have consoled myself by thinking of Uncle
Jimmy Bulloch's perfectly sincere conviction that Gladstone was a man of
quite exceptional and nameless infamy in both public and private life.
I was a sickly, delicate boy, suffered much from asthma, and frequently
had to be taken away on trips to find a place where I could breathe. One
of my memories is of my father walking up and down the room with me in
his arms at night when I was a very small person, and of sitting up in
bed gasping, with my father and mother trying to help me. I went very
little to school. I never went to the public schools, as my own children
later did, both at the "Cove School" at Oyster Bay and at the "Ford
School" in Washington. For a few months I attended Professor McMullen's
school in Twentieth Street near the house where I was born, but most of
the time I had tutors. As I have already said, my aunt taught me when
I was small. At one time we had a French governess, a loved and valued
"mam'selle," in the household.
When I was ten years old I made my first journey to Europe. My birthday
was spent in Cologne, and in order to give me a thoroughly "party"
feeling I remember that my mother put on full dress for my birthday
dinner. I do not think I gained anything from this particular trip
abroad. I cordially hated it, as did my younger brother and sister.
Practically all the enjoyment we had was in exploring any ruins or
mountains when we could get away from our elders, and in playing in
the different hotels. Our one desire was to get back to America, and
we regarded Europe with the most ignorant chauvinism and contempt. Four
years later, however, I made another journey to Europe, and was old
enough to enjoy it thoroughly and profit by it.
While still a small boy I began to take an interest in natural history.
I remember distinctly the first day that I started on my career as
zoologist. I was walking up Broadway, and as I passed the market to
which I used sometimes to be sent before breakfast to get strawberries I
suddenly saw a dead seal laid out on a slab of wood. That seal filled me
with every possible feeling of romance and adventure. I asked where it
was killed, and was informed in the harbor. I had already begun to read
some of Mayne Reid's books and other boys' books of adventure, and I
felt that this seal brought all these adventures in realistic
fashion before me. As long as that seal remained there I haunted the
neighborhood of the market day after day. I measured it, and I recall
that, not having a tape measure, I had to do my best to get its girth
with a folding pocket foot-rule, a difficult undertaking. I carefully
made a record of the utterly useless measurements, and at once began to
write a natural history of my own, on the strength of that seal. This,
and subsequent natural histories, were written down in blank books in
simplified spelling, wholly unpremeditated and unscientific. I had vague
aspirations of in some way or another owning and preserving that seal,
but they never got beyond the purely formless stage. I think, however,
I did get the seal's skull, and with two of my cousins promptly started
what we ambitiously called the "Roosevelt Museum of Natural History."
The collections were at first kept in my room, until a rebellion on the
part of the chambermaid received the approval of the higher authorities
of the household and the collection was moved up to a kind of bookcase
in the back hall upstairs. It was the ordinary small boy's collection
of curios, quite incongruous and entirely valueless except from the
standpoint of the boy himself. My father and mother encouraged me warmly
in this, as they always did in anything that could give me wholesome
pleasure or help to develop me.
The adventure of the seal and the novels of Mayne Reid together
strengthened my instinctive interest in natural history. I was too young
to understand much of Mayne Reid, excepting the adventure part and the
natural history part--these enthralled me. But of course my reading was
not wholly confined to natural history. There was very little effort
made to compel me to read books, my father and mother having the good
sense not to try to get me to read anything I did not like, unless it
was in the way of study. I was given the chance to read books that they
thought I ought to read, but if I did not like them I was then given
some other good book that I did like. There were certain books that were
taboo. For instance, I was not allowed to read dime novels. I obtained
some surreptitiously and did read them, but I do not think that the
enjoyment compensated for the feeling of guilt. I was also forbidden to
read the only one of Ouida's books which I wished to read--"Under Two
Flags." I did read it, nevertheless, with greedy and fierce hope of
coming on something unhealthy; but as a matter of fact all the parts
that might have seemed unhealthy to an older person made no impression
on me whatever. I simply enjoyed in a rather confused way the general
adventures.
I think there ought to be children's books. I think that the child will
like grown-up books also, and I do not believe a child's book is really
good unless grown-ups get something out of it. For instance, there is a
book I did not have when I was a child because it was not written. It is
Laura E. Richard's "Nursery Rhymes." My own children loved them dearly,
and their mother and I loved them almost equally; the delightfully
light-hearted "Man from New Mexico who Lost his Grandmother out in the
Snow," the adventures of "The Owl, the Eel, and the Warming-Pan," and
the extraordinary genealogy of the kangaroo whose "father was a whale
with a feather in his tail who lived in the Greenland sea," while "his
mother was a shark who kept very dark in the Gulf of Caribee."
As a small boy I had _Our Young Folks_, which I then firmly believed
to be the very best magazine in the world--a belief, I may add, which I
have kept to this day unchanged, for I seriously doubt if any magazine
for old or young has ever surpassed it. Both my wife and I have the
bound volumes of _Our Young Folks_ which we preserved from our youth. I
have tried to read again the Mayne Reid books which I so dearly loved as
a boy, only to find, alas! that it is impossible. But I really believe
that I enjoy going over _Our Young Folks_ now nearly as much as ever.
"Cast Away in the Cold," "Grandfather's Struggle for a Homestead," "The
William Henry Letters," and a dozen others like them were first-class,
good healthy stories, interesting in the first place, and in the next
place teaching manliness, decency, and good conduct. At the cost of
being deemed effeminate, I will add that I greatly liked the girls'
stories--"Pussy Willow" and "A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's
Life," just as I worshiped "Little Men" and "Little Women" and "An
Old-Fashioned Girl."
This enjoyment of the gentler side of life did not prevent my reveling
in such tales of adventure as Ballantyne's stories, or Marryat's
"Midshipman Easy." I suppose everybody has kinks in him, and even as
a child there were books which I ought to have liked and did not. For
instance, I never cared at all for the first part of "Robinson Crusoe"
(and although it is unquestionably the best part, I do not care for it
now); whereas the second part, containing the adventures of Robinson
Crusoe, with the wolves in the Pyrenees, and out in the Far East, simply
fascinated me. What I did like in the first part were the adventures
before Crusoe finally reached his island, the fight with the Sallee
Rover, and the allusion to the strange beasts at night taking their
improbable bath in the ocean. Thanks to being already an embryo
zoologist, I disliked the "Swiss Family Robinson" because of the wholly
impossible collection of animals met by that worthy family as they
ambled inland from the wreck. Even in poetry it was the relation of
adventures that most appealed to me as a boy. At a pretty early age I
began to read certain books of poetry, notably Longfellow's poem,
"The Saga of King Olaf," which absorbed me. This introduced me to
Scandinavian literature; and I have never lost my interest in and
affection for it.
Among my first books was a volume of a hopelessly unscientific kind by
Mayne Reid, about mammals, illustrated with pictures no more artistic
than but quite as thrilling as those in the typical school geography.
When my father found how deeply interested I was in this not very
accurate volume, he gave me a little book by J. G. Wood, the English
writer of popular books on natural history, and then a larger one of his
called "Homes Without Hands." Both of these were cherished possessions.
They were studied eagerly; and they finally descended to my children.
The "Homes Without Hands," by the way, grew to have an added association
in connection with a pedagogical failure on my part. In accordance
with what I believed was some kind of modern theory of making education
interesting and not letting it become a task, I endeavored to teach my
eldest small boy one or two of his letters from the title-page. As the
letter "H" appeared in the title an unusual number of times, I selected
that to begin on, my effort being to keep the small boy interested, not
to let him realize that he was learning a lesson, and to convince him
that he was merely having a good time. Whether it was the theory or my
method of applying it that was defective I do not know, but I certainly
absolutely eradicated from his brain any ability to learn what "H" was;
and long after he had learned all the other letters of the alphabet in
the old-fashioned way, he proved wholly unable to remember "H" under any
circumstances.
Quite unknown to myself, I was, while a boy, under a hopeless
disadvantage in studying nature. I was very near-sighted, so that the
only things I could study were those I ran against or stumbled over.
When I was about thirteen I was allowed to take lessons in taxidermy
from a Mr. Bell, a tall, clean-shaven, white-haired old gentleman, as
straight as an Indian, who had been a companion of Audubon's. He had
a musty little shop, somewhat on the order of Mr. Venus's shop in "Our
Mutual Friend," a little shop in which he had done very valuable work
for science. This "vocational study," as I suppose it would be called
by modern educators, spurred and directed my interest in collecting
specimens for mounting and preservation. It was this summer that I got
my first gun, and it puzzled me to find that my companions seemed to see
things to shoot at which I could not see at all. One day they read aloud
an advertisement in huge letters on a distant billboard, and I then
realized that something was the matter, for not only was I unable to
read the sign but I could not even see the letters. I spoke of this to
my father, and soon afterwards got my first pair of spectacles,
which literally opened an entirely new world to me. I had no idea how
beautiful the world was until I got those spectacles. I had been a
clumsy and awkward little boy, and while much of my clumsiness and
awkwardness was doubtless due to general characteristics, a good deal of
it was due to the fact that I could not see and yet was wholly ignorant
that I was not seeing. The recollection of this experience gives me
a keen sympathy with those who are trying in our public schools and
elsewhere to remove the physical causes of deficiency in children,
who are often unjustly blamed for being obstinate or unambitious, or
mentally stupid.
This same summer, too, I obtained various new books on mammals and
birds, including the publications of Spencer Baird, for instance, and
made an industrious book-study of the subject. I did not accomplish
much in outdoor study because I did not get spectacles until late in the
fall, a short time before I started with the rest of the family for a
second trip to Europe. We were living at Dobbs Ferry, on the Hudson. My
gun was a breech-loading, pin-fire double-barrel, of French manufacture.
It was an excellent gun for a clumsy and often absent-minded boy. There
was no spring to open it, and if the mechanism became rusty it could be
opened with a brick without serious damage. When the cartridges stuck
they could be removed in the same fashion. If they were loaded, however,
the result was not always happy, and I tattooed myself with partially
unburned grains of powder more than once.
When I was fourteen years old, in the winter of '72 and '73, I visited
Europe for the second time, and this trip formed a really useful part of
my education. We went to Egypt, journeyed up the Nile, traveled through
the Holy Land and part of Syria, visited Greece and Constantinople;
and then we children spent the summer in a German family in Dresden. My
first real collecting as a student of natural history was done in Egypt
during this journey. By this time I had a good working knowledge of
American bird life from the superficially scientific standpoint. I had
no knowledge of the ornithology of Egypt, but I picked up in Cairo
a book by an English clergyman, whose name I have now forgotten, who
described a trip up the Nile, and in an appendix to his volume gave an
account of his bird collection. I wish I could remember the name of the
author now, for I owe that book very much. Without it I should have been
collecting entirely in the dark, whereas with its aid I could generally
find out what the birds were. My first knowledge of Latin was obtained
by learning the scientific names of the birds and mammals which I
collected and classified by the aid of such books as this one.
The birds I obtained up the Nile and in Palestine represented merely the
usual boy's collection. Some years afterward I gave them, together with
the other ornithological specimens I had gathered, to the Smithsonian
Institution in Washington, and I think some of them also to the American
Museum of Natural History in New York. I am told that the skins are to
be found yet in both places and in other public collections. I doubt
whether they have my original labels on them. With great pride the
directors of the "Roosevelt Museum," consisting of myself and the two
cousins aforesaid, had printed a set of Roosevelt Museum labels in pink
ink preliminary to what was regarded as my adventurous trip to Egypt.
This bird-collecting gave what was really the chief zest to my Nile
journey. I was old enough and had read enough to enjoy the temples and
the desert scenery and the general feeling of romance; but this in time
would have palled if I had not also had the serious work of collecting
and preparing my specimens. Doubtless the family had their moments of
suffering--especially on one occasion when a well-meaning maid extracted
from my taxidermist's outfit the old tooth-brush with which I put on
the skins the arsenical soap necessary for their preservation, partially
washed it, and left it with the rest of my wash kit for my own personal
use. I suppose that all growing boys tend to be grubby; but the
ornithological small boy, or indeed the boy with the taste for natural
history of any kind, is generally the very grubbiest of all. An added
element in my case was the fact that while in Egypt I suddenly started
to grow. As there were no tailors up the Nile, when I got back to Cairo
I needed a new outfit. But there was one suit of clothes too good to
throw away, which we kept for a "change," and which was known as my
"Smike suit," because it left my wrists and ankles as bare as those of
poor Smike himself.
When we reached Dresden we younger children were left to spend the
summer in the house of Herr Minckwitz, a member of either the Municipal
or the Saxon Government--I have forgotten which. It was hoped that in
this way we would acquire some knowledge of the German language and
literature. They were the very kindest family imaginable. I shall never
forget the unwearied patience of the two daughters. The father and
mother, and a shy, thin, student cousin who was living in the flat,
were no less kind. Whenever I could get out into the country I collected
specimens industriously and enlivened the household with hedge-hogs
and other small beasts and reptiles which persisted in escaping from
partially closed bureau drawers. The two sons were fascinating students
from the University of Leipsic, both of them belonging to dueling corps,
and much scarred in consequence. One, a famous swordsman, was called
_Der Rothe Herzog_ (the Red Duke), and the other was nicknamed _Herr
Nasehorn_ (Sir Rhinoceros) because the tip of his nose had been cut off
in a duel and sewn on again. I learned a good deal of German here,
in spite of myself, and above all I became fascinated with the
Nibelungenlied. German prose never became really easy to me in the sense
that French prose did, but for German poetry I cared as much as for
English poetry. Above all, I gained an impression of the German people
which I never got over. From that time to this it would have been quite
impossible to make me feel that the Germans were really foreigners.
The affection, the _Gemuthlichkeit_ (a quality which cannot be exactly
expressed by any single English word), the capacity for hard work, the
sense of duty, the delight in studying literature and science, the pride
in the new Germany, the more than kind and friendly interest in three
strange children--all these manifestations of the German character and
of German family life made a subconscious impression upon me which I did
not in the least define at the time, but which is very vivid still forty
years later.
When I got back to America, at the age of fifteen, I began serious study
to enter Harvard under Mr. Arthur Cutler, who later founded the Cutler
School in New York. I could not go to school because I knew so much less
than most boys of my age in some subjects and so much more in others. In
science and history and geography and in unexpected parts of German
and French I was strong, but lamentably weak in Latin and Greek and
mathematics. My grandfather had made his summer home in Oyster Bay a
number of years before, and my father now made Oyster Bay the summer
home of his family also. Along with my college preparatory studies I
carried on the work of a practical student of natural history. I worked
with greater industry than either intelligence or success, and made very
few additions to the sum of human knowledge; but to this day certain
obscure ornithological publications may be found in which are recorded
such items as, for instance, that on one occasion a fish-crow, and on
another an Ipswich sparrow, were obtained by one Theodore Roosevelt,
Jr., at Oyster Bay, on the shore of Long Island Sound.
In the fall of 1876 I entered Harvard, graduating in 1880. I thoroughly
enjoyed Harvard, and I am sure it did me good, but only in the general
effect, for there was very little in my actual studies which helped me
in after life. More than one of my own sons have already profited by
their friendship with certain of their masters in school or college. I
certainly profited by my friendship with one of my tutors, Mr. Cutler;
and in Harvard I owed much to the professor of English, Mr. A. S. Hill.
Doubtless through my own fault, I saw almost nothing of President Eliot
and very little of the professors. I ought to have gained much more than
I did gain from writing the themes and forensics. My failure to do
so may have been partly due to my taking no interest in the subjects.
Before I left Harvard I was already writing one or two chapters of a
book I afterwards published on the Naval War of 1812. Those chapters
were so dry that they would have made a dictionary seem light reading by
comparison. Still, they represented purpose and serious interest on
my part, not the perfunctory effort to do well enough to get a certain
mark; and corrections of them by a skilled older man would have
impressed me and have commanded my respectful attention. But I was not
sufficiently developed to make myself take an intelligent interest in
some of the subjects assigned me--the character of the Gracchi, for
instance. A very clever and studious lad would no doubt have done so,
but I personally did not grow up to this particular subject until a good
many years later. The frigate and sloop actions between the American
and British sea-tigers of 1812 were much more within my grasp. I
worked drearily at the Gracchi because I had to; my conscientious
and much-to-be-pitied professor dragging me through the theme by main
strength, with my feet firmly planted in dull and totally idea-proof
resistance.
I had at the time no idea of going into public life, and I never studied
elocution or practiced debating. This was a loss to me in one way. In
another way it was not. Personally I have not the slightest sympathy
with debating contests in which each side is arbitrarily assigned a
given proposition and told to maintain it without the least reference to
whether those maintaining it believe in it or not. I know that under our
system this is necessary for lawyers, but I emphatically disbelieve in
it as regards general discussion of political, social, and industrial
matters. What we need is to turn out of our colleges young men with
ardent convictions on the side of the right; not young men who can make
a good argument for either right or wrong as their interest bids them.
The present method of carrying on debates on such subjects as "Our
Colonial Policy," or "The Need of a Navy," or "The Proper Position of
the Courts in Constitutional Questions," encourages precisely the
wrong attitude among those who take part in them. There is no effort to
instill sincerity and intensity of conviction. On the contrary, the
net result is to make the contestants feel that their convictions have
nothing to do with their arguments. I am sorry I did not study elocution
in college; but I am exceedingly glad that I did not take part in the
type of debate in which stress is laid, not upon getting a speaker to
think rightly, but on getting him to talk glibly on the side to which
he is assigned, without regard either to what his convictions are or to
what they ought to be.
I was a reasonably good student in college, standing just within the
first tenth of my class, if I remember rightly; although I am not sure
whether this means the tenth of the whole number that entered or of
those that graduated. I was given a Phi Beta Kappa "key." My chief
interests were scientific. When I entered college, I was devoted to
out-of-doors natural history, and my ambition was to be a scientific
man of the Audubon, or Wilson, or Baird, or Coues type--a man like Hart
Merriam, or Frank Chapman, or Hornaday, to-day. My father had from the
earliest days instilled into me the knowledge that I was to work and to
make my own way in the world, and I had always supposed that this meant
that I must enter business. But in my freshman year (he died when I was
a sophomore) he told me that if I wished to become a scientific man I
could do so. He explained that I must be sure that I really intensely
desired to do scientific work, because if I went into it I must make it
a serious career; that he had made enough money to enable me to take up
such a career and do non-remunerative work of value _if I intended to do
the very best work there was in me_; but that I must not dream of taking
it up as a dilettante. He also gave me a piece of advice that I have
always remembered, namely, that, if I was not going to earn money, I
must even things up by not spending it. As he expressed it, I had
to keep the fraction constant, and if I was not able to increase the
numerator, then I must reduce the denominator. In other words, if I went
into a scientific career, I must definitely abandon all thought of the
enjoyment that could accompany a money-making career, and must find my
pleasures elsewhere.
After this conversation I fully intended to make science my life-work. I
did not, for the simple reason that at that time Harvard, and I suppose
our other colleges, utterly ignored the possibilities of the faunal
naturalist, the outdoor naturalist and observer of nature. They treated
biology as purely a science of the laboratory and the microscope, a
science whose adherents were to spend their time in the study of minute
forms of marine life, or else in section-cutting and the study of the
tissues of the higher organisms under the microscope. This attitude was,
no doubt, in part due to the fact that in most colleges then there was
a not always intelligent copying of what was done in the great German
universities. The sound revolt against superficiality of study had been
carried to an extreme; thoroughness in minutiae as the only end of study
had been erected into a fetish. There was a total failure to understand
the great variety of kinds of work that could be done by naturalists,
including what could be done by outdoor naturalists--the kind of work
which Hart Merriam and his assistants in the Biological Survey have
carried to such a high degree of perfection as regards North American
mammals. In the entirely proper desire to be thorough and to avoid
slipshod methods, the tendency was to treat as not serious, as
unscientific, any kind of work that was not carried on with laborious
minuteness in the laboratory. My taste was specialized in a totally
different direction, and I had no more desire or ability to be a
microscopist and section-cutter than to be a mathematician. Accordingly
I abandoned all thought of becoming a scientist. Doubtless this meant
that I really did not have the intense devotion to science which I
thought I had; for, if I had possessed such devotion, I would
have carved out a career for myself somehow without regard to
discouragements.
As regards political economy, I was of course while in college taught
the _laissez-faire_ doctrines--one of them being free trade--then
accepted as canonical. Most American boys of my age were taught both by
their surroundings and by their studies certain principles which were
very valuable from the standpoint of National interest, and certain
others which were very much the reverse. The political economists were
not especially to blame for this; it was the general attitude of the
writers who wrote for us of that generation. Take my beloved _Our Young
Folks_, the magazine of which I have already spoken, and which taught
me much more than any of my text-books. Everything in this magazine
instilled the individual virtues, and the necessity of character as the
chief factor in any man's success--a teaching in which I now believe as
sincerely as ever, for all the laws that the wit of man can devise will
never make a man a worthy citizen unless he has within himself the
right stuff, unless he has self-reliance, energy, courage, the power of
insisting on his own rights and the sympathy that makes him regardful of
the rights of others. All this individual morality I was taught by the
books I read at home and the books I studied at Harvard. But there was
almost no teaching of the need for collective action, and of the fact
that in addition to, not as a substitute for, individual responsibility,
there is a collective responsibility. Books such as Herbert Croly's
"Promise of American Life" and Walter E. Weyl's "New Democracy" would
generally at that time have been treated either as unintelligible or
else as pure heresy.
The teaching which I received was genuinely democratic in one way. It
was not so democratic in another. I grew into manhood thoroughly imbued
with the feeling that a man must be respected for what he made of
himself. But I had also, consciously or unconsciously, been taught that
socially and industrially pretty much the whole duty of the man lay
in thus making the best of himself; that he should be honest in his
dealings with others and charitable in the old-fashioned way to the
unfortunate; but that it was no part of his business to join with others
in trying to make things better for the many by curbing the abnormal and
excessive development of individualism in a few. Now I do not mean that
this training was by any means all bad. On the contrary, the insistence
upon individual responsibility was, and is, and always will be, a prime
necessity. Teaching of the kind I absorbed from both my text-books and
my surroundings is a healthy anti-scorbutic to the sentimentality which
by complacently excusing the individual for all his shortcomings would
finally hopelessly weaken the spring of moral purpose. It also keeps
alive that virile vigor for the lack of which in the average individual
no possible perfection of law or of community action can ever atone. But
such teaching, if not corrected by other teaching, means acquiescence
in a riot of lawless business individualism which would be quite as
destructive to real civilization as the lawless military individualism
of the Dark Ages. I left college and entered the big world owing more
than I can express to the training I had received, especially in my own
home; but with much else also to learn if I were to become really fitted
to do my part in the work that lay ahead for the generation of Americans
to which I belonged.
CHAPTER II
THE VIGOR OF LIFE
Looking back, a man really has a more objective feeling about himself
as a child than he has about his father or mother. He feels as if that
child were not the present he, individually, but an ancestor; just as
much an ancestor as either of his parents. The saying that the child is
the father to the man may be taken in a sense almost the reverse of that
usually given to it. The child is father to the man in the sense that
his individuality is separate from the individuality of the grown-up
into which he turns. This is perhaps one reason why a man can speak of
his childhood and early youth with a sense of detachment.
Having been a sickly boy, with no natural bodily prowess, and having
lived much at home, I was at first quite unable to hold my own when
thrown into contact with other boys of rougher antecedents. I was
nervous and timid. Yet from reading of the people I admired--ranging
from the soldiers of Valley Forge, and Morgan's riflemen, to the heroes
of my favorite stories--and from hearing of the feats performed by my
Southern forefathers and kinsfolk, and from knowing my father, I felt a
great admiration for men who were fearless and who could hold their
own in the world, and I had a great desire to be like them. Until I
was nearly fourteen I let this desire take no more definite shape than
day-dreams. Then an incident happened that did me real good. Having an
attack of asthma, I was sent off by myself to Moosehead Lake. On the
stage-coach ride thither I encountered a couple of other boys who
were about my own age, but very much more competent and also much more
mischievous. I have no doubt they were good-hearted boys, but they were
boys! They found that I was a foreordained and predestined victim, and
industriously proceeded to make life miserable for me. The worst feature
was that when I finally tried to fight them I discovered that either one
singly could not only handle me with easy contempt, but handle me so as
not to hurt me much and yet to prevent my doing any damage whatever in
return.
The experience taught me what probably no amount of good advice could
have taught me. I made up my mind that I must try to learn so that I
would not again be put in such a helpless position; and having become
quickly and bitterly conscious that I did not have the natural prowess
to hold my own, I decided that I would try to supply its place by
training. Accordingly, with my father's hearty approval, I started to
learn to box. I was a painfully slow and awkward pupil, and certainly
worked two or three years before I made any perceptible improvement
whatever. My first boxing-master was John Long, an ex-prize-fighter. I
can see his rooms now, with colored pictures of the fights between Tom
Hyer and Yankee Sullivan, and Heenan and Sayers, and other great events
in the annals of the squared circle. On one occasion, to excite interest
among his patrons, he held a series of "championship" matches for the
different weights, the prizes being, at least in my own class, pewter
mugs of a value, I should suppose, approximating fifty cents. Neither
he nor I had any idea that I could do anything, but I was entered in
the lightweight contest, in which it happened that I was pitted in
succession against a couple of reedy striplings who were even worse than
I was. Equally to their surprise and to my own, and to John Long's, I
won, and the pewter mug became one of my most prized possessions. I
kept it, and alluded to it, and I fear bragged about it, for a number
of years, and I only wish I knew where it was now. Years later I read
an account of a little man who once in a fifth-rate handicap race won
a worthless pewter medal and joyed in it ever after. Well, as soon as I
read that story I felt that that little man and I were brothers.
This was, as far as I remember, the only one of my exceedingly rare
athletic triumphs which would be worth relating. I did a good deal of
boxing and wrestling in Harvard, but never attained to the first rank in
either, even at my own weight. Once, in the big contests in the Gym,
I got either into the finals or semi-finals, I forget which; but aside
from this the chief part I played was to act as trial horse for some
friend or classmate who did have a chance of distinguishing himself in
the championship contests.
I was fond of horseback-riding, but I took to it slowly and with
difficulty, exactly as with boxing. It was a long time before I became
even a respectable rider, and I never got much higher. I mean by this
that I never became a first-flight man in the hunting field, and never
even approached the bronco-busting class in the West. Any man, if
he chooses, can gradually school himself to the requisite nerve, and
gradually learn the requisite seat and hands, that will enable him to do
respectably across country, or to perform the average work on a ranch.
Of my ranch experiences I shall speak later. At intervals after leaving
college I hunted on Long Island with the Meadowbrook hounds. Almost the
only experience I ever had in this connection that was of any interest
was on one occasion when I broke my arm. My purse did not permit me to
own expensive horses. On this occasion I was riding an animal, a buggy
horse originally, which its owner sold because now and then it insisted
on thoughtfully lying down when in harness. It never did this under the
saddle; and when he turned it out to grass it would solemnly hop over
the fence and get somewhere where it did not belong. The last trait
was what converted it into a hunter. It was a natural jumper, although
without any speed. On the hunt in question I got along very well until
the pace winded my ex-buggy horse, and it turned a somersault over a
fence. When I got on it after the fall I found I could not use my left
arm. I supposed it was merely a strain. The buggy horse was a sedate
animal which I rode with a snaffle. So we pounded along at the tail of
the hunt, and I did not appreciate that my arm was broken for three or
four fences. Then we came to a big drop, and the jar made the bones slip
past one another so as to throw the hand out of position. It did not
hurt me at all, and as the horse was as easy to sit as a rocking-chair,
I got in at the death.
I think August Belmont was master of the hunt when the above incident
occurred. I know he was master on another occasion on which I met with
a mild adventure. On one of the hunts when I was out a man was thrown,
dragged by one stirrup, and killed. In consequence I bought a pair of
safety stirrups, which I used the next time I went out. Within five
minutes after the run began I found that the stirrups were so very
"safe" that they would not stay in at all. First one went off at one
jump, and then the other at another jump--with a fall for me on each
occasion. I hated to give up the fun so early, and accordingly finished
the run without any stirrups. My horse never went as fast as on that
run. Doubtless a first-class horseman can ride as well without stirrups
as with them. But I was not a first-class horseman. When anything
unexpected happened, I was apt to clasp the solemn buggy horse firmly
with my spurred heels, and the result was that he laid himself out to do
his best in the way of galloping. He speedily found that, thanks to the
snaffle bit, I could not pull him in, so when we came to a down grade he
would usually put on steam. Then if there was a fence at the bottom and
he checked at all, I was apt to shoot forward, and in such event we went
over the fence in a way that reminded me of Leech's picture, in _Punch_,
of Mr. Tom Noddy and his mare jumping a fence in the following order:
Mr. Tom Noddy, I; his mare, II. However, I got in at the death this time
also.
I was fond of walking and climbing. As a lad I used to go to the north
woods, in Maine, both in fall and winter. There I made life friends
of two men, Will Dow and Bill Sewall: I canoed with them, and tramped
through the woods with them, visiting the winter logging camps on
snow-shoes. Afterward they were with me in the West. Will Dow is dead.
Bill Sewall was collector of customs under me, on the Aroostook border.
Except when hunting I never did any mountaineering save for a couple of
conventional trips up the Matterhorn and the Jungfrau on one occasion
when I was in Switzerland.
I never did much with the shotgun, but I practiced a good deal with the
rifle. I had a rifle-range at Sagamore Hill, where I often took friends
to shoot. Once or twice when I was visited by parties of released Boer
prisoners, after the close of the South African War, they and I held
shooting matches together. The best man with both pistol and rifle who
ever shot there was Stewart Edward White. Among the many other good
men was a stanch friend, Baron Speck von Sternberg, afterwards German
Ambassador at Washington during my Presidency. He was a capital shot,
rider, and walker, a devoted and most efficient servant of Germany, who
had fought with distinction in the Franco-German War when barely more
than a boy; he was the hero of the story of "the pig dog" in Archibald
Forbes's volume of reminiscences. It was he who first talked over with
me the raising of a regiment of horse riflemen from among the ranchmen
and cowboys of the plains. When Ambassador, the poor, gallant,
tender-hearted fellow was dying of a slow and painful disease, so that
he could not play with the rest of us, but the agony of his mortal
illness never in the slightest degree interfered with his work.
Among the other men who shot and rode and walked with me was Cecil
Spring-Rice, who has just been appointed British Ambassador to the
United States. He was my groomsman, my best man, when I was married--at
St. George's, Hanover Square, which made me feel as if I were living in
one of Thackeray's novels.
My own experience as regards marksmanship was much the same as my
experience as regards horsemanship. There are men whose eye and hand are
so quick and so sure that they achieve a perfection of marksmanship to
which no practice will enable ordinary men to attain. There are other
men who cannot learn to shoot with any accuracy at all. In between come
the mass of men of ordinary abilities who, if they choose resolutely to
practice, can by sheer industry and judgment make themselves fair rifle
shots. The men who show this requisite industry and judgment can without
special difficulty raise themselves to the second class of respectable
rifle shots; and it is to this class that I belong. But to have reached
this point of marksmanship with the rifle at a target by no means
implies ability to hit game in the field, especially dangerous game. All
kinds of other qualities, moral and physical, enter into being a good
hunter, and especially a good hunter after dangerous game, just as all
kinds of other qualities in addition to skill with the rifle enter
into being a good soldier. With dangerous game, after a fair degree of
efficiency with the rifle has been attained, the prime requisites are
cool judgment and that kind of nerve which consists in avoiding being
rattled. Any beginner is apt to have "buck fever," and therefore no
beginner should go at dangerous game.
Buck fever means a state of intense nervous excitement which may be
entirely divorced from timidity. It may affect a man the first time he
has to speak to a large audience just as it affects him the first time
he sees a buck or goes into battle. What such a man needs is not courage
but nerve control, cool-headedness. This he can get only by actual
practice. He must, by custom and repeated exercise of self-mastery, get
his nerves thoroughly under control. This is largely a matter of habit,
in the sense of repeated effort and repeated exercise of will power. If
the man has the right stuff in him, his will grows stronger and stronger
with each exercise of it--and if he has not the right stuff in him he
had better keep clear of dangerous game hunting, or indeed of any other
form of sport or work in which there is bodily peril.
After he has achieved the ability to exercise wariness and judgment and
the control over his nerves _which will make him shoot as well at the
game as at a target_, he can begin his essays at dangerous game hunting,
and he will then find that it does not demand such abnormal prowess as
the outsider is apt to imagine. A man who can hit a soda-water bottle at
the distance of a few yards can brain a lion or a bear or an elephant at
that distance, and if he cannot brain it when it charges he can at least
bring it to a standstill. All he has to do is to shoot as accurately as
he would at a soda-water bottle; and to do this requires nerve, at least
as much as it does physical address. Having reached this point, the
hunter must not imagine that he is warranted in taking desperate
chances. There are degrees in proficiency; and what is a warrantable and
legitimate risk for a man to take when he has reached a certain grade of
efficiency may be a foolish risk for him to take before he has reached
that grade. A man who has reached the degree of proficiency indicated
above is quite warranted in walking in at a lion at bay, in an open
plain, to, say, within a hundred yards. If the lion has not charged, the
man ought at that distance to knock him over and prevent his charging;
and if the lion is already charging, the man ought at that distance to
be able to stop him. But the amount of prowess which warrants a man
in relying on his ability to perform this feat does not by any means
justify him in thinking that, for instance, he can crawl after a wounded
lion into thick cover. I have known men of indifferent prowess to
perform this latter feat successfully, but at least as often they have
been unsuccessful, and in these cases the result has been unpleasant.
The man who habitually follows wounded lions into thick cover must be
a hunter of the highest skill, or he can count with certainty on an
ultimate mauling.
The first two or three bucks I ever saw gave me buck fever badly, but
after I had gained experience with ordinary game I never had buck fever
at all with dangerous game. In my case the overcoming of buck fever
was the result of conscious effort and a deliberate determination
to overcome it. More happily constituted men never have to make this
determined effort at all--which may perhaps show that the average
man can profit more from my experiences than he can from those of the
exceptional man.
I have shot only five kinds of animals which can fairly be called
dangerous game--that is, the lion, elephant, rhinoceros, and buffalo
in Africa, and the big grizzly bear a quarter of a century ago in the
Rockies. Taking into account not only my own personal experience, but
the experiences of many veteran hunters, I regard all the four African
animals, but especially the lion, elephant, and buffalo, as much more
dangerous than the grizzly. As it happened, however, the only narrow
escape I personally ever had was from a grizzly, and in Africa the
animal killed closest to me as it was charging was a rhinoceros--all of
which goes to show that a man must not generalize too broadly from
his own personal experiences. On the whole, I think the lion the most
dangerous of all these five animals; that is, I think that, if fairly
hunted, there is a larger percentage of hunters killed or mauled for a
given number of lions killed than for a given number of any one of the
other animals. Yet I personally had no difficulties with lions. I twice
killed lions which were at bay and just starting to charge, and I killed
a heavy-maned male while it was in full charge. But in each instance I
had plenty of leeway, the animal being so far off that even if my bullet
had not been fatal I should have had time for a couple more shots. The
African buffalo is undoubtedly a dangerous beast, but it happened that
the few that I shot did not charge. A bull elephant, a vicious "rogue,"
which had been killing people in the native villages, did charge before
being shot at. My son Kermit and I stopped it at forty yards. Another
bull elephant, also unwounded, which charged, nearly got me, as I
had just fired both cartridges from my heavy double-barreled rifle in
killing the bull I was after--the first wild elephant I had ever seen.
The second bull came through the thick brush to my left like a steam
plow through a light snowdrift, everything snapping before his rush, and
was so near that he could have hit me with his trunk. I slipped past
him behind a tree. People have asked me how I felt on this occasion.
My answer has always been that I suppose I felt as most men of like
experience feel on such occasions. At such a moment a hunter is so
very busy that he has no time to get frightened. He wants to get in his
cartridges and try another shot.
Rhinoceros are truculent, blustering beasts, much the most stupid of
all the dangerous game I know. Generally their attitude is one of mere
stupidity and bluff. But on occasions they do charge wickedly, both when
wounded and when entirely unprovoked. The first I ever shot I mortally
wounded at a few rods' distance, and it charged with the utmost
determination, whereat I and my companion both fired, and more by good
luck than anything else brought it to the ground just thirteen paces
from where we stood. Another rhinoceros may or may not have been meaning
to charge me; I have never been certain which. It heard us and came at
us through rather thick brush, snorting and tossing its head. I am by
no means sure that it had fixedly hostile intentions, and indeed with
my present experience I think it likely that if I had not fired it would
have flinched at the last moment and either retreated or gone by me.
But I am not a rhinoceros mind reader, and its actions were such as to
warrant my regarding it as a suspicious character. I stopped it with a
couple of bullets, and then followed it up and killed it. The skins
of all these animals which I thus killed are in the National Museum at
Washington.
But, as I said above, the only narrow escape I met with was not from
one of these dangerous African animals, but from a grizzly bear. It was
about twenty-four years ago. I had wounded the bear just at sunset, in a
wood of lodge-pole pines, and, following him, I wounded him again, as he
stood on the other side of a thicket. He then charged through the brush,
coming with such speed and with such an irregular gait that, try as I
would, I was not able to get the sight of my rifle on the brain-pan,
though I hit him very hard with both the remaining barrels of my
magazine Winchester. It was in the days of black powder, and the smoke
hung. After my last shot, the first thing I saw was the bear's left paw
as he struck at me, so close that I made a quick movement to one side.
He was, however, practically already dead, and after another jump, and
while in the very act of trying to turn to come at me, he collapsed like
a shot rabbit.
By the way, I had a most exasperating time trying to bring in his skin.
I was alone, traveling on foot with one very docile little mountain mare
for a pack pony. The little mare cared nothing for bears or anything
else, so there was no difficulty in packing her. But the man without
experience can hardly realize the work it was to get that bearskin off
the carcass and then to pack it, wet, slippery, and heavy, so that it
would ride evenly on the pony. I was at the time fairly well versed in
packing with a "diamond hitch," the standby of Rocky Mountain packers in
my day; but the diamond hitch is a two-man job; and even working with
a "squaw hitch," I got into endless trouble with that wet and slippery
bearskin. With infinite labor I would get the skin on the pony and run
the ropes over it until to all seeming it was fastened properly. Then
off we would start, and after going about a hundred yards I would notice
the hide beginning to bulge through between two ropes. I would shift one
of them, and then the hide would bulge somewhere else. I would shift the
rope again; and still the hide would flow slowly out as if it was lava.
The first thing I knew it would come down on one side, and the little
mare, with her feet planted resolutely, would wait for me to perform my
part by getting that bearskin back in its proper place on the McClellan
saddle which I was using as a makeshift pack saddle. The feat of killing
the bear the previous day sank into nothing compared with the feat of
making the bearskin ride properly as a pack on the following three days.
The reason why I was alone in the mountains on this occasion was
because, for the only time in all my experience, I had a difficulty with
my guide. He was a crippled old mountain man, with a profound contempt
for "tenderfeet," a contempt that in my case was accentuated by the
fact that I wore spectacles--which at that day and in that region were
usually held to indicate a defective moral character in the wearer. He
had never previously acted as guide, or, as he expressed it, "trundled
a tenderfoot," and though a good hunter, who showed me much game, our
experience together was not happy. He was very rheumatic and liked to
lie abed late, so that I usually had to get breakfast, and, in fact, do
most of the work around camp. Finally one day he declined to go out with
me, saying that he had a pain. When, that afternoon, I got back to
camp, I speedily found what the "pain" was. We were traveling very light
indeed, I having practically nothing but my buffalo sleeping-bag, my
wash kit, and a pair of socks. I had also taken a flask of whisky for
emergencies--although, as I found that the emergencies never arose
and that tea was better than whisky when a man was cold or done out, I
abandoned the practice of taking whisky on hunting trips twenty years
ago. When I got back to camp the old fellow was sitting on a tree-trunk,
very erect, with his rifle across his knees, and in response to my nod
of greeting he merely leered at me. I leaned my rifle against a tree,
walked over to where my bed was lying, and, happening to rummage in it
for something, I found the whisky flask was empty. I turned on him at
once and accused him of having drunk it, to which he merely responded by
asking what I was going to do about it. There did not seem much to do,
so I said that we would part company--we were only four or five days
from a settlement--and I would go in alone, taking one of the horses. He
responded by cocking his rifle and saying that I could go alone and be
damned to me, but I could not take any horse. I answered "all right,"
that if I could not I could not, and began to move around to get some
flour and salt pork. He was misled by my quietness and by the fact that
I had not in any way resented either his actions or his language during
the days we had been together, and did not watch me as closely as he
ought to have done. He was sitting with the cocked rifle across his
knees, the muzzle to the left. My rifle was leaning against a tree near
the cooking things to his right. Managing to get near it, I whipped it
up and threw the bead on him, calling, "Hands up!" He of course put
up his hands, and then said, "Oh, come, I was only joking"; to which I
answered, "Well, I am not. Now straighten your legs and let your rifle
go to the ground." He remonstrated, saying the rifle would go off, and
I told him to let it go off. However, he straightened his legs in such
fashion that it came to the ground without a jar. I then made him move
back, and picked up the rifle. By this time he was quite sober, and
really did not seem angry, looking at me quizzically. He told me that if
I would give him back his rifle, he would call it quits and we could go
on together. I did not think it best to trust him, so I told him that
our hunt was pretty well through, anyway, and that I would go home.
There was a blasted pine on the trail, in plain view of the camp, about
a mile off, and I told him that I would leave his rifle at that blasted
pine if I could see him in camp, but that he must not come after me,
for if he did I should assume that it was with hostile intent and would
shoot. He said he had no intention of coming after me; and as he was
very much crippled with rheumatism, I did not believe he would do so.
Accordingly I took the little mare, with nothing but some flour, bacon,
and tea, and my bed-roll, and started off. At the blasted pine I looked
round, and as I could see him in camp, I left his rifle there. I then
traveled till dark, and that night, for the only time in my experience,
I used in camping a trick of the old-time trappers in the Indian days. I
did not believe I would be followed, but still it was not possible to be
sure, so, after getting supper, while my pony fed round, I left the fire
burning, repacked the mare and pushed ahead until it literally became so
dark that I could not see. Then I picketed the mare, slept where I was
without a fire until the first streak of dawn, and then pushed on for a
couple of hours before halting to take breakfast and to let the little
mare have a good feed. No plainsman needs to be told that a man should
not lie near a fire if there is danger of an enemy creeping up on him,
and that above all a man should not put himself in a position where he
can be ambushed at dawn. On this second day I lost the trail, and toward
nightfall gave up the effort to find it, camped where I was, and went
out to shoot a grouse for supper. It was while hunting in vain for a
grouse that I came on the bear and killed it as above described.
When I reached the settlement and went into the store, the storekeeper
identified me by remarking: "You're the tenderfoot that old Hank was
trundling, ain't you?" I admitted that I was. A good many years later,
after I had been elected Vice-President, I went on a cougar hunt in
northwestern Colorado with Johnny Goff, a famous hunter and mountain
man. It was midwinter. I was rather proud of my achievements, and
pictured myself as being known to the few settlers in the neighborhood
as a successful mountain-lion hunter. I could not help grinning
when I found out that they did not even allude to me as the
Vice-President-elect, let alone as a hunter, but merely as "Johnny
Goff's tourist."
Of course during the years when I was most busy at serious work I could
do no hunting, and even my riding was of a decorous kind. But a man
whose business is sedentary should get some kind of exercise if he
wishes to keep himself in as good physical trim as his brethren who do
manual labor. When I worked on a ranch, I needed no form of exercise
except my work, but when I worked in an office the case was different.
A couple of summers I played polo with some of my neighbors. I shall
always believe we played polo in just the right way for middle-aged men
with stables of the general utility order. Of course it was polo which
was chiefly of interest to ourselves, the only onlookers being the
members of our faithful families. My two ponies were the only occupants
of my stable except a cart-horse. My wife and I rode and drove them, and
they were used for household errands and for the children, and for two
afternoons a week they served me as polo ponies. Polo is a good game,
infinitely better for vigorous men than tennis or golf or anything of
that kind. There is all the fun of football, with the horse thrown in;
and if only people would be willing to play it in simple fashion it
would be almost as much within their reach as golf. But at Oyster Bay
our great and permanent amusements were rowing and sailing; I do not
care for the latter, and am fond of the former. I suppose it sounds
archaic, but I cannot help thinking that the people with motor boats
miss a great deal. If they would only keep to rowboats or canoes, and
use oar or paddle themselves, they would get infinitely more benefit
than by having their work done for them by gasoline. But I rarely took
exercise merely as exercise. Primarily I took it because I liked it.
Play should never be allowed to interfere with work; and a life devoted
merely to play is, of all forms of existence, the most dismal. But the
joy of life is a very good thing, and while work is the essential in it,
play also has its place.
When obliged to live in cities, I for a long time found that boxing and
wrestling enabled me to get a good deal of exercise in condensed and
attractive form. I was reluctantly obliged to abandon both as I grew
older. I dropped the wrestling earliest. When I became Governor, the
champion middleweight wrestler of America happened to be in Albany, and
I got him to come round three or four afternoons a week. Incidentally
I may mention that his presence caused me a difficulty with the
Comptroller, who refused to audit a bill I put in for a wrestling-mat,
explaining that I could have a billiard-table, billiards being
recognized as a proper Gubernatorial amusement, but that a wrestling-mat
symbolized something unusual and unheard of and could not be permitted.
The middleweight champion was of course so much better than I was that
he could not only take care of himself but of me too and see that I was
not hurt--for wrestling is a much more violent amusement than boxing.
But after a couple of months he had to go away, and he left as a
substitute a good-humored, stalwart professional oarsman. The oarsman
turned out to know very little about wrestling. He could not even take
care of himself, not to speak of me. By the end of our second afternoon
one of his long ribs had been caved in and two of my short ribs badly
damaged, and my left shoulder-blade so nearly shoved out of place that
it creaked. He was nearly as pleased as I was when I told him I thought
we would "vote the war a failure" and abandon wrestling. After that I
took up boxing again. While President I used to box with some of the
aides, as well as play single-stick with General Wood. After a few years
I had to abandon boxing as well as wrestling, for in one bout a young
captain of artillery cross-countered me on the eye, and the blow smashed
the little blood-vessels. Fortunately it was my left eye, but the sight
has been dim ever since, and if it had been the right eye I should
have been entirely unable to shoot. Accordingly I thought it better
to acknowledge that I had become an elderly man and would have to stop
boxing. I then took up jiu-jitsu for a year or two.
When I was in the Legislature and was working very hard, with little
chance of getting out of doors, all the exercise I got was boxing and
wrestling. A young fellow turned up who was a second-rate prize-fighter,
the son of one of my old boxing teachers. For several weeks I had him
come round to my rooms in the morning to put on the gloves with me for
half an hour. Then he suddenly stopped, and some days later I received a
letter of woe from him from the jail. I found that he was by profession
a burglar, and merely followed boxing as the amusement of his lighter
moments, or when business was slack.
Naturally, being fond of boxing, I grew to know a good many
prize-fighters, and to most of those I knew I grew genuinely attached.
I have never been able to sympathize with the outcry against
prize-fighters. The only objection I have to the prize ring is the
crookedness that has attended its commercial development. Outside of
this I regard boxing, whether professional or amateur, as a first-class
sport, and I do not regard it as brutalizing. Of course matches can be
conducted under conditions that make them brutalizing. But this is true
of football games and of most other rough and vigorous sports. Most
certainly prize-fighting is not half as brutalizing or demoralizing
as many forms of big business and of the legal work carried on in
connection with big business. Powerful, vigorous men of strong animal
development must have some way in which their animal spirits can find
vent. When I was Police Commissioner I found (and Jacob Riis will
back me up in this) that the establishment of a boxing club in a tough
neighborhood always tended to do away with knifing and gun-fighting
among the young fellows who would otherwise have been in murderous
gangs. Many of these young fellows were not naturally criminals at all,
but they had to have some outlet for their activities. In the same way
I have always regarded boxing as a first-class sport to encourage in the
Young Men's Christian Association. I do not like to see young Christians
with shoulders that slope like a champagne bottle. Of course boxing
should be encouraged in the army and navy. I was first drawn to two
naval chaplains, Fathers Chidwick and Rainey, by finding that each of
them had bought half a dozen sets of boxing-gloves and encouraged their
crews in boxing.
When I was Police Commissioner, I heartily approved the effort to
get boxing clubs started in New York on a clean basis. Later I was
reluctantly obliged to come to the conclusion that the prize ring had
become hopelessly debased and demoralized, and as Governor I aided in
the passage of and signed the bill putting a stop to professional boxing
for money. This was because some of the prize-fighters themselves were
crooked, while the crowd of hangers-on who attended and made up and
profited by the matches had placed the whole business on a basis
of commercialism and brutality that was intolerable. I shall always
maintain that boxing contests themselves make good, healthy sport. It
is idle to compare them with bull-fighting; the torture and death of the
wretched horses in bull-fighting is enough of itself to blast the sport,
no matter how great the skill and prowess shown by the bull-fighters.
Any sport in which the death and torture of animals is made to furnish
pleasure to the spectators is debasing. There should always be the
opportunity provided in a glove fight or bare-fist fight to stop it when
one competitor is hopelessly outclassed or too badly hammered. But the
men who take part in these fights are hard as nails, and it is not worth
while to feel sentimental about their receiving punishment which as a
matter of fact they do not mind. Of course the men who look on ought to
be able to stand up with the gloves, or without them, themselves; I have
scant use for the type of sportsmanship which consists merely in looking
on at the feats of some one else.
Some as good citizens as I know are or were prize-fighters. Take Mike
Donovan, of New York. He and his family represent a type of American
citizenship of which we have a right to be proud. Mike is a devoted
temperance man, and can be relied upon for every movement in the
interest of good citizenship. I was first intimately thrown with him
when I was Police Commissioner. One evening he and I--both in dress
suits--attended a temperance meeting of Catholic societies. It
culminated in a lively set-to between myself and a Tammany Senator who
was a very good fellow, but whose ideas of temperance differed radically
from mine, and, as the event proved, from those of the majority of the
meeting. Mike evidently regarded himself as my backer--he was sitting on
the platform beside me--and I think felt as pleased and interested as if
the set-to had been physical instead of merely verbal. Afterward I grew
to know him well both while I was Governor and while I was President,
and many a time he came on and boxed with me.
Battling Nelson was another stanch friend, and he and I think alike
on most questions of political and industrial life; although he once
expressed to me some commiseration because, as President, I did not get
anything like the money return for my services that he aggregated during
the same term of years in the ring. Bob Fitzsimmons was another good
friend of mine. He has never forgotten his early skill as a blacksmith,
and among the things that I value and always keep in use is a penholder
made by Bob out of a horseshoe, with an inscription saying that it is
"Made for and presented to President Theodore Roosevelt by his friend
and admirer, Robert Fitzsimmons." I have for a long time had the
friendship of John L. Sullivan, than whom in his prime no better man
ever stepped into the ring. He is now a Massachusetts farmer. John used
occasionally to visit me at the White House, his advent always causing a
distinct flutter among the waiting Senators and Congressmen. When I went
to Africa he presented me with a gold-mounted rabbit's foot for luck. I
carried it through my African trip; and I certainly had good luck.
On one occasion one of my prize-fighting friends called on me at the
White House on business. He explained that he wished to see me alone,
sat down opposite me, and put a very expensive cigar on the desk,
saying, "Have a cigar." I thanked him and said I did not smoke, to which
he responded, "Put it in your pocket." He then added, "Take another; put
both in your pocket." This I accordingly did. Having thus shown at the
outset the necessary formal courtesy, my visitor, an old and valued
friend, proceeded to explain that a nephew of his had enlisted in the
Marine Corps, but had been absent without leave, and was threatened with
dishonorable discharge on the ground of desertion. My visitor, a good
citizen and a patriotic American, was stung to the quick at the thought
of such an incident occurring in his family, and he explained to me that
it must not occur, that there must not be the disgrace to the family,
although he would be delighted to have the offender "handled rough" to
teach him a needed lesson; he added that he wished I would take him and
handle him myself, for he knew that I would see that he "got all that
was coming to him." Then a look of pathos came into his eyes, and
he explained: "That boy I just cannot understand. He was my sister's
favorite son, and I always took a special interest in him myself. I
did my best to bring him up the way he ought to go. But there was just
nothing to be done with him. His tastes were naturally low. He took
to music!" What form this debasing taste for music assumed I did not
inquire; and I was able to grant my friend's wish.
While in the White House I always tried to get a couple of hours'
exercise in the afternoons--sometimes tennis, more often riding, or else
a rough cross-country walk, perhaps down Rock Creek, which was then as
wild as a stream in the White Mountains, or on the Virginia side along
the Potomac. My companions at tennis or on these rides and walks we
gradually grew to style the Tennis Cabinet; and then we extended the
term to take in many of my old-time Western friends such as Ben Daniels,
Seth Bullock, Luther Kelly, and others who had taken part with me in
more serious outdoor adventures than walking and riding for pleasure.
Most of the men who were oftenest with me on these trips--men like
Major-General Leonard Wood; or Major-General Thomas Henry Barry; or
Presley Marion Rixey, Surgeon-General of the Navy; or Robert Bacon, who
was afterwards Secretary of State; or James Garfield, who was Secretary
of the Interior; or Gifford Pinchot, who was chief of the Forest
Service--were better men physically than I was; but I could ride and
walk well enough for us all thoroughly to enjoy it. Often, especially
in the winters and early springs, we would arrange for a point to point
walk, not turning aside for anything--for instance, swimming Rock
Creek or even the Potomac if it came in our way. Of course under such
circumstances we had to arrange that our return to Washington should
be when it was dark, so that our appearance might scandalize no one. On
several occasions we thus swam Rock Creek in the early spring when the
ice was floating thick upon it. If we swam the Potomac, we usually
took off our clothes. I remember one such occasion when the French
Ambassador, Jusserand, who was a member of the Tennis Cabinet, was
along, and, just as we were about to get in to swim, somebody said, "Mr.
Ambassador, Mr. Ambassador, you haven't taken off your gloves," to which
he promptly responded, "I think I will leave them on; we might meet
ladies!"
We liked Rock Creek for these walks because we could do so much
scrambling and climbing along the cliffs; there was almost as much
climbing when we walked down the Potomac to Washington from the Virginia
end of the Chain Bridge. I would occasionally take some big-game friend
from abroad, Selous or St. George Littledale or Captain Radclyffe
or Paul Niedicke, on these walks. Once I invited an entire class of
officers who were attending lectures at the War College to come on one
of these walks; I chose a route which gave us the hardest climbing along
the rocks and the deepest crossings of the creek; and my army friends
enjoyed it hugely--being the right sort, to a man.
On March 1, 1909, three days before leaving the Presidency, various
members of the Tennis Cabinet lunched with me at the White House.
"Tennis Cabinet" was an elastic term, and of course many who ought
to have been at the lunch were, for one reason or another, away from
Washington; but, to make up for this, a goodly number of out-of-town
honorary members, so to speak, were present--for instance, Seth Bullock;
Luther Kelly, better known as Yellowstone Kelly in the days when he was
an army scout against the Sioux; and Abernathy, the wolf-hunter. At the
end of the lunch Seth Bullock suddenly reached forward, swept aside a
mass of flowers which made a centerpiece on the table, and revealed
a bronze cougar by Proctor, which was a parting gift to me. The lunch
party and the cougar were then photographed on the lawn.
Some of the younger officers who were my constant companions on these
walks and rides pointed out to me the condition of utter physical
worthlessness into which certain of the elder ones had permitted
themselves to lapse, and the very bad effect this would certainly have
if ever the army were called into service. I then looked into the matter
for myself, and was really shocked at what I found. Many of the older
officers were so unfit physically that their condition would have
excited laughter, had it not been so serious, to think that they
belonged to the military arm of the Government. A cavalry colonel proved
unable to keep his horse at a smart trot for even half a mile, when I
visited his post; a Major-General proved afraid even to let his horse
canter, when he went on a ride with us; and certain otherwise good
men proved as unable to walk as if they had been sedentary brokers.
I consulted with men like Major-Generals Wood and Bell, who were
themselves of fine physique, with bodies fit to meet any demand. It
was late in my administration; and we deemed it best only to make a
beginning--experience teaches the most inveterate reformer how hard it
is to get a totally non-military nation to accept seriously any military
improvement. Accordingly, I merely issued directions that each officer
should prove his ability to walk fifty miles, or ride one hundred, in
three days.
This is, of course, a test which many a healthy middle-aged woman would
be able to meet. But a large portion of the press adopted the view that
it was a bit of capricious tyranny on my part; and a considerable number
of elderly officers, with desk rather than field experience, intrigued
with their friends in Congress to have the order annulled. So one day I
took a ride of a little over one hundred miles myself, in company with
Surgeon-General Rixey and two other officers. The Virginia roads were
frozen and in ruts, and in the afternoon and evening there was a storm
of snow and sleet; and when it had been thus experimentally shown, under
unfavorable conditions, how easy it was to do in one day the task for
which the army officers were allowed three days, all open objection
ceased. But some bureau chiefs still did as much underhanded work
against the order as they dared, and it was often difficult to reach
them. In the Marine Corps Captain Leonard, who had lost an arm at
Tientsin, with two of his lieutenants did the fifty miles in one day;
for they were vigorous young men, who laughed at the idea of treating a
fifty-mile walk as over-fatiguing. Well, the Navy Department officials
rebuked them, and made them take the walk over again in three days,
on the ground that taking it in one day did not comply with the
regulations! This seems unbelievable; but Leonard assures me it is true.
He did not inform me at the time, being afraid to "get in wrong" with
his permanent superiors. If I had known of the order, short work would
have been made of the bureaucrat who issued it.[*]
[*] One of our best naval officers sent me the following
letter, after the above had appeared:--
"I note in your Autobiography now being published in the
Outlook that you refer to the reasons which led you to
establish a physical test for the Army, and to the action
you took (your 100-mile ride) to prevent the test being
abolished. Doubtless you did not know the following facts:
"1. The first annual navy test of 50 miles in three days was
subsequently reduced to 25 miles in two days in each
quarter.
"2. This was further reduced to 10 miles each month, which
is the present 'test,' and there is danger lest even this
utterly insufficient test be abolished.
"I enclose a copy of a recent letter to the Surgeon General
which will show our present deplorable condition and the
worse condition into which we are slipping back.
"The original test of 50 miles in three days did a very
great deal of good. It decreased by thousands of dollars the
money expended on street car fare, and by a much greater sum
the amount expended over the bar. It eliminated a number of
the wholly unfit; it taught officers to walk; it forced them
to learn the care of their feet and that of their men; and
it improved their general health and was rapidly forming a
taste for physical exercise."
The enclosed letter ran in part as follows:--
"I am returning under separate cover 'The Soldiers' Foot and
the Military Shoe.'
"The book contains knowledge of a practical character that
is valuable for the men who HAVE TO MARCH, WHO HAVE SUFFERED
FROM FOOT TROUBLES, AND WHO MUST AVOID THEM IN ORDER TO
ATTAIN EFFICIENCY.
"The words in capitals express, according to my idea, the
gist of the whole matter as regards military men.
"The army officer whose men break down on test gets a black
eye. The one whose men show efficiency in this respect gets
a bouquet.
"To such men the book is invaluable. There is no danger that
they will neglect it. They will actually learn it, for
exactly the same reasons that our fellows learn the gunnery
instructions--or did learn them before they were withdrawn
and burned.
"B U T, I have not been able to interest a single naval
officer in this fine book. They will look at the pictures
and say it is a good book, but they won't read it. The
marine officers, on the contrary, are very much interested,
because they have to teach their men to care for their feet
and they must know how to care for their own. But the naval
officers feel no such necessity, simply because their men do
not have to demonstrate their efficiency by practice
marches, and they themselves do not have to do a stunt that
will show up their own ignorance and inefficiency in the
matter.
"For example, some time ago I was talking with some chaps
about shoes--the necessity of having them long enough and
wide enough, etc., and one of them said: 'I have no use for
such shoes, as I never walk except when I have to, and any
old shoes do for the 10-mile-a-month stunt,' so there you
are!
"When the first test was ordered, Edmonston (Washington shoe
man) told me that he sold more real walking shoes to naval
officers in three months than he had in the three preceding
years. I know three officers who lost both big-toe nails
after the first test, and another who walked nine miles in
practice with a pair of heavy walking shoes that were too
small and was laid up for three days--could not come to the
office. I know plenty of men who after the first test had to
borrow shoes from larger men until their feet 'went down' to
their normal size.
"This test may have been a bit too strenuous for old hearts
(of men who had never taken any exercise), but it was
excellent as a matter of instruction and training of
handling feet--and in an emergency (such as we soon may have
in Mexico) sound hearts are not much good if the feet won't
stand.
"However, the 25-mile test in two days each quarter answered
the same purpose, for the reason that 12.5 miles will
produce sore feet with bad shoes, and sore feet and lame
muscles even with good shoes, if there has been no practice
marching.
"It was the necessity of doing 12.5 MORE MILES ON THE SECOND
DAY WITH SORE FEET AND LAME MUSCLES that made 'em sit up and
take notice--made 'em practice walking, made 'em avoid
street cars, buy proper shoes, show some curiosity about sox
and the care of the feet in general.
"All this passed out with the introduction of the last test
of 10 miles a month. As one fellow said: 'I can do that in
sneakers'--but he couldn't if the second day involved a
tramp on the sore feet.
"The point is that whereas formerly officers had to practice
walking a bit and give some attention to proper footgear,
now they don't have to, and the natural consequence is that
they don't do it.
"There are plenty of officers who do not walk any more than
is necessary to reach a street car that will carry them from
their residences to their offices. Some who have motors do
not do so much. They take no exercise. They take cocktails
instead and are getting beefy and 'ponchy,' and something
should be done to remedy this state of affairs.
"It would not be necessary if service opinion required
officers so to order their lives that it would be common
knowledge that they were 'hard,' in order to avoid the
danger of being selected out.
"We have no such service opinion, and it is not in process
of formation. On the contrary, it is known that the
'Principal Dignitaries' unanimously advised the Secretary to
abandon all physical tests. He, a civilian, was wise enough
not to take the advice.
"I would like to see a test established that would oblige
officers to take sufficient exercise to pass it without
inconvenience. For the reasons given above, 20 miles in two
days every other month would do the business, while 10 miles
each month does not touch it, simply because nobody has to
walk on 'next day' feet. As for the proposed test of so many
hours 'exercise' a week, the flat foots of the pendulous
belly muscles are delighted. They are looking into the
question of pedometers, and will hang one of these on their
wheezy chests and let it count every shuffling step they
take out of doors.
"If we had an adequate test throughout 20 years, there would
at the end of that time be few if any sacks of blubber at
the upper end of the list; and service opinion against that
sort of thing would be established."
These tests were kept during my administration. They were afterwards
abandoned; not through perversity or viciousness; but through weakness,
and inability to understand the need of preparedness in advance, if the
emergencies of war are to be properly met, when, or if, they arrive.
In no country with an army worth calling such is there a chance for
a man physically unfit to stay in the service. Our countrymen should
understand that every army officer--and every marine officer--ought to
be summarily removed from the service unless he is able to undergo far
severer tests than those which, as a beginning, I imposed. To follow any
other course is to put a premium on slothful incapacity, and to do the
gravest wrong to the Nation.
I have mentioned all these experiences, and I could mention scores of
others, because out of them grew my philosophy--perhaps they were in
part caused by my philosophy--of bodily vigor as a method of getting
that vigor of soul without which vigor of the body counts for nothing.
The dweller in cities has less chance than the dweller in the country to
keep his body sound and vigorous. But he can do so, if only he will take
the trouble. Any young lawyer, shopkeeper, or clerk, or shop-assistant
can keep himself in good condition if he tries. Some of the best men who
have ever served under me in the National Guard and in my regiment were
former clerks or floor-walkers. Why, Johnny Hayes, the Marathon victor,
and at one time world champion, one of my valued friends and supporters,
was a floor-walker in Bloomingdale's big department store. Surely with
Johnny Hayes as an example, any young man in a city can hope to make his
body all that a vigorous man's body should be.
I once made a speech to which I gave the title "The Strenuous Life."
Afterwards I published a volume of essays with this for a title. There
were two translations of it which always especially pleased me. One was
by a Japanese officer who knew English well, and who had carried the
essay all through the Manchurian campaign, and later translated it for
the benefit of his countrymen. The other was by an Italian lady, whose
brother, an officer in the Italian army who had died on duty in a
foreign land, had also greatly liked the article and carried it round
with him. In translating the title the lady rendered it in Italian as
_Vigor di Vita_. I thought this translation a great improvement on the
original, and have always wished that I had myself used "The Vigor of
Life" as a heading to indicate what I was trying to preach, instead of
the heading I actually did use.
There are two kinds of success, or rather two kinds of ability displayed
in the achievement of success. There is, first, the success either in
big things or small things which comes to the man who has in him the
natural power to do what no one else can do, and what no amount of
training, no perseverance or will power, will enable any ordinary man to
do. This success, of course, like every other kind of success, may be
on a very big scale or on a small scale. The quality which the man
possesses may be that which enables him to run a hundred yards in nine
and three-fifths seconds, or to play ten separate games of chess at the
same time blindfolded, or to add five columns of figures at once without
effort, or to write the "Ode to a Grecian Urn," or to deliver the
Gettysburg speech, or to show the ability of Frederick at Leuthen or
Nelson at Trafalgar. No amount of training of body or mind would enable
any good ordinary man to perform any one of these feats. Of course the
proper performance of each implies much previous study or training,
but in no one of them is success to be attained save by the altogether
exceptional man who has in him the something additional which the
ordinary man does not have.
This is the most striking kind of success, and it can be attained only
by the man who has in him the quality which separates him in kind no
less than in degree from his fellows. But much the commoner type of
success in every walk of life and in every species of effort is that
which comes to the man who differs from his fellows not by the kind of
quality which he possesses but by the degree of development which he has
given that quality. This kind of success is open to a large number of
persons, if only they seriously determine to achieve it. It is the kind
of success which is open to the average man of sound body and fair mind,
who has no remarkable mental or physical attributes, but who gets just
as much as possible in the way of work out of the aptitudes that he does
possess. It is the only kind of success that is open to most of us. Yet
some of the greatest successes in history have been those of this second
class--when I call it second class I am not running it down in the
least, I am merely pointing out that it differs in kind from the first
class. To the average man it is probably more useful to study this
second type of success than to study the first. From the study of the
first he can learn inspiration, he can get uplift and lofty enthusiasm.
From the study of the second he can, if he chooses, find out how to win
a similar success himself.
I need hardly say that all the successes I have ever won have been
of the second type. I never won anything without hard labor and the
exercise of my best judgment and careful planning and working long in
advance. Having been a rather sickly and awkward boy, I was as a young
man at first both nervous and distrustful of my own prowess. I had to
train myself painfully and laboriously not merely as regards my body but
as regards my soul and spirit.
When a boy I read a passage in one of Marryat's books which always
impressed me. In this passage the captain of some small British
man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of
fearlessness. He says that at the outset almost every man is frightened
when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man
to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he was not
frightened. After this is kept up long enough it changes from pretense
to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint
of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it. (I am using my own
language, not Marryat's.) This was the theory upon which I went. There
were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from
grizzly bears to "mean" horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I
was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the
same experience if they choose. They will first learn to bear themselves
well in trials which they anticipate and which they school themselves
in advance to meet. After a while the habit will grow on them, and they
will behave well in sudden and unexpected emergencies which come upon
them unawares.
It is of course much pleasanter if one is naturally fearless, and I envy
and respect the men who are naturally fearless. But it is a good
thing to remember that the man who does not enjoy this advantage can
nevertheless stand beside the man who does, and can do his duty with the
like efficiency, if he chooses to. Of course he must not let his
desire take the form merely of a day-dream. Let him dream about being
a fearless man, and the more he dreams the better he will be, always
provided he does his best to realize the dream in practice. He can do
his part honorably and well provided only he sets fearlessness before
himself as an ideal, schools himself to think of danger merely as
something to be faced and overcome, and regards life itself as he should
regard it, not as something to be thrown away, but as a pawn to be
promptly hazarded whenever the hazard is warranted by the larger
interests of the great game in which we are all engaged.
CHAPTER III
PRACTICAL POLITICS
When I left Harvard, I took up the study of law. If I had been
sufficiently fortunate to come under Professor Thayer, of the Harvard
Law School, it may well be that I would have realized that the lawyer
can do a great work for justice and against legalism.
But, doubtless chiefly through my own fault, some of the teaching of the
law books and of the classroom seemed to me to be against justice.
The _caveat emptor_ side of the law, like the _caveat emptor_ side
of business, seemed to me repellent; it did not make for social fair
dealing. The "let the buyer beware" maxim, when translated into actual
practice, whether in law or business, tends to translate itself further
into the seller making his profit at the expense of the buyer, instead
of by a bargain which shall be to the profit of both. It did not seem
to me that the law was framed to discourage as it should sharp practice,
and all other kinds of bargains except those which are fair and of
benefit to both sides. I was young; there was much in the judgment which
I then formed on this matter which I should now revise; but, then as
now, many of the big corporation lawyers, to whom the ordinary members
of the bar then as now looked up, held certain standards which were
difficult to recognize as compatible with the idealism I suppose every
high-minded young man is apt to feel. If I had been obliged to earn
every cent I spent, I should have gone whole-heartedly into the business
of making both ends meet, and should have taken up the law or any other
respectable occupation--for I then held, and now hold, the belief that
a man's first duty is to pull his own weight and to take care of those
dependent upon him; and I then believed, and now believe, that the
greatest privilege and greatest duty for any man is to be happily
married, and that no other form of success or service, for either man
or woman, can be wisely accepted as a substitute or alternative. But it
happened that I had been left enough money by my father not to make
it necessary for me to think solely of earning bread for myself and my
family. I had enough to get bread. What I had to do, if I wanted butter
and jam, was to provide the butter and jam, but to count their cost
as compared with other things. In other words, I made up my mind that,
while I must earn money, I could afford to make earning money the
secondary instead of the primary object of my career. If I had had
no money at all, then my first duty would have been to earn it in any
honest fashion. As I had some money I felt that my need for more money
was to be treated as a secondary need, and that while it was my business
to make more money where I legitimately and properly could, yet that it
was also my business to treat other kinds of work as more important than
money-making.
Almost immediately after leaving Harvard in 1880 I began to take an
interest in politics. I did not then believe, and I do not now believe,
that any man should ever attempt to make politics his only career. It
is a dreadful misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole
livelihood and whole happiness depend upon his staying in office. Such
a feeling prevents him from being of real service to the people while
in office, and always puts him under the heaviest strain of pressure to
barter his convictions for the sake of holding office. A man should have
some other occupation--I had several other occupations--to which he can
resort if at any time he is thrown out of office, or if at any time he
finds it necessary to choose a course which will probably result in
his being thrown out, unless he is willing to stay in at cost to his
conscience.
At that day, in 1880, a young man of my bringing up and convictions
could join only the Republican party, and join it I accordingly did.
It was no simple thing to join it then. That was long before the era of
ballot reform and the control of primaries; long before the era when we
realized that the Government must take official notice of the deeds and
acts of party organizations. The party was still treated as a private
corporation, and in each district the organization formed a kind of
social and political club. A man had to be regularly proposed for and
elected into this club, just as into any other club. As a friend of mine
picturesquely phrased it, I "had to break into the organization with a
jimmy."
Under these circumstances there was some difficulty in joining the local
organization, and considerable amusement and excitement to be obtained
out of it after I had joined.
It was over thirty-three years ago that I thus became a member of the
Twenty-first District Republican Association in the city of New York.
The men I knew best were the men in the clubs of social pretension
and the men of cultivated taste and easy life. When I began to make
inquiries as to the whereabouts of the local Republican Association and
the means of joining it, these men--and the big business men and lawyers
also--laughed at me, and told me that politics were "low"; that the
organizations were not controlled by "gentlemen"; that I would find them
run by saloon-keepers, horse-car conductors, and the like, and not by
men with any of whom I would come in contact outside; and, moreover,
they assured me that the men I met would be rough and brutal and
unpleasant to deal with. I answered that if this were so it merely meant
that the people I knew did not belong to the governing class, and that
the other people did--and that I intended to be one of the governing
class; that if they proved too hard-bit for me I supposed I would have
to quit, but that I certainly would not quit until I had made the effort
and found out whether I really was too weak to hold my own in the rough
and tumble.
The Republican Association of which I became a member held its meetings
in Morton Hall, a large, barn-like room over a saloon. Its furniture was
of the canonical kind: dingy benches, spittoons, a dais at one end with
a table and chair and a stout pitcher for iced water, and on the walls
pictures of General Grant, and of Levi P. Morton, to whose generosity
we owed the room. We had regular meetings once or twice a month, and
between times the place was treated, at least on certain nights, as a
kind of club-room. I went around there often enough to have the men get
accustomed to me and to have me get accustomed to them, so that we began
to speak the same language, and so that each could begin to live down in
the other's mind what Bret Harte has called "the defective moral quality
of being a stranger." It is not often that a man can make opportunities
for himself. But he can put himself in such shape that when or if the
opportunities come he is ready to take advantage of them. This was what
happened to me in connection with my experiences in Morton Hall. I soon
became on good terms with a number of the ordinary "heelers" and even
some of the minor leaders. The big leader was Jake Hess, who treated
me with rather distant affability. There were prominent lawyers and
business men who belonged, but they took little part in the actual
meetings. What they did was done elsewhere. The running of the machine
was left to Jake Hess and his captains of tens and of hundreds.
Among these lesser captains I soon struck up a friendship with Joe
Murray, a friendship which is as strong now as it was thirty-three years
ago. He had been born in Ireland, but brought to New York by his parents
when he was three or four years old, and, as he expressed it, "raised as
a barefooted boy on First Avenue." When not eighteen he had enlisted in
the Army of the Potomac and taken part in the campaign that closed the
Civil War. Then he came back to First Avenue, and, being a fearless,
powerful, energetic young fellow, careless and reckless, speedily grew
to some prominence as leader of a gang. In that district, and at that
time, politics was a rough business, and Tammany Hall held unquestioned
sway. The district was overwhelmingly Democratic, and Joe and his
friends were Democrats who on election day performed the usual gang
work for the local Democratic leader, whose business it was to favor and
reward them in return. This same local leader, like many other greater
leaders, became puffed up by prosperity, and forgot the instruments
through which he had achieved prosperity. After one election he showed a
callous indifference to the hard work of the gang and complete disregard
of his before-election promises. He counted upon the resentment wearing
itself out, as usual, in threats and bluster.
But Joe Murray was not a man who forgot. He explained to his gang his
purposes and the necessity of being quiet. Accordingly they waited for
their revenge until the next election day. They then, as Joe expressed
it, decided "to vote furdest away from the leader"--I am using the
language of Joe's youth--and the best way to do this was to vote
the Republican ticket. In those days each party had a booth near the
polling-place in each election district, where the party representative
dispensed the party ballots. This had been a district in which, as a
rule, very early in the day the Republican election leader had his
hat knocked over his eyes and his booth kicked over and his ballots
scattered; and then the size of the Democratic majority depended on an
elastic appreciation of exactly how much was demanded from headquarters.
But on this day things went differently. The gang, with a Roman sense
of duty, took an active interest in seeing that the Republican was given
his full rights. Moreover, they made the most energetic reprisals on
their opponents, and as they were distinctly the tough and fighting
element, justice came to her own with a whoop. Would-be repeaters were
thrown out on their heads. Every person who could be cajoled or, I fear,
intimidated, was given the Republican ticket, and the upshot was that at
the end of the day a district which had never hitherto polled more than
two or three per cent of its vote Republican broke about even between
the two parties.
To Joe it had been merely an act of retribution in so far as it was not
simply a spree. But the leaders at the Republican headquarters did not
know this, and when they got over their paralyzed astonishment at the
returns, they investigated to find out what it meant. Somebody told
them that it represented the work of a young man named Joseph Murray.
Accordingly they sent for him. The room in which they received him was
doubtless some place like Morton Hall, and the men who received him were
akin to those who had leadership in Morton Hall; but in Joe's eyes
they stood for a higher civilization, for opportunity, for generous
recognition of successful effort--in short, for all the things that an
eager young man desires. He was received and patted on the back by a man
who was a great man to the world in which he lived. He was introduced
to the audience as a young man whose achievement was such as to
promise much for the future, and moreover he was given a place in the
post-office--as I have said, this was long before the day of Civil
Service Reform.
Now, to the wrong kind of man all this might have meant nothing at
all. But in Joe Murray's case it meant everything. He was by nature as
straight a man, as fearless and as stanchly loyal, as any one whom I
have ever met, a man to be trusted in any position demanding courage,
integrity, and good faith. He did his duty in the public service, and
became devotedly attached to the organization which he felt had given
him his chance in life. When I knew him he was already making his
way up; one of the proofs and evidences of which was that he owned a
first-class racing trotter--"Alice Lane"--behind which he gave me more
than one spin. During this first winter I grew to like Joe and his
particular cronies. But I had no idea that they especially returned the
liking, and in the first row we had in the organization (which arose
over a movement, that I backed, to stand by a non-partisan method of
street-cleaning) Joe and all his friends stood stiffly with the machine,
and my side, the reform side, was left with only some half-dozen votes
out of three or four hundred. I had expected no other outcome and took
it good-humoredly, but without changing my attitude.
Next fall, as the elections drew near, Joe thought he would like to make
a drive at Jake Hess, and after considerable planning decided that his
best chance lay in the fight for the nomination to the Assembly, the
lower house of the Legislature. He picked me as the candidate with whom
he would be most likely to win; and win he did. It was not my fight, it
was Joe's; and it was to him that I owe my entry into politics. I had
at that time neither the reputation nor the ability to have won the
nomination for myself, and indeed never would have thought of trying for
it.
Jake Hess was entirely good-humored about it. In spite of my being
anti-machine, my relations with him had been friendly and human, and
when he was beaten he turned in to help Joe elect me. At first they
thought they would take me on a personal canvass through the saloons
along Sixth Avenue. The canvass, however, did not last beyond the first
saloon. I was introduced with proper solemnity to the saloon-keeper--a
very important personage, for this was before the days when
saloon-keepers became merely the mortgaged chattels of the brewers--and
he began to cross-examine me, a little too much in the tone of one who
was dealing with a suppliant for his favor. He said he expected that I
would of course treat the liquor business fairly; to which I answered,
none too cordially, that I hoped I should treat all interests fairly.
He then said that he regarded the licenses as too high; to which I
responded that I believed they were really not high enough, and that
I should try to have them made higher. The conversation threatened to
become stormy. Messrs. Murray and Hess, on some hastily improvised plea,
took me out into the street, and then Joe explained to me that it was
not worth my while staying in Sixth Avenue any longer, that I had better
go right back to Fifth Avenue and attend to my friends there, and that
he would look after my interests on Sixth Avenue. I was triumphantly
elected.
Once before Joe had interfered in similar fashion and secured the
nomination of an Assemblyman; and shortly after election he had grown
to feel toward this Assemblyman that he must have fed on the meat which
rendered Caesar proud, as he became inaccessible to the ordinary mortals
whose place of resort was Morton Hall. He eyed me warily for a
short time to see if I was likely in this respect to follow in my
predecessor's footsteps. Finding that I did not, he and all my other
friends and supporters assumed toward me the very pleasantest attitude
that it was possible to assume. They did not ask me for a thing. They
accepted as a matter of course the view that I was absolutely straight
and was trying to do the best I could in the Legislature. They desired
nothing except that I should make a success, and they supported me with
hearty enthusiasm. I am a little at a loss to know quite how to express
the quality in my relationship with Joe Murray and my other friends of
this period which rendered that relationship so beneficial to me. When I
went into politics at this time I was not conscious of going in with
the set purpose to benefit other people, but of getting for myself a
privilege to which I was entitled in common with other people. So it was
in my relationship with these men. If there had lurked in the innermost
recesses of my mind anywhere the thought that I was in some way a
patron or a benefactor, or was doing something noble by taking part
in politics, or that I expected the smallest consideration save what
I could earn on my own merits, I am certain that somehow or other the
existence of that feeling would have been known and resented. As a
matter of fact, there was not the slightest temptation on my part to
have any such feeling or any one of such feelings. I no more expected
special consideration in politics than I would have expected it in the
boxing ring. I wished to act squarely to others, and I wished to be able
to show that I could hold my own as against others. The attitude of my
new friends toward me was first one of polite reserve, and then that of
friendly alliance. Afterwards I became admitted to comradeship, and then
to leadership. I need hardly say how earnestly I believe that men should
have a keen and lively sense of their obligations in politics, of their
duty to help forward great causes, and to struggle for the betterment of
conditions that are unjust to their fellows, the men and women who are
less fortunate in life. But in addition to this feeling there must be a
feeling of real fellowship with the other men and women engaged in the
same task, fellowship of work, with fun to vary the work; for unless
there is this feeling of fellowship, of common effort on an equal plane
for a common end, it will be difficult to keep the relations wholesome
and natural. To be patronized is as offensive as to be insulted. No one
of us cares permanently to have some one else conscientiously striving
to do him good; what we want is to work with that some one else for the
good of both of us--any man will speedily find that other people can
benefit him just as much as he can benefit them.
Neither Joe Murray nor I nor any of our associates at that time were
alive to social and industrial needs which we now all of us recognize.
But we then had very clearly before our minds the need of practically
applying certain elemental virtues, the virtues of honesty and
efficiency in politics, the virtue of efficiency side by side with
honesty in private and public life alike, the virtues of consideration
and fair dealing in business as between man and man, and especially as
between the man who is an employer and the man who is an employee.
On all fundamental questions Joe Murray and I thought alike. We never
parted company excepting on the question of Civil Service Reform, where
he sincerely felt that I showed doctrinaire affinities, that I sided
with the pharisees. We got back again into close relations as soon as
I became Police Commissioner under Mayor Strong, for Joe was then made
Excise Commissioner, and was, I believe, the best Excise Commissioner
the city of New York ever had. He is now a farmer, his boys have been
through Columbia College, and he and I look at the questions, political,
social, and industrial, which confront us in 1913 from practically the
same standpoint, just as we once looked at the questions that confronted
us in 1881.
There are many debts that I owe Joe Murray, and some for which he was
only unconsciously responsible. I do not think that a man is fit to do
good work in our American democracy unless he is able to have a
genuine fellow-feeling for, understanding of, and sympathy with his
fellow-Americans, whatever their creed or their birthplace, the section
in which they live, or the work which they do, provided they possess
the only kind of Americanism that really counts, the Americanism of the
spirit. It was no small help to me, in the effort to make myself a good
citizen and good American, that the political associate with whom I was
on closest and most intimate terms during my early years was a man born
in Ireland, by creed a Catholic, with Joe Murray's upbringing; just
as it helped me greatly at a later period to work for certain vitally
necessary public needs with Arthur von Briesen, in whom the spirit of
the "Acht-und-Vierziger" idealists was embodied; just as my whole life
was influenced by my long association with Jacob Riis, whom I am tempted
to call the best American I ever knew, although he was already a young
man when he came hither from Denmark.
I was elected to the Legislature in the fall of 1881, and found myself
the youngest man in that body. I was reelected the two following
years. Like all young men and inexperienced members, I had considerable
difficulty in teaching myself to speak. I profited much by the advice
of a hard-headed old countryman--who was unconsciously paraphrasing
the Duke of Wellington, who was himself doubtless paraphrasing somebody
else. The advice ran: "Don't speak until you are sure you have something
to say, and know just what it is; then say it, and sit down."
My first days in the Legislature were much like those of a boy in a
strange school. My fellow-legislators and I eyed one another with mutual
distrust. Each of us chose his seat, each began by following the lead of
some veteran in the first routine matters, and then, in a week or two,
we began to drift into groups according to our several affinities. The
Legislature was Democratic. I was a Republican from the "silk stocking"
district, the wealthiest district in New York, and I was put, as one
of the minority members, on the Committee of Cities. It was a coveted
position. I did not make any effort to get on, and, as far as I know,
was put there merely because it was felt to be in accordance with the
fitness of things.
A very short experience showed me that, as the Legislature was then
constituted, the so-called party contests had no interest whatever for
me. There was no real party division on most of the things that were of
concern in State politics, both Republicans and Democrats being for and
against them. My friendships were made, not with regard to party
lines, but because I found, and my friends found, that we had the same
convictions on questions of principle and questions of policy. The only
difference was that there was a larger proportion of these men among the
Republicans than among the Democrats, and that it was easier for me at
the outset to scrape acquaintance, among the men who felt as I did, with
the Republicans. They were for the most part from the country districts.
My closest friend for the three years I was there was Billy O'Neill,
from the Adirondacks. He kept a small crossroads store. He was a young
man, although a few years older than I was, and, like myself, had won
his position without regard to the machine. He had thought he would
like to be Assemblyman, so he had taken his buggy and had driven around
Franklin County visiting everybody, had upset the local ring, and came
to the Legislature as his own master. There is surely something in
American traditions that does tend toward real democracy in spite of our
faults and shortcomings. In most other countries two men of as different
antecedents, ancestry, and surroundings as Billy O'Neill and I would
have had far more difficulty in coming together. I came from the biggest
city in America and from the wealthiest ward of that city, and he from
a backwoods county where he kept a store at a crossroads. In all the
unimportant things we seemed far apart. But in all the important things
we were close together. We looked at all questions from substantially
the same view-point, and we stood shoulder to shoulder in every
legislative fight during those three years. He abhorred demagogy just
as he abhorred corruption. He had thought much on political problems; he
admired Alexander Hamilton as much as I did, being a strong believer
in a powerful National government; and we both of us differed from
Alexander Hamilton in being stout adherents of Abraham Lincoln's views
wherever the rights of the people were concerned. Any man who has met
with success, if he will be frank with himself, must admit that there
has been a big element of fortune in the success. Fortune favored me,
whereas her hand was heavy against Billy O'Neill. All his life he had to
strive hard to wring his bread from harsh surroundings and a reluctant
fate; if fate had been but a little kinder, I believe he would have had
a great political career; and he would have done good service for the
country in any position in which he might have been put.
There were other Republicans, like Isaac Hunt and Jonas van Duzer and
Walter Howe and Henry Sprague, who were among my close friends and
allies; and a gigantic one-eyed veteran of the Civil War, a gallant
General, Curtis from St. Lawrence County; and a capital fellow, whom
afterwards, when Governor, I put on the bench, Kruse, from Cattaraugus
County. Kruse was a German by birth; as far as I know, the only German
from Cattaraugus County at that time; and, besides being a German, he
was also a Prohibitionist. Among the Democrats were Hamden Robb and
Thomas Newbold, and Tom Welch of Niagara, who did a great service in
getting the State to set aside Niagara Falls Park--after a discouraging
experience with the first Governor before whom we brought the bill, who
listened with austere patience to our arguments in favor of the State
establishing a park, and then conclusively answered us by the question,
"But, gentlemen, why should we spend the people's money when just as
much water will run over the Falls without a park as with it?" Then
there were a couple of members from New York and Brooklyn, Mike Costello
and Pete Kelly.
Mike Costello had been elected as a Tammany man. He was as fearless as
he was honest. He came from Ireland, and had accepted the Tammany Fourth
of July orations as indicating the real attitude of that organization
towards the rights of the people. A month or two in Albany converted him
to a profound distrust of applied Tammany methods. He and I worked
hand in hand with equal indifference to our local machines. His machine
leaders warned him fairly that they would throw him out at the next
election, which they did; but he possessed a seasoned-hickory toughness
of ability to contend with adverse circumstances, and kept his head well
above water. A better citizen does not exist; and our friendship has
never faltered.
Peter Kelly's fate was a tragedy. He was a bright, well-educated young
fellow, an ardent believer in Henry George. At the beginning he and I
failed to understand each other or to get on together, for our theories
of government were radically opposed. After a couple of months spent in
active contests with men whose theories had nothing whatever to do with
their practices, Kelly and I found in our turn that it really did not
make much difference what our abstract theories were on questions that
were not before the Legislature, in view of the fact that on the actual
matters before the Legislature, the most important of which involved
questions of elementary morality, we were heartily at one. We began to
vote together and act together, and by the end of the session found that
in all practical matters that were up for action we thought together.
Indeed, each of us was beginning to change his theories, so that even
in theory we were coming closer together. He was ardent and generous; he
was a young lawyer, with a wife and children, whose ambition had tempted
him into politics, and who had been befriended by the local bosses
under the belief that they could count upon him for anything they really
wished. Unfortunately, what they really wished was often corrupt. Kelly
defied them, fought the battles of the people with ardor and good faith,
and when the bosses refused him a renomination, he appealed from them
to the people. When we both came up for reelection, I won easily in my
district, where circumstances conspired to favor me; and Kelly, with
exactly the same record that I had, except that it was more creditable
because he took his stand against greater odds, was beaten in his
district. Defeat to me would have meant merely chagrin; to Kelly it
meant terrible material disaster. He had no money. Like every rigidly
honest man, he had found that going into politics was expensive and that
his salary as Assemblyman did not cover the financial outgo. He had lost
his practice and he had incurred the ill will of the powerful, so that
it was impossible at the moment to pick up his practice again; and
the worry and disappointment affected him so much that shortly after
election he was struck down by sickness. Just before Christmas some of
us were informed that Kelly was in such financial straits that he and
his family would be put out into the street before New Year. This was
prevented by the action of some of his friends who had served with him
in the Legislature, and he recovered, at least to a degree, and took
up the practice of his profession. But he was a broken man. In the
Legislature in which he served one of his fellow-Democrats from
Brooklyn was the Speaker--Alfred C. Chapin, the leader and the foremost
representative of the reform Democracy, whom Kelly zealously supported.
A few years later Chapin, a very able man, was elected Mayor of Brooklyn
on a reform Democratic ticket. Shortly after his election I was asked
to speak at a meeting in a Brooklyn club at which various prominent
citizens, including the Mayor, were present. I spoke on civic decency,
and toward the close of my speech I sketched Kelly's career for my
audience, told them how he had stood up for the rights of the people of
Brooklyn, and how the people had failed to stand up for him, and the way
he had been punished, precisely because he had been a good citizen who
acted as a good citizen should act. I ended by saying that the reform
Democracy had now come into power, that Mr. Chapin was Mayor, and that I
very earnestly hoped recognition would at last be given to Kelly for the
fight he had waged at such bitter cost to himself. My words created some
impression, and Mayor Chapin at once said that he would take care of
Kelly and see that justice was done him. I went home that evening much
pleased. In the morning, at breakfast, I received a brief note from
Chapin in these words: "It was nine last evening when you finished
speaking of what Kelly had done, and when I said that I would take care
of him. At ten last night Kelly died." He had been dying while I was
making my speech, and he never knew that at last there was to be a
tardy recognition of what he had done, a tardy justification for the
sacrifices he had made. The man had fought, at heavy cost to himself and
with entire disinterestedness, for popular rights; but no recognition
for what he had done had come to him from the people, whose interest he
had so manfully upheld.
Where there is no chance of statistical or mathematical measurement, it
is very hard to tell just the degree to which conditions change from one
period to another. This is peculiarly hard to do when we deal with such
a matter as corruption. Personally I am inclined to think that in public
life we are on the whole a little better and not a little worse than we
were thirty years ago, when I was serving in the New York Legislature.
I think the conditions are a little better in National, in State, and in
municipal politics. Doubtless there are points in which they are worse,
and there is an enormous amount that needs reformation. But it does seem
to me as if, on the whole, things had slightly improved.
When I went into politics, New York City was under the control of
Tammany, which was from time to time opposed by some other--and
evanescent--city Democratic organization. The up-country Democrats had
not yet fallen under Tammany sway, and were on the point of developing a
big country political boss in the shape of David B. Hill. The Republican
party was split into the Stalwart and Half-Breed factions. Accordingly
neither party had one dominant boss, or one dominant machine, each being
controlled by jarring and warring bosses and machines. The corruption
was not what it had been in the days of Tweed, when outside individuals
controlled the legislators like puppets. Nor was there any such
centralization of the boss system as occurred later. Many of the members
were under the control of local bosses or local machines. But the
corrupt work was usually done through the members directly.
Of course I never had anything in the nature of legal proof of
corruption, and the figures I am about to give are merely approximate.
But three years' experience convinced me, in the first place, that there
were a great many thoroughly corrupt men in the Legislature, perhaps a
third of the whole number; and, in the next place, that the honest men
outnumbered the corrupt men, and that, if it were ever possible to get
an issue of right and wrong put vividly and unmistakably before them
in a way that would arrest their attention and that would arrest the
attention of their constituents, we could count on the triumph of the
right. The trouble was that in most cases the issue was confused. To
read some kinds of literature one would come to the conclusion that the
only corruption in legislative circles was in the form of bribery by
corporations, and that the line was sharp between the honest man who was
always voting against corporations and the dishonest man who was always
bribed to vote for them. My experience was the direct contrary of
this. For every one bill introduced (not passed) corruptly to favor a
corporation, there were at least ten introduced (not passed, and in this
case not intended to be passed) to blackmail corporations. The majority
of the corrupt members would be found voting for the blackmailing bills
if they were not paid, and would also be found voting in the interests
of the corporation if they were paid. The blackmailing, or, as they were
always called, the "strike" bills, could themselves be roughly divided
into two categories: bills which it would have been proper to pass,
and those that it would not have been proper to pass. Some of the bills
aimed at corporations were utterly wild and improper; and of these a
proportion might be introduced by honest and foolish zealots, whereas
most of them were introduced by men who had not the slightest intention
of passing them, but who wished to be paid not to pass them. The most
profitable type of bill to the accomplished blackmailer, however, was a
bill aimed at a real corporate abuse which the corporation, either from
wickedness or folly, was unwilling to remedy. Of the measures introduced
in the interest of corporations there were also some that were proper
and some that were improper. The corrupt legislators, the "black horse
cavalry," as they were termed, would demand payment to vote as the
corporations wished, no matter whether the bill was proper or improper.
Sometimes, if the bill was a proper one, the corporation would have the
virtue or the strength of mind to refuse to pay for its passage, and
sometimes it would not.
A very slight consideration of the above state of affairs will show
how difficult it was at times to keep the issue clear, for honest and
dishonest men were continually found side by side voting now against and
now for a corporation measure, the one set from proper and the other set
from grossly improper motives. Of course part of the fault lay in the
attitudes of outsiders. It was very early borne in upon me that almost
equal harm was done by indiscriminate defense of, and indiscriminate
attack on, corporations. It was hard to say whether the man who prided
himself upon always antagonizing the corporations, or the man who, on
the plea that he was a good conservative, always stood up for them, was
the more mischievous agent of corruption and demoralization.
In one fight in the House over a bill as to which there was a bitter
contest between two New York City street railway organizations, I saw
lobbyists come down on the floor itself and draw venal men out into the
lobbies with almost no pretense of concealing what they were doing.
In another case in which the elevated railway corporations of New York
City, against the protest of the Mayor and the other local authorities,
rushed through a bill remitting over half their taxes, some of the
members who voted for the measure probably thought it was right; but
every corrupt man in the House voted with them; and the man must
indeed have been stupid who thought that these votes were given
disinterestedly.
The effective fight against this bill for the revision of the elevated
railway taxes--perhaps the most openly crooked measure which during my
time was pushed at Albany--was waged by Mike Costello and myself. We
used to spend a good deal of time in industrious research into the
various bills introduced, so as to find out what their authors really
had in mind; this research, by the way, being highly unappreciated and
much resented by the authors. In the course of his researches Mike
had been puzzled by an unimportant bill, seemingly related to a
Constitutional amendment, introduced by a local saloon-keeper, whose
interests, as far as we knew, were wholly remote from the Constitution,
or from any form of abstract legal betterment. However, the measure
seemed harmless; we did not interfere; and it passed the House. Mike,
however, followed its career in the Senate, and at the last moment,
almost by accident, discovered that it had been "amended" by the
simple process of striking out everything after the enacting clause and
unobtrusively substituting the proposal to remit the elevated railway
taxes! The authors of the change wished to avoid unseemly publicity;
their hope was to slip the measure through the Legislature and have
it instantly signed by the Governor, before any public attention was
excited. In the Senate their plan worked to perfection. There was in
the Senate no fighting leadership of the forces of decency; and for such
leadership of the non-fighting type the representatives of corruption
cared absolutely nothing. By bold and adroit management the substitution
in the Senate was effected without opposition or comment. The bill (in
reality, of course, an absolutely new and undebated bill) then came back
to the House nominally as a merely amended measure, which, under the
rules, was not open to debate unless the amendment was first by vote
rejected. This was the great bill of the session for the lobby; and
the lobby was keenly alive to the need of quick, wise action. No public
attention whatever had so far been excited. Every measure was taken
to secure immediate and silent action. A powerful leader, whom the
beneficiaries of the bill trusted, a fearless and unscrupulous man,
of much force and great knowledge of parliamentary law, was put in the
chair. Costello and I were watched; and when for a moment we were out
of the House, the bill was brought over from the Senate, and the clerk
began to read it, all the black horse cavalry, in expectant mood, being
in their seats. But Mike Costello, who was in the clerk's room, happened
to catch a few words of what was being read. In he rushed, despatched a
messenger for me, and began a single-handed filibuster. The Speaker
pro tem called him to order. Mike continued to speak and protest;
the Speaker hammered him down; Mike continued his protests; the
sergeant-at-arms was sent to arrest and remove him; and then I bounced
in, and continued the protest, and refused to sit down or be silent.
Amid wild confusion the amendment was declared adopted, and the bill
was ordered engrossed and sent to the Governor. But we had carried our
point. The next morning the whole press rang with what had happened;
every detail of the bill, and every detail of the way it had been
slipped through the Legislature, were made public. All the slow and
cautious men in the House, who had been afraid of taking sides, now came
forward in support of us. Another debate was held on the proposal to
rescind the vote; the city authorities waked up to protest; the
Governor refused to sign the bill. Two or three years later, after much
litigation, the taxes were paid; in the newspapers it was stated that
the amount was over $1,500,000. It was Mike Costello to whom primarily
was due the fact that this sum was saved the public, and that the forces
of corruption received a stinging rebuff. He did not expect recognition
or reward for his services; and he got none. The public, if it knew of
what he had done, promptly forgot it. The machine did not forget it, and
turned him down at the next election.
One of the stand-by "strikes" was a bill for reducing the elevated
railway fare, which at that time was ten cents, to five cents. In
one Legislature the men responsible for the introduction of the bill
suffered such an extraordinary change of heart that when the bill
came up--being pushed by zealous radicals who really were honest--the
introducers actually voted against it! A number of us who had been very
doubtful about the principle of the bill voted for it simply because
we were convinced that money was being used to stop it, and we hated to
seem to side with the corruptionists. Then there came a wave of popular
feeling in its favor, the bill was reintroduced at the next session,
the railways very wisely decided that they would simply fight it on its
merits, and the entire black horse cavalry contingent, together with all
the former friends of the measure, voted against it. Some of us, who in
our anger at the methods formerly resorted to for killing the bill had
voted for it the previous year, with much heart-searching again voted
for it, as I now think unwisely; and the bill was vetoed by the then
Governor, Grover Cleveland. I believe the veto was proper, and those
who felt as I did supported the veto; for although it was entirely right
that the fare should be reduced to five cents, which was soon afterwards
done, the method was unwise, and would have set a mischievous precedent.
An instance of an opposite kind occurred in connection with a great
railway corporation which wished to increase its terminal facilities in
one of our great cities. The representatives of the railway brought
the bill to me and asked me to look into it, saying that they were well
aware that it was the kind of bill that lent itself to blackmail, and
that they wished to get it through on its merits, and invited the
most careful examination. I looked carefully into it, found that the
municipal authorities and the property-owners whose property was to be
taken favored it, and also found that it was an absolute necessity
from the standpoint of the city no less than from the standpoint of the
railway. So I said I would take charge of it if I had guarantees that no
money should be used and nothing improper done in order to push it. This
was agreed to. I was then acting as chairman of the committee before
which the bill went.
A very brief experience proved what I had already been practically sure
of, that there was a secret combination of the majority of the committee
on a crooked basis. On one pretext or another the crooked members of the
committee held the bill up, refusing to report it either favorably or
unfavorably. There were one or two members of the committee who were
pretty rough characters, and when I decided to force matters I was not
sure that we would not have trouble. There was a broken chair in the
room, and I got a leg of it loose and put it down beside me where it
was not visible, but where I might get at it in a hurry if necessary. I
moved that the bill be reported favorably. This was voted down without
debate by the "combine," some of whom kept a wooden stolidity of look,
while others leered at me with sneering insolence. I then moved that it
be reported unfavorably, and again the motion was voted down by the same
majority and in the same fashion. I then put the bill in my pocket and
announced that I would report it anyhow. This almost precipitated a
riot, especially when I explained, in answer to statements that my
conduct would be exposed on the floor of the Legislature, that in that
case I should give the Legislature the reasons why I suspected that the
men holding up all report of the bill were holding it up for purposes
of blackmail. The riot did not come off; partly, I think, because the
opportune production of the chair-leg had a sedative effect, and partly
owing to wise counsels from one or two of my opponents.
Accordingly I got the bill reported to the Legislature and put on the
calendar. But here it came to a dead halt. I think this was chiefly
because most of the newspapers which noticed the matter at all treated
it in such a cynical spirit as to encourage the men who wished to
blackmail. These papers reported the introduction of the bill, and said
that "all the hungry legislators were clamoring for their share of the
pie"; and they accepted as certain the fact that there was going to be a
division of "pie." This succeeded in frightening honest men, and also in
relieving the rogues; the former were afraid they would be suspected of
receiving money if they voted for the bill, and the latter were given a
shield behind which to stand until they were paid. I was wholly
unable to move the bill forward in the Legislature, and finally a
representative of the railway told me that he thought he would like
to take the bill out of my hands, that I did not seem able to get it
through, and that perhaps some "older and more experienced" leader could
be more successful. I was pretty certain what this meant, but of course
I had no kind of proof, and moreover I was not in a position to say that
I could promise success. Accordingly, the bill was given into the charge
of a veteran, whom I believe to have been a personally honest man, but
who was not inquisitive about the motives influencing his colleagues.
This gentleman, who went by a nickname which I shall incorrectly call
"the bald eagle of Weehawken," was efficient and knew his job. After a
couple of weeks a motion to put the bill through was made by "the
bald eagle"; the "black horse cavalry," whose feelings had undergone a
complete change in the intervening time, voted unanimously for it, in
company with all the decent members; and that was the end. Now here was
a bit of work in the interest of a corporation and in the interest of
a community, which the corporation at first tried honestly to have put
through on its merits. The blame for the failure lay primarily in the
supine indifference of the community to legislative wrong-doing, so long
as only the corporations were blackmailed.
Except as above mentioned, I was not brought in contact with big
business, save in the effort to impeach a certain judge. This judge
had been used as an instrument in their business by certain of the men
connected with the elevated railways and other great corporations at
that time. We got hold of his correspondence with one of these men, and
it showed a shocking willingness to use the judicial office in any way
that one of the kings of finance of that day desired. He had actually
held court in one of that financier's rooms. One expression in one of
the judge's letters to this financier I shall always remember: "I am
willing to go to the very verge of judicial discretion to serve your
vast interests." The curious thing was that I was by no means certain
that the judge himself was corrupt. He may have been; but I am inclined
to think that, aside from his being a man of coarse moral fiber, the
trouble lay chiefly in the fact that he had a genuine--if I had not
so often seen it, I would say a wholly inexplicable--reverence for
the possessor of a great fortune as such. He sincerely believed that
business was the end of existence, and that judge and legislator
alike should do whatever was necessary to favor it; and the bigger the
business the more he desired to favor it. Big business of the kind that
is allied with politics thoroughly appreciated the usefulness of such a
judge, and every effort was strained to protect him. We fought hard--by
"we" I mean some thirty or forty legislators, both Republicans and
Democrats--but the "black horse cavalry," and the timid good men, and
the dull conservative men, were all against us; and the vote in the
Legislature was heavily against impeachment. The minority of the
committee that investigated him, with Chapin at its head, recommended
impeachment; the argument for impeachment before the committee was made
by Francis Lynde Stetson.
It was my first experience of the kind. Various men whom I had known
well socially and had been taught to look up to, prominent business men
and lawyers, acted in a way which not only astounded me, but which I
was quite unable to reconcile with the theories I had formed as to their
high standing--I was little more than a year out of college at the time.
Generally, as has been always the case since, they were careful to avoid
any direct conversation with me on a concrete case of what we now
call "privilege" in business and in politics, that is, of the alliance
between business and politics which represents improper favors rendered
to some men in return for improper conduct on the part of others being
ignored or permitted.
One member of a prominent law firm, an old family friend, did, however,
take me out to lunch one day, evidently for the purpose of seeing just
what it was that I wished and intended to do. I believe he had a
genuine personal liking for me. He explained that I had done well in the
Legislature; that it was a good thing to have made the "reform play,"
that I had shown that I possessed ability such as would make me useful
in the right kind of law office or business concern; but that I must not
overplay my hand; that I had gone far enough, and that now was the time
to leave politics and identify myself with the right kind of people, the
people who would always in the long run control others and obtain the
real rewards which were worth having. I asked him if that meant that I
was to yield to the ring in politics. He answered somewhat impatiently
that I was entirely mistaken (as in fact I was) about there being merely
a political ring, of the kind of which the papers were fond of talking;
that the "ring," if it could be called such--that is, the inner
circle--included certain big business men, and the politicians, lawyers,
and judges who were in alliance with and to a certain extent dependent
upon them, and that the successful man had to win his success by the
backing of the same forces, whether in law, business, or politics.
This conversation not only interested me, but made such an impression
that I always remembered it, for it was the first glimpse I had of that
combination between business and politics which I was in after years so
often to oppose. In the America of that day, and especially among
the people whom I knew, the successful business man was regarded by
everybody as preeminently the good citizen. The orthodox books on
political economy, not only in America but in England, were written
for his especial glorification. The tangible rewards came to him, the
admiration of his fellow-citizens of the respectable type was apt to
be his, and the severe newspaper moralists who were never tired of
denouncing politicians and political methods were wont to hold up
"business methods" as the ideal which we were to strive to introduce
into political life. Herbert Croly, in "The Promise of American Life,"
has set forth the reasons why our individualistic democracy--which
taught that each man was to rely exclusively on himself, was in no way
to be interfered with by others, and was to devote himself to his own
personal welfare--necessarily produced the type of business man
who sincerely believed, as did the rest of the community, that the
individual who amassed a big fortune was the man who was the best and
most typical American.
In the Legislature the problems with which I dealt were mainly problems
of honesty and decency and of legislative and administrative efficiency.
They represented the effort, the wise, the vitally necessary effort, to
get efficient and honest government. But as yet I understood little of
the effort which was already beginning, for the most part under very bad
leadership, to secure a more genuine social and industrial justice. Nor
was I especially to blame for this. The good citizens I then knew best,
even when themselves men of limited means--men like my colleague Billy
O'Neill, and my backwoods friends Sewall and Dow--were no more awake
than I was to the changing needs the changing times were bringing.
Their outlook was as narrow as my own, and, within its limits, as
fundamentally sound.
I wish to dwell on the soundness of our outlook on life, even though as
yet it was not broad enough. We were no respecters of persons. Where our
vision was developed to a degree that enabled us to see crookedness, we
opposed it whether in great or small. As a matter of fact, we found that
it needed much more courage to stand up openly against labor men when
they were wrong than against capitalists when they were wrong. The
sins against labor are usually committed, and the improper services to
capitalists are usually rendered, behind closed doors. Very often the
man with the moral courage to speak in the open against labor when it is
wrong is the only man anxious to do effective work for labor when labor
is right.
The only kinds of courage and honesty which are permanently useful to
good institutions anywhere are those shown by men who decide all cases
with impartial justice on grounds of conduct and not on grounds of
class. We found that in the long run the men who in public blatantly
insisted that labor was never wrong were the very men who in private
could not be trusted to stand for labor when it was right. We grew
heartily to distrust the reformer who never denounced wickedness unless
it was embodied in a rich man. Human nature does not change; and that
type of "reformer" is as noxious now as he ever was. The loud-mouthed
upholder of popular rights who attacks wickedness only when it is allied
with wealth, and who never publicly assails any misdeed, no matter how
flagrant, if committed nominally in the interest of labor, has either a
warped mind or a tainted soul, and should be trusted by no honest man.
It was largely the indignant and contemptuous dislike aroused in our
minds by the demagogues of this class which then prevented those of us
whose instincts at bottom were sound from going as far as we ought to
have gone along the lines of governmental control of corporations and
governmental interference on behalf of labor.
I did, however, have one exceedingly useful experience. A bill was
introduced by the Cigar-Makers' Union to prohibit the manufacture of
cigars in tenement-houses. I was appointed one of a committee of three
to investigate conditions in the tenement-houses and see if legislation
should be had. Of my two colleagues on the committee, one took no
interest in the measure and privately said he did not think it was
right, but that he had to vote for it because the labor unions were
strong in his district and he was pledged to support the bill. The
other, a sporting Tammany man who afterwards abandoned politics for the
race-track, was a very good fellow. He told me frankly that he had to be
against the bill because certain interests which were all-powerful and
with which he had dealings required him to be against it, but that I
was a free agent, and that if I would look into the matter he believed I
would favor the legislation. As a matter of fact, I had supposed I would
be against the legislation, and I rather think that I was put on the
committee with that idea, for the respectable people I knew were against
it; it was contrary to the principles of political economy of the
_laissez-faire_ kind; and the business men who spoke to me about it
shook their heads and said that it was designed to prevent a man doing
as he wished and as he had a right to do with what was his own.
However, my first visits to the tenement-house districts in question
made me feel that, whatever the theories might be, as a matter of
practical common sense I could not conscientiously vote for the
continuance of the conditions which I saw. These conditions rendered
it impossible for the families of the tenement-house workers to live
so that the children might grow up fitted for the exacting duties
of American citizenship. I visited the tenement-houses once with
my colleagues of the committee, once with some of the labor union
representatives, and once or twice by myself. In a few of the
tenement-houses there were suites of rooms ample in number where the
work on the tobacco was done in rooms not occupied for cooking or
sleeping or living. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however,
there were one, two, or three room apartments, and the work of
manufacturing the tobacco by men, women, and children went on day and
night in the eating, living, and sleeping rooms--sometimes in one room.
I have always remembered one room in which two families were living. On
my inquiry as to who the third adult male was I was told that he was
a boarder with one of the families. There were several children,
three men, and two women in this room. The tobacco was stowed about
everywhere, alongside the foul bedding, and in a corner where there were
scraps of food. The men, women, and children in this room worked by day
and far on into the evening, and they slept and ate there. They were
Bohemians, unable to speak English, except that one of the children knew
enough to act as interpreter.
Instead of opposing the bill I ardently championed it. It was a poorly
drawn measure, and the Governor, Grover Cleveland, was at first doubtful
about signing it. The Cigar-makers' Union then asked me to appear before
the Governor and argue for it. I accordingly did so, acting as spokesman
for the battered, undersized foreigners who represented the Union
and the workers. The Governor signed the bill. Afterwards this
tenement-house cigar legislation was declared invalid by the Court
of Appeals in the Jacobs decision. Jacobs was one of the rare
tenement-house manufacturers of cigars who occupied quite a suite
of rooms, so that in his case the living conditions were altogether
exceptional. What the reason was which influenced those bringing the
suit to select the exceptional instead of the average worker I do not
know; of course such action was precisely the action which those most
interested in having the law broken down were anxious to see taken.
The Court of Appeals declared the law unconstitutional, and in their
decision the judges reprobated the law as an assault upon the "hallowed"
influences of "home." It was this case which first waked me to a dim and
partial understanding of the fact that the courts were not necessarily
the best judges of what should be done to better social and industrial
conditions. The judges who rendered this decision were well-meaning
men. They knew nothing whatever of tenement-house conditions; they
knew nothing whatever of the needs, or of the life and labor, of
three-fourths of their fellow-citizens in great cities. They knew
legalism, but not life. Their choice of the words "hallowed" and "home,"
as applicable to the revolting conditions attending the manufacture of
cigars in tenement-houses, showed that they had no idea what it was
that they were deciding. Imagine the "hallowed" associations of a "home"
consisting of one room where two families, one of them with a boarder,
live, eat, and work! This decision completely blocked tenement-house
reform legislation in New York for a score of years, and hampers it to
this day. It was one of the most serious setbacks which the cause of
industrial and social progress and reform ever received.
I had been brought up to hold the courts in especial reverence. The
people with whom I was most intimate were apt to praise the courts for
just such decisions as this, and to speak of them as bulwarks against
disorder and barriers against demagogic legislation. These were the same
people with whom the judges who rendered these decisions were apt
to foregather at social clubs, or dinners, or in private life. Very
naturally they all tended to look at things from the same standpoint. Of
course it took more than one experience such as this Tenement Cigar Case
to shake me out of the attitude in which I was brought up. But various
decisions, not only of the New York court but of certain other State
courts and even of the United States Supreme Court, during the quarter
of a century following the passage of this tenement-house legislation,
did at last thoroughly wake me to the actual fact. I grew to realize
that all that Abraham Lincoln had said about the Dred Scott decision
could be said with equal truth and justice about the numerous decisions
which in our own day were erected as bars across the path of social
reform, and which brought to naught so much of the effort to secure
justice and fair dealing for workingmen and workingwomen, and for plain
citizens generally.
Some of the wickedness and inefficiency in public life was then
displayed in simpler fashion than would probably now be the case. Once
or twice I was a member of committees which looked into gross and widely
ramifying governmental abuses. On the whole, the most important part I
played was in the third Legislature in which I served, when I acted as
chairman of a committee which investigated various phases of New York
City official life.
The most important of the reform measures our committee recommended was
the bill taking away from the Aldermen their power of confirmation over
the Mayor's appointments. We found that it was possible to get citizens
interested in the character and capacity of the head of the city, so
that they would exercise some intelligent interest in his conduct and
qualifications. But we found that as a matter of fact it was impossible
to get them interested in the Aldermen and other subordinate officers.
In actual practice the Aldermen were merely the creatures of the local
ward bosses or of the big municipal bosses, and where they controlled
the appointments the citizens at large had no chance whatever to make
their will felt. Accordingly we fought for the principle, which I
believe to be of universal application, that what is needed in our
popular government is to give plenty of power to a few officials, and to
make these few officials genuinely and readily responsible to the people
for the exercise of that power. Taking away the confirming power of the
Board of Aldermen did not give the citizens of New York good government.
We knew that if they chose to elect the wrong kind of Mayor they would
have bad government, no matter what the form of the law was. But we did
secure to them the chance to get good government if they desired, and
this was impossible as long as the old system remained. The change was
fought in the way in which all similar changes always are fought. The
corrupt and interested politicians were against it, and the battle-cries
they used, which rallied to them most of the unthinking conservatives,
were that we were changing the old constitutional system, that we were
defacing the monuments of the wisdom of the founders of the government,
that we were destroying that distinction between legislative and
executive power which was the bulwark of our liberties, and that we were
violent and unscrupulous radicals with no reverence for the past.
Of course the investigations, disclosures, and proceedings of the
investigating committee of which I was chairman brought me into
bitter personal conflict with very powerful financiers, very powerful
politicians, and with certain newspapers which these financiers and
politicians controlled. A number of able and unscrupulous men were
fighting, some for their financial lives, and others to keep out of
unpleasantly close neighborhood to State's prison. This meant that there
were blows to be taken as well as given. In such political struggles,
those who went in for the kind of thing that I did speedily excited
animosities among strong and cunning men who would stop at little to
gratify their animosity. Any man engaged in this particular type of
militant and practical reform movement was soon made to feel that he had
better not undertake to push matters home unless his own character was
unassailable. On one of the investigating committees on which I served
there was a countryman, a very able man, who, when he reached New York
City, felt as certain Americans do when they go to Paris--that the moral
restraints of his native place no longer applied. With all his ability,
he was not shrewd enough to realize that the Police Department was
having him as well as the rest of us carefully shadowed. He was caught
red-handed by a plain-clothes man doing what he had no business to do;
and from that time on he dared not act save as those who held his secret
permitted him to act. Thenceforth those officials who stood behind the
Police Department had one man on the committee on whom they could count.
I never saw terror more ghastly on a strong man's face than on the face
of this man on one or two occasions when he feared that events in the
committee might take such a course as to force him into a position where
his colleagues would expose him even if the city officials did not.
However, he escaped, for we were never able to get the kind of proof
which would warrant our asking for the action in which this man could
not have joined.
Traps were set for more than one of us, and if we had walked into these
traps our public careers would have ended, at least so far as following
them under the conditions which alone make it worth while to be in
public life at all. A man can of course hold public office, and many a
man does hold public office, and lead a public career of a sort, even if
there are other men who possess secrets about him which he cannot afford
to have divulged. But no man can lead a public career really worth
leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor
strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous
foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character. Nor will
clean conduct by itself enable a man to render good service. I have
always been fond of Josh Billings's remark that "it is much easier to
be a harmless dove than a wise serpent." There are plenty of decent
legislators, and plenty of able legislators; but the blamelessness and
the fighting edge are not always combined. Both qualities are necessary
for the man who is to wage active battle against the powers that prey.
He must be clean of life, so that he can laugh when his public or his
private record is searched; and yet being clean of life will not
avail him if he is either foolish or timid. He must walk warily and
fearlessly, and while he should never brawl if he can avoid it, he must
be ready to hit hard if the need arises. Let him remember, by the way,
that the unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can
be avoided; but never hit softly.
Like most young men in politics, I went through various oscillations
of feeling before I "found myself." At one period I became so impressed
with the virtue of complete independence that I proceeded to act on each
case purely as I personally viewed it, without paying any heed to the
principles and prejudices of others. The result was that I speedily
and deservedly lost all power of accomplishing anything at all; and I
thereby learned the invaluable lesson that in the practical activities
of life no man can render the highest service unless he can act
in combination with his fellows, which means a certain amount of
give-and-take between him and them. Again, I at one period began to
believe that I had a future before me, and that it behooved me to be
very far-sighted and scan each action carefully with a view to its
possible effect on that future. This speedily made me useless to the
public and an object of aversion to myself; and I then made up my mind
that I would try not to think of the future at all, but would proceed on
the assumption that each office I held would be the last I ever should
hold, and that I would confine myself to trying to do my work as well as
possible while I held that office. I found that for me personally this
was the only way in which I could either enjoy myself or render good
service to the country, and I never afterwards deviated from this plan.
As regards political advancement the bosses could of course do a good
deal. At that time the warring Stalwart and Half-Breed factions of
the Republican party were supporting respectively President Arthur
and Senator Miller. Neither side cared for me. The first year in the
Legislature I rose to a position of leadership, so that in the second
year, when the Republicans were in a minority, I received the minority
nomination for Speaker, although I was still the youngest man in the
House, being twenty-four years old. The third year the Republicans
carried the Legislature, and the bosses at once took a hand in the
Speakership contest. I made a stout fight for the nomination, but the
bosses of the two factions, the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds, combined
and I was beaten. I was much chagrined for the moment. But the fact that
I had fought hard and efficiently, even though defeated, and that I had
made the fight single-handed, with no machine back of me, assured my
standing as floor leader. My defeat in the end materially strengthened
my position, and enabled me to accomplish far more than I could have
accomplished as Speaker. As so often, I found that the titular
position was of no consequence; what counted was the combination of the
opportunity with the ability to accomplish results. The achievement was
the all-important thing; the position, whether titularly high or
low, was of consequence only in so far as it widened the chance for
achievement. After the session closed four of us who looked at politics
from the same standpoint and were known as Independent or Anti-Machine
Republicans were sent by the State Convention as delegates-at-large
to the Republican National Convention of 1884, where I advocated, as
vigorously as I knew how, the nomination of Senator George F. Edmunds.
Mr. Edmunds was defeated and Mr. Blaine nominated. Mr. Blaine was
clearly the choice of the rank and file of the party; his nomination
was won in fair and aboveboard fashion, because the rank and file of the
party stood back of him; and I supported him to the best of my ability
in the ensuing campaign.
The Speakership contest enlightened me as regards more things than the
attitude of the bosses. I had already had some exasperating experiences
with the "silk stocking" reformer type, as Abraham Lincoln called it,
the gentlemen who were very nice, very refined, who shook their heads
over political corruption and discussed it in drawing-rooms and parlors,
but who were wholly unable to grapple with real men in real life. They
were apt vociferously to demand "reform" as if it were some concrete
substance, like cake, which could be handed out at will, in tangible
masses, if only the demand were urgent enough. These parlor reformers
made up for inefficiency in action by zeal in criticising; and they
delighted in criticising the men who really were doing the things which
they said ought to be done, but which they lacked the sinewy power to
do. They often upheld ideals which were not merely impossible but highly
undesirable, and thereby played into the hands of the very politicians
to whom they professed to be most hostile. Moreover, if they believed
that their own interests, individually or as a class, were jeoparded,
they were apt to show no higher standards than did the men they usually
denounced.
One of their shibboleths was that the office should seek the man and not
the man the office. This is entirely true of certain offices at certain
times. It is entirely untrue when the circumstances are different.
It would have been unnecessary and undesirable for Washington to
have sought the Presidency. But if Abraham Lincoln had not sought the
Presidency he never would have been nominated. The objection in such a
case as this lies not to seeking the office, but to seeking it in any
but an honorable and proper manner. The effect of the shibboleth in
question is usually merely to put a premium on hypocrisy, and therefore
to favor the creature who is willing to rise by hypocrisy. When I ran
for Speaker, the whole body of machine politicians was against me, and
my only chance lay in arousing the people in the different districts. To
do this I had to visit the districts, put the case fairly before the men
whom I saw, and make them understand that I was really making a fight
and would stay in the fight to the end. Yet there were reformers who
shook their heads and deplored my "activity" in the canvass. Of course
the one thing which corrupt machine politicians most desire is to have
decent men frown on the activity, that is, on the efficiency, of the
honest man who genuinely wishes to reform politics.
If efficiency is left solely to bad men, and if virtue is confined
solely to inefficient men, the result cannot be happy. When I entered
politics there were, as there always had been--and as there always will
be--any number of bad men in politics who were thoroughly efficient,
and any number of good men who would like to have done lofty things in
politics but who were thoroughly inefficient. If I wished to accomplish
anything for the country, my business was to combine decency and
efficiency; to be a thoroughly practical man of high ideals who did his
best to reduce those ideals to actual practice. This was my ideal, and
to the best of my ability I strove to live up to it.
To a young man, life in the New York Legislature was always interesting
and often entertaining. There was always a struggle of some kind on
hand. Sometimes it was on a naked question of right and wrong. Sometimes
it was on a question of real constructive statesmanship. Moreover, there
were all kinds of humorous incidents, the humor being usually of the
unconscious kind. In one session of the Legislature the New York City
Democratic representatives were split into two camps, and there were
two rivals for leadership. One of these was a thoroughly good-hearted,
happy-go-lucky person who was afterwards for several years in Congress.
He had been a local magistrate and was called Judge. Generally he and I
were friendly, but occasionally I did something that irritated him. He
was always willing to vote for any other member's bill himself, and he
regarded it as narrow-minded for any one to oppose one of his
bills, especially if the opposition was upon the ground that it was
unconstitutional--for his views of the Constitution were so excessively
liberal as to make even me feel as if I belonged to the straitest sect
of strict constructionists. On one occasion he had a bill to appropriate
money, with obvious impropriety, for the relief of some miscreant whom
he styled "one of the honest yeomanry of the State." When I explained to
him that it was clearly unconstitutional, he answered, "Me friend, the
Constitution don't touch little things like that," and then added, with
an ingratiating smile, "Anyhow, I'd never allow the Constitution to
come between friends." At the time I was looking over the proofs of Mr.
Bryce's "American Commonwealth," and I told him the incident. He put it
into the first edition of the "Commonwealth"; whether it is in the last
edition or not, I cannot say.
On another occasion the same gentleman came to an issue with me in
a debate, and wound up his speech by explaining that I occupied what
"lawyers would call a quasi position on the bill." His rival was a man
of totally different type, a man of great natural dignity, also born in
Ireland. He had served with gallantry in the Civil War. After the close
of the war he organized an expedition to conquer Canada. The expedition,
however, got so drunk before reaching Albany that it was there
incarcerated in jail, whereupon its leader abandoned it and went into
New York politics instead. He was a man of influence, and later occupied
in the Police Department the same position as Commissioner which I
myself at one time occupied. He felt that his rival had gained too much
glory at my expense, and, walking over with ceremonious solemnity to
where the said rival was sitting close beside me, he said to him: "I
would like you to know, Mr. Cameron [Cameron, of course, was not the
real name], that Mr. Roosevelt knows more law in a wake than you do in a
month; and, more than that, Michael Cameron, what do you mane by quoting
Latin on the floor of this House when you don't know the alpha and
omayga of the language?"
There was in the Legislature, during the deadlock above mentioned, a man
whom I will call Brogan. He looked like a serious elderly frog. I
never heard him speak more than once. It was before the Legislature was
organized, or had adopted any rules; and each day the only business was
for the clerk to call the roll. One day Brogan suddenly rose, and the
following dialogue occurred:
Brogan. Misther Clu-r-r-k!
The Clerk. The gentleman from New York.
Brogan. I rise to a point of ordher under the rules!
The Clerk. There are no rules.
Brogan. Thin I object to them!
The Clerk. There are no rules to object to.
Brogan. Oh! [nonplussed; but immediately recovering himself].
Thin I move that they be amended until there ar-r-re!
The deadlock was tedious; and we hailed with joy such enlivening
incidents as the above.
During my three years' service in the Legislature I worked on a very
simple philosophy of government. It was that personal character and
initiative are the prime requisites in political and social life. It
was not only a good but an absolutely indispensable theory as far as it
went; but it was defective in that it did not sufficiently allow for
the need of collective action. I shall never forget the men with whom
I worked hand in hand in these legislative struggles, not only my
fellow-legislators, but some of the newspaper reporters, such as Spinney
and Cunningham; and then in addition the men in the various districts
who helped us. We had made up our minds that we must not fight fire with
fire, that on the contrary the way to win out was to equal our foes in
practical efficiency and yet to stand at the opposite plane from them in
applied morality.
It was not always easy to keep the just middle, especially when
it happened that on one side there were corrupt and unscrupulous
demagogues, and on the other side corrupt and unscrupulous
reactionaries. Our effort was to hold the scales even between both. We
tried to stand with the cause of righteousness even though its advocates
were anything but righteous. We endeavored to cut out the abuses of
property, even though good men of property were misled into upholding
those abuses. We refused to be frightened into sanctioning improper
assaults upon property, although we knew that the champions of property
themselves did things that were wicked and corrupt. We were as yet by
no means as thoroughly awake as we ought to have been to the need of
controlling big business and to the damage done by the combination of
politics with big business. In this matter I was not behind the rest
of my friends; indeed, I was ahead of them, for no serious leader in
political life then appreciated the prime need of grappling with these
questions. One partial reason--not an excuse or a justification, but a
partial reason--for my slowness in grasping the importance of action in
these matters was the corrupt and unattractive nature of so many of the
men who championed popular reforms, their insincerity, and the folly
of so many of the actions which they advocated. Even at that date I had
neither sympathy with nor admiration for the man who was merely a money
king, and I did not regard the "money touch," when divorced from other
qualities, as entitling a man to either respect or consideration. As
recited above, we did on more than one occasion fight battles, in
which we neither took nor gave quarter, against the most prominent and
powerful financiers and financial interests of the day. But most of the
fights in which we were engaged were for pure honesty and decency, and
they were more apt to be against that form of corruption which found
its expression in demagogy than against that form of corruption which
defended or advocated privilege. Fundamentally, our fight was part of
the eternal war against the Powers that Prey; and we cared not a whit in
what rank of life these powers were found.
To play the demagogue for purposes of self-interest is a cardinal sin
against the people in a democracy, exactly as to play the courtier for
such purposes is a cardinal sin against the people under other forms of
government. A man who stays long in our American political life, if he
has in his soul the generous desire to do effective service for great
causes, inevitably grows to regard himself merely as one of many
instruments, all of which it may be necessary to use, one at one time,
one at another, in achieving the triumph of those causes; and whenever
the usefulness of any one has been exhausted, it is to be thrown aside.
If such a man is wise, he will gladly do the thing that is next, when
the time and the need come together, without asking what the future
holds for him. Let the half-god play his part well and manfully, and
then be content to draw aside when the god appears. Nor should he feel
vain regrets that to another it is given to render greater services and
reap a greater reward. Let it be enough for him that he too has served,
and that by doing well he has prepared the way for the other man who can
do better.
CHAPTER IV
IN COWBOY LAND
Though I had previously made a trip into the then Territory of Dakota,
beyond the Red River, it was not until 1883 that I went to the Little
Missouri, and there took hold of two cattle ranches, the Chimney Butte
and the Elkhorn.
It was still the Wild West in those days, the Far West, the West of
Owen Wister's stories and Frederic Remington's drawings, the West of
the Indian and the buffalo-hunter, the soldier and the cow-puncher. That
land of the West has gone now, "gone, gone with lost Atlantis," gone to
the isle of ghosts and of strange dead memories. It was a land of vast
silent spaces, of lonely rivers, and of plains where the wild game
stared at the passing horseman. It was a land of scattered ranches, of
herds of long-horned cattle, and of reckless riders who unmoved looked
in the eyes of life or of death. In that land we led a free and hardy
life, with horse and with rifle. We worked under the scorching midsummer
sun, when the wide plains shimmered and wavered in the heat; and we knew
the freezing misery of riding night guard round the cattle in the late
fall round-up. In the soft springtime the stars were glorious in our
eyes each night before we fell asleep; and in the winter we rode through
blinding blizzards, when the driven snow-dust burned our faces. There
were monotonous days, as we guided the trail cattle or the beef herds,
hour after hour, at the slowest of walks; and minutes or hours teeming
with excitement as we stopped stampedes or swam the herds across rivers
treacherous with quicksands or brimmed with running ice. We knew toil
and hardship and hunger and thirst; and we saw men die violent deaths
as they worked among the horses and cattle, or fought in evil feuds with
one another; but we felt the beat of hardy life in our veins, and ours
was the glory of work and the joy of living.
It was right and necessary that this life should pass, for the safety of
our country lies in its being made the country of the small home-maker.
The great unfenced ranches, in the days of "free grass," necessarily
represented a temporary stage in our history. The large migratory flocks
of sheep, each guarded by the hired shepherds of absentee owners, were
the first enemies of the cattlemen; and owing to the way they ate out
the grass and destroyed all other vegetation, these roving sheep
bands represented little of permanent good to the country. But the
homesteaders, the permanent settlers, the men who took up each his own
farm on which he lived and brought up his family, these represented from
the National standpoint the most desirable of all possible users of,
and dwellers on, the soil. Their advent meant the breaking up of the big
ranches; and the change was a National gain, although to some of us an
individual loss.
I first reached the Little Missouri on a Northern Pacific train about
three in the morning of a cool September day in 1883. Aside from the
station, the only building was a ramshackle structure called the Pyramid
Park Hotel. I dragged my duffle-bag thither, and hammered at the door
until the frowsy proprietor appeared, muttering oaths. He ushered me
upstairs, where I was given one of the fourteen beds in the room which
by itself constituted the entire upper floor. Next day I walked over
to the abandoned army post, and, after some hours among the gray log
shacks, a ranchman who had driven into the station agreed to take me
out to his ranch, the Chimney Butte ranch, where he was living with his
brother and their partner.
The ranch was a log structure with a dirt roof, a corral for the horses
near by, and a chicken-house jabbed against the rear of the ranch house.
Inside there was only one room, with a table, three or four chairs, a
cooking-stove, and three bunks. The owners were Sylvane and Joe Ferris
and William J. Merrifield. Later all three of them held my commissions
while I was President. Merrifield was Marshal of Montana, and as
Presidential elector cast the vote of that State for me in 1904; Sylvane
Ferris was Land Officer in North Dakota, and Joe Ferris Postmaster at
Medora. There was a fourth man, George Meyer, who also worked for me
later. That evening we all played old sledge round the table, and at one
period the game was interrupted by a frightful squawking outside which
told us that a bobcat had made a raid on the chicken-house.
After a buffalo hunt with my original friend, Joe Ferris, I entered into
partnership with Merrifield and Sylvane Ferris, and we started a cow
ranch, with the maltese cross brand--always known as "maltee cross," by
the way, as the general impression along the Little Missouri was that
"maltese" must be a plural. Twenty-nine years later my four friends of
that night were delegates to the First Progressive National Convention
at Chicago. They were among my most constant companions for the few
years next succeeding the evening when the bobcat interrupted the game
of old sledge. I lived and worked with them on the ranch, and with them
and many others like them on the round-up; and I brought out from
Maine, in order to start the Elkhorn ranch lower down the river, my two
backwoods friends Sewall and Dow. My brands for the lower ranch were the
elkhorn and triangle.
I do not believe there ever was any life more attractive to a vigorous
young fellow than life on a cattle ranch in those days. It was a fine,
healthy life, too; it taught a man self-reliance, hardihood, and the
value of instant decision--in short, the virtues that ought to come
from life in the open country. I enjoyed the life to the full. After the
first year I built on the Elkhorn ranch a long, low ranch house of
hewn logs, with a veranda, and with, in addition to the other rooms, a
bedroom for myself, and a sitting-room with a big fire-place. I got out
a rocking-chair--I am very fond of rocking-chairs--and enough books to
fill two or three shelves, and a rubber bathtub so that I could get
a bath. And then I do not see how any one could have lived more
comfortably. We had buffalo robes and bearskins of our own killing. We
always kept the house clean--using the word in a rather large sense.
There were at least two rooms that were always warm, even in the
bitterest weather; and we had plenty to eat. Commonly the mainstay
of every meal was game of our own killing, usually antelope or deer,
sometimes grouse or ducks, and occasionally, in the earlier days,
buffalo or elk. We also had flour and bacon, sugar, salt, and canned
tomatoes. And later, when some of the men married and brought out their
wives, we had all kinds of good things, such as jams and jellies made
from the wild plums and the buffalo berries, and potatoes from the
forlorn little garden patch. Moreover, we had milk. Most ranchmen at
that time never had milk. I knew more than one ranch with ten thousand
head of cattle where there was not a cow that could be milked. We made
up our minds that we would be more enterprising. Accordingly, we started
to domesticate some of the cows. Our first effort was not successful,
chiefly because we did not devote the needed time and patience to the
matter. And we found that to race a cow two miles at full speed on
horseback, then rope her, throw her, and turn her upside down to milk
her, while exhilarating as a pastime, was not productive of results.
Gradually we accumulated tame cows, and, after we had thinned out the
bobcats and coyotes, more chickens.
The ranch house stood on the brink of a low bluff overlooking the broad,
shallow bed of the Little Missouri, through which at most seasons there
ran only a trickle of water, while in times of freshet it was filled
brimful with the boiling, foaming, muddy torrent. There was no neighbor
for ten or fifteen miles on either side of me. The river twisted down
in long curves between narrow bottoms bordered by sheer cliff walls,
for the Bad Lands, a chaos of peaks, plateaus, and ridges, rose abruptly
from the edges of the level, tree-clad, or grassy, alluvial meadows.
In front of the ranch-house veranda was a row of cottonwood trees with
gray-green leaves which quivered all day long if there was a breath of
air. From these trees came the far-away, melancholy cooing of mourning
doves, and little owls perched in them and called tremulously at night.
In the long summer afternoons we would sometimes sit on the piazza, when
there was no work to be done, for an hour or two at a time, watching the
cattle on the sand-bars, and the sharply channeled and strangely carved
amphitheater of cliffs across the bottom opposite; while the vultures
wheeled overhead, their black shadows gliding across the glaring white
of the dry river-bed. Sometimes from the ranch we saw deer, and once
when we needed meat I shot one across the river as I stood on the
piazza. In the winter, in the days of iron cold, when everything was
white under the snow, the river lay in its bed fixed and immovable as a
bar of bent steel, and then at night wolves and lynxes traveled up and
down it as if it had been a highway passing in front of the ranch house.
Often in the late fall or early winter, after a hard day's hunting, or
when returning from one of the winter line camps, we did not reach the
ranch until hours after sunset; and after the weary tramping in the
cold it was keen pleasure to catch the first red gleam of the fire-lit
windows across the snowy wastes.
The Elkhorn ranch house was built mainly by Sewall and Dow, who, like
most men from the Maine woods, were mighty with the ax. I could chop
fairly well for an amateur, but I could not do one-third the work they
could. One day when we were cutting down the cottonwood trees, to begin
our building operations, I heard some one ask Dow what the total cut had
been, and Dow not realizing that I was within hearing, answered: "Well,
Bill cut down fifty-three, I cut forty-nine, and the boss he beavered
down seventeen." Those who have seen the stump of a tree which has
been gnawed down by a beaver will understand the exact force of the
comparison.
In those days on a cow ranch the men were apt to be away on the various
round-ups at least half the time. It was interesting and exciting work,
and except for the lack of sleep on the spring and summer round-ups
it was not exhausting work; compared to lumbering or mining or
blacksmithing, to sit in the saddle is an easy form of labor. The ponies
were of course grass-fed and unshod. Each man had his own string of
nine or ten. One pony would be used for the morning work, one for the
afternoon, and neither would again be used for the next three days. A
separate pony was kept for night riding.
The spring and early summer round-ups were especially for the branding
of calves. There was much hard work and some risk on a round-up, but
also much fun. The meeting-place was appointed weeks beforehand, and all
the ranchmen of the territory to be covered by the round-up sent their
representatives. There were no fences in the West that I knew, and their
place was taken by the cowboy and the branding-iron. The cattle wandered
free. Each calf was branded with the brand of the cow it was following.
Sometimes in winter there was what we called line riding; that is, camps
were established and the line riders traveled a definite beat across the
desolate wastes of snow, to and fro from one camp to another, to prevent
the cattle from drifting. But as a rule nothing was done to keep the
cattle in any one place. In the spring there was a general round-up in
each locality. Each outfit took part in its own round-up, and all the
outfits of a given region combined to send representatives to the two or
three round-ups that covered the neighborhoods near by into which their
cattle might drift. For example, our Little Missouri round-up generally
worked down the river from a distance of some fifty or sixty miles above
my ranch toward the Kildeer Mountains, about the same distance below.
In addition we would usually send representatives to the Yellowstone
round-up, and to the round-up along the upper Little Missouri; and,
moreover, if we heard that cattle had drifted, perhaps toward the Indian
reservation southeast of us, we would send a wagon and rider after them.
At the meeting-point, which might be in the valley of a half-dry stream,
or in some broad bottom of the river itself, or perchance by a couple of
ponds under some queerly shaped butte that was a landmark for the region
round about, we would all gather on the appointed day. The chuck-wagons,
containing the bedding and food, each drawn by four horses and driven
by the teamster cook, would come jolting and rattling over the
uneven sward. Accompanying each wagon were eight or ten riders, the
cow-punchers, while their horses, a band of a hundred or so, were driven
by the two herders, one of whom was known as the day wrangler and one
as the night wrangler. The men were lean, sinewy fellows, accustomed
to riding half-broken horses at any speed over any country by day or by
night. They wore flannel shirts, with loose handkerchiefs knotted round
their necks, broad hats, high-heeled boots with jingling spurs, and
sometimes leather shaps, although often they merely had their trousers
tucked into the tops of their high boots. There was a good deal of rough
horse-play, and, as with any other gathering of men or boys of high
animal spirits, the horse-play sometimes became very rough indeed; and
as the men usually carried revolvers, and as there were occasionally one
or two noted gun-fighters among them, there was now and then a shooting
affray. A man who was a coward or who shirked his work had a bad time,
of course; a man could not afford to let himself be bullied or treated
as a butt; and, on the other hand, if he was "looking for a fight," he
was certain to find it. But my own experience was that if a man did not
talk until his associates knew him well and liked him, and if he did
his work, he never had any difficulty in getting on. In my own round-up
district I speedily grew to be friends with most of the men. When I went
among strangers I always had to spend twenty-four hours in living
down the fact that I wore spectacles, remaining as long as I could
judiciously deaf to any side remarks about "four eyes," unless it became
evident that my being quiet was misconstrued and that it was better to
bring matters to a head at once.
If, for instance, I was sent off to represent the Little Missouri brands
on some neighboring round-up, such as the Yellowstone, I usually showed
that kind of diplomacy which consists in not uttering one word that
can be avoided. I would probably have a couple of days' solitary ride,
mounted on one horse and driving eight or ten others before me, one of
them carrying my bedding. Loose horses drive best at a trot, or canter,
and if a man is traveling alone in this fashion it is a good thing to
have them reach the camp ground sufficiently late to make them desire
to feed and sleep where they are until morning. In consequence I never
spent more than two days on the journey from whatever the point was at
which I left the Little Missouri, sleeping the one night for as limited
a number of hours as possible.
As soon as I reached the meeting-place I would find out the wagon
to which I was assigned. Riding to it, I turned my horses into the
saddle-band and reported to the wagon boss, or, in his absence, to the
cook--always a privileged character, who was allowed and expected to
order men around. He would usually grumble savagely and profanely about
my having been put with his wagon, but this was merely conventional on
his part; and if I sat down and said nothing he would probably soon ask
me if I wanted anything to eat, to which the correct answer was that I
was not hungry and would wait until meal-time. The bedding rolls of
the riders would be strewn round the grass, and I would put mine down a
little outside the ring, where I would not be in any one's way, with my
six or eight branding-irons beside it. The men would ride in, laughing
and talking with one another, and perhaps nodding to me. One of their
number, usually the wagon foreman, might put some question to me as to
what brands I represented, but no other word would be addressed to me,
nor would I be expected to volunteer any conversation. Supper would
consist of bacon, Dutch oven bread, and possibly beef; once I won
the good graces of my companions at the outset by appearing with two
antelope which I had shot. After supper I would roll up in my bedding as
soon as possible, and the others would follow suit at their pleasure.
At three in the morning or thereabouts, at a yell from the cook, all
hands would turn hurriedly out. Dressing was a simple affair. Then each
man rolled and corded his bedding--if he did not, the cook would leave
it behind and he would go without any for the rest of the trip--and came
to the fire, where he picked out a tin cup, tin plate, and knife and
fork, helped himself to coffee and to whatever food there was, and ate
it standing or squatting as best suited him. Dawn was probably breaking
by this time, and the trampling of unshod hoofs showed that the night
wrangler was bringing in the pony herd. Two of the men would then run
ropes from the wagon at right angles to one another, and into this as
a corral the horses would be driven. Each man might rope one of his own
horses, or more often point it out to the most skillful roper of the
outfit, who would rope it for him--for if the man was an unskillful
roper and roped the wrong horse or roped the horse in the wrong place
there was a chance of the whole herd stampeding. Each man then saddled
and bridled his horse. This was usually followed by some resolute
bucking on the part of two or three of the horses, especially in
the early days of each round-up. The bucking was always a source of
amusement to all the men whose horses did not buck, and these fortunate
ones would gather round giving ironical advice, and especially adjuring
the rider not to "go to leather"--that is, not to steady himself in the
saddle by catching hold of the saddle-horn.
As soon as the men had mounted, the whole outfit started on the long
circle, the morning circle. Usually the ranch foreman who bossed a given
wagon was put in charge of the men of one group by the round-up foreman;
he might keep his men together until they had gone some ten or fifteen
miles from camp, and then drop them in couples at different points. Each
couple made its way toward the wagon, gathering all the cattle it could
find. The morning's ride might last six or eight hours, and it was still
longer before some of the men got in. Singly and in twos and threes they
appeared from every quarter of the horizon, the dust rising from the
hoofs of the steers and bulls, the cows and calves, they had collected.
Two or three of the men were left to take care of the herd while the
others changed horses, ate a hasty dinner, and then came out to the
afternoon work. This consisted of each man in succession being sent into
the herd, usually with a companion, to cut out the cows of his brand or
brands which were followed by unbranded calves, and also to cut out any
mavericks or unbranded yearlings. We worked each animal gently out to
the edge of the herd, and then with a sudden dash took it off at a run.
It was always desperately anxious to break back and rejoin the herd.
There was much breakneck galloping and twisting and turning before its
desire was thwarted and it was driven to join the rest of the cut--that
is, the other animals which had been cut out, and which were being held
by one or two other men. Cattle hate being alone, and it was no easy
matter to hold the first one or two that were cut out; but soon they
got a little herd of their own, and then they were contented. When
the cutting out had all been done, the calves were branded, and all
misadventures of the "calf wrestlers," the men who seized, threw, and
held each calf when roped by the mounted roper, were hailed with yelling
laughter. Then the animals which for one reason or another it was
desired to drive along with the round-up were put into one herd and left
in charge of a couple of night guards, and the rest of us would loaf
back to the wagon for supper and bed.
By this time I would have been accepted as one of the rest of the
outfit, and all strangeness would have passed off, the attitude of my
fellow cow-punchers being one of friendly forgiveness even toward my
spectacles. Night guards for the cattle herd were then assigned by the
captain of the wagon, or perhaps by the round-up foreman, according to
the needs of the case, the guards standing for two hours at a time
from eight in the evening till four in the morning. The first and last
watches were preferable, because sleep was not broken as in both of
the other two. If things went well, the cattle would soon bed down and
nothing further would occur until morning, when there was a repetition
of the work, the wagon moving each day eight or ten miles to some
appointed camping-place.
Each man would picket his night horse near the wagon, usually choosing
the quietest animal in his string for that purpose, because to saddle
and mount a "mean" horse at night is not pleasant. When utterly
tired, it was hard to have to get up for one's trick at night herd.
Nevertheless, on ordinary nights the two hours round the cattle in the
still darkness were pleasant. The loneliness, under the vast empty sky,
and the silence, in which the breathing of the cattle sounded loud, and
the alert readiness to meet any emergency which might suddenly arise
out of the formless night, all combined to give one a sense of subdued
interest. Then, one soon got to know the cattle of marked individuality,
the ones that led the others into mischief; and one also grew to
recognize the traits they all possessed in common, and the impulses
which, for instance, made a whole herd get up towards midnight, each
beast turning round and then lying down again. But by the end of the
watch each rider had studied the cattle until it grew monotonous, and
heartily welcomed his relief guard. A newcomer, of course, had any
amount to learn, and sometimes the simplest things were those which
brought him to grief.
One night early in my career I failed satisfactorily to identify the
direction in which I was to go in order to reach the night herd. It was
a pitch-dark night. I managed to get started wrong, and I never found
either the herd or the wagon again until sunrise, when I was greeted
with withering scorn by the injured cow-puncher, who had been obliged to
stand double guard because I failed to relieve him.
There were other misadventures that I met with where the excuse was
greater. The punchers on night guard usually rode round the cattle in
reverse directions; calling and singing to them if the beasts seemed
restless, to keep them quiet. On rare occasions something happened that
made the cattle stampede, and then the duty of the riders was to keep
with them as long as possible and try gradually to get control of them.
One night there was a heavy storm, and all of us who were at the wagons
were obliged to turn out hastily to help the night herders. After a
while there was a terrific peal of thunder, the lightning struck right
by the herd, and away all the beasts went, heads and horns and tails in
the air. For a minute or two I could make out nothing except the dark
forms of the beasts running on every side of me, and I should have been
very sorry if my horse had stumbled, for those behind would have trodden
me down. Then the herd split, part going to one side, while the other
part seemingly kept straight ahead, and I galloped as hard as ever
beside them. I was trying to reach the point--the leading animals--in
order to turn them, when suddenly there was a tremendous splashing in
front. I could dimly make out that the cattle immediately ahead and to
one side of me were disappearing, and the next moment the horse and I
went off a cut bank into the Little Missouri. I bent away back in the
saddle, and though the horse almost went down he just recovered himself,
and, plunging and struggling through water and quicksand, we made the
other side. Here I discovered that there was another cowboy with
the same part of the herd that I was with; but almost immediately we
separated. I galloped hard through a bottom covered with big cottonwood
trees, and stopped the part of the herd that I was with, but very soon
they broke on me again, and repeated this twice. Finally toward morning
the few I had left came to a halt.
It had been raining hard for some time. I got off my horse and leaned
against a tree, but before long the infernal cattle started on again,
and I had to ride after them. Dawn came soon after this, and I was
able to make out where I was and head the cattle back, collecting other
little bunches as I went. After a while I came on a cowboy on foot
carrying his saddle on his head. He was my companion of the previous
night. His horse had gone full speed into a tree and killed itself, the
man, however, not being hurt. I could not help him, as I had all I could
do to handle the cattle. When I got them to the wagon, most of the other
men had already come in and the riders were just starting on the long
circle. One of the men changed my horse for me while I ate a hasty
breakfast, and then we were off for the day's work.
As only about half of the night herd had been brought back, the circle
riding was particularly heavy, and it was ten hours before we were back
at the wagon. We then changed horses again and worked the whole herd
until after sunset, finishing just as it grew too dark to do anything
more. By this time I had been nearly forty hours in the saddle, changing
horses five times, and my clothes had thoroughly dried on me, and I fell
asleep as soon as I touched the bedding. Fortunately some men who had
gotten in late in the morning had had their sleep during the daytime, so
that the rest of us escaped night guard and were not called until four
next morning. Nobody ever gets enough sleep on a round-up.
The above was the longest number of consecutive hours I ever had to be
in the saddle. But, as I have said, I changed horses five times, and it
is a great lightening of labor for a rider to have a fresh horse. Once
when with Sylvane Ferris I spent about sixteen hours on one horse,
riding seventy or eighty miles. The round-up had reached a place called
the ox-bow of the Little Missouri, and we had to ride there, do some
work around the cattle, and ride back.
Another time I was twenty-four hours on horseback in company with
Merrifield without changing horses. On this occasion we did not travel
fast. We had been coming back with the wagon from a hunting trip in
the Big Horn Mountains. The team was fagged out, and we were tired of
walking at a snail's pace beside it. When we reached country that the
driver thoroughly knew, we thought it safe to leave him, and we loped in
one night across a distance which it took the wagon the three following
days to cover. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and the ride was
delightful. All day long we had plodded at a walk, weary and hot. At
supper time we had rested two or three hours, and the tough little
riding horses seemed as fresh as ever. It was in September. As we rode
out of the circle of the firelight, the air was cool in our faces.
Under the bright moonlight, and then under the starlight, we loped
and cantered mile after mile over the high prairie. We passed bands of
antelope and herds of long-horn Texas cattle, and at last, just as the
first red beams of the sun flamed over the bluffs in front of us, we
rode down into the valley of the Little Missouri, where our ranch house
stood.
I never became a good roper, nor more than an average rider, according
to ranch standards. Of course a man on a ranch has to ride a good many
bad horses, and is bound to encounter a certain number of accidents,
and of these I had my share, at one time cracking a rib, and on another
occasion the point of my shoulder. We were hundreds of miles from a
doctor, and each time, as I was on the round-up, I had to get through my
work for the next few weeks as best I could, until the injury healed
of itself. When I had the opportunity I broke my own horses, doing it
gently and gradually and spending much time over it, and choosing the
horses that seemed gentle to begin with. With these horses I never had
any difficulty. But frequently there was neither time nor opportunity
to handle our mounts so elaborately. We might get a band of horses, each
having been bridled and saddled two or three times, but none of them
having been broken beyond the extent implied in this bridling and
saddling. Then each of us in succession would choose a horse (for his
string), I as owner of the ranch being given the first choice on each
round, so to speak. The first time I was ever on a round-up Sylvane
Ferris, Merrifield, Meyer, and I each chose his string in this fashion.
Three or four of the animals I got were not easy to ride. The effort
both to ride them and to look as if I enjoyed doing so, on some cool
morning when my grinning cowboy friends had gathered round "to see
whether the high-headed bay could buck the boss off," doubtless was of
benefit to me, but lacked much of being enjoyable. The time I smashed
my rib I was bucked off on a stone. The time I hurt the point of my
shoulder I was riding a big, sulky horse named Ben Butler, which went
over backwards with me. When we got up it still refused to go anywhere;
so, while I sat it, Sylvane Ferris and George Meyer got their ropes on
its neck and dragged it a few hundred yards, choking but stubborn, all
four feet firmly planted and plowing the ground. When they released
the ropes it lay down and wouldn't get up. The round-up had started; so
Sylvane gave me his horse, Baldy, which sometimes bucked but never
went over backwards, and he got on the now rearisen Ben Butler. To my
discomfiture Ben started quietly beside us, while Sylvane remarked,
"Why, there's nothing the matter with this horse; he's a plumb gentle
horse." Then Ben fell slightly behind and I heard Sylvane again, "That's
all right! Come along! Here, you! Go on, you! Hi, hi, fellows, help me
out! he's lying on me!" Sure enough, he was; and when we dragged Sylvane
from under him the first thing the rescued Sylvane did was to execute
a war-dance, spurs and all, on the iniquitous Ben. We could do nothing
with him that day; subsequently we got him so that we could ride him;
but he never became a nice saddle-horse.
As with all other forms of work, so on the round-up, a man of ordinary
power, who nevertheless does not shirk things merely because they are
disagreeable or irksome, soon earns his place. There were crack riders
and ropers who, just because they felt such overweening pride in their
own prowess, were not really very valuable men. Continually on the
circles a cow or a calf would get into some thick patch of bulberry bush
and refuse to come out; or when it was getting late we would pass some
bad lands that would probably not contain cattle, but might; or a steer
would turn fighting mad, or a calf grow tired and want to lie down.
If in such a case the man steadily persists in doing the unattractive
thing, and after two hours of exasperation and harassment does finally
get the cow out, and keep her out, of the bulberry bushes, and drives
her to the wagon, or finds some animals that have been passed by in the
fourth or fifth patch of bad lands he hunts through, or gets the calf
up on his saddle and takes it in anyhow, the foreman soon grows to treat
him as having his uses and as being an asset of worth in the round-up,
even though neither a fancy roper nor a fancy rider.
When at the Progressive Convention last August, I met George Meyer for
the first time in many years, and he recalled to me an incident on one
round-up where we happened to be thrown together while driving some cows
and calves to camp. When the camp was only just across the river, two of
the calves positively refused to go any further. He took one of them
in his arms, and after some hazardous maneuvering managed to get on
his horse, in spite of the objections of the latter, and rode into the
river. My calf was too big for such treatment, so in despair I roped
it, intending to drag it over. However, as soon as I roped it, the calf
started bouncing and bleating, and, owing to some lack of dexterity on
my part, suddenly swung round the rear of the horse, bringing the rope
under his tail. Down went the tail tight, and the horse "went into
figures," as the cow-puncher phrase of that day was. There was a cut
bank about four feet high on the hither side of the river, and over this
the horse bucked. We went into the water with a splash. With a "pluck"
the calf followed, described a parabola in the air, and landed beside
us. Fortunately, this took the rope out from under the horse's tail,
but left him thoroughly frightened. He could not do much bucking in the
stream, for there were one or two places where we had to swim, and the
shallows were either sandy or muddy; but across we went, at speed, and
the calf made a wake like Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea.
On several occasions we had to fight fire. In the geography books of my
youth prairie fires were always portrayed as taking place in long grass,
and all living things ran before them. On the Northern cattle plains the
grass was never long enough to be a source of danger to man or beast.
The fires were nothing like the forest fires in the Northern woods. But
they destroyed large quantities of feed, and we had to stop them where
possible. The process we usually followed was to kill a steer, split it
in two lengthwise, and then have two riders drag each half-steer, the
rope of one running from his saddle-horn to the front leg, and that of
the other to the hind leg. One of the men would spur his horse over or
through the line of fire, and the two would then ride forward, dragging
the steer bloody side downward along the line of flame, men following
on foot with slickers or wet horse-blankets, to beat out any flickering
blaze that was still left. It was exciting work, for the fire and the
twitching and plucking of the ox carcass over the uneven ground maddened
the fierce little horses so that it was necessary to do some riding
in order to keep them to their work. After a while it also became very
exhausting, the thirst and fatigue being great, as, with parched lips
and blackened from head to foot, we toiled at our task.
In those years the Stockman's Association of Montana was a powerful
body. I was the delegate to it from the Little Missouri. The meetings
that I attended were held in Miles City, at that time a typical cow
town. Stockmen of all kinds attended, including the biggest men in the
stock business, men like old Conrad Kohrs, who was and is the finest
type of pioneer in all the Rocky Mountain country; and Granville
Stewart, who was afterwards appointed Minister by Cleveland, I think
to the Argentine; and "Hashknife" Simpson, a Texan who had brought his
cattle, the Hashknife brand, up the trail into our country. He and
I grew to be great friends. I can see him now the first time we met,
grinning at me as, none too comfortable, I sat a half-broken horse at
the edge of a cattle herd we were working. His son Sloan Simpson went to
Harvard, was one of the first-class men in my regiment, and afterwards
held my commission as Postmaster at Dallas.
At the stockmen's meeting in Miles City, in addition to the big
stockmen, there were always hundreds of cowboys galloping up and down
the wide dusty streets at every hour of the day and night. It was a
picturesque sight during the three days the meetings lasted. There was
always at least one big dance at the hotel. There were few dress suits,
but there was perfect decorum at the dance, and in the square dances
most of the men knew the figures far better than I did. With such a
crowd in town, sleeping accommodations of any sort were at a premium,
and in the hotel there were two men in every bed. On one occasion I had
a roommate whom I never saw, because he always went to bed much later
than I did and I always got up much earlier than he did. On the last
day, however, he rose at the same time and I saw that he was a man I
knew named Carter, and nicknamed "Modesty" Carter. He was a stalwart,
good-looking fellow, and I was sorry when later I heard that he had been
killed in a shooting row.
When I went West, the last great Indian wars had just come to an end,
but there were still sporadic outbreaks here and there, and occasionally
bands of marauding young braves were a menace to outlying and lonely
settlements. Many of the white men were themselves lawless and brutal,
and prone to commit outrages on the Indians. Unfortunately, each race
tended to hold all the members of the other race responsible for the
misdeeds of a few, so that the crime of the miscreant, red or white,
who committed the original outrage too often invited retaliation upon
entirely innocent people, and this action would in its turn arouse
bitter feeling which found vent in still more indiscriminate
retaliation. The first year I was on the Little Missouri some Sioux
bucks ran off all the horses of a buffalo-hunter's outfit. One of the
buffalo-hunters tried to get even by stealing the horses of a Cheyenne
hunting party, and when pursued made for a cow camp, with, as a result,
a long-range skirmish between the cowboys and the Cheyennes. One of the
latter was wounded; but this particular wounded man seemed to have
more sense than the other participants in the chain of wrong-doing, and
discriminated among the whites. He came into our camp and had his wound
dressed.
A year later I was at a desolate little mud road ranch on the Deadwood
trail. It was kept by a very capable and very forceful woman, with sound
ideas of justice and abundantly well able to hold her own. Her husband
was a worthless devil, who finally got drunk on some whisky he obtained
from an outfit of Missouri bull-whackers--that is, freighters, driving
ox wagons. Under the stimulus of the whisky he picked a quarrel with his
wife and attempted to beat her. She knocked him down with a stove-lid
lifter, and the admiring bull-whackers bore him off, leaving the lady
in full possession of the ranch. When I visited her she had a man named
Crow Joe working for her, a slab-sided, shifty-eyed person who later,
as I heard my foreman explain, "skipped the country with a bunch of
horses." The mistress of the ranch made first-class buckskin shirts of
great durability. The one she made for me, and which I used for years,
was used by one of my sons in Arizona a couple of winters ago. I had
ridden down into the country after some lost horses, and visited the
ranch to get her to make me the buckskin shirt in question. There
were, at the moment, three Indians there, Sioux, well behaved and
self-respecting, and she explained to me that they had been resting
there waiting for dinner, and that a white man had come along and tried
to run off their horses. The Indians were on the lookout, however, and,
running out, they caught the man; but, after retaking their horses and
depriving him of his gun, they let him go. "I don't see why they let him
go," exclaimed my hostess. "I don't believe in stealing Indians' horses
any more than white folks'; so I told 'em they could go along and hang
him--I'd never cheep. Anyhow, I won't charge them anything for their
dinner," concluded my hostess. She was in advance of the usual morality
of the time and place, which drew a sharp line between stealing
citizens' horses and stealing horses from the Government or the Indians.
A fairly decent citizen, Jap Hunt, who long ago met a violent death,
exemplified this attitude towards Indians in some remarks I once heard
him make. He had started a horse ranch, and had quite honestly purchased
a number of broken-down horses of different brands, with the view of
doctoring them and selling them again. About this time there had been
much horse-stealing and cattle-killing in our Territory and in Montana,
and under the direction of some of the big cattle-growers a committee
of vigilantes had been organized to take action against the rustlers,
as the horse thieves and cattle thieves were called. The vigilantes, or
stranglers, as they were locally known, did their work thoroughly; but,
as always happens with bodies of the kind, toward the end they grew
reckless in their actions, paid off private grudges, and hung men on
slight provocation. Riding into Jap Hunt's ranch, they nearly hung him
because he had so many horses of different brands. He was finally let
off. He was much upset by the incident, and explained again and again,
"The idea of saying that I was a horse thief! Why, I never stole a horse
in my life--leastways from a white man. I don't count Indians nor the
Government, of course." Jap had been reared among men still in the stage
of tribal morality, and while they recognized their obligations to one
another, both the Government and the Indians seemed alien bodies, in
regard to which the laws of morality did not apply.
On the other hand, parties of savage young bucks would treat lonely
settlers just as badly, and in addition sometimes murder them. Such a
party was generally composed of young fellows burning to distinguish
themselves. Some one of their number would have obtained a pass from
the Indian Agent allowing him to travel off the reservation, which pass
would be flourished whenever their action was questioned by bodies of
whites of equal strength. I once had a trifling encounter with such a
band. I was making my way along the edge of the bad lands, northward
from my lower ranch, and was just crossing a plateau when five Indians
rode up over the further rim. The instant they saw me they whipped
out their guns and raced full speed at me, yelling and flogging their
horses. I was on a favorite horse, Manitou, who was a wise old fellow,
with nerves not to be shaken by anything. I at once leaped off him and
stood with my rifle ready.
It was possible that the Indians were merely making a bluff and intended
no mischief. But I did not like their actions, and I thought it likely
that if I allowed them to get hold of me they would at least take my
horse and rifle, and possibly kill me. So I waited until they were a
hundred yards off and then drew a bead on the first. Indians--and, for
the matter of that, white men--do not like to ride in on a man who is
cool and means shooting, and in a twinkling every man was lying over the
side of his horse, and all five had turned and were galloping backwards,
having altered their course as quickly as so many teal ducks.
After this one of them made the peace sign, with his blanket first, and
then, as he rode toward me, with his open hand. I halted him at a fair
distance and asked him what he wanted. He exclaimed, "How! Me good
Injun, me good Injun," and tried to show me the dirty piece of paper on
which his agency pass was written. I told him with sincerity that I was
glad that he was a good Indian, but that he must not come any closer. He
then asked for sugar and tobacco. I told him I had none. Another Indian
began slowly drifting toward me in spite of my calling out to keep back,
so I once more aimed with my rifle, whereupon both Indians slipped to
the other side of their horses and galloped off, with oaths that did
credit to at least one side of their acquaintance with English. I now
mounted and pushed over the plateau on to the open prairie. In those
days an Indian, although not as good a shot as a white man, was
infinitely better at crawling under and taking advantage of cover; and
the worst thing a white man could do was to get into cover, whereas out
in the open if he kept his head he had a good chance of standing off
even half a dozen assailants. The Indians accompanied me for a couple of
miles. Then I reached the open prairie, and resumed my northward ride,
not being further molested.
In the old days in the ranch country we depended upon game for fresh
meat. Nobody liked to kill a beef, and although now and then a maverick
yearling might be killed on the round-up, most of us looked askance at
the deed, because if the practice of beef-killing was ever allowed to
start, the rustlers--the horse thieves and cattle thieves--would be sure
to seize on it as an excuse for general slaughter. Getting meat for the
ranch usually devolved upon me. I almost always carried a rifle when I
rode, either in a scabbard under my thigh, or across the pommel. Often
I would pick up a deer or antelope while about my regular work, when
visiting a line camp or riding after the cattle. At other times I would
make a day's trip after them. In the fall we sometimes took a wagon
and made a week's hunt, returning with eight or ten deer carcasses, and
perhaps an elk or a mountain sheep as well. I never became more than a
fair hunter, and at times I had most exasperating experiences, either
failing to see game which I ought to have seen, or committing some
blunder in the stalk, or failing to kill when I fired. Looking back,
I am inclined to say that if I had any good quality as a hunter it was
that of perseverance. "It is dogged that does it" in hunting as in many
other things. Unless in wholly exceptional cases, when we were very
hungry, I never killed anything but bucks.
Occasionally I made long trips away from the ranch and among the Rocky
Mountains with my ranch foreman Merrifield; or in later years with
Tazewell Woody, John Willis, or John Goff. We hunted bears, both the
black and the grizzly, cougars and wolves, and moose, wapiti, and white
goat. On one of these trips I killed a bison bull, and I also killed a
bison bull on the Little Missouri some fifty miles south of my ranch on
a trip which Joe Ferris and I took together. It was rather a rough trip.
Each of us carried only his slicker behind him on the saddle, with some
flour and bacon done up in it. We met with all kinds of misadventures.
Finally one night, when we were sleeping by a slimy little prairie pool
where there was not a stick of wood, we had to tie the horses to the
horns of our saddles; and then we went to sleep with our heads on the
saddles. In the middle of the night something stampeded the horses, and
away they went, with the saddles after them. As we jumped to our feet
Joe eyed me with an evident suspicion that I was the Jonah of the party,
and said: "O Lord! I've never done anything to deserve this. Did you
ever do anything to deserve this?"
In addition to my private duties, I sometimes served as deputy sheriff
for the northern end of our county. The sheriff and I crisscrossed in
our public and private relations. He often worked for me as a hired hand
at the same time that I was his deputy. His name, or at least the
name he went by, was Bill Jones, and as there were in the neighborhood
several Bill Joneses--Three Seven Bill Jones, Texas Bill Jones, and
the like--the sheriff was known as Hell Roaring Bill Jones. He was a
thorough frontiersman, excellent in all kinds of emergencies, and a
very game man. I became much attached to him. He was a thoroughly good
citizen when sober, but he was a little wild when drunk. Unfortunately,
toward the end of his life he got to drinking very heavily. When, in
1905, John Burroughs and I visited the Yellowstone Park, poor Bill
Jones, very much down in the world, was driving a team in Gardiner
outside the park. I had looked forward to seeing him, and he was equally
anxious to see me. He kept telling his cronies of our intimacy and of
what we were going to do together, and then got drinking; and the result
was that by the time I reached Gardiner he had to be carried out and
left in the sage-brush. When I came out of the park, I sent on in
advance to tell them to be sure to keep him sober, and they did so. But
it was a rather sad interview. The old fellow had gone to pieces, and
soon after I left he got lost in a blizzard and was dead when they found
him.
Bill Jones was a gun-fighter and also a good man with his fists. On one
occasion there was an election in town. There had been many threats that
the party of disorder would import section hands from the neighboring
railway stations to down our side. I did not reach Medora, the forlorn
little cattle town which was our county seat, until the election was
well under way. I then asked one of my friends if there had been any
disorder. Bill Jones was standing by. "Disorder hell!" said my friend.
"Bill Jones just stood there with one hand on his gun and the other
pointing over toward the new jail whenever any man who didn't have a
right to vote came near the polls. There was only one of them tried to
vote, and Bill knocked him down. Lord!" added my friend, meditatively,
"the way that man fell!" "Well," struck in Bill Jones, "if he hadn't
fell I'd have walked round behind him to see what was propping him up!"
In the days when I lived on the ranch I usually spent most of the
winter in the East, and when I returned in the early spring I was always
interested in finding out what had happened since my departure. On one
occasion I was met by Bill Jones and Sylvane Ferris, and in the course
of our conversation they mentioned "the lunatic." This led to a question
on my part, and Sylvane Ferris began the story: "Well, you see, he was
on a train and he shot the newsboy. At first they weren't going to do
anything to him, for they thought he just had it in for the newsboy. But
then somebody said, 'Why, he's plumb crazy, and he's liable to shoot any
of us!' and then they threw him off the train. It was here at Medora,
and they asked if anybody would take care of him, and Bill Jones said he
would, because he was the sheriff and the jail had two rooms, and he was
living in one and would put the lunatic in the other." Here Bill Jones
interrupted: "Yes, and more fool me! I wouldn't take charge of another
lunatic if the whole county asked me. Why" (with the air of a man
announcing an astounding discovery), "that lunatic didn't have his right
senses! He wouldn't eat, till me and Snyder got him down on the shavings
and made him eat." Snyder was a huge, happy-go-lucky, kind-hearted
Pennsylvania Dutchman, and was Bill Jones's chief deputy. Bill
continued: "You know, Snyder's soft-hearted, he is. Well, he'd think
that lunatic looked peaked, and he'd take him out for an airing. Then
the boys would get joshing him as to how much start he could give him
over the prairie and catch him again." Apparently the amount of the
start given the lunatic depended upon the amount of the bet to which the
joshing led up. I asked Bill what he would have done if Snyder hadn't
caught the lunatic. This was evidently a new idea, and he responded that
Snyder always did catch him. "Well, but suppose he hadn't caught him?"
"Well," said Bill Jones, "if Snyder hadn't caught the lunatic, I'd have
whaled hell out of Snyder!"
Under these circumstances Snyder ran his best and always did catch the
patient. It must not be gathered from this that the lunatic was badly
treated. He was well treated. He become greatly attached to both Bill
Jones and Snyder, and he objected strongly when, after the frontier
theory of treatment of the insane had received a full trial, he was
finally sent off to the territorial capital. It was merely that all the
relations of life in that place and day were so managed as to give ample
opportunity for the expression of individuality, whether in sheriff or
ranchman. The local practical joker once attempted to have some fun at
the expense of the lunatic, and Bill Jones described the result. "You
know Bixby, don't you? Well," with deep disapproval, "Bixby thinks he
is funny, he does. He'd come and he'd wake that lunatic up at night, and
I'd have to get up and soothe him. I fixed Bixby all right, though. I
fastened a rope on the latch, and next time Bixby came I let the lunatic
out on him. He 'most bit Bixby's nose off. I learned Bixby!"
Bill Jones had been unconventional in other relations besides that of
sheriff. He once casually mentioned to me that he had served on the
police force of Bismarck, but he had left because he "beat the Mayor
over the head with his gun one day." He added: "The Mayor, he didn't
mind it, but the Superintendent of Police said he guessed I'd better
resign." His feeling, obviously, was that the Superintendent of Police
was a martinet, unfit to take large views of life.
It was while with Bill Jones that I first made acquaintance with Seth
Bullock. Seth was at that time sheriff in the Black Hills district, and
a man he had wanted--a horse thief--I finally got, I being at the time
deputy sheriff two or three hundred miles to the north. The man went by
a nickname which I will call "Crazy Steve"; a year or two afterwards
I received a letter asking about him from his uncle, a thoroughly
respectable man in a Western State; and later this uncle and I met at
Washington when I was President and he a United States Senator. It
was some time after "Steve's" capture that I went down to Deadwood on
business, Sylvane Ferris and I on horseback, while Bill Jones drove the
wagon. At a little town, Spearfish, I think, after crossing the last
eighty or ninety miles of gumbo prairies, we met Seth Bullock. We had
had rather a rough trip, and had lain out for a fortnight, so I suppose
we looked somewhat unkempt. Seth received us with rather distant
courtesy at first, but unbent when he found out who we were, remarking,
"You see, by your looks I thought you were some kind of a tin-horn
gambling outfit, and that I might have to keep an eye on you!" He then
inquired after the capture of "Steve"--with a little of the air of
one sportsman when another has shot a quail that either might have
claimed--"My bird, I believe?" Later Seth Bullock became, and has ever
since remained, one of my stanchest and most valued friends. He served
as Marshal for South Dakota under me as President. When, after the close
of my term, I went to Africa, on getting back to Europe I cabled Seth
Bullock to bring over Mrs. Bullock and meet me in London, which he did;
by that time I felt that I just had to meet my own people, who spoke my
neighborhood dialect.
When serving as deputy sheriff I was impressed with the advantage the
officer of the law has over ordinary wrong-doers, provided he thoroughly
knows his own mind. There are exceptional outlaws, men with a price on
their heads and of remarkable prowess, who are utterly indifferent to
taking life, and whose warfare against society is as open as that of a
savage on the war-path. The law officer has no advantage whatever over
these men save what his own prowess may--or may not--give him. Such a
man was Billy the Kid, the notorious man-killer and desperado of New
Mexico, who was himself finally slain by a friend of mine, Pat Garrett,
whom, when I was President, I made collector of customs at El Paso.
But the ordinary criminal, even when murderously inclined, feels just a
moment's hesitation as to whether he cares to kill an officer of the
law engaged in his duty. I took in more than one man who was probably a
better man than I was with both rifle and revolver; but in each case I
knew just what I wanted to do, and, like David Harum, I "did it first,"
whereas the fraction of a second that the other man hesitated put him in
a position where it was useless for him to resist.
I owe more than I can ever express to the West, which of course means to
the men and women I met in the West. There were a few people of bad type
in my neighborhood--that would be true of every group of men, even in a
theological seminary--but I could not speak with too great affection and
respect of the great majority of my friends, the hard-working men and
women who dwelt for a space of perhaps a hundred and fifty miles along
the Little Missouri. I was always as welcome at their houses as they
were at mine. Everybody worked, everybody was willing to help everybody
else, and yet nobody asked any favors. The same thing was true of the
people whom I got to know fifty miles east and fifty miles west of my
own range, and of the men I met on the round-ups. They soon accepted me
as a friend and fellow-worker who stood on an equal footing with them,
and I believe the most of them have kept their feeling for me ever
since. No guests were ever more welcome at the White House than these
old friends of the cattle ranches and the cow camps--the men with whom
I had ridden the long circle and eaten at the tail-board of a
chuck-wagon--whenever they turned up at Washington during my Presidency.
I remember one of them who appeared at Washington one day just before
lunch, a huge, powerful man who, when I knew him, had been distinctly a
fighting character. It happened that on that day another old friend,
the British Ambassador, Mr. Bryce, was among those coming to lunch. Just
before we went in I turned to my cow-puncher friend and said to him with
great solemnity, "Remember, Jim, that if you shot at the feet of the
British Ambassador to make him dance, it would be likely to cause
international complications"; to which Jim responded with unaffected
horror, "Why, Colonel, I shouldn't think of it, I shouldn't think of
it!"
Not only did the men and women whom I met in the cow country quite
unconsciously help me, by the insight which working and living with them
enabled me to get into the mind and soul of the average American of the
right type, but they helped me in another way. I made up my mind that
the men were of just the kind whom it would be well to have with me if
ever it became necessary to go to war. When the Spanish War came, I gave
this thought practical realization.
Fortunately, Wister and Remington, with pen and pencil, have made these
men live as long as our literature lives. I have sometimes been asked
if Wister's "Virginian" is not overdrawn; why, one of the men I have
mentioned in this chapter was in all essentials the Virginian in real
life, not only in his force but in his charm. Half of the men I worked
with or played with and half of the men who soldiered with me afterwards
in my regiment might have walked out of Wister's stories or Remington's
pictures.
There were bad characters in the Western country at that time, of
course, and under the conditions of life they were probably more
dangerous than they would have been elsewhere. I hardly ever had any
difficulty, however. I never went into a saloon, and in the little
hotels I kept out of the bar-room unless, as sometimes happened, the
bar-room was the only room on the lower floor except the dining-room. I
always endeavored to keep out of a quarrel until self-respect forbade
my making any further effort to avoid it, and I very rarely had even the
semblance of trouble.
Of course amusing incidents occurred now and then. Usually these took
place when I was hunting lost horses, for in hunting lost horses I was
ordinarily alone, and occasionally had to travel a hundred or a hundred
and fifty miles away from my own country. On one such occasion I
reached a little cow town long after dark, stabled my horse in an empty
outbuilding, and when I reached the hotel was informed in response to my
request for a bed that I could have the last one left, as there was only
one other man in it. The room to which I was shown contained two double
beds; one contained two men fast asleep, and the other only one man,
also asleep. This man proved to be a friend, one of the Bill Joneses
whom I have previously mentioned. I undressed according to the fashion
of the day and place, that is, I put my trousers, boots, shaps, and
gun down beside the bed, and turned in. A couple of hours later I was
awakened by the door being thrown open and a lantern flashed in my face,
the light gleaming on the muzzle of a cocked .45. Another man said to
the lantern-bearer, "It ain't him"; the next moment my bedfellow was
covered with two guns, and addressed, "Now, Bill, don't make a fuss,
but come along quiet." "I'm not thinking of making a fuss," said Bill.
"That's right," was the answer; "we're your friends; we don't want to
hurt you; we just want you to come along, you know why." And Bill pulled
on his trousers and boots and walked out with them. Up to this
time there had not been a sound from the other bed. Now a match was
scratched, a candle lit, and one of the men in the other bed looked
round the room. At this point I committed the breach of etiquette of
asking questions. "I wonder why they took Bill," I said. There was no
answer, and I repeated, "I wonder why they took Bill." "Well," said the
man with the candle, dryly, "I reckon they wanted him," and with that
he blew out the candle and conversation ceased. Later I discovered that
Bill in a fit of playfulness had held up the Northern Pacific train at
a near-by station by shooting at the feet of the conductor to make him
dance. This was purely a joke on Bill's part, but the Northern Pacific
people possessed a less robust sense of humor, and on their complaint
the United States Marshal was sent after Bill, on the ground that by
delaying the train he had interfered with the mails.
The only time I ever had serious trouble was at an even more primitive
little hotel than the one in question. It was also on an occasion when
I was out after lost horses. Below the hotel had merely a bar-room, a
dining-room, and a lean-to kitchen; above was a loft with fifteen or
twenty beds in it. It was late in the evening when I reached the place.
I heard one or two shots in the bar-room as I came up, and I disliked
going in. But there was nowhere else to go, and it was a cold night.
Inside the room were several men, who, including the bartender, were
wearing the kind of smile worn by men who are making believe to like
what they don't like. A shabby individual in a broad hat with a cocked
gun in each hand was walking up and down the floor talking with strident
profanity. He had evidently been shooting at the clock, which had two or
three holes in its face.
He was not a "bad man" of the really dangerous type, the true man-killer
type, but he was an objectionable creature, a would-be bad man, a bully
who for the moment was having things all his own way. As soon as he saw
me he hailed me as "Four eyes," in reference to my spectacles, and said,
"Four eyes is going to treat." I joined in the laugh and got behind the
stove and sat down, thinking to escape notice. He followed me, however,
and though I tried to pass it off as a jest this merely made him more
offensive, and he stood leaning over me, a gun in each hand, using very
foul language. He was foolish to stand so near, and, moreover, his heels
were close together, so that his position was unstable. Accordingly, in
response to his reiterated command that I should set up the drinks, I
said, "Well, if I've got to, I've got to," and rose, looking past him.
As I rose, I struck quick and hard with my right just to one side of the
point of his jaw, hitting with my left as I straightened out, and then
again with my right. He fired the guns, but I do not know whether this
was merely a convulsive action of his hands or whether he was trying to
shoot at me. When he went down he struck the corner of the bar with his
head. It was not a case in which one could afford to take chances, and
if he had moved I was about to drop on his ribs with my knees; but he
was senseless. I took away his guns, and the other people in the room,
who were now loud in their denunciation of him, hustled him out and put
him in a shed. I got dinner as soon as possible, sitting in a corner
of the dining-room away from the windows, and then went upstairs to bed
where it was dark so that there would be no chance of any one shooting
at me from the outside. However, nothing happened. When my assailant
came to, he went down to the station and left on a freight.
As I have said, most of the men of my regiment were just such men as
those I knew in the ranch country; indeed, some of my ranch friends were
in the regiment--Fred Herrig, the forest ranger, for instance, in whose
company I shot my biggest mountain ram. After the regiment was disbanded
the careers of certain of the men were diversified by odd incidents. Our
relations were of the friendliest, and, as they explained, they felt
"as if I was a father" to them. The manifestations of this feeling were
sometimes less attractive than the phrase sounded, as it was chiefly
used by the few who were behaving like very bad children indeed. The
great majority of the men when the regiment disbanded took up the
business of their lives where they had dropped it a few months
previously, and these men merely tried to help me or help one another
as the occasion arose; no man ever had more cause to be proud of his
regiment than I had of mine, both in war and in peace. But there was
a minority among them who in certain ways were unsuited for a life of
peaceful regularity, although often enough they had been first-class
soldiers.
It was from these men that letters came with a stereotyped opening which
always caused my heart to sink--"Dear Colonel: I write you because I am
in trouble." The trouble might take almost any form. One correspondent
continued: "I did not take the horse, but they say I did." Another
complained that his mother-in-law had put him in jail for bigamy. In
the case of another the incident was more markworthy. I will call him
Gritto. He wrote me a letter beginning: "Dear Colonel: I write you
because I am in trouble. I have shot a lady in the eye. But, Colonel,
I was not shooting at the lady. I was shooting at my wife," which he
apparently regarded as a sufficient excuse as between men of the world.
I answered that I drew the line at shooting at ladies, and did not hear
any more of the incident for several years.
Then, while I was President, a member of the regiment, Major Llewellyn,
who was Federal District Attorney under me in New Mexico, wrote me a
letter filled, as his letters usually were, with bits of interesting
gossip about the comrades. It ran in part as follows: "Since I last
wrote you Comrade Ritchie has killed a man in Colorado. I understand
that the comrade was playing a poker game, and the man sat into the game
and used such language that Comrade Ritchie had to shoot. Comrade Webb
has killed two men in Beaver, Arizona. Comrade Webb is in the Forest
Service, and the killing was in the line of professional duty. I was out
at the penitentiary the other day and saw Comrade Gritto, who, you may
remember, was put there for shooting his sister-in-law [this was the
first information I had had as to the identity of the lady who was shot
in the eye]. Since he was in there Comrade Boyne has run off to old
Mexico with his (Gritto's) wife, and the people of Grant County think he
ought to be let out." Evidently the sporting instincts of the people of
Grant County had been roused, and they felt that, as Comrade Boyne had
had a fair start, the other comrade should be let out in order to see
what would happen.
The men of the regiment always enthusiastically helped me when I was
running for office. On one occasion Buck Taylor, of Texas, accompanied
me on a trip and made a speech for me. The crowd took to his speech from
the beginning and so did I, until the peroration, which ran as follows:
"My fellow-citizens, vote for my Colonel! vote for my Colonel! _and he
will lead you, as he led us, like sheep to the slaughter_!" This hardly
seemed a tribute to my military skill; but it delighted the crowd, and
as far as I could tell did me nothing but good.
On another tour, when I was running for Vice-President, a member of
the regiment who was along on the train got into a discussion with
a Populist editor who had expressed an unfavorable estimate of my
character, and in the course of the discussion shot the editor--not
fatally. We had to leave him to be tried, and as he had no money I
left him $150 to hire counsel--having borrowed the money from Senator
Wolcott, of Colorado, who was also with me. After election I received
from my friend a letter running: "Dear Colonel: I find I will not have
to use that $150 you lent me, as we have elected our candidate for
District Attorney. So I have used it to settle a horse transaction in
which I unfortunately became involved." A few weeks later, however, I
received a heartbroken letter setting forth the fact that the District
Attorney--whom he evidently felt to be a cold-blooded formalist--had
put him in jail. Then the affair dropped out of sight until two or three
years later, when as President I visited a town in another State,
and the leaders of the delegation which received me included both my
correspondent and the editor, now fast friends, and both of them ardent
supporters of mine.
At one of the regimental reunions a man, who had been an excellent
soldier, in greeting me mentioned how glad he was that the judge had let
him out in time to get to the reunion. I asked what was the matter, and
he replied with some surprise: "Why, Colonel, don't you know I had
a difficulty with a gentleman, and . . . er . . . well, I killed the
gentleman. But you can see that the judge thought it was all right or he
wouldn't have let me go." Waiving the latter point, I said: "How did it
happen? How did you do it?" Misinterpreting my question as showing
an interest only in the technique of the performance, the ex-puncher
replied: "With a .38 on a .45 frame, Colonel." I chuckled over the
answer, and it became proverbial with my family and some of my friends,
including Seth Bullock. When I was shot at Milwaukee, Seth Bullock wired
an inquiry to which I responded that it was all right, that the weapon
was merely "a .38 on a .45 frame." The telegram in some way became
public, and puzzled outsiders. By the way, both the men of my regiment
and the friends I had made in the old days in the West were themselves a
little puzzled at the interest shown in my making my speech after being
shot. This was what they expected, what they accepted as the right thing
for a man to do under the circumstances, a thing the non-performance of
which would have been discreditable rather than the performance being
creditable. They would not have expected a man to leave a battle, for
instance, because of being wounded in such fashion; and they saw no
reason why he should abandon a less important and less risky duty.
One of the best soldiers of my regiment was a huge man whom I made
marshal of a Rocky Mountain State. He had spent his hot and lusty youth
on the frontier during its viking age, and at that time had naturally
taken part in incidents which seemed queer to men "accustomed to die
decently of zymotic diseases." I told him that an effort would doubtless
be made to prevent his confirmation by the Senate, and therefore that
I wanted to know all the facts in his case. Had he played faro? He had;
but it was when everybody played faro, and he had never played a brace
game. Had he killed anybody? Yes, but it was in Dodge City on occasions
when he was deputy marshal or town marshal, at a time when Dodge City,
now the most peaceful of communities, was the toughest town on the
continent, and crowded with man-killing outlaws and road agents; and he
produced telegrams from judges of high character testifying to the need
of the actions he had taken. Finally I said: "Now, Ben, how did you
lose that half of your ear?" To which, looking rather shy, he responded:
"Well, Colonel, it was bit off." "How did it happen, Ben?" "Well, you
see, I was sent to arrest a gentleman, and him and me mixed it up, and
he bit off my ear." "What did you do to the gentleman, Ben?" And Ben,
looking more coy than ever, responded: "Well, Colonel, we broke about
even!" I forebore to inquire what variety of mayhem he had committed on
the "gentleman." After considerable struggle I got him confirmed by
the Senate, and he made one of the best marshals in the entire service,
exactly as he had already made one of the best soldiers in the regiment;
and I never wish to see a better citizen, nor a man in whom I would more
implicitly trust in every way.
When, in 1900, I was nominated for Vice-President, I was sent by the
National Committee on a trip into the States of the high plains and the
Rocky Mountains. These had all gone overwhelmingly for Mr. Bryan on
the free-silver issue four years previously, and it was thought that I,
because of my knowledge of and acquaintanceship with the people, might
accomplish something towards bringing them back into line. It was
an interesting trip, and the monotony usually attendant upon such a
campaign of political speaking was diversified in vivid fashion by
occasional hostile audiences. One or two of the meetings ended in riots.
One meeting was finally broken up by a mob; everybody fought so that the
speaking had to stop. Soon after this we reached another town where we
were told there might be trouble. Here the local committee included an
old and valued friend, a "two-gun" man of repute, who was not in the
least quarrelsome, but who always kept his word. We marched round to
the local opera-house, which was packed with a mass of men, many of them
rather rough-looking. My friend the two-gun man sat immediately behind
me, a gun on each hip, his arms folded, looking at the audience; fixing
his gaze with instant intentness on any section of the house from which
there came so much as a whisper. The audience listened to me with
rapt attention. At the end, with a pride in my rhetorical powers which
proceeded from a misunderstanding of the situation, I remarked to the
chairman: "I held that audience well; there wasn't an interruption." To
which the chairman replied: "Interruption? Well, I guess not! Seth had
sent round word that if any son of a gun peeped he'd kill him!"
There was one bit of frontier philosophy which I should like to see
imitated in more advanced communities. Certain crimes of revolting
baseness and cruelty were never forgiven. But in the case of ordinary
offenses, the man who had served his term and who then tried to make
good was given a fair chance; and of course this was equally true of
the women. Every one who has studied the subject at all is only too
well aware that the world offsets the readiness with which it condones
a crime for which a man escapes punishment, by its unforgiving
relentlessness to the often far less guilty man who _is_ punished,
and who therefore has made his atonement. On the frontier, if the man
honestly tried to behave himself there was generally a disposition to
give him fair play and a decent show. Several of the men I knew and whom
I particularly liked came in this class. There was one such man in my
regiment, a man who had served a term for robbery under arms, and who
had atoned for it by many years of fine performance of duty. I put him
in a high official position, and no man under me rendered better service
to the State, nor was there any man whom, as soldier, as civil officer,
as citizen, and as friend, I valued and respected--and now value and
respect--more.
Now I suppose some good people will gather from this that I favor men
who commit crimes. I certainly do not favor them. I have not a
particle of sympathy with the sentimentality--as I deem it, the
mawkishness--which overflows with foolish pity for the criminal and
cares not at all for the victim of the criminal. I am glad to see
wrong-doers punished. The punishment is an absolute necessity from the
standpoint of society; and I put the reformation of the criminal second
to the welfare of society. But I do desire to see the man or woman
who has paid the penalty and who wishes to reform given a helping
hand--surely every one of us who knows his own heart must know that he
too may stumble, and should be anxious to help his brother or sister who
has stumbled. When the criminal has been punished, if he then shows a
sincere desire to lead a decent and upright life, he should be given the
chance, he should be helped and not hindered; and if he makes good, he
should receive that respect from others which so often aids in creating
self-respect--the most invaluable of all possessions.
CHAPTER V
APPLIED IDEALISM
In the spring of 1899 I was appointed by President Harrison Civil
Service Commissioner. For nearly five years I had not been very
active in political life; although I had done some routine work in the
organization and had made campaign speeches, and in 1886 had run for
Mayor of New York against Abram S. Hewitt, Democrat, and Henry George,
Independent, and had been defeated.
I served six years as Civil Service Commissioner--four years under
President Harrison and then two years under President Cleveland. I
was treated by both Presidents with the utmost consideration. Among my
fellow-Commissioners there was at one time ex-Governor Hugh Thompson, of
South Carolina, and at another time John R. Proctor, of Kentucky. They
were Democrats and ex-Confederate soldiers. I became deeply attached to
both, and we stood shoulder to shoulder in every contest in which the
Commission was forced to take part.
Civil Service Reform had two sides. There was, first, the effort to
secure a more efficient administration of the public service, and,
second, the even more important effort to withdraw the administrative
offices of the Government from the domain of spoils politics, and
thereby cut out of American political life a fruitful source of
corruption and degradation. The spoils theory of politics is that
public office is so much plunder which the victorious political party is
entitled to appropriate to the use of its adherents. Under this system
the work of the Government was often done well even in those days, when
Civil Service Reform was only an experiment, because the man running an
office if himself an able and far-sighted man, knew that inefficiency
in administration would be visited on his head in the long run, and
therefore insisted upon most of his subordinates doing good work; and,
moreover, the men appointed under the spoils system were necessarily
men of a certain initiative and power, because those who lacked these
qualities were not able to shoulder themselves to the front. Yet there
were many flagrant instances of inefficiency, where a powerful chief
quartered friend, adherent, or kinsman upon the Government. Moreover,
the necessarily haphazard nature of the employment, the need of
obtaining and holding the office by service wholly unconnected with
official duty, inevitably tended to lower the standard of public
morality, alike among the office-holders and among the politicians who
rendered party service with the hope of reward in office. Indeed, the
doctrine that "To the victor belong the spoils," the cynical battle-cry
of the spoils politician in America for the sixty years preceding my own
entrance into public life, is so nakedly vicious that few right-thinking
men of trained mind defend it. To appoint, promote, reduce, and
expel from the public service, letter-carriers, stenographers, women
typewriters, clerks, because of the politics of themselves or their
friends, without regard to their own service, is, from the standpoint of
the people at large, as foolish and degrading as it is wicked.
Such being the case, it would seem at first sight extraordinary that
it should be so difficult to uproot the system. Unfortunately, it was
permitted to become habitual and traditional in American life, so that
the conception of public office as something to be used primarily for
the good of the dominant political party became ingrained in the mind
of the average American, and he grew so accustomed to the whole process
that it seemed part of the order of nature. Not merely the politicians
but the bulk of the people accepted this in a matter-of-course way as
the only proper attitude. There were plenty of communities where the
citizens themselves did not think it natural, or indeed proper, that
the Post-Office should be held by a man belonging to the defeated
party. Moreover, unless both sides were forbidden to use the offices for
purposes of political reward, the side that did use them possessed
such an advantage over the other that in the long run it was out of the
question for the other not to follow the bad example that had been set.
Each party profited by the offices when in power, and when in opposition
each party insincerely denounced its opponents for doing exactly what it
itself had done and intended again to do.
It was necessary, in order to remedy the evil, both gradually to change
the average citizen's mental attitude toward the question, and also to
secure proper laws and proper administration of the laws. The work is
far from finished even yet. There are still masses of office-holders
who can be used by an unscrupulous Administration to debauch political
conventions and fraudulently overcome public sentiment, especially in
the "rotten borough" districts--those where the party is not strong,
and where the office-holders in consequence have a disproportionate
influence. This was done by the Republican Administration in 1912, to
the ruin of the Republican party. Moreover, there are numbers of States
and municipalities where very little has as yet been done to do away
with the spoils system. But in the National Government scores of
thousands of offices have been put under the merit system, chiefly
through the action of the National Civil Service Commission.
The use of Government offices as patronage is a handicap difficult
to overestimate from the standpoint of those who strive to get good
government. Any effort for reform of any sort, National, State, or
municipal, results in the reformers immediately finding themselves face
to face with an organized band of drilled mercenaries who are paid out
of the public chest to train themselves with such skill that ordinary
good citizens when they meet them at the polls are in much the position
of militia matched against regular troops. Yet these citizens themselves
support and pay their opponents in such a way that they are drilled
to overthrow the very men who support them. Civil Service Reform is
designed primarily to give the average American citizen a fair chance in
politics, to give to this citizen the same weight in politics that the
"ward heeler" has.
Patronage does not really help a party. It helps the bosses to get
control of the machinery of the party--as in 1912 was true of the
Republican party--but it does not help the party. On the average, the
most sweeping party victories in our history have been won when the
patronage was against the victors. All that the patronage does is
to help the worst element in the party retain control of the party
organization. Two of the evil elements in our Government against which
good citizens have to contend are, 1, the lack of continuous activity
on the part of these good citizens themselves, and, 2, the ever-present
activity of those who have only an evil self-interest in political
life. It is difficult to interest the average citizen in any particular
movement to the degree of getting him to take an efficient part in it.
He wishes the movement well, but he will not, or often cannot, take
the time and the trouble to serve it efficiently; and this whether
he happens to be a mechanic or a banker, a telegraph operator or a
storekeeper. He has his own interests, his own business, and it is
difficult for him to spare the time to go around to the primaries, to
see to the organization, to see to getting out the vote--in short, to
attend to all the thousand details of political management.
On the other hand, the spoils system breeds a class of men whose
financial interest it is to take this necessary time and trouble. They
are paid for so doing, and they are paid out of the public chest.
Under the spoils system a man is appointed to an ordinary clerical or
ministerial position in the municipal, Federal, or State government, not
primarily because he is expected to be a good servant, but because he
has rendered help to some big boss or to the henchman of some big boss.
His stay in office depends not upon how he performs service, but upon
how he retains his influence in the party. This necessarily means that
his attention to the interests of the public at large, even though real,
is secondary to his devotion to his organization, or to the interest of
the ward leader who put him in his place. So he and his fellows attend
to politics, not once a year, not two or three times a year, like the
average citizen, but every day in the year. It is the one thing that
they talk of, for it is their bread and butter. They plan about it and
they scheme about it. They do it because it is their business. I do not
blame them in the least. I blame us, the people, for we ought to make
it clear as a bell that the business of serving the people in one of the
ordinary ministerial Government positions, which have nothing to do
with deciding the policy of the Government, should have no necessary
connection with the management of primaries, of caucuses, and
of nominating conventions. As a result of our wrong thinking and
supineness, we American citizens tend to breed a mass of men whose
interests in governmental matters are often adverse to ours, who are
thoroughly drilled, thoroughly organized, who make their livelihood
out of politics, and who frequently make their livelihood out of
bad politics. They know every little twist and turn, no matter how
intricate, in the politics of their several wards, and when election
day comes the ordinary citizen who has merely the interest that all good
men, all decent citizens, should have in political life, finds himself
as helpless before these men as if he were a solitary volunteer in the
presence of a band of drilled mercenaries on a field of battle. There
are a couple of hundred thousand Federal offices, not to speak of State
and municipal offices. The men who fill these offices, and the men who
wish to fill them, within and without the dominant party for the time
being, make a regular army, whose interest it is that the system
of bread-and-butter politics shall continue. Against their concrete
interest we have merely the generally unorganized sentiment of the
community in favor of putting things on a decent basis. The large number
of men who believe vaguely in good are pitted against the smaller but
still larger number of men whose interest it often becomes to act
very concretely and actively for evil; and it is small wonder that the
struggle is doubtful.
During my six years' service as Commissioner the field of the merit
system was extended at the expense of the spoils system so as to include
several times the number of offices that had originally been included.
Generally this was done by the introduction of competitive entrance
examinations; sometimes, as in the Navy-Yards, by a system of
registration. This of itself was good work.
Even better work was making the law efficient and genuine where it
applied. As was inevitable in the introduction of such a system, there
was at first only partial success in its application. For instance,
it applied to the ordinary employees in the big custom-houses and
post-offices, but not to the heads of these offices. A number of the
heads of the offices were slippery politicians of a low moral grade,
themselves appointed under the spoils system, and anxious, directly
or indirectly, to break down the merit system and to pay their own
political debts by appointing their henchmen and supporters to the
positions under them. Occasionally these men acted with open and naked
brutality. Ordinarily they sought by cunning to evade the law. The Civil
Service Reformers, on the other hand, were in most cases not much used
to practical politics, and were often well-nigh helpless when pitted
against veteran professional politicians. In consequence I found at the
beginning of my experiences that there were many offices in which the
execution of the law was a sham. This was very damaging, because it
encouraged the politicians to assault the law everywhere, and, on the
other hand, made good people feel that the law was not worth while
defending.
The first effort of myself and my colleagues was to secure the genuine
enforcement of the law. In this we succeeded after a number of lively
fights. But of course in these fights we were obliged to strike a large
number of influential politicians, some of them in Congress, some of
them the supporters and backers of men who were in Congress. Accordingly
we soon found ourselves engaged in a series of contests with prominent
Senators and Congressmen. There were a number of Senators and
Congressmen--men like Congressman (afterwards Senator) H. C. Lodge, of
Massachusetts; Senator Cushman K. Davis, of Minnesota; Senator Orville
H. Platt, of Connecticut; Senator Cockrell, of Missouri; Congressman
(afterwards President) McKinley, of Ohio, and Congressman Dargan,
of South Carolina--who abhorred the business of the spoilsman, who
efficiently and resolutely championed the reform at every turn, and
without whom the whole reform would certainly have failed. But there
were plenty of other Senators and Congressmen who hated the whole reform
and everything concerned with it and everybody who championed it;
and sometimes, to use a legal phrase, their hatred was for cause,
and sometimes it was peremptory--that is, sometimes the Commission
interfered with their most efficient, and incidentally most corrupt and
unscrupulous, supporters, and at other times, where there was no such
interference, a man nevertheless had an innate dislike of anything
that tended to decency in government. These men were always waging war
against us, and they usually had the more or less open support of a
certain number of Government officials, from Cabinet officers down. The
Senators and Congressmen in question opposed us in many different ways.
Sometimes, for instance, they had committees appointed to investigate
us--during my public career without and within office I grew accustomed
to accept appearances before investigating committees as part of
the natural order of things. Sometimes they tried to cut off the
appropriation for the Commission.
Occasionally we would bring to terms these Senators or Congressmen
who fought the Commission by the simple expedient of not holding
examinations in their districts. This always brought frantic appeals
from their constituents, and we would explain that unfortunately the
appropriations had been cut, so that we could not hold examinations in
every district, and that obviously we could not neglect the districts
of those Congressmen who believed in the reform and therefore in the
examinations. The constituents then turned their attention to the
Congressman, and the result was that in the long run we obtained
sufficient money to enable us to do our work. On the whole, the
most prominent leaders favored us. Any man who is the head of a big
department, if he has any fitness at all, wishes to see that department
run well; and a very little practical experience shows him that
it cannot be run well if he must make his appointments to please
spoilsmongering politicians. As with almost every reform that I have
ever undertaken, most of the opposition took the guise of shrewd
slander. Our opponents relied chiefly on downright misrepresentation of
what it was that we were trying to accomplish, and of our methods, acts,
and personalities. I had more than one lively encounter with the authors
and sponsors of these misrepresentations, which at the time were full of
interest to me. But it would be a dreary thing now to go over the record
of exploded mendacity, or to expose the meanness and malice shown by
some men of high official position. A favorite argument was to call
the reform Chinese, because the Chinese had constructed an inefficient
governmental system based in part on the theory of written competitive
examinations. The argument was simple. There had been written
examinations in China; it was proposed to establish written examinations
in the United States; therefore the proposed system was Chinese. The
argument might have been applied still further. For instance, the
Chinese had used gunpowder for centuries; gunpowder is used in
Springfield rifles; therefore Springfield rifles were Chinese. One
argument is quite as logical as the other. It was impossible to answer
every falsehood about the system. But it was possible to answer certain
falsehoods, especially when uttered by some Senator or Congressman of
note. Usually these false statements took the form of assertions that
we had asked preposterous questions of applicants. At times they also
included the assertion that we credited people to districts where they
did not live; this simply meaning that these persons were not known to
the active ward politicians of those districts.
One opponent with whom we had a rather lively tilt was a Republican
Congressman from Ohio, Mr. Grosvenor, one of the floor leaders. Mr.
Grosvenor made his attack in the House, and enumerated our sins in
picturesque rather than accurate fashion. There was a Congressional
committee investigating us at the time, and on my next appearance before
them I asked that Mr. Grosvenor be requested to meet me before the
committee. Mr. Grosvenor did not take up the challenge for several
weeks, until it was announced that I was leaving for my ranch in Dakota;
whereupon, deeming it safe, he wrote me a letter expressing his ardent
wish that I should appear before the committee to meet him. I promptly
canceled my ticket, waited, and met him. He proved to be a person of
happily treacherous memory, so that the simple expedient of arranging
his statements in pairs was sufficient to reduce him to confusion. For
instance, he had been trapped into making the unwary remark, "I do not
want to repeal the Civil Service Law, and I never said so." I produced
the following extract from one of his speeches: "I will vote not only to
strike out this provision, but I will vote to repeal the whole law." To
this he merely replied that there was "no inconsistency between those
two statements." He asserted that "Rufus P. Putnam, fraudulently
credited to Washington County, Ohio, never lived in Washington County,
Ohio, or in my Congressional district, or in Ohio as far as I know."
We produced a letter which, thanks to a beneficent Providence, he had
himself written about Mr. Rufus P. Putnam, in which he said: "Mr. Rufus
P. Putnam is a legal resident of my district and has relatives living
there now." He explained, first, that he had not written the letter;
second, that he had forgotten he had written the letter; and, third,
that he was grossly deceived when he wrote it. He said: "I have not
been informed of one applicant who has found a place in the classified
service from my district." We confronted him with the names of eight. He
looked them over and said, "Yes, the eight men are living in my district
as now constituted," but added that his district had been gerrymandered
so that he could no longer tell who did and who didn't live in it. When
I started further to question him, he accused me of a lack of humor in
not appreciating that his statements were made "in a jesting way," and
then announced that "a Congressman making a speech on the floor of the
House of Representatives was perhaps in a little different position
from a witness on the witness stand"--a frank admission that he did not
consider exactitude of statement necessary when he was speaking as a
Congressman. Finally he rose with great dignity and said that it was his
"constitutional right" not to be questioned elsewhere as to what he said
on the floor of the House of Representatives; and accordingly he left
the delighted committee to pursue its investigations without further aid
from him.
A more important opponent was the then Democratic leader of the Senate,
Mr. Gorman. In a speech attacking the Commission Mr. Gorman described
with moving pathos how a friend of his, "a bright young man from
Baltimore," a Sunday-school scholar, well recommended by his pastor,
wished to be a letter-carrier; and how he went before us to be examined.
The first question we asked him, said Mr. Gorman, was the shortest route
from Baltimore to China, to which the "bright young man" responded that
he didn't want to go to China, and had never studied up that route.
Thereupon, said Mr. Gorman, we asked him all about the steamship lines
from the United States to Europe, then branched him off into geology,
tried him in chemistry, and finally turned him down.
Apparently Mr. Gorman did not know that we kept full records of our
examinations. I at once wrote to him stating that I had carefully looked
through all our examination papers and had not been able to find one
question even remotely resembling any of these questions which he
alleged had been asked, and that I would be greatly obliged if he would
give me the name of the "bright young man" who had deceived him.
However, that "bright young man" remained permanently without a name.
I also asked Mr. Gorman, if he did not wish to give us the name of
his informant, to give us the date of the examination in which he was
supposed to have taken part; and I offered, if he would send down a
representative to look through our files, to give him all the aid we
could in his effort to discover any such questions. But Mr. Gorman, not
hitherto known as a sensitive soul, expressed himself as so shocked
at the thought that the veracity of the "bright young man" should be
doubted that he could not bring himself to answer my letter. So I made
a public statement to the effect that no such questions had ever been
asked. Mr. Gorman brooded over this; and during the next session of
Congress he rose and complained that he had received a very "impudent"
letter from me (my letter was a respectful note calling attention to
the fact that, if he wished, he could by personal examination satisfy
himself that his statements had no foundation in fact). He further
stated that he had been "cruelly" called to account by me because he
had been endeavoring to right a "great wrong" that the Civil Service
Commission had committed; but he never, then or afterwards, furnished
any clue to the identity of that child of his fondest fancy, the bright
young man without a name.[*]
[*] This is a condensation of a speech I at the time made to
the St. Louis Civil Service Reform Association. Senator
Gorman was then the Senate leader of the party that had just
been victorious in the Congressional elections.
The incident is of note chiefly as shedding light on the mental make-up
of the man who at the time was one of the two or three most influential
leaders of the Democratic party. Mr. Gorman had been Mr. Cleveland's
party manager in the Presidential campaign, and was the Democratic
leader in Congress. It seemed extraordinary that he should be so
reckless as to make statements with no foundation in fact, which he
might have known that I would not permit to pass unchallenged. Then,
as now, the ordinary newspaper, in New York and elsewhere, was quite as
reckless in its misstatements of fact about public men and measures; but
for a man in Mr. Gorman's position of responsible leadership such action
seemed hardly worth while. However, it is at least to be said for
Mr. Gorman that he was not trying by falsehood to take away any man's
character. It would be well for writers and speakers to bear in mind
the remark of Pudd'nhead Wilson to the effect that while there are nine
hundred and ninety-nine kinds of falsehood, the only kind specifically
condemned in Scripture, just as murder, theft, and adultery are
condemned, is bearing false witness against one's neighbor.
One of the worst features of the old spoils system was the ruthless
cruelty and brutality it so often bred in the treatment of faithful
public servants without political influence. Life is hard enough and
cruel enough at best, and this is as true of public service as of
private service. Under no system will it be possible to do away with all
favoritism and brutality and meanness and malice. But at least we can
try to minimize the exhibition of these qualities. I once came across
a case in Washington which very keenly excited my sympathy. Under an
Administration prior to the one with which I was connected a lady had
been ousted from a Government position. She came to me to see if she
could be reinstated. (This was not possible, but by active work I did
get her put back in a somewhat lower position, and this only by an
appeal to the sympathy of a certain official.) She was so pallid and so
careworn that she excited my sympathy and I made inquiries about
her. She was a poor woman with two children, a widow. She and her two
children were in actual want. She could barely keep the two children
decently clad, and she could not give them the food growing children
need. Three years before she had been employed in a bureau in a
department of Washington, doing her work faithfully, at a salary of
about $800. It was enough to keep her and her two children in clothing,
food, and shelter. One day the chief of the bureau called her up and
told her he was very sorry that he had to dismiss her. In great
distress she asked him why; she thought that she had been doing her work
satisfactorily. He answered her that she had been doing well, and that
he wished very much that he could keep her, that he would do so if he
possibly could, but that he could not; for a certain Senator, giving his
name, a very influential member of the Senate, had demanded her place
for a friend of his who had influence. The woman told the bureau chief
that it meant turning her out to starve. She had been thirteen or
fourteen years in the public service; she had lost all touch with her
friends in her native State; dismissal meant absolute want for her and
her children. On this the chief, who was a kind man, said he would not
have her turned out, and sent her back to her work.
But three weeks afterwards he called her up again and told her he could
not say how sorry he was, but the thing had to be done. The Senator had
been around in person to know why the change had not been made, and had
told the chief that he would be himself removed if the place were not
given him. The Senator was an extremely influential man. His wants had
to be attended to, and the woman had to go. And go she did, and turned
out she was, to suffer with her children and to starve outright, or to
live in semi-starvation, just as might befall. I do not blame the bureau
chief, who hated to do what he did, although he lacked the courage to
refuse; I do not even very much blame the Senator, who did not know
the hardship that he was causing, and who had been calloused by long
training in the spoils system; but this system, a system which permits
and encourages such deeds, is a system of brutal iniquity.
Any man accustomed to dealing with practical politics can with
difficulty keep a straight face when he reads or listens to some of the
arguments advanced against Civil Service Reform. One of these arguments,
a favorite with machine politicians, takes the form of an appeal to
"party loyalty" in filling minor offices. Why, again and again these
very same machine politicians take just as good care of henchmen of
the opposite party as of those of their own party. In the underworld of
politics the closest ties are sometimes those which knit together the
active professional workers of opposite political parties. A friend
of mine in the New York Legislature--the hero of the alpha and omega
incident--once remarked to me: "When you have been in public life a
little longer, Mr. Roosevelt, you will understand that there are no
politics in politics." In the politics to which he was referring this
remark could be taken literally.
Another illustration of this truth was incidentally given me, at about
the same time, by an acquaintance, a Tammany man named Costigan, a good
fellow according to his lights. I had been speaking to him of a fight in
one of the New York downtown districts, a Democratic district in which
the Republican party was in a hopeless minority, and, moreover,
was split into the Half-Breed and Stalwart factions. It had been an
interesting fight in more than one way. For instance, the Republican
party, at the general election, polled something like five hundred
and fifty votes, and yet at the primary the two factions polled
seven hundred and twenty-five all told. The sum of the parts was thus
considerably greater than the whole. There had been other little details
that made the contest worthy of note. The hall in which the primary was
held had been hired by the Stalwarts from a conscientious gentleman. To
him the Half-Breeds applied to know whether they could not hire the hall
away from their opponents, and offered him a substantial money advance.
The conscientious gentleman replied that his word was as good as his
bond, that he had hired the hall to the Stalwarts, and that it must
be theirs. But he added that he was willing to hire the doorway to
the Half-Breeds if they paid him the additional sum of money they had
mentioned. The bargain was struck, and the meeting of the hostile hosts
was spirited, when the men who had rented the doorway sought to bar the
path of the men who had rented the hall. I was asking my friend Costigan
about the details of the struggle, as he seemed thoroughly acquainted
with them, and he smiled good-naturedly over my surprise at there having
been more votes cast than there were members of the party in the whole
district. Said I, "Mr. Costigan, you seem to have a great deal of
knowledge about this; how did it happen?" To which he replied, "Come
now, Mr. Roosevelt, you know it's the same gang that votes in all the
primaries."
So much for most of the opposition to the reform. There was, however,
some honest and at least partially justifiable opposition both to
certain of the methods advocated by Civil Service Reformers and to
certain of the Civil Service Reformers themselves. The pet shibboleths
of the opponents of the reform were that the system we proposed to
introduce would give rise to mere red-tape bureaucracy, and that the
reformers were pharisees. Neither statement was true. Each statement
contained some truth.
If men are not to be appointed by favoritism, wise or unwise, honest or
dishonest, they must be appointed in some automatic way, which generally
means by competitive examination. The easiest kind of competitive
examination is an examination in writing. This is entirely appropriate
for certain classes of work, for lawyers, stenographers, typewriters,
clerks, mathematicians, and assistants in an astronomical observatory,
for instance. It is utterly inappropriate for carpenters, detectives,
and mounted cattle inspectors along the Rio Grande--to instance
three types of employment as to which I had to do battle to prevent
well-meaning bureaucrats from insisting on written competitive entrance
examinations. It would be quite possible to hold a very good competitive
examination for mounted cattle inspectors by means of practical tests
in brand reading and shooting with rifle and revolver, in riding
"mean" horses and in roping and throwing steers. I did my best to have
examinations of this kind instituted, but my proposal was of precisely
the type which most shocks the routine official mind, and I was never
able to get it put into practical effect.
The important point, and the point most often forgotten by zealous
Civil Service Reformers, was to remember that the routine competitive
examination was merely a means to an end. It did not always produce
ideal results. But it was normally better than a system of appointments
for spoils purposes; it sometimes worked out very well indeed; and in
most big governmental offices it not only gave satisfactory results,
but was the only system under which good results could be obtained. For
instance, when I was Police Commissioner we appointed some two thousand
policemen at one time. It was utterly impossible for the Commissioners
each to examine personally the six or eight thousand applicants.
Therefore they had to be appointed either on the recommendation of
outsiders or else by written competitive examination. The latter
method--the one we adopted--was infinitely preferable. We held a rigid
physical and moral pass examination, and then, among those who passed,
we held a written competitive examination, requiring only the knowledge
that any good primary common school education would meet--that is, a
test of ordinary intelligence and simple mental training. Occasionally
a man who would have been a good officer failed, and occasionally a man
who turned out to be a bad officer passed; but, as a rule, the men with
intelligence sufficient to enable them to answer the questions were of a
type very distinctly above that of those who failed.
The answers returned to some of the questions gave an illuminating idea
of the intelligence of those answering them. For instance, one of our
questions in a given examination was a request to name five of the New
England States. One competitor, obviously of foreign birth, answered:
"England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and Cork." His neighbor, who
had probably looked over his shoulder but who had North of Ireland
prejudices, made the same answer except that he substituted Belfast
for Cork. A request for a statement as to the life of Abraham Lincoln
elicited, among other less startling pieces of information, the fact
that many of the applicants thought that he was a general in the Civil
War; several thought that he was President of the Confederate States;
three thought he had been assassinated by Jefferson Davis, one by Thomas
Jefferson, one by Garfield, several by Guiteau, and one by Ballington
Booth--the last representing a memory of the fact that he had been shot
by a man named Booth, to whose surname the writer added the name with
which he was most familiar in connection therewith. A request to name
five of the States that seceded in 1861 received answers that included
almost every State in the Union. It happened to be at the time of the
silver agitation in the West, and the Rocky Mountain States accordingly
figured in a large percentage of the answers. Some of the men thought
that Chicago was on the Pacific Ocean. Others, in answer to a query as
to who was the head of the United States Government, wavered between
myself and Recorder Goff; one brilliant genius, for inscrutable reasons,
placed the leadership in the New York Fire Department. Now of course
some of the men who answered these questions wrong were nevertheless
quite capable of making good policemen; but it is fair to assume that
on the average the candidate who has a rudimentary knowledge of the
government, geography, and history of his country is a little better
fitted, in point of intelligence, to be a policeman than the one who has
not.
Therefore I felt convinced, after full experience, that as regards very
large classes of public servants by far the best way to choose the men
for appointment was by means of written competitive examination. But
I absolutely split off from the bulk of my professional Civil Service
Reform friends when they advocated written competitive examinations for
promotion. In the Police Department I found these examinations a serious
handicap in the way of getting the best men promoted, and never in any
office did I find that the written competitive promotion examination did
any good. The reason for a written competitive entrance examination is
that it is impossible for the head of the office, or the candidate's
prospective immediate superior, himself to know the average candidate
or to test his ability. But when once in office the best way to test any
man's ability is by long experience in seeing him actually at work.
His promotion should depend upon the judgment formed of him by his
superiors.
So much for the objections to the examinations. Now for the objections
to the men who advocated the reform. As a rule these men were
high-minded and disinterested. Certain of them, men like the leaders
in the Maryland and Indiana Reform Associations, for instances,
Messrs. Bonaparte and Rose, Foulke and Swift, added common sense, broad
sympathy, and practical efficiency to their high-mindedness. But in New
York, Philadelphia, and Boston there really was a certain mental and
moral thinness among very many of the leaders in the Civil Service
Reform movement. It was this quality which made them so profoundly
antipathetic to vigorous and intensely human people of the stamp of
my friend Joe Murray--who, as I have said, always felt that my Civil
Service Reform affiliations formed the one blot on an otherwise
excellent public record. The Civil Service Reform movement was one from
above downwards, and the men who took the lead in it were not men who as
a rule possessed a very profound sympathy with or understanding of the
ways of thought and life of their average fellow-citizen. They were not
men who themselves desired to be letter-carriers or clerks or policemen,
or to have their friends appointed to these positions. Having no
temptation themselves in this direction, they were eagerly anxious to
prevent other people getting such appointments as a reward for political
services. In this they were quite right. It would be impossible to run
any big public office to advantage save along the lines of the strictest
application of Civil Service Reform principles; and the system should be
extended throughout our governmental service far more widely than is now
the case.
But there are other and more vital reforms than this. Too many Civil
Service Reformers, when the trial came, proved tepidly indifferent
or actively hostile to reforms that were of profound and far-reaching
social and industrial consequence. Many of them were at best lukewarm
about movements for the improvement of the conditions of toil and
life among men and women who labor under hard surroundings, and were
positively hostile to movements which curbed the power of the great
corporation magnates and directed into useful instead of pernicious
channels the activities of the great corporation lawyers who advised
them.
Most of the newspapers which regarded themselves as the especial
champions of Civil Service Reform and as the highest exponents of civic
virtue, and which distrusted the average citizen and shuddered over the
"coarseness" of the professional politicians, were, nevertheless, given
to vices even more contemptible than, although not so gross as, those
they denounced and derided. Their editors were refined men of cultivated
tastes, whose pet temptations were backbiting, mean slander, and
the snobbish worship of anything clothed in wealth and the outward
appearances of conventional respectability. They were not robust or
powerful men; they felt ill at ease in the company of rough, strong
men; often they had in them a vein of physical timidity. They avenged
themselves to themselves for an uneasy subconsciousness of their
own shortcomings by sitting in cloistered--or, rather, pleasantly
upholstered--seclusion, and sneering at and lying about men who made
them feel uncomfortable. Sometimes these were bad men, who made them
feel uncomfortable by the exhibition of coarse and repellent vice; and
sometimes they were men of high character, who held ideals of courage
and of service to others, and who looked down and warred against the
shortcomings of swollen wealth, and the effortless, easy lives of those
whose horizon is bounded by a sheltered and timid respectability.
These newspapers, owned and edited by these men, although free from the
repulsive vulgarity of the yellow press, were susceptible to influence
by the privileged interests, and were almost or quite as hostile to
manliness as they were to unrefined vice--and were much more hostile
to it than to the typical shortcomings of wealth and refinement. They
favored Civil Service Reform; they favored copyright laws, and the
removal of the tariff on works of art; they favored all the proper (and
even more strongly all the improper) movements for international peace
and arbitration; in short, they favored all good, and many goody-goody,
measures so long as they did not cut deep into social wrong or make
demands on National and individual virility. They opposed, or were
lukewarm about, efforts to build up the army and the navy, for they were
not sensitive concerning National honor; and, above all, they opposed
every non-milk-and-water effort, however sane, to change our social and
economic system in such a fashion as to substitute the ideal of justice
towards all for the ideal of kindly charity from the favored few to the
possibly grateful many.
Some of the men foremost in the struggle for Civil Service Reform have
taken a position of honorable leadership in the battle for those other
and more vital reforms. But many of them promptly abandoned the field of
effort for decency when the battle took the form, not of a fight against
the petty grafting of small bosses and small politicians--a vitally
necessary battle, be it remembered--but of a fight against the great
intrenched powers of privilege, a fight to secure justice through the
law for ordinary men and women, instead of leaving them to suffer cruel
injustice either because the law failed to protect them or because it
was twisted from its legitimate purposes into a means for oppressing
them.
One of the reasons why the boss so often keeps his hold, especially in
municipal matters, is, or at least has been in the past, because so
many of the men who claim to be reformers have been blind to the need
of working in human fashion for social and industrial betterment. Such
words as "boss" and "machine" now imply evil, but both the implication
the words carry and the definition of the words themselves are somewhat
vague. A leader is necessary; but his opponents always call him a boss.
An organization is necessary; but the men in opposition always call it a
machine. Nevertheless, there is a real and deep distinction between the
leader and the boss, between organizations and machines. A political
leader who fights openly for principles, and who keeps his position of
leadership by stirring the consciences and convincing the intellects of
his followers, so that they have confidence in him and will follow him
because they can achieve greater results under him than under any one
else, is doing work which is indispensable in a democracy. The boss, on
the other hand, is a man who does not gain his power by open means, but
by secret means, and usually by corrupt means. Some of the worst and
most powerful bosses in our political history either held no public
office or else some unimportant public office. They made no appeal
either to intellect or conscience. Their work was done behind closed
doors, and consisted chiefly in the use of that greed which gives in
order that in return it may get. A boss of this kind can pull wires in
conventions, can manipulate members of the Legislature, can control
the giving or withholding of office, and serves as the intermediary for
bringing together the powers of corrupt politics and corrupt business.
If he is at one end of the social scale, he may through his agents
traffic in the most brutal forms of vice and give protection to the
purveyors of shame and sin in return for money bribes. If at the other
end of the scale, he may be the means of securing favors from high
public officials, legislative or executive, to great industrial
interests; the transaction being sometimes a naked matter of bargain and
sale, and sometimes being carried on in such manner that both parties
thereto can more or less successfully disguise it to their consciences
as in the public interest. The machine is simply another name for the
kind of organization which is certain to grow up in a party or section
of a party controlled by such bosses as these and by their henchmen,
whereas, of course, an effective organization of decent men is essential
in order to secure decent politics.
If these bosses were responsible for nothing but pure wickedness, they
would probably last but a short time in any community. And, in any
event, if the men who are horrified by their wickedness were themselves
as practical and as thoroughly in touch with human nature, the bosses
would have a short shrift. The trouble is that the boss does understand
human nature, and that he fills a place which the reformer cannot fill
unless he likewise understands human nature. Sometimes the boss is a man
who cares for political power purely for its own sake, as he might care
for any other hobby; more often he has in view some definitely selfish
object such as political or financial advancement. He can rarely
accomplish much unless he has another side to him. A successful boss is
very apt to be a man who, in addition to committing wickedness in his
own interest, also does look after the interests of others, even if not
from good motives. There are some communities so fortunate that there
are very few men who have private interests to be served, and in
these the power of the boss is at a minimum. There are many country
communities of this type. But in communities where there is poverty and
ignorance, the conditions are ripe for the growth of a boss. Moreover,
wherever big business interests are liable either to be improperly
favored or improperly discriminated against and blackmailed by public
officials--and the result is just as vicious in one case as in the
other--the boss is almost certain to develop. The best way of getting at
this type of boss is by keeping the public conscience aroused and alert,
so that it will tolerate neither improper attack upon, nor improper
favoritism towards, these corporations, and will quickly punish any
public servant guilty of either.
There is often much good in the type of boss, especially common in big
cities, who fulfills towards the people of his district in rough
and ready fashion the position of friend and protector. He uses his
influence to get jobs for young men who need them. He goes into court
for a wild young fellow who has gotten into trouble. He helps out with
cash or credit the widow who is in straits, or the breadwinner who is
crippled or for some other cause temporarily out of work. He organizes
clambakes and chowder parties and picnics, and is consulted by the
local labor leaders when a cut in wages is threatened. For some of
his constituents he does proper favors, and for others wholly improper
favors; but he preserves human relations with all. He may be a very bad
and very corrupt man, a man whose action in blackmailing and protecting
vice is of far-reaching damage to his constituents. But these
constituents are for the most part men and women who struggle hard
against poverty and with whom the problem of living is very real and
very close. They would prefer clean and honest government, if this
clean and honest government is accompanied by human sympathy, human
understanding. But an appeal made to them for virtue in the abstract, an
appeal made by good men who do not really understand their needs, will
often pass quite unheeded, if on the other side stands the boss, the
friend and benefactor, who may have been guilty of much wrong-doing in
things that they are hardly aware concern them, but who appeals to them,
not only for the sake of favors to come, but in the name of gratitude
and loyalty, and above all of understanding and fellow-feeling. They
have a feeling of clan-loyalty to him; his and their relations may be
substantially those which are right and proper among primitive people
still in the clan stage of moral development. The successful fight
against this type of vicious boss, and the type of vicious politics
which produces it, can be made only by men who have a genuine
fellow-feeling for and understanding of the people for and with whom
they are to work, and who in practical fashion seek their social and
industrial benefit.
There are communities of poor men, whose lives are hard, in which the
boss, though he would be out of place in a more advanced community, if
fundamentally an honest man, meets a real need which would otherwise not
be met. Because of his limitations in other than purely local matters
it may be our duty to fight such a boss; but it may also be our duty
to recognize, within his limitations, both his sincerity and his
usefulness.
Yet again even the boss who really is evil, like the business man who
really is evil, may on certain points be sound, and be doing good work.
It may be the highest duty of the patriotic public servant to work with
the big boss or the big business man on these points, while refusing
to work with him on others. In the same way there are many self-styled
reformers whose conduct is such as to warrant Tom Reed's bitter remark,
that when Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a
scoundrel he was ignorant of the infinite possibilities contained in the
word reform. Yet, none the less, it is our duty to work for the
reforms these men champion, without regard to the misconduct of the men
themselves on other points. I have known in my life many big business
men and many big political bosses who often or even generally did evil,
but who on some occasions and on certain issues were right. I never
hesitated to do battle against these men when they were wrong; and, on
the other hand, as long as they were going my way I was glad to have
them do so. To have repudiated their aid when they were right and were
striving for a right end, and for what was of benefit to the people--no
matter what their motives may have been--would have been childish, and
moreover would have itself been misconduct against the people.
My duty was to stand with every one while he was right, and to stand
against him when he went wrong; and this I have tried to do as regards
individuals and as regards groups of individuals. When a business man or
labor leader, politician or reformer, is right, I support him; when
he goes wrong, I leave him. When Mr. Lorimer upheld the war for the
liberation of Cuba, I supported him; when he became United States
Senator by improper methods, I opposed him. The principles or methods
which the Socialists advocate and which I believe to be in the interest
of the people I support, and those which I believe to be against the
interest of the people I oppose. Moreover, when a man has done evil, but
changes, and works for decency and righteousness, and when, as far as
I can see, the change is real and the man's conduct sincere, then I
welcome him and work heartily with him, as an equal with an equal.
For thirty years after the Civil War the creed of mere materialism was
rampant in both American politics and American business, and many, many
strong men, in accordance with the prevailing commercial and political
morality, did things for which they deserve blame and condemnation; but
if they now sincerely change, and strive for better things, it is unwise
and unjust to bar them from fellowship. So long as they work for evil,
smite them with the sword of the Lord and of Gideon! When they change
and show their faith by their works, remember the words of Ezekiel: "If
the wicked will turn from all the sins he has committed, and keep all my
statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live,
he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they
shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done
he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?
saith the Lord God; and not that he should return from his ways and
live?"
Every man who has been in practical politics grows to realize that
politicians, big and little, are no more all of them bad than they are
all of them good. Many of these men are very bad men indeed, but there
are others among them--and some among those held up to special obloquy,
too--who, even although they may have done much that is evil, also show
traits of sterling worth which many of their critics wholly lack. There
are few men for whom I have ever felt a more cordial and contemptuous
dislike than for some of the bosses and big professional politicians
with whom I have been brought into contact. On the other hand, in
the case of some political leaders who were most bitterly attacked as
bosses, I grew to know certain sides of their characters which inspired
in me a very genuine regard and respect.
To read much of the assault on Senator Hanna, one would have thought
that he was a man incapable of patriotism or of far-sighted devotion to
the country's good. I was brought into intimate contact with him only
during the two and a half years immediately preceding his death. I was
then President, and perforce watched all his actions at close range.
During that time he showed himself to be a man of rugged sincerity of
purpose, of great courage and loyalty, and of unswerving devotion to the
interests of the Nation and the people as he saw those interests. He was
as sincerely desirous of helping laboring men as of helping capitalists.
His ideals were in many ways not my ideals, and there were points where
both by temperament and by conviction we were far apart. Before this
time he had always been unfriendly to me; and I do not think he ever
grew to like me, at any rate not until the very end of his life.
Moreover, I came to the Presidency under circumstances which, if he
had been a smaller man, would inevitably have thrown him into violent
antagonism to me. He was the close and intimate friend of President
McKinley. He was McKinley's devoted ally and follower, and his trusted
adviser, who was in complete sympathy with him. Partly because of this
friendship, his position in the Senate and in the country was unique.
With McKinley's sudden death Senator Hanna found himself bereft of his
dearest friend, while I, who had just come to the Presidency, was in his
view an untried man, whose trustworthiness on many public questions
was at least doubtful. Ordinarily, as has been shown, not only in
our history, but in the history of all other countries, in countless
instances, over and over again, this situation would have meant
suspicion, ill will, and, at the last, open and violent antagonism. Such
was not the result, in this case, primarily because Senator Hanna had in
him the quality that enabled him to meet a serious crisis with dignity,
with power, and with disinterested desire to work for the common good.
Within a few days of my accession he called on me, and with entire
friendliness and obvious sincerity, but also with entire self-respect,
explained that he mourned McKinley as probably no other man did; that he
had not been especially my friend, but that he wished me to understand
that thenceforward, on every question where he could conscientiously
support me, I could count upon his giving me as loyal aid as it was
in his power to render. He added that this must not be understood as
committing him to favor me for nomination and election, because that
matter must be left to take care of itself as events should decide; but
that, aside from this, what he said was to be taken literally; in other
words, he would do his best to make my Administration a success by
supporting me heartily on every point on which he conscientiously could,
and that this I could count upon. He kept his word absolutely. He never
became especially favorable to my nomination; and most of his close
friends became bitterly opposed to me and used every effort to persuade
him to try to bring about my downfall. Most men in his position would
have been tempted to try to make capital at my expense by antagonizing
me and discrediting me so as to make my policies fail, just for the
sake of making them fail. Senator Hanna, on the contrary, did everything
possible to make them succeed. He kept his word in the letter and the
spirit, and on every point on which he felt conscientiously able to
support me he gave me the heartiest and most effective support, and did
all in his power to make my Administration a success; and this with
no hope of any reward for himself, of any gratitude from me, or of any
appreciation by the public at large, but solely because he deemed such
action necessary for the well-being of the country as a whole.
My experience with Senator Quay was similar. I had no personal relations
with him before I was President, and knew nothing of him save by
hearsay. Soon after I became President, Senator Quay called upon me,
told me he had known me very slightly, that he thought most men who
claimed to be reformers were hypocrites, but that he deemed me sincere,
that he thought conditions had become such that aggressive courage
and honesty were necessary in order to remedy them, that he believed I
intended to be a good and efficient President, and that to the best
of his ability he would support me in it making my Administration a
success. He kept his word with absolute good faith. He had been in the
Civil War, and was a medal of honor man; and I think my having been in
the Spanish War gave him at the outset a kindly feeling toward me.
He was also a very well-read man--I owe to him, for instance, my
acquaintance with the writings of the Finnish novelist Topelius. Not
only did he support me on almost every public question in which I was
most interested--including, I am convinced, every one on which he felt
he conscientiously could do so--but he also at the time of his death
gave a striking proof of his disinterested desire to render a service to
certain poor people, and this under conditions in which not only would
he never know if the service were rendered but in which he had no reason
to expect that his part in it would ever be made known to any other man.
Quay was descended from a French voyageur who had some Indian blood in
him. He was proud of this Indian blood, took an especial interest in
Indians, and whenever Indians came to Washington they always called on
him. Once during my Administration a delegation of Iroquois came over
from Canada to call on me at the White House. Their visit had in it
something that was pathetic as well as amusing. They represented the
descendants of the Six Nations, who fled to Canada after Sullivan
harried their towns in the Revolutionary War. Now, a century and a
quarter later, their people thought that they would like to come back
into the United States; and these representatives had called upon me
with the dim hope that perhaps I could give their tribes land on which
they could settle. As soon as they reached Washington they asked Quay to
bring them to call on me, which he did, telling me that of course their
errand was hopeless and that he had explained as much to them, but that
they would like me to extend the courtesy of an interview. At the close
of the interview, which had been conducted with all the solemnities of
calumet and wampum, the Indians filed out. Quay, before following them,
turned to me with his usual emotionless face and said, "Good-by, Mr.
President; this reminds one of the Flight of a Tartar Tribe, doesn't
it?" I answered, "So you're fond of De Quincey, Senator?" to which Quay
responded, "Yes; always liked De Quincey; good-by." And away he went
with the tribesmen, who seemed to have walked out of a remote past.
Quay had become particularly concerned about the Delawares in the Indian
Territory. He felt that the Interior Department did not do them justice.
He also felt that his colleagues of the Senate took no interest in them.
When in the spring of 1904 he lay in his house mortally sick, he sent
me word that he had something important to say to me, and would have
himself carried round to see me. I sent back word not to think of doing
so, and that on my way back from church next Sunday I would stop in
and call on him. This I accordingly did. He was lying in his bed, death
written on his face. He thanked me for coming, and then explained
that, as he was on the point of death and knew he would never return to
Washington--it was late spring and he was about to leave--he wished to
see me to get my personal promise that, after he died, I would myself
look after the interests of the Delaware Indians. He added that he did
not trust the Interior Department--although he knew that I did not share
his views on this point--and that still less did he believe that any of
his colleagues in the Senate would exert themselves in the interests of
the Delawares, and that therefore he wished my personal assurance that I
would personally see that no injustice was done them. I told him I would
do so, and then added, in rather perfunctory fashion, that he must not
take such a gloomy view of himself, that when he got away for the summer
I hoped he would recover and be back all right when Congress opened. A
gleam came into the old fighter's eyes and he answered: "No, I am dying,
and you know it. I don't mind dying; but I do wish it were possible for
me to get off into the great north woods and crawl out on a rock in the
sun and die like a wolf!"
I never saw him again. When he died I sent a telegram of sympathy to his
wife. A paper which constantly preached reform, and which kept up its
circulation by the no less constant practice of slander, a paper which
in theory condemned all public men who violated the eighth commandment,
and in practice subsisted by incessant violation of the ninth, assailed
me for sending my message to the dead man's wife. I knew the editors of
this paper, and the editor who was their predecessor. They had led
lives of bodily ease and the avoidance of bodily risk; they earned their
livelihood by the practice of mendacity for profit; and they delivered
malignant judgment on a dead man who, whatever his faults, had in his
youth freely risked his life for a great ideal, and who when death was
already clutching his breast had spent almost his last breath on behalf
of humble and friendless people whom he had served with disinterested
loyalty.
There is no greater duty than to war on the corrupt and unprincipled
boss, and on the corrupt and unprincipled business man; and for the
matter of that, on the corrupt and unprincipled labor leader also,
and on the corrupt and unprincipled editor, and on any one else who is
corrupt and unprincipled. But where the conditions are such, whether in
politics or in business, that the great majority of men have behaved in
a way which is gradually seen to be improper, but which at one time did
not conflict with the generally accepted morality, then the warfare on
the system should not include warfare on the men themselves, unless
they decline to amend their ways and to dissociate themselves from the
system. There are many good, unimaginative citizens who in politics
or in business act in accordance with accepted standards, in a
matter-of-course way, without questioning these standards; until
something happens which sharply arouses them to the situation, whereupon
they try to work for better things. The proper course in such event is
to let bygones be bygones, and if the men prove by their actions the
sincerity of their conversion, heartily to work with them for the
betterment of business and political conditions.
By the time that I was ending my career as Civil Service Commissioner
I was already growing to understand that mere improvement in political
conditions by itself was not enough. I dimly realized that an even
greater fight must be waged to improve economic conditions, and to
secure social and industrial justice, justice as between individuals
and justice as between classes. I began to see that political effort was
largely valuable as it found expression and resulted in such social and
industrial betterment. I was gradually puzzling out, or trying to puzzle
out, the answers to various questions--some as yet unsolvable to any of
us, but for the solution of which it is the bounden duty of all of us to
work. I had grown to realize very keenly that the duty of the Government
to protect women and children must be extended to include the protection
of all the crushable elements of labor. I saw that it was the affair of
all our people to see that justice obtained between the big corporation
and its employees, and between the big corporation and its smaller
rivals, as well as its customers and the general public. I saw that it
was the affair of all of us, and not only of the employer, if dividends
went up and wages went down; that it was to the interest of all of us
that a full share of the benefit of improved machinery should go to the
workman who used the machinery; and also that it was to the interest of
all of us that each man, whether brain worker or hand worker, should
do the best work of which he was capable, and that there should be
some correspondence between the value of the work and the value of the
reward. It is these and many similar questions which in their sum
make up the great social and industrial problems of to-day, the most
interesting and important of the problems with which our public life
must deal.
In handling these problems I believe that much can be done by the
Government. Furthermore, I believe that, after all that the Government
can do has been done, there will remain as the most vital of all factors
the individual character of the average man and the average woman.
No governmental action can do more than supplement individual action.
Moreover, there must be collective action of kinds distinct from
governmental action. A body of public opinion must be formed, must
make itself felt, and in the end transform, and be transformed by, the
gradual raising of individual standards of conduct.
It is curious to see how difficult it is to make some men understand
that insistence upon one factor does not and must not mean failure fully
to recognize other factors. The selfish individual needs to be taught
that we must now shackle cunning by law exactly as a few centuries back
we shackled force by law. Unrestricted individualism spells ruin to
the individual himself. But so does the elimination of individualism,
whether by law or custom. It is a capital error to fail to recognize the
vital need of good laws. It is also a capital error to believe that good
laws will accomplish anything unless the average man has the right stuff
in him. The toiler, the manual laborer, has received less than justice,
and he must be protected, both by law, by custom, and by the exercise
of his right to increase his wage; and yet to decrease the quantity and
quality of his work will work only evil. There must be a far greater
meed of respect and reward for the hand worker than we now give him, if
our society is to be put on a sound basis; and this respect and reward
cannot be given him unless he is as ambitious to do the best possible
work as is the highest type of brain worker, whether doctor or writer or
artist. There must be a raising of standards, and not a leveling down to
the standard of the poorest and most inefficient. There is urgent need
of intelligent governmental action to assist in making the life of the
man who tills the soil all that it should be, and to see that the manual
worker gets his full share of the reward for what he helps produce; but
if either farmer, mechanic, or day laborer is shiftless or lazy, if he
shirks downright hard work, if he is stupid or self-indulgent, then no
law can save him, and he must give way to a better type.
I suppose that some good people will misunderstand what I say, and
will insist on taking only half of it as representing the whole. Let
me repeat. When I say, that, even after we have all the good laws
necessary, the chief factor in any given man's success or failure must
be that man's own character, it must not be inferred that I am in the
least minimizing the importance of these laws, the real and vital need
for them. The struggle for individual advancement and development can be
brought to naught, or indefinitely retarded, by the absence of law or by
bad law. It can be immeasurably aided by organized effort on the part
of the State. Collective action and individual action, public law and
private character, are both necessary. It is only by a slow and patient
inward transformation such as these laws aid in bringing about that men
are really helped upward in their struggle for a higher and a fuller
life. Recognition of individual character as the most important of all
factors does not mean failure fully to recognize that we must have good
laws, and that we must have our best men in office to enforce these
laws. The Nation collectively will in this way be able to be of real and
genuine service to each of us individually; and, on the other hand,
the wisdom of the collective action will mainly depend on the high
individual average of citizenship.
The relationship of man and woman is the fundamental relationship that
stands at the base of the whole social structure. Much can be done by
law towards putting women on a footing of complete and entire equal
rights with man--including the right to vote, the right to hold and use
property, and the right to enter any profession she desires on the same
terms as a man. Yet when this has been done it will amount to little
unless on the one hand the man himself realizes his duty to the woman,
and unless on the other hand the woman realizes that she has no claim to
rights unless she performs the duties that go with those rights and that
alone justify her in appealing to them. A cruel, selfish, or licentious
man is an abhorrent member of the community; but, after all, his actions
are no worse in the long run than those of the woman who is content to
be a parasite on others, who is cold, selfish, caring for nothing but
frivolous pleasure and ignoble ease. The law of worthy effort, the
law of service for a worthy end, without regard to whether it brings
pleasure or pain, is the only right law of life, whether for man or for
woman. The man must not be selfish; nor, if the woman is wise, will she
let the man grow selfish, and this not only for her own sake but for
his. One of the prime needs is to remember that almost every duty is
composed of two seemingly conflicting elements, and that over-insistence
on one, to the exclusion of the other, may defeat its own end. Any man
who studies the statistics of the birth-rate among the native Americans
of New England, or among the native French of France, needs not to be
told that when prudence and forethought are carried to the point of cold
selfishness and self-indulgence, the race is bound to disappear. Taking
into account the women who for good reasons do not marry, or who when
married are childless or are able to have but one or two children, it is
evident that the married woman able to have children must on an average
have four or the race will not perpetuate itself. This is the mere
statement of a self-evident truth. Yet foolish and self-indulgent
people often resent this statement as if it were in some way possible
by denunciation to reverse the facts of nature; and, on the other hand,
improvident and shiftless people, inconsiderate and brutal people, treat
the statement as if it justified heads of families in having enormous
numbers of badly nourished, badly brought up, and badly cared for
children for whom they make no effort to provide. A man must think
well before he marries. He must be a tender and considerate husband and
realize that there is no other human being to whom he owes so much of
love and regard and consideration as he does to the woman who with pain
bears and with labor rears the children that are his. No words can paint
the scorn and contempt which must be felt by all right-thinking men, not
only for the brutal husband, but for the husband who fails to show full
loyalty and consideration to his wife. Moreover, he must work, he must
do his part in the world. On the other hand, the woman must realize that
she has no more right to shirk the business of wifehood and motherhood
than the man has to shirk his business as breadwinner for the household.
Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to
enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be
paid as highly. Yet normally for the man and the woman whose welfare
is more important than the welfare of any other human beings, the woman
must remain the housemother, the homekeeper, and the man must remain the
breadwinner, the provider for the wife who bears his children and for
the children she brings into the world. No other work is as valuable or
as exacting for either man or woman; it must always, in every healthy
society, be for both man and woman the prime work, the most important
work; normally all other work is of secondary importance, and must
come as an addition to, not a substitute for, this primary work. The
partnership should be one of equal rights, one of love, of self-respect,
and unselfishness, above all a partnership for the performance of the
most vitally important of all duties. The performance of duty, and not
an indulgence in vapid ease and vapid pleasure, is all that makes life
worth while.
Suffrage for women should be looked on from this standpoint. Personally
I feel that it is exactly as much a "right" of women as of men to vote.
But the important point with both men and women is to treat the
exercise of the suffrage as a duty, which, in the long run, must be
well performed to be of the slightest value. I always favored woman's
suffrage, but only tepidly, until my association with women like Jane
Addams and Frances Kellor, who desired it as one means of enabling them
to render better and more efficient service, changed me into a zealous
instead of a lukewarm adherent of the cause--in spite of the fact that
a few of the best women of the same type, women like Mary Antin, did not
favor the movement. A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon
the character of the user. The mere possession of the vote will no more
benefit men and women not sufficiently developed to use it than the
possession of rifles will turn untrained Egyptian fellaheen into
soldiers. This is as true of woman as of man--and no more true.
Universal suffrage in Hayti has not made the Haytians able to govern
themselves in any true sense; and woman suffrage in Utah in no shape or
way affected the problem of polygamy. I believe in suffrage for women
in America, because I think they are fit for it. I believe for women,
as for men, more in the duty of fitting one's self to do well and wisely
with the ballot than in the naked right to cast the ballot.
I wish that people would read books like the novels and stories, at once
strong and charming, of Henry Bordeaux, books like Kathleen Norris's
"Mother," and Cornelia Comer's "Preliminaries," and would use these,
and other such books, as tracts, now and then! Perhaps the following
correspondence will give a better idea than I can otherwise give of the
problems that in everyday life come before men and women, and of the
need that the man shall show himself unselfish and considerate, and do
his full share of the joint duty:
January 3, 1913.
_Colonel Theodore Roosevelt_:
Dear Sir--I suppose you are willing to stand sponsor for the assertion
that the women of the country are not doing their duty unless they have
large families. I wonder if you know the real reason, after all. Society
and clubs are held largely to blame, but society really takes in so few
people, after all. I thought, when I got married at twenty, that it was
the proper thing to have a family, and, as we had very little of this
world's goods, also thought it the thing to do all the necessary work
for them. I have had nine children, did all my own work, including
washing, ironing, house-cleaning, and the care of the little ones as
they came along, which was about every two years; also sewed everything
they wore, including trousers for the boys and caps and jackets for the
girls while little. I also helped them all in their school work, and
started them in music, etc. But as they grew older I got behind the
times. I never belonged to a club or a society or lodge, nor went to any
one's house scarcely; there wasn't time. In consequence, I knew nothing
that was going on in the town, much less the events of the country, and
at the same time my husband kept growing in wisdom and knowledge,
from mixing with men and hearing topics of the times discussed. At the
beginning of our married life I had just as quick a mind to grasp things
as he did, and had more school education, having graduated from a three
years' high school. My husband more and more declined to discuss things
with me; as he said, "I didn't know anything about it." When I'd ask
he'd say, "Oh, you wouldn't understand if I'd tell you." So here I am,
at forty-five years, hopelessly dull and uninteresting, while he can
mix with the brightest minds in the country as an equal. He's a strong
Progressive man, took very active part in the late campaign, etc. I
am also Progressive, and tried my best, after so many years of shut-in
life, to grasp the ideas you stood for, and read everything I could find
during the summer and fall. But I've been out of touch with people too
long now, and my husband would much rather go and talk to some woman who
hasn't had any children, because she knows things (I am not specifying
any particular woman). I simply bore him to death because I'm not
interesting. Now, tell me, how was it my fault? I was only doing what
I thought was my duty. No woman can keep up with things who never talks
with any one but young children. As soon as my children grew up they
took the same attitude as their father, and frequently say, "Oh, mother
doesn't know." They look up to and admire their father because he's a
man of the world and knows how to act when he goes out. How can I urge
my daughters now to go and raise large families? It means by the time
you have lost your figure and charm for them they are all ashamed of
you. Now, as a believer in woman's rights, do a little talking to the
men as to their duties to their wives, or else refrain from urging
us women to have children. I am only one of thousands of middle-class
respectable women who give their lives to raise a nice family, and then
who become bitter from the injustice done us. Don't let this go into the
waste-basket, but think it over.
Yours respectfully,
---- ----.
New York, January 11, 1913.
_My Dear Mrs. ----_:
Most certainly your letter will not go into the waste-paper basket. I
shall think it over and show it to Mrs. Roosevelt. Will you let me
say, in the first place, that a woman who can write such a letter is
certainly not "hopelessly dull and uninteresting"! If the facts are as
you state, then I do not wonder that you feel bitterly and that you
feel that the gravest kind of injustice has been done you. I have always
tried to insist to men that they should do their duty to the women even
more than the women to them. Now I hardly like to write specifically
about your husband, because you might not like it yourself. It seems to
me almost incredible that any man who is the husband of a woman who has
borne him nine children should not feel that they and he are lastingly
her debtors. You say that you have had nine children, that you did all
your own work, including washing, ironing, house-cleaning, and the care
of the little ones as they came along; that you sewed everything they
wore, including trousers for the boys and caps and jackets for the girls
while little; that you helped them all in their school work and started
them in music; but that as they grew older you got behind the times,
that you never belonged to a club or society or lodge, nor went to any
one's house, as you hardly had time to do so; and that in consequence
your husband outgrew you, and that your children look up to him and not
to you and feel that they have outgrown you. If these facts are so, you
have done a great and wonderful work, and the only explanation I can
possibly give of the attitude you describe on the part of your husband
and children is that they do not understand what it is that you have
done. I emphatically believe in unselfishness, but I also believe that
it is a mistake to let other people grow selfish, even when the other
people are husband and children.
Now, I suggest that you take your letter to me, of which I send you back
a copy, and this letter, and then select out of your family the one with
whom you feel most sympathy, whether it is your husband or one of your
children. Show the two letters to him or her, and then have a frank talk
about the matter. If any man, as you say, becomes ashamed of his wife
because she has lost her figure in bearing his children, then that man
is a hound and has every cause to be ashamed of himself. I am sending
you a little book called "Mother," by Kathleen Norris, which will give
you my views on the matter. Of course there are base and selfish men,
just as there are, although I believe in smaller number, base and
selfish women. Man and woman alike should profit by the teachings in
such a story as this of "Mother."
Sincerely yours,
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
January 21, 1913.
_Colonel Theodore Roosevelt_:
My dear Sir--Your letter came as a surprise, for I wasn't expecting
an answer. The next day the book came, and I thank you for your ready
sympathy and understanding. I feel as though you and Mrs. Roosevelt
would think I was hardly loyal to my husband and children; but knowing
of no other way to bring the idea which was so strong in my mind to your
notice, I told my personal story. If it will, in a small measure, be the
means of helping some one else by molding public opinion, through you, I
shall be content. You have helped me more than you know. Just having you
interested is as good as a tonic, and braces me up till I feel as though
I shall refuse to be "laid on the shelf." . . . To think that you'd
bother to send me a book. I shall always treasure it both for the text
of the book and the sender. I read it with absorbing interest. The
mother was so splendid. She was ideal. The situations are so startlingly
real, just like what happens here every day with variations.
---- ----.
A narrative of facts is often more convincing than a homily; and these
two letters of my correspondent carry their own lesson.
Parenthetically, let me remark that whenever a man thinks that he
has outgrown the woman who is his mate, he will do well carefully to
consider whether his growth has not been downward instead of upward,
whether the facts are not merely that he has fallen away from his wife's
standard of refinement and of duty.
CHAPTER VI
THE NEW YORK POLICE
In the spring of 1895 I was appointed by Mayor Strong Police
Commissioner, and I served as President of the Police Commission of New
York for the two following years. Mayor Strong had been elected Mayor
the preceding fall, when the general anti-Democratic wave of that year
coincided with one of the city's occasional insurrections of virtue and
consequent turning out of Tammany from municipal control. He had been
elected on a non-partisan ticket--usually (although not always) the
right kind of ticket in municipal affairs, provided it represents not
a bargain among factions but genuine non-partisanship with the genuine
purpose to get the right men in control of the city government on a
platform which deals with the needs of the average men and women, the
men and women who work hard and who too often live hard. I was appointed
with the distinct understanding that I was to administer the Police
Department with entire disregard of partisan politics, and only from the
standpoint of a good citizen interested in promoting the welfare of all
good citizens. My task, therefore, was really simple. Mayor Strong had
already offered me the Street-Cleaning Department. For this work I did
not feel that I had any especial fitness. I resolutely refused to accept
the position, and the Mayor ultimately got a far better man for his
purpose in Colonel George F. Waring. The work of the Police Department,
however, was in my line, and I was glad to undertake it.
The man who was closest to me throughout my two years in the Police
Department was Jacob Riis. By this time, as I have said, I was
getting our social, industrial, and political needs into pretty fair
perspective. I was still ignorant of the extent to which big men of
great wealth played a mischievous part in our industrial and social
life, but I was well awake to the need of making ours in good faith
both an economic and an industrial as well as a political democracy. I
already knew Jake Riis, because his book "How the Other Half Lives" had
been to me both an enlightenment and an inspiration for which I felt I
could never be too grateful. Soon after it was written I had called at
his office to tell him how deeply impressed I was by the book, and that
I wished to help him in any practical way to try to make things a little
better. I have always had a horror of words that are not translated
into deeds, of speech that does not result in action--in other words,
I believe in realizable ideals and in realizing them, in preaching what
can be practiced and then in practicing it. Jacob Riis had drawn an
indictment of the things that were wrong, pitifully and dreadfully
wrong, with the tenement homes and the tenement lives of our
wage-workers. In his book he had pointed out how the city government,
and especially those connected with the departments of police and
health, could aid in remedying some of the wrongs.
As President of the Police Board I was also a member of the Health
Board. In both positions I felt that with Jacob Riis's guidance I would
be able to put a goodly number of his principles into actual effect.
He and I looked at life and its problems from substantially the same
standpoint. Our ideals and principles and purposes, and our beliefs as
to the methods necessary to realize them, were alike. After the election
in 1894 I had written him a letter which ran in part as follows:
It is very important to the city to have a business man's Mayor, but it
is more important to have a workingman's Mayor; and I want Mr. Strong to
be that also. . . . It is an excellent thing to have rapid transit, but
it is a good deal more important, if you look at matters with a proper
perspective, to have ample playgrounds in the poorer quarters of the
city, and to take the children off the streets so as to prevent them
growing up toughs. In the same way it is an admirable thing to have
clean streets; indeed, it is an essential thing to have them; but it
would be a better thing to have our schools large enough to give ample
accommodation to all who should be pupils and to provide them with
proper playgrounds.
And I added, while expressing my regret that I had not been able to
accept the street-cleaning commissionership, that "I would have
been delighted to smash up the corrupt contractors and put the
street-cleaning force absolutely out of the domain of politics."
This was nineteen years ago, but it makes a pretty good platform in
municipal politics even to-day--smash corruption, take the municipal
service out of the domain of politics, insist upon having a Mayor who
shall be a workingman's Mayor even more than a business man's Mayor, and
devote all attention possible to the welfare of the children.
Therefore, as I viewed it, there were two sides to the work: first, the
actual handling of the Police Department; second, using my position to
help in making the city a better place in which to live and work for
those to whom the conditions of life and labor were hardest. The two
problems were closely connected; for one thing never to be forgotten in
striving to better the conditions of the New York police force is the
connection between the standard of morals and behavior in that force and
the general standard of morals and behavior in the city at large. The
form of government of the Police Department at that time was such as
to make it a matter of extreme difficulty to get good results. It
represented that device of old-school American political thought, the
desire to establish checks and balances so elaborate that no man shall
have power enough to do anything very bad. In practice this always means
that no man has power enough to do anything good, and that what is bad
is done anyhow.
In most positions the "division of powers" theory works unmitigated
mischief. The only way to get good service is to give somebody power to
render it, facing the fact that power which will enable a man to do
a job well will also necessarily enable him to do it ill if he is the
wrong kind of man. What is normally needed is the concentration in the
hands of one man, or of a very small body of men, of ample power to
enable him or them to do the work that is necessary; and then the
devising of means to hold these men fully responsible for the exercise
of that power by the people. This of course means that, if the people
are willing to see power misused, it will be misused. But it also means
that if, as we hold, the people are fit for self-government--if, in
other words, our talk and our institutions are not shams--we will get
good government. I do not contend that my theory will automatically
bring good government. I do contend that it will enable us to get as
good government as we deserve, and that the other way will not.
The then government of the Police Department was so devised as to render
it most difficult to accomplish anything good, while the field for
intrigue and conspiracy was limitless. There were four Commissioners,
two supposed to belong to one party and two to the other, although, as
a matter of fact, they never divided on party lines. There was a Chief,
appointed by the Commissioners, but whom they could not remove without a
regular trial subject to review by the courts of law. This Chief and
any one Commissioner had power to hold up most of the acts of the other
three Commissioners. It was made easy for the four Commissioners to come
to a deadlock among themselves; and if this danger was avoided, it was
easy for one Commissioner, by intriguing with the Chief, to bring the
other three to a standstill. The Commissioners were appointed by the
Mayor, but he could not remove them without the assent of the Governor,
who was usually politically opposed to him. In the same way the
Commissioners could appoint the patrolmen, but they could not remove
them, save after a trial which went up for review to the courts.
As was inevitable under our system of law procedure, this meant that the
action of the court was apt to be determined by legal technicalities.
It was possible to dismiss a man from the service for quite insufficient
reasons, and to provide against the reversal of the sentence, if the
technicalities of procedure were observed. But the worst criminals
were apt to be adroit men, against whom it was impossible to get legal
evidence which a court could properly consider in a criminal trial
(and the mood of the court might be to treat the case as if it were a
criminal trial), although it was easy to get evidence which would render
it not merely justifiable but necessary for a man to remove them from
his private employ--and surely the public should be as well treated as
a private employer. Accordingly, most of the worst men put out were
reinstated by the courts; and when the Mayor attempted to remove one of
my colleagues who made it his business to try to nullify the work done
by the rest of us, the Governor sided with the recalcitrant Commissioner
and refused to permit his removal.
Nevertheless, an astounding quantity of work was done in reforming the
force. We had a good deal of power, anyhow; we exercised it to the full;
and we accomplished some things by assuming the appearance of a power
which we did not really possess.
The first fight I made was to keep politics absolutely out of the force;
and not only politics, but every kind of improper favoritism. Doubtless
in making thousands of appointments and hundreds of promotions there
were men who contrived to use influence of which I was ignorant. But
these cases must have been few and far between. As far as was humanly
possible, the appointments and promotions were made without regard to
any question except the fitness of the man and the needs of the
service. As Civil Service Commissioner I had been instructing heads
of departments and bureaus how to get men appointed without regard to
politics, and assuring them that by following our methods they
would obtain first-class results. As Police Commissioner I was able
practically to apply my own teachings.
The appointments to the police force were made as I have described
in the last chapter. We paid not the slightest attention to a man's
politics or creed, or where he was born, so long as he was an American
citizen; and on an average we obtained far and away the best men
that had ever come into the Police Department. It was of course very
difficult at first to convince both the politicians and the people that
we really meant what we said, and that every one really would have a
fair trial. There had been in previous years the most widespread
and gross corruption in connection with every activity in the Police
Department, and there had been a regular tariff for appointments
and promotions. Many powerful politicians and many corrupt outsiders
believed that in some way or other it would still be possible to secure
appointments by corrupt and improper methods, and many good citizens
felt the same conviction. I endeavored to remove the impression from the
minds of both sets of people by giving the widest publicity to what we
were doing and how we were doing it, by making the whole process open
and aboveboard, and by making it evident that we would probe to the
bottom every charge of corruption.
For instance, I received visits at one time from a Catholic priest, and
at another time from a Methodist clergyman, who had parishioners who
wished to enter the police force, but who did not believe they could
get in save by the payment of money or through political pressure. The
priest was running a temperance lyceum in connection with his church,
and he wished to know if there would be a chance for some of the young
men who belonged to that lyceum. The Methodist clergyman came from a
little patch of old native America which by a recent extension had been
taken within the limits of the huge, polyglot, pleasure-loving city. His
was a small church, most of the members being shipwrights, mechanics,
and sailormen from the local coasters. In each case I assured my visitor
that we wanted on the force men of the exact type which he said he could
furnish. I also told him that I was as anxious as he was to find out
if there was any improper work being done in connection with the
examinations, and that I would like him to get four or five of his men
to take the examinations without letting me know their names. Then,
whether the men failed or succeeded, he and I would take their papers
and follow them through every stage so that we could tell at once
whether they had been either improperly favored or improperly
discriminated against. This was accordingly done, and in each case my
visitor turned up a few weeks later, his face wreathed in smiles, to
say that his candidates had passed and that everything was evidently all
straight. During my two years as President of the Commission I think
I appointed a dozen or fifteen members of that little Methodist
congregation, and certainly twice that number of men from the temperance
lyceum of the Catholic church in question. They were all men of the
very type I most wished to see on the force--men of strong physique and
resolute temper, sober, self-respecting, self-reliant, with a strong
wish to improve themselves.
Occasionally I would myself pick out a man and tell him to take the
examination. Thus one evening I went down to speak in the Bowery at
the Young Men's Institute, a branch of the Young Men's Christian
Association, at the request of Mr. Cleveland H. Dodge. While there
he told me he wished to show me a young Jew who had recently, by an
exhibition of marked pluck and bodily prowess, saved some women and
children from a burning building. The young Jew, whose name was
Otto Raphael, was brought up to see me; a powerful fellow, with a
good-humored, intelligent face. I asked him about his education, and
told him to try the examination. He did, passed, was appointed, and
made an admirable officer; and he and all his family, wherever they may
dwell, have been close friends of mine ever since. Otto Raphael was a
genuine East Sider. He and I were both "straight New York," to use the
vernacular of our native city. To show our community of feeling and our
grasp of the facts of life, I may mention that we were almost the only
men in the Police Department who picked Fitzsimmons as a winner against
Corbett. Otto's parents had come over from Russia, and not only in
social standing but in pay a policeman's position meant everything to
him. It enabled Otto to educate his little brothers and sisters who had
been born in this country, and to bring over from Russia two or three
kinsfolk who had perforce been left behind.
Rather curiously, it was by no means as easy to keep politics and
corruption out of the promotions as out of the entrance examinations.
This was because I could take complete charge of the entrance
examinations myself; and, moreover, they were largely automatic. In
promotions, on the other hand, the prime element was the record and
capacity of the officer, and for this we had largely to rely upon the
judgment of the man's immediate superiors. This doubtless meant that in
certain cases that judgment was given for improper reasons.
However, there were cases where I could act on personal knowledge. One
thing that we did was to endeavor to recognize gallantry. We did not
have to work a revolution in the force as to courage in the way that
we had to work a revolution in honesty. They had always been brave
in dealing with riotous and violent criminals. But they had gradually
become very corrupt. Our great work, therefore, was the stamping out of
dishonesty, and this work we did thoroughly, so far as the ridiculous
bi-partisan law under which the Department was administered would
permit. But we were anxious that, while stamping out what was evil in
the force, we should keep and improve what was good. While warring
on dishonesty, we made every effort to increase efficiency. It has
unfortunately been shown by sad experience that at times a police
organization which is free from the taint of corruption may yet show
itself weak in some great crisis or unable to deal with the more
dangerous kinds of criminals. This we were determined to prevent.
Our efforts were crowned with entire success. The improvement in the
efficiency of the force went hand in hand with the improvement in
its honesty. The men in uniform and the men in plain clothes--the
detectives--did better work than ever before. The aggregate of crimes
where punishment followed the commission of the crime increased, while
the aggregate of crimes where the criminal escaped punishment decreased.
Every discredited politician, every sensational newspaper, and every
timid fool who could be scared by clamor was against us. All three
classes strove by every means in their power to show that in making the
force honest we had impaired its efficiency; and by their utterances
they tended to bring about the very condition of things against which
they professed to protest. But we went steadily along the path we
had marked out. The fight was hard, and there was plenty of worry and
anxiety, but we won. I was appointed in May, 1895. In February, 1897,
three months before I resigned to become Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, the Judge who charged the Grand Jury of New York County was able
to congratulate them on the phenomenal decrease in crime, especially
of the violent sort. This decrease was steady during the two years.
The police, after the reform policy was thoroughly tried, proved more
successful than ever before in protecting life and property and in
putting down crime and criminal vice.
The part played by the recognition and reward of actual personal prowess
among the members of the police force in producing this state of affairs
was appreciable, though there were many other factors that combined to
bring about the betterment. The immense improvement in discipline
by punishing all offenders without mercy, no matter how great their
political or personal influence; the resolute warfare against every kind
of criminal who had hitherto been able corruptly to purchase protection;
the prompt recognition of ability even where it was entirely unconnected
with personal prowess--all these were elements which had enormous weight
in producing the change. Mere courage and daring, and the rewarding of
courage and daring, cannot supply the lack of discipline, of ability,
of honesty. But they are of vital consequence, nevertheless. No police
force is worth anything if its members are not intelligent and honest;
but neither is it worth anything unless its members are brave, hardy,
and well disciplined.
We showed recognition of daring and of personal prowess in two ways:
first, by awarding a medal or a certificate in remembrance of the deed;
and, second, by giving it weight in making any promotion, especially to
the lower grades. In the higher grades--in all promotions above that of
sergeant, for instance--resolute and daring courage cannot normally
be considered as a factor of determining weight in making promotions;
rather is it a quality the lack of which unfits a man for promotion. For
in the higher places we must assume the existence of such a quality in
any fit candidate, and must make the promotion with a view to the man's
energy, executive capacity, and power of command. In the lower grades,
however, marked gallantry should always be taken into account in
deciding among different candidates for any given place.
During our two years' service we found it necessary over a hundred times
to single out men for special mention because of some feat of heroism.
The heroism usually took one of four forms: saving somebody from
drowning, saving somebody from a burning building, stopping a
runaway team, or arresting some violent lawbreaker under exceptional
circumstances. To illustrate our method of action, I will take two of
the first promotions made after I became Commissioner. One case was
that of an old fellow, a veteran of the Civil War, who was at the time
a roundsman. I happened to notice one day that he had saved a woman from
drowning, and had him summoned so that I might look into the matter.
The old fellow brought up his record before me, and showed not a little
nervousness and agitation; for it appeared that he had grown gray in the
service, had performed feat after feat of heroism, but had no political
backing of any account. No heed had ever been paid him. He was one of
the quiet men who attend solely to duty, and although a Grand Army
man, he had never sought to use influence of any kind. Now, at last, he
thought there was a chance for him. He had been twenty-two years on
the force, and during that time had saved some twenty-five persons from
death by drowning, varying the performance two or three times by
saving persons from burning buildings. Twice Congress had passed laws
especially to empower the then Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman,
to give him a medal for distinguished gallantry in saving life. The
Life-Saving Society had also given him its medal, and so had the Police
Department. There was not a complaint in all his record against him
for any infraction of duty, and he was sober and trustworthy. He was
entitled to his promotion; and he got it, there and then. It may be
worth mentioning that he kept on saving life after he was given his
sergeantcy. On October 21, 1896, he again rescued a man from drowning.
It was at night, nobody else was in the neighborhood, and the dock from
which he jumped was in absolute darkness, and he was ten minutes in the
water, which was very cold. He was fifty-five years old when he saved
this man. It was the twenty-ninth person whose life he had saved during
his twenty-three years' service in the Department.
The other man was a patrolman whom we promoted to roundsman for activity
in catching a burglar under rather peculiar circumstances. I happened to
note his getting a burglar one week. Apparently he had fallen into the
habit, for he got another next week. In the latter case the burglar
escaped from the house soon after midnight, and ran away toward Park
Avenue, with the policeman in hot chase. The New York Central Railroad
runs under Park Avenue, and there is a succession of openings in the
top of the tunnel. Finding that the policeman was gaining on him, the
burglar took a desperate chance and leaped down one of these openings,
at the risk of breaking his neck. Now the burglar was running for his
liberty, and it was the part of wisdom for him to imperil life or limb;
but the policeman was merely doing his duty, and nobody could have
blamed him for not taking the jump. However, he jumped; and in this
particular case the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the unrighteous. The
burglar had the breath knocked out of him, and the "cop" didn't.
When his victim could walk, the officer trotted him around to the
station-house; and a week after I had the officer up and promoted him,
for he was sober, trustworthy, and strictly attentive to duty.
Now I think that any decent man of reasonable intelligence will agree
that we were quite right in promoting men in cases like these, and quite
right in excluding politics from promotions. Yet it was because of our
consistently acting in this manner, resolutely warring on dishonesty
and on that peculiar form of baseness which masquerades as "practical"
politics, and steadily refusing to pay heed to any consideration
except the good of the service and the city, and the merits of the men
themselves, that we drew down upon our heads the bitter and malignant
animosity of the bread-and-butter spoils politicians. They secured the
repeal of the Civil Service Law by the State Legislature. They attempted
and almost succeeded in the effort to legislate us out of office. They
joined with the baser portion of the sensational press in every species
of foul, indecent falsehood and slander as to what we were doing. They
attempted to seduce or frighten us by every species of intrigue and
cajolery, of promise of political reward and threat of political
punishment. They failed in their purpose. I believe in political
organizations, and I believe in practical politics. If a man is
not practical, he is of no use anywhere. But when politicians treat
practical politics as foul politics, and when they turn what ought to
be a necessary and useful political organization into a machine run by
professional spoilsmen of low morality in their own interest, then it
is time to drive the politician from public life, and either to mend or
destroy the machine, according as the necessity may determine.
We promoted to roundsman a patrolman, with an already excellent record,
for gallantry shown in a fray which resulted in the death of his
antagonist. He was after a gang of toughs who had just waylaid, robbed,
and beaten a man. They scattered and he pursued the ringleader. Running
hard, he gained on his man, whereupon the latter suddenly turned and
fired full in his face. The officer already had his revolver drawn,
and the two shots rang out almost together. The policeman was within
a fraction of death, for the bullet from his opponent's pistol went
through his helmet and just broke the skin of his head. His own aim was
truer, and the man he was after fell dead, shot through the heart. I
may explain that I have not the slightest sympathy with any policy which
tends to put the policeman at the mercy of a tough, or which deprives
him of efficient weapons. While Police Commissioner we punished any
brutality by the police with such immediate severity that all cases of
brutality practically came to an end. No decent citizen had anything
to fear from the police during the two years of my service. But we
consistently encouraged the police to prove that the violent criminal
who endeavored to molest them or to resist arrest, or to interfere with
them in the discharge of their duty, was himself in grave jeopardy; and
we had every "gang" broken up and the members punished with whatever
severity was necessary. Of course where possible the officer merely
crippled the criminal who was violent.
One of the things that we did while in office was to train the men in
the use of the pistol. A school of pistol practice was established,
and the marksmanship of the force was wonderfully improved. The man
in charge of the school was a roundsman, Petty, whom we promoted to
sergeant. He was one of the champion revolver shots of the country,
and could hit just about where he aimed. Twice he was forced to fire at
criminals who resisted arrest, and in each case he hit his man in the
arm or leg, simply stopping him without danger to his life.
In May, 1896, a number of burglaries occurred far uptown, in the
neighborhood of One Hundred and Fifty-sixth Street and Union Avenue.
Two officers were sent out each night to patrol the streets in plain
clothes. About two o'clock on the morning of May 8 they caught a glimpse
of two men loitering about a large corner house, and determined to
make them explain their actions. In order to cut off their escape, one
officer went down one street and one the other. The first officer, whose
name was Ryan, found the two men at the gateway of the side entrance of
the house, and hailed to know what they were doing. Without answering,
they turned and ran toward Prospect Avenue, with Ryan in close pursuit.
After running about one hundred feet, one of them turned and fired three
shots at Ryan, but failed to hit him. The two then separated, and the
man who had done the shooting escaped. The other man, whose name proved
to be O'Connor, again took to his heels, with Ryan still after him;
they turned the corner and met the other officer, whose name was Reid,
running as hard as he could toward the shooting. When O'Connor saw
himself cut off by Reid, he fired at his new foe, the bullet cutting
Reid's overcoat on the left shoulder. Reid promptly fired in return,
his bullet going into O'Connor's neck and causing him to turn a complete
somersault. The two officers then cared for their prisoner until the
ambulance arrived, when he was taken to the hospital and pronounced
mortally wounded. His companion was afterward caught, and they turned
out to be the very burglars for whom Reid and Ryan had been on the
lookout.
In December, 1896, one of our officers was shot. A row occurred in a
restaurant, which ended in two young toughs drawing their revolvers
and literally running amuck, shooting two or three men. A policeman,
attracted by the noise, ran up and seized one of them, whereupon the
other shot him in the mouth, wounding him badly. Nevertheless, the
officer kept his prisoner and carried him to the station-house. The
tough who had done the shooting ran out and was seized by another
officer. The tough fired at him, the bullet passing through the
officer's overcoat, but he was promptly knocked down, disarmed, and
brought to the station-house. In this case neither policeman used his
revolver, and each brought in his man, although the latter was armed and
resisted arrest, one of the officers taking in his prisoner after having
been himself severely wounded. A lamentable feature of the case was that
this same officer was a man who, though capable of great gallantry, was
also given to shirking his work, and we were finally obliged to dismiss
him from the force, after passing over two or three glaring misdeeds in
view of his record for courage.
We promoted another man on account of finding out accidentally that he
had performed a notable feat, which he had forborne even to mention,
so that his name never came on the roll of honor. Late at night, while
patrolling a lonely part of his post, he came upon three young toughs
who had turned highwaymen and were robbing a peddler. He ran in at once
with his night-stick, whereupon the toughs showed fight, and one of
them struck at him with a bludgeon, breaking his left hand. The officer,
however, made such good use of his night-stick that he knocked down two
of his assailants, whereupon the third ran away, and he brought both of
his prisoners to the station-house. Then he went round to the hospital,
had his broken hand set in plaster, and actually reported for duty at
the next tour, without losing one hour. He was a quiet fellow, with a
record free from complaints, and we made him roundsman.
The mounted squad have, of course, many opportunities to distinguish
themselves in stopping runaways. In May, 1895, a mounted policeman
named Heyer succeeded in stopping a runaway at Kingsbridge under rather
noteworthy circumstances. Two men were driving in a buggy, when the
horse stumbled, and in recovering himself broke the head-stall, so that
the bridle fell off. The horse was a spirited trotter, and at once ran
away at full speed. Heyer saw the occurrence, and followed at a run.
When he got alongside the runaway he seized him by the forelock, guided
him dexterously over the bridge, preventing him from running into the
numerous wagons that were on the road, and finally forced him up a hill
and into a wagon-shed. Three months later this same officer saved a man
from drowning.
The members of the bicycle squad, which was established shortly after we
took office, soon grew to show not only extraordinary proficiency on
the wheel, but extraordinary daring. They frequently stopped runaways,
wheeling alongside of them, and grasping the horses while going at full
speed; and, what was even more remarkable, they managed not only to
overtake but to jump into the vehicle and capture, on two or three
different occasions, men who were guilty of reckless driving, and who
fought violently in resisting arrest. They were picked men, being young
and active, and any feat of daring which could be accomplished on the
wheel they were certain to accomplish.
Three of the best riders of the bicycle squad, whose names and records
happen to occur to me, were men of the three ethnic strains most
strongly represented in the New York police force, being respectively of
native American, German, and Irish parentage.
The German was a man of enormous power, and he was able to stop each
of the many runaways he tackled without losing his wheel. Choosing his
time, he would get alongside the horse and seize the bit in his left
hand, keeping his right on the crossbar of the wheel. By degrees he then
got the animal under control. He never failed to stop it, and he
never lost his wheel. He also never failed to overtake any "scorcher,"
although many of these were professional riders who deliberately
violated the law to see if they could not get away from him; for the
wheelmen soon get to know the officers whose beats they cross.
The Yankee, though a tall, powerful man and a very good rider, scarcely
came up to the German in either respect; he possessed exceptional
ability, however, as well as exceptional nerve and coolness, and he also
won his promotion. He stopped about as many runaways; but when the
horse was really panic-stricken he usually had to turn his wheel loose,
getting a firm grip on the horse's reins and then kicking his wheel
so that it would fall out of the way of injury from the wagon. On one
occasion he had a fight with a drunken and reckless driver who was
urging to top speed a spirited horse. He first got hold of the horse,
whereupon the driver lashed both him and the beast, and the animal,
already mad with terror, could not be stopped. The officer had of course
kicked away his wheel at the beginning, and after being dragged along
for some distance he let go the beast and made a grab at the wagon.
The driver hit him with his whip, but he managed to get in, and after
a vigorous tussle overcame his man, and disposed of him by getting him
down and sitting on him. This left his hands free for the reins. By
degrees he got the horse under control, and drove the wagon round to the
station-house, still sitting on his victim. "I jounced up and down
on him to keep him quiet when he turned ugly," he remarked to me
parenthetically. Having disposed of the wagon, he took the man round to
the court, and on the way the prisoner suddenly sprang on him and tried
to throttle him. Convinced at last that patience had ceased to be a
virtue, he quieted his assailant with a smash on the head that took all
the fight out of him until he was brought before the judge and fined.
Like the other "bicycle cops," this officer made a number of arrests of
criminals, such as thieves, highwaymen, and the like, in addition to his
natural prey--scorchers, runaways, and reckless drivers.
The third member of the trio, a tall, sinewy man with flaming red hair,
which rather added to the terror he inspired in evil-doers, was usually
stationed in a tough part of the city, where there was a tendency to
crimes of violence, and incidentally an occasional desire to harass
wheelmen. The officer was as good off his wheel as on it, and he
speedily established perfect order on his beat, being always willing to
"take chances" in getting his man. He was no respecter of persons,
and when it became his duty to arrest a wealthy man for persistently
refusing to have his carriage lamps lighted after nightfall, he brought
him in with the same indifference that he displayed in arresting a
street-corner tough who had thrown a brick at a wheelman.
Occasionally a policeman would perform work which ordinarily comes
within the domain of the fireman. In November, 1896, an officer who had
previously saved a man from death by drowning added to his record by
saving five persons from burning. He was at the time asleep, when he was
aroused by a fire in a house a few doors away. Running over the roofs
of the adjoining houses until he reached the burning building, he
found that on the fourth floor the flames had cut off all exit from an
apartment in which there were four women, two of them over fifty, and
one of the others with a six-months-old baby. The officer ran down to
the adjoining house, broke open the door of the apartment on the same
floor--the fourth--and crept out on the coping, less than three inches
wide, that ran from one house to the other. Being a large and very
powerful and active man, he managed to keep hold of the casing of the
window with one hand, and with the other to reach to the window of the
apartment where the women and child were. The firemen appeared, and
stretched a net underneath. The crowd that was looking on suddenly
became motionless and silent. Then, one by one, he drew the women out of
their window, and, holding them tight against the wall, passed them into
the other window. The exertion in such an attitude was great, and he
strained himself badly; but he possessed a practical mind, and as soon
as the women were saved he began a prompt investigation of the cause
of the fire, and arrested two men whose carelessness, as was afterward
proved, caused it.
Now and then a man, though a brave man, proved to be slack or stupid or
vicious, and we could make nothing out of him; but hardihood and courage
were qualities upon which we insisted and which we rewarded. Whenever
I see the police force attacked and vilified, I always remember my
association with it. The cases I have given above are merely instances
chosen almost at random among hundreds of others. Men such as those
I have mentioned have the right stuff in them! If they go wrong, the
trouble is with the system, and therefore with us, the citizens, for
permitting the system to go unchanged. The conditions of New York life
are such as to make the police problem therein more difficult than in
any other of the world's great capitals. I am often asked if policemen
are honest. I believe that the great majority of them want to be honest
and will be honest whenever they are given the chance. The New York
police force is a body thoroughly representative of the great city
itself. As I have said above, the predominant ethnic strains in it are,
first, the men of Irish birth or parentage, and, following these, the
native Americans, usually from the country districts, and the men of
German birth or parentage. There are also Jews, Scandinavians, Italians,
Slavs, and men of other nationalities. All soon become welded into one
body. They are physically a fine lot. Moreover, their instincts are
right; they are game, they are alert and self-reliant, they prefer to
act squarely if they are allowed so to act. All that they need is to be
given the chance to prove themselves honest, brave, and self-respecting.
The law at present is much better than in our day, so far as governing
the force is concerned. There is now a single Commissioner, and the
Mayor has complete power over him. The Mayor, through his Commissioner,
now has power to keep the police force on a good level of conduct if
with resolution and common sense he insists on absolute honesty within
the force and at the same time heartily supports it against the criminal
classes. To weaken the force in its dealings with gangs and toughs
and criminals generally is as damaging as to permit dishonesty, and,
moreover, works towards dishonesty. But while under the present law very
much improvement can be worked, there is need of change of the law which
will make the Police Commissioner a permanent, non-partisan official,
holding office so long as he proves thoroughly fit for the job,
completely independent of the politicians and privileged interests, and
with complete power over the force. This means that there must be the
right law, and the right public opinion back of the law.
The many-sided ethnic character of the force now and then gives rise to,
or affords opportunity for, queer happenings. Occasionally it enables
one to meet emergencies in the best possible fashion. While I was Police
Commissioner an anti-Semitic preacher from Berlin, Rector Ahlwardt, came
over to New York to preach a crusade against the Jews. Many of the New
York Jews were much excited and asked me to prevent him from speaking
and not to give him police protection. This, I told them, was
impossible; and if possible would have been undesirable because it
would have made him a martyr. The proper thing to do was to make him
ridiculous. Accordingly I detailed for his protection a Jew sergeant and
a score or two of Jew policemen. He made his harangue against the Jews
under the active protection of some forty policemen, every one of them a
Jew! It was the most effective possible answer; and incidentally it was
an object-lesson to our people, whose greatest need it is to learn that
there must be no division by class hatred, whether this hatred be that
of creed against creed, nationality against nationality, section against
section, or men of one social or industrial condition against men
of another social and industrial condition. We must ever judge each
individual on his own conduct and merits, and not on his membership
in any class, whether that class be based on theological, social, or
industrial considerations.
Among my political opponents when I was Police Commissioner was the
head of a very influential local Democratic organization. He was a
State Senator usually known as Big Tim Sullivan. Big Tim represented
the morals of another era; that is, his principles and actions were very
much those of a Norman noble in the years immediately succeeding the
Battle of Hastings. (This will seem flattery only to those who are not
acquainted with the real histories and antecedents of the Norman nobles
of the epoch in question.) His application of these eleventh-century
theories to our nineteenth-century municipal democratic conditions
brought him into sharp contact with me, and with one of my right-hand
men in the Department, Inspector John McCullough. Under the old
dispensation this would have meant that his friends and kinsfolk were
under the ban.
Now it happened that in the Department at that time there was a
nephew or cousin of his, Jerry D. Sullivan. I found that Jerry was an
uncommonly good man, a conscientious, capable officer, and I promoted
him. I do not know whether Jerry or Jerry's cousin (Senator Sullivan)
was more astonished. The Senator called upon me to express what I am
sure was a very genuine feeling of appreciation. Poor Jerry died, I
think of consumption, a year or two after I left the Department. He was
promoted again after I left, and he then showed that he possessed the
very rare quality of gratitude, for he sent me a telegram dated January
15, 1898, running as follows: "Was made sergeant to-day. I thank you for
all in my first advancement." And in a letter written to me he said: "In
the future, as in the past, I will endeavor at all times to perform my
duty honestly and fearlessly, and never cause you to feel that you were
mistaken in me, so that you will be justly proud of my record." The
Senator, though politically opposed to me, always kept a feeling of
friendship for me after this incident. He served in Congress while I was
President.
The police can be used to help all kinds of good purposes. When I was
Police Commissioner much difficulty had been encountered in locating
illegal and fraudulent practitioners of medicine. Dr. Maurice Lewi
called on me, with a letter from James Russell Parsons, the Secretary of
the Board of Regents at Albany, and asked me if I could not help.
After questioning him I found that the local authorities were eager to
prosecute these men, but could not locate them; and I made up my mind
I would try my hand at it. Accordingly, a sealed order was sent to the
commanding officer of each police precinct in New York, not to be opened
until just before the morning roll call, previous to the police squad
going on duty. This order required that, immediately upon reaching post,
each patrolman should go over his beat and enter upon a sheet of paper,
provided for that purpose, the full name and address of every doctor
sign there appearing. Immediately upon securing this information, the
patrolman was instructed to return the sheet to the officer in charge of
the precinct. The latter in turn was instructed to collect and place
in one large envelope and to return to Police Headquarters all the
data thus received. As a result of this procedure, within two hours the
prosecuting officials of the city of New York were in possession of the
name and address of every person in New York who announced himself as
a physician; and scores of pretended physicians were brought to book or
driven from the city.
One of the perennially serious and difficult problems, and one of the
chief reasons for police blackmail and corruption, is to be found in the
excise situation in New York. When I was Police Commissioner, New York
was a city with twelve or fifteen thousand saloons, with a State law
which said they should be closed on Sundays, and with a local sentiment
which put a premium on violating the law by making Sunday the most
profitable day in the week to the saloon-keeper who was willing to take
chances. It was this willingness to take chances that furnished to the
corrupt politician and the corrupt police officer their opportunities.
There was in New York City a strong sentiment in favor of honesty in
politics; there was also a strong sentiment in favor of opening the
saloons on Sundays; and, finally, there was a strong sentiment in favor
of keeping the saloons closed on Sunday. Unfortunately, many of the men
who favored honest government nevertheless preferred keeping the saloons
open to having honest government; and many others among the men who
favored honest government put it second to keeping the saloons closed.
Moreover, among the people who wished the law obeyed and the saloons
closed there were plenty who objected strongly to every step necessary
to accomplish the result, although they also insisted that the result
should be accomplished.
Meanwhile the politicians found an incredible profit in using the law as
a club to keep the saloons in line; all except the biggest, the owners
of which, or the owners of the breweries back of which, sat in the inner
councils of Tammany, or controlled Tammany's allies in the Republican
organization. The police used the partial and spasmodic enforcement
of the law as a means of collecting blackmail. The result was that the
officers of the law, the politicians, and the saloon-keepers became
inextricably tangled in a network of crime and connivance at crime. The
most powerful saloon-keepers controlled the politicians and the police,
while the latter in turn terrorized and blackmailed all the other
saloon-keepers. It was not a case of non-enforcement of the law. The
law was very actively enforced, but it was enforced with corrupt
discrimination.
It is difficult for men who have not been brought into contact with that
side of political life which deals with the underworld to understand the
brazen openness with which this blackmailing of lawbreakers was carried
out. A further very dark fact was that many of the men responsible for
putting the law on the statute-books in order to please one element of
their constituents, also connived at or even profited by the corrupt
and partial non-enforcement of the law in order to please another set of
their constituents, or to secure profit for themselves. The organ of the
liquor-sellers at that time was the Wine and Spirit Gazette. The editor
of this paper believed in selling liquor on Sunday, and felt that it was
an outrage to forbid it. But he also felt that corruption and blackmail
made too big a price to pay for the partial non-enforcement of the law.
He made in his paper a statement, the correctness of which was never
questioned, which offers a startling commentary on New York politics of
that period. In this statement he recited the fact that the system of
blackmail had been brought to such a state of perfection, and had become
so oppressive to the liquor dealers themselves, that they communicated
at length on the subject with Governor Hill (the State Democratic boss)
and then with Mr. Croker (the city Democratic boss). Finally the matter
was formally taken up by a committee of the Central Association of
Liquor Dealers in an interview they held with Mr. Martin, my Tammany
predecessor as President of the police force. In matter-of-course way
the editor's statement continues: "An agreement was made between the
leaders of Tammany Hall and the liquor dealers according to which the
monthly blackmail paid to the force should be discontinued in return for
political support." Not only did the big bosses, State and local, treat
this agreement, and the corruption to which it was due, as normal and
proper, but they never even took the trouble to deny what had been done
when it was made public. Tammany and the police, however, did not fully
live up to the agreement; and much discrimination of a very corrupt
kind, and of a very exasperating kind to liquor-sellers who wished to be
honest, continued in connection with the enforcing of the law.
In short, the agreement was kept only with those who had "pull." These
men with "pull" were benefited when their rivals were bullied and
blackmailed by the police. The police, meanwhile, who had bought
appointment or promotion, and the politicians back of them, extended the
blackmailing to include about everything from the pushcart peddler and
the big or small merchant who wished to use the sidewalk illegally for
his goods, up to the keepers of the brothel, the gambling-house, and the
policy-shop. The total blackmail ran into millions of dollars. New York
was a wide-open town. The big bosses rolled in wealth, and the corrupt
policemen who ran the force lost all sense of decency and justice.
Nevertheless, I wish to insist on the fact that the honest men on the
patrol posts, "the men with the night-sticks," remained desirous to see
honesty obtain, although they were losing courage and hope.
This was the situation that confronted me when I came to Mulberry
Street. The saloon was the chief source of mischief. It was with the
saloon that I had to deal, and there was only one way to deal with
it. That was to enforce the law. The howl that rose was deafening. The
professional politicians raved. The yellow press surpassed themselves
in clamor and mendacity. A favorite assertion was that I was enforcing
a "blue" law, an obsolete law that had never before been enforced. As
a matter of fact, I was only enforcing honestly a law that had hitherto
been enforced dishonestly. There was very little increase in the number
of arrests made for violating the Sunday law. Indeed, there were weeks
when the number of arrests went down. The only difference was that
there was no protected class. Everybody was arrested alike, and I took
especial pains to see that there was no discrimination, and that the
big men and the men with political influence were treated like every one
else. The immediate effect was wholly good. I had been told that it
was not possible to close the saloons on Sunday and that I could
not succeed. However, I did succeed. The warden of Bellevue Hospital
reported, two or three weeks after we had begun, that for the first time
in its existence there had not been a case due to a drunken brawl in the
hospital all Monday. The police courts gave the same testimony, while
savings banks recorded increased deposits and pawnshops hard times.
The most touching of all things was the fact that we received letters,
literally by the hundred, from mothers in tenement-houses who had never
been allowed to take their children to the country in the wide-open
days, and who now found their husbands willing to take them and their
families for an outing on Sunday. Jake Riis and I spent one Sunday from
morning till night in the tenement districts, seeing for ourselves what
had happened.
During the two years that we were in office things never slipped back
to anything like what they had been before. But we did not succeed
in keeping them quite as highly keyed as during these first weeks. As
regards the Sunday-closing law, this was partly because public sentiment
was not really with us. The people who had demanded honesty, but who
did not like to pay for it by the loss of illegal pleasure, joined the
openly dishonest in attacking us. Moreover, all kinds of ways of evading
the law were tried, and some of them were successful. The statute, for
instance, permitted any man to take liquor with meals. After two
or three months a magistrate was found who decided judicially that
seventeen beers and one pretzel made a meal--after which decision joy
again became unconfined in at least some of the saloons, and the yellow
press gleefully announced that my "tyranny" had been curbed. But my
prime object, that of stopping blackmail, was largely attained.
All kinds of incidents occurred in connection with this crusade. One of
them introduced me to a friend who remains a friend yet. His name was
Edward J. Bourke. He was one of the men who entered the police force
through our examinations shortly after I took office. I had summoned
twenty or thirty of the successful applicants to let me look over them;
and as I walked into the hall, one of them, a well-set-up man, called
out sharply to the others, "Gangway," making them move to one side.
I found he had served in the United States navy. The incident was
sufficient to make me keep him in mind. A month later I was notified by
a police reporter, a very good fellow, that Bourke was in difficulties,
and that he thought I had better look into the matter myself, as Bourke
was being accused by certain very influential men of grave misconduct in
an arrest he had made the night before. Accordingly, I took the matter
up personally. I found that on the new patrolman's beat the preceding
night--a new beat--there was a big saloon run by a man of great
influence in political circles known as "King" Calahan. After midnight
the saloon was still running in full blast, and Bourke, stepping inside,
told Calahan to close up. It was at the time filled with "friends of
personal liberty," as Governor Hill used at that time, in moments of
pathos, to term everybody who regarded as tyranny any restriction on the
sale of liquor. Calahan's saloon had never before in its history been
closed, and to have a green cop tell him to close it seemed to him so
incredible that he regarded it merely as a bad jest. On his next round
Bourke stepped in and repeated the order. Calahan felt that the jest
had gone too far, and by way of protest knocked Bourke down. This was
an error of judgment on his part, for when Bourke arose he knocked down
Calahan. The two then grappled and fell on the floor, while the "friends
of personal liberty" danced around the fight and endeavored to stamp on
everything they thought wasn't Calahan. However, Bourke, though pretty
roughly handled, got his man and shut the saloon. When he appeared
against the lawbreaker in court next day, he found the court-room
crowded with influential Tammany Hall politicians, backed by one or
two Republican leaders of the same type; for Calahan was a baron of
the underworld, and both his feudal superiors and his feudal inferiors
gathered to the rescue. His backers in court included a Congressman and
a State Senator, and so deep-rooted was the police belief in "pull"
that his own superiors had turned against Bourke and were preparing to
sacrifice him. Just at this time I acted on the information given me by
my newspaper friend by starting in person for the court. The knowledge
that I knew what was going on, that I meant what I said, and that I
intended to make the affair personal, was all that was necessary. Before
I reached the court all effort to defend Calahan had promptly ceased,
and Bourke had come forth triumphant. I immediately promoted him to
roundsman. He is a captain now. He has been on the force ever since,
save that when the Spanish War came he obtained a holiday without pay
for six months and reentered the navy, serving as gun captain in one of
the gunboats, and doing his work, as was to be expected, in first-rate
fashion, especially when under fire.
Let me again say that when men tell me that the police are irredeemably
bad I remember scores and hundreds of cases like this of Bourke, like
the case I have already mentioned of Raphael, like the other cases I
have given above.
It is useless to tell me that these men are bad. They are naturally
first-rate men. There are no better men anywhere than the men of the
New York police force; and when they go bad it is because the system
is wrong, and because they are not given the chance to do the good work
they can do and would rather do. I never coddled these men. I punished
them severely whenever I thought their conduct required it. All I did
was to try to be just; to reward them when they did well; in short, to
act squarely by them. I believe that, as a whole, they liked me. When,
in 1912, I ran for President on the Progressive ticket, I received a
number of unsigned letters inclosing sums of money for the campaign. One
of these inclosed twenty dollars. The writer, who did not give his
name, said that he was a policeman, that I had once had him before me on
charges, and had fined him twenty dollars; that, as a matter of fact,
he had not committed the offense for which I fined him, but that the
evidence was such that he did not wonder that I had been misled, and
never blamed me for it, because I had acted squarely and had given
honest and decent men a chance in the Police Department; and that now he
inclosed a twenty-dollar bill, the amount of the fine inflicted on him
so many years before. I have always wished I knew who the man was.
The disciplinary courts were very interesting. But it was
extraordinarily difficult to get at the facts in the more complicated
cases--as must always be true under similar circumstances; for
ordinarily it is necessary to back up the superior officer who makes
the charge, and yet it is always possible that this superior officer is
consciously or unconsciously biased against his subordinate.
In the courts the charges were sometimes brought by police officers and
sometimes by private citizens. In the latter case we would get queer
insights into twilight phases of New York life. It was necessary to be
always on our guard. Often an accusation would be brought against the
policeman because he had been guilty of misconduct. Much more often the
accusation merely meant that the officer had incurred animosity by doing
his duty. I remember one amusing case where the officer was wholly to
blame but had acted in entire good faith.
One of the favorite and most demoralizing forms of gambling in New York
was policy-playing. The policy slips consisted of papers with three rows
of figures written on them. The officer in question was a huge pithecoid
lout of a creature, with a wooden face and a receding forehead, and his
accuser whom he had arrested the preceding evening was a little grig
of a red-headed man, obviously respectable, and almost incoherent with
rage. The anger of the little red-headed man was but natural, for he had
just come out from a night in the station-house. He had been arrested
late in the evening on suspicion that he was a policy-player, because of
the rows of figures on a piece of paper which he had held in his hand,
and because at the time of his arrest he had just stepped into the
entrance of the hall of a tenement-house in order to read by lamplight.
The paper was produced in evidence. There were the three rows of figures
all right, but, as the accused explained, hopping up and down with rage
and excitement, they were all of them the numbers of hymns. He was the
superintendent of a small Sunday-school. He had written down the hymns
for several future services, one under the other, and on the way home
was stopping to look at them, under convenient lamp-posts, and finally
by the light of the lamp in a tenement-house hallway; and it was this
conduct which struck the sagacious man in uniform as "suspicious."
One of the saddest features of police work is dealing with the social
evil, with prostitutes and houses of ill fame. In so far as the law gave
me power, I always treated the men taken in any raid on these houses
precisely as the women were treated. My experience brought me to the
very strong conviction that there ought not to be any toleration by law
of the vice. I do not know of any method which will put a complete
stop to the evil, but I do know certain things that ought to be done to
minimize it. One of these is treating men and women on an exact equality
for the same act. Another is the establishment of night courts and of
special commissions to deal with this special class of cases. Another
is that suggested by the Rev. Charles Stelzle, of the Labor Temple--to
publish conspicuously the name of the owner of any property used for
immoral purposes, after said owner had been notified of the use and has
failed to prevent it. Another is to prosecute the keepers and backers of
brothels, men and women, as relentlessly and punish them as severely as
pickpockets and common thieves. They should never be fined; they should
be imprisoned. As for the girls, the very young ones and first
offenders should be put in the charge of probation officers or sent to
reformatories, and the large percentage of feeble-minded girls and of
incorrigible girls and women should be sent to institutions created for
them. We would thus remove from this hideous commerce the articles
of commerce. Moreover, the Federal Government must in ever-increasing
measure proceed against the degraded promoters of this commercialism,
for their activities are inter-State and the Nation can often deal with
them more effectively than the States; although, as public sentiment
becomes aroused, Nation, State, and municipality will all cooperate
towards the same end of rooting out the traffic. But the prime need is
to raise the level of individual morality; and, moreover, to encourage
early marriages, the single standard of sex-morality, and a strict sense
of reciprocal conjugal obligation. The women who preach late marriages
are by just so much making it difficult to better the standard of
chastity.
As regards the white slave traffic, the men engaged in it, and the women
too, are far worse criminals than any ordinary murderers can be. For
them there is need of such a law as that recently adopted in England
through the efforts of Arthur Lee, M.P., a law which includes whipping
for the male offenders. There are brutes so low, so infamous, so
degraded and bestial in their cruelty and brutality, that the only way
to get at them is through their skins. Sentimentality on behalf of such
men is really almost as unhealthy and wicked as the criminality of the
men themselves. My experience is that there should be no toleration of
any "tenderloin" or "red light" district, and that, above all, there
should be the most relentless war on commercialized vice. The men who
profit and make their living by the depravity and the awful misery
of other human beings stand far below any ordinary criminals, and no
measures taken against them can be too severe.
As for the wretched girls who follow the dreadful trade in question, a
good deal can be done by a change in economic conditions. This ought
to be done. When girls are paid wages inadequate to keep them from
starvation, or to permit them to live decently, a certain proportion are
forced by their economic misery into lives of vice. The employers and
all others responsible for these conditions stand on a moral level not
far above the white slavers themselves. But it is a mistake to suppose
that either the correction of these economic conditions or the abolition
of the white slave trade will wholly correct the evil or will even reach
the major part of it. The economic factor is very far from being the
chief factor in inducing girls to go into this dreadful life. As with so
many other problems, while there must be governmental action, there must
also be strengthening of the average individual character in order to
achieve the desired end. Even where economic conditions are bad, girls
who are both strong and pure will remain unaffected by temptations to
which girls of weak character or lax standards readily yield. Any man
who knows the wide variation in the proportions of the different races
and nationalities engaged in prostitution must come to the conclusion
that it is out of the question to treat economic conditions as the sole
conditions or even as the chief conditions that determine this question.
There are certain races--the Irish are honorably conspicuous among
them--which, no matter what the economic pressure, furnish relatively
few inmates of houses of ill fame. I do not believe that the differences
are due to permanent race characteristics; this is shown by the
fact that the best settlement houses find that practically all their
"long-term graduates," so to speak, all the girls that come for a long
period under their influence, no matter what their race or national
origin, remain pure. In every race there are some naturally vicious
individuals and some weak individuals who readily succumb under economic
pressure. A girl who is lazy and hates hard work, a girl whose mind is
rather feeble, and who is of "subnormal intelligence," as the phrase now
goes, or a girl who craves cheap finery and vapid pleasure, is always
in danger. A high ideal of personal purity is essential. Where the same
pressure under the same economic conditions has tenfold the effect
on one set of people that it has on another, it is evident that the
question of moral standards is even more important than the question
of economic standards, very important though this question is. It is
important for us to remember that the girl ought to have the chance, not
only for the necessaries of life, but for innocent pleasure; and that
even more than the man she must not be broken by overwork, by excessive
toil. Moreover, public opinion and the law should combine to hunt
down the "flagrant man swine" who himself hunts down poor or silly or
unprotected girls. But we must not, in foolish sentimentality, excuse
the girl from her duty to keep herself pure. Our duty to achieve the
same moral level for the two sexes must be performed by raising the
level for the man, not by lowering it for the woman; and the fact that
society must recognize its duty in no shape or way relieves, not even
to the smallest degree, the individual from doing his or her duty.
Sentimentality which grows maudlin on behalf of the willful prostitute
is a curse; to confound her with the entrapped or coerced girl, the real
white slave, is both foolish and wicked. There are evil women just as
there are evil men, naturally depraved girls just as there are naturally
depraved young men; and the right and wise thing, the just thing, to
them, and the generous thing to innocent girls and decent men, is to
wage stern war against the evil creatures of both sexes.
In company with Jacob Riis, I did much work that was not connected with
the actual discipline of the force or indeed with the actual work of
the force. There was one thing which he and I abolished--police
lodging-houses, which were simply tramp lodging-houses, and a fruitful
encouragement to vagrancy. Those who read Mr. Riis's story of his own
life will remember the incidents that gave him from actual personal
experience his horror of these tramp lodging-houses. As member of the
Health Board I was brought into very close relations with the conditions
of life in the tenement-house districts. Here again I used to visit the
different tenement-house regions, usually in company with Riis, to
see for myself what the conditions were. It was largely this personal
experience that enabled me while on the Health Board to struggle not
only zealously, but with reasonable efficiency and success, to improve
conditions. We did our share in making forward strides in the matter of
housing the working people of the city with some regard to decency and
comfort.
The midnight trips that Riis and I took enabled me to see what the
Police Department was doing, and also gave me personal insight into some
of the problems of city life. It is one thing to listen in perfunctory
fashion to tales of overcrowded tenements, and it is quite another
actually to see what that overcrowding means, some hot summer night, by
even a single inspection during the hours of darkness. There was a very
hot spell one midsummer while I was Police Commissioner, and most of
each night I spent walking through the tenement-house districts and
visiting police stations to see what was being done. It was a tragic
week. We did everything possible to alleviate the suffering. Much of it
was heartbreaking, especially the gasping misery of the little children
and of the worn-out mothers. Every resource of the Health Department, of
the Police Department, and even the Fire Department (which flooded the
hot streets) was taxed in the effort to render service. The heat killed
such multitudes of horses that the means at our disposal for removing
the poor dead beasts proved quite inadequate, although every nerve was
strained to the limit. In consequence we received scores of complaints
from persons before whose doors dead horses had remained, festering
in the heat, for two or three days. One irascible man sent us furious
denunciations, until we were at last able to send a big dray to drag
away the horse that lay dead before his shop door. The huge dray already
contained eleven other dead horses, and when it reached this particular
door it broke down, and it was hours before it could be moved. The
unfortunate man who had thus been cursed with a granted wish closed
his doors in despair and wrote us a final pathetic letter in which he
requested us to remove either the horses or his shop, he didn't care
which.
I have spoken before of my experience with the tenement-house cigar
factory law which the highest court of New York State declared
unconstitutional. My experience in the Police Department taught me
that not a few of the worst tenement-houses were owned by wealthy
individuals, who hired the best and most expensive lawyers to persuade
the courts that it was "unconstitutional" to insist on the betterment of
conditions. These business men and lawyers were very adroit in using
a word with fine and noble associations to cloak their opposition to
vitally necessary movements for industrial fair play and decency. They
made it evident that they valued the Constitution, not as a help
to righteousness, but as a means for thwarting movements against
unrighteousness. After my experience with them I became more set than
ever in my distrust of those men, whether business men or lawyers,
judges, legislators, or executive officers, who seek to make of the
Constitution a fetich for the prevention of the work of social reform,
for the prevention of work in the interest of those men, women, and
children on whose behalf we should be at liberty to employ freely every
governmental agency.
Occasionally during the two years we had to put a stop to riotous
violence, and now and then on these occasions some of the labor union
leaders protested against the actions of the police. By this time I was
becoming a strong believer in labor unions, a strong believer in the
rights of labor. For that very reason I was all the more bound to see
that lawlessness and disorder were put down, and that no rioter was
permitted to masquerade under the guise of being a friend of labor or a
sympathizer with labor. I was scrupulous to see that the labor men had
fair play; that, for instance, they were allowed to picket just so far
as under the law picketing could be permitted, so that the strikers had
ample opportunity peacefully to persuade other labor men not to take
their places. But I made it clearly and definitely understood that under
no circumstances would I permit violence or fail to insist upon the
keeping of order. If there were wrongs, I would join with a full heart
in striving to have them corrected. But where there was violence
all other questions had to drop until order was restored. This is a
democracy, and the people have the power, if they choose to exercise
it, to make conditions as they ought to be made, and to do this strictly
within the law; and therefore the first duty of the true democrat, of
the man really loyal to the principles of popular government, is to see
that law is enforced and order upheld. It was a peculiar gratification
to me that so many of the labor leaders with whom I was thrown in
contact grew cordially to accept this view. When I left the Department,
several called upon me to say how sorry they were that I was not to
continue in office. One, the Secretary of the Journeyman Bakers' and
Confectioners' International Union, Henry Weismann, wrote me expressing
his regret that I was going, and his appreciation as a citizen of what
I had done as Police Commissioner; he added: "I am particularly
grateful for your liberal attitude toward organized labor, your cordial
championship of those speaking in behalf of the toilers, and your
evident desire to do the right thing as you saw it at whatever cost."
Some of the letters I received on leaving the Department were from
unexpected sources. Mr. E. L. Godkin, an editor who in international
matters was not a patriotic man, wrote protesting against my taking the
Assistant-Secretaryship of the Navy, and adding: "I have a concern, as
the Quakers say, to put on record my earnest belief that in New York you
are doing the greatest work of which any American to-day is capable,
and exhibiting to the young men of the country the spectacle of a very
important office administered by a man of high character in the most
efficient way amid a thousand difficulties. As a lesson in politics I
cannot think of anything more instructive."
About the same time I had a letter from Mr. (afterwards Ambassador)
James Bryce, also expressing regret that I was leaving the Police
Department, but naturally with much more appreciation of the work that
was to be done in the Navy Department. This letter I quote, with his
permission, because it conveys a lesson to those who are inclined always
to think that the conditions of the present time are very bad. It was
written July 7, 1897. Mr. Bryce spoke of the possibility of coming to
America in a month or so, and continued: "I hope I may have a chance
of seeing you if I do get over, and of drawing some comfort from you
as regards your political phenomena, which, so far as I can gather
from those of your countrymen I have lately seen, furnish some good
opportunities for a persistent optimist like myself to show that he is
not to be lightly discouraged. Don't suppose that things are specially
'nice,' as a lady would say, in Europe either. They are not." Mr. Bryce
was a very friendly and extraordinary competent observer of things
American; and there was this distinct note of discouragement about our
future in the intimate letter he was thus sending. Yet this was at the
very time when the United States was entering on a dozen years during
which our people accomplished more good, and came nearer realizing the
possibilities of a great, free, and conscientious democracy, than during
any other dozen years in our history, save only the years of Lincoln's
Presidency and the period during which the Nation was founded.
CHAPTER VII
THE WAR OF AMERICA THE UNREADY
I suppose the United States will always be unready for war, and
in consequence will always be exposed to great expense, and to the
possibility of the gravest calamity, when the Nation goes to war. This
is no new thing. Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from
experience.
There would have been no war in 1812 if, in the previous decade,
America, instead of announcing that "peace was her passion," instead of
acting on the theory that unpreparedness averts war, had been willing to
go to the expense of providing a fleet of a score of ships of the line.
However, in that case, doubtless the very men who in the actual
event deplored the loss of life and waste of capital which their own
supineness had brought about would have loudly inveighed against the
"excessive and improper cost of armaments"; so it all came to about the
same thing in the end.
There is no more thoroughgoing international Mrs. Gummidge, and no
more utterly useless and often utterly mischievous citizen, than the
peace-at-any-price, universal-arbitration type of being, who is always
complaining either about war or else about the cost of the armaments
which act as the insurance against war. There is every reason why
we should try to limit the cost of armaments, as these tend to grow
excessive, but there is also every reason to remember that in the
present stage of civilization a proper armament is the surest guarantee
of peace--and is the only guarantee that war, if it does come, will not
mean irreparable and overwhelming disaster.
In the spring of 1897 President McKinley appointed me Assistant
Secretary of the Navy. I owed the appointment chiefly to the efforts of
Senator H. C. Lodge of Massachusetts, who doubtless was actuated mainly
by his long and close friendship for me, but also--I like to believe--by
his keen interest in the navy. The first book I had ever published,
fifteen years previously, was "The History of the Naval War of 1812";
and I have always taken the interest in the navy which every good
American ought to take. At the time I wrote the book, in the early
eighties, the navy had reached its nadir, and we were then utterly
incompetent to fight Spain or any other power that had a navy at all.
Shortly afterwards we began timidly and hesitatingly to build up
a fleet. It is amusing to recall the roundabout steps we took to
accomplish our purpose. In the reaction after the colossal struggle of
the Civil War our strongest and most capable men had thrown their whole
energy into business, into money-making, into the development, and above
all the exploitation and exhaustion at the most rapid rate possible, of
our natural resources--mines, forests, soil, and rivers. These men were
not weak men, but they permitted themselves to grow shortsighted
and selfish; and while many of them down at the bottom possessed the
fundamental virtues, including the fighting virtues, others were purely
of the glorified huckster or glorified pawnbroker type--which when
developed to the exclusion of everything else makes about as poor a
national type as the world has seen. This unadulterated huckster or
pawnbroker type is rarely keenly sympathetic in matters of social and
industrial justice, and is usually physically timid and likes to cover
an unworthy fear of the most just war under high-sounding names.
It was reinforced by the large mollycoddle vote--the people who are soft
physically and morally, or who have a twist in them which makes them
acidly cantankerous and unpleasant as long as they can be so with
safety to their bodies. In addition there are the good people with no
imagination and no foresight, who think war will not come, but that if
it does come armies and navies can be improvised--a very large element,
typified by a Senator I knew personally who, in a public speech, in
answer to a question as to what we would do if America were suddenly
assailed by a first-class military power, answered that "we would build
a battle-ship in every creek." Then, among the wise and high-minded
people who in self-respecting and genuine fashion strive earnestly
for peace, there are the foolish fanatics always to be found in such a
movement and always discrediting it--the men who form the lunatic fringe
in all reform movements.
All these elements taken together made a body of public opinion so
important during the decades immediately succeeding the Civil War as to
put a stop to any serious effort to keep the Nation in a condition of
reasonable military preparedness. The representatives of this opinion
then voted just as they now do when they vote against battle-ships or
against fortifying the Panama Canal. It would have been bad enough if
we had been content to be weak, and, in view of our weakness, not to
bluster. But we were not content with such a policy. We wished to enjoy
the incompatible luxuries of an unbridled tongue and an unready hand.
There was a very large element which was ignorant of our military
weakness, or, naturally enough, unable to understand it; and another
large element which liked to please its own vanity by listening to
offensive talk about foreign nations. Accordingly, too many of our
politicians, especially in Congress, found that the cheap and easy thing
to do was to please the foolish peace people by keeping us weak, and to
please the foolish violent people by passing denunciatory resolutions
about international matters--resolutions which would have been
improper even if we had been strong. Their idea was to please both the
mollycoddle vote and the vote of the international tail-twisters by
upholding, with pretended ardor and mean intelligence, a National policy
of peace with insult.
I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at
the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals. I abhor
violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to
when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid it. I respect all
men and women who from high motives and with sanity and self-respect do
all they can to avert war. I advocate preparation for war in order
to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only
alternative to dishonor. I describe the folly of which so many of our
people were formerly guilty, in order that we may in our own day be on
our guard against similar folly.
We did not at the time of which I write take our foreign duties
seriously, and as we combined bluster in speech with refusal to make
any preparation whatsoever for action, we were not taken seriously in
return. Gradually a slight change for the better occurred, the writings
of Captain Mahan playing no small part therein. We built some modern
cruisers to start with; the people who felt that battle-ships were
wicked compromising with their misguided consciences by saying that the
cruisers could be used "to protect our commerce"--which they could not
be, unless they had battle-ships to back them. Then we attempted to
build more powerful fighting vessels, and as there was a section of
the public which regarded battle-ships as possessing a name immorally
suggestive of violence, we compromised by calling the new ships armored
cruisers, and making them combine with exquisite nicety all the defects
and none of the virtues of both types. Then we got to the point of
building battle-ships. But there still remained a public opinion, as old
as the time of Jefferson, which thought that in the event of war all
our problem ought to be one of coast defense, that we should do
nothing except repel attack; an attitude about as sensible as that of a
prize-fighter who expected to win by merely parrying instead of hitting.
To meet the susceptibilities of this large class of well-meaning people,
we provided for the battle-ships under the name of "coast defense
battle-ships"; meaning thereby that we did not make them quite as
seaworthy as they ought to have been, or with quite as much coal
capacity as they ought to have had. Then we decided to build real
battle-ships. But there still remained a lingering remnant of public
opinion that clung to the coast defense theory, and we met this
in beautiful fashion by providing for "sea-going coast defense
battle-ships"--the fact that the name was a contradiction in terms being
of very small consequence compared to the fact that we did thereby get
real battle-ships.
Our men had to be trained to handle the ships singly and in fleet
formation, and they had to be trained to use the new weapons of
precision with which the ships were armed. Not a few of the older
officers, kept in the service under our foolish rule of pure seniority
promotion, were not competent for the task; but a proportion of the
older officers were excellent, and this was true of almost all the
younger officers. They were naturally first-class men, trained in the
admirable naval school at Annapolis. They were overjoyed that at last
they were given proper instruments to work with, and they speedily grew
to handle these ships individually in the best fashion. They were fast
learning to handle them in squadron and fleet formation; but when the
war with Spain broke out, they had as yet hardly grasped the principles
of modern scientific naval gunnery.
Soon after I began work as Assistant Secretary of the Navy I became
convinced that the war would come. The revolt in Cuba had dragged its
weary length until conditions in the island had become so dreadful as to
be a standing disgrace to us for permitting them to exist. There is much
that I sincerely admire about the Spanish character; and there are few
men for whom I have felt greater respect than for certain gentlemen of
Spain whom I have known. But Spain attempted to govern her colonies on
archaic principles which rendered her control of them incompatible with
the advance of humanity and intolerable to the conscience of mankind.
In 1898 the so-called war in Cuba had dragged along for years with
unspeakable horror, degradation, and misery. It was not "war" at all,
but murderous oppression. Cuba was devastated.
During those years, while we continued at "peace," several hundred times
as many lives were lost, lives of men, women, and children, as were lost
during the three months' "war" which put an end to this slaughter and
opened a career of peaceful progress to the Cubans. Yet there were
misguided professional philanthropists who cared so much more for names
than for facts that they preferred a "peace" of continuous murder to
a "war" which stopped the murder and brought real peace. Spain's
humiliation was certain, anyhow; indeed, it was more certain without
war than with it, for she could not permanently keep the island, and she
minded yielding to the Cubans more than yielding to us. Our own direct
interests were great, because of the Cuban tobacco and sugar, and
especially because of Cuba's relation to the projected Isthmian Canal.
But even greater were our interests from the standpoint of humanity.
Cuba was at our very doors. It was a dreadful thing for us to sit
supinely and watch her death agony. It was our duty, even more from
the standpoint of National honor than from the standpoint of National
interest, to stop the devastation and destruction. Because of these
considerations I favored war; and to-day, when in retrospect it is
easier to see things clearly, there are few humane and honorable men who
do not believe that the war was both just and necessary.
The big financiers and the men generally who were susceptible to touch
on the money nerve, and who cared nothing for National honor if it
conflicted even temporarily with business prosperity, were against
the war. The more fatuous type of philanthropist agreed with them. The
newspapers controlled by, or run in the interests of, these two classes
deprecated war, and did everything in their power to prevent any
preparation for war. As a whole the people in Congress were at that time
(and are now) a shortsighted set as regards international matters. There
were a few men, Senators Cushman K. Davis,[*] for instance, and John
Morgan, who did look ahead; and Senator H. C. Lodge, who throughout his
quarter of a century of service in the Senate and House has ever stood
foremost among those who uphold with farsighted fearlessness and strict
justice to others our national honor and interest; but most of the
Congressmen were content to follow the worst of all possible courses,
that is, to pass resolutions which made war more likely, and yet to
decline to take measures which would enable us to meet the war if it did
come.
[*] In a letter written me just before I became Assistant
Secretary, Senator Davis unburdened his mind about one of
the foolish "peace" proposals of that period; his letter
running in part: "I left the Senate Chamber about three
o'clock this afternoon when there was going on a deal of
mowing and chattering over the treaty by which the United
States is to be bound to arbitrate its sovereign
functions--for policies are matters of sovereignty. . . .
The
aberrations of the social movement are neither progress nor
retrogression. They represent merely a local and temporary
sagging of the line of the great orbit. Tennyson knew this
when he wrote that fine and noble 'Maud.' I often read it,
for to do so does me good." After quoting one of Poe's
stories the letter continues: "The world will come out all
right. Let him who believes in the decline of the military
spirit observe the boys of a common school during the recess
or the noon hour. Of course when American patriotism speaks
out from its rank and file and demands action or expression,
and when, thereupon, the 'business man,' so called, places
his hand on his stack of reds as if he feared a policeman
were about to disturb the game, and protests until American
patriotism ceases to continue to speak as it had started to
do--why, you and I get mad, and I swear. I hope you will be
with us here after March 4. We can then pass judgment
together on the things we don't like, and together indulge
in hopes that I believe are prophetic."
However, in the Navy Department we were able to do a good deal, thanks
to the energy and ability of some of the bureau chiefs, and to the
general good tone of the service. I soon found my natural friends and
allies in such men as Evans, Taylor, Sampson, Wainwright, Brownson,
Schroeder, Bradford, Cowles, Cameron, Winslow, O'Neil, and others like
them. I used all the power there was in my office to aid these men in
getting the material ready. I also tried to gather from every source
information as to who the best men were to occupy the fighting
positions.
Sound naval opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of Dewey to command
one squadron. I was already watching him, for I had been struck by an
incident in his past career. It was at a time when there was threat of
trouble with Chile. Dewey was off the Argentine, and was told to get
ready to move to the other coast of South America. If the move became
necessary, he would have to have coal, and yet if he did not make the
move, the coal would not be needed. In such a case a man afraid of
responsibility always acts rigidly by the regulations and communicates
with the Department at home to get authority for everything he does;
and therefore he usually accomplishes nothing whatever, but is able to
satisfy all individuals with red-tape minds by triumphantly pointing out
his compliance with the regulations. In a crisis, the man worth his
salt is the man who meets the needs of the situation in whatever way
is necessary. Dewey purchased the coal and was ready to move at once if
need arose. The affair blew over; the need to move did not occur; and
for some time there seemed to be a chance that Dewey would get into
trouble over having purchased the coal, for our people are like
almost all other peoples in requiring responsible officers under such
conditions to decide at their own personal peril, no matter which course
they follow. However, the people higher up ultimately stood by Dewey.
The incident made me feel that here was a man who could be relied upon
to prepare in advance, and to act promptly, fearlessly, and on his own
responsibility when the emergency arose. Accordingly I did my best to
get him put in command of the Asiatic fleet, the fleet where it was most
essential to have a man who would act without referring things back
to the home authorities. An officer senior to him, of the respectable
commonplace type, was being pushed by certain politicians who I knew had
influence with the Navy Department and with the President. I would have
preferred to see Dewey get the appointment without appealing to any
politician at all. But while this was my preference, the essential thing
was to get him the appointment. For a naval officer to bring pressure to
get himself a soft and easy place is unpardonable; but a large leniency
should be observed toward the man who uses influence only to get himself
a place in the picture near the flashing of the guns. There was a
Senator, Proctor of Vermont, who I knew was close to McKinley, and who
was very ardent for the war, and desirous to have it fought in the
most efficient fashion. I suggested to Dewey that he should enlist the
services of Senator Proctor, which was accordingly done. In a fortunate
hour for the Nation, Dewey was given command of the Asiatic squadron.
When the Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor, war became inevitable.
A number of the peace-at-any-price men of course promptly assumed the
position that she had blown herself up; but investigation showed that
the explosion was from outside. And, in any event, it would have been
impossible to prevent war. The enlisted men of the navy, who often grew
bored to the point of desertion in peace, became keyed up to a high
pitch of efficiency, and crowds of fine young fellows, from the interior
as well as from the seacoast, thronged to enlist. The navy officers
showed alert ability and unwearied industry in getting things ready.
There was one deficiency, however, which there was no time to remedy,
and of the very existence of which, strange to say, most of our best men
were ignorant. Our navy had no idea how low our standard of marksmanship
was. We had not realized that the modern battle-ship had become such
a complicated piece of mechanism that the old methods of training in
marksmanship were as obsolete as the old muzzle-loading broadside guns
themselves. Almost the only man in the navy who fully realized this
was our naval attache at Paris, Lieutenant Sims. He wrote letter after
letter pointing out how frightfully backward we were in marksmanship.
I was much impressed by his letters; but Wainwright was about the only
other man who was. And as Sims proved to be mistaken in his belief that
the French had taught the Spaniards how to shoot, and as the Spaniards
proved to be much worse even than we were, in the service generally Sims
was treated as an alarmist. But although I at first partly acquiesced in
this view, I grew uneasy when I studied the small proportion of hits to
shots made by our vessels in battle. When I was President I took up the
matter, and speedily became convinced that we needed to revolutionize
our whole training in marksmanship. Sims was given the lead in
organizing and introducing the new system; and to him more than to any
other one man was due the astonishing progress made by our fleet in this
respect, a progress which made the fleet, gun for gun, at least three
times as effective, in point of fighting efficiency, in 1908, as it was
in 1902. The shots that hit are the shots that count!
Like the people, the Government was for a long time unwilling to prepare
for war, because so many honest but misguided men believed that the
preparation itself tended to bring on the war. I did not in the least
share this feeling, and whenever I was left as Acting Secretary I did
everything in my power to put us in readiness. I knew that in the event
of war Dewey could be slipped like a wolf-hound from a leash; I was sure
that if he were given half a chance he would strike instantly and with
telling effect; and I made up my mind that all I could do to give him
that half-chance should be done. I was in the closest touch with Senator
Lodge throughout this period, and either consulted him about or notified
him of all the moves I was taking. By the end of February I felt it was
vital to send Dewey (as well as each of our other commanders who
were not in home waters) instructions that would enable him to be in
readiness for immediate action. On the afternoon of Saturday, February
25, when I was Acting Secretary, Lodge called on me just as I was
preparing the order, which (as it was addressed to a man of the right
stamp) was of much importance to the subsequent operations. Admiral
Dewey speaks of the incident as follows, in his autobiography:
"The first real step [as regards active naval preparations] was taken
on February 25, when telegraphic instructions were sent to the Asiatic,
European, and South Atlantic squadrons to rendezvous at certain
convenient points where, should war break out, they would be most
available.
"The message to the Asiatic squadron bore the signature of that
Assistant Secretary who had seized the opportunity while Acting
Secretary to hasten preparations for a conflict which was inevitable. As
Mr. Roosevelt reasoned, precautions for readiness would cost little in
time of peace, and yet would be invaluable in case of war. His cablegram
was as follows:
"'Washington, February 25, '98.
"'_Dewey, Hong Kong_:
"'Order the squadron, except the Monocacy, to Hong Kong. Keep full of
coal. In the event of declaration of war Spain, your duty will be to
see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then
offensive operations in Philippine Islands. Keep Olympia until further
orders.
"'ROOSEVELT.'
"(The reference to keeping the Olympia until further orders was due to
the fact that I had been notified that she would soon be recalled to the
United States.)"
All that was needed with Dewey was to give him the chance to get ready,
and then to strike, without being hampered by orders from those not on
the ground. Success in war depends very largely upon choosing a man fit
to exercise such powers, and then giving him the powers.
It would be instructive to remember, if only we were willing to do so,
the fairly comic panic which swept in waves over our seacoast, first
when it became evident that war was about to be declared, and then when
it was declared. The public waked up to the sufficiently obvious fact
that the Government was in its usual state--perennial unreadiness for
war. Thereupon the people of the seaboard district passed at one bound
from unreasoning confidence that war never could come to unreasoning
fear as to what might happen now that it had come. That acute
philosopher Mr. Dooley proclaimed that in the Spanish War we were in a
dream, but that the Spaniards were in a trance. This just about summed
up the facts. Our people had for decades scoffed at the thought of
making ready for possible war. Now, when it was too late, they not
only backed every measure, wise and unwise, that offered a chance of
supplying a need that ought to have been met before, but they also fell
into a condition of panic apprehension as to what the foe might do.
For years we had been saying, just as any number of our people now say,
that no nation would venture to attack us. Then when we did go to war
with an exceedingly feeble nation, we, for the time being, rushed to the
other extreme of feeling, and attributed to this feeble nation plans of
offensive warfare which it never dreamed of making, and which, if
made, it would have been wholly unable to execute. Some of my readers
doubtless remember the sinister intentions and unlimited potentialities
for destruction with which the fertile imagination of the yellow press
endowed the armored cruiser Viscaya when she appeared in American waters
just before war was declared. The state of nervousness along much of
the seacoast was funny in view of the lack of foundation for it; but
it offered food for serious thought as to what would happen if we ever
became engaged with a serious foe.
The Governor of one State actually announced that he would not permit
the National Guard of that State to leave its borders, the idea being to
retain it against a possible Spanish invasion. So many of the business
men of the city of Boston took their securities inland to Worcester that
the safe deposit companies of Worcester proved unable to take care of
them. In my own neighborhood on Long Island clauses were gravely put
into leases to the effect that if the property were destroyed by the
Spaniards the lease should lapse. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy I
had every conceivable impossible request made to me. Members of Congress
who had actively opposed building any navy came clamorously around to
ask each for a ship for some special purpose of protection connected
with his district. It seems incredible, but it is true, that not only
these Congressmen but the Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade of
different coast cities all lost their heads for the time being, and
raised a deafening clamor and brought every species of pressure to bear
on the Administration to get it to adopt the one most fatal course--that
is, to distribute the navy, ship by ship, at all kinds of points and in
all kinds of ports with the idea of protecting everything everywhere,
and thereby rendering it absolutely certain that even the Spanish fleet,
poor though it was, would be able to pick up our own navy ship by ship
in detail. One Congressman besought me for a ship to protect Jekyll
Island, off the coast of Georgia, an island which derived its
sole consequence because it contained the winter homes of certain
millionaires. A lady whose husband occupied a very influential position,
and who was normally a most admirable and sensible woman, came to insist
that a ship should be anchored off a huge seaside hotel because she had
a house in the neighborhood.
There were many such instances. One stood out above the others. A
certain seaboard State contained in its Congressional delegation one of
the most influential men in the Senate, and one of the most influential
men in the lower house. These two men had been worse than lukewarm about
building up the navy, and had scoffed at the idea of there ever being
any danger from any foreign power. With the advent of war the feelings
of their constituents, and therefore their own feelings, suffered an
immediate change, and they demanded that a ship be anchored in the
harbor of their city as a protection. Getting no comfort from me, they
went "higher up," and became a kind of permanent committee in attendance
upon the President. They were very influential men in the Houses, with
whom it was important for the Administration to keep on good terms; and,
moreover, they possessed a pertinacity as great as the widow who won her
case from the unjust judge. Finally the President gave in and notified
me to see that a ship was sent to the city in question. I was bound
that, as long as a ship had to be sent, it should not be a ship worth
anything. Accordingly a Civil War Monitor, with one smooth-bore gun,
managed by a crew of about twenty-one naval militia, was sent to the
city in question, under convoy of a tug. It was a hazardous trip for the
unfortunate naval militiamen, but it was safely accomplished; and joy
and peace descended upon the Senator and the Congressman, and upon the
President whom they had jointly harassed. Incidentally, the fact that
the protecting war-vessel would not have been a formidable foe to
any antagonists of much more modern construction than the galleys of
Alcibiades seemed to disturb nobody.
This was one side of the picture. The other side was that the crisis at
once brought to the front any amount of latent fighting strength. There
were plenty of Congressmen who showed cool-headed wisdom and resolution.
The plain people, the men and women back of the persons who lost their
heads, set seriously to work to see that we did whatever was necessary,
and made the job a thorough one. The young men swarmed to enlist. In
time of peace it had been difficult to fill the scanty regular army and
navy, and there were innumerable desertions; now the ships and regiments
were over-enlisted, and so many deserters returned in order to fight
that it became difficult to decide what to do with them. England, and
to a less degree Japan, were friendly. The great powers of Continental
Europe were all unfriendly. They jeered at our ships and men, and with
fatuous partisanship insisted that the Spaniards would prove too much
for our "mercenaries" because we were a commercial people of low ideals
who could not fight, while the men whom we attempted to hire for that
purpose were certain to run on the day of battle.
Among my friends was the then Army Surgeon Leonard Wood. He was a
surgeon. Not having an income, he had to earn his own living. He had
gone through the Harvard Medical School, and had then joined the army
in the Southwest as a contract doctor. He had every physical, moral,
and mental quality which fitted him for a soldier's life and for
the exercise of command. In the inconceivably wearing and harassing
campaigns against the Apaches he had served nominally as a surgeon,
really in command of troops, on more than one expedition. He was as
anxious as I was that if there were war we should both have our part in
it. I had always felt that if there were a serious war I wished to be in
a position to explain to my children why I did take part in it, and not
why I did not take part in it. Moreover, I had very deeply felt that it
was our duty to free Cuba, and I had publicly expressed this feeling;
and when a man takes such a position, he ought to be willing to make his
words good by his deeds unless there is some very strong reason to the
contrary. He should pay with his body.
As soon as war was upon us, Wood and I began to try for a chance to
go to the front. Congress had authorized the raising of three National
Volunteer Cavalry regiments, wholly apart from the State contingents.
Secretary Alger of the War Department was fond of me personally, and
Wood was his family doctor. Alger had been a gallant soldier in the
Civil War, and was almost the only member of the Administration who felt
all along that we would have to go to war with Spain over Cuba. He liked
my attitude in the matter, and because of his remembrance of his
own experiences he sympathized with my desire to go to the front.
Accordingly he offered me the command of one of the regiments. I told
him that after six weeks' service in the field I would feel competent to
handle the regiment, but that I would not know how to equip it or how
to get it into the first action; but that Wood was entirely competent
at once to take command, and that if he would make Wood colonel I would
accept the lieutenant-colonelcy. General Alger thought this an act of
foolish self-abnegation on my part--instead of its being, what it
was, the wisest act I could have performed. He told me to accept the
colonelcy, and that he would make Wood lieutenant-colonel, and that Wood
would do the work anyway; but I answered that I did not wish to rise on
any man's shoulders; that I hoped to be given every chance that my deeds
and abilities warranted; but that I did not wish what I did not earn,
and that above all I did not wish to hold any position where any one
else did the work. He laughed at me a little and said I was foolish, but
I do not think he really minded, and he promised to do as I wished. True
to his word, he secured the appointment of Wood as colonel and of myself
as lieutenant-colonel of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry. This
was soon nicknamed, both by the public and by the rest of the army,
the Rough Riders, doubtless because the bulk of the men were from the
Southwestern ranch country and were skilled in the wild horsemanship of
the great plains.
Wood instantly began the work of raising the regiment. He first
assembled several old non-commissioned officers of experience, put them
in office, and gave them blanks for requisitions for the full equipment
of a cavalry regiment. He selected San Antonio as the gathering-place,
as it was in a good horse country, near the Gulf from some port on which
we would have to embark, and near an old arsenal and an old army
post from which we got a good deal of stuff--some of it practically
condemned, but which we found serviceable at a pinch, and much better
than nothing. He organized a horse board in Texas, and began purchasing
all horses that were not too big and were sound. A day or two after he
was commissioned he wrote out in the office of the Secretary of War,
under his authority, telegrams to the Governors of Arizona, New Mexico,
Oklahoma, and Indian Territory, in substance as follows:
The President desires to raise --- volunteers in your Territory to form
part of a regiment of mounted riflemen to be commanded by Leonard Wood,
Colonel; Theodore Roosevelt, Lieutenant-Colonel. He desires that the men
selected should be young, sound, good shots and good riders, and that
you expedite by all means in your power the enrollment of these men.
(Signed) R. A. ALGER, Secretary of War.
As soon as he had attended to a few more odds and ends he left
Washington, and the day after his arrival in San Antonio the troops
began to arrive.
For several weeks before I joined the regiment, to which Wood went ahead
of me, I continued as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, trying to
get some coherence of plan between the War Department and the Navy
Department; and also being used by Wood to finish getting the equipment
for the regiment. As regards finding out what the plans of the War
Department were, the task was simple. They had no plans. Even during the
final months before the outbreak of hostilities very little was done in
the way of efficient preparation. On one occasion, when every one knew
that the declaration of war was sure to come in a few days, I went on
military business to the office of one of the highest line generals of
the army, a man who at that moment ought to have been working eighteen
hours out of the twenty-four on the vital problems ahead of him. What he
was actually doing was trying on a new type of smart-looking uniform
on certain enlisted men; and he called me in to ask my advice as to the
position of the pockets in the blouse, with a view to making it look
attractive. An aide of this general--funnily enough a good fighting man
in actual service--when I consulted him as to what my uniform for the
campaign should be, laid special stress upon my purchasing a pair of
black top boots for full dress, explaining that they were very effective
on hotel piazzas and in parlors. I did not intend to be in any hotel
if it could possibly be avoided; and as things turned out, I had no
full-dress uniform, nothing but my service uniform, during my brief
experience in the army.
I suppose that war always does bring out what is highest and lowest in
human nature. The contractors who furnish poor materials to the army or
the navy in time of war stand on a level of infamy only one degree above
that of the participants in the white slave traffic themselves. But
there is conduct far short of this which yet seems inexplicable to any
man who has in him any spirit of disinterested patriotism combined
with any power of imagination. Respectable men, who I suppose lack the
imagination thoroughly to realize what they are doing, try to make money
out of the Nation's necessities in war at the very time that other men
are making every sacrifice, financial and personal, for the cause. In
the closing weeks of my service as Assistant Secretary of the Navy we
were collecting ships for auxiliary purposes. Some men, at cost to their
own purses, helped us freely and with efficiency; others treated the
affair as an ordinary business transaction; and yet others endeavored,
at some given crisis when our need was great, to sell us inferior
vessels at exorbitant prices, and used every pressure, through Senators
and Congressmen, to accomplish their ends. In one or two cases they did
accomplish them too, until we got a really first-class board established
to superintend such purchases. A more curious experience was in
connection with the point chosen for the starting of the expedition
against Cuba. I had not supposed that any human being could consider
this matter save from the standpoint of military need. But one morning
a very wealthy and influential man, a respectable and upright man
according to his own lights, called on me to protest against our choice
of Tampa, and to put in a plea for a certain other port, on the ground
that his railroad was entitled to its share of the profit for hauling
the army and equipment! I happened to know that at this time this
very man had kinsfolk with the army, who served gallantly, and the
circumstances of his coming to me were such as to show that he was not
acting secretly, and had no idea that there was anything out of the way
in his proposal. I think the facts were merely that he had been trained
to regard business as the sole object in life, and that he lacked the
imagination to enable him to understand the real nature of the request
that he was making; and, moreover, he had good reason to believe that
one of his business competitors had been unduly favored.
The War Department was in far worse shape than the Navy Department. The
young officers turned out from West Point are precisely as good as the
young officers turned out from Annapolis, and this always has been true.
But at that time (something has been done to remedy the worst conditions
since), and ever since the close of the Civil War, the conditions were
such that after a few years the army officer stagnated so far as his
profession was concerned. When the Spanish War broke out the navy really
was largely on a war footing, as any navy which is even respectably
cared for in time of peace must be. The admirals, captains, and
lieutenants were continually practicing their profession in almost
precisely the way that it has to be practiced in time of war. Except
actually shooting at a foe, most of the men on board ship went through
in time of peace practically all that they would have to go through in
time of war. The heads of bureaus in the Navy Department were for the
most part men who had seen sea service, who expected to return to sea
service, and who were preparing for needs which they themselves knew by
experience. Moreover, the civilian head of the navy had to provide for
keeping the ships in a state of reasonable efficiency, and Congress
could not hopelessly misbehave itself about the navy without the fact at
once becoming evident.
All this was changed so far as the army was concerned. Not only was it
possible to decrease the efficiency of the army without being called
to account for it, but the only way in which the Secretary of War could
gain credit for himself or the Administration was by economy, and the
easiest way to economize was in connection with something that would not
be felt unless war should arise. The people took no interest whatever in
the army; demagogues clamored against it, and, inadequate though it
was in size, insisted that it should be still further reduced. Popular
orators always appealed to the volunteers; the regulars had no votes and
there was no point in politicians thinking of them. The chief activity
shown by Congressmen about the army was in getting special army posts
built in places where there was no need for them. Even the work of the
army in its campaigns against the Indians was of such a character that
it was generally performed by small bodies of fifty or a hundred
men. Until a man ceased being a lieutenant he usually had plenty of
professional work to attend to and was employed in the field, and, in
short, had the same kind of practice that his brother in the navy had,
and he did his work as well. But once past this stage he had almost
no opportunity to perform any work corresponding to his rank, and but
little opportunity to do any military work whatsoever. The very best
men, men like Lawton, Young, Chaffee, Hawkins, and Sumner, to mention
only men under or beside whom I served, remained good soldiers, soldiers
of the best stamp, in spite of the disheartening conditions. But it
was not to be expected that the average man could continue to grow
when every influence was against him. Accordingly, when the Spanish War
suddenly burst upon us, a number of inert elderly captains and field
officers were, much against their own wishes, suddenly pitchforked into
the command of regiments, brigades, and even divisions and army corps.
Often these men failed painfully. This was not their fault; it was the
fault of the Nation, that is, the fault of all of us, of you, my reader,
and of myself, and of those like us, because we had permitted conditions
to be such as to render these men unfit for command. Take a stout
captain of an out-of-the-way two-company post, where nothing in the
world ever occurred even resembling military action, and where the only
military problem that really convulsed the post to its foundations was
the quarrel between the captain and the quartermaster as to how high a
mule's tail ought to be shaved (I am speaking of an actual incident).
What could be expected of such a man, even though thirty-five years
before he had been a gallant second lieutenant in the Civil War, if,
after this intervening do-nothing period, he was suddenly put in command
of raw troops in a midsummer campaign in the tropics?
The bureau chiefs were for the most part elderly incompetents, whose
idea was to do their routine duties in such way as to escape the
censure of routine bureaucratic superiors and to avoid a Congressional
investigation. They had not the slightest conception of preparing
the army for war. It was impossible that they could have any such
conception. The people and the Congress did not wish the army prepared
for war; and those editors and philanthropists and peace advocates who
felt vaguely that if the army were incompetent their principles were
safe, always inveighed against any proposal to make it efficient, on the
ground that this showed a natural bloodthirstiness in the proposer. When
such were the conditions, it was absolutely impossible that either the
War Department or the army could do well in the event of war. Secretary
Alger happened to be Secretary when war broke out, and all the
responsibility for the shortcomings of the Department were visited
upon his devoted head. He was made the scapegoat for our National
shortcomings. The fault was not his; the fault and responsibility
lay with us, the people, who for thirty-three years had permitted our
representatives in Congress and in National executive office to bear
themselves so that it was absolutely impossible to avoid the great bulk
of all the trouble that occurred, and of all the shortcomings of which
our people complained, during the Spanish War. The chief immediate cause
was the conditions of red-tape bureaucracy which existed in the War
Department at Washington, which had prevented any good organization
or the preparation of any good plan of operation for using our men and
supplies. The recurrence of these conditions, even though in somewhat
less aggravated form, in any future emergency is as certain as sunrise
unless we bring about the principle of a four years' detail in the staff
corps--a principle which Congress has now for years stubbornly refused
to grant.
There are nations who only need to have peaceful ideals inculcated, and
to whom militarism is a curse and a misfortune. There are other nations,
like our own, so happily situated that the thought of war is never
present to their minds. They are wholly free from any tendency
improperly to exalt or to practice militarism. These nations should
never forget that there must be military ideals no less than peaceful
ideals. The exaltation of Nogi's career, set forth so strikingly in
Stanley Washburn's little volume on the great Japanese warrior, contains
much that is especially needed for us of America, prone as we are to
regard the exigencies of a purely commercial and industrial civilization
as excusing us from the need of admiring and practicing the heroic and
warlike virtues.
Our people are not military. We need normally only a small standing
army; but there should be behind it a reserve of instructed men big
enough to fill it up to full war strength, which is over twice the peace
strength. Moreover, the young men of the country should realize that it
is the duty of every one of them to prepare himself so that in time of
need he may speedily become an efficient soldier--a duty now generally
forgotten, but which should be recognized as one of the vitally
essential parts of every man's training.
In endeavoring to get the "Rough Riders" equipped I met with some
experiences which were both odd and instructive. There were not enough
arms and other necessaries to go round, and there was keen rivalry among
the intelligent and zealous commanders of the volunteer organizations as
to who should get first choice. Wood's experience was what enabled us to
equip ourselves in short order. There was another cavalry organization
whose commander was at the War Department about this time, and we had
been eyeing him with much alertness as a rival. One day I asked him
what his plans were about arming and drilling his troops, who were of
precisely the type of our own men. He answered that he expected "to give
each of the boys two revolvers and a lariat, and then just turn them
loose." I reported the conversation to Wood, with the remark that we
might feel ourselves safe from rivalry in that quarter; and safe we
were.
In trying to get the equipment I met with checks and rebuffs, and in
return was the cause of worry and concern to various bureau chiefs
who were unquestionably estimable men in their private and domestic
relations, and who doubtless had been good officers thirty years
before, but who were as unfit for modern war as if they were so many
smooth-bores. One fine old fellow did his best to persuade us to take
black powder rifles, explaining with paternal indulgence that no one yet
really knew just what smokeless powder might do, and that there was a
good deal to be said in favor of having smoke to conceal us from the
enemy. I saw this pleasing theory actually worked out in practice later
on, for the National Guard regiments with us at Santiago had black
powder muskets, and the regular artillery black powder guns, and they
really might almost as well have replaced these weapons by crossbows
and mangonels. We succeeded, thanks to Wood, in getting the same cavalry
carbines that were used by the regulars. We were determined to do this,
not only because the weapons were good, but because this would in all
probability mean that we were brigaded with the regular cavalry, which
it was certain would be sent immediately to the front for the fighting.
There was one worthy bureau chief who was continually refusing
applications of mine as irregular. In each case I would appeal to
Secretary Alger--who helped me in every way--and get an order from him
countenancing the irregularity. For instance, I found out that as we
were nearer the July date than the January date for the issuance of
clothing, and as it had long been customary to issue the winter clothing
in July, so as to give ample leisure for getting it to all the various
posts, it was therefore solemnly proposed to issue this same winter
clothing to us who were about to start for a summer campaign in the
tropics. This would seem incredible to those who have never dealt with
an inert officialdom, a red-tape bureaucracy, but such is the fact. I
rectified this and got an order for khaki clothing. We were then told we
would have to advertise thirty days for horses. This meant that we would
have missed the Santiago expedition. So I made another successful appeal
to the Secretary. Other difficulties came up about wagons, and various
articles, and in each case the same result followed. On the last
occasion, when I came up in triumph with the needed order, the worried
office head, who bore me no animosity, but who did feel that fate had
been very unkind, threw himself back in his chair and exclaimed with a
sigh: "Oh, dear! I had this office running in such good shape--and then
along came the war and upset everything!" His feeling was that war was
an illegitimate interruption to the work of the War Department.
There were of course department heads and bureau chiefs and assistants
who, in spite of the worthlessness of the system, and of the paralyzing
conditions that had prevailed, remained first-class men. An example
of these was Commissary-General Weston. His energy, activity,
administrative efficiency, and common sense were supplemented by an
eager desire to help everybody do the best that could be done. Both in
Washington and again down at Santiago we owed him very much. When I was
President, it was my good fortune to repay him in part our debt,
which means the debt of the people of the country, by making him a
major-general.
The regiment assembled at San Antonio. When I reached there, the men,
rifles, and horses, which were the essentials, were coming in fast, and
the saddles, blankets, and the like were also accumulating. Thanks to
Wood's exertions, when we reached Tampa we were rather better equipped
than most of the regular regiments. We adhered strictly to field
equipment, allowing no luxuries or anything else unnecessary, and so
we were able to move off the field when ordered, with our own
transportation, leaving nothing behind.
I suppose every man tends to brag about his regiment; but it does seem
to me that there never was a regiment better worth bragging about
than ours. Wood was an exceptional commander, of great power, with a
remarkable gift for organization. The rank and file were as fine natural
fighting men as ever carried a rifle or rode a horse in any country or
any age. We had a number of first-class young fellows from the East,
most of them from colleges like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton; but
the great majority of the men were Southwesterners, from the then
territories of Oklahoma, Indian Territory, Arizona, and New Mexico. They
were accustomed to the use of firearms, accustomed to taking care of
themselves in the open; they were intelligent and self-reliant; they
possessed hardihood and endurance and physical prowess; and, above all,
they had the fighting edge, the cool and resolute fighting temper. They
went into the war with full knowledge, having deliberately counted the
cost. In the great majority of cases each man was chiefly anxious to
find out what he should do to make the regiment a success. They bought,
first and last, about 800 copies of the cavalry drill regulations and
studied them industriously. Such men were practically soldiers to
start with, in all the essentials. It is small wonder that with them as
material to work upon the regiment was raised, armed, equipped, drilled,
sent on trains to Tampa, embarked, disembarked, and put through two
victorious offensive--not defensive--fights in which a third of the
officers and one-fifth of the men were killed or wounded, all within
sixty days. It is a good record, and it speaks well for the men of the
regiment; and it speaks well for Wood.[*]
[*] To counterbalance the newspapers which ignorantly and
indiscriminately praised all the volunteers there were
others whose blame was of the same intelligent quality. The
New York _Evening Post_, on June 18, gave expression to the
following gloomy foreboding: "Competent observers have
remarked that nothing more extraordinary has been done than
the sending to Cuba of the First United States Volunteer
Cavalry, known as the 'rough riders.' Organized but four
weeks, barely given their full complement of officers, and
only a week of regular drill, these men have been sent to
the front before they have learned the first elements of
soldiering and discipline, or have even become acquainted
with their officers. In addition to all this, like the
regular cavalry, they have been sent with only their
carbines and revolvers to meet an enemy armed with long-range
rifles. There have been few cases of such military
cruelty in our military annals." A week or so after this not
wholly happy prophecy was promulgated, the "cruelty" was
consummated, first at Las Guasimas and then in the San Juan
fighting.
Wood was so busy getting the regiment ready that when I reached San
Antonio he turned most of the drilling of it over to me. This was a
piece of great good fortune for me, and I drilled the men industriously,
mounted and unmounted. I had plenty to learn, and the men and the
officers even more; but we went at our work with the heartiest good
will. We speedily made it evident that there was no room and no mercy
for any man who shirked any duty, and we accomplished good results.
The fact is that the essentials of drill and work for a cavalry or an
infantry regiment are easy to learn, which of course is not true for the
artillery or the engineers or for the navy. The reason why it takes
so long to turn the average civilized man into a good infantryman
or cavalryman is because it takes a long while to teach the average
untrained man how to shoot, to ride, to march, to take care of himself
in the open, to be alert, resourceful, cool, daring, and resolute, to
obey quickly, as well as to be willing, and to fit himself, to act on
his own responsibility. If he already possesses these qualities, there
is very little difficulty in making him a soldier; all the drill that is
necessary to enable him to march and to fight is of a simple character.
Parade ground and barrack square maneuvers are of no earthly consequence
in real war. When men can readily change from line to column, and column
to line, can form front in any direction, and assemble and scatter, and
can do these things with speed and precision, they have a fairly good
grasp of the essentials. When our regiment reached Tampa it could
already be handled creditably at fast gaits, and both in mass and
extended formations, mounted and dismounted.
I had served three years in the New York National Guard, finally
becoming a captain. This experience was invaluable to me. It enabled me
at once to train the men in the simple drill without which they would
have been a mob; for although the drill requirements are simple,
they are also absolutely indispensable. But if I had believed that my
experience in the National Guard had taught me all that there was to
teach about a soldier's career, it would have been better for me not to
have been in it at all. There were in the regiment a number of men who
had served in the National Guard, and a number of others who had served
in the Regular Army. Some of these latter had served in the field in
the West under campaign conditions, and were accustomed to long marches,
privation, risk, and unexpected emergencies. These men were of the
utmost benefit to the regiment. They already knew their profession, and
could teach and help the others. But if the man had merely served in
a National Guard regiment, or in the Regular Army at some post in a
civilized country where he learned nothing except what could be picked
up on the parade ground, in the barracks, and in practice marches of a
few miles along good roads, then it depended purely upon his own good
sense whether he had been helped or hurt by the experience. If he
realized that he had learned only five per cent of his profession, that
there remained ninety-five per cent to accomplish before he would be a
good soldier, why, he had profited immensely.
To start with five per cent handicap was a very great advantage; and if
the man was really a good man, he could not be overtaken. But if the
man thought that he had learned all about the profession of a soldier
because he had been in the National Guard or in the Regular Army under
the conditions I have described, then he was actually of less use than
if he had never had any military experience at all. Such a man was
apt to think that nicety of alignment, precision in wheeling, and
correctness in the manual of arms were the ends of training and the
guarantees of good soldiership, and that from guard mounting to sentry
duty everything in war was to be done in accordance with what he had
learned in peace. As a matter of fact, most of what he had learned was
never used at all, and some of it had to be unlearned. The one thing,
for instance, that a sentry ought never to do in an actual campaign is
to walk up and down a line where he will be conspicuous. His business
is to lie down somewhere off a ridge crest where he can see any one
approaching, but where a man approaching cannot see him. As for the
ceremonies, during the really hard part of a campaign only the barest
essentials are kept.
Almost all of the junior regular officers, and many of the senior
regular officers, were fine men. But, through no fault of their own, had
been forced to lead lives that fairly paralyzed their efficiency when
the strain of modern war came on them. The routine elderly regular
officer who knew nothing whatever of modern war was in most respects
nearly as worthless as a raw recruit. The positions and commands
prescribed in the text-books were made into fetishes by some of these
men, and treated as if they were the ends, instead of the not always
important means by which the ends were to be achieved. In the Cuban
fighting, for instance, it would have been folly for me to have taken my
place in the rear of the regiment, the canonical text-book position. My
business was to be where I could keep most command over the regiment,
and, in a rough-and-tumble, scrambling fight in thick jungle, this had
to depend upon the course of events, and usually meant that I had to be
at the front. I saw in that fighting more than one elderly regimental
commander who unwittingly rendered the only service he could render to
his regiment by taking up his proper position several hundred yards in
the rear when the fighting began; for then the regiment disappeared in
the jungle, and for its good fortune the commanding officer never saw it
again until long after the fight was over.
After one Cuban fight a lieutenant-colonel of the regulars, in command
of a regiment, who had met with just such an experience and had rejoined
us at the front several hours after the close of the fighting, asked me
what my men were doing when the fight began. I answered that they were
following in trace in column of twos, and that the instant the shooting
began I deployed them as skirmishers on both sides of the trail. He
answered triumphantly, "You can't deploy men as skirmishers from column
formation"; to which I responded, "Well, I did, and, what is more, if
any captain had made any difficulty about it, I would have sent him
to the rear." My critic was quite correct from the parade ground
standpoint. The prescribed orders at that time were to deploy the column
first into a line of squads at correct intervals, and then to give an
order which, if my memory serves correctly, ran: "As skirmishers, by the
right and left flanks, at six yards, take intervals, march." The order I
really gave ran more like this: "Scatter out to the right there, quick,
you! scatter to the left! look alive, look alive!" And they looked
alive, and they scattered, and each took advantage of cover, and forward
went the line.
Now I do not wish what I have said to be misunderstood. If ever we have
a great war, the bulk of our soldiers will not be men who have had any
opportunity to train soul and mind and body so as to meet the iron needs
of an actual campaign. Long continued and faithful drill will alone put
these men in shape to begin to do their duty, and failure to recognize
this on the part of the average man will mean laziness and folly and
not the possession of efficiency. Moreover, if men have been trained
to believe, for instance, that they can "arbitrate questions of
vital interest and national honor," if they have been brought up with
flabbiness of moral fiber as well as flabbiness of physique, then there
will be need of long and laborious and faithful work to give the needed
tone to mind and body. But if the men have in them the right stuff, it
is not so very difficult.
At San Antonio we entrained for Tampa. In various sociological books
by authors of Continental Europe, there are jeremiads as to the way
in which service in the great European armies, with their minute and
machine-like efficiency and regularity, tends to dwarf the capacity
for individual initiative among the officers and men. There is no such
danger for any officer or man of a volunteer organization in America
when our country, with playful light-heartedness, has pranced into war
without making any preparation for it. I know no larger or finer field
for the display of an advanced individualism than that which opened
before us as we went from San Antonio to Tampa, camped there, and
embarked on a transport for Cuba. Nobody ever had any definite
information to give us, and whatever information we unearthed on our
own account was usually wrong. Each of us had to show an alert and
not overscrupulous self-reliance in order to obtain food for his men,
provender for his horses, or transportation of any kind for any object.
One lesson early impressed on me was that if I wanted anything to eat it
was wise to carry it with me; and if any new war should arise, I would
earnestly advise the men of every volunteer organization always to
proceed upon the belief that their supplies will not turn up, and to
take every opportunity of getting food for themselves.
Tampa was a scene of the wildest confusion. There were miles of tracks
loaded with cars of the contents of which nobody seemed to have any
definite knowledge. General Miles, who was supposed to have supervision
over everything, and General Shafter, who had charge of the expedition,
were both there. But, thanks to the fact that nobody had had any
experience in handling even such a small force as ours--about 17,000
men--there was no semblance of order. Wood and I were bound that we
should not be left behind when the expedition started. When we were
finally informed that it was to leave next morning, we were ordered to
go to a certain track to meet a train. We went to the track, but the
train never came. Then we were sent to another track to meet another
train. Again it never came. However, we found a coal train, of which we
took possession, and the conductor, partly under duress and partly in a
spirit of friendly helpfulness, took us down to the quay.
All kinds of other organizations, infantry and cavalry, regular and
volunteer, were arriving at the quay and wandering around it, and there
was no place where we could get any specific information as to what
transport we were to have. Finally Wood was told to "get any ship you
can get which is not already assigned." He borrowed without leave a
small motor boat, and commandeered the transport Yucatan. When asked by
the captain what his authority was, he reported that he was acting "by
orders of General Shafter," and directed the ship to be brought to
the dock. He had already sent me word to be ready, as soon as the ship
touched the pier, to put the regiment aboard her. I found that she had
already been assigned to a regular regiment, and to another volunteer
regiment, and as it was evident that not more than half of the men
assigned to her could possibly get on, I was determined that we
should not be among the men left off. The volunteer regiment offered
a comparatively easy problem. I simply marched my men past them to the
allotted place and held the gangway. With the regulars I had to be a
little more diplomatic, because their commander, a lieutenant-colonel,
was my superior in rank, and also doubtless knew his rights. He sent
word to me to make way, to draw my regiment off to one side, and let his
take possession of the gangway. I could see the transport coming in,
and could dimly make out Wood's figure thereon. Accordingly I played for
time. I sent respectful requests through his officers to the commander
of the regulars, entered into parleys, and made protestations, until the
transport got near enough so that by yelling at the top of my voice I
was able to get into a--highly constructive--communication with Wood.
What he was saying I had no idea, but he was evidently speaking, and
on my own responsibility I translated it into directions to hold the
gangway, and so informed the regulars that I was under the orders of
my superior and of a ranking officer, and--to my great regret, etc.,
etc.--could not give way as they desired. As soon as the transport was
fast we put our men aboard at the double. Half of the regular regiment
got on, and the other half and the other volunteer regiment went
somewhere else.
We were kept several days on the transport, which was jammed with men,
so that it was hard to move about on the deck. Then the fleet got
under way, and we steamed slowly down to Santiago. Here we disembarked,
higgledy-piggledy, just as we had embarked. Different parts of different
outfits were jumbled together, and it was no light labor afterwards to
assemble the various batteries. For instance, one transport had guns,
and another the locks for the guns; the two not getting together for
several days after one of them had been landed. Soldiers went here,
provisions there; and who got ashore first largely depended upon
individual activity. Fortunately for us, my former naval aide, when I
had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Lieutenant-Commander Sharp, a
first-class fellow, was there in command of a little ship to which I had
succeeded in getting him appointed before I left the Navy Department. He
gave us a black pilot, who took our transport right in shore, the others
following like a flock of sheep; and we disembarked with our rifles,
ammunition belts, and not much else. In theory it was out of our turn,
but if we had not disembarked then, Heaven only knows when our turn
would have come, and we did not intend to be out of the fighting if we
could help it. I carried some food in my pockets, and a light waterproof
coat, which was my sole camp equipment for the next two or three days.
Twenty-four hours after getting ashore we marched from Daiquiri, where
we had landed, to Siboney, also on the coast, reaching it during a
terrific downpour of rain. When this was over, we built a fire, dried
our clothes, and ate whatever we had brought with us.
We were brigaded with the First and Tenth Regular Cavalry, under
Brigadier-General Sam Young. He was a fine type of the American regular.
Like General Chaffee, another of the same type, he had entered the army
in the Civil War as a private. Later, when I was President, it was my
good fortune to make each of them in succession Lieutenant-General of
the army of the United States. When General Young retired and General
Chaffee was to take his place, the former sent to the latter his three
stars to wear on his first official presentation, with a note that they
were from "Private Young to Private Chaffee." The two fine old fellows
had served in the ranks, one in the cavalry, one in the infantry, in
their golden youth, in the days of the great war nearly half a century
before; each had grown gray in a lifetime of honorable service under the
flag, and each closed his active career in command of the army. General
Young was one of the few men who had given and taken wounds with the
saber. He was an old friend of mine, and when in Washington before
starting for the front he told me that if we got in his brigade he would
put us into the fighting all right. He kept his word.
General Young had actively superintended getting his two regular
regiments, or at least a squadron of each, off the transports, and late
that night he sent us word that he had received permission to move at
dawn and strike the Spanish advance position. He directed us to move
along a ridge trail with our two squadrons (one squadron having been
left at Tampa), while with the two squadrons of regulars, one of the
First and one of the Tenth, under his personal supervision, he marched
up the valley trail. Accordingly Wood took us along the hill trail early
next morning, till we struck the Spaniards, and began our fight just as
the regulars began the fight in the valley trail.
It was a mountainous country covered with thick jungle, a most confusing
country, and I had an awful time trying to get into the fight and trying
to do what was right when in it; and all the while I was thinking that
I was the only man who did not know what I was about, and that all the
others did--whereas, as I found out later, pretty much everybody else
was as much in the dark as I was. There was no surprise; we struck the
Spaniards exactly where we had expected; then Wood halted us and put
us into the fight deliberately and in order. He ordered us to deploy
alternately by troops to the right and left of the trail, giving our
senior major, Brodie, a West Pointer and as good a soldier as ever wore
a uniform, the left wing, while I took the right wing. I was told if
possible to connect with the regulars who were on the right. In theory
this was excellent, but as the jungle was very dense the first troop
that deployed to the right vanished forthwith, and I never saw it again
until the fight was over--having a frightful feeling meanwhile that I
might be court-martialed for losing it. The next troop deployed to the
left under Brodie. Then the third came along, and I started to deploy it
to the right as before.
By the time the first platoon had gotten into the jungle I realized that
it likewise would disappear unless I kept hold of it. I managed to
keep possession of the last platoon. One learns fast in a fight, and I
marched this platoon and my next two troops in column through the jungle
without any attempt to deploy until we got on the firing line. This
sounds simple. But it was not. I did not know when I had gotten on the
firing line! I could hear a good deal of firing, some over to my right
at a good distance, and the rest to the left and ahead. I pushed on,
expecting to strike the enemy somewhere between.
Soon we came to the brink of a deep valley. There was a good deal of
cracking of rifles way off in front of us, but as they used smokeless
powder we had no idea as to exactly where they were, or who they were
shooting at. Then it dawned on us that we were the target. The bullets
began to come overhead, making a sound like the ripping of a silk dress,
with sometimes a kind of pop; a few of my men fell, and I deployed the
rest, making them lie down and get behind trees. Richard Harding Davis
was with us, and as we scanned the landscape with our glasses it was
he who first pointed out to us some Spaniards in a trench some
three-quarters of a mile off. It was difficult to make them out. There
were not many of them. However, we finally did make them out, and
we could see their conical hats, for the trench was a poor one. We
advanced, firing at them, and drove them off.
What to do then I had not an idea. The country in front fell away into
a very difficult jungle-filled valley. There was nothing but jungle all
around, and if I advanced I was afraid I might get out of touch with
everybody and not be going in the right direction. Moreover, as far as
I could see, there was now nobody in front who was shooting at us,
although some of the men on my left insisted that our own men had fired
into us--an allegation which I soon found was almost always made in such
a fight, and which in this case was not true. At this moment some of the
regulars appeared across the ravine on our right. The first thing they
did was to fire a volley at us, but one of our first sergeants went up a
tree and waved a guidon at them and they stopped. Firing was still going
on to our left, however, and I was never more puzzled to know what to
do. I did not wish to take my men out of their position without orders,
for fear that I might thereby be leaving a gap if there was a Spanish
force which meditated an offensive return. On the other hand, it did
not seem to me that I had been doing enough fighting to justify my
existence, and there was obviously fighting going on to the left. I
remember that I kept thinking of the refrain of the fox-hunting song,
"Here's to every friend who struggled to the end"; in the hunting field
I had always acted on this theory, and, no matter how discouraging
appearances might be, had never stopped trying to get in at the death
until the hunt was actually over; and now that there was work, and not
play, on hand, I intended to struggle as hard as I knew how not to
be left out of any fighting into which I could, with any possible
propriety, get.
So I left my men where they were and started off at a trot toward where
the firing was, with a couple of orderlies to send back for the men in
case that proved advisable. Like most tyros, I was wearing my sword,
which in thick jungle now and then got between my legs--from that day on
it always went corded in the baggage. I struck the trail, and began to
pass occasional dead men. Pretty soon I reached Wood and found, much to
my pleasure, that I had done the right thing, for as I came up word was
brought to him that Brodie had been shot, and he at once sent me to take
charge of the left wing. It was more open country here, and at least I
was able to get a glimpse of my own men and exercise some control over
them. There was much firing going on, but for the life of me I could not
see any Spaniards, and neither could any one else. Finally we made up
our minds that they were shooting at us from a set of red-tiled ranch
buildings a good way in front, and these I assaulted, finally charging
them. Before we came anywhere near, the Spaniards, who, as it proved,
really were inside and around them, abandoned them, leaving a few dead
men.
By the time I had taken possession of these buildings all firing had
ceased everywhere. I had not the faintest idea what had happened:
whether the fight was over; or whether this was merely a lull in the
fight; or where the Spaniards were; or whether we might be attacked
again; or whether we ought ourselves to attack somebody somewhere else.
I got my men in order and sent out small parties to explore the ground
in front, who returned without finding any foe. (By this time, as a
matter of fact, the Spaniards were in full retreat.) Meanwhile I was
extending my line so as to get into touch with our people on the right.
Word was brought to me that Wood had been shot--which fortunately proved
not to be true--and as, if this were so, it meant that I must take
charge of the regiment, I moved over personally to inquire. Soon I
learned that he was all right, that the Spaniards had retreated along
the main road, and that Colonel Wood and two or three other officers
were a short distance away. Before I reached them I encountered a
captain of the Ninth Cavalry, very glum because his troopers had not
been up in time to take part in the fight, and he congratulated me--with
visible effort!--upon my share in our first victory. I thanked him
cordially, not confiding in him that till that moment I myself knew
exceeding little about the victory; and proceeded to where Generals
Wheeler, Lawton, and Chaffee, who had just come up, in company with
Wood, were seated on a bank. They expressed appreciation of the way that
I had handled my troops, first on the right wing and then on the left!
As I was quite prepared to find I had committed some awful sin, I did my
best to accept this in a nonchalant manner, and not to look as relieved
as I felt. As throughout the morning I had preserved a specious aspect
of wisdom, and had commanded first one and then the other wing, the
fight was really a capital thing for me, for practically all the men
had served under my actual command, and thenceforth felt an enthusiastic
belief that I would lead them aright.
It was a week after this skirmish before the army made the advance on
Santiago. Just before this occurred General Young was stricken down with
fever. General Wheeler, who had commanded the Cavalry Division, was put
in general charge of the left wing of the army, which fought before the
city itself. Brigadier-General Sam Sumner, an excellent officer, who had
the second cavalry brigade, took command of the cavalry division, and
Wood took command of our brigade, while, to my intense delight, I got
my regiment. I therefore had command of the regiment before the stiffest
fighting occurred. Later, when Wood was put in command in Santiago, I
became the brigade commander.
Late in the evening we camped at El Poso. There were two regular
officers, the brigade commander's aides, Lieutenants A. L. Mills and W.
E. Shipp, who were camped by our regiment. Each of my men had food in
his haversack, but I had none, and I would have gone supperless to bed
if Mills and Shipp had not given me out of their scanty stores a big
sandwich, which I shared with my orderly, who also had nothing. Next
morning my body servant Marshall, an ex-soldier of the Ninth (Colored)
Cavalry, a fine and faithful fellow, had turned up and I was able in my
turn to ask Mills and Shipp, who had eaten all their food the preceding
evening, to take breakfast with me. A few hours later gallant Shipp was
dead, and Mills, an exceptionally able officer, had been shot through
the head from side to side, just back of the eyes; yet he lived,
although one eye was blinded, and before I left the Presidency I gave
him his commission as Brigadier-General.
Early in the morning our artillery began firing from the hill-crest
immediately in front of where our men were camped. Several of the
regiment were killed and wounded by the shrapnel of the return fire of
the Spaniards. One of the shrapnel bullets fell on my wrist and raised
a bump as big as a hickory nut, but did not even break the skin. Then
we were marched down from the hill on a muddy road through thick jungle
towards Santiago. The heat was great, and we strolled into the fight
with no definite idea on the part of any one as to what we were to do
or what would happen. There was no plan that our left wing was to make
a serious fight that day; and as there were no plans, it was naturally
exceedingly hard to get orders, and each of us had to act largely on his
own responsibility.
Lawton's infantry division attacked the little village of El Caney, some
miles to the right. Kent's infantry division and Sumner's dismounted
cavalry division were supposed to detain the Spanish army in Santiago
until Lawton had captured El Caney. Spanish towns and villages, however,
with their massive buildings, are natural fortifications, as the French
found in the Peninsular War, and as both the French and our people found
in Mexico. The Spanish troops in El Caney fought very bravely, as did
the Spanish troops in front of us, and it was late in the afternoon
before Lawton accomplished his task.
Meanwhile we of the left wing had by degrees become involved in a fight
which toward the end became not even a colonel's fight, but a squad
leader's fight. The cavalry division was put at the head of the line.
We were told to march forward, cross a little river in front, and then,
turning to the right, march up alongside the stream until we connected
with Lawton. Incidentally, this movement would not have brought us
into touch with Lawton in any event. But we speedily had to abandon any
thought of carrying it out. The maneuver brought us within fair range
of the Spanish intrenchments along the line of hills which we called the
San Juan Hills, because on one of them was the San Juan blockhouse. On
that day my regiment had the lead of the second brigade, and we marched
down the trail following in trace behind the first brigade. Apparently
the Spaniards could not make up their minds what to do as the three
regular regiments of the first brigade crossed and defiled along the
other bank of the stream, but when our regiment was crossing they began
to fire at us.
Under this flank fire it soon became impossible to continue the march.
The first brigade halted, deployed, and finally began to fire back. Then
our brigade was halted. From time to time some of our men would fall,
and I sent repeated word to the rear to try to get authority to attack
the hills in front. Finally General Sumner, who was fighting the
division in fine shape, sent word to advance. The word was brought to
me by Mills, who said that my orders were to support the regulars in
the assault on the hills, and that my objective would be the red-tiled
ranch-house in front, on a hill which we afterwards christened Kettle
Hill. I mention Mills saying this because it was exactly the kind of
definite order the giving of which does so much to insure success in a
fight, as it prevents all obscurity as to what is to be done. The order
to attack did not reach the first brigade until after we ourselves
reached it, so that at first there was doubt on the part of their
officers whether they were at liberty to join in the advance.
I had not enjoyed the Guasimas fight at all, because I had been so
uncertain as to what I ought to do. But the San Juan fight was entirely
different. The Spaniards had a hard position to attack, it is true,
but we could see them, and I knew exactly how to proceed. I kept on
horseback, merely because I found it difficult to convey orders along
the line, as the men were lying down; and it is always hard to get men
to start when they cannot see whether their comrades are also going.
So I rode up and down the lines, keeping them straightened out, and
gradually worked through line after line until I found myself at
the head of the regiment. By the time I had reached the lines of the
regulars of the first brigade I had come to the conclusion that it was
silly to stay in the valley firing at the hills, because that was really
where we were most exposed, and that the thing to do was to try to
rush the intrenchments. Where I struck the regulars there was no one
of superior rank to mine, and after asking why they did not charge, and
being answered that they had no orders, I said I would give the order.
There was naturally a little reluctance shown by the elderly officer in
command to accept my order, so I said, "Then let my men through, sir,"
and I marched through, followed by my grinning men. The younger officers
and the enlisted men of the regulars jumped up and joined us. I waved
my hat, and we went up the hill with a rush. Having taken it, we looked
across at the Spaniards in the trenches under the San Juan blockhouse to
our left, which Hawkins's brigade was assaulting. I ordered our men to
open fire on the Spaniards in the trenches.
Memory plays funny tricks in such a fight, where things happen quickly,
and all kinds of mental images succeed one another in a detached kind
of way, while the work goes on. As I gave the order in question there
slipped through my mind Mahan's account of Nelson's orders that each
ship as it sailed forward, if it saw another ship engaged with an
enemy's ship, should rake the latter as it passed. When Hawkins's
soldiers captured the blockhouse, I, very much elated, ordered a charge
on my own hook to a line of hills still farther on. Hardly anybody heard
this order, however; only four men started with me, three of whom were
shot. I gave one of them, who was only wounded, my canteen of water, and
ran back, much irritated that I had not been followed--which was quite
unjustifiable, because I found that nobody had heard my orders. General
Sumner had come up by this time, and I asked his permission to lead the
charge. He ordered me to do so, and this time away we went, and stormed
the Spanish intrenchments. There was some close fighting, and we took
a few prisoners. We also captured the Spanish provisions, and ate them
that night with great relish. One of the items was salted flying-fish,
by the way. There were also bottles of wine, and jugs of fiery spirit,
and as soon as possible I had these broken, although not before one
or two of my men had taken too much liquor. Lieutenant Howze, of the
regulars, an aide of General Sumner's, brought me an order to halt where
I was; he could not make up his mind to return until he had spent an
hour or two with us under fire. The Spaniards attempted a counter-attack
in the middle of the afternoon, but were driven back without effort, our
men laughing and cheering as they rose to fire; because hitherto they
had been assaulting breastworks, or lying still under artillery fire,
and they were glad to get a chance to shoot at the Spaniards in the
open. We lay on our arms that night and as we were drenched with sweat,
and had no blankets save a few we took from the dead Spaniards, we found
even the tropic night chilly before morning came.
During the afternoon's fighting, while I was the highest officer at our
immediate part of the front, Captains Boughton and Morton of the regular
cavalry, two as fine officers as any man could wish to have beside him
in battle, came along the firing line to tell me that they had heard
a rumor that we might fall back, and that they wished to record their
emphatic protest against any such course. I did not believe there was
any truth in the rumor, for the Spaniards were utterly incapable of any
effective counter-attack. However, late in the evening, after the fight,
General Wheeler visited us at the front, and he told me to keep myself
in readiness, as at any moment it might be decided to fall back. Jack
Greenway was beside me when General Wheeler was speaking. I answered,
"Well, General, I really don't know whether we would obey an order to
fall back. We can take that city by a rush, and if we have to move
out of here at all I should be inclined to make the rush in the right
direction." Greenway nodded an eager assent. The old General, after a
moment's pause, expressed his hearty agreement, and said that he would
see that there was no falling back. He had been very sick for a couple
of days, but, sick as he was, he managed to get into the fight. He was a
gamecock if ever there was one, but he was in very bad physical shape
on the day of the fight. If there had been any one in high command to
supervise and press the attack that afternoon, we would have gone
right into Santiago. In my part of the line the advance was halted only
because we received orders not to move forward, but to stay on the crest
of the captured hill and hold it.
We are always told that three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage is the most
desirable kind. Well, my men and the regulars of the cavalry had just
that brand of courage. At about three o'clock on the morning after the
first fight, shooting began in our front and there was an alarm of a
Spanish advance. I was never more pleased than to see the way in which
the hungry, tired, shabby men all jumped up and ran forward to the
hill-crest, so as to be ready for the attack; which, however, did not
come. As soon as the sun rose the Spaniards again opened upon us with
artillery. A shell burst between Dave Goodrich and myself, blacking us
with powder, and killing and wounding several of the men immediately
behind us.
Next day the fight turned into a siege; there were some stirring
incidents; but for the most part it was trench work. A fortnight later
Santiago surrendered. Wood won his brigadier-generalship by the capital
way in which he handled his brigade in the fight, and in the following
siege. He was put in command of the captured city; and in a few days I
succeeded to the command of the brigade.
The health of the troops was not good, and speedily became very bad.
There was some dysentery, and a little yellow fever; but most of
the trouble was from a severe form of malarial fever. The Washington
authorities had behaved better than those in actual command of the
expedition at one crisis. Immediately after the first day's fighting
around Santiago the latter had hinted by cable to Washington that they
might like to withdraw, and Washington had emphatically vetoed the
proposal. I record this all the more gladly because there were not
too many gleams of good sense shown in the home management of the war;
although I wish to repeat that the real blame for this rested primarily
with us ourselves, the people of the United States, who had for years
pursued in military matters a policy that rendered it certain that there
would be ineptitude and failure in high places if ever a crisis came.
After the siege the people in Washington showed no knowledge whatever
of the conditions around Santiago, and proposed to keep the army there.
This would have meant that at least three-fourths of the men would
either have died or have been permanently invalided, as a virulent form
of malaria was widespread, and there was a steady growth of dysentery
and other complaints. No object of any kind was to be gained by keeping
the army in or near the captured city. General Shafter tried his best to
get the Washington authorities to order the army home. As he failed to
accomplish anything, he called a council of the division and brigade
commanders and the chief medical officers to consult over the situation.
Although I had command of a brigade, I was only a colonel, and so I
did not intend to attend, but the General informed me that I was
particularly wanted, and accordingly I went. At the council General
Shafter asked the medical authorities as to conditions, and they united
in informing him that they were very bad, and were certain to grow
much worse; and that in order to avoid frightful ravages from disease,
chiefly due to malaria, the army should be sent back at once to some
part of the northern United States. The General then explained that he
could not get the War Department to understand the situation; that he
could not get the attention of the public; and that he felt that there
should be some authoritative publication which would make the War
Department take action before it was too late to avert the ruin of the
army. All who were in the room expressed their agreement.
Then the reason for my being present came out. It was explained to me
by General Shafter, and by others, that as I was a volunteer officer
and intended immediately to return to civil life, I could afford to take
risks which the regular army men could not afford to take and ought
not to be expected to take, and that therefore I ought to make the
publication in question; because to incur the hostility of the War
Department would not make any difference to me, whereas it would be
destructive to the men in the regular army, or to those who hoped to
get into the regular army. I thought this true, and said I would write
a letter or make a statement which could then be published.
Brigadier-General Ames, who was in the same position that I was, also
announced that he would make a statement.
When I left the meeting it was understood that I was to make my
statement as an interview in the press; but Wood, who was by that time
Brigadier-General commanding the city of Santiago, gave me a quiet hint
to put my statement in the form of a letter to General Shafter, and this
I accordingly did. When I had written my letter, the correspondent
of the Associated Press, who had been informed by others of what had
occurred, accompanied me to General Shafter. I presented the letter to
General Shafter, who waved it away and said: "I don't want to take it;
do whatever you wish with it." I, however, insisted on handing it to
him, whereupon he shoved it toward the correspondent of the Associated
Press, who took hold of it, and I released my hold. General Ames made
a statement direct to the correspondent, and also sent a cable to the
Assistant Secretary of the Navy at Washington, a copy of which he
gave to the correspondent. By this time the other division and brigade
commanders who were present felt that they had better take action
themselves. They united in a round robin to General Shafter, which
General Wood dictated, and which was signed by Generals Kent, Gates,
Chaffee, Sumner, Ludlow, Ames, and Wood, and by myself. General Wood
handed this to General Shafter, and it was made public by General
Shafter precisely as mine was made public.[*] Later I was much amused
when General Shafter stated that he could not imagine how my letter and
the round robin got out! When I saw this statement, I appreciated how
wise Wood had been in hinting to me not to act on the suggestion of the
General that I should make a statement to the newspapers, but to put
my statement in the form of a letter to him as my superior officer, a
letter which I delivered to him. Both the letter and the round robin
were written at General Shafter's wish, and at the unanimous suggestion
of all the commanding and medical officers of the Fifth Army Corps, and
both were published by General Shafter.
[*] General Wood writes me: "The representative of the
Associated Press was very anxious to get a copy of this
despatch or see it, and I told him it was impossible for him
to have it or see it. I then went in to General Shafter and
stated the case to him, handing him the despatch, saying,
'The matter is now in your hands.' He, General Shafter, then
said, 'I don't care whether this gentleman has it or not,'
and I left then. When I went back the General told me he had
given the Press representative a copy of the despatch, and
that he had gone to the office with it."
In a regiment the prime need is to have fighting men; the prime virtue
is to be able and eager to fight with the utmost effectiveness. I have
never believed that this was incompatible with other virtues. On the
contrary, while there are of course exceptions, I believe that on the
average the best fighting men are also the best citizens. I do not
believe that a finer set of natural soldiers than the men of my regiment
could have been found anywhere, and they were first-class citizens in
civil life also. One fact may perhaps be worthy of note. Whenever we
were in camp and so fixed that we could have regular meals, we used to
have a general officers' mess, over which I of course presided. During
our entire service there was never a foul or indecent word uttered at
the officers' mess--I mean this literally; and there was very little
swearing--although now and then in the fighting, if there was a moment
when swearing seemed to be the best method of reaching the heart of the
matter, it was resorted to.
The men I cared for most in the regiment were the men who did the best
work; and therefore my liking for them was obliged to take the shape of
exposing them to the most fatigue and hardship, of demanding from them
the greatest service, and of making them incur the greatest risk. Once
I kept Greenway and Goodrich at work for forty-eight hours, without
sleeping, and with very little food, fighting and digging trenches. I
freely sent the men for whom I cared most, to where death might smite
them; and death often smote them--as it did the two best officers in my
regiment, Allyn Capron and Bucky O'Neil. My men would not have respected
me had I acted otherwise. Their creed was my creed. The life even of the
most useful man, of the best citizen, is not to be hoarded if there be
need to spend it. I felt, and feel, this about others; and of course
also about myself. This is one reason why I have always felt impatient
contempt for the effort to abolish the death penalty on account of
sympathy with criminals. I am willing to listen to arguments in favor of
abolishing the death penalty so far as they are based purely on grounds
of public expediency, although these arguments have never convinced me.
But inasmuch as, without hesitation, in the performance of duty, I have
again and again sent good and gallant and upright men to die, it seems
to me the height of a folly both mischievous and mawkish to contend
that criminals who have deserved death should nevertheless be allowed
to shirk it. No brave and good man can properly shirk death; and no
criminal who has earned death should be allowed to shirk it.
One of the best men with our regiment was the British military attache,
Captain Arthur Lee, an old friend. The other military attaches were
herded together at headquarters and saw little. Captain Lee, who had
known me in Washington, escaped and stayed with the regiment. We grew to
feel that he was one of us, and made him an honorary member. There were
two other honorary members. One was Richard Harding Davis, who was with
us continually and who performed valuable service on the fighting line.
The other was a regular officer, Lieutenant Parker, who had a battery
of gatlings. We were with this battery throughout the San Juan fighting,
and we grew to have the strongest admiration for Parker as a soldier and
the strongest liking for him as a man. During our brief campaign we were
closely and intimately thrown with various regular officers of the type
of Mills, Howze, and Parker. We felt not merely fondness for them as
officers and gentlemen, but pride in them as Americans. It is a
fine thing to feel that we have in the army and in the navy modest,
efficient, gallant gentlemen of this type, doing such disinterested work
for the honor of the flag and of the Nation. No American can overpay the
debt of gratitude we all of us owe to the officers and enlisted men of
the army and of the navy.
Of course with a regiment of our type there was much to learn both among
the officers and the men. There were all kinds of funny incidents. One
of my men, an ex-cow-puncher and former round-up cook, a very good
shot and rider, got into trouble on the way down on the transport.
He understood entirely that he had to obey the officers of his own
regiment, but, like so many volunteers, or at least like so many
volunteers of my regiment, he did not understand that this obligation
extended to officers of other regiments. One of the regular officers on
the transport ordered him to do something which he declined to do. When
the officer told him to consider himself under arrest, he responded
by offering to fight him for a trifling consideration. He was brought
before a court martial which sentenced him to a year's imprisonment at
hard labor with dishonorable discharge, and the major-general commanding
the division approved the sentence.
We were on the transport. There was no hard labor to do; and the prison
consisted of another cow-puncher who kept guard over him with his
carbine, evidently divided in his feelings as to whether he would like
most to shoot him or to let him go. When we landed, somebody told the
prisoner that I intended to punish him by keeping him with the baggage.
He at once came to me in great agitation, saying: "Colonel, they say
you're going to leave me with the baggage when the fight is on. Colonel,
if you do that, I will never show my face in Arizona again. Colonel, if
you will let me go to the front, I promise I will obey any one you say;
any one you say, Colonel," with the evident feeling that, after this
concession, I could not, as a gentleman, refuse his request. Accordingly
I answered: "Shields, there is no one in this regiment more entitled to
be shot than you are, and you shall go to the front." His gratitude was
great, and he kept repeating, "I'll never forget this, Colonel, never."
Nor did he. When we got very hard up, he would now and then manage to
get hold of some flour and sugar, and would cook a doughnut and bring it
round to me, and watch me with a delighted smile as I ate it. He behaved
extremely well in both fights, and after the second one I had him
formally before me and remitted his sentence--something which of course
I had not the slightest power to do, although at the time it seemed
natural and proper to me.
When we came to be mustered out, the regular officer who was doing the
mustering, after all the men had been discharged, finally asked me where
the prisoner was. I said, "What prisoner?" He said, "The prisoner,
the man who was sentenced to a year's imprisonment with hard labor
and dishonorable discharge." I said, "Oh! I pardoned him"; to which he
responded, "I beg your pardon; you did what?" This made me grasp the
fact that I had exceeded authority, and I could only answer, "Well, I
did pardon him, anyhow, and he has gone with the rest"; whereupon the
mustering-out officer sank back in his chair and remarked, "He was
sentenced by a court martial, and the sentence was approved by the
major-general commanding the division. You were a lieutenant-colonel,
and you pardoned him. Well, it was nervy, that's all I'll say."
The simple fact was that under the circumstances it was necessary for me
to enforce discipline and control the regiment, and therefore to reward
and punish individuals in whatever way the exigencies demanded. I often
explained to the men what the reasons for an order were, the first time
it was issued, if there was any trouble on their part in understanding
what they were required to do. They were very intelligent and very eager
to do their duty, and I hardly ever had any difficulty the second time
with them. If, however, there was the slightest willful shirking of duty
or insubordination, I punished instantly and mercilessly, and the whole
regiment cordially backed me up. To have punished men for faults and
shortcomings which they had no opportunity to know were such would have
been as unwise as to have permitted any of the occasional bad characters
to exercise the slightest license. It was a regiment which was sensitive
about its dignity and was very keenly alive to justice and to courtesy,
but which cordially approved absence of mollycoddling, insistence upon
the performance of duty, and summary punishment of wrong-doing.
In the final fighting at San Juan, when we captured one of the trenches,
Jack Greenway had seized a Spaniard, and shortly afterwards I found Jack
leading his captive round with a string. I told him to turn him over to
a man who had two or three other captives, so that they should all be
taken to the rear. It was the only time I ever saw Jack look aggrieved.
"Why, Colonel, can't I keep him for myself?" he asked, plaintively. I
think he had an idea that as a trophy of his bow and spear the Spaniard
would make a fine body servant.
One reason that we never had the slightest trouble in the regiment was
because, when we got down to hard pan, officers and men shared exactly
alike. It is all right to have differences in food and the like in times
of peace and plenty, when everybody is comfortable. But in really hard
times officers and men must share alike if the best work is to be done.
As long as I had nothing but two hardtacks, which was the allowance to
each man on the morning after the San Juan fight, no one could complain;
but if I had had any private little luxuries the men would very
naturally have realized keenly their own shortages.
Soon after the Guasimas fight we were put on short commons; and as I
knew that a good deal of food had been landed and was on the beach at
Siboney, I marched thirty or forty of the men down to see if I could not
get some and bring it up. I finally found a commissary officer, and he
asked me what I wanted, and I answered, anything he had. So he told me
to look about for myself. I found a number of sacks of beans, I think
about eleven hundred pounds, on the beach; and told the officer that
I wanted eleven hundred pounds of beans. He produced a book of
regulations, and showed me the appropriate section and subdivision which
announced that beans were issued only for the officers' mess. This did
me no good, and I told him so. He said he was sorry, and I answered that
he was not as sorry as I was. I then "studied on it," as Br'r Rabbit
would say, and came back with a request for eleven hundred pounds of
beans for the officers' mess. He said, "Why, Colonel, your officers
can't eat eleven hundred pounds of beans," to which I responded, "You
don't know what appetites my officers have." He then said he would send
the requisition to Washington. I told him I was quite willing, so long
as he gave me the beans. He was a good fellow, so we finally effected a
working compromise--he got the requisition and I got the beans, although
he warned me that the price would probably be deducted from my salary.
Under some regulation or other only the regular supply trains were
allowed to act, and we were supposed not to have any horses or mules in
the regiment itself. This was very pretty in theory; but, as a matter of
fact, the supply trains were not numerous enough. My men had a natural
genius for acquiring horseflesh in odd ways, and I continually found
that they had staked out in the brush various captured Spanish cavalry
horses and Cuban ponies and abandoned commissary mules. Putting these
together, I would organize a small pack train and work it industriously
for a day or two, until they learned about it at headquarters and
confiscated it. Then I would have to wait for a week or so until my
men had accumulated some more ponies, horses, and mules, the regiment
meanwhile living in plenty on what we had got before the train was
confiscated.
All of our men were good at accumulating horses, but within our own
ranks I think we were inclined to award the palm to our chaplain. There
was not a better man in the regiment than the chaplain, and there could
not have been a better chaplain for our men. He took care of the sick
and the wounded, he never spared himself, and he did every duty. In
addition, he had a natural aptitude for acquiring mules, which made some
admirer, when the regiment was disbanded, propose that we should have a
special medal struck for him, with, on the obverse, "A Mule passant and
Chaplain regardant." After the surrender of Santiago, a Philadelphia
clergyman whom I knew came down to General Wheeler's headquarters,
and after visiting him announced that he intended to call on the Rough
Riders, because he knew their colonel. One of General Wheeler's aides,
Lieutenant Steele, who liked us both individually and as a regiment,
and who appreciated some of our ways, asked the clergyman, after he
had announced that he knew Colonel Roosevelt, "But do you know Colonel
Roosevelt's regiment?" "No," said the clergyman. "Very well, then, let
me give you a piece of advice. When you go down to see the Colonel,
don't let your horse out of your sight; and if the chaplain is there,
don't get off the horse!"
We came back to Montauk Point and soon after were disbanded. We had been
in the service only a little over four months. There are no four months
of my life to which I look back with more pride and satisfaction. I
believe most earnestly and sincerely in peace, but as things are yet in
this world the nation that cannot fight, the people that have lost the
fighting edge, that have lost the virile virtues, occupy a position as
dangerous as it is ignoble. The future greatness of America in no small
degree depends upon the possession by the average American citizen of
the qualities which my men showed when they served under me at Santiago.
Moreover, there is one thing in connection with this war which it is
well that our people should remember, our people who genuinely love the
peace of righteousness, the peace of justice--and I would be ashamed to
be other than a lover of the peace of righteousness and of justice. The
true preachers of peace, who strive earnestly to bring nearer the
day when peace shall obtain among all peoples, and who really do help
forward the cause, are men who never hesitate to choose righteous war
when it is the only alternative to unrighteous peace. These are the men
who, like Dr. Lyman Abbott, have backed every genuine movement for peace
in this country, and who nevertheless recognized our clear duty to war
for the freedom of Cuba.
But there are other men who put peace ahead of righteousness, and who
care so little for facts that they treat fantastic declarations
for immediate universal arbitration as being valuable, instead of
detrimental, to the cause they profess to champion, and who seek to make
the United States impotent for international good under the pretense of
making us impotent for international evil. All the men of this kind, and
all of the organizations they have controlled, since we began our career
as a nation, all put together, have not accomplished one hundredth part
as much for both peace and righteousness, have not done one hundredth
part as much either for ourselves or for other peoples, as was
accomplished by the people of the United States when they fought the war
with Spain and with resolute good faith and common sense worked out the
solution of the problems which sprang from the war.
Our army and navy, and above all our people, learned some lessons from
the Spanish War, and applied them to our own uses. During the following
decade the improvement in our navy and army was very great; not in
material only, but also in personnel, and, above all, in the ability to
handle our forces in good-sized units. By 1908, when our battle fleet
steamed round the world, the navy had become in every respect as fit
a fighting instrument as any other navy in the world, fleet for fleet.
Even in size there was but one nation, England, which was completely
out of our class; and in view of our relations with England and all the
English-speaking peoples, this was of no consequence. Of our army,
of course, as much could not be said. Nevertheless the improvement in
efficiency was marked. Our artillery was still very inferior in training
and practice to the artillery arm of any one of the great Powers such
as Germany, France, or Japan--a condition which we only then began
to remedy. But the workmanlike speed and efficiency with which the
expedition of some 6000 troops of all arms was mobilized and transported
to Cuba during the revolution of 1908 showed that, as regards our
cavalry and infantry, we had at least reached the point where we could
assemble and handle in first-rate fashion expeditionary forces. This is
mighty little to boast of, for a Nation of our wealth and population;
it is not pleasant to compare it with the extraordinary feats of
contemporary Japan and the Balkan peoples; but, such as it is, it
represents a long stride in advance over conditions as they were in
1898.
APPENDIX A
A MANLY LETTER
There was a sequel to the "round robin" incident which caused a little
stir at the moment; Secretary Alger had asked me to write him freely
from time to time. Accordingly, after the surrender of Santiago, I wrote
him begging that the cavalry division might be put into the Porto Rican
fighting, preparatory to what we supposed would be the big campaign
against Havana in the fall. In the letter I extolled the merits of the
Rough Riders and of the Regulars, announcing with much complacency that
each of our regiments was worth "three of the National Guard regiments,
armed with their archaic black powder rifles."[*] Secretary Alger
believed, mistakenly, that I had made public the round robin, and
was naturally irritated, and I suddenly received from him a published
telegram, not alluding to the round robin incident, but quoting my
reference to the comparative merits of the cavalry regiments and the
National Guard regiments and rebuking me for it. The publication of the
extract from my letter was not calculated to help me secure the votes of
the National Guard if I ever became a candidate for office. However, I
did not mind the matter much, for I had at the time no idea of being
a candidate for anything--while in the campaign I ate and drank and
thought and dreamed regiment and nothing but regiment, until I got the
brigade, and then I devoted all my thoughts to handling the brigade.
Anyhow, there was nothing I could do about the matter.
[*] I quote this sentence from memory; it is substantially
correct.
When our transport reached Montauk Point, an army officer came aboard
and before doing anything else handed me a sealed letter from the
Secretary of War which ran as follows:--
WAR DEPARTMENT,
WASHINGTON,
August 10, 1898.
DEAR COL. ROOSEVELT:
You have been a most gallant officer and in the battle before Santiago
showed superb soldierly qualities. I would rather add to, than detract
from, the honors you have so fairly won, and I wish you all good things.
In a moment of aggravation under great stress of feeling, first because
I thought you spoke in a disparaging manner of the volunteers (probably
without intent, but because of your great enthusiasm for your own men)
and second that I believed your published letter would embarrass the
Department I sent you a telegram which with an extract from a private
letter of yours I gave to the press. I would gladly recall both if I
could, but unable to do that I write you this letter which I hope you
will receive in the same friendly spirit in which I send it. Come and
see me at a very early day. No one will welcome you more heartily than
I.
Yours very truly, (Signed) R. A. ALGER.
I thought this a manly letter, and paid no more heed to the incident;
and when I was President, and General Alger was Senator from Michigan,
he was my stanch friend and on most matters my supporter.
APPENDIX B
THE SAN JUAN FIGHT
The San Juan fight took its name from the San Juan Hill or hills--I do
not know whether the name properly belonged to a line of hills or to
only one hill.
To compare small things with large things, this was precisely as the
Battle of Gettysburg took its name from the village of Gettysburg, where
only a small part of the fighting was done; and the battle of Waterloo
from the village of Waterloo, where none of the fighting was done.
When it became the political interest of certain people to endeavor to
minimize my part in the Santiago fighting (which was merely like that of
various other squadron, battalion and regimental commanders) some of my
opponents laid great stress on the alleged fact that the cavalry did not
charge up San Juan Hill. We certainly charged some hills; but I did not
ask their names before charging them. To say that the Rough Riders and
the cavalry division, and among other people myself, were not in the
San Juan fight is precisely like saying that the men who made Pickett's
Charge, or the men who fought at Little Round Top and Culps Hill, were
not at Gettysburg; or that Picton and the Scotch Greys and the French
and English guards were not at Waterloo. The present Vice-President of
the United States in the campaign last year was reported in the press
as repeatedly saying that I was not in the San Juan fight. The documents
following herewith have been printed for many years, and were accessible
to him had he cared to know or to tell the truth.
These documents speak for themselves. The first is the official report
issued by the War Department. From this it will be seen that there
were in the Santiago fighting thirty infantry and cavalry regiments
represented. Six of these were volunteer, of which one was the Rough
Riders. The other twenty-four were regular regiments. The percentage of
loss of our regiment was about seven times as great as that of the
other five volunteer regiments. Of the twenty-four regular regiments,
twenty-two suffered a smaller percentage of loss than we suffered.
Two, the Sixth United States Infantry and the Thirteenth United States
Infantry, suffered a slightly greater percentage of loss--twenty-six per
cent and twenty-three per cent as against twenty-two per cent.
NOMINATIONS BY THE PRESIDENT
To be Colonel by Brevet
Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, First Volunteer Cavalry, for
gallantry in battle, Las Guasima, Cuba, June 24, 1898.
To be Brigadier-General by Brevet
Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, First Volunteer Cavalry, for
gallantry in battle, Santiago de Cuba, July 1, 1898. (Nominated for
brevet colonel, to rank from June 24, 1898.)
FORT SAN JUAN, CUBA, July 17, 1898.
THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL UNITED STATES ARMY, Washington, D. C. (Through
military channels)
SIR: I have the honor to invite attention to the following list of
officers and enlisted men who specially distinguished themselves in the
action at Las Guasimas, Cuba, June 24, 1898.
These officers and men have been recommended for favorable consideration
by their immediate commanding officers in their respective reports, and
I would respectfully urge that favorable action be taken.
OFFICERS
. . . . .
In First United States Volunteer Cavalry--Colonel Leonard Wood,
Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt.
Respectfully, JOSEPH WHEELER, Major-General United States Volunteers,
Commanding.
HEADQUARTERS SECOND CAVALRY BRIGADE, CAMP NEAR SANTIAGO DE CUBA, CUBA,
June 29, 1898.
THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL CAVALRY DIVISION.
SIR: By direction of the major-general commanding the Cavalry Division,
I have the honor to submit the following report of the engagement of
a part of this brigade with the enemy at Guasimas, Cuba, on June 24th,
accompanied by detailed reports from the regimental and other commanders
engaged, and a list of the killed and wounded:
. . . . .
I cannot speak too highly of the efficient manner in which Colonel Wood
handled his regiment, and of his magnificent behavior on the field. The
conduct of Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt, as reported to me by my
two aides, deserves my highest commendation. Both Colonel Wood and
Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt disdained to take advantage of shelter or
cover from the enemy's fire while any of their men remained exposed to
it--an error of judgment, but happily on the heroic side.
. . . . .
Very respectfully, S. B. M. YOUNG, Brigadier General United States
Volunteers, Commanding.
HEADQUARTERS FIRST DIVISION SECOND ARMY CORPS CAMP MACKENZIE, GA.,
December 30, 1898.
ADJUTANT-GENERAL, Washington, D. C.
SIR: I have the honor to recommend Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, late Colonel
First United States Volunteer Cavalry, for a medal of honor, as a reward
for conspicuous gallantry at the battle of San Juan, Cuba, on July 1,
1898.
Colonel Roosevelt by his example and fearlessness inspired his men, and
both at Kettle Hill and the ridge known as San Juan he led his command
in person. I was an eye-witness of Colonel Roosevelt's action.
As Colonel Roosevelt has left the service, a Brevet Commission is of no
particular value in his case.
Very respectfully, SAMUEL S. SUMNER, Major-General United States
Volunteers.
WEST POINT, N. Y., December 17, 1898.
MY DEAR COLONEL: I saw you lead the line up the first hill--you were
certainly the first officer to reach the top--and through your efforts,
and your personally jumping to the front, a line more or less thin, but
strong enough to take it, was led by you to the San Juan or first hill.
In this your life was placed in extreme jeopardy, as you may recall,
and as it proved by the number of dead left in that vicinity. Captain
Stevens, then of the Ninth Cavalry, now of the Second Cavalry, was
with you, and I am sure he recalls your gallant conduct. After the line
started on the advance from the first hill, I did not see you until our
line was halted, under a most galling fire, at the extreme front, where
you afterwards entrenched. I spoke to you there and gave instructions
from General Sumner that the position was to be held and that there
would be no further advance till further orders. You were the senior
officer there, took charge of the line, scolded me for having my horse
so high upon the ridge; at the same time you were exposing yourself most
conspicuously, while adjusting the line, for the example was necessary,
as was proved when several colored soldiers--about eight or ten,
Twenty-fourth Infantry, I think--started at a run to the rear to assist
a wounded colored soldier, and you drew your revolver and put a short
and effective stop to such apparent stampede--it quieted them. That
position was hot, and now I marvel at your escaping there. . . . Very
sincerely yours, ROBERT L. HOWZE.
WEST POINT, N. Y., December 17, 1898.
I hereby certify that on July 1, 1898, Colonel (then Lieutenant-Colonel)
Theodore Roosevelt, First Volunteer Cavalry, distinguished himself
through the action, and on two occasions during the battle when I was an
eye-witness, his conduct was most conspicuous and clearly distinguished
above other men, as follows:
1. At the base of San Juan, or first hill, there was a strong wire
fence, or entanglement, at which the line hesitated under a galling
fire, and where the losses were severe. Colonel Roosevelt jumped through
the fence and by his enthusiasm, his example and courage succeeded in
leading to the crest of the hill a line sufficiently strong to capture
it. In this charge the Cavalry Brigade suffered its greatest loss,
and the Colonel's life was placed in extreme jeopardy, owing to the
conspicuous position he took in leading the line, and being the first
to reach the crest of that hill, while under heavy fire of the enemy at
close range.
2. At the extreme advanced position occupied by our lines, Colonel
Roosevelt found himself the senior, and under his instructions from
General Sumner to hold that position. He displayed the greatest bravery
and placed his life in extreme jeopardy by unavoidable exposure to
severe fire while adjusting and strengthening the line, placing the men
in positions which afforded best protection, etc., etc. His conduct
and example steadied the men, and on one occasion by severe but not
unnecessary measures prevented a small detachment from stampeding to the
rear. He displayed the most conspicuous gallantry, courage and coolness,
in performing extraordinarily hazardous duty.
ROBERT L. HOWZE, Captain A. A. G., U. S. V. (First Lieutenant Sixth
United States Cavalry.)
TO THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL UNITED STATES ARMY, Washington, D. C.
HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY, WEST POINT, N. Y., April 5,
1899.
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL W. H. CARTER, Assistant Adjutant-General United
States Army, Washington, D. C.
SIR: In compliance with the request, contained in your letter of April
30th, of the Board convened to consider the awarding of brevets, medals
of honor, etc., for the Santiago Campaign, that I state any facts,
within my knowledge as Adjutant-General of the Brigade in which
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt served, to aid the Board in determining, in
connection with Colonel Roosevelt's application for a medal of honor,
whether his conduct at Santiago was such as to distinguish him above
others, I have the honor to submit the following:
My duties on July 1, 1898, brought me in constant observation of and
contact with Colonel Roosevelt from early morning until shortly before
the climax of the assault of the Cavalry Division on the San Juan
Hill--the so-called Kettle Hill. During this time, while under the
enemy's artillery fire at El Poso, and while on the march from El Poso
by the San Juan ford to the point from which his regiment moved to the
assault--about two miles, the greater part under fire--Colonel Roosevelt
was conspicuous above any others I observed in his regiment in the
zealous performance of duty, in total disregard of his personal danger
and in his eagerness to meet the enemy. At El Poso, when the enemy
opened on that place with artillery fire, a shrapnel bullet grazed and
bruised one of Colonel Roosevelt's wrists. The incident did not lessen
his hazardous exposure, but he continued so exposed until he had placed
his command under cover. In moving to the assault of San Juan Hill,
Colonel Roosevelt was most conspicuously brave, gallant and indifferent
to his own safety. He, in the open, led his regiment; no officer
could have set a more striking example to his men or displayed greater
intrepidity.
Very respectfully, Your obedient servant, A. L. MILLS, Colonel United
States Army, Superintendent.
HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF SANTIAGO DE CUBA, SANTIAGO DE CUBA, December
30, 1898.
TO THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY, Washington, D. C.
SIR: I have the honor to make the following statement relative to
the conduct of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, late First United States
Volunteer Cavalry, during the assault upon San Juan Hill, July 1, 1898.
I have already recommended this officer for a medal of honor, which I
understand has been denied him, upon the ground that my previous letter
was too indefinite. I based my recommendation upon the fact that Colonel
Roosevelt, accompanied only by four or five men, led a very desperate
and extremely gallant charge on San Juan Hill, thereby setting a
splendid example to the troops and encouraging them to pass over the
open country intervening between their position and the trenches of the
enemy. In leading this charge, he started off first, as he supposed,
with quite a following of men, but soon discovered that he was alone. He
then returned and gathered up a few men and led them to the charge, as
above stated. The charge in itself was an extremely gallant one, and the
example set a most inspiring one to the troops in that part of the line,
and while it is perfectly true that everybody finally went up the hill
in good style, yet there is no doubt that the magnificent example set by
Colonel Roosevelt had a very encouraging effect and had great weight in
bringing up the troops behind him. During the assault, Colonel Roosevelt
was the first to reach the trenches in his part of the line and killed
one of the enemy with his own hand.
I earnestly recommend that the medal be conferred upon Colonel
Roosevelt, for I believe that he in every way deserves it, and that
his services on the day in question were of great value and of a most
distinguished character.
Very respectfully, LEONARD WOOD, Major-General, United States
Volunteers. Commanding Department of Santiago de Cuba.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA., January 4, 1899.
THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY, Washington, D. C.
SIR: I have the honor to recommend that a "Congressional Medal of Honor"
be given to Theodore Roosevelt (late Colonel First Volunteer Cavalry),
for distinguished conduct and conspicuous bravery in command of his
regiment in the charge on San Juan Hill, Cuba, July 1, 1898.
In compliance with G. O. 135, A. G. O. 1898, I enclose my certificate
showing my personal knowledge of Colonel Roosevelt's conduct.
Very respectfully, C. J. STEVENS, Captain Second Cavalry.
I hereby certify that on July 1, 1898, at the battle of San Juan, Cuba,
I witnessed Colonel (then Lieutenant-Colonel) Roosevelt, First Volunteer
Cavalry, United States of America, mounted, leading his regiment in
the charge on San Juan. By his gallantry and strong personality he
contributed most materially to the success of the charge of the Cavalry
Division up San Juan Hill.
Colonel Roosevelt was among the first to reach the crest of the hill,
and his dashing example, his absolute fearlessness and gallant leading
rendered his conduct conspicuous and clearl distinguished above other
men.
C. J. STEVENS, Captain Second Cavalry. (Late First Lieutenant Ninth
Cavalry.)
YOUNG'S ISLAND, S. C., December 28, 1898.
TO THE ADJUTANT-GENERAL, UNITED STATES ARMY. Washington, D. C.
SIR: Believing that information relating to superior conduct on the part
of any of the higher officers who participated in the Spanish-American
War (and which information may not have been given) would be appreciated
by the Department over which you preside, I have the honor to call your
attention to the part borne by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, of the late
First United States Volunteer Cavalry, in the battle of July 1st last.
I do this not only because I think you ought to know, but because his
regiment as a whole were very proud of his splendid actions that day
and believe they call for that most coveted distinction of the American
officer, the Medal of Honor. Held in support, he brought his regiment,
at exactly the right time, not only up to the line of regulars, but went
through them and headed, on horseback, the charge on Kettle Hill; this
being done on his own initiative, the regulars as well as his own men
following. He then headed the charge on the next hill, both regulars and
the First United States Volunteer Cavalry following. He was so near
the intrenchments on the second hill, that he shot and killed with a
revolver one of the enemy before they broke completely. He then led the
cavalry on the chain of hills overlooking Santiago, where he remained in
charge of all the cavalry that was at the extreme front for the rest of
that day and night. His unhesitating gallantry in taking the initiative
against intrenchments lined by men armed with rapid fire guns certainly
won him the highest consideration and admiration of all who witnessed
his conduct throughout that day.
What I here write I can bear witness to from personally having seen.
Very respectfully, M. J. JENKINS, Major Late First United States
Cavalry.
PRESCOTT, A. T., December 25, 1898.
I was Colonel Roosevelt's orderly at the battle of San Juan Hill, and
from that time on until our return to Montauk Point. I was with him all
through the fighting, and believe I was the only man who was always with
him, though during part of the time Lieutenants Ferguson and Greenwald
were also close to him. He led our regiment forward on horseback until
he came to the men of the Ninth Cavalry lying down. He led us through
these and they got up and joined us. He gave the order to charge on
Kettle Hill, and led us on horseback up the hill, both Rough Riders and
the Ninth Cavalry. He was the first on the hill, I being very nearly
alongside of him. Some Spanish riflemen were coming out of the
intrenchments and he killed one with his revolver. He took the men on
to the crest of the hill and bade them begin firing on the blockhouse on
the hill to our left, the one the infantry were attacking. When he
took it, he gave the order to charge, and led the troops on Kettle Hill
forward against the blockhouse on our front. He then had charge of all
the cavalry on the hills overlooking Santiago, where we afterwards dug
our trenches. He had command that afternoon and night, and for the rest
of the time commanded our regiment at this point.
Yours very truly, H. P. BARDSHAR.
CAMBRIDGE, MD., March 27, 1902.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT, President of the United States. Washington, D. C.
DEAR SIR: At your request, I send you the following extracts from my
diary, and from notes taken on the day of the assault on San Juan. I
kept in my pocket a small pad on which incidents were noted daily from
the landing until the surrender. On the day of the fight notes were
taken just before Grimes fired his first gun, just after the third reply
from the enemy--when we were massed in the road about seventy paces
from Grimes' guns, and when I was beginning to get scared and to think
I would be killed--at the halt just before you advanced, and under the
shelter of the hills in the evening. Each time that notes were taken,
the page was put in an envelope addressed to my wife. At the first
chance they were mailed to her, and on my arrival in the United States
the story of the fight, taken from these notes, was entered in the diary
I keep in a book. I make this lengthy explanation that you may see that
everything put down was fresh in my memory.
I quote from my diary: "The tension on the men was great. Suddenly a
line of men appeared coming from our right. They were advancing through
the long grass, deployed as skirmishers and were under fire. At
their head, or rather in front of them and leading them, rode Colonel
Roosevelt. He was very conspicuous, mounted as he was. The men were the
'Rough Riders,' so-called. I heard some one calling to them not to fire
into us, and seeing Colonel Carrol, reported to him, and was told to go
out and meet them, and caution them as to our position, we being between
them and the enemy. I did so, speaking to Colonel Roosevelt. I also
told him we were under orders not to advance, and asked him if he had
received any orders. He replied that he was going to charge the Spanish
trenches. I told this to Colonel Carrol, and to Captain Dimmick, our
squadron commander. A few moments after the word passed down that our
left (Captain Taylor) was about to charge. Captain McBlain called out,
'we must go in with those troops; we must support Taylor.' I called this
to Captain Dimmick, and he gave the order to assault."
"The cheer was taken up and taken up again, on the left, and in the
distance it rolled on and on. And so we started. Colonel Roosevelt, of
the Rough Riders, started the whole movement on the left, which was the
first advance of the assault."
The following is taken from my notes and was hastily jotted down on the
field: "The Rough Riders came in line--Colonel Roosevelt said he would
assault--Taylor joined them with his troop--McBlain called to Dimmick,
'let us go, we must go to support them.' Dimmick said all right--and so,
with no orders, we went in."
I find many of my notes are illegible from perspiration. My authority
for saying Taylor went in with you, "joined with his troop" was the word
passed to me and repeated to Captain Dimmick that Taylor was about to
charge with you. I could not see his troop. I have not put it in my
diary, but in another place I have noted that Colonel Carrol, who was
acting as brigade commander, told me to ask you if you had any orders.
I have the honor to be, Very respectfully, Your obedient servant,
HENRY ANSON BARBER, Captain Twenty-Eighth Infantry, (formerly of Ninth
Cavalry.)
HEADQUARTERS PACIFIC DIVISION, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL., May 11, 1905.
DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: As some discussion has arisen in the public prints
regarding the battle of San Juan, Cuba, July 1, 1898, and your personal
movements during that day have been the subject of comment, it may not
be amiss in me to state some facts coming under my personal observation
as Commanding General of the Cavalry Division of which your regiment
formed a part. It will, perhaps, be advisable to show first how I came
to be in command, in order that my statement may have due weight as an
authoritative statement of facts: I was placed in command of the
Cavalry Division on the afternoon of June 30th by General Shafter; the
assignment was made owing to the severe illness of General Wheeler, who
was the permanent commander of said Division. Brigadier General Young,
who commanded the Second Cavalry Brigade, of which your regiment--the
First Volunteer Cavalry--formed a part, was also very ill, and I found
it necessary to relieve him from command and place Colonel Wood, of
the Rough Riders, in command of the Brigade; this change placed you in
command of your regiment.
The Division moved from its camp on the evening of June 30th, and
bivouacked at and about El Poso. I saw you personally in the vicinity
of El Poso, about 8 A.M., July 1st. I saw you again on the road leading
from El Poso to the San Juan River; you were at the head of your
regiment, which was leading the Second Brigade, and immediately behind
the rear regiment of the First Brigade. My orders were to turn to the
right at San Juan River and take up a line along that stream and try and
connect with General Lawton, who was to engage the enemy at El Caney. On
reaching the river we came under the fire of the Spanish forces posted
on San Juan Ridge and Kettle Hill. The First Brigade was faced to the
front in line as soon as it had cleared the road, and the Second Brigade
was ordered to pass in rear of the first and face to the front when
clear of the First Brigade. This movement was very difficult, owing to
the heavy undergrowth, and the regiments became more or less tangled up,
but eventually the formation was accomplished, and the Division stood
in an irregular line along the San Juan River, the Second Brigade on
the right. We were subjected to a heavy fire from the forces on San
Juan Ridge and Kettle Hill; our position was untenable, and it became
necessary to assault the enemy or fall back. Kettle Hill was immediately
in front of the Cavalry, and it was determined to assault that hill. The
First Brigade was ordered forward, and the Second Brigade was ordered
to support the attack; personally, I accompanied a portion of the Tenth
Cavalry, Second Brigade, and the Rough Riders were to the right. This
brought your regiment to the right of the house which was at the summit
of the hill. Shortly after I reached the crest of the hill you came
to me, accompanied, I think, by Captain C. J. Stevens, of the Ninth
Cavalry. We were then in a position to see the line of intrenchments
along San Juan Ridge, and could see Kent's Infantry Division engaged on
our left, and Hawkins' assault against Fort San Juan. You asked me for
permission to move forward and assault San Juan Ridge. I gave you the
order in person to move forward, and I saw you move forward and assault
San Juan Ridge with your regiment and portions of the First and Tenth
Cavalry belonging to your Brigade. I held a portion of the Second
Brigade as a reserve on Kettle Hill, not knowing what force the enemy
might have in reserve behind the ridge. The First Brigade also moved
forward and assaulted the ridge to the right of Fort San Juan. There
was a small lake between Kettle Hill and San Juan Ridge, and in moving
forward your command passed to the right of this lake. This brought
you opposite a house on San Juan Ridge--not Fort San Juan proper, but a
frame house surrounded by an earthwork. The enemy lost a number of men
at this point, whose bodies lay in the trenches. Later in the day I rode
along the line, and, as I recall it, a portion of the Tenth Cavalry was
immediately about this house, and your regiment occupied an irregular
semi-circular position along the ridge and immediately to the right of
the house. You had pickets out to your front; and several hundred yards
to your front the Spaniards had a heavy outpost occupying a house, with
rifle pits surrounding it. Later in the day, and during the following
day, the various regiments forming the Division were rearranged and
brought into tactical formation, the First Brigade on the left and
immediately to the right of Fort San Juan, and the Second Brigade on the
right of the First.
This was the position occupied by the Cavalry Division until the final
surrender of the Spanish forces, on July 17, 1898.
In conclusion allow me to say, that I saw you, personally, at about 8
A.M., at El Poso; later, on the road to San Juan River; later, on the
summit of Kettle Hill, immediately after its capture by the Cavalry
Division. I saw you move forward with your command to assault San Juan
Ridge, and I saw you on San Juan Ridge, where we visited your line
together, and you explained to me the disposition of your command.
I am, sir, with much respect, Your obedient servant, SAMUEL S. SUMNER,
Major-General United States Army.
CHAPTER VIII
THE NEW YORK GOVERNORSHIP
In September, 1898, the First Volunteer Cavalry, in company with most
of the rest of the Fifth Army Corps, was disembarked at Montauk Point.
Shortly after it was disbanded, and a few days later, I was nominated
for Governor of New York by the Republican party. Timothy L. Woodruff
was nominated for Lieutenant-Governor. He was my stanch friend
throughout the term of our joint service.
The previous year, the machine or standpat Republicans, who were under
the domination of Senator Platt, had come to a complete break with the
anti-machine element over the New York mayoralty. This had brought
the Republican party to a smash, not only in New York City, but in the
State, where the Democratic candidate for Chief Judge of the Court
of Appeals, Alton B. Parker, was elected by sixty or eighty thousand
majority. Mr. Parker was an able man, a lieutenant of Mr. Hill's,
standing close to the conservative Democrats of the Wall Street type.
These conservative Democrats were planning how to wrest the Democratic
party from the control of Mr. Bryan. They hailed Judge Parker's victory
as a godsend. The Judge at once loomed up as a Presidential possibility,
and was carefully groomed for the position by the New York Democratic
machine, and its financial allies in the New York business world.
The Republicans realized that the chances were very much against them.
Accordingly the leaders were in a chastened mood and ready to nominate
any candidate with whom they thought there was a chance of winning. I
was the only possibility, and, accordingly, under pressure from certain
of the leaders who recognized this fact, and who responded to popular
pressure, Senator Platt picked me for the nomination. He was entirely
frank in the matter. He made no pretense that he liked me personally;
but he deferred to the judgment of those who insisted that I was the
only man who could be elected, and that therefore I had to be nominated.
Foremost among the leaders who pressed me on Mr. Platt (who "pestered"
him about me, to use his own words) were Mr. Quigg, Mr. Odell--then
State Chairman of the Republican organization, and afterwards
Governor--and Mr. Hazel, now United States Judge. Judge Hazel did not
know me personally, but felt that the sentiment in his city, Buffalo,
demanded my nomination, and that the then Republican Governor, Mr.
Black, could not be reelected. Mr. Odell, who hardly knew me personally,
felt the same way about Mr. Black's chances, and, as he had just taken
the State Chairmanship, he was very anxious to win a victory. Mr. Quigg
knew me quite well personally; he had been in touch with me for years,
while he was a reporter on the _Tribune_, and also when he edited a
paper in Montana; he had been on good terms with me while he was in
Congress and I was Civil Service Commissioner, meeting me often in
company with my especial cronies in Congress--men like Lodge, Speaker
Tom Reed, Greenhalge, Butterworth, and Dolliver--and he had urged my
appointment as Police Commissioner on Mayor Strong.
It was Mr. Quigg who called on me at Montauk Point to sound me about the
Governorship; Mr. Platt being by no means enthusiastic over Mr. Quigg's
mission, largely because he disapproved of the Spanish War and of my
part in bringing it about. Mr. Quigg saw me in my tent, in which he
spent a couple of hours with me, my brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson,
being also present. Quigg spoke very frankly to me, stating that he
earnestly desired to see me nominated and believed that the great body
of Republican voters in the State so desired, but that the organization
and the State Convention would finally do what Senator Platt desired. He
said that county leaders were already coming to Senator Platt, hinting
at a close election, expressing doubt of Governor Black's availability
for reelection, and asking why it would not be a good thing to nominate
me; that now that I had returned to the United States this would go on
more and more all the time, and that he (Quigg) did not wish that
these men should be discouraged and be sent back to their localities to
suppress a rising sentiment in my favor. For this reason he said that
he wanted from me a plain statement as to whether or not I wanted the
nomination, and as to what would be my attitude toward the organization
in the event of my nomination and election, whether or not I would "make
war" on Mr. Platt and his friends, or whether I would confer with them
and with the organization leaders generally, and give fair consideration
to their point of view as to party policy and public interest. He said
he had not come to make me any offer of the nomination, and had no
authority to do so, nor to get any pledges or promises. He simply wanted
a frank definition of my attitude towards existing party conditions.
To this I replied that I should like to be nominated, and if nominated
would promise to throw myself into the campaign with all possible
energy. I said that I should not make war on Mr. Platt or anybody else
if war could be avoided; that what I wanted was to be Governor and not a
faction leader; that I certainly would confer with the organization
men, as with everybody else who seemed to me to have knowledge of
and interest in public affairs, and that as to Mr. Platt and the
organization leaders, I would do so in the sincere hope that there might
always result harmony of opinion and purpose; but that while I would try
to get on well with the organization, the organization must with equal
sincerity strive to do what I regarded as essential for the public good;
and that in every case, after full consideration of what everybody had
to say who might possess real knowledge of the matter, I should have to
act finally as my own judgment and conscience dictated and administer
the State government as I thought it ought to be administered. Quigg
said that this was precisely what he supposed I would say, that it was
all anybody could expect, and that he would state it to Senator Platt
precisely as I had put it to him, which he accordingly did; and,
throughout my term as Governor, Quigg lived loyally up to our
understanding.[*]
[*] In a letter to me Mr. Quigg states, what I had
forgotten, that I told him to tell the Senator that I would
talk freely with him, and had no intention of becoming a
factional leader with a personal organization, yet that I
must have direct personal relations with everybody, and get
their views at first hand whenever I so desired, because I
could not have one man speaking for all.
After being nominated, I made a hard and aggressive campaign through the
State. My opponent was a respectable man, a judge, behind whom stood
Mr. Croker, the boss of Tammany Hall. My object was to make the people
understand that it was Croker, and not the nominal candidate, who was my
real opponent; that the choice lay between Crokerism and myself. Croker
was a powerful and truculent man, the autocrat of his organization, and
of a domineering nature. For his own reasons he insisted upon Tammany's
turning down an excellent Democratic judge who was a candidate for
reelection. This gave me my chance. Under my attack, Croker, who was a
stalwart fighting man and who would not take an attack tamely, himself
came to the front. I was able to fix the contest in the public mind as
one between himself and myself; and, against all probabilities, I won by
the rather narrow margin of eighteen thousand plurality.
As I have already said, there is a lunatic fringe to every reform
movement. At least nine-tenths of all the sincere reformers supported
me; but the ultra-pacifists, the so-called anti-imperialists, or
anti-militarists, or peace-at-any-price men, preferred Croker to me;
and another knot of extremists who had at first ardently insisted that
I must be "forced" on Platt, as soon as Platt supported me themselves
opposed me _because_ he supported me. After election John Hay wrote me
as follows: "While you are Governor, I believe the party can be
made solid as never before. You have already shown that a man may be
absolutely honest and yet practical; a reformer by instinct and a wise
politician; brave, bold, and uncompromising, and yet not a wild ass
of the desert. The exhibition made by the professional independents in
voting against you for no reason on earth except that somebody else was
voting for you, is a lesson that is worth its cost."
At that time boss rule was at its very zenith. Mr. Bryan's candidacy in
1896 on a free silver platform had threatened such frightful business
disaster as to make the business men, the wage-workers, and the
professional classes generally, turn eagerly to the Republican party.
East of the Mississippi the Republican vote for Mr. McKinley was larger
by far than it had been for Abraham Lincoln in the days when the life of
the Nation was at stake. Mr. Bryan championed many sorely needed reforms
in the interest of the plain people; but many of his platform proposals,
economic and otherwise, were of such a character that to have put them
into practice would have meant to plunge all our people into conditions
far worse than any of those for which he sought a remedy. The free
silver advocates included sincere and upright men who were able to make
a strong case for their position; but with them and dominating them were
all the believers in the complete or partial repudiation of National,
State, and private debts; and not only the business men but the
workingmen grew to feel that under these circumstances too heavy a price
could not be paid to avert the Democratic triumph. The fear of Mr. Bryan
threw almost all the leading men of all classes into the arms of whoever
opposed him.
The Republican bosses, who were already very powerful, and who were
already in fairly close alliance with the privileged interests, now
found everything working to their advantage. Good and high-minded men
of conservative temperament in their panic played into the hands of the
ultra-reactionaries of business and politics. The alliance between the
two kinds of privilege, political and financial, was closely cemented;
and wherever there was any attempt to break it up, the cry was at once
raised that this merely represented another phase of the assault on
National honesty and individual and mercantile integrity. As so often
happens, the excesses and threats of an unwise and extreme radicalism
had resulted in immensely strengthening the position of the
beneficiaries of reaction. This was the era when the Standard Oil
Company achieved a mastery of Pennsylvania politics so far-reaching
and so corrupt that it is difficult to describe it without seeming to
exaggerate.
In New York State, United States Senator Platt was the absolute boss of
the Republican party. "Big business" was back of him; yet at the time
this, the most important element in his strength, was only imperfectly
understood. It was not until I was elected Governor that I myself came
to understand it. We were still accustomed to talking of the "machine"
as if it were something merely political, with which business had
nothing to do. Senator Platt did not use his political position to
advance his private fortunes--therein differing absolutely from many
other political bosses. He lived in hotels and had few extravagant
tastes. Indeed, I could not find that he had any tastes at all except
for politics, and on rare occasions for a very dry theology wholly
divorced from moral implications. But big business men contributed
to him large sums of money, which enabled him to keep his grip on
the machine and secured for them the help of the machine if they were
threatened with adverse legislation. The contributions were given in the
guise of contributions for campaign purposes, of money for the good
of the party; when the money was contributed there was rarely talk of
specific favors in return.[*] It was simply put into Mr. Platt's hands
and treated by him as in the campaign chest. Then he distributed it
in the districts where it was most needed by the candidates and
organization leaders. Ordinarily no pledge was required from the latter
to the bosses, any more than it was required by the business men
from Mr. Platt or his lieutenants. No pledge was needed. It was all a
"gentlemen's understanding." As the Senator once said to me, if a man's
character was such that it was necessary to get a promise from him, it
was clear proof that his character was such that the promise would not
be worth anything after it was made.
[*] Each nation has its own pet sins to which it is merciful
and also sins which it treats as most abhorrent. In America
we are peculiarly sensitive about big money contributions
for which the donors expect any reward. In England, where in
some ways the standard is higher than here, such
contributions are accepted as a matter of course, nay, as
one of the methods by which wealthy men obtain peerages. It
would be well-nigh an impossibility for a man to secure a
seat in the United States Senate by mere campaign
contributions, in the way that seats in the British House of
Lords have often been secured without any scandal being
caused thereby.
It must not be forgotten that some of the worst practices of the machine
in dealings of this kind represented merely virtues in the wrong place,
virtues wrenched out of proper relation to their surroundings. A man in
a doubtful district might win only because of the help Mr. Platt gave
him; he might be a decent young fellow without money enough to finance
his own campaign, who was able to finance it only because Platt of his
own accord found out or was apprised of his need and advanced the money.
Such a man felt grateful, and, because of his good qualities, joined
with the purely sordid and corrupt heelers and crooked politicians to
become part of the Platt machine. In his turn Mr. Platt was recognized
by the business men, the big contributors, as an honorable man; not only
a man of his word, but a man who, whenever he received a favor, could be
trusted to do his best to repay it on any occasion that arose. I believe
that usually the contributors, and the recipient, sincerely felt that
the transaction was proper and subserved the cause of good politics
and good business; and, indeed, as regards the major part of the
contributions, it is probable that this was the fact, and that the only
criticism that could properly be made about the contributions was that
they were not made with publicity--and at that time neither the parties
nor the public had any realization that publicity was necessary, or any
adequate understanding of the dangers of the "invisible empire"
which throve by what was done in secrecy. Many, probably most, of the
contributors of this type never wished anything personal in exchange for
their contributions, and made them with sincere patriotism, desiring in
return only that the Government should be conducted on a proper basis.
Unfortunately, it was, in practice, exceedingly difficult to distinguish
these men from the others who contributed big sums to the various party
bosses with the expectation of gaining concrete and personal advantages
(in which the bosses shared) at the expense of the general public. It
was very hard to draw the line between these two types of contributions.
There was but one kind of money contributions as to which it seemed to
me absolutely impossible for either the contributor or the recipient to
disguise to themselves the evil meaning of the contribution. This was
where a big corporation contributed to both political parties. I knew of
one such case where in a State campaign a big corporation which had many
dealings with public officials frankly contributed in the neighborhood
of a hundred thousand dollars to one campaign fund and fifty thousand
dollars to the campaign fund of the other side--and, I believe, made
some further substantial contributions in the same ratio of two dollars
to one side for every one dollar given to the other. The contributors
were Democrats, and the big contributions went to the Democratic
managers. The Republican was elected, and after his election, when
a matter came up affecting the company, in which its interests were
hostile to those of the general public, the successful candidate, then
holding a high State office, was approached by his campaign managers
and the situation put frankly before him. He was less disturbed than
astonished, and remarked, "Why, I thought So-and-so and his associates
were Democrats and subscribed to the Democratic campaign fund." "So they
did," was the answer; "they subscribed to them twice as much as they
subscribed to us, but if they had had any idea that you intended doing
what you now say you will do, they would have subscribed it all to the
other side, and more too." The State official in his turn answered that
he was very sorry if any one had subscribed under a misapprehension,
that it was no fault of his, for he had stated definitely and clearly
his position, that he of course had no money wherewith himself to return
what without his knowledge had been contributed, and that all he could
say was that any man who had subscribed to his campaign fund under the
impression that the receipt of the subscription would be a bar to the
performance of public duty was sadly mistaken.
The control by Mr. Platt and his lieutenants over the organization was
well-nigh complete. There were splits among the bosses, and insurgent
movements now and then, but the ordinary citizens had no control over
the political machinery except in a very few districts. There were,
however, plenty of good men in politics, men who either came from
districts where there was popular control, or who represented a genuine
aspiration towards good citizenship on the part of some boss or group of
bosses, or else who had been nominated frankly for reasons of expediency
by bosses whose attitude towards good citizenship was at best one of
Gallio-like indifference. At the time when I was nominated for Governor,
as later when Mr. Hughes was nominated and renominated for Governor,
there was no possibility of securing the nomination unless the bosses
permitted it. In each case the bosses, the machine leaders, took a man
for whom they did not care, because he was the only man with whom they
could win. In the case of Mr. Hughes there was of course also the fact
of pressure from the National Administration. But the bosses were never
overcome in a fair fight, when they had made up their minds to fight,
until the Saratoga Convention in 1910, when Mr. Stimson was nominated
for Governor.
Senator Platt had the same inborn capacity for the kind of politics
which he liked that many big Wall Street men have shown for not wholly
dissimilar types of finance. It was his chief interest, and he
applied himself to it unremittingly. He handled his private business
successfully; but it was politics in which he was absorbed, and he
concerned himself therewith every day in the year. He had built up an
excellent system of organization, and the necessary funds came from
corporations and men of wealth who contributed as I have described
above. The majority of the men with a natural capacity for organization
leadership of the type which has generally been prevalent in New York
politics turned to Senator Platt as their natural chief and helped build
up the organization, until under his leadership it became more powerful
and in a position of greater control than any other Republican machine
in the country, excepting in Pennsylvania. The Democratic machines
in some of the big cities, as in New York and Boston, and the country
Democratic machine of New York under David B. Hill, were probably
even more efficient, representing an even more complete mastery by
the bosses, and an even greater degree of drilled obedience among the
henchmen. It would be an entire mistake to suppose that Mr. Platt's
lieutenants were either all bad men or all influenced by unworthy
motives. He was constantly doing favors for men. He had won the
gratitude of many good men. In the country districts especially, there
were many places where his machine included the majority of the best
citizens, the leading and substantial citizens, among the inhabitants.
Some of his strongest and most efficient lieutenants were disinterested
men of high character.
There had always been a good deal of opposition to Mr. Platt and the
machine, but the leadership of this opposition was apt to be found only
among those whom Abraham Lincoln called the "silk stockings," and much
of it excited almost as much derision among the plain people as the
machine itself excited anger or dislike. Very many of Mr. Platt's
opponents really disliked him and his methods, for aesthetic rather than
for moral reasons, and the bulk of the people half-consciously felt this
and refused to submit to their leadership. The men who opposed him in
this manner were good citizens according to their lights, prominent in
the social clubs and in philanthropic circles, men of means and often
men of business standing. They disliked coarse and vulgar politicians,
and they sincerely reprobated all the shortcomings that were recognized
by, and were offensive to, people of their own caste. They had not the
slightest understanding of the needs, interests, ways of thought, and
convictions of the average small man; and the small man felt this,
although he could not express it, and sensed that they were really not
concerned with his welfare, and that they did not offer him anything
materially better from his point of view than the machine.
When reformers of this type attempted to oppose Mr. Platt, they usually
put up either some rather inefficient, well-meaning person, who
bathed every day, and didn't steal, but whose only good point was
"respectability," and who knew nothing of the great fundamental
questions looming before us; or else they put up some big business man
or corporation lawyer who was wedded to the gross wrong and injustice
of our economic system, and who neither by personality nor by programme
gave the ordinary plain people any belief that there was promise of
vital good to them in the change. The correctness of their view was
proved by the fact that as soon as fundamental economic and social
reforms were at stake the aesthetic, as distinguished from the genuinely
moral, reformers, for the most part sided with the bosses against the
people.
When I became Governor, the conscience of the people was in no way or
shape aroused, as it has since become roused. The people accepted and
practiced in a matter-of-course way as quite proper things which they
would not now tolerate. They had no definite and clearly outlined
conception of what they wished in the way of reform. They on the whole
tolerated, and indeed approved of, the machine; and there had been no
development on any considerable scale of reformers with the vision to
see what the needs of the people were, and the high purpose sanely to
achieve what was necessary in order to meet these needs. I knew both the
machine and the silk-stocking reformers fairly well, from many years'
close association with them. The machine as such had no ideals at all,
although many of the men composing it did have. On the other hand, the
ideals of very many of the silk-stocking reformers did not relate to
the questions of real and vital interest to our people; and, singularly
enough, in international matters, these same silk-stockings were no more
to be trusted than the average ignorant demagogue or shortsighted spoils
politicians. I felt that these men would be broken reeds to which to
trust in any vital contest for betterment of social and industrial
conditions.
I had neither the training nor the capacity that would have enabled me
to match Mr. Platt and his machine people on their own ground. Nor did
I believe that the effort to build up a machine of my own under the then
existing conditions would meet the needs of the situation so far as the
people were concerned. I therefore made no effort to create a machine of
my own, and consistently adopted the plan of going over the heads of the
men holding public office and of the men in control of the organization,
and appealing directly to the people behind them. The machine, for
instance, had a more or less strong control over the great bulk of the
members of the State Legislature; but in the last resort the people
behind these legislators had a still greater control over them. I made
up my mind that the only way I could beat the bosses whenever the need
to do so arose (and unless there was such need I did not wish to try)
was, not by attempting to manipulate the machinery, and not by trusting
merely to the professional reformers, but by making my appeal as
directly and as emphatically as I knew how to the mass of voters
themselves, to the people, to the men who if waked up would be able to
impose their will on their representatives. My success depended upon
getting the people in the different districts to look at matters in my
way, and getting them to take such an active interest in affairs as to
enable them to exercise control over their representatives.
There were a few of the Senators and Assemblymen whom I could reach by
seeing them personally and putting before them my arguments; but most of
them were too much under the control of the machine for me to shake
them loose unless they knew that the people were actively behind me. In
making my appeal to the people as a whole I was dealing with an entirely
different constituency from that which, especially in the big cities,
liked to think of itself as the "better element," the particular
exponent of reform and good citizenship. I was dealing with shrewd,
hard-headed, kindly men and women, chiefly concerned with the absorbing
work of earning their own living, and impatient of fads, who had grown
to feel that the associations with the word "reformer" were not much
better than the associations with the word "politician." I had to
convince these men and women of my good faith, and, moreover, of my
common sense and efficiency. They were most of them strong partisans,
and an outrage had to be very real and very great to shake them even
partially loose from their party affiliations. Moreover, they took
little interest in any fight of mere personalities. They were not
influenced in the least by the silk-stocking reform view of Mr. Platt.
I knew that if they were persuaded that I was engaged in a mere faction
fight against him, that it was a mere issue between his ambition and
mine, they would at once become indifferent, and my fight would be lost.
But I felt that I could count on their support wherever I could show
them that the fight was not made just for the sake of the row, that it
was not made merely as a factional contest against Senator Platt and the
organization, but was waged from a sense of duty for real and tangible
causes such as the promotion of governmental efficiency and honesty,
and forcing powerful moneyed men to take the proper attitude toward the
community at large. They stood by me when I insisted upon having the
canal department, the insurance department, and the various departments
of the State Government run with efficiency and honesty; they stood by
me when I insisted upon making wealthy men who owned franchises pay
the State what they properly ought to pay; they stood by me when, in
connection with the strikes on the Croton Aqueduct and in Buffalo, I
promptly used the military power of the State to put a stop to rioting
and violence.
In the latter case my chief opponents and critics were local politicians
who were truckling to the labor vote; but in all cases coming under the
first two categories I had serious trouble with the State leaders of the
machine. I always did my best, in good faith, to get Mr. Platt and the
other heads of the machine to accept my views, and to convince them,
by repeated private conversations, that I was right. I never wantonly
antagonized or humiliated them. I did not wish to humiliate them or to
seem victorious over them; what I wished was to secure the things that
I thought it essential to the men and women of the State to secure. If I
could finally persuade them to support me, well and good; in such case I
continued to work with them in the friendliest manner.
If after repeated and persistent effort I failed to get them to support
me, then I made a fair fight in the open, and in a majority of cases I
carried my point and succeeded in getting through the legislation which
I wished. In theory the Executive has nothing to do with legislation. In
practice, as things now are, the Executive is or ought to be peculiarly
representative of the people as a whole. As often as not the action
of the Executive offers the only means by which the people can get the
legislation they demand and ought to have. Therefore a good executive
under the present conditions of American political life must take a very
active interest in getting the right kind of legislation, in addition
to performing his executive duties with an eye single to the public
welfare. More than half of my work as Governor was in the direction of
getting needed and important legislation. I accomplished this only by
arousing the people, and riveting their attention on what was done.
Gradually the people began to wake up more and more to the fact that the
machine politicians were not giving them the kind of government which
they wished. As this waking up grew more general, not merely in New York
or any other one State, but throughout most of the Nation, the power
of the bosses waned. Then a curious thing happened. The professional
reformers who had most loudly criticized these bosses began to change
toward them. Newspaper editors, college presidents, corporation lawyers,
and big business men, all alike, had denounced the bosses and had taken
part in reform movements against them so long as these reforms dealt
only with things that were superficial, or with fundamental things that
did not affect themselves and their associates. But the majority
of these men turned to the support of the bosses when the great new
movement began clearly to make itself evident as one against privilege
in business no less than against privilege in politics, as one for
social and industrial no less than for political righteousness and fair
dealing. The big corporation lawyer who had antagonized the boss in
matters which he regarded as purely political stood shoulder to shoulder
with the boss when the movement for betterment took shape in direct
attack on the combination of business with politics and with the
judiciary which has done so much to enthrone privilege in the economic
world.
The reformers who denounced political corruption and fraud when shown
at the expense of their own candidates by machine ward heelers of a low
type hysterically applauded similar corrupt trickery when practiced by
these same politicians against men with whose political and industrial
programme the reformers were not in sympathy. I had always been
instinctively and by nature a democrat, but if I had needed conversion
to the democratic ideal here in America the stimulus would have been
supplied by what I saw of the attitude, not merely of the bulk of the
men of greatest wealth, but of the bulk of the men who most prided
themselves upon their education and culture, when we began in good faith
to grapple with the wrong and injustice of our social and industrial
system, and to hit at the men responsible for the wrong, no matter how
high they stood in business or in politics, at the bar or on the bench.
It was while I was Governor, and especially in connection with the
franchise tax legislation, that I first became thoroughly aware of the
real causes of this attitude among the men of great wealth and among the
men who took their tone from the men of great wealth.
Very soon after my victory in the race for Governor I had one or two
experiences with Senator Platt which showed in amusing fashion how
absolute the rule of the boss was in the politics of that day. Senator
Platt, who was always most kind and friendly in his personal relations
with me, asked me in one day to talk over what was to be done at Albany.
He had the two or three nominal heads of the organization with him. They
were his lieutenants, who counseled and influenced him, whose advice he
often followed, but who, when he had finally made up his mind, merely
registered and carried out his decrees. After a little conversation the
Senator asked if I had any member of the Assembly whom I wished to
have put on any committee, explaining that the committees were being
arranged. I answered no, and expressed my surprise at what he had said,
because I had not understood the Speaker who appointed the committees
had himself been agreed upon by the members-elect. "Oh!" responded the
Senator, with a tolerant smile, "He has not been chosen yet, but of
course whoever we choose as Speaker will agree beforehand to make the
appointments we wish." I made a mental note to the effect that if they
attempted the same process with the Governor-elect they would find
themselves mistaken.
In a few days the opportunity to prove this arrived. Under the preceding
Administration there had been grave scandals about the Erie Canal, the
trans-State Canal, and these scandals had been one of the chief issues
in the campaign for the Governorship. The construction of this work was
under the control of the Superintendent of Public Works. In the actual
state of affairs his office was by far the most important office under
me, and I intended to appoint to it some man of high character and
capacity who could be trusted to do the work not merely honestly and
efficiently, but without regard to politics. A week or so after the
Speakership incident Senator Platt asked me to come and see him (he was
an old and physically feeble man, able to move about only with extreme
difficulty).
On arrival I found the Lieutenant-Governor elect, Mr. Woodruff, who had
also been asked to come. The Senator informed me that he was glad to
say that I would have a most admirable man as Superintendent of Public
Works, as he had just received a telegram from a certain gentleman, whom
he named, saying that he would accept the position! He handed me the
telegram. The man in question was a man I liked; later I appointed him
to an important office in which he did well. But he came from a city
along the line of the canal, so that I did not think it best that he
should be appointed anyhow; and, moreover, what was far more important,
it was necessary to have it understood at the very outset that the
Administration was my Administration and was no one else's but mine. So
I told the Senator very politely that I was sorry, but that I could not
appoint his man. This produced an explosion, but I declined to lose my
temper, merely repeating that I must decline to accept any man chosen
for me, and that I must choose the man myself. Although I was very
polite, I was also very firm, and Mr. Platt and his friends finally
abandoned their position.
I appointed an engineer from Brooklyn, a veteran of the Civil War,
Colonel Partridge, who had served in Mayor Low's administration. He was
an excellent man in every way. He chose as his assistant, actively to
superintend the work, a Cornell graduate named Elon Hooker, a man with
no political backing at all, picked simply because he was the best
equipped man for the place. The office, the most important office under
me, was run in admirable fashion throughout my Administration; I
doubt if there ever was an important department of the New York State
Government run with a higher standard of efficiency and integrity.
But this was not all that had to be done about the canals. Evidently
the whole policy hitherto pursued had been foolish and inadequate. I
appointed a first-class non-partisan commission of business men and
expert engineers who went into the matter exhaustively, and their report
served as the basis upon which our entire present canal system is based.
There remained the question of determining whether the canal officials
who were in office before I became Governor, and whom I had declined to
reappoint, had been guilty of any action because of which it would be
possible to proceed against them criminally or otherwise under the law.
Such criminal action had been freely charged against them during the
campaign by the Democratic (including the so-called mugwump) press. To
determine this matter I appointed two Democratic lawyers, Messrs. Fox
and MacFarlane (the latter Federal District Attorney for New York under
President Cleveland), and put the whole investigation in their hands.
These gentlemen made an exhaustive investigation lasting several months.
They reported that there had been grave delinquency in the prosecution
of the work, delinquency which justified public condemnation of those
responsible for it (who were out of office), but that there was
no ground for criminal prosecution. I laid their report before the
Legislature with a message in which I said: "There is probably no lawyer
of high standing in the State who, after studying the report of counsel
in this case and the testimony taken by the investigating commission,
would disagree with them as to the impracticability of a successful
prosecution. Under such circumstances the one remedy was a thorough
change in the methods and management. This change has been made."
When my successor in the Governorship took office, Colonel Partridge
retired, and Elon Hooker, finding that he could no longer act with
entire disregard of politics and with an eye single to the efficiency of
the work, also left. A dozen years later--having in the meantime made
a marked success in a business career--he became the Treasurer of the
National Progressive party.
My action in regard to the canals, and the management of his office,
the most important office under me, by Colonel Partridge, established
my relations with Mr. Platt from the outset on pretty nearly the right
basis. But, besides various small difficulties, we had one or two
serious bits of trouble before my duties as Governor ceased. It must be
remembered that Mr. Platt was to all intents and purposes a large part
of, and sometimes a majority of, the Legislature. There were a few
entirely independent men such as Nathaniel Elsberg, Regis Post, and
Alford Cooley, in each of the two houses; the remainder were under the
control of the Republican and Democratic bosses, but could also be more
or less influenced by an aroused public opinion. The two machines were
apt to make common cause if their vital interests were touched. It was
my business to devise methods by which either the two machines could be
kept apart or else overthrown if they came together.
My desire was to achieve results, and not merely to issue manifestoes
of virtue. It is very easy to be efficient if the efficiency is based
on unscrupulousness, and it is still easier to be virtuous if one is
content with the purely negative virtue which consists in not doing
anything wrong, but being wholly unable to accomplish anything positive
for good. My favorite quotation from Josh Billings again applies: It is
so much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent. My duty was to
combine both idealism and efficiency. At that time the public conscience
was still dormant as regards many species of political and business
misconduct, as to which during the next decade it became sensitive. I
had to work with the tools at hand and to take into account the feeling
of the people, which I have already described. My aim was persistently
to refuse to be put in a position where what I did would seem to be a
mere faction struggle against Senator Platt. My aim was to make a fight
only when I could so manage it that there could be no question in the
minds of honest men that my prime purpose was not to attack Mr. Platt
or any one else except as a necessary incident to securing clean and
efficient government.
In each case I did my best to persuade Mr. Platt not to oppose me. I
endeavored to make it clear to him that I was not trying to wrest the
organization from him; and I always gave him in detail the reasons why I
felt I had to take the position I intended to adopt. It was only after I
had exhausted all the resources of my patience that I would finally, if
he still proved obstinate, tell him that I intended to make the fight
anyhow. As I have said, the Senator was an old and feeble man in
physique, and it was possible for him to go about very little. Until
Friday evening he would be kept at his duties at Washington, while I was
in Albany. If I wished to see him it generally had to be at his hotel
in New York on Saturday, and usually I would go there to breakfast with
him. The one thing I would not permit was anything in the nature of a
secret or clandestine meeting. I always insisted on going openly. Solemn
reformers of the tom-fool variety, who, according to their custom, paid
attention to the name and not the thing, were much exercised over my
"breakfasting with Platt." Whenever I breakfasted with him they became
sure that the fact carried with it some sinister significance. The
worthy creatures never took the trouble to follow the sequence of facts
and events for themselves. If they had done so they would have seen that
any series of breakfasts with Platt always meant that I was going to
do something he did not like, and that I was trying, courteously and
frankly, to reconcile him to it. My object was to make it as easy as
possible for him to come with me. As long as there was no clash between
us there was no object in my seeing him; it was only when the clash came
or was imminent that I had to see him. A series of breakfasts was always
the prelude to some active warfare.[*] In every instance I substantially
carried my point, although in some cases not in exactly the way in which
I had originally hoped.
[*] To illustrate my meaning I quote from a letter of mine
to Senator Platt of December 13, 1899. He had been trying to
get me to promote a certain Judge X over the head of another
Judge Y. I wrote: "There is a strong feeling among the
judges and the leading members of the bar that Judge Y ought
not to have Judge X jumped over his head, and I do not see
my way clear to doing it. I am inclined to think that the
solution I mentioned to you is the solution I shall have to
adopt. Remember the breakfast at Douglas Robinson's at
8:30."
There were various measures to which he gave a grudging and querulous
assent without any break being threatened. I secured the reenactment
of the Civil Service Law, which under my predecessor had very foolishly
been repealed. I secured a mass of labor legislation, including the
enactment of laws to increase the number of factory inspectors, to
create a Tenement House Commission (whose findings resulted in further
and excellent legislation to improve housing conditions), to regulate
and improve sweatshop labor, to make the eight-hour and prevailing rate
of wages law effective, to secure the genuine enforcement of the act
relating to the hours of railway workers, to compel railways to equip
freight trains with air-brakes, to regulate the working hours of women
and protect both women and children from dangerous machinery, to enforce
good scaffolding provisions for workmen on buildings, to provide seats
for the use of waitresses in hotels and restaurants, to reduce the
hours of labor for drug-store clerks, to provide for the registration of
laborers for municipal employment. I tried hard but failed to secure an
employers' liability law and the state control of employment offices.
There was hard fighting over some of these bills, and, what was much
more serious, there was effort to get round the law by trickery and by
securing its inefficient enforcement. I was continually helped by men
with whom I had gotten in touch while in the Police Department; men such
as James Bronson Reynolds, through whom I first became interested in
settlement work on the East Side. Once or twice I went suddenly down to
New York City without warning any one and traversed the tenement-house
quarters, visiting various sweat-shops picked at random. Jake Riis
accompanied me; and as a result of our inspection we got not only
an improvement in the law but a still more marked improvement in its
administration. Thanks chiefly to the activity and good sense of Dr.
John H. Pryor, of Buffalo, and by the use of every pound of pressure
which as Governor I could bring to bear in legitimate fashion--including
a special emergency message--we succeeded in getting through a bill
providing for the first State hospital for incipient tuberculosis. We
got valuable laws for the farmer; laws preventing the adulteration of
food products (which laws were equally valuable to the consumer), and
laws helping the dairyman. In addition to labor legislation I was able
to do a good deal for forest preservation and the protection of our
wild life. All that later I strove for in the Nation in connection with
Conservation was foreshadowed by what I strove to obtain for New York
State when I was Governor; and I was already working in connection with
Gifford Pinchot and Newell. I secured better administration, and some
improvement in the laws themselves. The improvement in administration,
and in the character of the game and forest wardens, was secured partly
as the result of a conference in the executive chamber which I held with
forty of the best guides and woodsmen of the Adirondacks.
As regards most legislation, even that affecting labor and the forests,
I got on fairly well with the machine. But on the two issues in which
"big business" and the kind of politics which is allied to big business
were most involved we clashed hard--and clashing with Senator Platt
meant clashing with the entire Republican organization, and with the
organized majority in each house of the Legislature. One clash was in
connection with the Superintendent of Insurance, a man whose office made
him a factor of immense importance in the big business circles of New
York. The then incumbent of the office was an efficient man, the boss
of an up-State county, a veteran politician and one of Mr. Platt's
right-hand men. Certain investigations which I made--in the course of
the fight--showed that this Superintendent of Insurance had been engaged
in large business operations in New York City. These operations had
thrown him into a peculiarly intimate business contact of one sort and
another with various financiers with whom I did not deem it expedient
that the Superintendent of Insurance, while such, should have any
intimate and secret money-making relations. Moreover, the gentleman
in question represented the straitest sect of the old-time spoils
politicians. I therefore determined not to reappoint him. Unless I could
get his successor confirmed, however, he would stay in under the law,
and the Republican machine, with the assistance of Tammany, expected to
control far more than a majority of all the Senators.
Mr. Platt issued an ultimatum to me that the incumbent must be
reappointed or else that he would fight, and that if he chose to fight
the man would stay in anyhow because I could not oust him--for under the
New York Constitution the assent of the Senate was necessary not only
to appoint a man to office but to remove him from office. As always with
Mr. Platt, I persistently refused to lose my temper, no matter what
he said--he was much too old and physically feeble for there to be any
point of honor in taking up any of his remarks--and I merely explained
good-humoredly that I had made up my mind and that the gentleman
in question would not be retained. As for not being able to get his
successor confirmed, I pointed out that as soon as the Legislature
adjourned I could and would appoint another man temporarily. Mr.
Platt then said that the incumbent would be put back as soon as the
Legislature reconvened; I admitted that this was possible, but
added cheerfully that I would remove him again just as soon as that
Legislature adjourned, and that even though I had an uncomfortable time
myself, I would guarantee to make my opponents more uncomfortable still.
We parted without any sign of reaching an agreement.
There remained some weeks before final action could be taken, and the
Senator was confident that I would have to yield. His most efficient
allies were the pretended reformers, most of them my open or covert
enemies, who loudly insisted that I must make an open fight on the
Senator himself and on the Republican organization. This was what he
wished, for at that time there was no way of upsetting him within the
Republican party; and, as I have said, if I had permitted the contest
to assume the shape of a mere faction fight between the Governor and the
United States Senator, I would have insured the victory of the
machine. So I blandly refused to let the thing become a personal fight,
explaining again and again that I was perfectly willing to appoint an
organization man, and naming two or three whom I was willing to appoint,
but also explaining that I would not retain the incumbent, and would not
appoint any man of his type. Meanwhile pressure on behalf of the said
incumbent began to come from the business men of New York.
The Superintendent of Insurance was not a man whose ill will the big
life insurance companies cared to incur, and company after company
passed resolutions asking me to reappoint him, although in private some
of the men who signed these resolutions nervously explained that they
did not mean what they had written, and hoped I would remove the man. A
citizen prominent in reform circles, marked by the Cato-like austerity
of his reform professions, had a son who was a counsel for one of the
insurance companies. The father was engaged in writing letters to the
papers demanding in the name of uncompromising virtue that I should not
only get rid of the Superintendent of Insurance, but in his place should
appoint somebody or other personally offensive to Senator Platt--which
last proposition, if adopted, would have meant that the Superintendent
of Insurance would have stayed in, for the reasons I have already given.
Meanwhile the son came to see me on behalf of the insurance company he
represented and told me that the company was anxious that there should
be a change in the superintendency; that if I really meant to fight,
they thought they had influence with four of the State Senators,
Democrats and Republicans, whom they could get to vote to confirm
the man I nominated, but that they wished to be sure that I would not
abandon the fight, because it would be a very bad thing for them if I
started the fight and then backed down. I told my visitor that he need
be under no apprehensions, that I would certainly see the fight through.
A man who has much to do with that kind of politics which concerns both
New York politicians and New York business men and lawyers is not easily
surprised, and therefore I felt no other emotion than a rather sardonic
amusement when thirty-six hours later I read in the morning paper
an open letter from the officials of the very company who had been
communicating with me in which they enthusiastically advocated the
renomination of the Superintendent. Shortly afterwards my visitor,
the young lawyer, called me up on the telephone and explained that the
officials did not mean what they had said in this letter, that they had
been obliged to write it for fear of the Superintendent, but that if
they got the chance they intended to help me get rid of him. I thanked
him and said I thought I could manage the fight by myself. I did not
hear from him again, though his father continued to write public demands
that I should practice pure virtue, undefiled and offensive.
Meanwhile Senator Platt declined to yield. I had picked out a man,
a friend of his, who I believed would make an honest and competent
official, and whose position in the organization was such that I did not
believe the Senate would venture to reject him. However, up to the
day before the appointment was to go to the Senate, Mr. Platt remained
unyielding. I saw him that afternoon and tried to get him to yield, but
he said No, that if I insisted, it would be war to the knife, and my
destruction, and perhaps the destruction of the party. I said I was
very sorry, that I could not yield, and if the war came it would have
to come, and that next morning I should send in the name of the
Superintendent's successor. We parted, and soon afterwards I received
from the man who was at the moment Mr. Platt's right-hand lieutenant
a request to know where he could see me that evening. I appointed the
Union League Club. My visitor went over the old ground, explained that
the Senator would under no circumstances yield, that he was certain to
win in the fight, that my reputation would be destroyed, and that he
wished to save me from such a lamentable smash-up as an ending to my
career. I could only repeat what I had already said, and after half an
hour of futile argument I rose and said that nothing was to be gained by
further talk and that I might as well go. My visitor repeated that I
had this last chance, and that ruin was ahead of me if I refused it;
whereas, if I accepted, everything would be made easy. I shook my head
and answered, "There is nothing to add to what I have already said." He
responded, "You have made up your mind?" and I said, "I have." He then
said, "You know it means your ruin?" and I answered, "Well, we will see
about that," and walked toward the door. He said, "You understand, the
fight will begin to-morrow and will be carried on to the bitter end."
I said, "Yes," and added, as I reached the door, "Good night." Then, as
the door opened, my opponent, or visitor, whichever one chooses to call
him, whose face was as impassive and as inscrutable as that of Mr. John
Hamlin in a poker game, said: "Hold on! We accept. Send in So-and-so
[the man I had named]. The Senator is very sorry, but he will make no
further opposition!" I never saw a bluff carried more resolutely
through to the final limit. My success in the affair, coupled with the
appointment of Messrs. Partridge and Hooker, secured me against further
effort to interfere with my handling of the executive departments.
It was in connection with the insurance business that I first met Mr.
George W. Perkins. He came to me with a letter of introduction from the
then Speaker of the National House of Representatives, Tom Reed,
which ran: "Mr. Perkins is a personal friend of mine, whose
straightforwardness and intelligence will commend to you whatever he has
to say. If you will give him proper opportunity to explain his business,
I have no doubt that what he will say will be worthy of your attention."
Mr. Perkins wished to see me with reference to a bill that had just been
introduced in the Legislature, which aimed to limit the aggregate volume
of insurance that any New York State company could assume. There
were then three big insurance companies in New York--the Mutual Life,
Equitable, and New York Life. Mr. Perkins was a Vice-President of
the New York Life Insurance Company and Mr. John A. McCall was its
President. I had just finished my fight against the Superintendent of
Insurance, whom I refused to continue in office. Mr. McCall had written
me a very strong letter urging that he be retained, and had done
everything he could to aid Senator Platt in securing his retention. The
Mutual Life and Equitable people had openly followed the same course,
but in private had hedged. They were both backing the proposed bill. Mr.
McCall was opposed to it; he was in California, and just before starting
thither he had been told by the Mutual Life and Equitable that the
Limitation Bill was favored by me and would be put through if such a
thing were possible. Mr. McCall did not know me, and on leaving for
California told Mr. Perkins that from all he could learn he was sure I
was bent on putting this bill through, and that nothing he could say
to me would change my view; in fact, because he had fought so hard
to retain the old Insurance Superintendent, he felt that I would be
particularly opposed to anything he might wish done.
As a matter of fact, I had no such feeling. I had been carefully
studying the question. I had talked with the Mutual Life and Equitable
people about it, but was not committed to any particular course, and had
grave doubts as to whether it was well to draw the line on size instead
of on conduct. I was therefore very glad to see Perkins and get a new
point of view. I went over the matter with a great deal of care and at
considerable length, and after we had thrashed the matter out pretty
fully and Perkins had laid before me in detail the methods employed by
Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and other European countries to handle
their large insurance companies, I took the position that there
undoubtedly were evils in the insurance business, but that they did not
consist in insuring people's lives, for that certainly was not an evil;
and I did not see how the real evils could be eradicated by limiting or
suppressing a company's ability to protect an additional number of lives
with insurance. I therefore announced that I would not favor a bill that
limited volume of business, and would not sign it if it were passed;
but that I favored legislation that would make it impossible to place,
through agents, policies that were ambiguous and misleading, or to pay
exorbitant prices to agents for business, or to invest policy-holders'
money in improper securities, or to give power to officers to use
the company's funds for their own personal profit. In reaching this
determination I was helped by Mr. Loeb, then merely a stenographer in
my office, but who had already attracted my attention both by his
efficiency and by his loyalty to his former employers, who were for
the most part my political opponents. Mr. Loeb gave me much information
about various improper practices in the insurance business. I began
to gather data on the subject, with the intention of bringing about
corrective legislation, for at that time I expected to continue
in office as Governor. But in a few weeks I was nominated as
Vice-President, and my successor did nothing about the matter.
So far as I remember, this was the first time the question of correcting
evils in a business by limiting the volume of business to be done was
ever presented to me, and my decision in the matter was on all fours
with the position I have always since taken when any similar principle
was involved. At the time when I made my decision about the Limitation
Bill, I was on friendly terms with the Mutual and Equitable people
who were back of it, whereas I did not know Mr. McCall at all, and Mr.
Perkins only from hearing him discuss the bill.
An interesting feature of the matter developed subsequently. Five years
later, after the insurance investigations took place, the Mutual Life
strongly urged the passage of a Limitation Bill, and, because of the
popular feeling developed by the exposure of the improper practices of
the companies, this bill was generally approved. Governor Hughes adopted
the suggestion, such a bill was passed by the Legislature, and Governor
Hughes signed it. This bill caused the three great New York companies to
reduce markedly the volume of business they were doing; it threw a great
many agents out of employment, and materially curtailed the foreign
business of the companies--which business was bringing annually a
considerable sum of money to this country for investment. In short,
the experiment worked so badly that before Governor Hughes went out of
office one of the very last bills he signed was one that permitted the
life insurance companies to increase their business each year by an
amount representing a certain percentage of the business they had
previously done. This in practice, within a few years, practically
annulled the Limitation Bill that had been previously passed. The
experiment of limiting the size of business, of legislating against it
merely because it was big, had been tried, and had failed so completely
that the authors of the bill had themselves in effect repealed it. My
action in refusing to try the experiment had been completely justified.
As a sequel to this incident I got Mr. Perkins to serve on the Palisade
Park Commission. At the time I was taking active part in the effort to
save the Palisades from vandalism and destruction by getting the States
of New York and New Jersey jointly to include them in a public park.
It is not easy to get a responsible and capable man of business to
undertake such a task, which is unpaid, which calls on his part for an
immense expenditure of time, money, and energy, which offers no
reward of any kind, and which entails the certainty of abuse and
misrepresentation. Mr. Perkins accepted the position, and has filled
it for the last thirteen years, doing as disinterested, efficient,
and useful a bit of public service as any man in the State has done
throughout these thirteen years.
The case of most importance in which I clashed with Senator Platt
related to a matter of fundamental governmental policy, and was the
first step I ever took toward bringing big corporations under effective
governmental control. In this case I had to fight the Democratic machine
as well as the Republican machine, for Senator Hill and Senator Platt
were equally opposed to my action, and the big corporation men, the big
business men back of both of them, took precisely the same view of these
matters without regard to their party feelings on other points. What
I did convulsed people at that time, and marked the beginning of the
effort, at least in the Eastern states, to make the great corporations
really responsible to popular wish and governmental command. But we
have gone so far past the stage in which we then were that now it seems
well-nigh incredible that there should have been any opposition at all
to what I at that time proposed.
The substitution of electric power for horse power in the street car
lines of New York offered a fruitful chance for the most noxious type of
dealing between business men and politicians. The franchises granted by
New York were granted without any attempt to secure from the grantees
returns, in the way of taxation or otherwise, for the value received.
The fact that they were thus granted by improper favoritism, a
favoritism which in many cases was unquestionably secured by downright
bribery, led to all kinds of trouble. In return for the continuance
of these improper favors to the corporations the politicians expected
improper favors in the way of excessive campaign contributions, often
contributed by the same corporation at the same time to two opposing
parties. Before I became Governor a bill had been introduced into the
New York Legislature to tax the franchises of these street railways. It
affected a large number of corporations, but particularly those in New
York and Buffalo. It had been suffered to slumber undisturbed, as none
of the people in power dreamed of taking it seriously, and both the
Republican and Democratic machines were hostile to it. Under the rules
of the New York Legislature a bill could always be taken up out of its
turn and passed if the Governor sent in a special emergency message on
its behalf.
After I was elected Governor I had my attention directed to the
franchise tax matter, looked into the subject, and came to the
conclusion that it was a matter of plain decency and honesty that these
companies should pay a tax on their franchises, inasmuch as they did
nothing that could be considered as service rendered the public in lieu
of a tax. This seemed to me so evidently the common-sense and decent
thing to do that I was hardly prepared for the storm of protest and
anger which my proposal aroused. Senator Platt and the other machine
leaders did everything to get me to abandon my intention. As usual,
I saw them, talked the matter all over with them, and did my best to
convert them to my way of thinking. Senator Platt, I believe, was quite
sincere in his opposition. He did not believe in popular rule, and he
did believe that the big business men were entitled to have things their
way. He profoundly distrusted the people--naturally enough, for the kind
of human nature with which a boss comes in contact is not of an exalted
type. He felt that anarchy would come if there was any interference
with a system by which the people in mass were, under various necessary
cloaks, controlled by the leaders in the political and business worlds.
He wrote me a very strong letter of protest against my attitude,
expressed in dignified, friendly, and temperate language, but using one
word in a curious way. This was the word "altruistic." He stated in his
letter that he had not objected to my being independent in politics,
because he had been sure that I had the good of the party at heart, and
meant to act fairly and honorably; but that he had been warned, before
I became a candidate, by a number of his business friends that I was a
dangerous man because I was "altruistic," and that he now feared that
my conduct would justify the alarm thus expressed. I was interested in
this, not only because Senator Platt was obviously sincere, but because
of the way in which he used "altruistic" as a term of reproach, as if it
was Communistic or Socialistic--the last being a word he did use to me
when, as now and then happened, he thought that my proposals warranted
fairly reckless vituperation.
Senator Platt's letter ran in part as follows:
"When the subject of your nomination was under consideration, there was
one matter that gave me real anxiety. I think you will have no
trouble in appreciating the fact that it was _not_ the matter of your
independence. I think we have got far enough along in our political
acquaintance for you to see that my support in a convention does
not imply subsequent 'demands,' nor any other relation that may not
reasonably exist for the welfare of the party. . . . The thing that did
bother me was this: I had heard from a good many sources that you were
a little loose on the relations of capital and labor, on trusts and
combinations, and, indeed, on those numerous questions which have
recently arisen in politics affecting the security of earnings and the
right of a man to run his own business in his own way, with due respect
of course to the Ten Commandments and the Penal Code. Or, to get at it
even more clearly, I understood from a number of business men, and among
them many of your own personal friends, that you entertained various
altruistic ideas, all very well in their way, but which before they
could safely be put into law needed very profound consideration. . . .
You have just adjourned a Legislature which created a good opinion
throughout the State. I congratulate you heartily upon this fact because
I sincerely believe, as everybody else does, that this good impression
exists very largely as a result of your personal influence in the
Legislative chambers. But at the last moment, and to my very great
surprise, you did a thing which has caused the business community of New
York to wonder how far the notions of Populism, as laid down in Kansas
and Nebraska, have taken hold upon the Republican party of the State of
New York."
In my answer I pointed out to the Senator that I had as Governor
unhesitatingly acted, at Buffalo and elsewhere, to put down mobs,
without regard to the fact that the professed leaders of labor furiously
denounced me for so doing; but that I could no more tolerate wrong
committed in the name of property than wrong committed against property.
My letter ran in part as follows:
"I knew that you had just the feelings that you describe; that is, apart
from my 'impulsiveness,' you felt that there was a justifiable anxiety
among men of means, and especially men representing large corporate
interests, lest I might feel too strongly on what you term the
'altruistic' side in matters of labor and capital and as regards the
relations of the State to great corporations. . . . I know that when
parties divide on such issues [as Bryanism] the tendency is to force
everybody into one of two camps, and to throw out entirely men like
myself, who are as strongly opposed to Populism in every stage as the
greatest representative of corporate wealth, but who also feel strongly
that many of these representatives of enormous corporate wealth have
themselves been responsible for a portion of the conditions against
which Bryanism is in ignorant revolt. I do not believe that it is wise
or safe for us as a party to take refuge in mere negation and to
say that there are no evils to be corrected. It seems to me that our
attitude should be one of correcting the evils and thereby showing that,
whereas the Populists, Socialists, and others really do not correct the
evils at all, or else only do so at the expense of producing others in
aggravated form; on the contrary we Republicans hold the just balance
and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on
the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other. I understand
perfectly that such an attitude of moderation is apt to be misunderstood
when passions are greatly excited and when victory is apt to rest with
the extremists on one side or the other; yet I think it is in the long
run the only wise attitude. . . . I appreciate absolutely [what Mr.
Platt had said] that any applause I get will be too evanescent for a
moment's consideration. I appreciate absolutely that the people who now
loudly approve of my action in the franchise tax bill will forget all
about it in a fortnight, and that, on the other hand, the very powerful
interests adversely affected will always remember it. . . . [The
leaders] urged upon me that I personally could not afford to take this
action, for under no circumstances could I ever again be nominated for
any public office, as no corporation would subscribe to a campaign fund
if I was on the ticket, and that they would subscribe most heavily to
beat me; and when I asked if this were true of Republican corporations,
the cynical answer was made that the corporations that subscribed most
heavily to the campaign funds subscribed impartially to both party
organizations. Under all these circumstances, it seemed to me there
was no alternative but to do what I could to secure the passage of the
bill."
These two letters, written in the spring of 1899, express clearly the
views of the two elements of the Republican party, whose hostility
gradually grew until it culminated, thirteen years later. In 1912 the
political and financial forces of which Mr. Platt had once been the
spokesman, usurped the control of the party machinery and drove out of
the party the men who were loyally endeavoring to apply the principles
of the founders of the party to the needs and issues of their own day.
I had made up my mind that if I could get a show in the Legislature
the bill would pass, because the people had become interested and the
representatives would scarcely dare to vote the wrong way. Accordingly,
on April 27, 1899, I sent a special message to the Assembly, certifying
that the emergency demanded the immediate passage of the bill. The
machine leaders were bitterly angry, and the Speaker actually tore up
the message without reading it to the Assembly. That night they were
busy trying to arrange some device for the defeat of the bill--which
was not difficult, as the session was about to close. At seven the
next morning I was informed of what had occurred. At eight I was in the
Capitol at the Executive chamber, and sent in another special message,
which opened as follows: "I learn that the emergency message which I
sent last evening to the Assembly on behalf of the Franchise Tax Bill
has not been read. I therefore send hereby another message on the
subject. I need not impress upon the Assembly the need of passing this
bill at once." I sent this message to the Assembly, by my secretary,
William J. Youngs, afterwards United States District Attorney of Kings,
with an intimation that if this were not promptly read I should come
up in person and read it. Then, as so often happens, the opposition
collapsed and the bill went through both houses with a rush. I had in
the House stanch friends, such as Regis Post and Alford Cooley, men of
character and courage, who would have fought to a finish had the need
arisen.
My troubles were not at an end, however. The bill put the taxation in
the hands of the local county boards, and as the railways sometimes
passed through several different counties, this was inadvisable. It was
the end of the session, and the Legislature adjourned. The corporations
affected, through various counsel, and the different party leaders
of both organizations, urged me not to sign the bill, laying especial
stress on this feature, and asking that I wait until the following year,
when a good measure could be put through with this obnoxious feature
struck out. I had thirty days under the law in which to sign the bill.
If I did not sign it by the end of that time it would not become a law.
I answered my political and corporation friends by telling them that I
agreed with them that this feature was wrong, but that I would rather
have the bill with this feature than not have it at all; and that I was
not willing to trust to what might be done a year later. Therefore, I
explained, I would reconvene the Legislature in special session, and if
the legislators chose to amend the bill by placing the power of taxation
in the State instead of in the county or municipality, I would be glad;
but that if they failed to amend it, or amended it improperly, I would
sign the original bill and let it become law as it was.
When the representatives of Mr. Platt and of the corporations affected
found they could do no better, they assented to this proposition.
Efforts were tentatively made to outwit me, by inserting amendments that
would nullify the effect of the law, or by withdrawing the law when the
Legislature convened; which would at once have deprived me of the
whip hand. On May 12 I wrote Senator Platt, outlining the amendments I
desired, and said: "Of course it must be understood that I will sign the
present bill if the proposed bill containing the changes outlined above
fails to pass." On May 18 I notified the Senate leader, John Raines,
by telegram: "Legislature has no power to withdraw the Ford bill. If
attempt is made to do so, I will sign the bill at once." On the same
day, by telegram, I wired Mr. Odell concerning the bill the leaders were
preparing: "Some provisions of bill very objectionable. I am at work on
bill to show you to-morrow. The bill must not contain greater changes
than those outlined in my message." My wishes were heeded, and when I
had reconvened the Legislature it amended the bill as I outlined in my
message; and in its amended form the bill became law.
There promptly followed something which afforded an index of the good
faith of the corporations that had been protesting to me. As soon as the
change for which they had begged was inserted in the law, and the law
was signed, they turned round and refused to pay the taxes; and in the
lawsuit that followed, they claimed that the law was unconstitutional,
because it contained the very clause which they had so clamorously
demanded. Senator David B. Hill had appeared before me on behalf of the
corporations to argue for the change; and he then appeared before the
courts to make the argument on the other side. The suit was carried
through to the Supreme Court of the United States, which declared the
law constitutional during the time that I was President.
One of the painful duties of the chief executive in States like New
York, as well as in the Nation, is the refusing of pardons. Yet I can
imagine nothing more necessary from the standpoint of good citizenship
than the ability to steel one's heart in this matter of granting
pardons. The pressure is always greatest in two classes of cases: first,
that where capital punishment is inflicted; second, that where the
man is prominent socially and in the business world, and where in
consequence his crime is apt to have been one concerned in some way with
finance.
As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women
always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and
neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who
would in the long run be harmed by what they ask. Moreover, almost any
criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom
he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. If the mother is alive
she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that the case in which
she is so concerned is peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be
granted. It was really heartrending to have to see the kinsfolk and
friends of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the very
rare occasions when anything governmental or official caused me to lose
sleep were the times when I had to listen to some poor mother making a
plea for a criminal so wicked, so utterly brutal and depraved, that it
would have been a crime on my part to remit his punishment.
On the other hand, there were certain crimes where requests for leniency
merely made me angry. Such crimes were, for instance, rape, or the
circulation of indecent literature, or anything connected with what
would now be called the "white slave" traffic, or wife murder, or gross
cruelty to women and children, or seduction and abandonment, or the
action of some man in getting a girl whom he had seduced to commit
abortion. I am speaking in each instance of cases that actually came
before me, either while I was Governor or while I was President. In an
astonishing number of these cases men of high standing signed petitions
or wrote letters asking me to show leniency to the criminal. In two or
three of the cases--one where some young roughs had committed rape on a
helpless immigrant girl, and another in which a physician of wealth
and high standing had seduced a girl and then induced her to commit
abortion--I rather lost my temper, and wrote to the individuals who had
asked for the pardon, saying that I extremely regretted that it was
not in my power to increase the sentence. I then let the facts be made
public, for I thought that my petitioners deserved public censure.
Whether they received this public censure or not I did not know, but
that my action made them very angry I do know, and their anger gave me
real satisfaction. The list of these petitioners was a fairly long one,
and included two United States Senators, a Governor of a State, two
judges, an editor, and some eminent lawyers and business men.
In the class of cases where the offense was one involving the misuse of
large sums of money the reason for the pressure was different. Cases of
this kind more frequently came before me when I was President, but they
also came before me when I was Governor, chiefly in the cases of county
treasurers who had embezzled funds. A big bank president, a railway
magnate, an official connected with some big corporation, or a
Government official in a responsible fiduciary position, necessarily
belongs among the men who have succeeded in life. This means that his
family are living in comfort, and perhaps luxury and refinement, and
that his sons and daughters have been well educated. In such a case
the misdeed of the father comes as a crushing disaster to the wife and
children, and the people of the community, however bitter originally
against the man, grow to feel the most intense sympathy for the
bowed-down women and children who suffer for the man's fault. It is
a dreadful thing in life that so much of atonement for wrong-doing
is vicarious. If it were possible in such a case to think only of the
banker's or county treasurer's wife and children, any man would pardon
the offender at once. Unfortunately, it is not right to think only of
the women and children. The very fact that in cases of this class there
is certain to be pressure from high sources, pressure sometimes by men
who have been beneficially, even though remotely, interested in the
man's criminality, no less than pressure because of honest sympathy with
the wife and children, makes it necessary that the good public servant
shall, no matter how deep his sympathy and regret, steel his heart and
do his duty by refusing to let the wrong-doer out. My experience of the
way in which pardons are often granted is one of the reasons why I
do not believe that life imprisonment for murder and rape is a proper
substitute for the death penalty. The average term of so-called life
imprisonment in this country is only about fourteen years.
Of course there were cases where I either commuted sentences or pardoned
offenders with very real pleasure. For instance, when President, I
frequently commuted sentences for horse stealing in the Indian Territory
because the penalty for stealing a horse was disproportionate to the
penalty for many other crimes, and the offense was usually committed by
some ignorant young fellow who found a half-wild horse, and really did
not commit anything like as serious an offense as the penalty indicated.
The judges would be obliged to give the minimum penalty, but would
forward me memoranda stating that if there had been a less penalty they
would have inflicted it, and I would then commute the sentence to the
penalty thus indicated.
In one case in New York I pardoned outright a man convicted of murder
in the second degree, and I did this on the recommendation of a friend,
Father Doyle of the Paulist Fathers. I had become intimate with the
Paulist Fathers while I was Police Commissioner, and I had grown to feel
confidence in their judgment, for I had found that they always told me
exactly what the facts were about any man, whether he belonged to their
church or not. In this case the convicted man was a strongly built,
respectable old Irishman employed as a watchman around some big
cattle-killing establishments. The young roughs of the neighborhood,
which was then of a rather lawless type, used to try to destroy the
property of the companies. In a conflict with a watchman a member of one
of the gangs was slain. The watchman was acquitted, but the neighborhood
was much wrought up over the acquittal. Shortly afterwards, a gang of
the same roughs attacked another watchman, the old Irishman in question,
and finally, to save his own life, he was obliged in self-defense to
kill one of his assailants. The feeling in the community, however, was
strongly against him, and some of the men high up in the corporation
became frightened and thought that it would be better to throw over the
watchman. He was convicted. Father Doyle came to me, told me that he
knew the man well, that he was one of the best members of his church,
admirable in every way, that he had simply been forced to fight for his
life while loyally doing his duty, and that the conviction represented
the triumph of the tough element of the district and the abandonment of
this man, by those who should have stood by him, under the influence of
an unworthy fear. I looked into the case, came to the conclusion that
Father Doyle was right, and gave the man a full pardon before he had
served thirty days.
The various clashes between myself and the machine, my triumph in them,
and the fact that the people were getting more and more interested
and aroused, brought on a curious situation in the Republican National
Convention at Philadelphia in June, 1900. Senator Platt and the New
York machine leaders had become very anxious to get me out of the
Governorship, chiefly because of the hostility of the big corporation
men towards me; but they had also become convinced that there was such
popular feeling on my behalf that it would be difficult to refuse me a
renomination if I demanded it. They accordingly decided to push me for
Vice-President, taking advantage of the fact that there was at that time
a good deal of feeling for me in the country at large. [See Appendix B
to this chapter.] I myself did not appreciate that there was any such
feeling, and as I greatly disliked the office of Vice-President and was
much interested in the Governorship, I announced that I would not accept
the Vice-Presidency. I was one of the delegates to Philadelphia. On
reaching there I found that the situation was complicated. Senator
Hanna appeared on the surface to have control of the Convention. He was
anxious that I should not be nominated as Vice-President. Senator Platt
was anxious that I should be nominated as Vice-President, in order to
get me out of the New York Governorship. Each took a position opposite
to that of the other, but each at that time cordially sympathized with
the other's feelings about me--it was the manifestations and not the
feelings that differed. My supporters in New York State did not wish
me nominated for Vice-President because they wished me to continue as
Governor; but in every other State all the people who admired me were
bound that I should be nominated as Vice-President. These people were
almost all desirous of seeing Mr. McKinley renominated as President, but
they became angry at Senator Hanna's opposition to me as Vice-President.
He in his turn suddenly became aware that if he persisted he might find
that in their anger these men would oppose Mr. McKinley's renomination,
and although they could not have prevented the nomination, such
opposition would have been a serious blow in the campaign which was to
follow. Senator Hanna, therefore, began to waver.
Meanwhile a meeting of the New York delegation was called. Most of the
delegates were under the control of Senator Platt. The Senator notified
me that if I refused to accept the nomination for Vice-President I
would be beaten for the nomination for Governor. I answered that I would
accept the challenge, that we would have a straight-out fight on the
proposition, and that I would begin it at once by telling the assembled
delegates of the threat, and giving fair warning that I intended to
fight for the Governorship nomination, and, moreover, that I intended to
get it. This brought Senator Platt to terms. The effort to instruct
the New York delegation for me was abandoned, and Lieutenant-Governor
Woodruff was presented for nomination in my place.
I supposed that this closed the incident, and that no further effort
would be made to nominate me for the Vice-Presidency. On the contrary,
the effect was directly the reverse. The upset of the New York machine
increased the feeling of the delegates from other States that it was
necessary to draft me for the nomination. By next day Senator Hanna
himself concluded that this was a necessity, and acquiesced in the
movement. As New York was already committed against me, and as I was
not willing that there should be any chance of supposing that the New
Yorkers had nominated me to get rid of me, the result was that I was
nominated and seconded from outside States. No other candidate was
placed in the field.
By this time the Legislature had adjourned, and most of my work as
Governor of New York was over. One unexpected bit of business arose,
however. It was the year of the Presidential campaign. Tammany, which
had been lukewarm about Bryan in 1896, cordially supported him in
1900; and when Tammany heartily supports a candidate it is well for the
opposing candidate to keep a sharp lookout for election frauds. The city
government was in the hands of Tammany; but I had power to remove
the Mayor, the Sheriff, and the District Attorney for malfeasance or
misfeasance in office. Such power had not been exercised by any previous
Governor, as far as I knew; but it existed, and if the misfeasance or
malfeasance warranted it, and if the Governor possessed the requisite
determination, the power could be, and ought to be, exercised.
By an Act of the Legislature, a State Bureau of Elections had been
created in New York City, and a Superintendent of Elections appointed
by the Governor. The Chief of the State Bureau of Elections was
John McCullagh, formerly in the Police Department when I was Police
Commissioner. The Chief of Police for the city was William F. Devery,
one of the Tammany leaders, who represented in the Police Department
all that I had warred against while Commissioner. On November 4 Devery
directed his subordinates in the Police Department to disregard the
orders which McCullagh had given to his deputies, orders which were
essential if we were to secure an honest election in the city. I had
just returned from a Western campaign trip, and was at Sagamore Hill. I
had no direct power over Devery; but the Mayor had; and I had power over
the Mayor. Accordingly, I at once wrote to the Mayor of New York, to the
Sheriff of New York, and to the District Attorney of New York County the
following letters:
STATE OF NEW YORK OYSTER BAY, November 5, 1900.
To the Mayor of the City of New York.
Sir: My attention has been called to the official order issued by Chief
of Police Devery, in which he directs his subordinates to disregard the
Chief of the State Election Bureau, John McCullagh, and his deputies.
Unless you have already taken steps to secure the recall of this order,
it is necessary for me to point out that I shall be obliged to hold you
responsible as the head of the city government for the action of the
Chief of Police, if it should result in any breach of the peace and
intimidation or any crime whatever against the election laws. The State
and city authorities should work together. I will not fail to call to
summary account either State or city authority in the event of either
being guilty of intimidation or connivance at fraud or of failure to
protect every legal voter in his rights. I therefore hereby notify
you that in the event of any wrong-doing following upon the failure
immediately to recall Chief Devery's order, or upon any action or
inaction on the part of Chief Devery, I must necessarily call you to
account.
Yours, etc., THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
STATE OF NEW YORK OYSTER BAY, November 5, 1900.
To the Sheriff of the County of New York.
Sir: My attention has been called to the official order issued by Chief
of Police Devery in which he directs his subordinates to disregard the
Chief of the State Election Bureau, John McCullagh, and his deputies.
It is your duty to assist in the orderly enforcement of the law, and I
shall hold you strictly responsible for any breach of the public peace
within your county, or for any failure on your part to do your full duty
in connection with the election to-morrow.
Yours truly, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
STATE OF NEW YORK OYSTER BAY, November 5, 1900.
To the District Attorney of the County of New York.
Sir: My attention has been called to the official order issued by Chief
of Police Devery, in which he directs his subordinates to disregard the
Chief of the State Election Bureau, John McCullagh, and his deputies.
In view of this order I call your attention to the fact that it is your
duty to assist in the orderly enforcement of the law, and there must be
no failure on your part to do your full duty in the matter.
Yours truly, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
These letters had the desired effect. The Mayor promptly required Chief
Devery to rescind the obnoxious order, which was as promptly done. The
Sheriff also took prompt action. The District Attorney refused to heed
my letter, and assumed an attitude of defiance, and I removed him from
office. On election day there was no clash between the city and State
authorities; the election was orderly and honest.
APPENDIX A
CONSERVATION
As foreshadowing the course I later, as President, followed in this
matter, I give extracts from one of my letters to the Commission, and
from my second (and last) Annual Message. I spent the first months of my
term in investigations to find out just what the situation was.
On November 28, 1899, I wrote to the Commission as follows:
". . . I have had very many complaints before this as to the
inefficiency of the game wardens and game protectors, the complaints
usually taking the form that the men have been appointed and are
retained without due regard to the duties to be performed. I do not wish
a man to be retained or appointed who is not thoroughly fit to perform
the duties of game protector. The Adirondacks are entitled to a peculiar
share of the Commission's attention, both from the standpoint of
forestry, and from the less important, but still very important,
standpoint of game and fish protection. The men who do duty as game
protectors in the Adirondacks should, by preference, be appointed from
the locality itself, and should in all cases be thorough woodsmen. The
mere fact that a game protector has to hire a guide to pilot him through
the woods is enough to show his unfitness for the position. I want
as game protectors men of courage, resolution, and hardihood, who can
handle the rifle, ax, and paddle; who can camp out in summer or winter;
who can go on snow-shoes, if necessary; who can go through the woods by
day or by night without regard to trails.
"I should like full information about all your employees, as to their
capacities, as to the labor they perform, as to their distribution from
and where they do their work."
Many of the men hitherto appointed owed their positions principally to
political preference. The changes I recommended were promptly made,
and much to the good of the public service. In my Annual Message, in
January, 1900, I said:
"Great progress has been made through the fish hatcheries in the
propagation of valuable food and sporting fish. The laws for the
protection of deer have resulted in their increase. Nevertheless, as
railroads tend to encroach on the wilderness, the temptation to illegal
hunting becomes greater, and the danger from forest fires increases.
There is need of great improvement both in our laws and in their
administration. The game wardens have been too few in number. More
should be provided. None save fit men must be appointed; and their
retention in office must depend purely upon the zeal, ability, and
efficiency with which they perform their duties. The game wardens in the
forests must be woodsmen; and they should have no outside business.
In short, there should be a thorough reorganization of the work of
the Commission. A careful study of the resources and condition of the
forests on State land must be made. It is certainly not too much to
expect that the State forests should be managed as efficiently as the
forests on private lands in the same neighborhoods. And the measure
of difference in efficiency of management must be the measure of
condemnation or praise of the way the public forests have been managed.
"The subject of forest preservation is of the utmost importance to
the State. The Adirondacks and Catskills should be great parks kept in
perpetuity for the benefit and enjoyment of our people. Much has been
done of late years towards their preservation, but very much remains to
be done. The provisions of law in reference to sawmills and wood-pulp
mills are defective and should be changed so as to prohibit dumping
dye-stuff, sawdust, or tan-bark, in any amount whatsoever, into the
streams. Reservoirs should be made, but not where they will tend to
destroy large sections of the forest, and only after a careful and
scientific study of the water resources of the region. The people of
the forest regions are themselves growing more and more to realize the
necessity of preserving both the trees and the game. A live deer in the
woods will attract to the neighborhood ten times the money that could
be obtained for the deer's dead carcass. Timber theft on the State lands
is, of course, a grave offense against the whole public.
"Hardy outdoor sports, like hunting, are in themselves of no small value
to the National character and should be encouraged in every way. Men who
go into the wilderness, indeed, men who take part in any field sports
with horse or rifle, receive a benefit which can hardly be given by even
the most vigorous athletic games.
"There is a further and more immediate and practical end in view. A
primeval forest is a great sponge which absorbs and distills the rain
water. And when it is destroyed the result is apt to be an alternation
of flood and drought. Forest fires ultimately make the land a desert,
and are a detriment to all that portion of the State tributary to the
streams through the woods where they occur. Every effort should be made
to minimize their destructive influence. We need to have our system of
forestry gradually developed and conducted along scientific principles.
When this has been done it will be possible to allow marketable lumber
to be cut everywhere without damage to the forests--indeed, with
positive advantage to them. But until lumbering is thus conducted,
on strictly scientific principles no less than upon principles of the
strictest honesty toward the State, we cannot afford to suffer it at
all in the State forests. Unrestrained greed means the ruin of the great
woods and the drying up of the sources of the rivers.
"Ultimately the administration of the State lands must be so centralized
as to enable us definitely to place responsibility in respect to
everything concerning them, and to demand the highest degree of trained
intelligence in their use.
"The State should not permit within its limits factories to make bird
skins or bird feathers into articles of ornament or wearing apparel.
Ordinary birds, and especially song birds, should be rigidly protected.
Game birds should never be shot to a greater extent than will offset the
natural rate of increase. . . . Care should be taken not to encourage
the use of cold storage or other market systems which are a benefit to
no one but the wealthy epicure who can afford to pay a heavy price for
luxuries. These systems tend to the destruction of the game, which would
bear most severely upon the very men whose rapacity has been appealed to
in order to secure its extermination. . . ."
I reorganized the Commission, putting Austin Wadsworth at its head.
APPENDIX B
THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN 1900
My general scheme of action as Governor was given in a letter I wrote
one of my supporters among the independent district organization
leaders, Norton Goddard, on April 16, 1900. It runs in part as follows:
"Nobody can tell, and least of all the machine itself, whether the
machine intends to renominate me next fall or not. If for some reason I
should be weak, whether on account of faults or virtues, doubtless the
machine will throw me over, and I think I am not uncharitable when I say
they would feel no acute grief at so doing. It would be very strange if
they did feel such grief. If, for instance, we had strikes which led
to riots, I would of course be obliged to preserve order and stop the
riots. Decent citizens would demand that I should do it, and in any
event I should do it wholly without regard to their demands. But, once
it was done, they would forget all about it, while a great many laboring
men, honest but ignorant and prejudiced, would bear a grudge against
me for doing it. This might put me out of the running as a candidate.
Again, the big corporations undoubtedly want to beat me. They prefer
the chance of being blackmailed to the certainty that they will not be
allowed any more than their due. Of course they will try to beat me
on some entirely different issue, and, as they are very able and very
unscrupulous, nobody can tell that they won't succeed. . . . I have been
trying to stay in with the organization. I did not do it with the idea
that they would renominate me. I did it with the idea of getting things
done, and in that I have been absolutely successful. Whether Senator
Platt and Mr. Odell endeavor to beat me, or do beat me, for the
renomination next fall, is of very small importance compared to the fact
that for my two years I have been able to make a Republican majority
in the Legislature do good and decent work and have prevented any split
within the party. The task was one of great difficulty, because, on the
one hand, I had to keep clearly before me the fact that it was better to
have a split than to permit bad work to be done, and, on the other hand,
the fact that to have that split would absolutely prevent all _good_
work. The result has been that I have avoided a split and that as a net
result of my two years and the two sessions of the Legislature,
there has been an enormous improvement in the administration of the
Government, and there has also been a great advance in legislation."
To show my reading of the situation at the time I quote from a letter
of mine to Joseph B. Bishop, then editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_,
with whom towards the end of my term I had grown into very close
relations, and who, together with two other old friends, Albert Shaw,
of the _Review of Reviews_, and Silas McBee, now editor of the
_Constructive Quarterly_, knew the inside of every movement, so far as I
knew it myself. The letter, which is dated April 11, 1900, runs in part
as follows: "The dangerous element as far as I am concerned comes from
the corporations. The [naming certain men] crowd and those like them
have been greatly exasperated by the franchise tax. They would like to
get me out of politics for good, but at the moment they think the best
thing to do is to put me into the Vice-Presidency. Naturally I will
not be opposed openly on the ground of the corporations' grievance; but
every kind of false statement will continually be made, and men like
[naming the editors of certain newspapers] will attack me, not as the
enemy of corporations, but as their tool! There is no question whatever
that if the leaders can they will upset me."
One position which as Governor (and as President) I consistently took,
seems to me to represent what ought to be a fundamental principle in
American legislative work. I steadfastly refused to advocate any law, no
matter how admirable in theory, if there was good reason to believe that
in practice it would not be executed. I have always sympathized with the
view set forth by Pelatiah Webster in 1783--quoted by Hannis Taylor
in his _Genesis of the Supreme Court_--"Laws or ordinances of any kind
(especially of august bodies of high dignity and consequence) which
fail of execution, are much worse than none. They weaken the government,
expose it to contempt, destroy the confidence of all men, native and
foreigners, in it, and expose both aggregate bodies and individuals who
have placed confidence in it to many ruinous disappointments which
they would have escaped had no such law or ordinance been made." This
principle, by the way, not only applies to an internal law which cannot
be executed; it applies even more to international action, such as a
universal arbitration treaty which cannot and will not be kept; and
most of all it applies to proposals to make such universal arbitration
treaties at the very time that we are not keeping our solemn promise
to execute limited arbitration treaties which we have already made. A
general arbitration treaty is merely a promise; it represents merely a
debt of honorable obligation; and nothing is more discreditable, for
a nation or an individual, than to cover up the repudiation of a debt
which can be and ought to be paid, by recklessly promising to incur a
new and insecure debt which no wise man for one moment supposes ever
will be paid.
CHAPTER IX
OUTDOORS AND INDOORS
There are men who love out-of-doors who yet never open a book; and other
men who love books but to whom the great book of nature is a
sealed volume, and the lines written therein blurred and illegible.
Nevertheless among those men whom I have known the love of books and the
love of outdoors, in their highest expressions, have usually gone hand
in hand. It is an affectation for the man who is praising outdoors to
sneer at books. Usually the keenest appreciation of what is seen in
nature is to be found in those who have also profited by the hoarded
and recorded wisdom of their fellow-men. Love of outdoor life, love of
simple and hardy pastimes, can be gratified by men and women who do
not possess large means, and who work hard; and so can love of good
books--not of good bindings and of first editions, excellent enough in
their way but sheer luxuries--I mean love of reading books, owning them
if possible of course, but, if that is not possible, getting them from a
circulating library.
Sagamore Hill takes its name from the old Sagamore Mohannis, who,
as chief of his little tribe, signed away his rights to the land two
centuries and a half ago. The house stands right on the top of the hill,
separated by fields and belts of woodland from all other houses, and
looks out over the bay and the Sound. We see the sun go down beyond long
reaches of land and of water. Many birds dwell in the trees round the
house or in the pastures and the woods near by, and of course in winter
gulls, loons, and wild fowl frequent the waters of the bay and the
Sound. We love all the seasons; the snows and bare woods of winter;
the rush of growing things and the blossom-spray of spring; the yellow
grain, the ripening fruits and tasseled corn, and the deep, leafy shades
that are heralded by "the green dance of summer"; and the sharp fall
winds that tear the brilliant banners with which the trees greet the
dying year.
The Sound is always lovely. In the summer nights we watch it from the
piazza, and see the lights of the tall Fall River boats as they steam
steadily by. Now and then we spend a day on it, the two of us together
in the light rowing skiff, or perhaps with one of the boys to pull an
extra pair of oars; we land for lunch at noon under wind-beaten oaks
on the edge of a low bluff, or among the wild plum bushes on a spit
of white sand, while the sails of the coasting schooners gleam in the
sunlight, and the tolling of the bell-buoy comes landward across the
waters.
Long Island is not as rich in flowers as the valley of the Hudson. Yet
there are many. Early in April there is one hillside near us which glows
like a tender flame with the white of the bloodroot. About the same time
we find the shy mayflower, the trailing arbutus; and although we rarely
pick wild flowers, one member of the household always plucks a little
bunch of mayflowers to send to a friend working in Panama, whose soul
hungers for the Northern spring. Then there are shadblow and delicate
anemones, about the time of the cherry blossoms; the brief glory of the
apple orchards follows; and then the thronging dogwoods fill the forests
with their radiance; and so flowers follow flowers until the springtime
splendor closes with the laurel and the evanescent, honey-sweet locust
bloom. The late summer flowers follow, the flaunting lilies, and
cardinal flowers, and marshmallows, and pale beach rosemary; and the
goldenrod and the asters when the afternoons shorten and we again begin
to think of fires in the wide fireplaces.
Most of the birds in our neighborhood are the ordinary home friends of
the house and the barn, the wood lot and the pasture; but now and then
the species make queer shifts. The cheery quail, alas! are rarely found
near us now; and we no longer hear the whip-poor-wills at night. But
some birds visit us now which formerly did not. When I was a boy neither
the black-throated green warbler nor the purple finch nested around us,
nor were bobolinks found in our fields. The black-throated green warbler
is now one of our commonest summer warblers; there are plenty of purple
finches; and, best of all, the bobolinks are far from infrequent. I had
written about these new visitors to John Burroughs, and once when he
came out to see me I was able to show them to him.
When I was President, we owned a little house in western Virginia; a
delightful house, to us at least, although only a shell of rough boards.
We used sometimes to go there in the fall, perhaps at Thanksgiving, and
on these occasions we would have quail and rabbits of our own shooting,
and once in a while a wild turkey. We also went there in the spring. Of
course many of the birds were different from our Long Island friends.
There were mocking-birds, the most attractive of all birds, and blue
grosbeaks, and cardinals and summer redbirds, instead of scarlet
tanagers, and those wonderful singers the Bewick's wrens, and Carolina
wrens. All these I was able to show John Burroughs when he came to visit
us; although, by the way, he did not appreciate as much as we did one
set of inmates of the cottage--the flying squirrels. We loved having the
flying squirrels, father and mother and half-grown young, in their nest
among the rafters; and at night we slept so soundly that we did not in
the least mind the wild gambols of the little fellows through the rooms,
even when, as sometimes happened, they would swoop down to the bed and
scuttle across it.
One April I went to Yellowstone Park, when the snow was still very deep,
and I took John Burroughs with me. I wished to show him the big game of
the Park, the wild creatures that have become so astonishingly tame and
tolerant of human presence. In the Yellowstone the animals seem always
to behave as one wishes them to! It is always possible to see the sheep
and deer and antelope, and also the great herds of elk, which are shyer
than the smaller beasts. In April we found the elk weak after the
short commons and hard living of winter. Once without much difficulty
I regularly rounded up a big band of them, so that John Burroughs could
look at them. I do not think, however, that he cared to see them as much
as I did. The birds interested him more, especially a tiny owl the size
of a robin which we saw perched on the top of a tree in mid-afternoon
entirely uninfluenced by the sun and making a queer noise like a cork
being pulled from a bottle. I was rather ashamed to find how much
better his eyes were than mine in seeing the birds and grasping their
differences.
When wolf-hunting in Texas, and when bear-hunting in Louisiana and
Mississippi, I was not only enthralled by the sport, but also by the
strange new birds and other creatures, and the trees and flowers I had
not known before. By the way, there was one feast at the White House
which stands above all others in my memory--even above the time when
I lured Joel Chandler Harris thither for a night, a deed in which to
triumph, as all who knew that inveterately shy recluse will testify.
This was "the bear-hunters' dinner." I had been treated so kindly by my
friends on these hunts, and they were such fine fellows, men whom I was
so proud to think of as Americans, that I set my heart on having them
at a hunters' dinner at the White House. One December I succeeded; there
were twenty or thirty of them, all told, as good hunters, as daring
riders, as first-class citizens as could be found anywhere; no finer set
of guests ever sat at meat in the White House; and among other game
on the table was a black bear, itself contributed by one of these same
guests.
When I first visited California, it was my good fortune to see the "big
trees," the Sequoias, and then to travel down into the Yosemite, with
John Muir. Of course of all people in the world he was the one with whom
it was best worth while thus to see the Yosemite. He told me that when
Emerson came to California he tried to get him to come out and camp with
him, for that was the only way in which to see at their best the majesty
and charm of the Sierras. But at the time Emerson was getting old and
could not go. John Muir met me with a couple of packers and two mules
to carry our tent, bedding, and food for a three days' trip. The first
night was clear, and we lay down in the darkening aisles of the great
Sequoia grove. The majestic trunks, beautiful in color and in symmetry,
rose round us like the pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was
conceived even by the fervor of the Middle Ages. Hermit thrushes sang
beautifully in the evening, and again, with a burst of wonderful music,
at dawn. I was interested and a little surprised to find that, unlike
John Burroughs, John Muir cared little for birds or bird songs, and knew
little about them. The hermit-thrushes meant nothing to him, the trees
and the flowers and the cliffs everything. The only birds he noticed
or cared for were some that were very conspicuous, such as the
water-ousels--always particular favorites of mine too. The second night
we camped in a snow-storm, on the edge of the canyon walls, under the
spreading limbs of a grove of mighty silver fir; and next day we went
down into the wonderland of the valley itself. I shall always be glad
that I was in the Yosemite with John Muir and in the Yellowstone with
John Burroughs.
Like most Americans interested in birds and books, I know a good
deal about English birds as they appear in books. I know the lark of
Shakespeare and Shelley and the Ettrick Shepherd; I know the nightingale
of Milton and Keats; I know Wordsworth's cuckoo; I know mavis and merle
singing in the merry green wood of the old ballads; I know Jenny Wren
and Cock Robin of the nursery books. Therefore I had always much desired
to hear the birds in real life; and the opportunity offered in June,
1910, when I spent two or three weeks in England. As I could snatch but
a few hours from a very exciting round of pleasures and duties, it was
necessary for me to be with some companion who could identify both song
and singer. In Sir Edward Grey, a keen lover of outdoor life in all
its phases, and a delightful companion, who knows the songs and ways of
English birds as very few do know them, I found the best possible guide.
We left London on the morning of June 9, twenty-four hours before I
sailed from Southampton. Getting off the train at Basingstoke, we drove
to the pretty, smiling valley of the Itchen. Here we tramped for three
or four hours, then again drove, this time to the edge of the New
Forest, where we first took tea at an inn, and then tramped through the
forest to an inn on its other side, at Brockenhurst. At the conclusion
of our walk my companion made a list of the birds we had seen, putting
an asterisk (*) opposite those which we had heard sing. There were
forty-one of the former and twenty-three of the latter, as follows:
* Thrush, * blackbird, * lark, * yellowhammer, * robin,
*wren, * golden-crested wren, * goldfinch, * chaffinch, *
*greenfinch, pied wagtail, sparrow, * dunnock (hedge,
accentor), missel thrush, starling, rook, jackdaw,
*blackcap, * garden warbler, * willow warbler, * chiffchaff,
* wood warbler, tree-creeper, * reed bunting, * sedge
warbler, coot, water hen, little grebe (dabchick), tufted
duck, wood pigeon, stock dove, * turtle dove, peewit, tit (?
coal-tit), * cuckoo, * nightjar, * swallow, martin, swift,
pheasant, partridge.
The valley of the Itchen is typically the England that we know from
novel and story and essay. It is very beautiful in every way, with a
rich, civilized, fertile beauty--the rapid brook twisting among its reed
beds, the rich green of trees and grass, the stately woods, the gardens
and fields, the exceedingly picturesque cottages, the great handsome
houses standing in their parks. Birds were plentiful; I know but few
places in America where one would see such an abundance of individuals,
and I was struck by seeing such large birds as coots, water hens,
grebes, tufted ducks, pigeons, and peewits. In places in America as
thickly settled as the valley of the Itchen, I should not expect to see
any like number of birds of this size; but I hope that the efforts of
the Audubon societies and kindred organizations will gradually make
themselves felt until it becomes a point of honor not only with the
American man, but with the American small boy, to shield and protect all
forms of harmless wild life. True sportsmen should take the lead in such
a movement, for if there is to be any shooting there must be something
to shoot; the prime necessity is to keep, and not kill out, even the
birds which in legitimate numbers may be shot.
The New Forest is a wild, uninhabited stretch of heath and woodland,
many of the trees gnarled and aged, and its very wildness, the lack of
cultivation, the ruggedness, made it strongly attractive in my eyes, and
suggested my own country. The birds of course were much less plentiful
than beside the Itchen.
The bird that most impressed me on my walk was the blackbird. I had
already heard nightingales in abundance near Lake Como, and had also
listened to larks, but I had never heard either the blackbird, the song
thrush, or the blackcap warbler; and while I knew that all three were
good singers, I did not know what really beautiful singers they were.
Blackbirds were very abundant, and they played a prominent part in the
chorus which we heard throughout the day on every hand, though perhaps
loudest the following morning at dawn. In its habits and manners the
blackbird strikingly resembles our American robin, and indeed looks
exactly like a robin, with a yellow bill and coal-black plumage. It
hops everywhere over the lawns, just as our robin does, and it lives
and nests in the gardens in the same fashion. Its song has a general
resemblance to that of our robin, but many of the notes are far
more musical, more like those of our wood thrush. Indeed, there were
individuals among those we heard certain of whose notes seemed to me
almost to equal in point of melody the chimes of the wood thrush; and
the highest possible praise for any song-bird is to liken its song to
that of the wood thrush or hermit thrush. I certainly do not think that
the blackbird has received full justice in the books. I knew that he was
a singer, but I really had no idea how fine a singer he was. I suppose
one of his troubles has been his name, just as with our own catbird.
When he appears in the ballads as the merle, bracketed with his cousin
the mavis, the song thrush, it is far easier to recognize him as the
master singer that he is. It is a fine thing for England to have such
an asset of the countryside, a bird so common, so much in evidence, so
fearless, and such a really beautiful singer.
The thrush is a fine singer too, a better singer than our American
robin, but to my mind not at the best quite as good as the blackbird at
his best; although often I found difficulty in telling the song of one
from the song of the other, especially if I only heard two or three
notes.
The larks were, of course, exceedingly attractive. It was fascinating
to see them spring from the grass, circle upwards, steadily singing and
soaring for several minutes, and then return to the point whence
they had started. As my companion pointed out, they exactly fulfilled
Wordsworth's description; they soared but did not roam. It is quite
impossible wholly to differentiate a bird's voice from its habits and
surroundings. Although in the lark's song there are occasional musical
notes, the song as a whole is not very musical; but it is so joyous,
buoyant and unbroken, and uttered under such conditions as fully to
entitle the bird to the place he occupies with both poet and prose
writer.
The most musical singer we heard was the blackcap warbler. To my ear
its song seemed more musical than that of the nightingale. It was
astonishingly powerful for so small a bird; in volume and continuity
it does not come up to the songs of the thrushes and of certain other
birds, but in quality, as an isolated bit of melody, it can hardly be
surpassed.
Among the minor singers the robin was noticeable. We all know this
pretty little bird from the books, and I was prepared to find him as
friendly and attractive as he proved to be, but I had not realized how
well he sang. It is not a loud song, but very musical and attractive,
and the bird is said to sing practically all through the year. The song
of the wren interested me much, because it was not in the least like
that of our house wren, but, on the contrary, like that of our winter
wren. The theme is the same as the winter wren's, but the song did not
seem to me to be as brilliantly musical as that of the tiny singer of
the North Woods. The sedge warbler sang in the thick reeds a mocking
ventriloquial lay, which reminded me at times of the less pronounced
parts of our yellow-breasted chat's song. The cuckoo's cry was
singularly attractive and musical, far more so than the rolling, many
times repeated, note of our rain-crow.
We did not reach the inn at Brockenhurst until about nine o'clock, just
at nightfall, and a few minutes before that we heard a nightjar. It did
not sound in the least like either our whip-poor-will or our night-hawk,
uttering a long-continued call of one or two syllables, repeated over
and over. The chaffinch was very much in evidence, continually chaunting
its unimportant little ditty. I was pleased to see the bold, masterful
missel thrush, the stormcock as it is often called; but this bird breeds
and sings in the early spring, when the weather is still tempestuous,
and had long been silent when we saw it. The starlings, rooks, and
jackdaws did not sing, and their calls were attractive merely as the
calls of our grackles are attractive; and the other birds that we
heard sing, though they played their part in the general chorus, were
performers of no especial note, like our tree-creepers, pine warblers,
and chipping sparrows. The great spring chorus had already begun to
subside, but the woods and fields were still vocal with beautiful bird
music, the country was very lovely, the inn as comfortable as possible,
and the bath and supper very enjoyable after our tramp; and altogether I
passed no pleasanter twenty-four hours during my entire European trip.
Ten days later, at Sagamore Hill, I was among my own birds, and was much
interested as I listened to and looked at them in remembering the notes
and actions of the birds I had seen in England. On the evening of the
first day I sat in my rocking-chair on the broad veranda, looking across
the Sound towards the glory of the sunset. The thickly grassed hillside
sloped down in front of me to a belt of forest from which rose the
golden, leisurely chiming of the wood thrushes, chanting their vespers;
through the still air came the warble of vireo and tanager; and after
nightfall we heard the flight song of an ovenbird from the same belt
of timber. Overhead an oriole sang in the weeping elm, now and then
breaking his song to scold like an overgrown wren. Song-sparrows and
catbirds sang in the shrubbery; one robin had built its nest over the
front and one over the back door, and there was a chippy's nest in the
wistaria vine by the stoop. During the next twenty-four hours I saw and
heard, either right around the house or while walking down to bathe,
through the woods, the following forty-two birds:
Little green heron, night heron, red-tailed hawk, yellow-billed cuckoo,
kingfisher, flicker, humming-bird, swift, meadow-lark, red-winged
blackbird, sharp-tailed finch, song sparrow, chipping sparrow, bush
sparrow, purple finch, Baltimore oriole, cowbunting, robin, wood thrush,
thrasher, catbird, scarlet tanager, red-eyed vireo, yellow warbler,
black-throated green warbler, kingbird, wood peewee, crow, blue jay,
cedar-bird, Maryland yellowthroat, chickadee, black and white
creeper, barn swallow, white-breasted swallow, ovenbird, thistlefinch,
vesperfinch, indigo bunting, towhee, grasshopper-sparrow, and screech
owl.
The birds were still in full song, for on Long Island there is little
abatement in the chorus until about the second week of July, when
the blossoming of the chestnut trees patches the woodland with frothy
greenish-yellow.[*]
[*] Alas! the blight has now destroyed the chestnut trees,
and robbed our woods of one of their distinctive beauties.
Our most beautiful singers are the wood thrushes; they sing not only in
the early morning but throughout the long hot June afternoons. Sometimes
they sing in the trees immediately around the house, and if the air is
still we can always hear them from among the tall trees at the foot of
the hill. The thrashers sing in the hedgerows beyond the garden, the
catbirds everywhere. The catbirds have such an attractive song that it
is extremely irritating to know that at any moment they may interrupt
it to mew and squeal. The bold, cheery music of the robins always seems
typical of the bold, cheery birds themselves. The Baltimore orioles nest
in the young elms around the house, and the orchard orioles in the apple
trees near the garden and outbuildings. Among the earliest sounds of
spring is the cheerful, simple, homely song of the song-sparrow; and in
March we also hear the piercing cadence of the meadow-lark--to us one
of the most attractive of all bird calls. Of late years now and then
we hear the rollicking, bubbling melody of the bobolink in the pastures
back of the barn; and when the full chorus of these and of many other
of the singers of spring is dying down, there are some true hot-weather
songsters, such as the brightly hued indigo buntings and thistlefinches.
Among the finches one of the most musical and plaintive songs is that of
the bush-sparrow--I do not know why the books call it field-sparrow,
for it does not dwell in the open fields like the vesperfinch, the
savannah-sparrow, and grasshopper-sparrow, but among the cedars and
bayberry bushes and young locusts in the same places where the prairie
warbler is found. Nor is it only the true songs that delight us. We love
to hear the flickers call, and we readily pardon any one of their number
which, as occasionally happens, is bold enough to wake us in the
early morning by drumming on the shingles of the roof. In our ears the
red-winged blackbirds have a very attractive note. We love the screaming
of the red-tailed hawks as they soar high overhead, and even the calls
of the night heron that nest in the tall water maples by one of the wood
ponds on our place, and the little green herons that nest beside the
salt marsh. It is hard to tell just how much of the attraction in any
bird-note lies in the music itself and how much in the associations.
This is what makes it so useless to try to compare the bird songs of one
country with those of another. A man who is worth anything can no more
be entirely impartial in speaking of the bird songs with which from
his earliest childhood he has been familiar than he can be entirely
impartial in speaking of his own family.
At Sagamore Hill we love a great many things--birds and trees and books,
and all things beautiful, and horses and rifles and children and hard
work and the joy of life. We have great fireplaces, and in them the logs
roar and crackle during the long winter evenings. The big piazza is for
the hot, still afternoons of summer. As in every house, there are things
that appeal to the householder because of their associations, but
which would not mean much to others. Naturally, any man who has been
President, and filled other positions, accumulates such things, with
scant regard to his own personal merits. Perhaps our most cherished
possessions are a Remington bronze, "The Bronco Buster," given me by my
men when the regiment was mustered out, and a big Tiffany silver vase
given to Mrs. Roosevelt by the enlisted men of the battleship Louisiana
after we returned from a cruise on her to Panama. It was a real surprise
gift, presented to her in the White House, on behalf of the whole crew,
by four as strapping man-of-war's-men as ever swung a turret or pointed
a twelve-inch gun. The enlisted men of the army I already knew well--of
course I knew well the officers of both army and navy. But the enlisted
men of the navy I only grew to know well when I was President. On the
Louisiana Mrs. Roosevelt and I once dined at the chief petty officers'
mess, and on another battleship, the Missouri (when I was in company
with Admiral Evans and Captain Cowles), and again on the Sylph and on
the Mayflower, we also dined as guests of the crew. When we finished our
trip on the Louisiana I made a short speech to the assembled crew,
and at its close one of the petty officers, the very picture of what a
man-of-war's-man should look like, proposed three cheers for me in terms
that struck me as curiously illustrative of America at her best; he
said, "Now then, men, three cheers for Theodore Roosevelt, the typical
American citizen!" That was the way in which they thought of the
American President--and a very good way, too. It was an expression that
would have come naturally only to men in whom the American principles of
government and life were ingrained, just as they were ingrained in the
men of my regiment. I need scarcely add, but I will add for the
benefit of those who do not know, that this attitude of self-respecting
identification of interest and purpose is not only compatible with but
can only exist when there is fine and real discipline, as thorough
and genuine as the discipline that has always obtained in the most
formidable fighting fleets and armies. The discipline and the mutual
respect are complementary, not antagonistic. During the Presidency all
of us, but especially the children, became close friends with many of
the sailor men. The four bearers of the vase to Mrs. Roosevelt were
promptly hailed as delightful big brothers by our two smallest boys, who
at once took them to see the sights of Washington in the landau--"the
President's land-ho!" as, with seafaring humor, our guests immediately
styled it. Once, after we were in private life again, Mrs. Roosevelt
was in a railway station and had some difficulty with her ticket. A
fine-looking, quiet man stepped up and asked if he could be of help; he
remarked that he had been one of the Mayflower's crew, and knew us well;
and in answer to a question explained that he had left the navy in
order to study dentistry, and added--a delicious touch--that while thus
preparing himself to be a dentist he was earning the necessary money to
go on with his studies by practicing the profession of a prize-fighter,
being a good man in the ring.
There are various bronzes in the house: Saint-Gaudens's "Puritan," a
token from my staff officers when I was Governor; Proctor's cougar, the
gift of the Tennis Cabinet--who also gave us a beautiful silver bowl,
which is always lovingly pronounced to rhyme with "owl" because that was
the pronunciation used at the time of the giving by the valued friend
who acted as spokesman for his fellow-members, and who was himself the
only non-American member of the said Cabinet. There is a horseman by
Macmonnies, and a big bronze vase by Kemys, an adaptation or development
of the pottery vases of the Southwestern Indians. Mixed with all of
these are gifts from varied sources, ranging from a brazen Buddha sent
me by the Dalai Lama and a wonderful psalter from the Emperor Menelik to
a priceless ancient Samurai sword, coming from Japan in remembrance
of the peace of Portsmouth, and a beautifully inlaid miniature suit of
Japanese armor, given me by a favorite hero of mine, Admiral Togo, when
he visited Sagamore Hill. There are things from European friends; a
mosaic picture of Pope Leo XIII in his garden; a huge, very handsome
edition of the Nibelungenlied; a striking miniature of John Hampden from
Windsor Castle; editions of Dante, and the campaigns of "Eugenio von
Savoy" (another of my heroes, a dead hero this time); a Viking cup; the
state sword of a Uganda king; the gold box in which the "freedom of the
city of London" was given me; a beautiful head of Abraham Lincoln given
me by the French authorities after my speech at the Sorbonne; and many
other things from sources as diverse as the Sultan of Turkey and the
Dowager Empress of China. Then there are things from home friends: a
Polar bear skin from Peary; a Sioux buffalo robe with, on it, painted
by some long-dead Sioux artist, the picture story of Custer's fight; a
bronze portrait plaque of Joel Chandler Harris; the candlestick used in
sealing the Treaty of Portsmouth, sent me by Captain Cameron Winslow;
a shoe worn by Dan Patch when he paced a mile in 1:59, sent me by his
owner. There is a picture of a bull moose by Carl Rungius, which seems
to me as spirited an animal painting as I have ever seen. In the north
room, with its tables and mantelpiece and desks and chests made of woods
sent from the Philippines by army friends, or by other friends for other
reasons; with its bison and wapiti heads; there are three paintings by
Marcus Symonds--"Where Light and Shadow Meet," "The Porcelain Towers,"
and "The Seats of the Mighty"; he is dead now, and he had scant
recognition while he lived, yet surely he was a great imaginative
artist, a wonderful colorist, and a man with a vision more wonderful
still. There is one of Lungren's pictures of the Western plains; and a
picture of the Grand Canyon; and one by a Scandinavian artist who could
see the fierce picturesqueness of workaday Pittsburgh; and sketches of
the White House by Sargent and by Hopkinson Smith.
The books are everywhere. There are as many in the north room and in the
parlor--is drawing-room a more appropriate name than parlor?--as in the
library; the gun-room at the top of the house, which incidentally has
the loveliest view of all, contains more books than any of the other
rooms; and they are particularly delightful books to browse among, just
because they have not much relevance to one another, this being one of
the reasons why they are relegated to their present abode. But the books
have overflowed into all the other rooms too.
I could not name any principle upon which the books have been gathered.
Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in
laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person,
and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover's
besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls "the mad pride of
intellectuality," taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does
not like the same kind of books. Of course there are books which a man
or woman uses as instruments of a profession--law books, medical books,
cookery books, and the like. I am not speaking of these, for they are
not properly "books" at all; they come in the category of time-tables,
telephone directories, and other useful agencies of civilized life. I
am speaking of books that are meant to be read. Personally, granted that
these books are decent and healthy, the one test to which I demand
that they all submit is that of being interesting. If the book is not
interesting to the reader, then in all but an infinitesimal number of
cases it gives scant benefit to the reader. Of course any reader ought
to cultivate his or her taste so that good books will appeal to it, and
that trash won't. But after this point has once been reached, the needs
of each reader must be met in a fashion that will appeal to those needs.
Personally the books by which I have profited infinitely more than
by any others have been those in which profit was a by-product of the
pleasure; that is, I read them because I enjoyed them, because I liked
reading them, and the profit came in as part of the enjoyment.
Of course each individual is apt to have some special tastes in which
he cannot expect that any but a few friends will share. Now, I am very
proud of my big-game library. I suppose there must be many big-game
libraries in Continental Europe, and possibly in England, more extensive
than mine, but I have not happened to come across any such library in
this country. Some of the originals go back to the sixteenth century,
and there are copies or reproductions of the two or three most famous
hunting books of the Middle Ages, such as the Duke of York's translation
of Gaston Phoebus, and the queer book of the Emperor Maximilian. It is
only very occasionally that I meet any one who cares for any of these
books. On the other hand, I expect to find many friends who will turn
naturally to some of the old or the new books of poetry or romance or
history to which we of the household habitually turn. Let me add that
ours is in no sense a collector's library. Each book was procured
because some one of the family wished to read it. We could never afford
to take overmuch thought for the outsides of books; we were too much
interested in their insides.
Now and then I am asked as to "what books a statesman should read," and
my answer is, poetry and novels--including short stories under the
head of novels. I don't mean that he should read only novels and modern
poetry. If he cannot also enjoy the Hebrew prophets and the Greek
dramatists, he should be sorry. He ought to read interesting books on
history and government, and books of science and philosophy; and really
good books on these subjects are as enthralling as any fiction ever
written in prose or verse. Gibbon and Macaulay, Herodotus, Thucydides
and Tacitus, the Heimskringla, Froissart, Joinville and Villehardouin,
Parkman and Mahan, Mommsen and Ranke--why! there are scores and scores
of solid histories, the best in the world, which are as absorbing as
the best of all the novels, and of as permanent value. The same thing
is true of Darwin and Huxley and Carlyle and Emerson, and parts of Kant,
and of volumes like Sutherland's "Growth of the Moral Instinct," or
Acton's Essays and Lounsbury's studies--here again I am not trying to
class books together, or measure one by another, or enumerate one in a
thousand of those worth reading, but just to indicate that any man or
woman of some intelligence and some cultivation can in some line or
other of serious thought, scientific or historical or philosophical or
economic or governmental, find any number of books which are charming to
read, and which in addition give that for which his or her soul hungers.
I do not for a minute mean that the statesman ought not to read a great
many different books of this character, just as every one else should
read them. But, in the final event, the statesman, and the publicist,
and the reformer, and the agitator for new things, and the upholder of
what is good in old things, all need more than anything else to know
human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find
this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great
imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry.
The room for choice is so limitless that to my mind it seems absurd to
try to make catalogues which shall be supposed to appeal to all the best
thinkers. This is why I have no sympathy whatever with writing lists of
the One Hundred Best Books, or the Five-Foot Library. It is all right
for a man to amuse himself by composing a list of a hundred very good
books; and if he is to go off for a year or so where he cannot get
many books, it is an excellent thing to choose a five-foot library of
particular books which in that particular year and on that particular
trip he would like to read. But there is no such thing as a hundred
books that are best for all men, or for the majority of men, or for
one man at all times; and there is no such thing as a five-foot library
which will satisfy the needs of even one particular man on different
occasions extending over a number of years. Milton is best for one mood
and Pope for another. Because a man likes Whitman or Browning or Lowell
he should not feel himself debarred from Tennyson or Kipling or Korner
or Heine or the Bard of the Dimbovitza. Tolstoy's novels are good at one
time and those of Sienkiewicz at another; and he is fortunate who can
relish "Salammbo" and "Tom Brown" and the "Two Admirals" and "Quentin
Durward" and "Artemus Ward" and the "Ingoldsby Legends" and "Pickwick"
and "Vanity Fair." Why, there are hundreds of books like these, each one
of which, if really read, really assimilated, by the person to whom
it happens to appeal, will enable that person quite unconsciously to
furnish himself with much ammunition which he will find of use in the
battle of life.
A book must be interesting to the particular reader at that particular
time. But there are tens of thousands of interesting books, and some of
them are sealed to some men and some are sealed to others; and some stir
the soul at some given point of a man's life and yet convey no message
at other times. The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs
without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs
should be. He must not hypocritically pretend to like what he does not
like. Yet at the same time he must avoid that most unpleasant of all
the indications of puffed-up vanity which consists in treating mere
individual, and perhaps unfortunate, idiosyncrasy as a matter of pride.
I happen to be devoted to Macbeth, whereas I very seldom read Hamlet
(though I like parts of it). Now I am humbly and sincerely conscious
that this is a demerit in me and not in Hamlet; and yet it would not do
me any good to pretend that I like Hamlet as much as Macbeth when, as
a matter of fact, I don't. I am very fond of simple epics and of ballad
poetry, from the Nibelungenlied and the Roland song through "Chevy
Chase" and "Patrick Spens" and "Twa Corbies" to Scott's poems and
Longfellow's "Saga of King Olaf" and "Othere." On the other hand, I
don't care to read dramas as a rule; I cannot read them with enjoyment
unless they appeal to me very strongly. They must almost be AEschylus
or Euripides, Goethe or Moliere, in order that I may not feel after
finishing them a sense of virtuous pride in having achieved a task. Now
I would be the first to deny that even the most delightful old English
ballad should be put on a par with any one of scores of dramatic
works by authors whom I have not mentioned; I know that each of these
dramatists has written what is of more worth than the ballad; only, I
enjoy the ballad, and I don't enjoy the drama; and therefore the ballad
is better for me, and this fact is not altered by the other fact that
my own shortcomings are to blame in the matter. I still read a number of
Scott's novels over and over again, whereas if I finish anything by Miss
Austen I have a feeling that duty performed is a rainbow to the soul.
But other booklovers who are very close kin to me, and whose taste
I know to be better than mine, read Miss Austen all the time--and,
moreover, they are very kind, and never pity me in too offensive a
manner for not reading her myself.
Aside from the masters of literature, there are all kinds of books which
one person will find delightful, and which he certainly ought not
to surrender just because nobody else is able to find as much in the
beloved volume. There is on our book-shelves a little pre-Victorian
novel or tale called "The Semi-Attached Couple." It is told with much
humor; it is a story of gentlefolk who are really gentlefolk; and to me
it is altogether delightful. But outside the members of my own family
I have never met a human being who had even heard of it, and I don't
suppose I ever shall meet one. I often enjoy a story by some living
author so much that I write to tell him so--or to tell her so; and at
least half the time I regret my action, because it encourages the writer
to believe that the public shares my views, and he then finds that the
public doesn't.
Books are all very well in their way, and we love them at Sagamore
Hill; but children are better than books. Sagamore Hill is one of three
neighboring houses in which small cousins spent very happy years of
childhood. In the three houses there were at one time sixteen of these
small cousins, all told, and once we ranged them in order of size and
took their photograph. There are many kinds of success in life worth
having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful
business man, or railroad man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or
doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of
a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for
unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things
go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and
achievement lose their importance by comparison. It may be true that
he travels farthest who travels alone; but the goal thus reached is not
worth reaching. And as for a life deliberately devoted to pleasure as
an end--why, the greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a
by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is
met in the doing. There is a bit of homely philosophy, quoted by Squire
Bill Widener, of Widener's Valley, Virginia, which sums up one's duty in
life: "Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are."
The country is the place for children, and if not the country, a city
small enough so that one can get out into the country. When our own
children were little, we were for several winters in Washington, and
each Sunday afternoon the whole family spent in Rock Creek Park, which
was then very real country indeed. I would drag one of the children's
wagons; and when the very smallest pairs of feet grew tired of trudging
bravely after us, or of racing on rapturous side trips after flowers and
other treasures, the owners would clamber into the wagon. One of these
wagons, by the way, a gorgeous red one, had "Express" painted on it in
gilt letters, and was known to the younger children as the "'spress"
wagon. They evidently associated the color with the term. Once while we
were at Sagamore something happened to the cherished "'spress" wagon to
the distress of the children, and especially of the child who owned it.
Their mother and I were just starting for a drive in the buggy, and we
promised the bereaved owner that we would visit a store we knew in East
Norwich, a village a few miles away, and bring back another "'spress"
wagon. When we reached the store, we found to our dismay that the wagon
which we had seen had been sold. We could not bear to return without
the promised gift, for we knew that the brains of small persons are much
puzzled when their elders seem to break promises. Fortunately, we saw in
the store a delightful little bright-red chair and bright-red table,
and these we brought home and handed solemnly over to the expectant
recipient, explaining that as there unfortunately was not a "'spress"
wagon we had brought him back a "'spress" chair and "'spress" table.
It worked beautifully! The "'spress" chair and table were received with
such rapture that we had to get duplicates for the other small member
of the family who was the particular crony of the proprietor of the new
treasures.
When their mother and I returned from a row, we would often see the
children waiting for us, running like sand-spiders along the beach. They
always liked to swim in company with a grown-up of buoyant temperament
and inventive mind, and the float offered limitless opportunities
for enjoyment while bathing. All dutiful parents know the game of
"stage-coach"; each child is given a name, such as the whip, the nigh
leader, the off wheeler, the old lady passenger, and, under penalty of
paying a forfeit, must get up and turn round when the grown-up, who is
improvising a thrilling story, mentions that particular object; and when
the word "stage-coach" is mentioned, everybody has to get up and turn
round. Well, we used to play stage-coach on the float while in swimming,
and instead of tamely getting up and turning round, the child whose
turn it was had to plunge overboard. When I mentioned "stage-coach," the
water fairly foamed with vigorously kicking little legs; and then there
was always a moment of interest while I counted, so as to be sure
that the number of heads that came up corresponded with the number of
children who had gone down.
No man or woman will ever forget the time when some child lies sick of a
disease that threatens its life. Moreover, much less serious sickness is
unpleasant enough at the time. Looking back, however, there are elements
of comedy in certain of the less serious cases. I well remember one such
instance which occurred when we were living in Washington, in a small
house, with barely enough room for everybody when all the chinks were
filled. Measles descended on the household. In the effort to keep the
children that were well and those that were sick apart, their mother and
I had to camp out in improvised fashion. When the eldest small boy was
getting well, and had recovered his spirits, I slept on a sofa beside
his bed--the sofa being so short that my feet projected over anyhow. One
afternoon the small boy was given a toy organ by a sympathetic friend.
Next morning early I was waked to find the small boy very vivacious
and requesting a story. Having drowsily told the story, I said, "Now,
father's told you a story, so you amuse yourself and let father go to
sleep"; to which the small boy responded most virtuously, "Yes, father
will go to sleep and I'll play the organ," which he did, at a distance
of two feet from my head. Later his sister, who had just come down with
the measles, was put into the same room. The small boy was convalescing,
and was engaged in playing on the floor with some tin ships, together
with two or three pasteboard monitors and rams of my own manufacture. He
was giving a vivid rendering of Farragut at Mobile Bay, from memories
of how I had told the story. My pasteboard rams and monitors were
fascinating--if a naval architect may be allowed to praise his own
work--and as property they were equally divided between the little girl
and the small boy. The little girl looked on with alert suspicion from
the bed, for she was not yet convalescent enough to be allowed down on
the floor. The small boy was busily reciting the phases of the fight,
which now approached its climax, and the little girl evidently suspected
that her monitor was destined to play the part of victim.
Little boy. "And then they steamed bang into the monitor."
Little girl. "Brother, don't you sink my monitor!"
Little boy (without heeding, and hurrying toward the climax). "And the
torpedo went at the monitor!"
Little girl. "My monitor is not to sink!"
Little boy, dramatically: "And bang the monitor sank!"
Little girl. "It didn't do any such thing. My monitor always goes to bed
at seven, and it's now quarter past. My monitor was in bed and couldn't
sink!"
When I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Leonard Wood and I used
often to combine forces and take both families of children out to walk,
and occasionally some of their playmates. Leonard Wood's son, I found,
attributed the paternity of all of those not of his own family to me.
Once we were taking the children across Rock Creek on a fallen tree.
I was standing on the middle of the log trying to prevent any of the
children from falling off, and while making a clutch at one peculiarly
active and heedless child I fell off myself. As I emerged from the water
I heard the little Wood boy calling frantically to the General: "Oh! oh!
The father of all the children fell into the creek!"--which made me feel
like an uncommonly moist patriarch. Of course the children took much
interest in the trophies I occasionally brought back from my hunts. When
I started for my regiment, in '98, the stress of leaving home, which
was naturally not pleasant, was somewhat lightened by the next to
the youngest boy, whose ideas of what was about to happen were hazy,
clasping me round the legs with a beaming smile and saying, "And is my
father going to the war? And will he bring me back a bear?" When, some
five months later, I returned, of course in my uniform, this little boy
was much puzzled as to my identity, although he greeted me affably
with "Good afternoon, Colonel." Half an hour later somebody asked him,
"Where's father?" to which he responded, "I don't know; but the Colonel
is taking a bath."
Of course the children anthropomorphized--if that is the proper
term--their friends of the animal world. Among these friends at one
period was the baker's horse, and on a very rainy day I heard the little
girl, who was looking out of the window, say, with a melancholy shake of
her head, "Oh! there's poor Kraft's horse, all soppin' wet!"
While I was in the White House the youngest boy became an _habitue_ of
a small and rather noisome animal shop, and the good-natured owner would
occasionally let him take pets home to play with. On one occasion I was
holding a conversation with one of the leaders in Congress, Uncle
Pete Hepburn, about the Railroad Rate Bill. The children were strictly
trained not to interrupt business, but on this particular occasion the
little boy's feelings overcame him. He had been loaned a king-snake,
which, as all nature-lovers know, is not only a useful but a beautiful
snake, very friendly to human beings; and he came rushing home to show
the treasure. He was holding it inside his coat, and it contrived to
wiggle partly down the sleeve. Uncle Pete Hepburn naturally did not
understand the full import of what the little boy was saying to me as
he endeavored to wriggle out of his jacket, and kindly started to help
him--and then jumped back with alacrity as the small boy and the snake
both popped out of the jacket.
There could be no healthier and pleasanter place in which to bring up
children than in that nook of old-time America around Sagamore Hill.
Certainly I never knew small people to have a better time or a better
training for their work in after life than the three families of cousins
at Sagamore Hill. It was real country, and--speaking from the somewhat
detached point of view of the masculine parent--I should say there was
just the proper mixture of freedom and control in the management of the
children. They were never allowed to be disobedient or to shirk lessons
or work; and they were encouraged to have all the fun possible. They
often went barefoot, especially during the many hours passed in various
enthralling pursuits along and in the waters of the bay. They swam,
they tramped, they boated, they coasted and skated in winter, they were
intimate friends with the cows, chickens, pigs, and other live stock.
They had in succession two ponies, General Grant and, when the General's
legs became such that he lay down too often and too unexpectedly in
the road, a calico pony named Algonquin, who is still living a life of
honorable leisure in the stable and in the pasture--where he has to be
picketed, because otherwise he chases the cows. Sedate pony Grant used
to draw the cart in which the children went driving when they were very
small, the driver being their old nurse Mame, who had held their mother
in her arms when she was born, and who was knit to them by a tie as
close as any tie of blood. I doubt whether I ever saw Mame really
offended with them except once when, out of pure but misunderstood
affection, they named a pig after her. They loved pony Grant. Once I
saw the then little boy of three hugging pony Grant's fore legs. As
he leaned over, his broad straw hat tilted on end, and pony Grant
meditatively munched the brim; whereupon the small boy looked up with
a wail of anguish, evidently thinking the pony had decided to treat him
like a radish.
The children had pets of their own, too, of course. Among them guinea
pigs were the stand-bys--their highly unemotional nature fits them
for companionship with adoring but over-enthusiastic young masters and
mistresses. Then there were flying squirrels, and kangaroo rats, gentle
and trustful, and a badger whose temper was short but whose nature was
fundamentally friendly. The badger's name was Josiah; the particular
little boy whose property he was used to carry him about, clasped firmly
around what would have been his waist if he had had any. Inasmuch as
when on the ground the badger would play energetic games of tag with
the little boy and nip his bare legs, I suggested that it would be
uncommonly disagreeable if he took advantage of being held in the little
boy's arms to bite his face; but this suggestion was repelled with
scorn as an unworthy assault on the character of Josiah. "He bites legs
sometimes, but he never bites faces," said the little boy. We also had
a young black bear whom the children christened Jonathan Edwards, partly
out of compliment to their mother, who was descended from that great
Puritan divine, and partly because the bear possessed a temper in
which gloom and strength were combined in what the children regarded as
Calvinistic proportions. As for the dogs, of course there were many,
and during their lives they were intimate and valued family friends,
and their deaths were household tragedies. One of them, a large yellow
animal of several good breeds and valuable rather because of psychical
than physical traits, was named "Susan" by his small owners, in
commemoration of another retainer, a white cow; the fact that the cow
and the dog were not of the same sex being treated with indifference.
Much the most individual of the dogs and the one with the strongest
character was Sailor Boy, a Chesapeake Bay dog. He had a masterful
temper and a strong sense of both dignity and duty. He would never let
the other dogs fight, and he himself never fought unless circumstances
imperatively demanded it; but he was a murderous animal when he did
fight. He was not only exceedingly fond of the water, as was to be
expected, but passionately devoted to gunpowder in every form, for
he loved firearms and fairly reveled in the Fourth of July
celebrations--the latter being rather hazardous occasions, as the
children strongly objected to any "safe and sane" element being injected
into them, and had the normal number of close shaves with rockets, Roman
candles, and firecrackers.
One of the stand-bys for enjoyment, especially in rainy weather, was the
old barn. This had been built nearly a century previously, and was as
delightful as only the pleasantest kind of old barn can be. It stood
at the meeting-spot of three fences. A favorite amusement used to be an
obstacle race when the barn was full of hay. The contestants were timed
and were started successively from outside the door. They rushed inside,
clambered over or burrowed through the hay, as suited them best, dropped
out of a place where a loose board had come off, got over, through, or
under the three fences, and raced back to the starting-point. When they
were little, their respective fathers were expected also to take part
in the obstacle race, and when with the advance of years the fathers
finally refused to be contestants, there was a general feeling of pained
regret among the children at such a decline in the sporting spirit.
Another famous place for handicap races was Cooper's Bluff, a gigantic
sand-bank rising from the edge of the bay, a mile from the house. If
the tide was high there was an added thrill, for some of the contestants
were sure to run into the water.
As soon as the little boys learned to swim they were allowed to go off
by themselves in rowboats and camp out for the night along the Sound.
Sometimes I would go along so as to take the smaller children. Once
a schooner was wrecked on a point half a dozen miles away. She
held together well for a season or two after having been cleared of
everything down to the timbers, and this gave us the chance to make
camping-out trips in which the girls could also be included, for we put
them to sleep in the wreck, while the boys slept on the shore; squaw
picnics, the children called them.
My children, when young, went to the public school near us, the little
Cove School, as it is called. For nearly thirty years we have given
the Christmas tree to the school. Before the gifts are distributed I am
expected to make an address, which is always mercifully short, my own
children having impressed upon me with frank sincerity the attitude of
other children to addresses of this kind on such occasions. There are of
course performances by the children themselves, while all of us parents
look admiringly on, each sympathizing with his or her particular
offspring in the somewhat wooden recital of "Darius Green and his Flying
Machine" or "The Mountain and the Squirrel had a Quarrel." But the tree
and the gifts make up for all shortcomings.
We had a sleigh for winter; but if, when there was much snow, the whole
family desired to go somewhere, we would put the body of the farm wagon
on runners and all bundle in together. We always liked snow at Christmas
time, and the sleigh-ride down to the church on Christmas eve. One
of the hymns always sung at this Christmas eve festival begins, "It's
Christmas eve on the river, it's Christmas eve on the bay." All good
natives of the village firmly believe that this hymn was written here,
and with direct reference to Oyster Bay; although if such were the case
the word "river" would have to be taken in a hyperbolic sense, as the
nearest approach to a river is the village pond. I used to share this
belief myself, until my faith was shaken by a Denver lady who wrote that
she had sung that hymn when a child in Michigan, and that at the present
time her little Denver babies also loved it, although in their case the
river was not represented by even a village pond.
When we were in Washington, the children usually went with their mother
to the Episcopal church, while I went to the Dutch Reformed. But if any
child misbehaved itself, it was sometimes sent next Sunday to church
with me, on the theory that my companionship would have a sedative
effect--which it did, as I and the child walked along with rather
constrained politeness, each eying the other with watchful readiness
for the unexpected. On one occasion, when the child's conduct fell just
short of warranting such extreme measures, his mother, as they were on
the point of entering church, concluded a homily by a quotation
which showed a certain haziness of memory concerning the marriage and
baptismal services: "No, little boy, if this conduct continues, I shall
think that you neither love, honor, nor obey me!" However, the culprit
was much impressed with a sense of shortcoming as to the obligations he
had undertaken; so the result was as satisfactory as if the quotation
had been from the right service.
As for the education of the children, there was of course much of it
that represented downright hard work and drudgery. There was also
much training that came as a by-product and was perhaps almost as
valuable--not as a substitute but as an addition. After their supper,
the children, when little, would come trotting up to their mother's
room to be read to, and it was always a surprise to me to notice the
extremely varied reading which interested them, from Howard Pyle's
"Robin Hood," Mary Alicia Owen's "Voodoo Tales," and Joel Chandler
Harris's "Aaron in the Wild Woods," to "Lycides" and "King John." If
their mother was absent, I would try to act as vice-mother--a poor
substitute, I fear--superintending the supper and reading aloud
afterwards. The children did not wish me to read the books they desired
their mother to read, and I usually took some such book as "Hereward the
Wake," or "Guy Mannering," or "The Last of the Mohicans" or else some
story about a man-eating tiger, or a man-eating lion, from one of the
hunting books in my library. These latter stories were always favorites,
and as the authors told them in the first person, my interested auditors
grew to know them by the name of the "I" stories, and regarded them as
adventures all of which happened to the same individual. When Selous,
the African hunter, visited us, I had to get him to tell to the younger
children two or three of the stories with which they were already
familiar from my reading; and as Selous is a most graphic narrator, and
always enters thoroughly into the feeling not only of himself but of
the opposing lion or buffalo, my own rendering of the incidents was cast
entirely into the shade.
Besides profiting by the more canonical books on education, we profited
by certain essays and articles of a less orthodox type. I wish to
express my warmest gratitude for such books--not of avowedly didactic
purpose--as Laura Richards's books, Josephine Dodge Daskam's "Madness of
Philip," Palmer Cox's "Queer People," the melodies of Father Goose and
Mother Wild Goose, Flandreau's "Mrs. White's," Myra Kelly's stories of
her little East Side pupils, and Michelson's "Madigans." It is well to
take duties, and life generally, seriously. It is also well to remember
that a sense of humor is a healthy anti-scorbutic to that portentous
seriousness which defeats its own purpose.
Occasionally bits of self-education proved of unexpected help to the
children in later years. Like other children, they were apt to take to
bed with them treasures which they particularly esteemed. One of the
boys, just before his sixteenth birthday, went moose hunting with the
family doctor, and close personal friend of the entire family, Alexander
Lambert. Once night overtook them before they camped, and they had to
lie down just where they were. Next morning Dr. Lambert rather enviously
congratulated the boy on the fact that stones and roots evidently
did not interfere with the soundness of his sleep; to which the boy
responded, "Well, Doctor, you see it isn't very long since I used to
take fourteen china animals to bed with me every night!"
As the children grew up, Sagamore Hill remained delightful for them.
There were picnics and riding parties, there were dances in the north
room--sometimes fancy dress dances--and open-air plays on the green
tennis court of one of the cousin's houses. The children are no longer
children now. Most of them are men and women, working out their own
fates in the big world; some in our own land, others across the great
oceans or where the Southern Cross blazes in the tropic nights. Some of
them have children of their own; some are working at one thing, some at
another; in cable ships, in business offices, in factories, in newspaper
offices, building steel bridges, bossing gravel trains and steam
shovels, or laying tracks and superintending freight traffic. They have
had their share of accidents and escapes; as I write, word comes from
a far-off land that one of them, whom Seth Bullock used to call "Kim"
because he was the friend of all mankind, while bossing a dangerous
but necessary steel structural job has had two ribs and two back teeth
broken, and is back at work. They have known and they will know joy and
sorrow, triumph and temporary defeat. But I believe they are all the
better off because of their happy and healthy childhood.
It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks,
and the greatest of all prizes are those connected with the home. No
father and mother can hope to escape sorrow and anxiety, and there are
dreadful moments when death comes very near those we love, even if for
the time being it passes by. But life is a great adventure, and the
worst of all fears is the fear of living. There are many forms of
success, many forms of triumph. But there is no other success that in
any shape or way approaches that which is open to most of the many, many
men and women who have the right ideals. These are the men and the women
who see that it is the intimate and homely things that count most. They
are the men and women who have the courage to strive for the happiness
which comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and only to
those whose joy in life springs in part from power of work and sense of
duty.
CHAPTER X
THE PRESIDENCY; MAKING AN OLD PARTY PROGRESSIVE
On September 6, 1901, President McKinley was shot by an Anarchist in the
city of Buffalo. I went to Buffalo at once. The President's condition
seemed to be improving, and after a day or two we were told that he
was practically out of danger. I then joined my family, who were in the
Adirondacks, near the foot of Mount Tahawus. A day or two afterwards
we took a long tramp through the forest, and in the afternoon I climbed
Mount Tahawus. After reaching the top I had descended a few hundred feet
to a shelf of land where there was a little lake, when I saw a guide
coming out of the woods on our trail from below. I felt at once that he
had bad news, and, sure enough, he handed me a telegram saying that the
President's condition was much worse and that I must come to Buffalo
immediately. It was late in the afternoon, and darkness had fallen by
the time I reached the clubhouse where we were staying. It was some time
afterwards before I could get a wagon to drive me out to the nearest
railway station, North Creek, some forty or fifty miles distant. The
roads were the ordinary wilderness roads and the night was dark. But we
changed horses two or three times--when I say "we" I mean the driver
and I, as there was no one else with us--and reached the station just at
dawn, to learn from Mr. Loeb, who had a special train waiting, that the
President was dead. That evening I took the oath of office, in the house
of Ansley Wilcox, at Buffalo.
On three previous occasions the Vice-President had succeeded to the
Presidency on the death of the President. In each case there had been
a reversal of party policy, and a nearly immediate and nearly complete
change in the personnel of the higher offices, especially the Cabinet.
I had never felt that this was wise from any standpoint. If a man is fit
to be President, he will speedily so impress himself in the office that
the policies pursued will be his anyhow, and he will not have to bother
as to whether he is changing them or not; while as regards the offices
under him, the important thing for him is that his subordinates shall
make a success in handling their several departments. The subordinate is
sure to desire to make a success of his department for his own sake, and
if he is a fit man, whose views on public policy are sound, and whose
abilities entitle him to his position, he will do excellently under
almost any chief with the same purposes.
I at once announced that I would continue unchanged McKinley's policies
for the honor and prosperity of the country, and I asked all the members
of the Cabinet to stay. There were no changes made among them save as
changes were made among their successors whom I myself appointed. I
continued Mr. McKinley's policies, changing and developing them and
adding new policies only as the questions before the public changed and
as the needs of the public developed. Some of my friends shook their
heads over this, telling me that the men I retained would not be "loyal
to me," and that I would seem as if I were "a pale copy of McKinley."
I told them that I was not nervous on this score, and that if the men
I retained were loyal to their work they would be giving me the loyalty
for which I most cared; and that if they were not, I would change them
anyhow; and that as for being "a pale copy of McKinley," I was not
primarily concerned with either following or not following in his
footsteps, but in facing the new problems that arose; and that if I were
competent I would find ample opportunity to show my competence by my
deeds without worrying myself as to how to convince people of the fact.
For the reasons I have already given in my chapter on the Governorship
of New York, the Republican party, which in the days of Abraham Lincoln
was founded as the radical progressive party of the Nation, had been
obliged during the last decade of the nineteenth century to uphold
the interests of popular government against a foolish and illjudged
mock-radicalism. It remained the Nationalist as against the
particularist or State's rights party, and in so far it remained
absolutely sound; for little permanent good can be done by any party
which worships the State's rights fetish or which fails to regard the
State, like the county or the municipality, as merely a convenient unit
for local self-government, while in all National matters, of importance
to the whole people, the Nation is to be supreme over State, county, and
town alike. But the State's rights fetish, although still effectively
used at certain times by both courts and Congress to block needed
National legislation directed against the huge corporations or in the
interests of workingmen, was not a prime issue at the time of which I
speak. In 1896, 1898, and 1900 the campaigns were waged on two great
moral issues: (1) the imperative need of a sound and honest currency;
(2) the need, after 1898, of meeting in manful and straightforward
fashion the extraterritorial problems arising from the Spanish War. On
these great moral issues the Republican party was right, and the men who
were opposed to it, and who claimed to be the radicals, and their allies
among the sentimentalists, were utterly and hopelessly wrong. This had,
regrettably but perhaps inevitably, tended to throw the party into the
hands not merely of the conservatives but of the reactionaries; of men
who, sometimes for personal and improper reasons, but more often with
entire sincerity and uprightness of purpose, distrusted anything that
was progressive and dreaded radicalism. These men still from force of
habit applauded what Lincoln had done in the way of radical dealing
with the abuses of his day; but they did not apply the spirit in which
Lincoln worked to the abuses of their own day. Both houses of Congress
were controlled by these men. Their leaders in the Senate were Messrs.
Aldrich and Hale. The Speaker of the House when I became President
was Mr. Henderson, but in a little over a year he was succeeded by Mr.
Cannon, who, although widely differing from Senator Aldrich in matters
of detail, represented the same type of public sentiment. There were
many points on which I agreed with Mr. Cannon and Mr. Aldrich, and some
points on which I agreed with Mr. Hale. I made a resolute effort to get
on with all three and with their followers, and I have no question that
they made an equally resolute effort to get on with me. We succeeded in
working together, although with increasing friction, for some years, I
pushing forward and they hanging back. Gradually, however, I was forced
to abandon the effort to persuade them to come my way, and then I
achieved results only by appealing over the heads of the Senate and
House leaders to the people, who were the masters of both of us. I
continued in this way to get results until almost the close of my term;
and the Republican party became once more the progressive and indeed the
fairly radical progressive party of the Nation. When my successor was
chosen, however, the leaders of the House and Senate, or most of them,
felt that it was safe to come to a break with me, and the last or short
session of Congress, held between the election of my successor and his
inauguration four months later, saw a series of contests
between the majorities in the two houses of Congress and the
President,--myself,--quite as bitter as if they and I had belonged to
opposite political parties. However, I held my own. I was not able to
push through the legislation I desired during these four months, but
I was able to prevent them doing anything I did not desire, or undoing
anything that I had already succeeded in getting done.
There were, of course, many Senators and members of the lower house with
whom up to the very last I continued to work in hearty accord, and with
a growing understanding. I have not the space to enumerate, as I would
like to, these men. For many years Senator Lodge had been my close
personal and political friend, with whom I discussed all public
questions that arose, usually with agreement; and our intimately close
relations were of course unchanged by my entry into the White House. He
was of all our public men the man who had made the closest and wisest
study of our foreign relations, and more clearly than almost any
other man he understood the vital fact that the efficiency of our
navy conditioned our national efficiency in foreign affairs. Anything
relating to our international relations, from Panama and the navy to the
Alaskan boundary question, the Algeciras negotiations, or the peace of
Portsmouth, I was certain to discuss with Senator Lodge and also with
certain other members of Congress, such as Senator Turner of Washington
and Representative Hitt of Illinois. Anything relating to labor
legislation and to measures for controlling big business or efficiently
regulating the giant railway systems, I was certain to discuss with
Senator Dolliver or Congressman Hepburn or Congressman Cooper. With
men like Senator Beveridge, Congressman (afterwards Senator) Dixon,
and Congressman Murdock, I was apt to discuss pretty nearly everything
relating to either our internal or our external affairs. There were
many, many others. The present president of the Senate, Senator Clark,
of Arkansas, was as fearless and high-minded a representative of the
people of the United States as I ever dealt with. He was one of the men
who combined loyalty to his own State with an equally keen loyalty to
the people of all the United States. He was politically opposed to me;
but when the interests of the country were at stake, he was incapable of
considering party differences; and this was especially his attitude
in international matters--including certain treaties which most of
his party colleagues, with narrow lack of patriotism, and complete
subordination of National to factional interest, opposed. I have never
anywhere met finer, more faithful, more disinterested, and more
loyal public servants than Senator O. H. Platt, a Republican, from
Connecticut, and Senator Cockrell, a Democrat, from Missouri. They were
already old men when I came to the Presidency; and doubtless there
were points on which I seemed to them to be extreme and radical; but
eventually they found that our motives and beliefs were the same,
and they did all in their power to help any movement that was for the
interest of our people as a whole. I had met them when I was Civil
Service Commissioner and Assistant Secretary of the Navy. All I ever had
to do with either was to convince him that a given measure I championed
was right, and he then at once did all he could to have it put into
effect. If I could not convince them, why! that was my fault, or my
misfortune; but if I could convince them, I never had to think again as
to whether they would or would not support me. There were many other men
of mark in both houses with whom I could work on some points, whereas
on others we had to differ. There was one powerful leader--a burly,
forceful man, of admirable traits--who had, however, been trained in
the post-bellum school of business and politics, so that his attitude
towards life, quite unconsciously, reminded me a little of Artemus
Ward's view of the Tower of London--"If I like it, I'll buy it." There
was a big governmental job in which this leader was much interested,
and in reference to which he always wished me to consult a man whom
he trusted, whom I will call Pitt Rodney. One day I answered him, "The
trouble with Rodney is that he misestimates his relations to cosmos";
to which he responded, "Cosmos--Cosmos? Never heard of him. You stick
to Rodney. He's your man!" Outside of the public servants there were
multitudes of men, in newspaper offices, in magazine offices, in
business or the professions or on farms or in shops, who actively
supported the policies for which I stood and did work of genuine
leadership which was quite as effective as any work done by men in
public office. Without the active support of these men I would have
been powerless. In particular, the leading newspaper correspondents
at Washington were as a whole a singularly able, trustworthy, and
public-spirited body of men, and the most useful of all agents in the
fight for efficient and decent government.
As for the men under me in executive office, I could not overstate the
debt of gratitude I owe them. From the heads of the departments, the
Cabinet officers, down, the most striking feature of the Administration
was the devoted, zealous, and efficient work that was done as soon as it
became understood that the one bond of interest among all of us was the
desire to make the Government the most effective instrument in advancing
the interests of the people as a whole, the interests of the average men
and women of the United States and of their children. I do not think I
overstate the case when I say that most of the men who did the best work
under me felt that ours was a partnership, that we all stood on the same
level of purpose and service, and that it mattered not what position any
one of us held so long as in that position he gave the very best that
was in him. We worked very hard; but I made a point of getting a couple
of hours off each day for equally vigorous play. The men with whom I
then played, whom we laughingly grew to call the "Tennis Cabinet," have
been mentioned in a previous chapter of this book in connection with
the gift they gave me at the last breakfast which they took at the White
House. There were many others in the public service under me with whom I
happened not to play, but who did their share of our common work just as
effectively as it was done by us who did play. Of course nothing could
have been done in my Administration if it had not been for the zeal,
intelligence, masterful ability, and downright hard labor of these men
in countless positions under me. I was helpless to do anything except
as my thoughts and orders were translated into action by them; and,
moreover, each of them, as he grew specially fit for his job, used to
suggest to me the right thought to have, and the right order to give,
concerning that job. It is of course hard for me to speak with cold and
dispassionate partiality of these men, who were as close to me as were
the men of my regiment. But the outside observers best fitted to pass
judgment about them felt as I did. At the end of my Administration Mr.
Bryce, the British Ambassador, told me that in a long life, during which
he had studied intimately the government of many different countries, he
had never in any country seen a more eager, high-minded, and efficient
set of public servants, men more useful and more creditable to their
country, than the men then doing the work of the American Government in
Washington and in the field. I repeat this statement with the permission
of Mr. Bryce.
At about the same time, or a little before, in the spring of 1908, there
appeared in the English _Fortnightly Review_ an article, evidently by
a competent eye witness, setting forth more in detail the same views to
which the British Ambassador thus privately gave expression. It was in
part as follows:
"Mr. Roosevelt has gathered around him a body of public servants who
are nowhere surpassed, I question whether they are anywhere equaled, for
efficiency, self-sacrifice, and an absolute devotion to their country's
interests. Many of them are poor men, without private means, who have
voluntarily abandoned high professional ambitions and turned their backs
on the rewards of business to serve their country on salaries that are
not merely inadequate, but indecently so. There is not one of them
who is not constantly assailed by offers of positions in the world
of commerce, finance, and the law that would satisfy every material
ambition with which he began life. There is not one of them who could
not, if he chose, earn outside Washington from ten to twenty times the
income on which he economizes as a State official. But these men are
as indifferent to money and to the power that money brings as to the
allurements of Newport and New York, or to merely personal distinctions,
or to the commercialized ideals which the great bulk of their
fellow-countrymen accept without question. They are content, and more
than content, to sink themselves in the National service without a
thought of private advancement, and often at a heavy sacrifice of
worldly honors, and to toil on . . . sustained by their own native
impulse to make of patriotism an efficient instrument of public
betterment."
The American public rarely appreciate the high quality of the work
done by some of our diplomats--work, usually entirely unnoticed and
unrewarded, which redounds to the interest and the honor of all of
us. The most useful man in the entire diplomatic service, during my
presidency, and for many years before, was Henry White; and I say
this having in mind the high quality of work done by such admirable
ambassadors and ministers as Bacon, Meyer, Straus, O'Brien, Rockhill,
and Egan, to name only a few among many. When I left the presidency
White was Ambassador to France; shortly afterwards he was removed by Mr.
Taft, for reasons unconnected with the good of the service.
The most important factor in getting the right spirit in my
Administration, next to the insistence upon courage, honesty, and a
genuine democracy of desire to serve the plain people, was my insistence
upon the theory that the executive power was limited only by specific
restrictions and prohibitions appearing in the Constitution or imposed
by the Congress under its Constitutional powers. My view was that
every executive officer, and above all every executive officer in high
position, was a steward of the people bound actively and affirmatively
to do all he could for the people, and not to content himself with the
negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin. I declined
to adopt the view that what was imperatively necessary for the Nation
could not be done by the President unless he could find some specific
authorization to do it. My belief was that it was not only his right
but his duty to do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless
such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws. Under
this interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be done
many things not previously done by the President and the heads of the
departments. I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of
executive power. In other words, I acted for the public welfare, I acted
for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever
manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional or
legislative prohibition. I did not care a rap for the mere form and
show of power; I cared immensely for the use that could be made of the
substance. The Senate at one time objected to my communicating with them
in printing, preferring the expensive, foolish, and laborious practice
of writing out the messages by hand. It was not possible to return to
the outworn archaism of hand writing; but we endeavored to have the
printing made as pretty as possible. Whether I communicated with the
Congress in writing or by word of mouth, and whether the writing was by
a machine, or a pen, were equally, and absolutely, unimportant matters.
The importance lay in what I said and in the heed paid to what I said.
So as to my meeting and consulting Senators, Congressmen, politicians,
financiers, and labor men. I consulted all who wished to see me; and if
I wished to see any one, I sent for him; and where the consultation took
place was a matter of supreme unimportance. I consulted every man
with the sincere hope that I could profit by and follow his advice; I
consulted every member of Congress who wished to be consulted, hoping to
be able to come to an agreement of action with him; and I always finally
acted as my conscience and common sense bade me act.
About appointments I was obliged by the Constitution to consult the
Senate; and the long-established custom of the Senate meant that in
practice this consultation was with individual Senators and even with
big politicians who stood behind the Senators. I was only one-half the
appointing power; I nominated; but the Senate confirmed. In practice,
by what was called "the courtesy of the Senate," the Senate normally
refused to confirm any appointment if the Senator from the State
objected to it. In exceptional cases, where I could arouse public
attention, I could force through the appointment in spite of the
opposition of the Senators; in all ordinary cases this was impossible.
On the other hand, the Senator could of course do nothing for any man
unless I chose to nominate him. In consequence the Constitution itself
forced the President and the Senators from each State to come to a
working agreement on the appointments in and from that State.
My course was to insist on absolute fitness, including honesty, as a
prerequisite to every appointment; and to remove only for good cause,
and, where there was such cause, to refuse even to discuss with the
Senator in interest the unfit servant's retention. Subject to these
considerations, I normally accepted each Senator's recommendations for
offices of a routine kind, such as most post-offices and the like, but
insisted on myself choosing the men for the more important positions.
I was willing to take any good man for postmaster; but in the case of
a Judge or District Attorney or Canal Commissioner or Ambassador, I
was apt to insist either on a given man or else on any man with a given
class of qualifications. If the Senator deceived me, I took care that he
had no opportunity to repeat the deception.
I can perhaps best illustrate my theory of action by two specific
examples. In New York Governor Odell and Senator Platt sometimes worked
in agreement and sometimes were at swords' points, and both wished to be
consulted. To a friendly Congressman, who was also their friend, I wrote
as follows on July 22, 1903:
"I want to work with Platt. I want to work with Odell. I want to support
both and take the advice of both. But of course ultimately I must be
the judge as to acting on the advice given. When, as in the case of the
judgeship, I am convinced that the advice of both is wrong, I shall act
as I did when I appointed Holt. When I can find a friend of Odell's
like Cooley, who is thoroughly fit for the position I desire to fill, it
gives me the greatest pleasure to appoint him. When Platt proposes to me
a man like Hamilton Fish, it is equally a pleasure to appoint him."
This was written in connection with events which led up to my refusing
to accept Senator Platt's or Governor Odell's suggestions as to a
Federal Judgeship and a Federal District Attorneyship, and insisting
on the appointment, first of Judge Hough and later of District Attorney
Stimson; because in each case I felt that the work to be done was of so
high an order that I could not take an ordinary man.
The other case was that of Senator Fulton, of Oregon. Through Francis
Heney I was prosecuting men who were implicated in a vast network of
conspiracy against the law in connection with the theft of public land
in Oregon. I had been acting on Senator Fulton's recommendations for
office, in the usual manner. Heney had been insisting that Fulton was
in league with the men we were prosecuting, and that he had recommended
unfit men. Fulton had been protesting against my following Heney's
advice, particularly as regards appointing Judge Wolverton as United
States Judge. Finally Heney laid before me a report which convinced me
of the truth of his statements. I then wrote to Fulton as follows, on
November 20, 1905: "My dear Senator Fulton: I inclose you herewith a
copy of the report made to me by Mr. Heney. I have seen the originals
of the letters from you and Senator Mitchell quoted therein. I do not
at this time desire to discuss the report itself, which of course I must
submit to the Attorney-General. But I have been obliged to reach the
painful conclusion that your own letters as therein quoted tend to show
that you recommended for the position of District Attorney B when you
had good reason to believe that he had himself been guilty of fraudulent
conduct; that you recommended C for the same position simply because it
was for B's interest that he should be so recommended, and, as there is
reason to believe, because he had agreed to divide the fees with B if he
were appointed; and that you finally recommended the reappointment of
H with the knowledge that if H were appointed he would abstain from
prosecuting B for criminal misconduct, this being why B advocated H's
claims for reappointment. If you care to make any statement in the
matter, I shall of course be glad to hear it. As the District Judge of
Oregon I shall appoint Judge Wolverton." In the letter I of course gave
in full the names indicated above by initials. Senator Fulton gave no
explanation. I therefore ceased to consult him about appointments under
the Department of Justice and the Interior, the two departments in which
the crookedness had occurred--there was no question of crookedness
in the other offices in the State, and they could be handled in the
ordinary manner. Legal proceedings were undertaken against his colleague
in the Senate, and one of his colleagues in the lower house, and the
former was convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary.
In a number of instances the legality of executive acts of my
Administration was brought before the courts. They were uniformly
sustained. For example, prior to 1907 statutes relating to the
disposition of coal lands had been construed as fixing the flat price at
$10 to $20 per acre. The result was that valuable coal lands were sold
for wholly inadequate prices, chiefly to big corporations. By executive
order the coal lands were withdrawn and not opened for entry until
proper classification was placed thereon by Government agents. There was
a great clamor that I was usurping legislative power; but the acts were
not assailed in court until we brought suits to set aside entries made
by persons and associations to obtain larger areas than the statutes
authorized. This position was opposed on the ground that the
restrictions imposed were illegal; that the executive orders were
illegal. The Supreme Court sustained the Government. In the same way our
attitude in the water power question was sustained, the Supreme Court
holding that the Federal Government had the rights we claimed over
streams that are or may be declared navigable by Congress. Again, when
Oklahoma became a State we were obliged to use the executive power
to protect Indian rights and property, for there had been an enormous
amount of fraud in the obtaining of Indian lands by white men. Here we
were denounced as usurping power over a State as well as usurping power
that did not belong to the executive. The Supreme Court sustained our
action.
In connection with the Indians, by the way, it was again and again
necessary to assert the position of the President as steward of the
whole people. I had a capital Indian Commissioner, Francis E. Leupp. I
found that I could rely on his judgment not to get me into fights that
were unnecessary, and therefore I always backed him to the limit when
he told me that a fight was necessary. On one occasion, for example,
Congress passed a bill to sell to settlers about half a million acres of
Indian land in Oklahoma at one and a half dollars an acre. I refused to
sign it, and turned the matter over to Leupp. The bill was accordingly
withdrawn, amended so as to safeguard the welfare of the Indians, and
the minimum price raised to five dollars an acre. Then I signed the
bill. We sold that land under sealed bids, and realized for the Kiowa,
Comanche, and Apache Indians more than four million dollars--three
millions and a quarter more than they would have obtained if I had
signed the bill in its original form. In another case, where there
had been a division among the Sac and Fox Indians, part of the tribe
removing to Iowa, the Iowa delegation in Congress, backed by two Iowans
who were members of my Cabinet, passed a bill awarding a sum of nearly
a half million dollars to the Iowa seceders. They had not consulted
the Indian Bureau. Leupp protested against the bill, and I vetoed it. A
subsequent bill was passed on the lines laid down by the Indian Bureau,
referring the whole controversy to the courts, and the Supreme Court in
the end justified our position by deciding against the Iowa seceders and
awarding the money to the Oklahoma stay-at-homes.
As to all action of this kind there have long been two schools of
political thought, upheld with equal sincerity. The division has not
normally been along political, but temperamental, lines. The course I
followed, of regarding the executive as subject only to the people, and,
under the Constitution, bound to serve the people affirmatively in cases
where the Constitution does not explicitly forbid him to render the
service, was substantially the course followed by both Andrew Jackson
and Abraham Lincoln. Other honorable and well-meaning Presidents, such
as James Buchanan, took the opposite and, as it seems to me, narrowly
legalistic view that the President is the servant of Congress rather
than of the people, and can do nothing, no matter how necessary it be to
act, unless the Constitution explicitly commands the action. Most able
lawyers who are past middle age take this view, and so do large numbers
of well-meaning, respectable citizens. My successor in office took this,
the Buchanan, view of the President's powers and duties.
For example, under my Administration we found that one of the favorite
methods adopted by the men desirous of stealing the public domain was
to carry the decision of the Secretary of the Interior into court. By
vigorously opposing such action, and only by so doing, we were able
to carry out the policy of properly protecting the public domain. My
successor not only took the opposite view, but recommended to Congress
the passage of a bill which would have given the courts direct appellate
power over the Secretary of the Interior in these land matters. This
bill was reported favorably by Mr. Mondell, Chairman of the House
Committee on public lands, a Congressman who took the lead in every
measure to prevent the conservation of our natural resources and
the preservation of the National domain for the use of home-seekers.
Fortunately, Congress declined to pass the bill. Its passage would have
been a veritable calamity.
I acted on the theory that the President could at any time in his
discretion withdraw from entry any of the public lands of the United
States and reserve the same for forestry, for water-power sites, for
irrigation, and other public purposes. Without such action it would
have been impossible to stop the activity of the land thieves. No one
ventured to test its legality by lawsuit. My successor, however, himself
questioned it, and referred the matter to Congress. Again Congress
showed its wisdom by passing a law which gave the President the power
which he had long exercised, and of which my successor had shorn
himself.
Perhaps the sharp difference between what may be called the
Lincoln-Jackson and the Buchanan-Taft schools, in their views of the
power and duties of the President, may be best illustrated by comparing
the attitude of my successor toward his Secretary of the Interior, Mr.
Ballinger, when the latter was accused of gross misconduct in office,
with my attitude towards my chiefs of department and other subordinate
officers. More than once while I was President my officials were
attacked by Congress, generally because these officials did their duty
well and fearlessly. In every such case I stood by the official
and refused to recognize the right of Congress to interfere with me
excepting by impeachment or in other Constitutional manner. On the other
hand, wherever I found the officer unfit for his position I promptly
removed him, even although the most influential men in Congress fought
for his retention. The Jackson-Lincoln view is that a President who is
fit to do good work should be able to form his own judgment as to his
own subordinates, and, above all, of the subordinates standing highest
and in closest and most intimate touch with him. My secretaries
and their subordinates were responsible to me, and I accepted the
responsibility for all their deeds. As long as they were satisfactory to
me I stood by them against every critic or assailant, within or without
Congress; and as for getting Congress to make up my mind for me about
them, the thought would have been inconceivable to me. My successor took
the opposite, or Buchanan, view when he permitted and requested Congress
to pass judgment on the charges made against Mr. Ballinger as an
executive officer. These charges were made to the President; the
President had the facts before him and could get at them at any time,
and he alone had power to act if the charges were true. However, he
permitted and requested Congress to investigate Mr. Ballinger. The party
minority of the committee that investigated him, and one member of
the majority, declared that the charges were well founded and that Mr.
Ballinger should be removed. The other members of the majority declared
the charges ill founded. The President abode by the view of the
majority. Of course believers in the Jackson-Lincoln theory of the
Presidency would not be content with this town meeting majority and
minority method of determining by another branch of the Government what
it seems the especial duty of the President himself to determine for
himself in dealing with his own subordinate in his own department.
There are many worthy people who reprobate the Buchanan method as a
matter of history, but who in actual life reprobate still more strongly
the Jackson-Lincoln method when it is put into practice. These persons
conscientiously believe that the President should solve every doubt in
favor of inaction as against action, that he should construe strictly
and narrowly the Constitutional grant of powers both to the National
Government, and to the President within the National Government. In
addition, however, to the men who conscientiously believe in this course
from high, although as I hold misguided, motives, there are many men who
affect to believe in it merely because it enables them to attack and to
try to hamper, for partisan or personal reasons, an executive whom
they dislike. There are other men in whom, especially when they are
themselves in office, practical adherence to the Buchanan principle
represents not well-thought-out devotion to an unwise course, but simple
weakness of character and desire to avoid trouble and responsibility.
Unfortunately, in practice it makes little difference which class
of ideas actuates the President, who by his action sets a cramping
precedent. Whether he is highminded and wrongheaded or merely infirm
of purpose, whether he means well feebly or is bound by a mischievous
misconception of the powers and duties of the National Government and
of the President, the effect of his actions is the same. The President's
duty is to act so that he himself and his subordinates shall be able to
do efficient work for the people, and this efficient work he and they
cannot do if Congress is permitted to undertake the task of making up
his mind for him as to how he shall perform what is clearly his sole
duty.
One of the ways in which by independent action of the executive we were
able to accomplish an immense amount of work for the public was through
volunteer unpaid commissions appointed by the President. It was possible
to get the work done by these volunteer commissions only because of the
enthusiasm for the public service which, starting in the higher
offices at Washington, made itself felt throughout the Government
departments--as I have said, I never knew harder and more disinterested
work done by any people than was done by the men and women of all ranks
in the Government service. The contrast was really extraordinary between
their live interest in their work and the traditional clerical apathy
which has so often been the distinguishing note of governmental work
in Washington. Most of the public service performed by these volunteer
commissions, carried on without a cent of pay to the men themselves,
and wholly without cost to the Government, was done by men the great
majority of whom were already in the Government service and already
charged with responsibilities amounting each to a full man's job.
The first of these Commissions was the Commission on the Organization
of Government Scientific Work, whose Chairman was Charles D. Walcott.
Appointed March 13, 1903, its duty was to report directly to the
President "upon the organization, present condition, and needs of the
Executive Government work wholly or partly scientific in character, and
upon the steps which should be taken, if any, to prevent the duplication
of such work, to co-ordinate its various branches, to increase its
efficiency and economy, and to promote its usefulness to the Nation
at large." This Commission spent four months in an examination which
covered the work of about thirty of the larger scientific and executive
bureaus of the Government, and prepared a report which furnished the
basis for numerous improvements in the Government service.
Another Commission, appointed June 2, 1905, was that on Department
Methods--Charles H. Keep, Chairman--whose task was to "find out what
changes are needed to place the conduct of the executive business of
the Government in all its branches on the most economical and effective
basis in the light of the best modern business practice." The letter
appointing this Commission laid down nine principles of effective
Governmental work, the most striking of which was: "The existence of any
method, standard, custom, or practice is no reason for its continuance
when a better is offered." This Commission, composed like that just
described, of men already charged with important work, performed its
functions wholly without cost to the Government. It was assisted by a
body of about seventy experts in the Government departments chosen
for their special qualifications to carry forward a study of the best
methods in business, and organized into assistant committees under
the leadership of Overton W. Price, Secretary of the Commission. These
assistant committees, all of whose members were still carrying on their
regular work, made their reports during the last half of 1906. The
Committee informed itself fully regarding the business methods of
practically every individual branch of the business of the Government,
and effected a marked improvement in general efficiency throughout the
service. The conduct of the routine business of the Government had never
been thoroughly overhauled before, and this examination of it resulted
in the promulgation of a set of working principles for the transaction
of public business which are as sound to-day as they were when
the Committee finished its work. The somewhat elaborate and costly
investigations of Government business methods since made have served
merely to confirm the findings of the Committee on Departmental Methods,
which were achieved without costing the Government a dollar. The actual
saving in the conduct of the business of the Government through the
better methods thus introduced amounted yearly to many hundreds of
thousands of dollars; but a far more important gain was due to the
remarkable success of the Commission in establishing a new point of view
in public servants toward their work.
The need for improvement in the Governmental methods of transacting
business may be illustrated by an actual case. An officer in charge of
an Indian agency made a requisition in the autumn for a stove costing
seven dollars, certifying at the same time that it was needed to keep
the infirmary warm during the winter, because the old stove was worn
out. Thereupon the customary papers went through the customary routine,
without unusual delay at any point. The transaction moved like a glacier
with dignity to its appointed end, and the stove reached the infirmary
in good order in time for the Indian agent to acknowledge its arrival in
these words: "The stove is here. So is spring."
The Civil Service Commission, under men like John McIlhenny and
Garfield, rendered service without which the Government could have been
conducted with neither efficiency nor honesty. The politicians were
not the only persons at fault; almost as much improper pressure for
appointments is due to mere misplaced sympathy, and to the spiritless
inefficiency which seeks a Government office as a haven for the
incompetent. An amusing feature of office seeking is that each man
desiring an office is apt to look down on all others with the same
object as forming an objectionable class with which _he_ has nothing in
common. At the time of the eruption of Mt. Pelee, when among others
the American Consul was killed, a man who had long been seeking an
appointment promptly applied for the vacancy. He was a good man, of
persistent nature, who felt I had been somewhat blind to his merits. The
morning after the catastrophe he wrote, saying that as the consul was
dead he would like his place, and that I could surely give it to him,
because "even the office seekers could not have applied for it yet!"
The method of public service involved in the appointment and the work of
the two commissions just described was applied also in the establishment
of four other commissions, each of which performed its task without
salary or expense for its members, and wholly without cost to the
Government. The other four commissions were:
Commission on Public Lands;
Commission on Inland Waterways;
Commission on Country Life; and
Commission on National Conservation.
All of these commissions were suggested to me by Gifford Pinchot, who
served upon them all. The work of the last four will be touched upon in
connection with the chapter on Conservation. These commissions by their
reports and findings directly interfered with many place-holders who
were doing inefficient work, and their reports and the action
taken thereon by the Administration strengthened the hands of those
administrative officers who in the various departments, and especially
in the Secret Service, were proceeding against land thieves and other
corrupt wrong-doers. Moreover, the mere fact that they did efficient
work for the public along lines new to veteran and cynical politicians
of the old type created vehement hostility to them. Senators like Mr.
Hale and Congressmen like Mr. Tawney were especially bitter against
these commissions; and towards the end of my term they were followed
by the majority of their fellows in both houses, who had gradually been
sundered from me by the open or covert hostility of the financial or
Wall Street leaders, and of the newspaper editors and politicians who
did their bidding in the interest of privilege. These Senators and
Congressmen asserted that they had a right to forbid the President
profiting by the unpaid advice of disinterested experts. Of course I
declined to admit the existence of any such right, and continued the
Commissions. My successor acknowledged the right, upheld the view of the
politicians in question, and abandoned the commissions, to the lasting
detriment of the people as a whole.
One thing is worth pointing out: During the seven and a half years of
my Administration we greatly and usefully extended the sphere of
Governmental action, and yet we reduced the burden of the taxpayers;
for we reduced the interest-bearing debt by more than $90,000,000. To
achieve a marked increase in efficiency and at the same time an increase
in economy is not an easy feat; but we performed it.
There was one ugly and very necessary task. This was to discover and
root out corruption wherever it was found in any of the departments. The
first essential was to make it clearly understood that no political or
business or social influence of any kind would for one moment be even
considered when the honesty of a public official was at issue. It took
a little time to get this fact thoroughly drilled into the heads both
of the men within the service and of the political leaders without. The
feat was accomplished so thoroughly that every effort to interfere in
any shape or way with the course of justice was abandoned definitely and
for good. Most, although not all, of the frauds occurred in connection
with the Post-Office Department and the Land Office.
It was in the Post-Office Department that we first definitely
established the rule of conduct which became universal throughout the
whole service. Rumors of corruption in the department became rife, and
finally I spoke of them to the then First Assistant Postmaster-General,
afterwards Postmaster-General, Robert J. Wynne. He reported to me, after
some investigation, that in his belief there was doubtless corruption,
but that it was very difficult to get at it, and that the offenders
were confident and defiant because of their great political and business
backing and the ramifications of their crimes. Talking the matter over
with him, I came to the conclusion that the right man to carry on the
investigation was the then Fourth Assistant Postmaster-General, now
a Senator from Kansas, Joseph L. Bristow, who possessed the iron
fearlessness needful to front such a situation. Mr. Bristow had perforce
seen a good deal of the seamy side of politics, and of the extent of the
unscrupulousness with which powerful influence was brought to bear to
shield offenders. Before undertaking the investigation he came to see
me, and said that he did not wish to go into it unless he could be
assured that I would stand personally behind him, and, no matter where
his inquiries led him, would support him and prevent interference
with him. I answered that I would certainly do so. He went into
the investigation with relentless energy, dogged courage, and keen
intelligence. His success was complete, and the extent of his services
to the Nation are not easily to be exaggerated. He unearthed a really
appalling amount of corruption, and he did his work with such absolute
thoroughness that the corruption was completely eradicated.
We had, of course, the experience usual in all such investigations. At
first there was popular incredulity and disbelief that there was much
behind the charges, or that much could be unearthed. Then when the
corruption was shown there followed a yell of anger from all directions,
and a period during which any man accused was forthwith held guilty
by the public; and violent demands were made by the newspapers for the
prosecution not only of the men who could be prosecuted with a fair
chance of securing conviction and imprisonment, but of other men whose
misconduct had been such as to warrant my removing them from office, but
against whom it was not possible to get the kind of evidence which would
render likely conviction in a criminal case. Suits were brought against
all the officials whom we thought we could convict; and the public
complained bitterly that we did not bring further suits. We secured
several convictions, including convictions of the most notable
offenders. The trials consumed a good deal of time. Public attention was
attracted to something else. Indifference succeeded to excitement, and
in some subtle way the juries seemed to respond to the indifference. One
of the worst offenders was acquitted by a jury; whereupon not a few of
the same men who had insisted that the Government was derelict in not
criminally prosecuting every man whose misconduct was established so as
to make it necessary to turn him out of office, now turned round and,
inasmuch as the jury had not found this man guilty of crime, demanded
that he should be reinstated in office! It is needless to say that the
demand was not granted. There were two or three other acquittals, of
prominent outsiders. Nevertheless the net result was that the majority
of the worst offenders were sent to prison, and the remainder dismissed
from the Government service, if they were public officials, and if
they were not public officials at least so advertised as to render
it impossible that they should ever again have dealings with the
Government. The department was absolutely cleaned and became one of the
very best in the Government. Several Senators came to me--Mr. Garfield
was present on the occasion--and said that they were glad I was putting
a stop to corruption, but they hoped I would avoid all scandal; that if
I would make an example of some one man and then let the others quietly
resign, it would avoid a disturbance which might hurt the party. They
were advising me in good faith, and I was as courteous as possible in
my answer, but explained that I would have to act with the utmost rigor
against the offenders, no matter what the effect on the party, and,
moreover, that I did not believe it would hurt the party. It did not
hurt the party. It helped the party. A favorite war-cry in American
political life has always been, "Turn the rascals out." We made it
evident that, as far as we were concerned, this war-cry was pointless;
for we turned our own rascals out.
There were important and successful land fraud prosecutions in several
Western States. Probably the most important were the cases prosecuted in
Oregon by Francis J. Heney, with the assistance of William J. Burns,
a secret service agent who at that time began his career as a great
detective. It would be impossible to overstate the services rendered to
the cause of decency and honesty by Messrs. Heney and Burns. Mr. Heney
was my close and intimate adviser professionally and non-professionally,
not only as regards putting a stop to frauds in the public lands, but
in many other matters of vital interest to the Republic. No man in the
country has waged the battle for National honesty with greater courage
and success, with more whole-hearted devotion to the public good; and
no man has been more traduced and maligned by the wrong-doing agents
and representatives of the great sinister forces of evil. He secured the
conviction of various men of high political and financial standing
in connection with the Oregon prosecutions; he and Burns behaved with
scrupulous fairness and propriety; but their services to the public
caused them to incur the bitter hatred of those who had wronged the
public, and after I left office the National Administration turned
against them. One of the most conspicuous of the men whom they had
succeeded in convicting was pardoned by President Taft--in spite of the
fact that the presiding Judge, Judge Hunt, had held that the
evidence amply warranted the conviction, and had sentenced the man to
imprisonment. As was natural, the one hundred and forty-six land-fraud
defendants in Oregon, who included the foremost machine political
leaders in the State, furnished the backbone of the opposition to me in
the Presidential contest of 1912. The opposition rallied behind Messrs.
Taft and LaFollette; and although I carried the primaries handsomely,
half of the delegates elected from Oregon under instructions to vote for
me, sided with my opponents in the National Convention--and as regards
some of them I became convinced that the mainspring of their motive
lay in the intrigue for securing the pardon of certain of the men whose
conviction Heney had secured.
Land fraud and post-office cases were not the only ones. We were
especially zealous in prosecuting all of the "higher up" offenders
in the realms of politics and finance who swindled on a large scale.
Special assistants of the Attorney-General, such as Mr. Frank Kellogg,
of St. Paul, and various first-class Federal district attorneys in
different parts of the country secured notable results: Mr. Stimson and
his assistants, Messrs. Wise, Denison, and Frankfurter, in New York, for
instance, in connection with the prosecution of the Sugar Trust and of
the banker Morse, and of a great metropolitan newspaper for opening its
columns to obscene and immoral advertisements; and in St. Louis Messrs.
Dyer and Nortoni, who, among other services, secured the conviction and
imprisonment of Senator Burton, of Kansas; and in Chicago Mr. Sims,
who raised his office to the highest pitch of efficiency, secured the
conviction of the banker Walsh and of the Beef Trust, and first broke
through the armor of the Standard Oil Trust. It is not too much to say
that these men, and others like them, worked a complete revolution in
the enforcement of the Federal laws, and made their offices organized
legal machines fit and ready to conduct smashing fights for the people's
rights and to enforce the laws in aggressive fashion. When I took the
Presidency, it was a common and bitter saying that a big man, a rich
man, could not be put in jail. We put many big and rich men in jail;
two United States Senators, for instance, and among others two great
bankers, one in New York and one in Chicago. One of the United States
Senators died, the other served his term. (One of the bankers was
released from prison by executive order after I left office.) These were
merely individual cases among many others like them. Moreover, we
were just as relentless in dealing with crimes of violence among the
disorderly and brutal classes as in dealing with the crimes of cunning
and fraud of which certain wealthy men and big politicians were guilty.
Mr. Sims in Chicago was particularly efficient in sending to the
penitentiary numbers of the infamous men who batten on the "white
slave" traffic, after July, 1908, when by proclamation I announced
the adherence of our Government to the international agreement for the
suppression of the traffic.
The views I then held and now hold were expressed in a memorandum made
in the case of a Negro convicted of the rape of a young Negro girl,
practically a child. A petition for his pardon had been sent me.
WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C., August 8, 1904.
The application for the commutation of sentence of John W. Burley is
denied. This man committed the most hideous crime known to our laws, and
twice before he has committed crimes of a similar, though less horrible,
character. In my judgment there is no justification whatever for paying
heed to the allegations that he is not of sound mind, allegations made
after the trial and conviction. Nobody would pretend that there has ever
been any such degree of mental unsoundness shown as would make people
even consider sending him to an asylum if he had not committed this
crime. Under such circumstances he should certainly be esteemed sane
enough to suffer the penalty for his monstrous deed. I have scant
sympathy with the plea of insanity advanced to save a man from the
consequences of crime, when unless that crime had been committed it
would have been impossible to persuade any responsible authority to
commit him to an asylum as insane. Among the most dangerous criminals,
and especially among those prone to commit this particular kind of
offense, there are plenty of a temper so fiendish or so brutal as to be
incompatible with any other than a brutish order of intelligence; but
these men are nevertheless responsible for their acts; and nothing more
tends to encourage crime among such men than the belief that through the
plea of insanity or any other method it is possible for them to escape
paying the just penalty of their crimes. The crime in question is one
to the existence of which we largely owe the existence of that spirit
of lawlessness which takes form in lynching. It is a crime so revolting
that the criminal is not entitled to one particle of sympathy from any
human being. It is essential that the punishment for it should be not
only as certain but as swift as possible. The jury in this case did
their duty by recommending the infliction of the death penalty. It is
to be regretted that we do not have special provision for more summary
dealing with this type of case. The more we do what in us lies to
secure certain and swift justice in dealing with these cases, the more
effectively do we work against the growth of that lynching spirit which
is so full of evil omen for this people, because it seeks to avenge one
infamous crime by the commission of another of equal infamy.
The application is denied and the sentence will be carried into effect.
(Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
One of the most curious incidents of lawlessness with which I had to
deal affected an entire State. The State of Nevada in the year 1907
was gradually drifting into utter governmental impotence and downright
anarchy. The people were at heart all right; but the forces of evil had
been permitted to get the upper hand, and for the time being the decent
citizens had become helpless to assert themselves either by controlling
the greedy corporations on the one hand or repressing the murderous
violence of certain lawless labor organizations on the other hand. The
Governor of the State was a Democrat and a Southern man, and in the
abstract a strong believer in the doctrine of State's Rights. But his
experience finally convinced him that he could obtain order only through
the intervention of the National Government; and then he went over too
far and wished to have the National Government do his police work for
him. In the Rocky Mountain States there had existed for years what
was practically a condition of almost constant war between the wealthy
mine-owners and the Western Federation of Miners, at whose head stood
Messrs. Haywood, Pettibone, and Moyer, who were about that time indicted
for the murder of the Governor of Idaho. Much that was lawless, much
that was indefensible, had been done by both sides. The Legislature of
Nevada was in sympathy with, or at least was afraid of not expressing
sympathy for, Messrs. Moyer, Haywood, Pettibone, and their associates.
The State was practically without any police, and the Governor had
recommended the establishment of a State Constabulary, along the lines
of the Texas Rangers; but the Legislature rejected his request. The
Governor reported to me the conditions as follows. During 1907 the
Goldfield mining district became divided into two hostile camps. Half
of the Western Federation of Miners were constantly armed, and arms and
ammunition were purchased and kept by the union as a body, while the
mine-owners on their side retained large numbers of watchmen and guards
who were also armed and always on duty. In addition to these opposing
forces there was, as the Governor reported, an unusually large number of
the violent and criminal element, always attracted to a new and
booming mining camp. Under such conditions the civil authorities were
practically powerless, and the Governor, being helpless to avert civil
war, called on me to keep order. I accordingly threw in a body of
regular troops under General Funston. These kept order completely, and
the Governor became so well satisfied that he thought he would like
to have them there permanently! This seemed to me unhealthy, and on
December 28, 1907, I notified him that while I would do my duty, the
first need was that the State authorities should do theirs, and that
the first step towards this was the assembling of the Legislature.
I concluded my telegram: "If within five days from receipt of this
telegram you shall have issued the necessary notice to convene the
Legislature of Nevada, I shall continue the troops during a period of
three weeks. If when the term of five days has elapsed the notice has
not been issued, the troops will be immediately returned to their former
stations." I had already investigated the situation through a committee,
composed of the Chief of the Bureau of Corporations, Mr. H. K. Smith,
the Chief of the Bureau of Labor, Mr. C. P. Neill, and the Comptroller
of the Treasury, Mr. Lawrence Murray. These men I could thoroughly
trust, and their report, which was not over-favorable to either side,
had convinced me that the only permanent way to get good results was to
insist on the people of the State themselves grappling with and solving
their own troubles. The Governor summoned the Legislature, it met, and
the constabulary bill was passed. The troops remained in Nevada until
time had been given for the State authorities to organize their force so
that violence could at once be checked. Then they were withdrawn.
Nor was it only as regards their own internal affairs that I sometimes
had to get into active communication with the State authorities. There
has always been a strong feeling in California against the immigration
of Asiatic laborers, whether these are wage-workers or men who occupy
and till the soil. I believe this to be fundamentally a sound and proper
attitude, an attitude which must be insisted upon, and yet which can be
insisted upon in such a manner and with such courtesy and such sense of
mutual fairness and reciprocal obligation and respect as not to give any
just cause of offense to Asiatic peoples. In the present state of
the world's progress it is highly inadvisable that peoples in wholly
different stages of civilization, or of wholly different types of
civilization even although both equally high, shall be thrown into
intimate contact. This is especially undesirable when there is a
difference of both race and standard of living. In California the
question became acute in connection with the admission of the Japanese.
I then had and now have a hearty admiration for the Japanese people.
I believe in them; I respect their great qualities; I wish that our
American people had many of these qualities. Japanese and American
students, travelers, scientific and literary men, merchants engaged in
international trade, and the like can meet on terms of entire equality
and should be given the freest access each to the country of the other.
But the Japanese themselves would not tolerate the intrusion into
their country of a mass of Americans who would displace Japanese in the
business of the land. I think they are entirely right in this position.
I would be the first to admit that Japan has the absolute right to
declare on what terms foreigners shall be admitted to work in her
country, or to own land in her country, or to become citizens of her
country. America has and must insist upon the same right. The people
of California were right in insisting that the Japanese should not
come thither in mass, that there should be no influx of laborers, of
agricultural workers, or small tradesmen--in short, no mass settlement
or immigration.
Unfortunately, during the latter part of my term as President certain
unwise and demagogic agitators in California, to show their disapproval
of the Japanese coming into the State, adopted the very foolish
procedure of trying to provide by law that the Japanese children should
not be allowed to attend the schools with the white children, and
offensive and injurious language was used in connection with the
proposal. The Federal Administration promptly took up the matter with
the California authorities, and I got into personal touch with them. At
my request the Mayor of San Francisco and other leaders in the movement
came on to see me. I explained that the duty of the National Government
was twofold: in the first place, to meet every reasonable wish and every
real need of the people of California or any other State in dealing
with the people of a foreign power; and, in the next place, itself
exclusively and fully to exercise the right of dealing with this foreign
power.
Inasmuch as in the last resort, including that last of all resorts, war,
the dealing of necessity had to be between the foreign power and the
National Government, it was impossible to admit that the doctrine
of State sovereignty could be invoked in such a matter. As soon as
legislative or other action in any State affects a foreign nation, then
the affair becomes one for the Nation, and the State should deal with
the foreign power purely through the Nation.
I explained that I was in entire sympathy with the people of California
as to the subject of immigration of the Japanese in mass; but that of
course I wished to accomplish the object they had in view in the way
that would be most courteous and most agreeable to the feelings of the
Japanese; that all relations between the two peoples must be those of
reciprocal justice, and that it was an intolerable outrage on the part
of newspapers and public men to use offensive and insulting language
about a high-spirited, sensitive, and friendly people; and that such
action as was proposed about the schools could only have bad effects,
and would in no shape or way achieve the purpose that the Californians
had in mind. I also explained that I would use every resource of the
National Government to protect the Japanese in their treaty rights, and
would count upon the State authorities backing me up to the limit in
such action. In short, I insisted upon the two points (1) that the
Nation and not the individual States must deal with matters of such
international significance and must treat foreign nations with entire
courtesy and respect; and (2) that the Nation would at once, and in
efficient and satisfactory manner, take action that would meet the needs
of California. I both asserted the power of the Nation and offered a
full remedy for the needs of the State. This is the right, and the only
right, course. The worst possible course in such a case is to fail to
insist on the right of the Nation, to offer no action of the Nation to
remedy what is wrong, and yet to try to coax the State not to do what
it is mistakenly encouraged to believe it has the power to do, when no
other alternative is offered.
After a good deal of discussion, we came to an entirely satisfactory
conclusion. The obnoxious school legislation was abandoned, and I
secured an arrangement with Japan under which the Japanese themselves
prevented any immigration to our country of their laboring people, it
being distinctly understood that if there was such emigration the United
States would at once pass an exclusion law. It was of course infinitely
better that the Japanese should stop their own people from coming rather
than that we should have to stop them; but it was necessary for us to
hold this power in reserve.
Unfortunately, after I left office, a most mistaken and ill-advised
policy was pursued towards Japan, combining irritation and inefficiency,
which culminated in a treaty under which we surrendered this important
and necessary right. It was alleged in excuse that the treaty provided
for its own abrogation; but of course it is infinitely better to have a
treaty under which the power to exercise a necessary right is explicitly
retained rather than a treaty so drawn that recourse must be had to the
extreme step of abrogating if it ever becomes necessary to exercise the
right in question.
The arrangement we made worked admirably, and entirely achieved its
purpose. No small part of our success was due to the fact that we
succeeded in impressing on the Japanese that we sincerely admired and
respected them, and desired to treat them with the utmost consideration.
I cannot too strongly express my indignation with, and abhorrence
of, reckless public writers and speakers who, with coarse and vulgar
insolence, insult the Japanese people and thereby do the greatest wrong
not only to Japan but to their own country.
Such conduct represents that nadir of underbreeding and folly. The
Japanese are one of the great nations of the world, entitled to stand,
and standing, on a footing of full equality with any nation of Europe
or America. I have the heartiest admiration for them. They can teach us
much. Their civilization is in some respects higher than our own. It is
eminently undesirable that Japanese and Americans should attempt to
live together in masses; any such attempt would be sure to result
disastrously, and the far-seeing statesmen of both countries should join
to prevent it.
But this is not because either nation is inferior to the other; it is
because they are different. The two peoples represent two civilizations
which, although in many respects equally high, are so totally
distinct in their past history that it is idle to expect in one or two
generations to overcome this difference. One civilization is as old
as the other; and in neither case is the line of cultural descent
coincident with that of ethnic descent. Unquestionably the ancestors of
the great majority both of the modern Americans and the modern Japanese
were barbarians in that remote past which saw the origins of the
cultured peoples to which the Americans and the Japanese of to-day
severally trace their civilizations. But the lines of development of
these two civilizations, of the Orient and the Occident, have been
separate and divergent since thousands of years before the Christian
era; certainly since that hoary eld in which the Akkadian predecessors
of the Chaldean Semites held sway in Mesopotamia. An effort to mix
together, out of hand, the peoples representing the culminating points
of two such lines of divergent cultural development would be fraught
with peril; and this, I repeat, because the two are different, not
because either is inferior to the other. Wise statesmen, looking to the
future, will for the present endeavor to keep the two nations from mass
contact and intermingling, precisely because they wish to keep each in
relations of permanent good will and friendship with the other.
Exactly what was done in the particular crisis to which I refer is shown
in the following letter which, after our policy had been successfully
put into execution, I sent to the then Speaker of the California lower
house of the Legislature:
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, February 8, 1909.
HON P. A. STANTON, Speaker of the Assembly, Sacramento, California:
I trust there will be no misunderstanding of the Federal Government's
attitude. We are jealously endeavoring to guard the interests of
California and of the entire West in accordance with the desires of our
Western people. By friendly agreement with Japan, we are now carrying
out a policy which, while meeting the interests and desires of the
Pacific slope, is yet compatible, not merely with mutual self-respect,
but with mutual esteem and admiration between the Americans and
Japanese. The Japanese Government is loyally and in good faith doing its
part to carry out this policy, precisely as the American Government
is doing. The policy aims at mutuality of obligation and behavior. In
accordance with it the purpose is that the Japanese shall come here
exactly as Americans go to Japan, which is in effect that travelers,
students, persons engaged in international business, men who sojourn for
pleasure or study, and the like, shall have the freest access from one
country to the other, and shall be sure of the best treatment, but that
there shall be no settlement in mass by the people of either country in
the other. During the last six months under this policy more Japanese
have left the country than have come in, and the total number in the
United States has diminished by over two thousand. These figures are
absolutely accurate and cannot be impeached. In other words, if the
present policy is consistently followed and works as well in the future
as it is now working, all difficulties and causes of friction
will disappear, while at the same time each nation will retain its
self-respect and the good will of the other. But such a bill as this
school bill accomplishes literally nothing whatever in the line of the
object aimed at, and gives just and grave cause for irritation; while
in addition the United States Government would be obliged immediately to
take action in the Federal courts to test such legislation, as we hold
it to be clearly a violation of the treaty. On this point I refer you to
the numerous decisions of the United States Supreme Court in regard to
State laws which violate treaty obligations of the United States. The
legislation would accomplish nothing beneficial and would certainly
cause some mischief, and might cause very grave mischief. In short, the
policy of the Administration is to combine the maximum of efficiency in
achieving the real object which the people of the Pacific Slope have at
heart, with the minimum of friction and trouble, while the misguided men
who advocate such action as this against which I protest are following a
policy which combines the very minimum of efficiency with the maximum of
insult, and which, while totally failing to achieve any real result for
good, yet might accomplish an infinity of harm. If in the next year or
two the action of the Federal Government fails to achieve what it is now
achieving, then through the further action of the President and Congress
it can be made entirely efficient. I am sure that the sound judgment of
the people of California will support you, Mr. Speaker, in your effort.
Let me repeat that at present we are actually doing the very thing which
the people of California wish to be done, and to upset the arrangement
under which this is being done cannot do good and may do great harm.
If in the next year or two the figures of immigration prove that the
arrangement which has worked so successfully during the last six months
is no longer working successfully, then there would be ground for
grievance and for the reversal by the National Government of its present
policy. But at present the policy is working well, and until it works
badly it would be a grave misfortune to change it, and when changed it
can only be changed effectively by the National Government.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
In foreign and domestic affairs alike the policy pursued during my
Administration was simple. In foreign affairs the principle from which
we never deviated was to have the Nation behave toward other nations
precisely as a strong, honorable, and upright man behaves in dealing
with his fellow-men. There is no such thing as international law in the
sense that there is municipal law or law within a nation. Within the
nation there is always a judge, and a policeman who stands back of the
judge. The whole system of law depends first upon the fact that there is
a judge competent to pass judgment, and second upon the fact that there
is some competent officer whose duty it is to carry out this judgment,
by force if necessary. In international law there is no judge, unless
the parties in interest agree that one shall be constituted; and there
is no policeman to carry out the judge's orders. In consequence, as
yet each nation must depend upon itself for its own protection. The
frightful calamities that have befallen China, solely because she has
had no power of self-defense, ought to make it inexcusable in any wise
American citizen to pretend to patriotic purpose, and yet to fail to
insist that the United States shall keep in a condition of ability if
necessary to assert its rights with a strong hand. It is folly of the
criminal type for the Nation not to keep up its navy, not to fortify
its vital strategic points, and not to provide an adequate army for its
needs. On the other hand, it is wicked for the Nation to fail in either
justice, courtesy, or consideration when dealing with any other power,
big or little. John Hay was Secretary of State when I became President,
and continued to serve under me until his death, and his and my views
as to the attitude that the Nation should take in foreign affairs were
identical, both as regards our duty to be able to protect ourselves
against the strong and as regards our duty always to act not only justly
but generously toward the weak.
John Hay was one of the most delightful of companions, one of the most
charming of all men of cultivation and action. Our views on foreign
affairs coincided absolutely; but, as was natural enough, in domestic
matters he felt much more conservative than he did in the days when as
a young man he was private secretary to the great radical democratic
leader of the '60's, Abraham Lincoln. He was fond of jesting with me
about my supposedly dangerous tendencies in favor of labor against
capital. When I was inaugurated on March 4, 1905, I wore a ring he sent
me the evening before, containing the hair of Abraham Lincoln. This ring
was on my finger when the Chief Justice administered to me the oath of
allegiance to the United States; I often thereafter told John Hay that
when I wore such a ring on such an occasion I bound myself more than
ever to treat the Constitution, after the manner of Abraham Lincoln,
as a document which put human rights above property rights when the
two conflicted. The last Christmas John Hay was alive he sent me the
manuscript of a Norse saga by William Morris, with the following note:
Christmas Eve, 1904.
DEAR THEODORE: In your quality of Viking this Norse saga should belong
to you, and in your character of Enemy of Property this Ms. of William
Morris will appeal to you. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and many happy
years, I am yours affectionately,
JOHN HAY.
In internal affairs I cannot say that I entered the Presidency with any
deliberately planned and far-reaching scheme of social betterment. I
had, however, certain strong convictions; and I was on the lookout for
every opportunity of realizing those convictions. I was bent upon making
the Government the most efficient possible instrument in helping
the people of the United States to better themselves in every way,
politically, socially, and industrially. I believed with all my heart
in real and thoroughgoing democracy, and I wished to make this
democracy industrial as well as political, although I had only partially
formulated the methods I believed we should follow. I believed in the
people's rights, and therefore in National rights and States' rights
just exactly to the degree in which they severally secured popular
rights. I believed in invoking the National power with absolute freedom
for every National need; and I believed that the Constitution should be
treated as the greatest document ever devised by the wit of man to aid
a people in exercising every power necessary for its own betterment, and
not as a straitjacket cunningly fashioned to strangle growth. As for the
particular methods of realizing these various beliefs, I was content
to wait and see what method might be necessary in each given case as it
arose; and I was certain that the cases would arise fast enough.
As the time for the Presidential nomination of 1904 drew near, it became
evident that I was strong with the rank and file of the party, but that
there was much opposition to me among many of the big political leaders,
and especially among many of the Wall Street men. A group of these men
met in conference to organize this opposition. It was to be done with
complete secrecy. But such secrets are very hard to keep. I speedily
knew all about it, and took my measures accordingly. The big men in
question, who possessed much power so long as they could work under
cover, or so long as they were merely throwing their weight one way or
the other between forces fairly evenly balanced, were quite helpless
when fighting in the open by themselves. I never found out that anything
practical was even attempted by most of the men who took part in the
conference. Three or four of them, however, did attempt something. The
head of one big business corporation attempted to start an effort to
control the delegations from New Jersey, North Carolina, and certain
Gulf States against me. The head of a great railway system made
preparations for a more ambitious effort looking towards the control of
the delegations from Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and California
against me. He was a very powerful man financially, but his power
politically was much more limited, and he did not really understand his
own limitations or the situation itself, whereas I did. He could not
have secured a delegate against me from Iowa, Nebraska, or Kansas. In
Colorado and California he could have made a fight, but even there I
think he would have been completely beaten. However, long before the
time for the Convention came around, it was recognized that it was
hopeless to make any opposition to my nomination. The effort was
abandoned, and I was nominated unanimously. Judge Parker was nominated
by the Democrats against me. Practically all the metropolitan newspapers
of largest circulation were against me; in New York City fifteen out
of every sixteen copies of papers issued were hostile to me. I won by a
popular majority of about two million and a half, and in the electoral
college carried 330 votes against 136. It was by far the largest popular
majority ever hitherto given any Presidential candidate.
My opponents during the campaign had laid much stress upon my supposed
personal ambition and intention to use the office of President to
perpetuate myself in power. I did not say anything on the subject
prior to the election, as I did not wish to say anything that could be
construed into a promise offered as a consideration in order to secure
votes. But on election night, after the returns were in I issued the
following statement: "The wise custom which limits the President to two
terms regards the substance and not the form, and under no circumstances
will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination."
The reason for my choice of the exact phraseology used was twofold. In
the first place, many of my supporters were insisting that, as I had
served only three and a half years of my first term, coming in from the
Vice-Presidency when President McKinley was killed, I had really had
only one elective term, so that the third term custom did not apply to
me; and I wished to repudiate this suggestion. I believed then (and I
believe now) the third term custom or tradition to be wholesome, and,
therefore, I was determined to regard its substance, refusing to quibble
over the words usually employed to express it. On the other hand, I did
not wish simply and specifically to say that I would not be a candidate
for the nomination in 1908, because if I had specified the year when I
would not be a candidate, it would have been widely accepted as meaning
that I intended to be a candidate some other year; and I had no such
intention, and had no idea that I would ever be a candidate again.
Certain newspaper men did ask me if I intended to apply my prohibition
to 1912, and I answered that I was not thinking of 1912, nor of 1920,
nor of 1940, and that I must decline to say anything whatever except
what appeared in my statement.
The Presidency is a great office, and the power of the President can be
effectively used to secure a renomination, especially if the President
has the support of certain great political and financial interests. It
is for this reason, and this reason alone, that the wholesome principle
of continuing in office, so long as he is willing to serve, an incumbent
who has proved capable, is not applicable to the Presidency. Therefore,
the American people have wisely established a custom against allowing
any man to hold that office for more than two consecutive terms.
But every shred of power which a President exercises while in office
vanishes absolutely when he has once left office. An ex-President stands
precisely in the position of any other private citizen, and has not one
particle more power to secure a nomination or election than if he had
never held the office at all--indeed, he probably has less because of
the very fact that he has held the office. Therefore the reasoning on
which the anti-third term custom is based has no application whatever
to an ex-President, and no application whatever to anything except
consecutive terms. As a barrier of precaution against more than two
consecutive terms the custom embodies a valuable principle. Applied
in any other way it becomes a mere formula, and like all formulas
a potential source of mischievous confusion. Having this in mind, I
regarded the custom as applying practically, if not just as much, to a
President who had been seven and a half years in office as to one
who had been eight years in office, and therefore, in the teeth of a
practically unanimous demand from my own party that I accept another
nomination, and the reasonable certainty that the nomination would be
ratified at the polls, I felt that the substance of the custom applied
to me in 1908. On the other hand, it had no application whatever to any
human being save where it was invoked in the case of a man desiring a
third consecutive term. Having given such substantial proof of my own
regard for the custom, I deem it a duty to add this comment on it. I
believe that it is well to have a custom of this kind, to be generally
observed, but that it would be very unwise to have it definitely
hardened into a Constitutional prohibition. It is not desirable
ordinarily that a man should stay in office twelve consecutive years as
President; but most certainly the American people are fit to take care
of themselves, and stand in no need of an irrevocable self-denying
ordinance. They should not bind themselves never to take action which
under some quite conceivable circumstances it might be to their great
interest to take. It is obviously of the last importance to the safety
of a democracy that in time of real peril it should be able to command
the service of every one among its citizens in the precise position
where the service rendered will be most valuable. It would be a
benighted policy in such event to disqualify absolutely from the
highest office a man who while holding it had actually shown the highest
capacity to exercise its powers with the utmost effect for the public
defense. If, for instance, a tremendous crisis occurred at the end of
the second term of a man like Lincoln, as such a crisis occurred at the
end of his first term, it would be a veritable calamity if the American
people were forbidden to continue to use the services of the one man
whom they knew, and did not merely guess, could carry them through the
crisis. The third term tradition has no value whatever except as it
applies to a third consecutive term. While it is well to keep it as
a custom, it would be a mark both of weakness and unwisdom for the
American people to embody it into a Constitutional provision which could
not do them good and on some given occasion might work real harm.
There was one cartoon made while I was President, in which I appeared
incidentally, that was always a great favorite of mine. It pictured an
old fellow with chin whiskers, a farmer, in his shirt-sleeves, with his
boots off, sitting before the fire, reading the President's Message. On
his feet were stockings of the kind I have seen hung up by the dozen in
Joe Ferris's store at Medora, in the days when I used to come in to town
and sleep in one of the rooms over the store. The title of the picture
was "His Favorite Author." This was the old fellow whom I always used to
keep in mind. He had probably been in the Civil War in his youth; he had
worked hard ever since he left the army; he had been a good husband and
father; he had brought up his boys and girls to work; he did not wish to
do injustice to any one else, but he wanted justice done to himself and
to others like him; and I was bound to secure that justice for him if it
lay in my power to do so.[*]
[*] I believe I realized fairly well this ambition. I shall turn to
my enemies to attest the truth of this statement. The New York _Sun_,
shortly before the National Convention of 1904, spoke of me as follows:
"President Roosevelt holds that his nomination by the National
Republican Convention of 1904 is an assured thing. He makes no
concealment of his conviction, and it is unreservedly shared by his
friends. We think President Roosevelt is right.
"There are strong and convincing reasons why the President should feel
that success is within his grasp. He has used the opportunities that
he found or created, and he has used them with consummate skill and
undeniable success.
"The President has disarmed all his enemies. Every weapon they had,
new or old, has been taken from them and added to the now unassailable
Roosevelt arsenal. Why should people wonder that Mr. Bryan clings to
silver? Has not Mr. Roosevelt absorbed and sequestered every vestige of
the Kansas City platform that had a shred of practical value?
Suppose that Mr. Bryan had been elected President. What could he have
accomplished compared with what Mr. Roosevelt has accomplished? Will his
most passionate followers pretend for one moment that Mr. Bryan could
have conceived, much less enforced, any such pursuit of the trusts as
that which Mr. Roosevelt has just brought to a triumphant issue? Will
Mr. Bryan himself intimate that the Federal courts would have turned to
his projects the friendly countenance which they have lent to those of
Mr. Roosevelt?
"Where is 'government by injunction' gone to? The very emptiness of that
once potent phrase is beyond description! A regiment of Bryans could not
compete with Mr. Roosevelt in harrying the trusts, in bringing wealth to
its knees, and in converting into the palpable actualities of action the
wildest dreams of Bryan's campaign orators. He has outdone them all.
"And how utterly the President has routed the pretensions of Bryan, and
of the whole Democratic horde in respect to organized labor! How empty
were all their professions, their mouthings and their howlings in the
face of the simple and unpretentious achievements of the President! In
his own straightforward fashion he inflicted upon capital in one short
hour of the coal strike a greater humiliation than Bryan could have
visited upon it in a century. He is the leader of the labor unions of
the United States. Mr. Roosevelt has put them above the law and above
the Constitution, because for him they are the American people." [This
last, I need hardly say, is merely a rhetorical method of saying that I
gave the labor union precisely the same treatment as the corporation.]
Senator La Follette, in the issue of his magazine immediately following
my leaving the Presidency in March, 1909, wrote as follows:
"Roosevelt steps from the stage gracefully. He has ruled his party to a
large extent against its will. He has played a large part in the
world's work, for the past seven years. The activities of his remarkably
forceful personality have been so manifold that it will be long before
his true rating will be fixed in the opinion of the race. He is said to
think that the three great things done by him are the undertaking of the
construction of the Panama Canal and its rapid and successful carrying
forward, the making of peace between Russia and Japan, and the sending
around the world of the fleet.
"These are important things, but many will be slow to think them his
greatest services. The Panama Canal will surely serve mankind when in
operation; and the manner of organizing this work seems to be fine.
But no one can say whether this project will be a gigantic success or
a gigantic failure; and the task is one which must, in the nature of
things, have been undertaken and carried through some time soon, as
historic periods go, anyhow. The Peace of Portsmouth was a great thing
to be responsible for, and Roosevelt's good offices undoubtedly saved
a great and bloody battle in Manchuria. But the war was fought out, and
the parties ready to quit, and there is reason to think that it was
only when this situation was arrived at that the good offices of the
President of the United States were, more or less indirectly, invited.
The fleet's cruise was a strong piece of diplomacy, by which we informed
Japan that we will send our fleet wherever we please and whenever we
please. It worked out well.
"But none of these things, it will seem to many, can compare with some
of Roosevelt's other achievements. Perhaps he is loath to take credit as
a reformer, for he is prone to spell the word with question marks, and
to speak disparagingly of 'reform.'
"But for all that, this contemner of 'reformers' made reform respectable
in the United States, and this rebuker of 'muck-rakers' has been the
chief agent in making the history of 'muck-raking' in the United States
a National one, conceded to be useful. He has preached from the White
House many doctrines; but among them he has left impressed on the
American mind the one great truth of economic justice couched in the
pithy and stinging phrase 'the square deal.' The task of making reform
respectable in a commercialized world, and of giving the Nation a slogan
in a phrase, is greater than the man who performed it is likely to
think.
"And, then, there is the great and statesmanlike movement for the
conservation of our National resources, into which Roosevelt so
energetically threw himself at a time when the Nation as a whole knew
not that we are ruining and bankrupting ourselves as fast as we can.
This is probably the greatest thing Roosevelt did, undoubtedly. This
globe is the capital stock of the race. It is just so much coal and oil
and gas. This may be economized or wasted. The same thing is true of
phosphates and other mineral resources. Our water resources are immense,
and we are only just beginning to use them. Our forests have been
destroyed; they must be restored. Our soils are being depleted; they
must be built up and conserved.
"These questions are not of this day only or of this generation. They
belong all to the future. Their consideration requires that high moral
tone which regards the earth as the home of a posterity to whom we owe a
sacred duty.
"This immense idea Roosevelt, with high statesmanship, dinned into the
ears of the Nation until the Nation heeded. He held it so high that it
attracted the attention of the neighboring nations of the continent,
and will so spread and intensify that we will soon see the world's
conferences devoted to it.
"Nothing can be greater or finer than this. It is so great and so fine
that when the historian of the future shall speak of Theodore Roosevelt
he is likely to say that he did many notable things, among them that of
inaugurating the movement which finally resulted in the square deal,
but that his greatest work was inspiring and actually beginning a world
movement for staying terrestrial waste and saving for the human race
the things upon which, and upon which alone, a great and peaceful and
progressive and happy race life can be founded.
"What statesman in all history has done anything calling for so wide a
view and for a purpose more lofty?"
CHAPTER XI
THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE NATION
When Governor of New York, as I have already described, I had been in
consultation with Gifford Pinchot and F. H. Newell, and had shaped
my recommendations about forestry largely in accordance with their
suggestions. Like other men who had thought about the national future at
all, I had been growing more and more concerned over the destruction of
the forests.
While I had lived in the West I had come to realize the vital need of
irrigation to the country, and I had been both amused and irritated
by the attitude of Eastern men who obtained from Congress grants of
National money to develop harbors and yet fought the use of the Nation's
power to develop the irrigation work of the West. Major John Wesley
Powell, the explorer of the Grand Canyon, and Director of the Geological
Survey, was the first man who fought for irrigation, and he lived to see
the Reclamation Act passed and construction actually begun. Mr. F. H.
Newell, the present Director of the Reclamation Service, began his
work as an assistant hydraulic engineer under Major Powell; and, unlike
Powell, he appreciated the need of saving the forests and the soil
as well as the need of irrigation. Between Powell and Newell came, as
Director of the Geological Survey, Charles D. Walcott, who, after
the Reclamation Act was passed, by his force, pertinacity, and tact,
succeeded in putting the act into effect in the best possible manner.
Senator Francis G. Newlands, of Nevada, fought hard for the cause of
reclamation in Congress. He attempted to get his State to act, and when
that proved hopeless to get the Nation to act; and was ably assisted
by Mr. G. H. Maxwell, a Californian, who had taken a deep interest in
irrigation matters. Dr. W. J. McGee was one of the leaders in all the
later stages of the movement. But Gifford Pinchot is the man to whom
the nation owes most for what has been accomplished as regards the
preservation of the natural resources of our country. He led, and indeed
during its most vital period embodied, the fight for the preservation
through use of our forests. He played one of the leading parts in
the effort to make the National Government the chief instrument in
developing the irrigation of the arid West. He was the foremost leader
in the great struggle to coordinate all our social and governmental
forces in the effort to secure the adoption of a rational and farseeing
policy for securing the conservation of all our national resources. He
was already in the Government service as head of the Forestry Bureau
when I became President; he continued throughout my term, not only as
head of the Forest service, but as the moving and directing spirit in
most of the conservation work, and as counsellor and assistant on most
of the other work connected with the internal affairs of the country.
Taking into account the varied nature of the work he did, its vital
importance to the nation and the fact that as regards much of it he
was practically breaking new ground, and taking into account also
his tireless energy and activity, his fearlessness, his complete
disinterestedness, his single-minded devotion to the interests of the
plain people, and his extraordinary efficiency, I believe it is but
just to say that among the many, many public officials who under my
administration rendered literally invaluable service to the people of
the United States, he, on the whole, stood first. A few months after I
left the Presidency he was removed from office by President Taft.
The first work I took up when I became President was the work of
reclamation. Immediately after I had come to Washington, after the
assassination of President McKinley, while staying at the house of
my sister, Mrs. Cowles, before going into the White House, Newell and
Pinchot called upon me and laid before me their plans for National
irrigation of the arid lands of the West, and for the consolidation of
the forest work of the Government in the Bureau of Forestry.
At that time a narrowly legalistic point of view toward natural
resources obtained in the Departments, and controlled the Governmental
administrative machinery. Through the General Land Office and other
Government bureaus, the public resources were being handled and
disposed of in accordance with the small considerations of petty
legal formalities, instead of for the large purposes of constructive
development, and the habit of deciding, whenever possible, in favor of
private interests against the public welfare was firmly fixed. It was
as little customary to favor the bona-fide settler and home builder, as
against the strict construction of the law, as it was to use the law in
thwarting the operations of the land grabbers. A technical compliance
with the letter of the law was all that was required.
The idea that our natural resources were inexhaustible still obtained,
and there was as yet no real knowledge of their extent and condition.
The relation of the conservation of natural resources to the problems
of National welfare and National efficiency had not yet dawned on the
public mind. The reclamation of arid public lands in the West was still
a matter for private enterprise alone; and our magnificent river system,
with its superb possibilities for public usefulness, was dealt with by
the National Government not as a unit, but as a disconnected series of
pork-barrel problems, whose only real interest was in their effect
on the reelection or defeat of a Congressman here and there--a theory
which, I regret to say, still obtains.
The place of the farmer in the National economy was still regarded
solely as that of a grower of food to be eaten by others, while the
human needs and interests of himself and his wife and children still
remained wholly outside the recognition of the Government.
All the forests which belonged to the United States were held and
administered in one Department, and all the foresters in Government
employ were in another Department. Forests and foresters had nothing
whatever to do with each other. The National Forests in the West (then
called forest reserves) were wholly inadequate in area to meet the
purposes for which they were created, while the need for forest
protection in the East had not yet begun to enter the public mind.
Such was the condition of things when Newell and Pinchot called on me. I
was a warm believer in reclamation and in forestry, and, after listening
to my two guests, I asked them to prepare material on the subject for
me to use in my first message to Congress, of December 3, 1901. This
message laid the foundation for the development of irrigation and
forestry during the next seven and one-half years. It set forth the
new attitude toward the natural resources in the words: "The Forest
and water problems are perhaps the most vital internal problems of the
United States."
On the day the message was read, a committee of Western Senators and
Congressmen was organized to prepare a Reclamation Bill in accordance
with the recommendations. By far the most effective of the Senators
in drafting and pushing the bill, which became known by his name, was
Newlands. The draft of the bill was worked over by me and others at
several conferences and revised in important particulars; my active
interference was necessary to prevent it from being made unworkable by
an undue insistence upon States Rights, in accordance with the efforts
of Mr. Mondell and other Congressmen, who consistently fought for local
and private interests as against the interests of the people as a whole.
On June 17, 1902, the Reclamation Act was passed. It set aside the
proceeds of the disposal of public lands for the purpose of reclaiming
the waste areas of the arid West by irrigating lands otherwise
worthless, and thus creating new homes upon the land. The money so
appropriated was to be repaid to the Government by the settlers, and to
be used again as a revolving fund continuously available for the work.
The impatience of the Western people to see immediate results from the
Reclamation Act was so great that red tape was disregarded, and the work
was pushed forward at a rate previously unknown in Government affairs.
Later, as in almost all such cases, there followed the criticisms of
alleged illegality and haste which are so easy to make after results
have been accomplished and the need for the measures without which
nothing could have been done has gone by. These criticisms were in
character precisely the same as that made about the acquisition of
Panama, the settlement of the anthracite coal strike, the suits against
the big trusts, the stopping of the panic of 1907 by the action of the
Executive concerning the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; and, in short,
about most of the best work done during my administration.
With the Reclamation work, as with much other work under me, the men
in charge were given to understand that they must get into the water if
they would learn to swim; and, furthermore, they learned to know that if
they acted honestly, and boldly and fearlessly accepted responsibility,
I would stand by them to the limit. In this, as in every other case, in
the end the boldness of the action fully justified itself.
Every item of the whole great plan of Reclamation now in effect was
undertaken between 1902 and 1906. By the spring of 1909 the work was an
assured success, and the Government had become fully committed to its
continuance. The work of Reclamation was at first under the United
States Geological Survey, of which Charles D. Walcott was at that time
Director. In the spring of 1908 the United States Reclamation Service
was established to carry it on, under the direction of Frederick
Hayes Newell, to whom the inception of the plan was due. Newell's
single-minded devotion to this great task, the constructive imagination
which enabled him to conceive it, and the executive power and high
character through which he and his assistant, Arthur P. Davis, built
up a model service--all these have made him a model servant. The final
proof of his merit is supplied by the character and records of the men
who later assailed him.
Although the gross expenditure under the Reclamation Act is not yet
as large as that for the Panama Canal, the engineering obstacles to be
overcome have been almost as great, and the political impediments many
times greater. The Reclamation work had to be carried on at widely
separated points, remote from railroads, under the most difficult
pioneer conditions. The twenty-eight projects begun in the years 1902
to 1906 contemplated the irrigation of more than three million acres
and the watering of more than thirty thousand farms. Many of the
dams required for this huge task are higher than any previously built
anywhere in the world. They feed main-line canals over seven thousand
miles in total length, and involve minor constructions, such as culverts
and bridges, tens of thousands in number.
What the Reclamation Act has done for the country is by no means limited
to its material accomplishment. This Act and the results flowing from it
have helped powerfully to prove to the Nation that it can handle its own
resources and exercise direct and business-like control over them. The
population which the Reclamation Act has brought into the arid West,
while comparatively small when compared with that in the more closely
inhabited East, has been a most effective contribution to the National
life, for it has gone far to transform the social aspect of the West,
making for the stability of the institutions upon which the welfare of
the whole country rests: it has substituted actual homemakers, who have
settled on the land with their families, for huge, migratory bands of
sheep herded by the hired shepherds of absentee owners.
The recent attacks on the Reclamation Service, and on Mr. Newell, arise
in large part, if not altogether, from an organized effort to repudiate
the obligation of the settlers to repay the Government for what it has
expended to reclaim the land. The repudiation of any debt can always
find supporters, and in this case it has attracted the support not only
of certain men among the settlers who hope to be relieved of paying what
they owe, but also of a variety of unscrupulous politicians, some highly
placed. It is unlikely that their efforts to deprive the West of
the revolving Irrigation fund will succeed in doing anything but
discrediting these politicians in the sight of all honest men.
When in the spring of 1911 I visited the Roosevelt Dam in Arizona, and
opened the reservoir, I made a short speech to the assembled people.
Among other things, I said to the engineers present that in the name of
all good citizens I thanked them for their admirable work, as efficient
as it was honest, and conducted according to the highest standards of
public service. As I looked at the fine, strong, eager faces of those
of the force who were present, and thought of the similar men in the
service, in the higher positions, who were absent, and who were no less
responsible for the work done, I felt a foreboding that they would
never receive any real recognition for their achievement; and, only half
humorously, I warned them not to expect any credit, or any satisfaction,
except their own knowledge that they had done well a first-class job,
for that probably the only attention Congress would ever pay them would
be to investigate them. Well, a year later a Congressional Committee
actually did investigate them. The investigation was instigated by some
unscrupulous local politicians and by some settlers who wished to be
relieved from paying their just obligations; and the members of the
Committee joined in the attack on as fine and honorable a set of public
servants as the Government has ever had; an attack made on them solely
because they were honorable and efficient and loyal to the interests
both of the Government and the settlers.
When I became President, the Bureau of Forestry (since 1905 the United
States Forest Service) was a small but growing organization, under
Gifford Pinchot, occupied mainly with laying the foundation of American
forestry by scientific study of the forests, and with the promotion of
forestry on private lands. It contained all the trained foresters in the
Government service, but had charge of no public timberland whatsoever.
The Government forest reserves of that day were in the care of a
Division in the General Land Office, under the management of clerks
wholly without knowledge of forestry, few if any of whom had ever seen
a foot of the timberlands for which they were responsible. Thus the
reserves were neither well protected nor well used. There were no
foresters among the men who had charge of the National Forests, and no
Government forests in charge of the Government foresters.
In my first message to Congress I strongly recommended the consolidation
of the forest work in the hands of the trained men of the Bureau of
Forestry. This recommendation was repeated in other messages, but
Congress did not give effect to it until three years later. In the
meantime, by thorough study of the Western public timberlands, the
groundwork was laid for the responsibilities which were to fall upon
the Bureau of Forestry when the care of the National Forests came to be
transferred to it. It was evident that trained American Foresters would
be needed in considerable numbers, and a forest school was established
at Yale to supply them.
In 1901, at my suggestion as President, the Secretary of the Interior,
Mr. Hitchcock, made a formal request for technical advice from the
Bureau of Forestry in handling the National Forests, and an extensive
examination of their condition and needs was accordingly taken up. The
same year a study was begun of the proposed Appalachian National Forest,
the plan of which, already formulated at that time, has since been
carried out. A year later experimental planting on the National Forests
was also begun, and studies preparatory to the application of practical
forestry to the Indian Reservations were undertaken. In 1903, so
rapidly did the public work of the Bureau of Forestry increase, that the
examination of land for new forest reserves was added to the study
of those already created, the forest lands of the various States were
studied, and cooperation with several of them in the examination and
handling of their forest lands was undertaken. While these practical
tasks were pushed forward, a technical knowledge of American Forests
was rapidly accumulated. The special knowledge gained was made public
in printed bulletins; and at the same time the Bureau undertook, through
the newspaper and periodical press, to make all the people of the United
States acquainted with the needs and the purposes of practical
forestry. It is doubtful whether there has ever been elsewhere under the
Government such effective publicity--publicity purely in the interest of
the people--at so low a cost. Before the educational work of the Forest
Service was stopped by the Taft Administration, it was securing
the publication of facts about forestry in fifty million copies of
newspapers a month at a total expense of $6000 a year. Not one cent has
ever been paid by the Forest Service to any publication of any kind for
the printing of this material. It was given out freely, and published
without cost because it was news. Without this publicity the Forest
Service could not have survived the attacks made upon it by the
representatives of the great special interests in Congress; nor could
forestry in America have made the rapid progress it has.
The result of all the work outlined above was to bring together in the
Bureau of Forestry, by the end of 1904, the only body of forest experts
under the Government, and practically all of the first-hand information
about the public forests which was then in existence. In 1905, the
obvious foolishness of continuing to separate the foresters and the
forests, reenforced by the action of the First National Forest Congress,
held in Washington, brought about the Act of February 1, 1905,
which transferred the National Forests from the care of the Interior
Department to the Department of Agriculture, and resulted in the
creation of the present United States Forest Service.
The men upon whom the responsibility of handling some sixty million
acres of National Forest lands was thus thrown were ready for the work,
both in the office and in the field, because they had been preparing
for it for more than five years. Without delay they proceeded, under the
leadership of Pinchot, to apply to the new work the principles they had
already formulated. One of these was to open all the resources of the
National Forests to regulated use. Another was that of putting every
part of the land to that use in which it would best serve the public.
Following this principle, the Act of June 11, 1906, was drawn, and its
passage was secured from Congress. This law throws open to settlement
all land in the National Forests that is found, on examination, to be
chiefly valuable for agriculture. Hitherto all such land had been closed
to the settler.
The principles thus formulated and applied may be summed up in the
statement that the rights of the public to the natural resources
outweigh private rights, and must be given its first consideration.
Until that time, in dealing with the National Forests, and the public
lands generally, private rights had almost uniformly been allowed to
overbalance public rights. The change we made was right, and was vitally
necessary; but, of course, it created bitter opposition from private
interests.
One of the principles whose application was the source of much hostility
was this: It is better for the Government to help a poor man to make a
living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his
company. This principle was too sound to be fought openly. It is the
kind of principle to which politicians delight to pay unctuous homage in
words. But we translated the words into deeds; and when they found that
this was the case, many rich men, especially sheep owners, were stirred
to hostility, and they used the Congressmen they controlled to assault
us--getting most aid from certain demagogues, who were equally glad
improperly to denounce rich men in public and improperly to serve them
in private. The Forest Service established and enforced regulations
which favored the settler as against the large stock owner; required
that necessary reductions in the stock grazed on any National Forest
should bear first on the big man, before the few head of the small man,
upon which the living of his family depended, were reduced; and made
grazing in the National Forests a help, instead of a hindrance, to
permanent settlement. As a result, the small settlers and their families
became, on the whole, the best friends the Forest Service has; although
in places their ignorance was played on by demagogues to influence them
against the policy that was primarily for their own interest.
Another principle which led to the bitterest antagonism of all was
this--whoever (except a bona-fide settler) takes public property for
private profit should pay for what he gets. In the effort to apply
this principle, the Forest Service obtained a decision from the
Attorney-General that it was legal to make the men who grazed sheep and
cattle on the National Forests pay for what they got. Accordingly, in
the summer of 1906, for the first time, such a charge was made; and, in
the face of the bitterest opposition, it was collected.
Up to the time the National Forests were put under the charge of the
Forest Service, the Interior Department had made no effort to establish
public regulation and control of water powers. Upon the transfer, the
Service immediately began its fight to handle the power resources of the
National Forests so as to prevent speculation and monopoly and to yield
a fair return to the Government. On May 1, 1906, an Act was passed
granting the use of certain power sites in Southern California to the
Edison Electric Power Company, which Act, at the suggestion of the
Service, limited the period of the permit to forty years, and required
the payment of an annual rental by the company, the same conditions
which were thereafter adopted by the Service as the basis for all
permits for power development. Then began a vigorous fight against
the position of the Service by the water-power interests. The right
to charge for water-power development was, however, sustained by the
Attorney-General.
In 1907, the area of the National Forests was increased by Presidential
proclamation more than forty-three million acres; the plant necessary
for the full use of the Forests, such as roads, trails, and telephone
lines, began to be provided on a large scale; the interchange of field
and office men, so as to prevent the antagonism between them, which is
so destructive of efficiency in most great businesses, was established
as a permanent policy; and the really effective management of the
enormous area of the National Forests began to be secured.
With all this activity in the field, the progress of technical forestry
and popular education was not neglected. In 1907, for example, sixty-one
publications on various phases of forestry, with a total of more than a
million copies, were issued, as against three publications, with a
total of eighty-two thousand copies, in 1901. By this time, also, the
opposition of the servants of the special interests in Congress to the
Forest Service had become strongly developed, and more time appeared
to be spent in the yearly attacks upon it during the passage of the
appropriation bills than on all other Government Bureaus put together.
Every year the Forest Service had to fight for its life.
One incident in these attacks is worth recording. While the Agricultural
Appropriation Bill was passing through the Senate, in 1907, Senator
Fulton, of Oregon, secured an amendment providing that the President
could not set aside any additional National Forests in the six
Northwestern States. This meant retaining some sixteen million of acres
to be exploited by land grabbers and by the representatives of the great
special interests, at the expense of the public interest. But for four
years the Forest Service had been gathering field notes as to what
forests ought to be set aside in these States, and so was prepared to
act. It was equally undesirable to veto the whole agricultural bill, and
to sign it with this amendment effective. Accordingly, a plan to create
the necessary National Forest in these States before the Agricultural
Bill could be passed and signed was laid before me by Mr. Pinchot. I
approved it. The necessary papers were immediately prepared. I signed
the last proclamation a couple of days before, by my signature, the bill
became law; and, when the friends of the special interests in the Senate
got their amendment through and woke up, they discovered that sixteen
million acres of timberland had been saved for the people by putting
them in the National Forests before the land grabbers could get at them.
The opponents of the Forest Service turned handsprings in their wrath;
and dire were their threats against the Executive; but the threats could
not be carried out, and were really only a tribute to the efficiency of
our action.
By 1908, the fire prevention work of the Forest Service had become so
successful that eighty-six per cent of the fires that did occur were
held down to an area of five acres or less, and the timber sales, which
yielded $60,000 in 1905, in 1908 produced $850,000. In the same year, in
addition to the work of the National Forests, the responsibility for the
proper handling of Indian timberlands was laid upon the Forest Service,
where it remained with great benefit to the Indians until it was
withdrawn, as a part of the attack on the Conservation policy made after
I left office.
By March 4, 1909, nearly half a million acres of agricultural land in
the National Forests had been opened to settlement under the Act of
June 11, 1906. The business management of the Forest Service became so
excellent, thanks to the remarkable executive capacity of the Associate
Forester, Overton W. Price (removed after I left office), that it
was declared by a well-known firm of business organizers to compare
favorably with the best managed of the great private corporations,
an opinion which was confirmed by the report of a Congressional
investigation, and by the report of the Presidential Committee on
Department method. The area of the National Forests had increased from
43 to 194 million acres; the force from about 500 to more than 3000.
There was saved for public use in the National Forests more Government
timberland during the seven and a half years prior to March 4, 1909,
than during all previous and succeeding years put together.
The idea that the Executive is the steward of the public welfare was
first formulated and given practical effect in the Forest Service by its
law officer, George Woodruff. The laws were often insufficient, and it
became well-nigh impossible to get them amended in the public interest
when once the representatives of privilege in Congress grasped the fact
that I would sign no amendment that contained anything not in the public
interest. It was necessary to use what law was already in existence,
and then further to supplement it by Executive action. The practice
of examining every claim to public land before passing it into private
ownership offers a good example of the policy in question. This
practice, which has since become general, was first applied in the
National Forests. Enormous areas of valuable public timberland were
thereby saved from fraudulent acquisition; more than 250,000 acres were
thus saved in a single case.
This theory of stewardship in the interest of the public was well
illustrated by the establishment of a water-power policy. Until the
Forest Service changed the plan, water-powers on the navigable streams,
on the public domain, and in the National Forests were given away for
nothing, and substantially without question, to whoever asked for them.
At last, under the principle that public property should be paid for
and should not be permanently granted away when such permanent grant is
avoidable, the Forest Service established the policy of regulating the
use of power in the National Forests in the public interest and making
a charge for value received. This was the beginning of the water-power
policy now substantially accepted by the public, and doubtless soon to
be enacted into law. But there was at the outset violent opposition to
it on the part of the water-power companies, and such representatives of
their views in Congress as Messrs. Tawney and Bede.
Many bills were introduced in Congress aimed, in one way or another, at
relieving the power companies of control and payment. When these bills
reached me I refused to sign them; and the injury to the public interest
which would follow their passage was brought sharply to public attention
in my message of February 26, 1908. The bills made no further progress.
Under the same principle of stewardship, railroads and other
corporations, which applied for and were given rights in the National
Forests, were regulated in the use of those rights. In short, the public
resources in charge of the Forest Service were handled frankly and
openly for the public welfare under the clear-cut and clearly set forth
principle that the public rights come first and private interest second.
The natural result of this new attitude was the assertion in every form
by the representatives of special interests that the Forest Service
was exceeding its legal powers and thwarting the intention of Congress.
Suits were begun wherever the chance arose. It is worth recording that,
in spite of the novelty and complexity of the legal questions it had
to face, no court of last resort has ever decided against the Forest
Service. This statement includes two unanimous decisions by the Supreme
Court of the United States (U. S. vs. Grimaud, 220 U. S., 506, and Light
vs. U. S., 220 U. S., 523).
In its administration of the National Forests, the Forest Service
found that valuable coal lands were in danger of passing into private
ownership without adequate money return to the Government and
without safeguard against monopoly; and that existing legislation was
insufficient to prevent this. When this condition was brought to my
attention I withdrew from all forms of entry about sixty-eight million
acres of coal land in the United States, including Alaska. The refusal
of Congress to act in the public interest was solely responsible for
keeping these lands from entry.
The Conservation movement was a direct outgrowth of the forest movement.
It was nothing more than the application to our other natural resources
of the principles which had been worked out in connection with the
forests. Without the basis of public sentiment which had been built up
for the protection of the forests, and without the example of public
foresight in the protection of this, one of the great natural resources,
the Conservation movement would have been impossible. The first formal
step was the creation of the Inland Waterways Commission, appointed
on March 14, 1907. In my letter appointing the Commission, I called
attention to the value of our streams as great natural resources, and to
the need for a progressive plan for their development and control, and
said: "It is not possible to properly frame so large a plan as this
for the control of our rivers without taking account of the orderly
development of other natural resources. Therefore I ask that the Inland
Waterways Commission shall consider the relations of the streams to the
use of all the great permanent natural resources and their conservation
for the making and maintenance of prosperous homes."
Over a year later, writing on the report of the Commission, I said:
"The preliminary Report of the Inland Waterways Commission was excellent
in every way. It outlines a general plan of waterway improvement which
when adopted will give assurance that the improvements will yield
practical results in the way of increased navigation and water
transportation. In every essential feature the plan recommended by the
Commission is new. In the principle of coordinating all uses of the
waters and treating each waterway system as a unit; in the principle
of correlating water traffic with rail and other land traffic; in the
principle of expert initiation of projects in accordance with commercial
foresight and the needs of a growing country; and in the principle
of cooperation between the States and the Federal Government in the
administration and use of waterways, etc.; the general plan proposed by
the Commission is new, and at the same time sane and simple. The plan
deserves unqualified support. I regret that it has not yet been adopted
by Congress, but I am confident that ultimately it will be adopted."
The most striking incident in the history of the Commission was the trip
down the Mississippi River in October, 1907, when, as President of the
United States, I was the chief guest. This excursion, with the meetings
which were held and the wide public attention it attracted, gave the
development of our inland waterways a new standing in public estimation.
During the trip a letter was prepared and presented to me asking me
to summon a conference on the conservation of natural resources. My
intention to call such a conference was publicly announced at a great
meeting at Memphis, Tenn.
In the November following I wrote to each of the Governors of the
several States and to the Presidents of various important National
Societies concerned with natural resources, inviting them to attend the
conference, which took place May 13 to 15, 1908, in the East Room of the
White House. It is doubtful whether, except in time of war, any new idea
of like importance has ever been presented to a Nation and accepted
by it with such effectiveness and rapidity, as was the case with this
Conservation movement when it was introduced to the American people
by the Conference of Governors. The first result was the unanimous
declaration of the Governors of all the States and Territories upon
the subject of Conservation, a document which ought to be hung in every
schoolhouse throughout the land. A further result was the appointment of
thirty-six State Conservation Commissions and, on June 8, 1908, of the
National Conservation Commission. The task of this Commission was to
prepare an inventory, the first ever made for any nation, of all the
natural resources which underlay its property. The making of this
inventory was made possible by an Executive order which placed
the resources of the Government Departments at the command of the
Commission, and made possible the organization of subsidiary committees
by which the actual facts for the inventory were prepared and digested.
Gifford Pinchot was made chairman of the Commission.
The report of the National Conservation Commission was not only the
first inventory of our resources, but was unique in the history of
Government in the amount and variety of information brought together. It
was completed in six months. It laid squarely before the American people
the essential facts regarding our natural resources, when facts were
greatly needed as the basis for constructive action. This report was
presented to the Joint Conservation Congress in December, at which there
were present Governors of twenty States, representatives of twenty-two
State Conservation Commissions, and representatives of sixty National
organizations previously represented at the White House conference.
The report was unanimously approved, and transmitted to me, January
11, 1909. On January 22, 1909, I transmitted the report of the National
Conservation Commission to Congress with a Special Message, in which
it was accurately described as "one of the most fundamentally important
documents ever laid before the American people."
The Joint Conservation Conference of December, 1908, suggested to me the
practicability of holding a North American Conservation Conference. I
selected Gifford Pinchot to convey this invitation in person to Lord
Grey, Governor General of Canada; to Sir Wilfrid Laurier; and to
President Diaz of Mexico; giving as reason for my action, in the letter
in which this invitation was conveyed, the fact that: "It is evident
that natural resources are not limited by the boundary lines which
separate nations, and that the need for conserving them upon this
continent is as wide as the area upon which they exist."
In response to this invitation, which included the colony of
Newfoundland, the Commissioners assembled in the White House on February
18, 1909. The American Commissioners were Gifford Pinchot, Robert Bacon,
and James R. Garfield. After a session continuing through five days, the
Conference united in a declaration of principles, and suggested to the
President of the United States "that all nations should be invited to
join together in conference on the subject of world resources, and their
inventory, conservation, and wise utilization." Accordingly, on February
19, 1909, Robert Bacon, Secretary of State, addressed to forty-five
nations a letter of invitation "to send delegates to a conference to be
held at The Hague at such date to be found convenient, there to meet
and consult the like delegates of the other countries, with a view of
considering a general plan for an inventory of the natural resources
of the world and to devising a uniform scheme for the expression of
the results of such inventory, to the end that there may be a general
understanding and appreciation of the world's supply of the material
elements which underlie the development of civilization and the welfare
of the peoples of the earth." After I left the White House the project
lapsed.
Throughout the early part of my Administration the public land policy
was chiefly directed to the defense of the public lands against fraud
and theft. Secretary Hitchcock's efforts along this line resulted in
the Oregon land fraud cases, which led to the conviction of Senator
Mitchell, and which made Francis J. Heney known to the American people
as one of their best and most effective servants. These land fraud
prosecutions under Mr. Heney, together with the study of the public
lands which preceded the passage of the Reclamation Act in 1902, and
the investigation of land titles in the National Forests by the Forest
Service, all combined to create a clearer understanding of the need of
land law reform, and thus led to the appointment of the Public Lands
Commission. This Commission, appointed by me on October 22, 1903, was
directed to report to the President: "Upon the condition, operation, and
effect of the present land laws, and to recommend such changes as are
needed to effect the largest practicable disposition of the public lands
to actual settlers who will build permanent homes upon them, and to
secure in permanence the fullest and most effective use of the resources
of the public lands." It proceeded without loss of time to make a
personal study on the ground of public land problems throughout the
West, to confer with the Governors and other public men most concerned,
and to assemble the information concerning the public lands, the laws
and decisions which governed them, and the methods of defeating or
evading those laws, which was already in existence, but which remained
unformulated in the records of the General Land Office and in the mind
of its employees. The Public Lands Commission made its first preliminary
report on March 7, 1904. It found "that the present land laws do not fit
the conditions of the remaining public lands," and recommended specific
changes to meet the public needs. A year later the second report of the
Commission recommended still further changes, and said "The fundamental
fact that characterizes the situation under the present land laws
is this, that the number of patents issued is increasing out of all
proportion to the number of new homes." This report laid the foundation
of the movement for Government control of the open range, and included
by far the most complete statement ever made of the disposition of the
public domain.
Among the most difficult topics considered by the Public Lands
Commission was that of the mineral land laws. This subject was referred
by the Commission to the American Institute of Mining Engineers, which
reported upon it through a Committee. This Committee made the very
important recommendation, among others, "that the Government of the
United States should retain title to all minerals, including coal
and oil, in the lands of unceded territory, and lease the same to
individuals or corporations at a fixed rental." The necessity for
this action has since come to be very generally recognized. Another
recommendation, since partly carried into effect, was for the separation
of the surface and the minerals in lands containing coal and oil.
Our land laws have of recent years proved inefficient; yet the land laws
themselves have not been so much to blame as the lax, unintelligent, and
often corrupt administration of these laws. The appointment on March 4,
1907, of James R. Garfield as Secretary of the Interior led to a new era
in the interpretation and enforcement of the laws governing the
public lands. His administration of the Interior Department was beyond
comparison the best we have ever had. It was based primarily on the
conception that it is as much the duty of public land officials to
help the honest settler get title to his claim as it is to prevent the
looting of the public lands. The essential fact about public land frauds
is not merely that public property is stolen, but that every claim
fraudulently acquired stands in the way of the making of a home or a
livelihood by an honest man.
As the study of the public land laws proceeded and their administration
improved, a public land policy was formulated in which the saving of
the resources on the public domain for public use became the leading
principle. There followed the withdrawal of coal lands as already
described, of oil lands and phosphate lands, and finally, just at the
end of the Administration, of water-power sites on the public domain.
These withdrawals were made by the Executive in order to afford to
Congress the necessary opportunity to pass wise laws dealing with their
use and disposal; and the great crooked special interests fought them
with incredible bitterness.
Among the men of this Nation interested in the vital problems affecting
the welfare of the ordinary hard-working men and women of the Nation,
there is none whose interest has been more intense, and more wholly free
from taint of thought of self, than that of Thomas Watson, of Georgia.
While President I often discussed with him the condition of women on
the small farms, and on the frontier, the hardship of their lives as
compared with those of the men, and the need for taking their welfare
into consideration in whatever was done for the improvement of life on
the land. I also went over the matter with C. S. Barrett, of Georgia,
a leader in the Southern farmers' movement, and with other men, such as
Henry Wallace, Dean L. H. Bailey, of Cornell, and Kenyon Butterfield.
One man from whose advice I especially profited was not an American, but
an Irishman, Sir Horace Plunkett. In various conversations he described
to me and my close associates the reconstruction of farm life which had
been accomplished by the Agricultural Organization Society of Ireland,
of which he was the founder and the controlling force; and he discussed
the application of similar methods to the improvements of farm life
in the United States. In the spring of 1908, at my request, Plunkett
conferred on the subject with Garfield and Pinchot, and the latter
suggested to him the appointment of a Commission on Country Life as a
means for directing the attention of the Nation to the problems of the
farm, and for securing the necessary knowledge of the actual conditions
of life in the open country. After long discussion a plan for a Country
Life Commission was laid before me and approved. The appointment of the
Commission followed in August, 1908. In the letter of appointment the
reasons for creating the Commission were set forth as follows: "I doubt
if any other nation can bear comparison with our own in the amount
of attention given by the Government, both Federal and State, to
agricultural matters. But practically the whole of this effort has
hitherto been directed toward increasing the production of crops. Our
attention has been concentrated almost exclusively on getting better
farming. In the beginning this was unquestionably the right thing to do.
The farmer must first of all grow good crops in order to support himself
and his family. But when this has been secured, the effort for better
farming should cease to stand alone, and should be accompanied by the
effort for better business and better living on the farm. It is at least
as important that the farmer should get the largest possible return in
money, comfort, and social advantages from the crops he grows, as that
he should get the largest possible return in crops from the land he
farms. Agriculture is not the whole of country life. The great rural
interests are human interests, and good crops are of little value to the
farmer unless they open the door to a good kind of life on the farm."
The Commission on Country Life did work of capital importance. By means
of a widely circulated set of questions the Commission informed itself
upon the status of country life throughout the Nation. Its trip through
the East, South, and West brought it into contact with large numbers of
practical farmers and their wives, secured for the Commissioners a most
valuable body of first-hand information, and laid the foundation for the
remarkable awakening of interest in country life which has since taken
place throughout the Nation.
One of the most illuminating--and incidentally one of the most
interesting and amusing--series of answers sent to the Commission was
from a farmer in Missouri. He stated that he had a wife and 11 living
children, he and his wife being each 52 years old; and that they owned
520 acres of land without any mortgage hanging over their heads. He had
himself done well, and his views as to why many of his neighbors had
done less well are entitled to consideration. These views are expressed
in terse and vigorous English; they cannot always be quoted in full. He
states that the farm homes in his neighborhood are not as good as they
should be because too many of them are encumbered by mortgages; that the
schools do not train boys and girls satisfactorily for life on the farm,
because they allow them to get an idea in their heads that city life is
better, and that to remedy this practical farming should be taught. To
the question whether the farmers and their wives in his neighborhood are
satisfactorily organized, he answers: "Oh, there is a little one-horse
grange gang in our locality, and every darned one thinks they ought
to be a king." To the question, "Are the renters of farms in your
neighborhood making a satisfactory living?" he answers: "No; because
they move about so much hunting a better job." To the question, "Is the
supply of farm labor in your neighborhood satisfactory?" the answer is:
"No; because the people have gone out of the baby business"; and when
asked as to the remedy, he answers, "Give a pension to every mother who
gives birth to seven living boys on American soil." To the question,
"Are the conditions surrounding hired labor on the farm in your
neighborhood satisfactory to the hired men?" he answers: "Yes, unless he
is a drunken cuss," adding that he would like to blow up the stillhouses
and root out whiskey and beer. To the question, "Are the sanitary
conditions on the farms in your neighborhood satisfactory?" he answers:
"No; too careless about chicken yards, and the like, and poorly covered
wells. In one well on neighbor's farm I counted seven snakes in the wall
of the well, and they used the water daily: his wife dead now and he is
looking for another." He ends by stating that the most important single
thing to be done for the betterment of country life is "good roads"; but
in his answers he shows very clearly that most important of all is the
individual equation of the man or woman.
Like the rest of the Commissions described in this chapter, the Country
Life Commission cost the Government not one cent, but laid before the
President and the country a mass of information so accurate and so
vitally important as to disturb the serenity of the advocates of things
as they are; and therefore it incurred the bitter opposition of the
reactionaries. The report of the Country Life Commission was transmitted
to Congress by me on February 9, 1909. In the accompanying message I
asked for $25,000 to print and circulate the report and to prepare for
publication the immense amount of valuable material collected by the
Commission but still unpublished. The reply made by Congress was not
only a refusal to appropriate the money, but a positive prohibition
against continuing the work. The Tawney amendment to the Sundry Civil
bill forbade the President to appoint any further Commissions unless
specifically authorized by Congress to do so. Had this prohibition
been enacted earlier _and complied with_, it would have prevented the
appointment of the six Roosevelt commissions. But I would not have
complied with it. Mr. Tawney, one of the most efficient representatives
of the cause of special privilege as against public interest to be found
in the House, was later, in conjunction with Senator Hale and others,
able to induce my successor to accept their view. As what was almost my
last official act, I replied to Congress that if I did not believe the
Tawney amendment to be unconstitutional I would veto the Sundry Civil
bill which contained it, and that if I were remaining in office I would
refuse to obey it. The memorandum ran in part:
"The chief object of this provision, however, is to prevent the
Executive repeating what it has done within the last year in connection
with the Conservation Commission and the Country Life Commission. It is
for the people of the country to decide whether or not they believe in
the work done by the Conservation Commission and by the Country Life
Commission. . . .
"If they believe in improving our waterways, in preventing the waste of
soil, in preserving the forests, in thrifty use of the mineral resources
of the country for the nation as a whole rather than merely for private
monopolies, in working for the betterment of the condition of the men
and women who live on the farms, then they will unstintedly condemn the
action of every man who is in any way responsible for inserting this
provision, and will support those members of the legislative branch who
opposed its adoption. I would not sign the bill at all if I thought
the provision entirely effective. But the Congress cannot prevent the
President from seeking advice. Any future President can do as I have
done, and ask disinterested men who desire to serve the people to give
this service free to the people through these commissions. . . .
"My successor, the President-elect, in a letter to the Senate Committee
on Appropriations, asked for the continuance and support of the
Conservation Commission. The Conservation Commission was appointed at
the request of the Governors of over forty States, and almost all of
these States have since appointed commissions to cooperate with the
National Commission. Nearly all the great national organizations
concerned with natural resources have been heartily cooperating with the
commission.
"With all these facts before it, the Congress has refused to pass a law
to continue and provide for the commission; and it now passes a law with
the purpose of preventing the Executive from continuing the commission
at all. The Executive, therefore, must now either abandon the work and
reject the cooperation of the States, or else must continue the work
personally and through executive officers whom he may select for that
purpose."
The Chamber of Commerce of Spokane, Washington, a singularly energetic
and far-seeing organization, itself published the report which Congress
had thus discreditably refused to publish.
The work of the Bureau of Corporations, under Herbert Knox Smith,
formed an important part of the Conservation movement almost from the
beginning. Mr. Smith was a member of the Inland Waterways Commission and
of the National Conservation Commission and his Bureau prepared material
of importance for the reports of both. The investigation of standing
timber in the United States by the Bureau of Corporations furnished
for the first time a positive knowledge of the facts. Over nine hundred
counties in timbered regions were covered by the Bureau, and the work
took five years. The most important facts ascertained were that forty
years ago three-fourths of the standing timber in the United States
was publicly owned, while at the date of the report four-fifths of the
timber in the country was in private hands. The concentration of private
ownership had developed to such an amazing extent that about two hundred
holders owned nearly one-half of all privately owned timber in the
United States; and of this the three greatest holders, the Southern
Pacific Railway, the Northern Pacific Railway, and the Weyerhaeuser
Timber Company, held over ten per cent. Of this work, Mr. Smith says:
"It was important, indeed, to know the facts so that we could take
proper action toward saving the timber still left to the public. But of
far more importance was the light that this history (and the history
of our other resources) throws on the basic attitude, tradition and
governmental beliefs of the American people. The whole standpoint of
the people toward the proper aim of government, toward the relation of
property to the citizen, and the relation of property to the government,
were brought out first by this Conservation work."
The work of the Bureau of Corporations as to water power was equally
striking. In addition to bringing the concentration of water-power
control first prominently to public attention, through material
furnished for my message in my veto of the James River Dam Bill, the
work of the Bureau showed that ten great interests and their allies held
nearly sixty per cent of the developed water power of the United States.
Says Commissioner Smith: "Perhaps the most important thing in the whole
work was its clear demonstration of the fact that the only effective
place to control water power in the public interest is at the power
sites; that as to powers now owned by the public it is absolutely
essential that the public shall retain title. . . . The only way in
which the public can get back to itself the margin of natural advantage
in the water-power site is to rent that site at a rental which, added
to the cost of power production there, will make the total cost of water
power about the same as fuel power, and then let the two sell at the
same price, i. e., the price of fuel power."
Of the fight of the water-power men for States Rights at the St. Paul
Conservation Congress in September, 1909, Commissioner Smith says:
"It was the first open sign of the shift of the special interests to the
Democratic party for a logical political reason, namely, because of the
availability of the States Rights idea for the purposes of the large
corporations. It marked openly the turn of the tide."
Mr. Smith brought to the attention of the Inland Waterways Commission
the overshadowing importance to waterways of their relation with
railroad lines, the fact that the bulk of the traffic is long distance
traffic, that it cannot pass over the whole distance by water, while it
can go anywhere by rail, and that therefore the power of the rail lines
to pro-rate or not to pro-rate, with water lines really determines the
practical value of a river channel. The controlling value of terminals
and the fact that out of fifty of our leading ports, over half the
active water frontage in twenty-one ports was controlled by the
railroads, was also brought to the Commission's attention, and reports
of great value were prepared both for the Inland Waterways Commission
and for the National Conservation Commission. In addition to developing
the basic facts about the available timber supply, about waterways,
water power, and iron ore, Mr. Smith helped to develop and drive into
the public conscience the idea that the people ought to retain title to
our natural resources and handle them by the leasing system.
The things accomplished that have been enumerated above were of
immediate consequence to the economic well-being of our people. In
addition certain things were done of which the economic bearing was more
remote, but which bore directly upon our welfare, because they add to
the beauty of living and therefore to the joy of life. Securing a great
artist, Saint-Gaudens, to give us the most beautiful coinage since the
decay of Hellenistic Greece was one such act. In this case I had power
myself to direct the Mint to employ Saint-Gaudens. The first, and
most beautiful, of his coins were issued in thousands before Congress
assembled or could intervene; and a great and permanent improvement was
made in the beauty of the coinage. In the same way, on the advice
and suggestion of Frank Millet, we got some really capital medals by
sculptors of the first rank. Similarly, the new buildings in Washington
were erected and placed in proper relation to one another, on plans
provided by the best architects and landscape architects. I also
appointed a Fine Arts Council, an unpaid body of the best architects,
painters, and sculptors in the country, to advise the Government as
to the erection and decoration of all new buildings. The "pork-barrel"
Senators and Congressmen felt for this body an instinctive, and perhaps
from their standpoint a natural, hostility; and my successor a couple
of months after taking office revoked the appointment and disbanded the
Council.
Even more important was the taking of steps to preserve from destruction
beautiful and wonderful wild creatures whose existence was threatened by
greed and wantonness. During the seven and a half years closing on March
4, 1909, more was accomplished for the protection of wild life in the
United States than during all the previous years, excepting only the
creation of the Yellowstone National Park. The record includes the
creation of five National Parks--Crater Lake, Oregon; Wind Cave, South
Dakota; Platt, Oklahoma; Sully Hill, North Dakota, and Mesa Verde,
Colorado; four big game refuges in Oklahoma, Arizona, Montana, and
Washington; fifty-one bird reservations; and the enactment of laws for
the protection of wild life in Alaska, the District of Columbia, and
on National bird reserves. These measures may be briefly enumerated as
follows:
The enactment of the first game laws for the Territory of Alaska in
1902 and 1908, resulting in the regulation of the export of heads and
trophies of big game and putting an end to the slaughter of deer for
hides along the southern coast of the Territory.
The securing in 1902 of the first appropriation for the preservation of
buffalo and the establishment in the Yellowstone National Park of the
first and now the largest herd of buffalo belonging to the Government.
The passage of the Act of January 24, 1905, creating the Wichita Game
Preserves, the first of the National game preserves. In 1907, 12,000
acres of this preserve were inclosed with a woven wire fence for
the reception of the herd of fifteen buffalo donated by the New York
Zoological Society.
The passage of the Act of June 29, 1906, providing for the establishment
of the Grand Canyon Game Preserve of Arizona, now comprising 1,492,928
acres.
The passage of the National Monuments Act of June 8, 1906, under which
a number of objects of scientific interest have been preserved for all
time. Among the Monuments created are Muir Woods, Pinnacles National
Monument in California, and the Mount Olympus National Monument,
Washington, which form important refuges for game.
The passage of the Act of June 30, 1906, regulating shooting in the
District of Columbia and making three-fourths of the environs of the
National Capital within the District in effect a National Refuge.
The passage of the Act of May 23, 1908, providing for the establishment
of the National Bison Range in Montana. This range comprises about
18,000 acres of land formerly in the Flathead Indian Reservation, on
which is now established a herd of eighty buffalo, a nucleus of which
was donated to the Government by the American Bison Society.
The issue of the Order protecting birds on the Niobrara Military
Reservation, Nebraska, in 1908, making this entire reservation in effect
a bird reservation.
The establishment by Executive Order between March 14, 1903, and
March 4, 1909, of fifty-one National Bird Reservations distributed in
seventeen States and Territories from Porto Rico to Hawaii and Alaska.
The creation of these reservations at once placed the United States
in the front rank in the world work of bird protection. Among these
reservations are the celebrated Pelican Island rookery in Indian River,
Florida; the Mosquito Inlet Reservation, Florida, the northernmost home
of the manatee; the extensive marshes bordering Klamath and Malhuer
Lakes in Oregon, formerly the scene of slaughter of ducks for market
and ruthless destruction of plume birds for the millinery trade; the
Tortugas Key, Florida, where, in connection with the Carnegie Institute,
experiments have been made on the homing instinct of birds; and the
great bird colonies on Laysan and sister islets in Hawaii, some of the
greatest colonies of sea birds in the world.
CHAPTER XII
THE BIG STICK AND THE SQUARE DEAL
One of the vital questions with which as President I had to deal was the
attitude of the Nation toward the great corporations. Men who understand
and practice the deep underlying philosophy of the Lincoln school of
American political thought are necessarily Hamiltonian in their belief
in a strong and efficient National Government and Jeffersonian in their
belief in the people as the ultimate authority, and in the welfare
of the people as the end of Government. The men who first applied the
extreme Democratic theory in American life were, like Jefferson, ultra
individualists, for at that time what was demanded by our people was the
largest liberty for the individual. During the century that had elapsed
since Jefferson became President the need had been exactly reversed.
There had been in our country a riot of individualistic materialism,
under which complete freedom for the individual--that ancient license
which President Wilson a century after the term was excusable has called
the "New" Freedom--turned out in practice to mean perfect freedom for
the strong to wrong the weak. The total absence of governmental control
had led to a portentous growth in the financial and industrial world
both of natural individuals and of artificial individuals--that is,
corporations. In no other country in the world had such enormous
fortunes been gained. In no other country in the world was such power
held by the men who had gained these fortunes; and these men almost
always worked through, and by means of, the giant corporations which
they controlled. The power of the mighty industrial overlords of
the country had increased with giant strides, while the methods of
controlling them, or checking abuses by them, on the part of the people,
through the Government, remained archaic and therefore practically
impotent. The courts, not unnaturally, but most regrettably, and to
the grave detriment of the people and of their own standing, had for a
quarter of a century been on the whole the agents of reaction, and by
conflicting decisions which, however, in their sum were hostile to the
interests of the people, had left both the nation and the several
States well-nigh impotent to deal with the great business combinations.
Sometimes they forbade the Nation to interfere, because such
interference trespassed on the rights of the States; sometimes they
forbade the States to interfere (and often they were wise in this),
because to do so would trespass on the rights of the Nation; but always,
or well-nigh always, their action was negative action against the
interests of the people, ingeniously devised to limit their power
against wrong, instead of affirmative action giving to the people power
to right wrong. They had rendered these decisions sometimes as upholders
of property rights against human rights, being especially zealous in
securing the rights of the very men who were most competent to take care
of themselves; and sometimes in the name of liberty, in the name of
the so-called "new freedom," in reality the old, old "freedom,"
which secured to the powerful the freedom to prey on the poor and the
helpless.
One of the main troubles was the fact that the men who saw the evils and
who tried to remedy them attempted to work in two wholly different ways,
and the great majority of them in a way that offered little promise of
real betterment. They tried (by the Sherman law method) to bolster up
an individualism already proved to be both futile and mischievous; to
remedy by more individualism the concentration that was the inevitable
result of the already existing individualism. They saw the evil done
by the big combinations, and sought to remedy it by destroying them and
restoring the country to the economic conditions of the middle of the
nineteenth century. This was a hopeless effort, and those who went into
it, although they regarded themselves as radical progressives, really
represented a form of sincere rural toryism. They confounded monopolies
with big business combinations, and in the effort to prohibit both
alike, instead of where possible prohibiting one and drastically
controlling the other, they succeeded merely in preventing any effective
control of either.
On the other hand, a few men recognized that corporations and
combinations had become indispensable in the business world, that it was
folly to try to prohibit them, but that it was also folly to leave them
without thoroughgoing control. These men realized that the doctrines
of the old laissez faire economists, of the believers in unlimited
competition, unlimited individualism, were in the actual state of
affairs false and mischievous. They realized that the Government must
now interfere to protect labor, to subordinate the big corporation
to the public welfare, and to shackle cunning and fraud exactly as
centuries before it had interfered to shackle the physical force which
does wrong by violence.
The big reactionaries of the business world and their allies and
instruments among politicians and newspaper editors took advantage of
this division of opinion, and especially of the fact that most of their
opponents were on the wrong path; and fought to keep matters absolutely
unchanged. These men demanded for themselves an immunity from
governmental control which, if granted, would have been as wicked and as
foolish as immunity to the barons of the twelfth century. Many of them
were evil men. Many others were just as good men as were some of
these same barons; but they were as utterly unable as any medieval
castle-owner to understand what the public interest really was. There
have been aristocracies which have played a great and beneficent part at
stages in the growth of mankind; but we had come to the stage where for
our people what was needed was a real democracy; and of all forms of
tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere
wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.
When I became President, the question as to the method by which the
United States Government was to control the corporations was not yet
important. The absolutely vital question was whether the Government had
power to control them at all. This question had not yet been decided in
favor of the United States Government. It was useless to discuss methods
of controlling big business by the National Government until it was
definitely settled that the National Government had the power to control
it. A decision of the Supreme Court had, with seeming definiteness,
settled that the National Government had not the power.
This decision I caused to be annulled by the court that had rendered
it; and the present power of the National Government to deal effectively
with the trusts is due solely to the success of the Administration in
securing this reversal of its former decision by the Supreme Court.
The Constitution was formed very largely because it had become
imperative to give to some central authority the power to regulate and
control interstate commerce. At that time when corporations were in
their infancy and big combinations unknown, there was no difficulty
in exercising the power granted. In theory, the right of the Nation
to exercise this power continued unquestioned. But changing conditions
obscured the matter in the sight of the people as a whole; and
the conscious and the unconscious advocates of an unlimited and
uncontrollable capitalism gradually secured the whittling away of the
National power to exercise this theoretical right of control until it
practically vanished. After the Civil War, with the portentous growth
of industrial combinations in this country, came a period of reactionary
decisions by the courts which, as regards corporations, culminated in
what is known as the Knight case.
The Sherman Anti-Trust Law was enacted in 1890 because the formation of
the Tobacco Trust and the Sugar Trust, the only two great trusts then
in the country (aside from the Standard Oil Trust, which was a gradual
growth), had awakened a popular demand for legislation to destroy
monopoly and curb industrial combinations. This demand the Anti-Trust
Law was intended to satisfy. The Administrations of Mr. Harrison and Mr.
Cleveland evidently construed this law as prohibiting such combinations
in the future, not as condemning those which had been formed prior
to its enactment. In 1895, however, the Sugar Trust, whose output
originally was about fifty-five per cent of all sugar produced in the
United States, obtained control of three other companies in Philadelphia
by exchanging its stock for theirs, and thus increased its business
until it controlled ninety-eight per cent of the entire product. Under
Cleveland, the Government brought proceedings against the Sugar Trust,
invoking the Anti-Trust Law, to set aside the acquisition of these
corporations. The test case was on the absorption of the Knight Company.
The Supreme Court of the United States, with but one dissenting vote,
held adversely to the Government. They took the ground that the power
conferred by the Constitution to regulate and control interstate
commerce did not extend to the production or manufacture of commodities
within a State, and that nothing in the Sherman Anti-Trust Law
prohibited a corporation from acquiring all the stock of other
corporations through exchange of its stock for theirs, such exchange
not being "commerce" in the opinion of the Court, even though by such
acquisition the corporation was enabled to control the entire production
of a commodity that was a necessary of life. The effect of this decision
was not merely the absolute nullification of the Anti-Trust Law, so
far as industrial corporations were concerned, but was also in effect a
declaration that, under the Constitution, the National Government could
pass no law really effective for the destruction or control of such
combinations.
This decision left the National Government, that is, the people of the
Nation, practically helpless to deal with the large combinations of
modern business. The courts in other cases asserted the power of
the Federal Government to enforce the Anti-Trust Law so far as
transportation rates by railways engaged in interstate commerce were
concerned. But so long as the trusts were free to control the production
of commodities without interference from the General Government, they
were well content to let the transportation of commodities take care of
itself--especially as the law against rebates was at that time a dead
letter; and the Court by its decision in the Knight case had interdicted
any interference by the President or by Congress with the production of
commodities. It was on the authority of this case that practically all
the big trusts in the United States, excepting those already mentioned,
were formed. Usually they were organized as "holding" companies, each
one acquiring control of its constituent corporations by exchanging its
stock for theirs, an operation which the Supreme Court had thus decided
could not be prohibited, controlled, regulated, or even questioned by
the Federal Government.
Such was the condition of our laws when I acceded to the Presidency.
Just before my accession, a small group of financiers, desiring to
profit by the governmental impotence to which we had been reduced by the
Knight decision, had arranged to take control of practically the entire
railway system in the Northwest--possibly as the first step toward
controlling the entire railway system of the country. This control of
the Northwestern railway systems was to be effected by organizing a new
"holding" company, and exchanging its stock against the stock of the
various corporations engaged in railway transportation throughout that
vast territory, exactly as the Sugar Trust had acquired control of the
Knight company and other concerns. This company was called the Northern
Securities Company. Not long after I became President, on the advice of
the Attorney-General, Mr. Knox, and through him, I ordered proceedings
to be instituted for the dissolution of the company. As far as could be
told by their utterances at the time, among all the great lawyers in the
United States Mr. Knox was the only one who believed that this action
could be sustained. The defense was based expressly on the ground that
the Supreme Court in the Knight case had explicitly sanctioned the
formation of such a company as the Northern Securities Company. The
representatives of privilege intimated, and sometimes asserted outright,
that in directing the action to be brought I had shown a lack of respect
for the Supreme Court, which had already decided the question at issue
by a vote of eight to one. Mr. Justice White, then on the Court and
now Chief Justice, set forth the position that the two cases were in
principle identical with incontrovertible logic. In giving the views of
the dissenting minority on the action I had brought, he said:
"The parallel between the two cases [the Knight case and the Northern
Securities case] is complete. The one corporation acquired the stock
of other and competing corporations in exchange for its own. It was
conceded for the purposes of the case, that in doing so monopoly had
been brought about in the refining of sugar, that the sugar to be
produced was likely to become the subject of interstate commerce, and
indeed that part of it would certainly become so. But the power of
Congress was decided not to extend to the subject, because the ownership
of the stock in the corporations was not itself commerce."
Mr. Justice White was entirely correct in this statement. The cases were
parallel. It was necessary to reverse the Knight case in the interests
of the people against monopoly and privilege just as it had been
necessary to reverse the Dred Scott case in the interest of the people
against slavery and privilege; just as later it became necessary to
reverse the New York Bakeshop case in the interest of the people
against that form of monopolistic privilege which put human rights below
property rights where wage workers were concerned.
By a vote of five to four the Supreme Court reversed its decision in
the Knight case, and in the Northern Securities case sustained the
Government. The power to deal with industrial monopoly and suppress it
and to control and regulate combinations, of which the Knight case had
deprived the Federal Government, was thus restored to it by the Northern
Securities case. After this later decision was rendered, suits were
brought by my direction against the American Tobacco Company and the
Standard Oil Company. Both were adjudged criminal conspiracies, and
their dissolution ordered. The Knight case was finally overthrown.
The vicious doctrine it embodied no longer remains as an obstacle to
obstruct the pathway of justice when it assails monopoly. Messrs.
Knox, Moody, and Bonaparte, who successively occupied the position of
Attorney-General under me, were profound lawyers and fearless and
able men; and they completely established the newer and more wholesome
doctrine under which the Federal Government may now deal with
monopolistic combinations and conspiracies.
The decisions rendered in these various cases brought under my direction
constitute the entire authority upon which any action must rest that
seeks through the exercise of national power to curb monopolistic
control. The men who organized and directed the Northern Securities
Company were also the controlling forces in the Steel Corporation, which
has since been prosecuted under the act. The proceedings against the
Sugar Trust for corruption in connection with the New York Custom House
are sufficiently interesting to be considered separately.
From the standpoint of giving complete control to the National
Government over big corporations engaged in inter-State business, it
would be impossible to over-estimate the importance of the Northern
Securities decision and of the decisions afterwards rendered in line
with it in connection with the other trusts whose dissolution was
ordered. The success of the Northern Securities case definitely
established the power of the Government to deal with all great
corporations. Without this success the National Government must have
remained in the impotence to which it had been reduced by the Knight
decision as regards the most important of its internal functions. But
our success in establishing the power of the National Government to curb
monopolies did not establish the right method of exercising that
power. We had gained the power. We had not devised the proper method of
exercising it.
Monopolies can, although in rather cumbrous fashion, be broken up by
law suits. Great business combinations, however, cannot possibly be made
useful instead of noxious industrial agencies merely by law suits, and
especially by law suits supposed to be carried on for their destruction
and not for their control and regulation. I at once began to urge upon
Congress the need of laws supplementing the Anti-Trust Law--for this law
struck at all big business, good and bad, alike, and as the event
proved was very inefficient in checking bad big business, and yet was
a constant threat against decent business men. I strongly urged the
inauguration of a system of thoroughgoing and drastic Governmental
regulation and control over all big business combinations engaged in
inter-State industry.
Here I was able to accomplish only a small part of what I desired to
accomplish. I was opposed both by the foolish radicals who desired to
break up all big business, with the impossible ideal of returning to
mid-nineteenth century industrial conditions; and also by the great
privileged interests themselves, who used these ordinarily--but
sometimes not entirely--well-meaning "stool pigeon progressives" to
further their own cause. The worst representatives of big business
encouraged the outcry for the total abolition of big business, because
they knew that they could not be hurt in this way, and that such an
outcry distracted the attention of the public from the really efficient
method of controlling and supervising them, in just but masterly
fashion, which was advocated by the sane representatives of reform.
However, we succeeded in making a good beginning by securing the passage
of a law creating the Department of Commerce and Labor, and with it the
erection of the Bureau of Corporations. The first head of the Department
of Commerce and Labor was Mr. Cortelyou, later Secretary of the
Treasury. He was succeeded by Mr. Oscar Straus. The first head of
the Bureau of Corporations was Mr. Garfield, who was succeeded by Mr.
Herbert Knox Smith. No four better public servants from the standpoint
of the people as a whole could have been found.
The Standard Oil Company took the lead in opposing all this legislation.
This was natural, for it had been the worst offender in the amassing of
enormous fortunes by improper methods of all kinds, at the expense of
business rivals and of the public, including the corruption of public
servants. If any man thinks this condemnation extreme, I refer him to
the language officially used by the Supreme Court of the nation in its
decision against the Standard Oil Company. Through their counsel, and
by direct telegrams and letters to Senators and Congressmen from various
heads of the Standard Oil organization, they did their best to kill the
bill providing for the Bureau of Corporations. I got hold of one or two
of these telegrams and letters, however, and promptly published them;
and, as generally happens in such a case, the men who were all-powerful
as long as they could work in secret and behind closed doors became
powerless as soon as they were forced into the open. The bill went
through without further difficulty.
The true way of dealing with monopoly is to prevent it by administrative
action before it grows so powerful that even when courts condemn it they
shrink from destroying it. The Supreme Court in the Tobacco and Standard
Oil cases, for instance, used very vigorous language in condemning these
trusts; but the net result of the decision was of positive advantage to
the wrongdoers, and this has tended to bring the whole body of our law
into disrepute in quarters where it is of the very highest importance
that the law be held in respect and even in reverence. My effort was to
secure the creation of a Federal Commission which should neither excuse
nor tolerate monopoly, but prevent it when possible and uproot it
when discovered; and which should in addition effectively control and
regulate all big combinations, and should give honest business certainty
as to what the law was and security as long as the law was obeyed. Such
a Commission would furnish a steady expert control, a control adapted to
the problem; and dissolution is neither control nor regulation, but is
purely negative; and negative remedies are of little permanent avail.
Such a Commission would have complete power to examine into every big
corporation engaged or proposing to engage in business between the
States. It would have the power to discriminate sharply between
corporations that are doing well and those that are doing ill; and the
distinction between those who do well and those who do ill would
be defined in terms so clear and unmistakable that no one could
misapprehend them. Where a company is found seeking its profits through
serving the community by stimulating production, lowering prices, or
improving service, while scrupulously respecting the rights of others
(including its rivals, its employees, its customers, and the general
public), and strictly obeying the law, then no matter how large its
capital, or how great the volume of its business it would be encouraged
to still more abundant production, or better service, by the fullest
protection that the Government could afford it. On the other hand, if
a corporation were found seeking profit through injury or oppression
of the community, by restricting production through trick or device,
by plot or conspiracy against competitors, or by oppression of
wage-workers, and then extorting high prices for the commodity it had
made artificially scarce, it would be prevented from organizing if its
nefarious purpose could be discovered in time, or pursued and suppressed
by all the power of Government whenever found in actual operation. Such
a commission, with the power I advocate, would put a stop to abuses of
big corporations and small corporations alike; it would draw the line on
conduct and not on size; it would destroy monopoly, and make the biggest
business man in the country conform squarely to the principles laid down
by the American people, while at the same time giving fair play to the
little man and certainty of knowledge as to what was wrong and what was
right both to big man and little man.
Although under the decision of the courts the National Government had
power over the railways, I found, when I became President, that
this power was either not exercised at all or exercised with utter
inefficiency. The law against rebates was a dead letter. All the
unscrupulous railway men had been allowed to violate it with impunity;
and because of this, as was inevitable, the scrupulous and decent
railway men had been forced to violate it themselves, under penalty of
being beaten by their less scrupulous rivals. It was not the fault of
these decent railway men. It was the fault of the Government.
Thanks to a first-class railway man, Paul Morton of the Santa Fe, son of
Mr. Cleveland's Secretary of Agriculture, I was able completely to stop
the practice. Mr. Morton volunteered to aid the Government in abolishing
rebates. He frankly stated that he, like every one else, had been guilty
in the matter; but he insisted that he uttered the sentiments of
the decent railway men of the country when he said that he hoped the
practice would be stopped, and that if I would really stop it, and not
merely make believe to stop it, he would give the testimony which would
put into the hands of the Government the power to put a complete check
to the practice. Accordingly he testified, and on the information which
he gave us we were able to take such action through the Inter-State
Commerce Commission and the Department of Justice, supplemented by
the necessary additional legislation, that the evil was absolutely
eradicated. He thus rendered, of his own accord, at his own personal
risk, and from purely disinterested motives, an invaluable service to
the people, a service which no other man who was able to render was
willing to render. As an immediate sequel, the world-old alliance
between Blifil and Black George was immediately revived against Paul
Morton. In giving rebates he had done only what every honest railway
man in the country had been obliged to do because of the failure of the
Government to enforce the prohibition as regards dishonest railway
men. But unlike his fellows he had then shown the courage and sense of
obligation to the public which made him come forward and without
evasion or concealment state what he had done, in order that we might
successfully put an end to the practice; and put an end to the practice
we did, and we did it because of the courage and patriotism he had
shown. The unscrupulous railway men, whose dishonest practices were
thereby put a stop to, and the unscrupulous demagogues who were either
under the influence of these men or desirous of gaining credit with
thoughtless and ignorant people no matter who was hurt, joined in
vindictive clamor against Mr. Morton. They actually wished me to
prosecute him, although such prosecution would have been a piece of
unpardonable ingratitude and treachery on the part of the public toward
him--for I was merely acting as the steward of the public in this
matter. I need hardly say that I stood by him; and later he served under
me as Secretary of the Navy, and a capital Secretary he made too.
We not only secured the stopping of rebates, but in the Hepburn Rate
Bill we were able to put through a measure which gave the Inter-State
Commerce Commission for the first time real control over the railways.
There were two or three amusing features in the contest over this bill.
All of the great business interests which objected to Governmental
control banded to fight it, and they were helped by the honest men of
ultra-conservative type who always dread change, whether good or bad. We
finally forced it through the House. In the Senate it was referred to
a committee in which the Republican majority was under the control of
Senator Aldrich, who took the lead in opposing the bill. There was one
Republican on the committee, however, whom Senator Aldrich could
not control--Senator Dolliver, of Iowa. The leading Democrat on the
committee was Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, with whom I was not on
good terms, because I had been obliged to cancel an invitation to him to
dine at the White House on account of his having made a personal assault
in the Senate Chamber on his colleague from South Carolina; and later I
had to take action against him on account of his conduct in connection
with certain land matters. Senator Tillman favored the bill. The
Republican majority in the committee under Senator Aldrich, when they
acted adversely on the bill, turned it over to Senator Tillman, thereby
making him its sponsor. The object was to create what it was hoped would
be an impossible situation in view of the relations between Senator
Tillman and myself. I regarded the action as simply childish. It was a
curious instance of how able and astute men sometimes commit blunders
because of sheer inability to understand intensity of disinterested
motive in others. I did not care a rap about Mr. Tillman's getting
credit for the bill, or having charge of it. I was delighted to go with
him or with any one else just so long as he was traveling in my way--and
no longer.
There was another amusing incident in connection with the passage of the
bill. All the wise friends of the effort to secure Governmental control
of corporations know that this Government control must be exercised
through administrative and not judicial officers if it is to be
effective. Everything possible should be done to minimize the chance
of appealing from the decisions of the administrative officer to the
courts. But it is not possible Constitutionally, and probably would not
be desirable anyhow, completely to abolish the appeal. Unwise zealots
wished to make the effort totally to abolish the appeal in connection
with the Hepburn Bill. Representatives of the special interests wished
to extend the appeal to include what it ought not to include. Between
stood a number of men whose votes would mean the passage of, or the
failure to pass, the bill, and who were not inclined towards either
side. Three or four substantially identical amendments were proposed,
and we then suddenly found ourselves face to face with an absurd
situation. The good men who were willing to go with us but had
conservative misgivings about the ultra-radicals would not accept a good
amendment if one of the latter proposed it; and the radicals would not
accept their own amendment if one of the conservatives proposed it.
Each side got so wrought up as to be utterly unable to get matters into
proper perspective; each prepared to stand on unimportant trifles; each
announced with hysterical emphasis--the reformers just as hysterically
as the reactionaries--that the decision as regards each unimportant
trifle determined the worth or worthlessness of the measure. Gradually
we secured a measurable return to sane appreciation of the essentials.
Finally both sides reluctantly agreed to accept the so-called Allison
amendment which did not, as a matter of fact, work any change in the
bill at all. The amendment was drawn by Attorney-General Moody after
consultation with the Inter-State Commerce Commission, and was forwarded
by me to Senator Dolliver; it was accepted, and the bill became law.
Thanks to this law and to the way in which the Inter-State Commerce
Commission was backed by the Administration, the Commission, under men
like Prouty, Lane, and Clark, became a most powerful force for good.
Some of the good that we had accomplished was undone after the close of
my Administration by the unfortunate law creating a Commerce Court; but
the major part of the immense advance we had made remained. There was
one point on which I insisted, and upon which it is necessary always to
insist. The Commission cannot do permanent good unless it does justice
to the corporations precisely as it exacts justice from them. The
public, the shippers, the stock and bondholders, and the employees, all
have their rights, and none should be allowed unfair privileges at the
expense of the others. Stock watering and swindling of any kind should
of course not only be stopped but punished. When, however, a road is
managed fairly and honestly, and when it renders a real and needed
service, then the Government must see that it is not so burdened as to
make it impossible to run it at a profit. There is much wise
legislation necessary for the safety of the public, or--like workmen's
compensation--necessary to the well-being of the employee, which
nevertheless imposes such a burden on the road that the burden must be
distributed between the general public and the corporation, or there
will be no dividends. In such a case it may be the highest duty of the
commission to raise rates; and the commission, when satisfied that the
necessity exists, in order to do justice to the owners of the road,
should no more hesitate to raise rates, than under other circumstances
to lower them.
So much for the "big stick" in dealing with the corporations when they
went wrong. Now for a sample of the square deal.
In the fall of 1907 there were severe business disturbances and
financial stringency, culminating in a panic which arose in New York
and spread over the country. The damage actually done was great, and the
damage threatened was incalculable. Thanks largely to the action of
the Government, the panic was stopped before, instead of being merely a
serious business check, it became a frightful and Nation-wide calamity,
a disaster fraught with untold misery and woe to all our people. For
several days the Nation trembled on the brink of such a calamity, of
such a disaster.
During these days both the Secretary of the Treasury and I personally
were in hourly communication with New York, following every change in
the situation, and trying to anticipate every development. It was
the obvious duty of the Administration to take every step possible to
prevent appalling disaster by checking the spread of the panic before
it grew so that nothing could check it. And events moved with such
speed that it was necessary to decide and to act on the instant, as each
successive crisis arose, if the decision and action were to accomplish
anything. The Secretary of the Treasury took various actions, some
on his own initiative, some by my direction. Late one evening I was
informed that two representatives of the Steel Corporation wished to see
me early the following morning, the precise object not being named. Next
morning, while at breakfast, I was informed that Messrs. Frick and
Gary were waiting at the office. I at once went over, and, as the
Attorney-General, Mr. Bonaparte, had not yet arrived from Baltimore,
where he had been passing the night, I sent a message asking the
Secretary of State, Mr. Root, who was also a lawyer, to join us, which
he did. Before the close of the interview and in the presence of the
three gentlemen named, I dictated a note to Mr. Bonaparte, setting forth
exactly what Messrs. Frick and Gary had proposed, and exactly what I
had answered--so that there might be no possibility of misunderstanding.
This note was published in a Senate Document while I was still
President. It runs as follows:
THE WHITE HOUSE, Washington, November 4, 1907.
My dear Mr. Attorney-General:
Judge E. H. Gary and Mr. H. C. Frick, on behalf of the Steel
Corporation, have just called upon me. They state that there is a
certain business firm (the name of which I have not been told, but
which is of real importance in New York business circles), which will
undoubtedly fail this week if help is not given. Among its assets are
a majority of the securities of the Tennessee Coal Company. Application
has been urgently made to the Steel Corporation to purchase this stock
as the only means of avoiding a failure. Judge Gary and Mr. Frick
informed me that as a mere business transaction they do not care to
purchase the stock; that under ordinary circumstances they would not
consider purchasing the stock, because but little benefit will come to
the Steel Corporation from the purchase; that they are aware that the
purchase will be used as a handle for attack upon them on the ground
that they are striving to secure a monopoly of the business and prevent
competition--not that this would represent what could honestly be said,
but what might recklessly and untruthfully be said.
They further informed me that, as a matter of fact, the policy of the
company has been to decline to acquire more than sixty per cent of
the steel properties, and that this purpose has been persevered in for
several years past, with the object of preventing these accusations,
and, as a matter of fact, their proportion of steel properties has
slightly decreased, so that it is below this sixty per cent, and the
acquisition of the property in question will not raise it above sixty
per cent. But they feel that it is immensely to their interest, as to
the interest of every responsible business man, to try to prevent a
panic and general industrial smash-up at this time, and that they are
willing to go into this transaction, which they would not otherwise
go into, because it seems the opinion of those best fitted to express
judgment in New York that it will be an important factor in preventing
a break that might be ruinous; and that this has been urged upon them by
the combination of the most responsible bankers in New York who are now
thus engaged in endeavoring to save the situation. But they asserted
that they did not wish to do this if I stated that it ought not to be
done. I answered that, while of course I could not advise them to take
the action proposed, I felt it no public duty of mine to interpose any
objections.
Sincerely yours, (Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
HON. CHARLES J. BONAPARTE, Attorney-General.
Mr. Bonaparte received this note in about an hour, and that same morning
he came over, acknowledged its receipt, and said that my answer was the
only proper answer that could have been made, having regard both to
the law and to the needs of the situation. He stated that the legal
situation had been in no way changed, and that no sufficient ground
existed for prosecution of the Steel Corporation. But I acted purely on
my own initiative, and the responsibility for the act was solely mine.
I was intimately acquainted with the situation in New York. The word
"panic" means fear, unreasoning fear; to stop a panic it is necessary
to restore confidence; and at the moment the so-called Morgan interests
were the only interests which retained a full hold on the confidence of
the people of New York--not only the business people, but the immense
mass of men and women who owned small investments or had small savings
in the banks and trust companies. Mr. Morgan and his associates were
of course fighting hard to prevent the loss of confidence and the panic
distrust from increasing to such a degree as to bring any other big
financial institutions down; for this would probably have been followed
by a general, and very likely a worldwide, crash. The Knickerbocker
Trust Company had already failed, and runs had begun on, or were
threatened as regards, two other big trust companies. These companies
were now on the fighting line, and it was to the interest of everybody
to strengthen them, in order that the situation might be saved. It was
a matter of general knowledge and belief that they, or the individuals
prominent in them, held the securities of the Tennessee Coal and Iron
Company, which securities had no market value, and were useless as a
source of strength in the emergency. The Steel Corporation securities,
on the contrary, were immediately marketable, their great value being
known and admitted all over the world--as the event showed. The proposal
of Messrs. Frick and Gary was that the Steel Corporation should at once
acquire the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, and thereby substitute,
among the assets of the threatened institutions (which, by the way,
they did not name to me), securities of great and immediate value for
securities which at the moment were of no value. It was necessary for
me to decide on the instant, before the Stock Exchange opened, for the
situation in New York was such that any hour might be vital, and failure
to act for even an hour might make all subsequent effort to act utterly
useless. From the best information at my disposal, I believed (what
was actually the fact) that the addition of the Tennessee Coal and
Iron property would only increase the proportion of the Steel Company's
holdings by about four per cent, making them about sixty-two per cent
instead of about fifty-eight per cent of the total value in the country;
an addition which, by itself, in my judgment (concurred in, not only by
the Attorney-General but by every competent lawyer), worked no change
in the legal status of the Steel corporation. The diminution in the
percentage of holdings, and production, has gone on steadily, and the
percentage is now about ten per cent less than it was ten years ago.
The action was emphatically for the general good. It offered the only
chance for arresting the panic, and it did arrest the panic. I answered
Messrs. Frick and Gary, as set forth in the letter quoted above, to the
effect that I did not deem it my duty to interfere, that is, to forbid
the action which more than anything else in actual fact saved the
situation. The result justified my judgment. The panic was stopped,
public confidence in the solvency of the threatened institution being at
once restored.
Business was vitally helped by what I did. The benefit was not only
for the moment. It was permanent. Particularly was this the case in the
South. Three or four years afterwards I visited Birmingham. Every man
I met, without exception, who was competent to testify, informed me
voluntarily that the results of the action taken had been of the utmost
benefit to Birmingham, and therefore to Alabama, the industry having
profited to an extraordinary degree, not only from the standpoint of the
business, but from the standpoint of the community at large and of the
wage-workers, by the change in ownership. The results of the action I
took were beneficial from every standpoint, and the action itself, at
the time when it was taken, was vitally necessary to the welfare of the
people of the United States.
I would have been derelict in my duty, I would have shown myself a timid
and unworthy public servant, if in that extraordinary crisis I had not
acted precisely as I did act. In every such crisis the temptation to
indecision, to non-action, is great, for excuses can always be found for
non-action, and action means risk and the certainty of blame to the man
who acts. But if the man is worth his salt he will do his duty, he will
give the people the benefit of the doubt, and act in any way which
their interests demand and which is not affirmatively prohibited by law,
unheeding the likelihood that he himself, when the crisis is over and
the danger past, will be assailed for what he has done.
Every step I took in this matter was open as the day, and was known in
detail at the moment to all people. The press contained full accounts of
the visit to me of Messrs. Frick and Gary, and heralded widely and
with acclamation the results of that visit. At the time the relief and
rejoicing over what had been done were well-nigh universal. The danger
was too imminent and too appalling for me to be willing to condemn those
who were successful in saving them from it. But I fully understood and
expected that when there was no longer danger, when the fear had been
forgotten, attack would be made upon me; and as a matter of fact after
a year had elapsed the attack was begun, and has continued at intervals
ever since; my ordinary assailant being some politician of rather cheap
type.
If I were on a sail-boat, I should not ordinarily meddle with any of the
gear; but if a sudden squall struck us, and the main sheet jammed, so
that the boat threatened to capsize, I would unhesitatingly cut the main
sheet, even though I were sure that the owner, no matter how grateful
to me at the moment for having saved his life, would a few weeks later,
when he had forgotten his danger and his fear, decide to sue me for the
value of the cut rope. But I would feel a hearty contempt for the owner
who so acted.
There were many other things that we did in connection with
corporations. One of the most important was the passage of the meat
inspection law because of scandalous abuses shown to exist in the great
packing-houses in Chicago and elsewhere. There was a curious result of
this law, similar to what occurred in connection with the law providing
for effective railway regulation. The big beef men bitterly opposed the
law; just as the big railway men opposed the Hepburn Act. Yet three
or four years after these laws had been put on the statute books every
honest man both in the beef business and the railway business came to
the conclusion that they worked good and not harm to the decent business
concerns. They hurt only those who were not acting as they should have
acted. The law providing for the inspection of packing-houses, and the
Pure Food and Drugs Act, were also extremely important; and the way in
which they were administered was even more important. It would be hard
to overstate the value of the service rendered in all these cases
by such cabinet officers as Moody and Bonaparte, and their outside
assistants of the stamp of Frank Kellogg.
It would be useless to enumerate all the suits we brought. Some of
them I have already touched upon. Others, such as the suits against the
Harriman railway corporations, which were successful, and which had
been rendered absolutely necessary by the grossly improper action of the
corporations concerned, offered no special points of interest. The Sugar
Trust proceedings, however, may be mentioned as showing just the kind of
thing that was done and the kind of obstacle encountered and overcome in
prosecutions of this character.
It was on the advice of my secretary, William Loeb, Jr., afterward head
of the New York Custom-House, that the action was taken which started
the uncovering of the frauds perpetrated by the Sugar Trust and other
companies in connection with the importing of sugar. Loeb had from time
to time told me that he was sure that there was fraud in connection with
the importations by the Sugar Trust through the New York Custom-House.
Finally, some time toward the end of 1904, he informed me that Richard
Parr, a sampler at the New York Appraisers' Stores (whose duties took
him almost continually on the docks in connection with the sampling of
merchandise), had called on him, and had stated that in his belief the
sugar companies were defrauding the Government in the matter of weights,
and had stated that if he could be made an investigating officer of
the Treasury Department, he was confident that he could show there was
wrongdoing. Parr had been a former school fellow of Loeb in Albany, and
Loeb believed him to be loyal, honest, and efficient. He thereupon laid
the matter before me, and advised the appointment of Parr as a special
employee of the Treasury Department, for the specific purpose of
investigating the alleged sugar frauds. I instructed the Treasury
Department accordingly, and was informed that there was no vacancy in
the force of special employees, but that Parr would be given the first
place that opened up. Early in the spring of 1905 Parr came to Loeb
again, and said that he had received additional information about the
sugar frauds, and was anxious to begin the investigation. Loeb again
discussed the matter with me; and I notified the Treasury Department to
appoint Parr immediately. On June 1, 1905, he received his appointment,
and was assigned to the port of Boston for the purpose of gaining
some experience as an investigating officer. During the month he was
transferred to the Maine District, with headquarters at Portland, where
he remained until March, 1907. During his service in Maine he uncovered
extensive wool smuggling frauds. At the conclusion of the wool case, he
appealed to Loeb to have him transferred to New York, so that he might
undertake the investigation of the sugar underweighing frauds. I now
called the attention of Secretary Cortelyou personally to the matter,
so that he would be able to keep a check over any subordinates who might
try to interfere with Parr, for the conspiracy was evidently widespread,
the wealth of the offenders great, and the corruption in the service
far-reaching--while moreover as always happens with "respectable"
offenders, there were many good men who sincerely disbelieved in the
possibility of corruption on the part of men of such high financial
standing. Parr was assigned to New York early in March, 1907, and at
once began an active investigation of the conditions existing on the
sugar docks. This terminated in the discovery of a steel spring in one
of the scales of the Havemeyer & Elder docks in Brooklyn, November 20,
1907, which enabled us to uncover what were probably the most colossal
frauds ever perpetrated in the Customs Service. From the beginning of
his active work in the investigation of the sugar frauds in March, 1907,
to March 4, 1909, Parr, from time to time, personally reported to Loeb,
at the White House, the progress of his investigations, and Loeb in his
turn kept me personally advised. On one occasion there was an attempt
made to shunt Parr off the investigation and substitute another agent of
the Treasury, who was suspected of having some relations with the sugar
companies under investigation; but Parr reported the facts to Loeb,
I sent for Secretary Cortelyou, and Secretary Cortelyou promptly took
charge of the matter himself, putting Parr back on the investigation.
During the investigation Parr was subjected to all sorts of harassments,
including an attempt to bribe him by Spitzer, the dock superintendent
of the Havemeyer & Elder Refinery, for which Spitzer was convicted and
served a term in prison. Brzezinski, a special agent, who was assisting
Parr, was convicted of perjury and also served a term in prison, he
having changed his testimony, in the trial of Spitzer for the attempted
bribery of Parr, from that which he gave before the Grand Jury. For his
extraordinary services in connection with this investigation Parr was
granted an award of $100,000 by the Treasury Department.
District-Attorney Stimson, of New York, assisted by Denison,
Frankfurter, Wise, and other employees of the Department of Justice,
took charge of the case, and carried on both civil and criminal
proceedings. The trial in the action against the Sugar Trust, for the
recovery of duties on the cargo of sugar, which was being sent over the
scales at the time of the discovery of the steel spring by Parr, was
begun in 1908; judgment was rendered against the defendants on March
5, 1909, the day after I left office. Over four million dollars were
recovered and paid back into the United States Treasury by the sugar
companies which had perpetrated the various forms of fraud. These frauds
were unearthed by Parr, Loeb, Stimson, Frankfurter, and the other men
mentioned and their associates, and it was to them that the people owed
the refunding of the huge sum of money mentioned. We had already secured
heavy fines from the Sugar Trust, and from various big railways, and
private individuals, such as Edwin Earle, for unlawful rebates. In the
case of the chief offender, the American Sugar Refining Company (the
Sugar Trust), criminal prosecutions were carried on against every living
man whose position was such that he would naturally know about the
fraud. All of them were indicted, and the biggest and most responsible
ones were convicted. The evidence showed that the president of the
company, Henry O. Havemeyer, virtually ran the entire company, and was
responsible for all the details of the management. He died two weeks
after the fraud was discovered, just as proceedings were being begun.
Next to him in importance was the secretary and treasurer, Charles R.
Heike, who was convicted. Various other officials and employees of the
Trust, and various Government employees, were indicted, and most of
them convicted. Ernest W. Gerbracht, the superintendent of one of the
refineries, was convicted, but his sentence was commuted to a short
jail imprisonment, because he became a Government witness and greatly
assisted the Government in the suits.
Heike's sentence was commuted so as to excuse him from going to the
penitentiary; just as the penitentiary sentence of Morse, the big New
York banker, who was convicted of gross fraud and misapplication of
funds, was commuted. Both commutations were granted long after I left
office. In each case the commutation was granted because, as was stated,
of the prisoner's age and state of health. In Morse's case the President
originally refused the request, saying that Morse had exhibited
"fraudulent and criminal disregard of the trust imposed upon him," that
"he was entirely unscrupulous as to the methods he adopted," and
"that he seemed at times to be absolutely heartless with regard to the
consequences to others, and he showed great shrewdness in obtaining
large sums of money from the bank without adequate security and without
making himself personally liable therefor." The two cases may be
considered in connection with the announcement in the public press that
on May 17, 1913, the President commuted the sentence of Lewis A. Banks,
who was serving a very long term penitentiary sentence for an attack on
a girl in the Indian Territory; "the reason for the commutation which is
set forth in the press being that 'Banks is in poor health.'"
It is no easy matter to balance the claims of justice and mercy in such
cases. In these three cases, of all of which I had personal cognizance,
I disagreed radically with the views my successors took, and with the
views which many respectable men took who in these and similar cases,
both while I was in office and afterward, urged me to show, or to ask
others to show, clemency. It then seemed to me, and it now seems to me,
that such clemency is from the larger standpoint a gross wrong to the
men and women of the country.
One of the former special assistants of the district-attorney, Mr. W.
Cleveland Runyon, in commenting bitterly on the release of Heike
and Morse on account of their health, pointed out that their health
apparently became good when once they themselves became free men, and
added:
"The commutation of these sentences amounts to a direct interference
with the administration of justice by the courts. Heike got a $25,000
salary and has escaped his imprisonment, but what about the six $18 a
week checkers, who were sent to jail, one of them a man of more than
sixty? It is cases like this that create discontent and anarchy. They
make it seem plain that there is one law for the rich and another for
the poor man, and I for one will protest."
In dealing with Heike the individual (or Morse or any other individual),
it is necessary to emphasize the social aspects of his case. The moral
of the Heike case, as has been well said, is "how easy it is for a man
in modern corporate organization to drift into wrongdoing." The
moral restraints are loosened in the case of a man like Heike by
the insulation of himself from the sordid details of crime, through
industrially coerced intervening agents. Professor Ross has made the
penetrating observation that "distance disinfects dividends"; it also
weakens individual responsibility, particularly on the part of the very
managers of large business, who should feel it most acutely. One of the
officers of the Department of Justice who conducted the suit, and who
inclined to the side of mercy in the matter, nevertheless writes: "Heike
is a beautiful illustration of mental and moral obscuration in the
business life of an otherwise valuable member of society. Heike had
an ample share in the guidance of the affairs of the American Sugar
Company, and we are apt to have a foreshortened picture of his
responsibility, because he operated from the easy coign of vantage of
executive remoteness. It is difficult to say to what extent he did,
directly or indirectly, profit by the sordid practices of his company.
But the social damage of an individual in his position may be just as
deep, whether merely the zest of the game or hard cash be his dominant
motive."
I have coupled the cases of the big banker and the Sugar Trust official
and the case of the man convicted of a criminal assault on a woman. All
of the criminals were released from penitentiary sentences on grounds of
ill health. The offenses were typical of the worst crimes committed
at the two ends of the social scale. One offense was a crime of brutal
violence; the other offenses were crimes of astute corruption. All of
them were offenses which in my judgment were of such a character that
clemency towards the offender worked grave injustice to the community
as a whole, injustice so grave that its effects might be far-reaching in
their damage.
Every time that rape or criminal assault on a woman is pardoned, and
anything less than the full penalty of the law exacted, a premium is
put on the practice of lynching such offenders. Every time a big moneyed
offender, who naturally excites interest and sympathy, and who has
many friends, is excused from serving a sentence which a man of less
prominence and fewer friends would have to serve, justice is discredited
in the eyes of plain people--and to undermine faith in justice is to
strike at the foundation of the Republic. As for ill health, it must
be remembered that few people are as healthy in prison as they would be
outside; and there should be no discrimination among criminals on this
score; either all criminals who grow unhealthy should be let out, or
none. Pardons must sometimes be given in order that the cause of justice
may be served; but in cases such as these I am considering, while I know
that many amiable people differ from me, I am obliged to say that in my
judgment the pardons work far-reaching harm to the cause of justice.
Among the big corporations themselves, even where they did wrong, there
was a wide difference in the moral obliquity indicated by the wrongdoer.
There was a wide distinction between the offenses committed in the case
of the Northern Securities Company, and the offenses because of which
the Sugar Trust, the Tobacco Trust, and the Standard Oil Trust were
successfully prosecuted under my Administration. It was vital to destroy
the Northern Securities Company; but the men creating it had done so in
open and above-board fashion, acting under what they, and most of the
members of the bar, thought to be the law established by the Supreme
Court in the Knight sugar case. But the Supreme Court in its decree
dissolving the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trusts, condemned them in the
severest language for moral turpitude; and an even severer need of
condemnation should be visited on the Sugar Trust.
However, all the trusts and big corporations against which we
proceeded--which included in their directorates practically all the
biggest financiers in the country--joined in making the bitterest
assaults on me and on my Administration. Of their actions I wrote as
follows to Attorney-General Bonaparte, who had been a peculiarly close
friend and adviser through the period covered by my public life in high
office and who, together with Attorney-General Moody, possessed the same
understanding sympathy with my social and industrial program that
was possessed by such officials as Straus, Garfield, H. K. Smith, and
Pinchot. The letter runs:
January 2, 1908.
My dear Bonaparte:
I must congratulate you on your admirable speech at Chicago. You said
the very things it was good to say at this time. What you said bore
especial weight because it represented what you had done. You have shown
by what you have actually accomplished that the law is enforced against
the wealthiest corporation, and the richest and most powerful manager
or manipulator of that corporation, just as resolutely and fearlessly as
against the humblest citizen. The Department of Justice is now in very
fact the Department of Justice, and justice is meted out with an even
hand to great and small, rich and poor, weak and strong. Those who have
denounced you and the action of the Department of Justice are either
misled, or else are the very wrongdoers, and the agents of the very
wrongdoers, who have for so many years gone scot-free and flouted the
laws with impunity. Above all, you are to be congratulated upon the
bitterness felt and expressed towards you by the representatives and
agents of the great law-defying corporations of immense wealth, who,
until within the last half-dozen years, have treated themselves and have
expected others to treat them as being beyond and above all possible
check from law.
It was time to say something, for the representatives of predatory
wealth, of wealth accumulated on a giant scale by iniquity,
by wrongdoing in many forms, by plain swindling, by oppressing
wage-workers, by manipulating securities, by unfair and unwholesome
competition and by stock-jobbing,--in short, by conduct abhorrent to
every man of ordinarily decent conscience, have during the last few
months made it evident that they are banded together to work for a
reaction, to endeavor to overthrow and discredit all who honestly
administer the law, and to secure a return to the days when every
unscrupulous wrongdoer could do what he wished unchecked, provided he
had enough money. They attack you because they know your honesty and
fearlessness, and dread them. The enormous sums of money these men have
at their control enable them to carry on an effective campaign. They
find their tools in a portion of the public press, including especially
certain of the great New York newspapers. They find their agents in
some men in public life,--now and then occupying, or having occupied,
positions as high as Senator or Governor,--in some men in the pulpit,
and most melancholy of all, in a few men on the bench. By gifts to
colleges and universities they are occasionally able to subsidize in
their own interest some head of an educational body, who, save only a
judge, should of all men be most careful to keep his skirts clear from
the taint of such corruption. There are ample material rewards for those
who serve with fidelity the Mammon of unrighteousness, but they are
dearly paid for by that institution of learning whose head, by example
and precept, teaches the scholars who sit under him that there is one
law for the rich and another for the poor. The amount of money the
representatives of the great moneyed interests are willing to spend can
be gauged by their recent publication broadcast throughout the papers
of this country from the Atlantic to the Pacific of huge advertisements,
attacking with envenomed bitterness the Administration's policy of
warring against successful dishonesty, advertisements that must have
cost enormous sums of money. This advertisement, as also a pamphlet
called "The Roosevelt Panic," and one or two similar books and
pamphlets, are written especially in the interest of the Standard Oil
and Harriman combinations, but also defend all the individuals and
corporations of great wealth that have been guilty of wrongdoing. From
the railroad rate law to the pure food law, every measure for honesty
in business that has been pressed during the last six years, has been
opposed by these men, on its passage and in its administration, with
every resource that bitter and unscrupulous craft could suggest, and the
command of almost unlimited money secure. These men do not themselves
speak or write; they hire others to do their bidding. Their spirit and
purpose are made clear alike by the editorials of the papers owned in,
or whose policy is dictated by, Wall Street, and by the speeches of
public men who, as Senators, Governors, or Mayors, have served these
their masters to the cost of the plain people. At one time one of their
writers or speakers attacks the rate law as the cause of the panic; he
is, whether in public life or not, usually a clever corporation lawyer,
and he is not so foolish a being as to believe in the truth of what he
says; he has too closely represented the railroads not to know well that
the Hepburn Rate Bill has helped every honest railroad, and has hurt
only the railroads that regarded themselves as above the law. At another
time, one of them assails the Administration for not imprisoning people
under the Sherman Anti-Trust Law; for declining to make what he well
knows, in view of the actual attitude of juries (as shown in the Tobacco
Trust cases and in San Francisco in one or two of the cases brought
against corrupt business men) would have been the futile endeavor to
imprison defendants whom we are actually able to fine. He raises the
usual clamor, raised by all who object to the enforcement of the law,
that we are fining corporations instead of putting the heads of the
corporations in jail; and he states that this does not really harm the
chief offenders. Were this statement true, he himself would not be found
attacking us. The extraordinary violence of the assault upon our policy
contained in speeches like these, in the articles in the subsidized
press, in such huge advertisements and pamphlets as those above referred
to, and the enormous sums of money spent in these various ways, give a
fairly accurate measure of the anger and terror which our actions have
caused the corrupt men of vast wealth to feel in the very marrow of
their being.
The man thus attacking us is usually, like so many of his fellows,
either a great lawyer, or a paid editor who takes his commands from the
financiers and his arguments from their attorneys. If the former, he has
defended many malefactors, and he knows well that, thanks to the advice
of lawyers like himself, a certain kind of modern corporation has been
turned into an admirable instrument by which to render it well nigh
impossible to get at the really guilty man, so that in most cases the
only way of punishing the wrong is by fining the corporation or by
proceeding personally against some of the minor agents. These lawyers
and their employers are the men mainly responsible for this state of
things, and their responsibility is shared with the legislators who
ingeniously oppose the passing of just and effective laws, and with
those judges whose one aim seems to be to construe such laws so that
they cannot be executed. Nothing is sillier than this outcry on behalf
of the "innocent stockholders" in the corporations. We are besought to
pity the Standard Oil Company for a fine relatively far less great than
the fines every day inflicted in the police courts upon multitudes of
push cart peddlers and other petty offenders, whose woes never extort
one word from the men whose withers are wrung by the woes of the mighty.
The stockholders have the control of the corporation in their own hands.
The corporation officials are elected by those holding the majority of
the stock and can keep office only by having behind them the good-will
of these majority stockholders. They are not entitled to the slightest
pity if they deliberately choose to resign into the hands of great
wrongdoers the control of the corporations in which they own the stock.
Of course innocent people have become involved in these big corporations
and suffer because of the misdeeds of their criminal associates. Let
these innocent people be careful not to invest in corporations where
those in control are not men of probity, men who respect the laws; above
all let them avoid the men who make it their one effort to evade or defy
the laws. But if these honest innocent people are in the majority in
any corporation they can immediately resume control and throw out of
the directory the men who misrepresent them. Does any man for a moment
suppose that the majority stockholders of the Standard Oil are others
than Mr. Rockefeller and his associates themselves and the beneficiaries
of their wrongdoing? When the stock is watered so that the innocent
investors suffer, a grave wrong is indeed done to these innocent
investors as well as to the public; but the public men, lawyers and
editors, to whom I refer, do not under these circumstances express
sympathy for the innocent; on the contrary they are the first to protest
with frantic vehemence against our efforts by law to put a stop to
over-capitalization and stock-watering. The apologists of successful
dishonesty always declaim against any effort to punish or prevent it on
the ground that such effort will "unsettle business." It is they who by
their acts have unsettled business; and the very men raising this
cry spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in securing, by speech,
editorial, book or pamphlet, the defense by misstatement of what they
have done; and yet when we correct their misstatements by telling the
truth, they declaim against us for breaking silence, lest "values be
unsettled!" They have hurt honest business men, honest working men,
honest farmers; and now they clamor against the truth being told.
The keynote of all these attacks upon the effort to secure honesty in
business and in politics, is expressed in a recent speech, in which the
speaker stated that prosperity had been checked by the effort for the
"moral regeneration of the business world," an effort which he denounced
as "unnatural, unwarranted, and injurious" and for which he stated the
panic was the penalty. The morality of such a plea is precisely as great
as if made on behalf of the men caught in a gambling establishment when
that gambling establishment is raided by the police. If such words mean
anything they mean that those whose sentiments they represent stand
against the effort to bring about a moral regeneration of business which
will prevent a repetition of the insurance, banking, and street railroad
scandals in New York; a repetition of the Chicago and Alton deal; a
repetition of the combination between certain professional politicians,
certain professional labor leaders and certain big financiers from the
disgrace of which San Francisco has just been rescued; a repetition of
the successful efforts by the Standard Oil people to crush out every
competitor, to overawe the common carriers, and to establish a monopoly
which treats the public with the contempt which the public deserves so
long as it permits men like the public men of whom I speak to represent
it in politics, men like the heads of colleges to whom I refer to
educate its youth. The outcry against stopping dishonest practices among
the very wealthy is precisely similar to the outcry raised against every
effort for cleanliness and decency in city government because, forsooth,
it will "hurt business." The same outcry is made against the Department
of Justice for prosecuting the heads of colossal corporations that is
made against the men who in San Francisco are prosecuting with impartial
severity the wrongdoers among business men, public officials, and labor
leaders alike. The principle is the same in the two cases. Just as
the blackmailer and the bribe giver stand on the same evil eminence
of infamy, so the man who makes an enormous fortune by corrupting
Legislatures and municipalities and fleecing his stockholders and the
public stands on a level with the creature who fattens on the blood
money of the gambling house, the saloon and the brothel. Moreover,
both kinds of corruption in the last analysis are far more intimately
connected than would at first sight appear; the wrong-doing is at bottom
the same. Corrupt business and corrupt politics act and react, with
ever increasing debasement, one on the other; the rebate-taker, the
franchise-trafficker, the manipulator of securities, the purveyor and
protector of vice, the black-mailing ward boss, the ballot box stuffer,
the demagogue, the mob leader, the hired bully and mankiller, all alike
work at the same web of corruption, and all alike should be abhorred by
honest men.
The "business" which is hurt by the movement for honesty is the kind of
business which, in the long run, it pays the country to have hurt. It
is the kind of business which has tended to make the very name "high
finance" a term of scandal to which all honest American men of business
should join in putting an end. One of the special pleaders for business
dishonesty, in a recent speech, in denouncing the Administration for
enforcing the law against the huge and corrupt corporations which
have defied the law, also denounced it for endeavoring to secure
a far-reaching law making employers liable for injuries to their
employees. It is meet and fit that the apologists for corrupt wealth
should oppose every effort to relieve weak and helpless people from
crushing misfortune brought upon them by injury in the business from
which they gain a bare livelihood and their employers fortunes. It is
hypocritical baseness to speak of a girl who works in a factory where
the dangerous machinery is unprotected as having the "right" freely
to contract to expose herself to dangers to life and limb. She has
no alternative but to suffer want or else to expose herself to such
dangers, and when she loses a hand or is otherwise maimed or disfigured
for life it is a moral wrong that the burden of the risk necessarily
incidental to the business should be placed with crushing weight upon
her weak shoulders and the man who has profited by her work escape
scot-free. This is what our opponents advocate, and it is proper that
they should advocate it, for it rounds out their advocacy of those most
dangerous members of the criminal class, the criminals of vast wealth,
the men who can afford best to pay for such championship in the press
and on the stump.
It is difficult to speak about the judges, for it behooves us all to
treat with the utmost respect the high office of judge; and our judges
as a whole are brave and upright men. But there is need that those who
go wrong should not be allowed to feel that there is no condemnation of
their wrongdoing. A judge who on the bench either truckles to the mob or
bows down before a corporation; or who, having left the bench to become
a corporation lawyer, seeks to aid his clients by denouncing as enemies
of property all those who seek to stop the abuses of the criminal rich;
such a man performs an even worse service to the body politic than the
Legislator or Executive who goes wrong. In no way can respect for the
courts be so quickly undermined as by teaching the public through the
action of a judge himself that there is reason for the loss of such
respect. The judge who by word or deed makes it plain that the corrupt
corporation, the law-defying corporation, the law-defying rich man,
has in him a sure and trustworthy ally, the judge who by misuse of the
process of injunction makes it plain that in him the wage-worker has a
determined and unscrupulous enemy, the judge who when he decides in an
employers' liability or a tenement house factory case shows that he has
neither sympathy for nor understanding of those fellow-citizens of his
who most need his sympathy and understanding; these judges work as much
evil as if they pandered to the mob, as if they shrank from sternly
repressing violence and disorder. The judge who does his full duty well
stands higher, and renders a better service to the people, than any
other public servant; he is entitled to greater respect; and if he is a
true servant of the people, if he is upright, wise and fearless, he will
unhesitatingly disregard even the wishes of the people if they conflict
with the eternal principles of right as against wrong. He must serve
the people; but he must serve his conscience first. All honor to such a
judge; and all honor cannot be rendered him if it is rendered equally
to his brethren who fall immeasurably below the high ideals for which he
stands. There should be a sharp discrimination against such judges. They
claim immunity from criticism, and the claim is heatedly advanced by men
and newspapers like those of whom I speak. Most certainly they can claim
immunity from untruthful criticism; and their champions, the newspapers
and the public men I have mentioned, exquisitely illustrate by their own
actions mendacious criticism in its most flagrant and iniquitous form.
But no servant of the people has a right to expect to be free from just
and honest criticism. It is the newspapers, and the public men whose
thoughts and deeds show them to be most alien to honesty and truth
who themselves loudly object to truthful and honest criticism of their
fellow-servants of the great moneyed interests.
We have no quarrel with the individuals, whether public men, lawyers
or editors, to whom I refer. These men derive their sole power from the
great, sinister offenders who stand behind them. They are but puppets
who move as the strings are pulled by those who control the enormous
masses of corporate wealth which if itself left uncontrolled threatens
dire evil to the Republic. It is not the puppets, but the strong,
cunning men and the mighty forces working for evil behind, and to a
certain extent through, the puppets, with whom we have to deal. We seek
to control law-defying wealth, in the first place to prevent its
doing evil, and in the next place to avoid the vindictive and dreadful
radicalism which if left uncontrolled it is certain in the end to
arouse. Sweeping attacks upon all property, upon all men of means,
without regard to whether they do well or ill, would sound the death
knell of the Republic; and such attacks become inevitable if decent
citizens permit rich men whose lives are corrupt and evil to domineer
in swollen pride, unchecked and unhindered, over the destinies of this
country. We act in no vindictive spirit, and we are no respecters of
persons. If a labor union does what is wrong, we oppose it as fearlessly
as we oppose a corporation that does wrong; and we stand with equal
stoutness for the rights of the man of wealth and for the rights of the
wage-workers; just as much so for one as for the other. We seek to stop
wrongdoing; and we desire to punish the wrongdoer only so far as is
necessary in order to achieve this end. We are the stanch upholders of
every honest man, whether business man or wage-worker.
I do not for a moment believe that our actions have brought on business
distress; so far as this is due to local and not world-wide causes,
and to the actions of any particular individuals, it is due to the
speculative folly and flagrant dishonesty of a few men of great
wealth, who now seek to shield themselves from the effects of their own
wrongdoings by ascribing its results to the actions of those who have
sought to put a stop to the wrongdoing. But if it were true that to
cut out rottenness from the body politic meant a momentary check to an
unhealthy seeming prosperity, I should not for one moment hesitate to
put the knife to the cancer. On behalf of all our people, on behalf no
less of the honest man of means than of the honest man who earns each
day's livelihood by that day's sweat of his brow, it is necessary to
insist upon honesty in business and politics alike, in all walks of
life, in big things and in little things; upon just and fair dealing
as between man and man. We are striving for the right in the spirit of
Abraham Lincoln when he said:
"Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge may
speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the
wealth piled by the bondsmen's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord
are true and righteous altogether.'
"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the
right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the
work we are in."
Sincerely yours, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
HON. CHARLES J. BONAPARTE. Attorney-General.
CHAPTER XIII
SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE
By the time I became President I had grown to feel with deep intensity
of conviction that governmental agencies must find their justification
largely in the way in which they are used for the practical betterment
of living and working conditions among the mass of the people. I felt
that the fight was really for the abolition of privilege; and one of the
first stages in the battle was necessarily to fight for the rights of
the workingman. For this reason I felt most strongly that all that the
government could do in the interest of labor should be done. The Federal
Government can rarely act with the directness that the State governments
act. It can, however, do a good deal. My purpose was to make the
National Government itself a model employer of labor, the effort being
to make the per diem employee just as much as the Cabinet officer regard
himself as one of the partners employed in the service of the public,
proud of his work, eager to do it in the best possible manner, and
confident of just treatment. Our aim was also to secure good laws
wherever the National Government had power, notably in the Territories,
in the District of Columbia, and in connection with inter-State
commerce. I found the eight-hour law a mere farce, the departments
rarely enforcing it with any degree of efficiency. This I remedied
by executive action. Unfortunately, thoroughly efficient government
servants often proved to be the prime offenders so far as the
enforcement of the eight-hour law was concerned, because in their zeal
to get good work done for the Government they became harsh taskmasters,
and declined to consider the needs of their fellow-employees who served
under them. The more I had studied the subject the more strongly I had
become convinced that an eight-hour day under the conditions of labor
in the United States was all that could, with wisdom and propriety, be
required either by the Government or by private employers; that more
than this meant, on the average, a decrease in the qualities that tell
for good citizenship. I finally solved the problem, as far as Government
employees were concerned, by calling in Charles P. Neill, the head
of the Labor Bureau; and acting on his advice, I speedily made the
eight-hour law really effective. Any man who shirked his work, who
dawdled and idled, received no mercy; slackness is even worse than
harshness; for exactly as in battle mercy to the coward is cruelty to
the brave man, so in civil life slackness towards the vicious and idle
is harshness towards the honest and hardworking.
We passed a good law protecting the lives and health of miners in the
Territories, and other laws providing for the supervision of employment
agencies in the District of Columbia, and protecting the health
of motormen and conductors on street railways in the District. We
practically started the Bureau of Mines. We provided for safeguarding
factory employees in the District against accidents, and for the
restriction of child labor therein. We passed a workmen's compensation
law for the protection of Government employees; a law which did not
go as far as I wished, but which was the best I could get, and which
committed the Government to the right policy. We provided for an
investigation of woman and child labor in the United States. We
incorporated the National Child Labor Committee. Where we had most
difficulty was with the railway companies engaged in inter-State
business. We passed an act improving safety appliances on railway trains
without much opposition, but we had more trouble with acts regulating
the hours of labor of railway employees and making those railways which
were engaged in inter-State commerce liable for injuries to or the death
of their employees while on duty. One important step in connection with
these latter laws was taken by Attorney-General Moody when, on behalf of
the Government, he intervened in the case of a wronged employee. It
is unjust that a law which has been declared public policy by the
representatives of the people should be submitted to the possibility of
nullification because the Government leaves the enforcement of it to the
private initiative of poor people who have just suffered some crushing
accident. It should be the business of the Government to enforce laws of
this kind, and to appear in court to argue for their constitutionality
and proper enforcement. Thanks to Moody, the Government assumed this
position. The first employers' liability law affecting inter-State
railroads was declared unconstitutional. We got through another, which
stood the test of the courts.
The principle to which we especially strove to give expression, through
these laws and through executive action, was that a right is valueless
unless reduced from the abstract to the concrete. This sounds like a
truism. So far from being such, the effort practically to apply it was
almost revolutionary, and gave rise to the bitterest denunciation of us
by all the big lawyers, and all the big newspaper editors, who, whether
sincerely or for hire, gave expression to the views of the privileged
classes. Ever since the Civil War very many of the decisions of the
courts, not as regards ordinary actions between man and man, but as
regards the application of great governmental policies for social
and industrial justice, had been in reality nothing but ingenious
justification of the theory that these policies were mere high-sounding
abstractions, and were not to be given practical effect. The tendency of
the courts had been, in the majority of cases, jealously to exert their
great power in protecting those who least needed protection and hardly
to use their power at all in the interest of those who most needed
protection. Our desire was to make the Federal Government efficient as
an instrument for protecting the rights of labor within its province,
and therefore to secure and enforce judicial decisions which would
permit us to make this desire effective. Not only some of the Federal
judges, but some of the State courts invoked the Constitution in a
spirit of the narrowest legalistic obstruction to prevent the Government
from acting in defense of labor on inter-State railways. In effect,
these judges took the view that while Congress had complete power as
regards the goods transported by the railways, and could protect wealthy
or well-to-do owners of these goods, yet that it had no power to protect
the lives of the men engaged in transporting the goods. Such judges
freely issued injunctions to prevent the obstruction of traffic in
the interest of the property owners, but declared unconstitutional
the action of the Government in seeking to safeguard the men, and the
families of the men, without whose labor the traffic could not take
place. It was an instance of the largely unconscious way in which the
courts had been twisted into the exaltation of property rights over
human rights, and the subordination of the welfare of the laborer when
compared with the profit of the man for whom he labored. By what I fear
my conservative friends regarded as frightfully aggressive missionary
work, which included some uncommonly plain speaking as to certain unjust
and anti-social judicial decisions, we succeeded in largely, but by no
means altogether, correcting this view, at least so far as the best and
most enlightened judges were concerned.
Very much the most important action I took as regards labor had nothing
to do with legislation, and represented executive action which was not
required by the Constitution. It illustrated as well as anything that
I did the theory which I have called the Jackson-Lincoln theory of the
Presidency; that is, that occasionally great national crises arise which
call for immediate and vigorous executive action, and that in such cases
it is the duty of the President to act upon the theory that he is the
steward of the people, and that the proper attitude for him to take is
that he is bound to assume that he has the legal right to do whatever
the needs of the people demand, unless the Constitution or the laws
explicitly forbid him to do it.
Early in the spring of 1902 a universal strike began in the anthracite
regions. The miners and the operators became deeply embittered, and the
strike went on throughout the summer and the early fall without any sign
of reaching an end, and with almost complete stoppage of mining. In many
cities, especially in the East, the heating apparatus is designed
for anthracite, so that the bituminous coal is only a very partial
substitute. Moreover, in many regions, even in farmhouses, many of the
provisions are for burning coal and not wood. In consequence, the coal
famine became a National menace as the winter approached. In most big
cities and many farming districts east of the Mississippi the shortage
of anthracite threatened calamity. In the populous industrial States,
from Ohio eastward, it was not merely calamity, but the direct disaster,
that was threatened. Ordinarily conservative men, men very sensitive as
to the rights of property under normal conditions, when faced by this
crisis felt, quite rightly, that there must be some radical action. The
Governor of Massachusetts and the Mayor of New York both notified me, as
the cold weather came on, that if the coal famine continued the misery
throughout the Northeast, and especially in the great cities, would
become appalling, and the consequent public disorder so great that
frightful consequences might follow. It is not too much to say that the
situation which confronted Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, and
to a less degree the States of the Middle West, in October, 1902, was
quite as serious as if they had been threatened by the invasion of a
hostile army of overwhelming force.
The big coal operators had banded together, and positively refused
to take any steps looking toward an accommodation. They knew that the
suffering among the miners was great; they were confident that if order
were kept, and nothing further done by the Government, they would win;
and they refused to consider that the public had any rights in the
matter. They were, for the most part, men of unquestionably good private
life, and they were merely taking the extreme individualistic view of
the rights of property and the freedom of individual action upheld in
the _laissez-faire_ political economics. The mines were in the State
of Pennsylvania. There was no duty whatever laid upon me by the
Constitution in the matter, and I had in theory the power to act
directly unless the Governor of Pennsylvania or the Legislature, if
it were in session, should notify me that Pennsylvania could not keep
order, and request me as commander-in-chief of the army of the United
States to intervene and keep order.
As long as I could avoid interfering I did so; but I directed the head
of the Labor Bureau, Carroll Wright, to make a thorough investigation
and lay the facts fully before me. As September passed without any sign
of weakening either among the employers or the striking workmen,
the situation became so grave that I felt I would have to try to do
something. The thing most feasible was to get both sides to agree to a
Commission of Arbitration, with a promise to accept its findings; the
miners to go to work as soon as the commission was appointed, at the old
rate of wages. To this proposition the miners, headed by John Mitchell,
agreed, stipulating only that I should have the power to name the
Commission. The operators, however, positively refused. They insisted
that all that was necessary to do was for the State to keep order, using
the militia as a police force; although both they and the miners asked
me to intervene under the Inter-State Commerce Law, each side requesting
that I proceed against the other, and both requests being impossible.
Finally, on October 3, the representatives of both the operators and the
miners met before me, in pursuance of my request. The representatives of
the miners included as their head and spokesman John Mitchell, who kept
his temper admirably and showed to much advantage. The representatives
of the operators, on the contrary, came down in a most insolent frame of
mind, refused to talk of arbitration or other accommodation of any kind,
and used language that was insulting to the miners and offensive to me.
They were curiously ignorant of the popular temper; and when they went
away from the interview they, with much pride, gave their own account of
it to the papers, exulting in the fact that they had "turned down" both
the miners and the President.
I refused to accept the rebuff, however, and continued the effort to get
an agreement between the operators and the miners. I was anxious to get
this agreement, because it would prevent the necessity of taking
the extremely drastic action I meditated, and which is hereinafter
described.
Fortunately, this time we were successful. Yet we were on the verge of
failure, because of self-willed obstinacy on the part of the operators.
This obstinacy was utterly silly from their own standpoint, and
well-nigh criminal from the standpoint of the people at large. The
miners proposed that I should name the Commission, and that if I put
on a representative of the employing class I should also put on a labor
union man. The operators positively declined to accept the suggestion.
They insisted upon my naming a Commission of only five men, and
specified the qualifications these men should have, carefully choosing
these qualifications so as to exclude those whom it had leaked out I was
thinking of appointing, including ex-President Cleveland. They made the
condition that I was to appoint one officer of the engineer corps of
the army or navy, one man with experience of mining, one "man of
prominence," "eminent as a sociologist," one Federal judge of the
Eastern district of Pennsylvania, and one mining engineer.
They positively refused to have me appoint any representative of labor,
or to put on an extra man. I was desirous of putting on the extra man,
because Mitchell and the other leaders of the miners had urged me
to appoint some high Catholic ecclesiastic. Most of the miners were
Catholics, and Mitchell and the leaders were very anxious to secure
peaceful acquiescence by the miners in any decision rendered, and they
felt that their hands would be strengthened if such an appointment
were made. They also, quite properly, insisted that there should be
one representative of labor on the commission, as all of the others
represented the propertied classes. The operators, however, absolutely
refused to acquiesce in the appointment of any representative of labor,
and also announced that they would refuse to accept a sixth man on the
Commission; although they spoke much less decidedly on this point. The
labor men left everything in my hands.
The final conferences with the representatives of the operators took
place in my rooms on the evening of October 15. Hour after hour went by
while I endeavored to make the operators through their representatives
see that the country would not tolerate their insisting upon such
conditions; but in vain. The two representatives of the operators were
Robert Bacon and George W. Perkins. They were entirely reasonable. But
the operators themselves were entirely unreasonable. They had worked
themselves into a frame of mind where they were prepared to sacrifice
everything and see civil war in the country rather than back down and
acquiesce in the appointment of a representative of labor. It looked as
if a deadlock were inevitable.
Then, suddenly, after about two hours' argument, it dawned on me that
they were not objecting to the thing, but to the name. I found that they
did not mind my appointing any man, whether he was a labor man or
not, so long as he was not appointed _as_ a labor man, or _as_ a
representative of labor; they did not object to my exercising any
latitude I chose in the appointments so long as they were made under the
headings they had given. I shall never forget the mixture of relief
and amusement I felt when I thoroughly grasped the fact that while they
would heroically submit to anarchy rather than have Tweedledum, yet if
I would call it Tweedledee they would accept it with rapture; it gave
me an illuminating glimpse into one corner of the mighty brains of these
"captains of industry." In order to carry the great and vital point and
secure agreement by both parties, all that was necessary for me to do
was to commit a technical and nominal absurdity with a solemn face. This
I gladly did. I announced at once that I accepted the terms laid down.
With this understanding, I appointed the labor man I had all along
had in view, Mr. E. E. Clark, the head of the Brotherhood of Railway
Conductors, calling him an "eminent sociologist"--a term which I doubt
whether he had ever previously heard. He was a first-class man, whom
I afterward put on the Inter-State Commerce Commission. I added to the
Arbitration Commission, on my own authority, a sixth member, in the
person of Bishop Spalding, a Catholic bishop, of Peoria, Ill., one of
the very best men to be found in the entire country. The man whom the
operators had expected me to appoint as the sociologist was Carroll
Wright--who really was an eminent sociologist. I put him on as recorder
of the Commission, and added him as a seventh member as soon as
the Commission got fairly started. In publishing the list of the
Commissioners, when I came to Clark's appointment, I added: "As a
sociologist--the President assuming that for the purposes of such a
Commission, the term sociologist means a man who has thought and studied
deeply on social questions and has practically applied his knowledge."
The relief of the whole country was so great that the sudden appearance
of the head of the Brotherhood of Railway Conductors as an "eminent
sociologist" merely furnished material for puzzled comment on the part
of the press. It was a most admirable Commission. It did a noteworthy
work, and its report is a monument in the history of the relations of
labor and capital in this country. The strike, by the way, brought me
into contact with more than one man who was afterward a valued friend
and fellow-worker. On the suggestion of Carroll Wright I appointed as
assistant recorders to the Commission Charles P. Neill, whom I afterward
made Labor Commissioner, to succeed Wright himself, and Mr. Edward
A. Moseley. Wilkes-Barre was the center of the strike; and the man in
Wilkes-Barre who helped me most was Father Curran; I grew to know
and trust and believe in him, and throughout my term in office, and
afterward, he was not only my stanch friend, but one of the men by whose
advice and counsel I profited most in matters affecting the welfare of
the miners and their families.
I was greatly relieved at the result, for more than one reason. Of
course, first and foremost, my concern was to avert a frightful calamity
to the United States. In the next place I was anxious to save the great
coal operators and all of the class of big propertied men, of which they
were members, from the dreadful punishment which their own folly would
have brought on them if I had not acted; and one of the exasperating
things was that they were so blinded that they could not see that I was
trying to save them from themselves and to avert, not only for their
sakes, but for the sake of the country, the excesses which would have
been indulged in at their expense if they had longer persisted in their
conduct.
The great Anthracite Strike of 1902 left an indelible impress upon
the people of the United States. It showed clearly to all wise and
far-seeing men that the labor problem in this country had entered upon
a new phase. Industry had grown. Great financial corporations, doing a
nation-wide and even a world-wide business, had taken the place of
the smaller concerns of an earlier time. The old familiar, intimate
relations between employer and employee were passing. A few generations
before, the boss had known every man in his shop; he called his men
Bill, Tom, Dick, John; he inquired after their wives and babies; he
swapped jokes and stories and perhaps a bit of tobacco with them. In the
small establishment there had been a friendly human relationship between
employer and employee.
There was no such relation between the great railway magnates, who
controlled the anthracite industry, and the one hundred and fifty
thousand men who worked in their mines, or the half million women and
children who were dependent upon these miners for their daily bread.
Very few of these mine workers had ever seen, for instance, the
president of the Reading Railroad. Had they seen him many of them could
not have spoken to him, for tens of thousands of the mine workers were
recent immigrants who did not understand the language which he spoke and
who spoke a language which he could not understand.
Again, a few generations ago an American workman could have saved money,
gone West and taken up a homestead. Now the free lands were gone. In
earlier days a man who began with pick and shovel might have come to own
a mine. That outlet too was now closed, as regards the immense majority,
and few, if any, of the one hundred and fifty thousand mine workers
could ever aspire to enter the small circle of men who held in their
grasp the great anthracite industry. The majority of the men who earned
wages in the coal industry, if they wished to progress at all, were
compelled to progress not by ceasing to be wage-earners, but by
improving the conditions under which all the wage-earners in all the
industries of the country lived and worked, as well of course, as
improving their own individual efficiency.
Another change which had come about as a result of the foregoing was a
crass inequality in the bargaining relation between the employer and
the individual employee standing alone. The great coal-mining and
coal-carrying companies, which employed their tens of thousands, could
easily dispense with the services of any particular miner. The miner, on
the other hand, however expert, could not dispense with the companies.
He needed a job; his wife and children would starve if he did not get
one. What the miner had to sell--his labor--was a perishable commodity;
the labor of to-day--if not sold to-day--was lost forever. Moreover,
his labor was not like most commodities--a mere thing; it was part of
a living, breathing human being. The workman saw, and all citizens who
gave earnest thought to the matter saw, that the labor problem was not
only an economic, but also a moral, a human problem. Individually the
miners were impotent when they sought to enter a wage-contract with the
great companies; they could make fair terms only by uniting into trade
unions to bargain collectively. The men were forced to cooperate to
secure not only their economic, but their simple human rights. They,
like other workmen, were compelled by the very conditions under which
they lived to unite in unions of their industry or trade, and these
unions were bound to grow in size, in strength, and in power for good
and evil as the industries in which the men were employed grew larger
and larger.
A democracy can be such in fact only if there is some rough
approximation in similarity in stature among the men composing it. One
of us can deal in our private lives with the grocer or the butcher
or the carpenter or the chicken raiser, or if we are the grocer or
carpenter or butcher or farmer, we can deal with our customers, because
_we are all of about the same size_. Therefore a simple and poor society
can exist as a democracy on a basis of sheer individualism. But a rich
and complex industrial society cannot so exist; for some individuals,
and especially those artificial individuals called corporations, become
so very big that the ordinary individual is utterly dwarfed beside them,
and cannot deal with them on terms of equality. It therefore becomes
necessary for these ordinary individuals to combine in their turn, first
in order to act in their collective capacity through that biggest of all
combinations called the Government, and second, to act, also in their
own self-defense, through private combinations, such as farmers'
associations and trade unions.
This the great coal operators did not see. They did not see that their
property rights, which they so stoutly defended, were of the same
texture as were the human rights, which they so blindly and hotly
denied. They did not see that the power which they exercised by
representing their stockholders was of the same texture as the power
which the union leaders demanded of representing the workmen, who had
democratically elected them. They did not see that the right to use
one's property as one will can be maintained only so long as it is
consistent with the maintenance of certain fundamental human rights, of
the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, or, as we
may restate them in these later days, of the rights of the worker to a
living wage, to reasonable hours of labor, to decent working and
living conditions, to freedom of thought and speech and industrial
representation,--in short, to a measure of industrial democracy and, in
return for his arduous toil, to a worthy and decent life according to
American standards. Still another thing these great business leaders did
not see. They did not see that both their interests and the interests of
the workers must be accommodated, and if need be, subordinated, to the
fundamental permanent interests of the whole community. No man and no
group of men may so exercise their rights as to deprive the nation of
the things which are necessary and vital to the common life. A strike
which ties up the coal supplies of a whole section is a strike invested
with a public interest.
So great was that public interest in the Coal Strike of 1902, so deeply
and strongly did I feel the wave of indignation which swept over the
whole country that had I not succeeded in my efforts to induce the
operators to listen to reason, I should reluctantly but none the less
decisively have taken a step which would have brought down upon my head
the execrations of many of "the captains of industry," as well as of
sundry "respectable" newspapers who dutifully take their cue from them.
As a man should be judged by his intentions as well as by his actions, I
will give here the story of the intervention that never happened.
While the coal operators were exulting over the fact that they had
"turned down" the miners and the President, there arose in all parts
of the country an outburst of wrath so universal that even so naturally
conservative a man as Grover Cleveland wrote to me, expressing his
sympathy with the course I was following, his indignation at the conduct
of the operators, and his hope that I would devise some method of
effective action. In my own mind I was already planning effective
action; but it was of a very drastic character, and I did not wish
to take it until the failure of all other expedients had rendered it
necessary. Above all, I did not wish to talk about it until and unless I
actually acted. I had definitely determined that somehow or other act
I would, that somehow or other the coal famine should be broken. To
accomplish this end it was necessary that the mines should be run, and,
if I could get no voluntary agreement between the contending sides, that
an Arbitration Commission should be appointed which would command such
public confidence as to enable me, without too much difficulty, to
enforce its terms upon both parties. Ex-President Cleveland's letter not
merely gratified me, but gave me the chance to secure him as head of the
Arbitration Commission. I at once wrote him, stating that I would very
probably have to appoint an Arbitration Commission or Investigating
Commission to look into the matter and decide on the rights of the
case, whether or not the operators asked for or agreed to abide by the
decisions of such a Commission; and that I would ask him to accept the
chief place on the Commission. He answered that he would do so. I picked
out several first-class men for other positions on the Commission.
Meanwhile the Governor of Pennsylvania had all the Pennsylvania
militia in the anthracite region, although without any effect upon the
resumption of mining. The method of action upon which I had determined
in the last resort was to get the Governor of Pennsylvania to ask me
to keep order. Then I would put in the army under the command of some
first-rate general. I would instruct this general to keep absolute
order, taking any steps whatever that was necessary to prevent
interference by the strikers or their sympathizers with men who wanted
to work. I would also instruct him to dispossess the operators and run
the mines as a receiver until such time as the Commission might make its
report, and until I, as President, might issue further orders in view of
this report. I had to find a man who possessed the necessary good sense,
judgment, and nerve to act in such event. He was ready to hand in the
person of Major-General Schofield. I sent for him, telling him that if
I had to make use of him it would be because the crisis was only less
serious than that of the Civil War, that the action taken would be
practically a war measure, and that if I sent him he must act in a
purely military capacity under me as commander-in-chief, paying no heed
to any authority, judicial or otherwise, except mine. He was a fine
fellow--a most respectable-looking old boy, with side whiskers and a
black skull-cap, without any of the outward aspect of the conventional
military dictator; but in both nerve and judgment he was all right, and
he answered quietly that if I gave the order he would take possession
of the mines, and would guarantee to open them and to run them without
permitting any interference either by the owners or the strikers or
anybody else, so long as I told him to stay. I then saw Senator Quay,
who, like every other responsible man in high position, was greatly
wrought up over the condition of things. I told him that he need be
under no alarm as to the problem not being solved, that I was going to
make another effort to get the operators and miners to come together,
but that I would solve the problem in any event and get coal; that,
however, I did not wish to tell him anything of the details of my
intention, but merely to have him arrange that whenever I gave the word
the Governor of Pennsylvania should request me to intervene; that when
this was done I would be responsible for all that followed, and would
guarantee that the coal famine would end forthwith. The Senator made
no inquiry or comment, and merely told me that he in his turn would
guarantee that the Governor would request my intervention the minute I
asked that the request be made.
These negotiations were concluded with the utmost secrecy, General
Schofield being the only man who knew exactly what my plan was, and
Senator Quay, two members of my Cabinet, and ex-President Cleveland and
the other men whom I proposed to put on the Commission, the only other
men who knew that I had a plan. As I have above outlined, my efforts to
bring about an agreement between the operators and miners were finally
successful. I was glad not to have to take possession of the mines on my
own initiative by means of General Schofield and the regulars. I was all
ready to act, and would have done so without the slightest hesitation or
a moment's delay if the negotiations had fallen through. And my action
would have been entirely effective. But it is never well to take drastic
action if the result can be achieved with equal efficiency in less
drastic fashion; and, although this was a minor consideration, I was
personally saved a good deal of future trouble by being able to avoid
this drastic action. At the time I should have been almost unanimously
supported. With the famine upon them the people would not have tolerated
any conduct that would have thwarted what I was doing. Probably no man
in Congress, and no man in the Pennsylvania State Legislature, would
have raised his voice against me. Although there would have been
plenty of muttering, nothing would have been done to interfere with the
solution of the problem which I had devised, _until the solution was
accomplished and the problem ceased to be a problem_. Once this was
done, and when people were no longer afraid of a coal famine, and began
to forget that they ever had been afraid of it, and to be indifferent as
regards the consequences to those who put an end to it, then my enemies
would have plucked up heart and begun a campaign against me. I doubt if
they could have accomplished much anyway, for the only effective remedy
against me would have been impeachment, and that they would not have
ventured to try.[*]
[*] One of my appointees on the Anthracite Strike Commission
was Judge George Gray, of Delaware, a Democrat whose
standing in the country was second only to that of Grover
Cleveland. A year later he commented on my action as
follows:
"I have no hesitation in saying that the President of the United States
was confronted in October, 1902, by the existence of a crisis more grave
and threatening than any that had occurred since the Civil War. I mean
that the cessation of mining in the anthracite country, brought about
by the dispute between the miners and those who controlled the greatest
natural monopoly in this country and perhaps in the world, had
brought upon more than one-half of the American people a condition
of deprivation of one of the necessaries of life, and the probable
continuance of the dispute threatened not only the comfort and health,
but the safety and good order, of the nation. He was without legal or
constitutional power to interfere, but his position as President of the
United States gave him an influence, a leadership, as first citizen
of the republic, that enabled him to appeal to the patriotism and good
sense of the parties to the controversy and to place upon them the moral
coercion of public opinion to agree to an arbitrament of the strike then
existing and threatening consequences so direful to the whole country.
He acted promptly and courageously, and in so doing averted the dangers
to which I have alluded.
"So far from interfering or infringing upon property rights, the
Presidents' action tended to conserve them. The peculiar situation, as
regards the anthracite coal interest, was that they controlled a natural
monopoly of a product necessary to the comfort and to the very life of a
large portion of the people. A prolonged deprivation of the enjoyment of
this necessary of life would have tended to precipitate an attack upon
these property rights of which you speak; for, after all, it is vain
to deny that this property, so peculiar in its conditions, and which
is properly spoken of as a natural monopoly, is affected with a public
interest.
"I do not think that any President ever acted more wisely, courageously
or promptly in a national crisis. Mr. Roosevelt deserves unstinted
praise for what he did."
They would doubtless have acted precisely as they acted as regards the
acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone in 1903, and the stoppage of
the panic of 1907 by my action in the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company
matter. Nothing could have made the American people surrender the canal
zone. But after it was an accomplished fact, and the canal was
under way, then they settled down to comfortable acceptance of the
accomplished fact, and as their own interests were no longer in
jeopardy, they paid no heed to the men who attacked me because of what I
had done--and also continue to attack me, although they are exceedingly
careful not to propose to right the "wrong," in the only proper way if
it really was a wrong, by replacing the old Republic of Panama under the
tyranny of Colombia and giving Colombia sole or joint ownership of
the canal itself. In the case of the panic of 1907 (as in the case
of Panama), what I did was not only done openly, but depended for its
effect upon being done and with the widest advertisement. Nobody in
Congress ventured to make an objection at the time. No serious leader
outside made any objection. The one concern of everybody was to stop
the panic, and everybody was overjoyed that I was willing to take the
responsibility of stopping it upon my own shoulders. But a few months
afterward, the panic was a thing of the past. People forgot the
frightful condition of alarm in which they had been. They no longer had
a personal interest in preventing any interference with the stoppage of
the panic. Then the men who had not dared to raise their voices until
all danger was past came bravely forth from their hiding places and
denounced the action which had saved them. They had kept a hushed
silence when there was danger; they made clamorous outcry when there was
safety in doing so.
Just the same course would have been followed in connection with the
Anthracite Coal Strike if I had been obliged to act in the fashion I
intended to act had I failed to secure a voluntary agreement between the
miners and the operators. Even as it was, my action was remembered with
rancor by the heads of the great moneyed interests; and as time went by
was assailed with constantly increasing vigor by the newspapers these
men controlled. Had I been forced to take possession of the mines,
these men and the politicians hostile to me would have waited until the
popular alarm was over and the popular needs met, just as they waited
in the case of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; and then they
would have attacked me precisely as they did attack me as regards the
Tennessee Coal and Iron Company.
Of course, in labor controversies it was not always possible to champion
the cause of the workers, because in many cases strikes were called
which were utterly unwarranted and were fought by methods which cannot
be too harshly condemned. No straightforward man can believe, and no
fearless man will assert, that a trade union is always right. That
man is an unworthy public servant who by speech or silence, by direct
statement or cowardly evasion, invariably throws the weight of his
influence on the side of the trade union, whether it is right or wrong.
It has occasionally been my duty to give utterance to the feelings of
all right thinking men by expressing the most emphatic disapproval of
unwise or even immoral notions by representatives of labor. The man is
no true democrat, and if an American, is unworthy of the traditions
of his country who, in problems calling for the exercise of a moral
judgment, fails to take his stand on conduct and not on class. There are
good and bad wage-workers just as there are good and bad employers, and
good and bad men of small means and of large means alike.
But a willingness to do equal and exact justice to all citizens,
irrespective of race, creed, section or economic interest and position,
does not imply a failure to recognize the enormous economic, political
and moral possibilities of the trade union. Just as democratic
government cannot be condemned because of errors and even crimes
committed by men democratically elected, so trade-unionism must not be
condemned because of errors or crimes of occasional trade-union leaders.
The problem lies deeper. While we must repress all illegalities and
discourage all immoralities, whether of labor organizations or of
corporations, we must recognize the fact that to-day the organization of
labor into trade unions and federations is necessary, is beneficent,
and is one of the greatest possible agencies in the attainment of a true
industrial, as well as a true political, democracy in the United States.
This is a fact which many well-intentioned people even to-day do not
understand. They do not understand that the labor problem is a human
and a moral as well as an economic problem; that a fall in wages, an
increase in hours, a deterioration of labor conditions mean wholesale
moral as well as economic degeneration, and the needless sacrifice of
human lives and human happiness, while a rise of wages, a lessening of
hours, a bettering of conditions, mean an intellectual, moral and social
uplift of millions of American men and women. There are employers to-day
who, like the great coal operators, speak as though they were lords of
these countless armies of Americans, who toil in factory, in shop, in
mill and in the dark places under the earth. They fail to see that all
these men have the right and the duty to combine to protect themselves
and their families from want and degradation. They fail to see that
the Nation and the Government, within the range of fair play and a just
administration of the law, must inevitably sympathize with the men who
have nothing but their wages, with the men who are struggling for
a decent life, as opposed to men, however honorable, who are merely
fighting for larger profits and an autocratic control of big business.
Each man should have all he earns, whether by brain or body; and
the director, the great industrial leader, is one of the greatest of
earners, and should have a proportional reward; but no man should live
on the earnings of another, and there should not be too gross inequality
between service and reward.
There are many men to-day, men of integrity and intelligence, who
honestly believe that we must go back to the labor conditions of half
a century ago. They are opposed to trade unions, root and branch. They
note the unworthy conduct of many labor leaders, they find instances
of bad work by union men, of a voluntary restriction of output, of
vexations and violent strikes, of jurisdictional disputes between unions
which often disastrously involve the best intentioned and fairest of
employers. All these things occur and should be repressed. But the same
critic of the trade union might find equal causes of complaint against
individual employers of labor, or even against great associations of
manufacturers. He might find many instances of an unwarranted cutting of
wages, of flagrant violations of factory laws and tenement house laws,
of the deliberate and systematic cheating of employees by means of truck
stores, of the speeding up of work to a point which is fatal to the
health of the workman, of the sweating of foreign-born workers, of
the drafting of feeble little children into dusty workshops, of
black-listing, of putting spies into union meetings and of the
employment in strike times of vicious and desperate ruffians, who
are neither better nor worse than are the thugs who are occasionally
employed by unions under the sinister name, "entertainment committees."
I believe that the overwhelming majority, both of workmen and of
employers, are law-abiding peaceful, and honorable citizens, and I do
not think that it is just to lay up the errors and wrongs of individuals
to the entire group to which they belong. I also think--and this is
a belief which has been borne upon me through many years of practical
experience--that the trade union is growing constantly in wisdom as well
as in power, and is becoming one of the most efficient agencies toward
the solution of our industrial problems, the elimination of poverty and
of industrial disease and accidents, the lessening of unemployment,
the achievement of industrial democracy and the attainment of a larger
measure of social and industrial justice.
If I were a factory employee, a workman on the railroads or a
wage-earner of any sort, I would undoubtedly join the union of my trade.
If I disapproved of its policy, I would join in order to fight that
policy; if the union leaders were dishonest, I would join in order to
put them out. I believe in the union and I believe that all men who are
benefited by the union are morally bound to help to the extent of their
power in the common interests advanced by the union. Nevertheless,
irrespective of whether a man should or should not, and does or does
not, join the union of his trade, all the rights, privileges and
immunities of that man as an American and as a citizen should be
safeguarded and upheld by the law. We dare not make an outlaw of any
individual or any group, whatever his or its opinions or professions.
The non-unionist, like the unionist, must be protected in all his legal
rights by the full weight and power of the law.
This question came up before me in the shape of the right of a non-union
printer named Miller to hold his position in the Government Printing
Office. As I said before, I believe in trade unions. I always prefer to
see a union shop. But any private preferences cannot control my public
actions. The Government can recognize neither union men nor non-union
men as such, and is bound to treat both exactly alike. In the Government
Printing Office not many months prior to the opening of the Presidential
campaign of 1904, when I was up for reelection, I discovered that a man
had been dismissed because he did not belong to the union. I reinstated
him. Mr. Gompers, the President of the American Federation of Labor,
with various members of the executive council of that body, called upon
me to protest on September 29, 1903, and I answered them as follows:
"I thank you and your committee for your courtesy, and I appreciate the
opportunity to meet with you. It will always be a pleasure to see you
or any representative of your organizations or of your Federation as a
whole.
"As regards the Miller case, I have little to add to what I have already
said. In dealing with it I ask you to remember that I am dealing purely
with the relation of the Government to its employees. I must govern
my action by the laws of the land, which I am sworn to administer,
and which differentiate any case in which the Government of the United
States is a party from all other cases whatsoever. These laws are
enacted for the benefit of the whole people, and cannot and must not be
construed as permitting the crimination against some of the people. I
am President of all the people of the United States, without regard to
creed, color, birthplace, occupation or social condition. My aim is
to do equal and exact justice as among them all. In the employment and
dismissal of men in the Government service I can no more recognize
the fact that a man does or does not belong to a union as being for or
against him than I can recognize the fact that he is a Protestant or a
Catholic, a Jew or a Gentile, as being for or against him.
"In the communications sent me by various labor organizations protesting
against the retention of Miller in the Government Printing Office, the
grounds alleged are twofold: 1, that he is a non-union man; 2, that he
is not personally fit. The question of his personal fitness is one to be
settled in the routine of administrative detail, and cannot be allowed
to conflict with or to complicate the larger question of governmental
discrimination for or against him or any other man because he is or is
not a member of a union. This is the only question now before me for
decision; and as to this my decision is final."
Because of things I have done on behalf of justice to the workingman, I
have often been called a Socialist. Usually I have not taken the trouble
even to notice the epithet. I am not afraid of names, and I am not
one of those who fear to do what is right because some one else will
confound me with partisans with whose principles I am not in accord.
Moreover, I know that many American Socialists are high-minded and
honorable citizens, who in reality are merely radical social reformers.
They are oppressed by the brutalities and industrial injustices which we
see everywhere about us. When I recall how often I have seen Socialists
and ardent non-Socialists working side by side for some specific measure
of social or industrial reform, and how I have found opposed to them on
the side of privilege many shrill reactionaries who insist on calling
all reformers Socialists, I refuse to be panic-stricken by having this
title mistakenly applied to me.
None the less, without impugning their motives, I do disagree most
emphatically with both the fundamental philosophy and the proposed
remedies of the Marxian Socialists. These Socialists are unalterably
opposed to our whole industrial system. They believe that the payment of
wages means everywhere and inevitably an exploitation of the laborer
by the employer, and that this leads inevitably to a class war between
those two groups, or, as they would say, between the capitalists and the
proletariat. They assert that this class war is already upon us and
can only be ended when capitalism is entirely destroyed and all the
machines, mills, mines, railroads and other private property used in
production are confiscated, expropriated or taken over by the workers.
They do not as a rule claim--although some of the sinister extremists
among them do--that there is and must be a continual struggle between
two great classes, whose interests are opposed and cannot be reconciled.
In this war they insist that the whole government--National, State and
local--is on the side of the employers and is used by them against
the workmen, and that our law and even our common morality are class
weapons, like a policeman's club or a Gatling gun.
I have never believed, and do not to-day believe, that such a class war
is upon us, or need ever be upon us; nor do I believe that the interests
of wage-earners and employers cannot be harmonized, compromised and
adjusted. It would be idle to deny that wage-earners have certain
different economic interests from, let us say, manufacturers or
importers, just as farmers have different interests from sailors, and
fishermen from bankers. There is no reason why any of these economic
groups should not consult their group interests by any legitimate means
and with due regard to the common, overlying interests of all. I do
not even deny that the majority of wage-earners, because they have less
property and less industrial security than others and because they do
not own the machinery with which they work (as does the farmer) are
perhaps in greater need of acting together than are other groups in the
community. But I do insist (and I believe that the great majority of
wage-earners take the same view) that employers and employees have
overwhelming interests in common, both as partners in industry and as
citizens of the republic, and that where these interests are apart they
can be adjusted by so altering our laws and their interpretation as to
secure to all members of the community social and industrial justice.
I have always maintained that our worst revolutionaries to-day are those
reactionaries who do not see and will not admit that there is any need
for change. Such men seem to believe that the four and a half million
Progressive voters, who in 1912 registered their solemn protest against
our social and industrial injustices, are "anarchists," who are not
willing to let ill enough alone. If these reactionaries had lived at an
earlier time in our history, they would have advocated Sedition Laws,
opposed free speech and free assembly, and voted against free schools,
free access by settlers to the public lands, mechanics' lien laws, the
prohibition of truck stores and the abolition of imprisonment for debt;
and they are the men who to-day oppose minimum wage laws, insurance
of workmen against the ills of industrial life and the reform of
our legislators and our courts, which can alone render such measures
possible. Some of these reactionaries are not bad men, but merely
shortsighted and belated. It is these reactionaries, however, who, by
"standing pat" on industrial injustice, incite inevitably to industrial
revolt, and it is only we who advocate political and industrial
democracy who render possible the progress of our American industry
on large constructive lines with a minimum of friction because with a
maximum of justice.
Everything possible should be done to secure the wage-workers fair
treatment. There should be an increased wage for the worker of
increased productiveness. Everything possible should be done against the
capitalist who strives, not to reward special efficiency, but to use
it as an excuse for reducing the reward of moderate efficiency. The
capitalist is an unworthy citizen who pays the efficient man no more
than he has been content to pay the average man, and nevertheless
reduces the wage of the average man; and effort should be made by the
Government to check and punish him. When labor-saving machinery
is introduced, special care should be taken--by the Government if
necessary--to see that the wage-worker gets his share of the benefit,
and that it is not all absorbed by the employer or capitalist. The
following case, which has come to my knowledge, illustrates what I mean.
A number of new machines were installed in a certain shoe factory, and
as a result there was a heavy increase in production even though there
was no increase in the labor force. Some of the workmen were instructed
in the use of these machines by special demonstrators sent out by the
makers of the machines. These men, by reason of their special aptitudes
and the fact that they were not called upon to operate the machines
continuously nine hours every day, week in and week out, but only for an
hour or so at special times, were naturally able to run the machines at
their maximum capacity. When these demonstrators had left the factory,
and the company's own employees had become used to operating the
machines at a fair rate of speed, the foreman of the establishment
gradually speeded the machines and demanded a larger and still larger
output, constantly endeavoring to drive the men on to greater exertions.
Even with a slightly less maximum capacity, the introduction of this
machinery resulted in a great increase over former production with the
same amount of labor; and so great were the profits from the business in
the following two years as to equal the total capitalized stock of the
company. But not a cent got into the pay envelope of the workmen beyond
what they had formerly been receiving before the introduction of this
new machinery, notwithstanding that it had meant an added strain,
physical and mental, upon their energies, and that they were forced
to work harder than ever before. The whole of the increased profits
remained with the company. Now this represented an "increase of
efficiency," with a positive decrease of social and industrial justice.
The increase of prosperity which came from increase of production in no
way benefited the wage-workers. I hold that they were treated with gross
injustice; and that society, acting if necessary through the Government,
in such a case should bend its energies to remedy such injustice; and
I will support any proper legislation that will aid in securing the
desired end.
The wage-worker should not only receive fair treatment; he should give
fair treatment. In order that prosperity may be passed around it is
necessary that the prosperity exist. In order that labor shall receive
its fair share in the division of reward it is necessary that there be
a reward to divide. Any proposal to reduce efficiency by insisting that
the most efficient shall be limited in their output to what the least
efficient can do, is a proposal to limit by so much production, and
therefore to impoverish by so much the public, and specifically to
reduce the amount that can be divided among the producers. This is all
wrong. Our protest must be against unfair division of the reward for
production. Every encouragement should be given the business man, the
employer, to make his business prosperous, and therefore to earn more
money for himself; and in like fashion every encouragement should be
given the efficient workman. We must always keep in mind that to reduce
the amount of production serves merely to reduce the amount that is
to be divided, is in no way permanently efficient as a protest against
unequal distribution and is permanently detrimental to the entire
community. But increased productiveness is not secured by excessive
labor amid unhealthy surroundings. The contrary is true. Shorter hours,
and healthful conditions, and opportunity for the wage-worker to make
more money, and the chance for enjoyment as well as work, all add to
efficiency. My contention is that there should be no penalization of
efficient productiveness, brought about under healthy conditions;
but that every increase of production brought about by an increase in
efficiency should benefit all the parties to it, including wage-workers
as well as employers or capitalists, men who work with their hands as
well as men who work with their heads.
With the Western Federation of Miners I more than once had serious
trouble. The leaders of this organization had preached anarchy, and
certain of them were indicted for having practiced murder in the case of
Governor Steunenberg, of Idaho. On one occasion in a letter or speech I
coupled condemnation of these labor leaders and condemnation of certain
big capitalists, describing them all alike as "undesirable citizens."
This gave great offense to both sides. The open attack upon me was made
for the most part either by the New York newspapers which were frankly
representatives of Wall Street, or else by those so-called--and
miscalled--Socialists who had anarchistic leanings. Many of the latter
sent me open letters of denunciation, and to one of them I responded as
follows:
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, April 22, 1907.
Dear Sir:
I have received your letter of the 19th instant, in which you enclose
the draft of the formal letter which is to follow. I have been notified
that several delegations, bearing similar requests, are on the way
hither. In the letter you, on behalf of the Cook County, Moyer-Haywood
conference, protest against certain language I used in a recent letter
which you assert to be designed to influence the course of justice
in the case of the trial for murder of Messrs. Moyer and Haywood. I
entirely agree with you that it is improper to endeavor to influence the
course of justice, whether by threats or in any similar manner. For this
reason I have regretted most deeply the actions of such organizations as
your own in undertaking to accomplish this very result in the very case
of which you speak. For instance, your letter is headed "Cook
County Moyer-Haywood-Pettibone Conference," with the headlines:
"_Death_--cannot--will not--and shall not claim our brothers!" This
shows that you and your associates are not demanding a fair trial, or
working for a fair trial, but are announcing in advance that the verdict
shall only be one way and that you will not tolerate any other verdict.
Such action is flagrant in its impropriety, and I join heartily in
condemning it.
But it is a simple absurdity to suppose that because any man is on trial
for a given offense he is therefore to be freed from all criticism upon
his general conduct and manner of life. In my letter to which you object
I referred to a certain prominent financier, Mr. Harriman, on the one
hand, and to Messrs. Moyer, Haywood and Debs on the other, as being
equally undesirable citizens. It is as foolish to assert that this was
designed to influence the trial of Moyer and Haywood as to assert that
it was designed to influence the suits that have been brought against
Mr. Harriman. I neither expressed nor indicated any opinion as to
whether Messrs. Moyer and Haywood were guilty of the murder of Governor
Steunenberg. If they are guilty, they certainly ought to be punished.
If they are not guilty, they certainly ought not to be punished. But no
possible outcome either of the trial or the suits can affect my judgment
as to the undesirability of the type of citizenship of those whom I
mentioned. Messrs. Moyer, Haywood, and Debs stand as representatives of
those men who have done as much to discredit the labor movement as the
worst speculative financiers or most unscrupulous employers of labor and
debauchers of legislatures have done to discredit honest capitalists and
fair-dealing business men. They stand as the representatives of those
men who by their public utterances and manifestoes, by the utterances of
the papers they control or inspire, and by the words and deeds of those
associated with or subordinated to them, habitually appear as guilty of
incitement to or apology for bloodshed and violence. If this does
not constitute undesirable citizenship, then there can never be any
undesirable citizens. The men whom I denounce represent the men who
have abandoned that legitimate movement for the uplifting of labor, with
which I have the most hearty sympathy; they have adopted practices which
cut them off from those who lead this legitimate movement. In every way
I shall support the law-abiding and upright representatives of labor,
and in no way can I better support them than by drawing the sharpest
possible line between them on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
those preachers of violence who are themselves the worst foes of the
honest laboring man.
Let me repeat my deep regret that any body of men should so far forget
their duty to the country as to endeavor by the formation of societies
and in other ways to influence the course of justice in this matter.
I have received many such letters as yours. Accompanying them
were newspaper clippings announcing demonstrations, parades, and
mass-meetings designed to show that the representatives of labor,
without regard to the facts, demand the acquittal of Messrs. Haywood and
Moyer. Such meetings can, of course, be designed only to coerce court
or jury in rendering a verdict, and they therefore deserve all the
condemnation which you in your letters say should be awarded to those
who endeavor improperly to influence the course of justice.
You would, of course, be entirely within your rights if you merely
announced that you thought Messrs. Moyer and Haywood were "desirable
citizens"--though in such case I should take frank issue with you and
should say that, wholly without regard to whether or not they are guilty
of the crime for which they are now being tried, they represent as
thoroughly undesirable a type of citizenship as can be found in this
country; a type which, in the letter to which you so unreasonably take
exception, I showed not to be confined to any one class, but to exist
among some representatives of great capitalists as well as among some
representatives of wage-workers. In that letter I condemned both types.
Certain representatives of the great capitalists in turn condemned
me for including Mr. Harriman in my condemnation of Messrs. Moyer and
Haywood. Certain of the representatives of labor in their turn condemned
me because I included Messrs. Moyer and Haywood as undesirable citizens
together with Mr. Harrison. I am as profoundly indifferent to the
condemnation in one case as in the other. I challenge as a right the
support of all good Americans, whether wage-workers or capitalists,
whatever their occupation or creed, or in whatever portion of the
country they live, when I condemn both the types of bad citizenship
which I have held up to reprobation. It seems to be a mark of utter
insincerity to fail thus to condemn both; and to apologize for either
robs the man thus apologizing of all right to condemn any wrongdoing in
any man, rich or poor, in public or in private life.
You say you ask for a "square deal" for Messrs. Moyer and Haywood. So
do I. When I say "Square deal," I mean a square deal to every one; it is
equally a violation of the policy of the square deal for a capitalist to
protest against denunciation of a capitalist who is guilty of wrongdoing
and for a labor leader to protest against the denunciation of a labor
leader who has been guilty of wrongdoing. I stand for equal justice to
both; and so far as in my power lies I shall uphold justice, whether
the man accused of guilt has behind him the wealthiest corporation, the
greatest aggregations of riches in the country, or whether he has behind
him the most influential labor organization in the country.
I treated anarchists and the bomb-throwing and dynamiting gentry
precisely as I treated other criminals. Murder is murder. It is not
rendered one whit better by the allegation that it is committed
on behalf of "a cause." It is true that law and order are not all
sufficient; but they are essential; lawlessness and murderous violence
must be quelled before any permanence of reform can be obtained. Yet
when they have been quelled, the beneficiaries of the enforcement of
law must in their turn be taught that law is upheld as a means to the
enforcement of justice, and that we will not tolerate its being turned
into an engine of injustice and oppression. The fundamental need in
dealing with our people, whether laboring men or others, is not charity
but justice; we must all work in common for the common end of
helping each and all, in a spirit of the sanest, broadest and deepest
brotherhood.
It was not always easy to avoid feeling very deep anger with the
selfishness and short-sightedness shown both by the representatives of
certain employers' organizations and by certain great labor federations
or unions. One such employers' association was called the National
Association of Manufacturers. Extreme though the attacks sometimes made
upon me by the extreme labor organizations were, they were not quite
as extreme as the attacks made upon me by the head of the National
Association of Manufacturers, and as regards their attitude toward
legislation I came to the conclusion toward the end of my term that the
latter had actually gone further the wrong way than did the former--and
the former went a good distance also. The opposition of the National
Association of Manufacturers to every rational and moderate measure
for benefiting workingmen, such as measures abolishing child labor, or
securing workmen's compensation, caused me real and grave concern; for
I felt that it was ominous of evil for the whole country to have men who
ought to stand high in wisdom and in guiding force take a course and use
language of such reactionary type as directly to incite revolution--for
this is what the extreme reactionary always does.
Often I was attacked by the two sides at once. In the spring of 1906 I
received in the same mail a letter from a very good friend of mine who
thought that I had been unduly hard on some labor men, and a letter from
another friend, the head of a great corporation, who complained about me
for both favoring labor and speaking against large fortunes. My answers
ran as follows:
April 26, 1906.
"Personal. _My dear Doctor_:
"In one of my last letters to you I enclosed you a copy of a letter of
mine, in which I quoted from [So and so's] advocacy of murder. You may
be interested to know that he and his brother Socialists--in reality
anarchists--of the frankly murderous type have been violently attacking
my speech because of my allusion to the sympathy expressed for murder.
In _The Socialist_, of Toledo, Ohio, of April 21st, for instance, the
attack [on me] is based specifically on the following paragraph of my
speech, to which he takes violent exception:
"We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital
than evil in the man of no capital. The wealthy man who exults because
there is a failure of justice in the effort to bring some trust magnate
to an account for his misdeeds is as bad as, and no worse than, the
so-called labor leader who clamorously strives to excite a foul class
feeling on behalf of some other labor leader who is implicated in
murder. One attitude is as bad as the other, and no worse; in each case
the accused is entitled to exact justice; and in neither case is there
need of action by others which can be construed into an expression of
sympathy for crime.
"Remember that this crowd of labor leaders have done all in their
power to overawe the executive and the courts of Idaho on behalf of men
accused of murder, and beyond question inciters of murder in the past."
April 26, 1906.
"_My dear Judge_:
"I wish the papers had given more prominence to what I said as to the
murder part of my speech. But oh, my dear sir, I utterly and radically
disagree with you in what you say about large fortunes. I wish it were
in my power to devise some scheme to make it increasingly difficult to
heap them up beyond a certain amount. As the difficulties in the way
of such a scheme are very great, let us at least prevent their being
bequeathed after death or given during life to any one man in excessive
amount.
"You and other capitalist friends, on one side, shy off at what I say
against them. Have you seen the frantic articles against me by [the
anarchists and] the Socialists of the bomb-throwing persuasion, on the
other side, because of what I said in my speech in reference to those
who, in effect, advocate murder?"
On another occasion I was vehemently denounced in certain capitalistic
papers because I had a number of labor leaders, including miners from
Butte, lunch with me at the White House; and this at the very time that
the Western Federation of Miners was most ferocious in its denunciation
of me because of what it alleged to be my unfriendly attitude toward
labor. To one of my critics I set forth my views in the following
letter:
November 26, 1903.
"I have your letter of the 25th instant, with enclosure. These men, not
all of whom were miners, by the way, came here and were at lunch with
me, in company with Mr. Carroll D. Wright, Mr. Wayne MacVeagh, and
Secretary Cortelyou. They are as decent a set of men as can be. They all
agreed entirely with me in my denunciation of what had been done in the
Court d'Alene country; and it appeared that some of them were on the
platform with me when I denounced this type of outrage three years ago
in Butte. There is not one man who was here, who, I believe, was in
any way, shape or form responsible for such outrages. I find that the
ultra-Socialistic members of the unions in Butte denounced these men for
coming here, in a manner as violent--and I may say as irrational--as the
denunciation [by the capitalistic writer] in the article you sent me.
Doubtless the gentleman of whom you speak as your general manager is
an admirable man. I, of course, was not alluding to him; but I most
emphatically _was_ alluding to men who write such articles as that you
sent me. These articles are to be paralleled by the similar articles in
the Populist and Socialist papers when two years ago I had at dinner
at one time Pierpont Morgan, and at another time J. J. Hill, and at
another, Harriman, and at another time Schiff. Furthermore, they could
be paralleled by the articles in the same type of paper which at the
time of the Miller incident in the Printing Office were in a condition
of nervous anxiety because I met the labor leaders to discuss it. It
would have been a great misfortune if I had not met them; and it would
have been an even greater misfortune if after meeting them I had yielded
to their protests in the matter.
"You say in your letter that you know that I am 'on record' as opposed
to violence. Pardon my saying that this seems to me not the right way to
put the matter, if by 'record' you mean utterance and not action. Aside
from what happened when I was Governor in connection, for instance with
the Croton dam strike riots, all you have to do is to turn back to what
took place last June in Arizona--and you can find out about it from
[Mr. X] of New York. The miners struck, violence followed, and the
Arizona Territorial authorities notified me they could not grapple with
the situation. Within twenty minutes of the receipt of the telegram,
orders were issued to the nearest available troops, and twenty-four
hours afterwards General Baldwin and his regulars were on the ground,
and twenty-four hours later every vestige of disorder had disappeared.
The Miners' Federation in their meeting, I think at Denver, a short
while afterwards, passed resolutions denouncing me. I do not know
whether the _Mining and Engineering Journal_ paid any heed to this
incident or know of it. If the _Journal_ did, I suppose it can hardly
have failed to understand that to put an immediate stop to rioting by
the use of the United States army is a fact of importance beside which
the criticism of my having 'labor leaders' to lunch, shrinks into the
same insignificance as the criticism in a different type of paper about
my having 'trust magnates' to lunch. While I am President I wish the
labor man to feel that he has the same right of access to me that the
capitalist has; that the doors swing open as easily to the wage-worker
as to the head of a big corporation--_and no easier_. Anything else
seems to be not only un-American, but as symptomatic of an attitude
which will cost grave trouble if persevered in. To discriminate against
labor men from Butte because there is reason to believe that rioting has
been excited in other districts by certain labor unions, or individuals
in labor unions in Butte, would be to adopt precisely the attitude of
those who desire me to discriminate against all capitalists in Wall
street because there are plenty of capitalists in Wall Street who
have been guilty of bad financial practices and who have endeavored to
override or evade the laws of the land. In my judgment, the only safe
attitude for a private citizen, and still more for a public servant, to
assume, is that he will draw the line on conduct, discriminating against
neither corporation nor union as such, nor in favor of either as such,
but endeavoring to make the decent member of the union and the upright
capitalists alike feel that they are bound, not only by self-interest,
but by every consideration of principle and duty to stand together on
the matters of most moment to the nation."
On another of the various occasions when I had labor leaders to dine
at the White House, my critics were rather shocked because I had John
Morley to meet them. The labor leaders in question included the heads
of the various railroad brotherhoods, men like Mr. Morrissey, in
whose sound judgment and high standard of citizenship I had peculiar
confidence; and I asked Mr. Morley to meet them because they represented
the exact type of American citizen with whom I thought he ought to be
brought in contact.
One of the devices sometimes used by big corporations to break down the
law was to treat the passage of laws as an excuse for action on their
part which they knew would be resented by the public, it being their
purpose to turn this resentment against the law instead of against
themselves. The heads of the Louisville and Nashville road were bitter
opponents of everything done by the Government toward securing good
treatment for their employees. In February, 1908, they and various
other railways announced that they intended to reduce the wages of
their employees. A general strike, with all the attendant disorder and
trouble, was threatened in consequence. I accordingly sent the following
open letter to the Inter-State Commerce Commission:
February 16, 1908.
"To the Inter-State Commerce Commission:
"I am informed that a number of railroad companies have served notice
of a proposed reduction of wages of their employees. One of them, the
Louisville and Nashville, in announcing the reduction, states that 'the
drastic laws inimical to the interests of the railroads that have in the
past year or two been enacted by Congress and the State Legislatures'
are largely or chiefly responsible for the conditions requiring the
reduction.
"Under such circumstances it is possible that the public may soon be
confronted by serious industrial disputes, and the law provides that in
such case either party may demand the services of your Chairman and
of the Commissioner of Labor as a Board of Mediation and Conciliation.
These reductions in wages may be warranted, or they may not. As to this
the public, which is a vitally interested party, can form no judgment
without a more complete knowledge of the essential facts and real merits
of the case than it now has or than it can possibly obtain from the
special pleadings, certain to be put forth by each side in case their
dispute should bring about serious interruption to traffic. If the
reduction in wages is due to natural causes, the loss of business being
such that the burden should be and is, equitably distributed between
capitalist and wage-worker, the public should know it. If it is caused
by legislation, the public, and Congress, should know it; and if it is
caused by misconduct in the past financial or other operations of any
railroad, then everybody should know it, especially if the excuse of
unfriendly legislation is advanced as a method of covering up past
business misconduct by the railroad managers, or as a justification for
failure to treat fairly the wage-earning employees of the company.
"Moreover, an industrial conflict between a railroad corporation and
its employees offers peculiar opportunities to any small number of
evil-disposed persons to destroy life and property and foment public
disorder. Of course, if life, property, and public order are endangered,
prompt and drastic measures for their protection become the first plain
duty. All other issues then become subordinate to the preservation of
the public peace, and the real merits of the original controversy are
necessarily lost from view. This vital consideration should be ever
kept in mind by all law-abiding and far-sighted members of labor
organizations.
"It is sincerely to be hoped, therefore, that any wage controversy that
may arise between the railroads and their employees may find a peaceful
solution through the methods of conciliation and arbitration already
provided by Congress, which have proven so effective during the past
year. To this end the Commission should be in a position to have
available for any Board of Conciliation or Arbitration relevant data
pertaining to such carriers as may become involved in industrial
disputes. Should conciliation fail to effect a settlement and
arbitration be rejected, accurate information should be available in
order to develop a properly informed public opinion.
"I therefore ask you to make such investigation, both of your records
and by any other means at your command, as will enable you to furnish
data concerning such conditions obtaining on the Louisville and
Nashville and any other roads, as may relate, directly or indirectly, to
the real merits of the possibly impending controversy.
"THEODORE ROOSEVELT."
This letter achieved its purpose, and the threatened reduction of
wages was not made. It was an instance of what could be accomplished
by governmental action. Let me add, however, with all the emphasis I
possess, that this does not mean any failure on my part to recognize the
fact that if governmental action places too heavy burdens on railways,
it will be impossible for them to operate without doing injustice to
somebody. Railways cannot pay proper wages and render proper service
unless they make money. The investors must get a reasonable profit or
they will not invest, and the public cannot be well served unless the
investors are making reasonable profits. There is every reason why rates
should not be too high, but they must be sufficiently high to allow
the railways to pay good wages. Moreover, when laws like workmen's
compensation laws, and the like are passed, it must always be kept in
mind by the Legislature that the purpose is to distribute over the whole
community a burden that should not be borne only by those least able
to bear it--that is, by the injured man or the widow and orphans of the
dead man. If the railway is already receiving a disproportionate return
from the public, then the burden may, with propriety, bear purely on the
railway; but if it is not earning a disproportionate return, then the
public must bear its share of the burden of the increased service the
railway is rendering. Dividends and wages should go up together; and the
relation of rates to them should never be forgotten. This of course does
not apply to dividends based on water; nor does it mean that if foolish
people have built a road that renders no service, the public must
nevertheless in some way guarantee a return on the investment; but it
does mean that the interests of the honest investor are entitled to
the same protection as the interests of the honest manager, the honest
shipper and the honest wage-earner. All these conflicting considerations
should be carefully considered by Legislatures before passing laws. One
of the great objects in creating commissions should be the provision of
disinterested, fair-minded experts who will really and wisely consider
all these matters, and will shape their actions accordingly. This is one
reason why such matters as the regulation of rates, the provision for
full crews on roads and the like should be left for treatment by railway
commissions, and not be settled off hand by direct legislative action.
APPENDIX
SOCIALISM
As regards what I have said in this chapter concerning Socialism, I
wish to call especial attention to the admirable book on "Marxism versus
Socialism," which has just been published by Vladimir D. Simkhovitch.
What I have, here and elsewhere, merely pointed out in rough and
ready fashion from actual observation of the facts of life around me,
Professor Simkhovitch in his book has discussed with keen practical
insight, with profundity of learning, and with a wealth of applied
philosophy. Crude thinkers in the United States, and moreover honest and
intelligent men who are not crude thinkers, but who are oppressed by
the sight of the misery around them and have not deeply studied what has
been done elsewhere, are very apt to adopt as their own the theories
of European Marxian Socialists of half a century ago, ignorant that the
course of events has so completely falsified the prophecies contained
in these theories that they have been abandoned even by the authors
themselves. With quiet humor Professor Simkhovitch now and then makes
an allusion which shows that he appreciates to perfection this rather
curious quality of some of our fellow countrymen; as for example when
he says that "A Socialist State with the farmer outside of it is a
conception that can rest comfortably only in the head of an American
Socialist," or as when he speaks of Marx and Engels as men "to whom
thinking was not an irrelevant foreign tradition." Too many thoroughly
well-meaning men and women in the America of to-day glibly repeat and
accept--much as medieval schoolmen repeated and accepted authorized
dogma in their day--various assumptions and speculations by Marx and
others which by the lapse of time and by actual experiment have been
shown to possess not one shred of value. Professor Simkhovitch possesses
the gift of condensation as well as the gift of clear and logical
statement, and it is not possible to give in brief any idea of his
admirable work. Every social reformer who desires to face facts should
study it--just as social reformers should study John Graham Brooks's
"American Syndicalism." From Professor Simkhovitch's book we Americans
should learn: First, to discard crude thinking; second, to realize that
the orthodox or so-called scientific or purely economic or materialistic
socialism of the type preached by Marx is an exploded theory; and,
third, that many of the men who call themselves Socialists to-day are in
reality merely radical social reformers, with whom on many points good
citizens can and ought to work in hearty general agreement, and whom
in many practical matters of government good citizens well afford to
follow.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND THE PANAMA CANAL
No nation can claim rights without acknowledging the duties that go
with the rights. It is a contemptible thing for a great nation to render
itself impotent in international action, whether because of cowardice or
sloth, or sheer inability or unwillingness to look into the future. It
is a very wicked thing for a nation to do wrong to others. But the most
contemptible and most wicked course of conduct is for a nation to use
offensive language or be guilty of offensive actions toward other people
and yet fail to hold its own if the other nation retaliates; and it is
almost as bad to undertake responsibilities and then not fulfil them.
During the seven and a half years that I was President, this Nation
behaved in international matters toward all other nations precisely as
an honorable man behaves to his fellow-men. We made no promise which
we could not and did not keep. We made no threat which we did not carry
out. We never failed to assert our rights in the face of the strong, and
we never failed to treat both strong and weak with courtesy and justice;
and against the weak when they misbehaved we were slower to assert our
rights than we were against the strong.
As a legacy of the Spanish War we were left with peculiar relations
to the Philippines, Cuba, and Porto Rico, and with an immensely added
interest in Central America and the Caribbean Sea. As regards the
Philippines my belief was that we should train them for self-government
as rapidly as possible, and then leave them free to decide their own
fate. I did not believe in setting the time-limit within which we would
give them independence, because I did not believe it wise to try to
forecast how soon they would be fit for self-government; and once having
made the promise I would have felt that it was imperative to keep it.
Within a few months of my assuming office we had stamped out the last
armed resistance in the Philippines that was not of merely sporadic
character; and as soon as peace was secured we turned our energies to
developing the islands in the interests of the natives. We established
schools everywhere; we built roads; we administered an even-handed
justice; we did everything possible to encourage agriculture and
industry; and in constantly increasing measure we employed natives to
do their own governing, and finally provided a legislative chamber. No
higher grade of public officials ever handled the affairs of any colony
than the public officials who in succession governed the Philippines.
With the possible exception of the Sudan, and not even excepting
Algiers, I know of no country ruled and administered by men of the white
race where that rule and that administration have been exercised
so emphatically with an eye single to the welfare of the natives
themselves. The English and Dutch administrators of Malaysia have done
admirable work; but the profit to the Europeans in those States has
always been one of the chief elements considered; whereas in the
Philippines our whole attention was concentrated upon the welfare of the
Filipinos themselves, if anything to the neglect of our own interests.
I do not believe that America has any special beneficial interest in
retaining the Philippines. Our work there has benefited us only as
any efficiently done work performed for the benefit of others does
incidentally help the character of those who do it. The people of the
islands have never developed so rapidly, from every standpoint, as
during the years of the American occupation. The time will come when
it will be wise to take their own judgment as to whether they wish to
continue their association with America or not. There is, however,
one consideration upon which we should insist. Either we should
retain complete control of the islands, or absolve ourselves from all
responsibility for them. Any half and half course would be both foolish
and disastrous. We are governing and have been governing the islands
in the interests of the Filipinos themselves. If after due time the
Filipinos themselves decide that they do not wish to be thus governed,
then I trust that we will leave; but when we do leave it must be
distinctly understood that we retain no protectorate--and above all that
we take part in no joint protectorate--over the islands, and give
them no guarantee, of neutrality or otherwise; that, in short, we
are absolutely quit of responsibility for them, of every kind and
description.
The Filipinos were quite incapable of standing by themselves when we
took possession of the islands, and we had made no promise concerning
them. But we had explicitly promised to leave the island of Cuba,
had explicitly promised that Cuba should be independent. Early in my
administration that promise was redeemed. When the promise was made,
I doubt if there was a single ruler or diplomat in Europe who believed
that it would be kept. As far as I know, the United States was the first
power which, having made such a promise, kept it in letter and spirit.
England was unwise enough to make such a promise when she took Egypt.
It would have been a capital misfortune to have kept the promise,
and England has remained in Egypt for over thirty years, and will
unquestionably remain indefinitely; but though it is necessary for her
to do so, the fact of her doing so has meant the breaking of a positive
promise and has been a real evil. Japan made the same guarantee about
Korea, but as far as can be seen there was never even any thought of
keeping the promise in this case; and Korea, which had shown herself
utterly impotent either for self-government or self-defense, was in
actual fact almost immediately annexed to Japan.
We made the promise to give Cuba independence; and we kept the promise.
Leonard Wood was left in as Governor for two or three years, and evolved
order out of chaos, raising the administration of the island to a level,
moral and material, which it had never before achieved. We also by
treaty gave the Cubans substantial advantages in our markets. Then we
left the island, turning the government over to its own people. After
four or five years a revolution broke out, during my administration, and
we again had to intervene to restore order. We promptly sent thither a
small army of pacification. Under General Barry, order was restored and
kept, and absolute justice done. The American troops were then withdrawn
and the Cubans reestablished in complete possession of their own
beautiful island, and they are in possession of it now. There are plenty
of occasions in our history when we have shown weakness or inefficiency,
and some occasions when we have not been as scrupulous as we should have
been as regards the rights of others. But I know of no action by
any other government in relation to a weaker power which showed such
disinterested efficiency in rendering service as was true in connection
with our intervention in Cuba.
In Cuba, as in the Philippines and as in Porto Rico, Santo Domingo, and
later in Panama, no small part of our success was due to the fact that
we put in the highest grade of men as public officials. This practice
was inaugurated under President McKinley. I found admirable men in
office, and I continued them and appointed men like them as their
successors. The way that the custom-houses in Santo Domingo were
administered by Colton definitely established the success of our
experiment in securing peace for that island republic; and in Porto
Rico, under the administration of affairs under such officials as Hunt,
Winthrop, Post, Ward and Grahame, more substantial progress was achieved
in a decade than in any previous century.
The Philippines, Cuba, and Porto Rico came within our own sphere of
governmental action. In addition to this we asserted certain rights in
the Western Hemisphere under the Monroe Doctrine. My endeavor was not
only to assert these rights, but frankly and fully to acknowledge the
duties that went with the rights.
The Monroe Doctrine lays down the rule that the Western Hemisphere is
not hereafter to be treated as subject to settlement and occupation
by Old World powers. It is not international law; but it is a cardinal
principle of our foreign policy. There is no difficulty at the present
day in maintaining this doctrine, save where the American power whose
interest is threatened has shown itself in international matters both
weak and delinquent. The great and prosperous civilized commonwealths,
such as the Argentine, Brazil, and Chile, in the Southern half of South
America, have advanced so far that they no longer stand in any position
of tutelage toward the United States. They occupy toward us precisely
the position that Canada occupies. Their friendship is the friendship of
equals for equals. My view was that as regards these nations there was
no more necessity for asserting the Monroe Doctrine than there was to
assert it in regard to Canada. They were competent to assert it for
themselves. Of course if one of these nations, or if Canada, should be
overcome by some Old World power, which then proceeded to occupy its
territory, we would undoubtedly, if the American Nation needed our help,
give it in order to prevent such occupation from taking place. But the
initiative would come from the Nation itself, and the United States
would merely act as a friend whose help was invoked.
The case was (and is) widely different as regards certain--not all--of
the tropical states in the neighborhood of the Caribbean Sea. Where
these states are stable and prosperous, they stand on a footing of
absolute equality with all other communities. But some of them have
been a prey to such continuous revolutionary misrule as to have grown
impotent either to do their duties to outsiders or to enforce their
rights against outsiders. The United States has not the slightest desire
to make aggressions on any one of these states. On the contrary, it
will submit to much from them without showing resentment. If any great
civilized power, Russia or Germany, for instance, had behaved toward us
as Venezuela under Castro behaved, this country would have gone to war
at once. We did not go to war with Venezuela merely because our people
declined to be irritated by the actions of a weak opponent, and showed a
forbearance which probably went beyond the limits of wisdom in refusing
to take umbrage at what was done by the weak; although we would
certainly have resented it had it been done by the strong. In the case
of two states, however, affairs reached such a crisis that we had to
act. These two states were Santo Domingo and the then owner of the
Isthmus of Panama, Colombia.
The Santo Domingan case was the less important; and yet it possessed a
real importance, and moreover is instructive because the action there
taken should serve as a precedent for American action in all similar
cases. During the early years of my administration Santo Domingo was in
its usual condition of chronic revolution. There was always fighting,
always plundering; and the successful graspers for governmental power
were always pawning ports and custom-houses, or trying to put them up as
guarantees for loans. Of course the foreigners who made loans under
such conditions demanded exorbitant interest, and if they were Europeans
expected their governments to stand by them. So utter was the disorder
that on one occasion when Admiral Dewey landed to pay a call of ceremony
on the President, he and his party were shot at by revolutionists in
crossing the square, and had to return to the ships, leaving the call
unpaid. There was default on the interest due to the creditors; and
finally the latter insisted upon their governments intervening. Two or
three of the European powers were endeavoring to arrange for concerted
action, and I was finally notified that these powers intended to take
and hold several of the seaports which held custom-houses.
This meant that unless I acted at once I would find foreign powers in
partial possession of Santo Domingo; in which event the very individuals
who, in the actual event deprecated the precaution taken to prevent such
action, would have advocated extreme and violent measures to undo the
effect of their own supineness. Nine-tenths of wisdom is to be wise in
time, and at the right time; and my whole foreign policy was based
on the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action
sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis to make it improbable
that we would run into serious trouble.
Santo Domingo had fallen into such chaos that once for some weeks there
were two rival governments in it, and a revolution was being carried
on against each. At one period one government was at sea in a small
gunboat, but still stoutly maintained that it was in possession of
the island and entitled to make loans and declare peace or war. The
situation had become intolerable by the time that I interfered. There
was a naval commander in the waters whom I directed to prevent any
fighting which might menace the custom-houses. He carried out his
orders, both to his and my satisfaction, in thoroughgoing fashion. On
one occasion, when an insurgent force threatened to attack a town in
which Americans had interests, he notified the commanders on both sides
that he would not permit any fighting in the town, but that he would
appoint a certain place where they could meet and fight it out, and that
the victors should have the town. They agreed to meet his wishes,
the fight came off at the appointed place, and the victors, who if I
remember rightly were the insurgents, were given the town.
It was the custom-houses that caused the trouble, for they offered the
only means of raising money, and the revolutions were carried on to
get possession of them. Accordingly I secured an agreement with the
governmental authorities, who for the moment seemed best able to speak
for the country, by which these custom-houses were placed under American
control. The arrangement was that we should keep order and prevent any
interference with the custom-houses or the places where they stood, and
should collect the revenues. Forty-five per cent of the revenue was then
turned over to the Santo Domingan Government, and fifty-five per cent
put in a sinking fund in New York for the benefit of the creditors. The
arrangement worked in capital style. On the forty-five per cent basis
the Santo Domingan Government received from us a larger sum than it
had ever received before when nominally all the revenue went to it. The
creditors were entirely satisfied with the arrangement, and no excuse
for interference by European powers remained. Occasional disturbances
occurred in the island, of course, but on the whole there ensued a
degree of peace and prosperity which the island had not known before for
at least a century.
All this was done without the loss of a life, with the assent of all
the parties in interest, and without subjecting the United States to
any charge, while practically all of the interference, after the
naval commander whom I have mentioned had taken the initial steps in
preserving order, consisted in putting a first-class man trained in our
insular service at the head of the Santo Domingan customs service. We
secured peace, we protected the people of the islands against foreign
foes, and we minimized the chance of domestic trouble. We satisfied the
creditors and the foreign nations to which the creditors belonged; and
our own part of the work was done with the utmost efficiency and with
rigid honesty, so that not a particle of scandal was ever so much as
hinted at.
Under these circumstances those who do not know the nature of the
professional international philanthropists would suppose that these
apostles of international peace would have been overjoyed with what we
had done. As a matter of fact, when they took any notice of it at all it
was to denounce it; and those American newspapers which are fondest
of proclaiming themselves the foes of war and the friends of peace
violently attacked me for averting war from, and bringing peace to, the
island. They insisted I had no power to make the agreement, and demanded
the rejection of the treaty which was to perpetuate the agreement. They
were, of course, wholly unable to advance a single sound reason of any
kind for their attitude. I suppose the real explanation was partly their
dislike of me personally, and unwillingness to see peace come through or
national honor upheld by me; and in the next place their sheer, simple
devotion to prattle and dislike of efficiency. They liked to have people
come together and talk about peace, or even sign bits of paper with
something about peace or arbitration on them, but they took no interest
whatever in the practical achievement of a peace that told for good
government and decency and honesty. They were joined by the many
moderately well-meaning men who always demand that a thing be done, but
also always demand that it be not done in the only way in which it is,
as a matter of fact, possible to do it. The men of this kind insisted
that of course Santo Domingo must be protected and made to behave
itself, and that of course the Panama Canal must be dug; but they
insisted even more strongly that neither feat should be accomplished in
the only way in which it was possible to accomplish it at all.
The Constitution did not explicitly give me power to bring about the
necessary agreement with Santo Domingo. But the Constitution did not
forbid my doing what I did. I put the agreement into effect, and I
continued its execution for two years before the Senate acted; and I
would have continued it until the end of my term, if necessary, without
any action by Congress. But it was far preferable that there should be
action by Congress, so that we might be proceeding under a treaty which
was the law of the land and not merely by a direction of the Chief
Executive which would lapse when that particular executive left office.
I therefore did my best to get the Senate to ratify what I had done.
There was a good deal of difficulty about it. With the exception of one
or two men like Clark of Arkansas, the Democratic Senators acted in that
spirit of unworthy partisanship which subordinates national interest to
some fancied partisan advantage, and they were cordially backed by all
that portion of the press which took its inspiration from Wall Street,
and was violently hostile to the Administration because of its attitude
towards great corporations. Most of the Republican Senators under
the lead of Senator Lodge stood by me; but some of them, of the more
"conservative" or reactionary type, who were already growing hostile
to me on the trust question, first proceeded to sneer at what had
been done, and to raise all kinds of meticulous objections, which they
themselves finally abandoned, but which furnished an excuse on which
the opponents of the treaty could hang adverse action. Unfortunately the
Senators who were most apt to speak of the dignity of the Senate, and to
insist upon its importance, were the very ones who were also most apt
to try to make display of this dignity and importance by thwarting the
public business. This case was typical. The Republicans in question
spoke against certain provisions of the proposed treaty. They then,
having ingeniously provided ammunition for the foes of the treaty,
abandoned their opposition to it, and the Democrats stepped into the
position they had abandoned. Enough Republicans were absent to prevent
the securing of a two-thirds vote for the treaty, and the Senate
adjourned without any action at all, and with a feeling of entire
self-satisfaction at having left the country in the position of assuming
a responsibility and then failing to fulfil it. Apparently the Senators
in question felt that in some way they had upheld their dignity. All
that they had really done was to shirk their duty. Somebody had to do
that duty, and accordingly I did it. I went ahead and administered the
proposed treaty anyhow, considering it as a simple agreement on the part
of the Executive which would be converted into a treaty whenever
the Senate acted. After a couple of years the Senate did act, having
previously made some utterly unimportant changes which I ratified and
persuaded Santo Domingo to ratify. In all its history Santo Domingo has
had nothing happen to it as fortunate as this treaty, and the passing of
it saved the United States from having to face serious difficulties with
one or more foreign powers.
It cannot in the long run prove possible for the United States
to protect delinquent American nations from punishment for the
non-performance of their duties unless she undertakes to make them
perform their duties. People may theorize about this as much as
they wish, but whenever a sufficiently strong outside nation becomes
sufficiently aggrieved, then either that nation will act or the United
States Government itself will have to act. We were face to face at one
period of my administration with this condition of affairs in Venezuela,
when Germany, rather feebly backed by England, undertook a blockade
against Venezuela to make Venezuela adopt the German and English view
about certain agreements. There was real danger that the blockade would
finally result in Germany's taking possession of certain cities or
custom-houses. I succeeded, however, in getting all the parties in
interest to submit their cases to the Hague Tribunal.
By far the most important action I took in foreign affairs during the
time I was President related to the Panama Canal. Here again there was
much accusation about my having acted in an "unconstitutional" manner--a
position which can be upheld only if Jefferson's action in acquiring
Louisiana be also treated as unconstitutional; and at different stages
of the affair believers in a do-nothing policy denounced me as having
"usurped authority"--which meant, that when nobody else could or would
exercise efficient authority, I exercised it.
During the nearly four hundred years that had elapsed since Balboa
crossed the Isthmus, there had been a good deal of talk about building
an Isthmus canal, and there had been various discussions of the subject
and negotiations about it in Washington for the previous half century.
So far it had all resulted merely in conversation; and the time had come
when unless somebody was prepared to act with decision we would have
to resign ourselves to at least half a century of further conversation.
Under the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty signed shortly after I became President,
and thanks to our negotiations with the French Panama Company, the
United States at last acquired a possession, so far as Europe was
concerned, which warranted her in immediately undertaking the task. It
remained to decide where the canal should be, whether along the line
already pioneered by the French company in Panama, or in Nicaragua.
Panama belonged to the Republic of Colombia. Nicaragua bid eagerly for
the privilege of having the United States build the canal through her
territory. As long as it was doubtful which route we would decide
upon, Colombia extended every promise of friendly cooperation; at the
Pan-American Congress in Mexico her delegate joined in the unanimous
vote which requested the United States forthwith to build the canal; and
at her eager request we negotiated the Hay-Herran Treaty with her, which
gave us the right to build the canal across Panama. A board of experts
sent to the Isthmus had reported that this route was better than the
Nicaragua route, and that it would be well to build the canal over it
provided we could purchase the rights of the French company for forty
million dollars; but that otherwise they would advise taking the
Nicaragua route. Ever since 1846 we had had a treaty with the power then
in control of the Isthmus, the Republic of New Granada, the predecessor
of the Republic of Colombia and of the present Republic of Panama, by
which treaty the United States was guaranteed free and open right of way
across the Isthmus of Panama by any mode of communication that might
be constructed, while in return our Government guaranteed the perfect
neutrality of the Isthmus with a view to the preservation of free
transit.
For nearly fifty years we had asserted the right to prevent the closing
of this highway of commerce. Secretary of State Cass in 1858 officially
stated the American position as follows:
"Sovereignty has its duties as well as its rights, and none of these
local governments, even if administered with more regard to the just
demands of other nations than they have been, would be permitted, in a
spirit of Eastern isolation, to close the gates of intercourse of the
great highways of the world, and justify the act by the pretension that
these avenues of trade and travel belong to them and that they choose
to shut them, or, what is almost equivalent, to encumber them with such
unjust relations as would prevent their general use."
We had again and again been forced to intervene to protect the transit
across the Isthmus, and the intervention was frequently at the request
of Colombia herself. The effort to build a canal by private capital had
been made under De Lesseps and had resulted in lamentable failure. Every
serious proposal to build the canal in such manner had been abandoned.
The United States had repeatedly announced that we would not permit
it to be built or controlled by any old-world government. Colombia was
utterly impotent to build it herself. Under these circumstances it
had become a matter of imperative obligation that we should build it
ourselves without further delay.
I took final action in 1903. During the preceding fifty-three years the
Governments of New Granada and of its successor, Colombia, had been in
a constant state of flux; and the State of Panama had sometimes been
treated as almost independent, in a loose Federal league, and sometimes
as the mere property of the Government at Bogota; and there had been
innumerable appeals to arms, sometimes of adequate, sometimes for
inadequate, reasons. The following is a partial list of the disturbances
on the Isthmus of Panama during the period in question, as reported to
us by our consuls. It is not possible to give a complete list, and
some of the reports that speak of "revolutions" must mean unsuccessful
revolutions:
May 22, 1850.--Outbreak; two Americans killed. War vessel demanded to
quell outbreak.
October, 1850.--Revolutionary plot to bring about independence of the
Isthmus.
July 22, 1851.--Revolution in four Southern provinces.
November 14, 1851.--Outbreak at Chagres. Man-of-war requested for
Chagres.
June 27, 1853.--Insurrection at Bogota, and consequent disturbance on
Isthmus. War vessel demanded.
May 23, 1854.--Political disturbances. War vessel requested.
June 28, 1854.--Attempted revolution.
October 24, 1854.--Independence of Isthmus demanded by provincial
legislature.
April, 1856.--Riot, and massacre of Americans.
May 4, 1856.--Riot.
May 18, 1856.--Riot.
June 3, 1856.--Riot.
October 2, 1856.--Conflict between two native parties. United States
force landed.
December 18, 1858.--Attempted secession of Panama.
April, 1859.--Riots.
September, 1860.--Outbreak.
October 4, 1860.--Landing of United States forces in consequence.
May 23, 1861.--Intervention of the United States force required, by
intendente.
October 2, 1861.--Insurrection and civil war.
April 4, 1862.--Measures to prevent rebels crossing Isthmus.
June 13, 1862.--Mosquera's troops refused admittance to Panama.
March, 1865.--Revolution, and United States troops landed.
August, 1865.--Riots; unsuccessful attempt to invade Panama.
March, 1866.--Unsuccessful revolution.
April, 1867.--Attempt to overthrow Government.
August, 1867.--Attempt at revolution.
July 5, 1868.--Revolution; provisional government inaugurated.
August 29, 1868.--Revolution; provisional government overthrown.
April, 1871.--Revolution; followed apparently by counter revolution.
April, 1873.--Revolution and civil war which lasted to October, 1875.
August, 1876.--Civil war which lasted until April, 1877.
July, 1878.--Rebellion.
December, 1878.--Revolt.
April, 1879.--Revolution.
June, 1879.--Revolution.
March, 1883.--Riot.
May, 1883.--Riot.
June, 1884.--Revolutionary attempt.
December, 1884.--Revolutionary attempt.
January, 1885.--Revolutionary disturbances.
March, 1885.--Revolution.
April, 1887.--Disturbance on Panama Railroad.
November, 1887.--Disturbance on line of canal.
January, 1889.--Riot.
January, 1895.--Revolution which lasted until April.
March, 1895.--Incendiary attempt.
October, 1899.--Revolution.
February, 1900, to July, 1900.--Revolution.
January, 1901.--Revolution.
July, 1901.--Revolutionary disturbances.
September, 1901.--City of Colon taken by rebels.
March, 1902.--Revolutionary disturbances.
July, 1902.--Revolution
The above is only a partial list of the revolutions, rebellions,
insurrections, riots, and other outbreaks that occurred during the
period in question; yet they number fifty-three for the fifty-three
years, and they showed a tendency to increase, rather than decrease, in
numbers and intensity. One of them lasted for nearly three years before
it was quelled; another for nearly a year. In short, the experience
of over half a century had shown Colombia to be utterly incapable of
keeping order on the Isthmus. Only the active interference of the
United States had enabled her to preserve so much as a semblance of
sovereignty. Had it not been for the exercise by the United States of
the police power in her interest, her connection with the Isthmus would
have been sundered long before it was. In 1856, in 1860, in 1873, in
1885, in 1901, and again in 1902, sailors and marines from United States
warships were forced to land in order to patrol the Isthmus, to protect
life and property, and to see that the transit across the Isthmus
was kept open. In 1861, in 1862, in 1885, and in 1900, the Colombian
Government asked that the United States Government would land troops
to protect Colombian interests and maintain order on the Isthmus. The
people of Panama during the preceding twenty years had three times
sought to establish their independence by revolution or secession--in
1885, in 1895, and in 1899.
The peculiar relations of the United States toward the Isthmus, and the
acquiescence by Colombia in acts which were quite incompatible with the
theory of her having an absolute and unconditioned sovereignty on the
Isthmus, are illustrated by the following three telegrams between two of
our naval officers whose ships were at the Isthmus, and the Secretary
of the Navy on the occasion of the first outbreak that occurred on
the Isthmus after I became President (a year before Panama became
independent):
September 12, 1902.
Ranger, Panama:
United States guarantees perfect neutrality of Isthmus and that a free
transit from sea to sea be not interrupted or embarrassed. . . . Any
transportation of troops which might contravene these provisions of
treaty should not be sanctioned by you, nor should use of road be
permitted which might convert the line of transit into theater of
hostility.
MOODY.
COLON, September 20, 1902.
Secretary Navy, Washington:
Everything is conceded. The United States guards and guarantees traffic
and the line of transit. To-day I permitted the exchange of Colombian
troops from Panama to Colon, about 1000 men each way, the troops without
arms in trains guarded by American naval force in the same manner as
other passengers; arms and ammunition in separate train, guarded also by
naval force in the same manner as other freight.
MCLEAN.
PANAMA, October 3, 1902.
Secretary Navy, Washington, D.C.:
Have sent this communication to the American Consul at Panama:
"Inform Governor, while trains running under United States protection,
I must decline transportation any combatants, ammunition, arms, which
might cause interruption to traffic or convert line of transit into
theater hostilities."
CASEY.
When the Government in nominal control of the Isthmus continually
besought American interference to protect the "rights" it could not
itself protect, and permitted our Government to transport Colombian
troops unarmed, under protection of our own armed men, while the
Colombian arms and ammunition came in a separate train, it is obvious
that the Colombian "sovereignty" was of such a character as to warrant
our insisting that inasmuch as it only existed because of our protection
there should be in requital a sense of the obligations that the
acceptance of this protection implied.
Meanwhile Colombia was under a dictatorship. In 1898 M. A. Sanclamente
was elected President, and J. M. Maroquin Vice-President, of the
Republic of Colombia. On July 31, 1900, the Vice-President, Maroquin,
executed a "coup d'etat" by seizing the person of the President,
Sanclamente, and imprisoning him at a place a few miles out of Bogota.
Maroquin thereupon declared himself possessed of the executive power
because of "the absence of the President"--a delightful touch of
unconscious humor. He then issued a decree that public order was
disturbed, and, upon that ground, assumed to himself legislative power
under another provision of the constitution; that is, having
himself disturbed the public order, he alleged the disturbance as a
justification for seizing absolute power. Thenceforth Maroquin, without
the aid of any legislative body, ruled as a dictator, combining the
supreme executive, legislative, civil, and military authorities, in the
so-called Republic of Colombia. The "absence" of Sanclamente from the
capital became permanent by his death in prison in the year 1902. When
the people of Panama declared their independence in November, 1903, no
Congress had sat in Colombia since the year 1898, except the special
Congress called by Maroquin to reject the canal treaty, and which did
reject it by a unanimous vote, and adjourned without legislating on any
other subject. The constitution of 1886 had taken away from Panama the
power of self-government and vested it in Columbia. The _coup d'etat_
of Maroquin took away from Colombia herself the power of government and
vested it in an irresponsible dictator.
Consideration of the above facts ought to be enough to show any human
being that we were not dealing with normal conditions on the Isthmus
and in Colombia. We were dealing with the government of an irresponsible
alien dictator, and with a condition of affairs on the Isthmus
itself which was marked by one uninterrupted series of outbreaks
and revolutions. As for the "consent of the governed" theory, that
absolutely justified our action; the people on the Isthmus were the
"governed"; they were governed by Colombia, without their consent, and
they unanimously repudiated the Colombian government, and demanded that
the United States build the canal.
I had done everything possible, personally and through Secretary Hay,
to persuade the Colombian Government to keep faith. Under the
Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, it was explicitly provided that the United States
should build the canal, should control, police and protect it, and keep
it open to the vessels of all nations on equal terms. We had assumed the
position of guarantor of the canal, including, of course, the building
of the canal, and of its peaceful use by all the world. The enterprise
was recognized everywhere as responding to an international need. It was
a mere travesty on justice to treat the government in possession of
the Isthmus as having the right--which Secretary Cass forty-five years
before had so emphatically repudiated--to close the gates of intercourse
on one of the great highways of the world. When we submitted to Colombia
the Hay-Herran Treaty, it had been settled that the time for delay,
the time for permitting any government of anti-social character, or of
imperfect development, to bar the work, had passed. The United States
had assumed in connection with the canal certain responsibilities not
only to its own people but to the civilized world, which imperatively
demanded that there should be no further delay in beginning the work.
The Hay-Herran Treaty, if it erred at all, erred in being overgenerous
toward Colombia. The people of Panama were delighted with the treaty,
and the President of Colombia, who embodied in his own person the entire
government of Colombia, had authorized the treaty to be made. But after
the treaty had been made the Colombia Government thought it had the
matter in its own hands; and the further thought, equally wicked and
foolish, came into the heads of the people in control at Bogota that
they would seize the French Company at the end of another year and take
for themselves the forty million dollars which the United States had
agreed to pay the Panama Canal Company.
President Maroquin, through his Minister, had agreed to the
Hay-Herran Treaty in January, 1903. He had the absolute power of an
unconstitutional dictator to keep his promise or break it. He determined
to break it. To furnish himself an excuse for breaking it he devised
the plan of summoning a Congress especially called to reject the canal
treaty. This the Congress--a Congress of mere puppets--did, without a
dissenting vote; and the puppets adjourned forthwith without legislating
on any other subject. The fact that this was a mere sham, and that the
President had entire power to confirm his own treaty and act on it if he
desired, was shown as soon as the revolution took place, for on November
6 General Reyes of Colombia addressed the American Minister at Bogota,
on behalf of President Maroquin, saying that "if the Government of the
United States would land troops and restore the Colombian sovereignty"
the Colombian President would "declare martial law; and, by virtue of
vested constitutional authority, when public order is disturbed, would
approve by decree the ratification of the canal treaty as signed; or, if
the Government of the United States prefers, would call an extra session
of the Congress--with new and friendly members--next May to approve the
treaty." This, of course, is proof positive that the Colombian dictator
had used his Congress as a mere shield, and a sham shield at that, and
it shows how utterly useless it would have been further to trust his
good faith in the matter.
When, in August, 1903, I became convinced that Colombia intended to
repudiate the treaty made the preceding January, under cover of securing
its rejection by the Colombian Legislature, I began carefully to
consider what should be done. By my direction, Secretary Hay, personally
and through the Minister at Bogota, repeatedly warned Colombia that
grave consequences might follow her rejection of the treaty. The
possibility of ratification did not wholly pass away until the close of
the session of the Colombian Congress on the last day of October. There
would then be two possibilities. One was that Panama would remain quiet.
In that case I was prepared to recommend to Congress that we should at
once occupy the Isthmus anyhow, and proceed to dig the canal; and I
had drawn out a draft of my message to this effect.[*] But from the
information I received, I deemed it likely that there would be a
revolution in Panama as soon as the Colombian Congress adjourned without
ratifying the treaty, for the entire population of Panama felt that
the immediate building of the canal was of vital concern to their
well-being. Correspondents of the different newspapers on the Isthmus
had sent to their respective papers widely published forecasts
indicating that there would be a revolution in such event.
[*] See appendix at end of this chapter.
Moreover, on October 16, at the request of Lieutenant-General Young,
Captain Humphrey, and Lieutenant Murphy, two army officers who
had returned from the Isthmus, saw me and told me that there would
unquestionably be a revolution on the Isthmus, that the people were
unanimous in their criticism of the Bogota Government and their disgust
over the failure of that Government to ratify the treaty; and that the
revolution would probably take place immediately after the adjournment
of the Colombian Congress. They did not believe that it would be before
October 20, but they were confident that it would certainly come at the
end of October or immediately afterwards, when the Colombian Congress
had adjourned. Accordingly I directed the Navy Department to station
various ships within easy reach of the Isthmus, to be ready to act in
the event of need arising.
These ships were barely in time. On November 3 the revolution occurred.
Practically everybody on the Isthmus, including all the Colombian troops
that were already stationed there, joined in the revolution, and there
was no bloodshed. But on that same day four hundred new Colombian
troops were landed at Colon. Fortunately, the gunboat _Nashville_, under
Commander Hubbard, reached Colon almost immediately afterwards, and when
the commander of the Colombian forces threatened the lives and property
of the American citizens, including women and children, in Colon,
Commander Hubbard landed a few score sailors and marines to protect
them. By a mixture of firmness and tact he not only prevented any
assault on our citizens, but persuaded the Colombian commander to
reembark his troops for Cartagena. On the Pacific side a Colombian
gunboat shelled the City of Panama, with the result of killing one
Chinaman--the only life lost in the whole affair.
No one connected with the American Government had any part in preparing,
inciting, or encouraging the revolution, and except for the reports of
our military and naval officers, which I forwarded to Congress, no one
connected with the Government had any previous knowledge concerning the
proposed revolution, except such as was accessible to any person who
read the newspapers and kept abreast of current questions and current
affairs. By the unanimous action of its people, and without the firing
of a shot, the state of Panama declared themselves an independent
republic. The time for hesitation on our part had passed.
My belief then was, and the events that have occurred since have more
than justified it, that from the standpoint of the United States it
was imperative, not only for civil but for military reasons, that there
should be the immediate establishment of easy and speedy communication
by sea between the Atlantic and the Pacific. These reasons were not
of convenience only, but of vital necessity, and did not admit of
indefinite delay. The action of Colombia had shown not only that the
delay would be indefinite, but that she intended to confiscate the
property and rights of the French Panama Canal Company. The report of
the Panama Canal Committee of the Colombian Senate on October 14,
1903, on the proposed treaty with the United States, proposed that all
consideration of the matter should be postponed until October 31, 1904,
when the next Colombian Congress would have convened, because by that
time the new Congress would be in condition to determine whether through
lapse of time the French company had not forfeited its property and
rights. "When that time arrives," the report significantly declared,
"the Republic, without any impediment, will be able to contract and will
be in more clear, more definite and more advantageous possession, both
legally and materially." The naked meaning of this was that Colombia
proposed to wait a year, and then enforce a forfeiture of the rights and
property of the French Panama Company, so as to secure the forty million
dollars our Government had authorized as payment to this company. If we
had sat supine, this would doubtless have meant that France would have
interfered to protect the company, and we should then have had on the
Isthmus, not the company, but France; and the gravest international
complications might have ensued. Every consideration of international
morality and expediency, of duty to the Panama people, and of
satisfaction of our own national interests and honor, bade us take
immediate action. I recognized Panama forthwith on behalf of the United
States, and practically all the countries of the world immediately
followed suit. The State Department immediately negotiated a canal
treaty with the new Republic. One of the foremost men in securing the
independence of Panama, and the treaty which authorized the United
States forthwith to build the canal, was M. Philippe Bunau-Varilla, an
eminent French engineer formerly associated with De Lesseps and then
living on the Isthmus; his services to civilization were notable, and
deserve the fullest recognition.
From the beginning to the end our course was straightforward and in
absolute accord with the highest of standards of international morality.
Criticism of it can come only from misinformation, or else from a
sentimentality which represents both mental weakness and a moral twist.
To have acted otherwise than I did would have been on my part betrayal
of the interests of the United States, indifference to the interests of
Panama, and recreancy to the interests of the world at large. Colombia
had forfeited every claim to consideration; indeed, this is not stating
the case strongly enough: she had so acted that yielding to her would
have meant on our part that culpable form of weakness which stands on a
level with wickedness. As for me personally, if I had hesitated to act,
and had not in advance discounted the clamor of those Americans who have
made a fetish of disloyalty to their country, I should have esteemed
myself as deserving a place in Dante's inferno beside the faint-hearted
cleric who was guilty of "il gran rifiuto." The facts I have given
above are mere bald statements from the record. They show that from
the beginning there had been acceptance of our right to insist on free
transit, in whatever form was best, across the Isthmus; and that towards
the end there had been a no less universal feeling that it was our
duty to the world to provide this transit in the shape of a canal--the
resolution of the Pan-American Congress was practically a mandate
to this effect. Colombia was then under a one-man government, a
dictatorship, founded on usurpation of absolute and irresponsible power.
She eagerly pressed us to enter into an agreement with her, as long
as there was any chance of our going to the alternative route through
Nicaragua. When she thought we were committed, she refused to fulfil the
agreement, with the avowed hope of seizing the French company's property
for nothing and thereby holding us up. This was a bit of pure bandit
morality. It would have achieved its purpose had I possessed as weak
moral fiber as those of my critics who announced that I ought to
have confined my action to feeble scolding and temporizing until the
opportunity for action passed. I did not lift my finger to incite the
revolutionists. The right simile to use is totally different. I simply
ceased to stamp out the different revolutionary fuses that were already
burning. When Colombia committed flagrant wrong against us, I considered
it no part of my duty to aid and abet her in her wrongdoing at our
expense, and also at the expense of Panama, of the French company,
and of the world generally. There had been fifty years of continuous
bloodshed and civil strife in Panama; because of my action Panama has
now known ten years of such peace and prosperity as she never before saw
during the four centuries of her existence--for in Panama, as in Cuba
and Santo Domingo, it was the action of the American people, against the
outcries of the professed apostles of peace, which alone brought peace.
We gave to the people of Panama self-government, and freed them from
subjection to alien oppressors. We did our best to get Colombia to let
us treat her with a more than generous justice; we exercised patience
to beyond the verge of proper forbearance. When we did act and recognize
Panama, Colombia at once acknowledged her own guilt by promptly offering
to do what we had demanded, and what she had protested it was not in her
power to do. But the offer came too late. What we would gladly have done
before, it had by that time become impossible for us honorably to do;
for it would have necessitated our abandoning the people of Panama, our
friends, and turning them over to their and our foes, who would have
wreaked vengeance on them precisely because they had shown friendship to
us. Colombia was solely responsible for her own humiliation; and she had
not then, and has not now, one shadow of claim upon us, moral or legal;
all the wrong that was done was done by her. If, as representing the
American people, I had not acted precisely as I did, I would have been
an unfaithful or incompetent representative; and inaction at that crisis
would have meant not only indefinite delay in building the canal, but
also practical admission on our part that we were not fit to play the
part on the Isthmus which we had arrogated to ourselves. I acted on my
own responsibility in the Panama matter. John Hay spoke of this action
as follows: "The action of the President in the Panama matter is not
only in the strictest accordance with the principles of justice and
equity, and in line with all the best precedents of our public policy,
but it was the only course he could have taken in compliance with our
treaty rights and obligations."
I deeply regretted, and now deeply regret, the fact that the Colombian
Government rendered it imperative for me to take the action I took; but
I had no alternative, consistent with the full performance of my duty
to my own people, and to the nations of mankind. (For, be it remembered,
that certain other nations, Chile for example, will probably benefit
even more by our action than will the United States itself.) I am well
aware that the Colombian people have many fine traits; that there is
among them a circle of high-bred men and women which would reflect
honor on the social life of any country; and that there has been an
intellectual and literary development within this small circle which
partially atones for the stagnation and illiteracy of the mass of the
people; and I also know that even the illiterate mass possesses many
sterling qualities. But unfortunately in international matters every
nation must be judged by the action of its Government. The good people
in Colombia apparently made no effort, certainly no successful effort,
to cause the Government to act with reasonable good faith towards the
United States; and Colombia had to take the consequences. If Brazil,
or the Argentine, or Chile, had been in possession of the Isthmus,
doubtless the canal would have been built under the governmental control
of the nation thus controlling the Isthmus, with the hearty acquiescence
of the United States and of all other powers. But in the actual fact the
canal would not have been built at all save for the action I took. If
men choose to say that it would have been better not to build it, than
to build it as the result of such action, their position, although
foolish, is compatible with belief in their wrongheaded sincerity. But
it is hypocrisy, alike odious and contemptible, for any man to say both
that we ought to have built the canal and that we ought not to have
acted in the way we did act.
After a sufficient period of wrangling, the Senate ratified the treaty
with Panama, and work on the canal was begun. The first thing that
was necessary was to decide the type of canal. I summoned a board of
engineering experts, foreign and native. They divided on their report.
The majority of the members, including all the foreign members, approved
a sea-level canal. The minority, including most of the American members,
approved a lock canal. Studying these conclusions, I came to the belief
that the minority was right. The two great traffic canals of the world
were the Suez and the Soo. The Suez Canal is a sea-level canal, and it
was the one best known to European engineers. The Soo Canal, through
which an even greater volume of traffic passes every year, is a lock
canal, and the American engineers were thoroughly familiar with it;
whereas, in my judgment, the European engineers had failed to pay proper
heed to the lessons taught by its operation and management. Moreover,
the engineers who were to do the work at Panama all favored a lock
canal. I came to the conclusion that a sea-level canal would be slightly
less exposed to damage in the event of war; that the running expenses,
apart from the heavy cost of interest on the amount necessary to build
it, would be less; and that for small ships the time of transit would
be less. But I also came to the conclusion that the lock canal at the
proposed level would cost only about half as much to build and would be
built in half the time, with much less risk; that for large ships the
transit would be quicker, and that, taking into account the interest
saved, the cost of maintenance would be less. Accordingly I recommended
to Congress, on February 19, 1906, that a lock canal should be built,
and my recommendation was adopted. Congress insisted upon having it
built by a commission of several men. I tried faithfully to get good
work out of the commission, and found it quite impossible; for a
many-headed commission is an extremely poor executive instrument. At
last I put Colonel Goethals in as head of the commission. Then, when
Congress still refused to make the commission single-headed, I
solved the difficulty by an executive order of January 6, 1908, which
practically accomplished the object by enlarging the powers of the
chairman, making all the other members of the commission dependent upon
him, and thereby placing the work under one-man control. Dr. Gorgas
had already performed an inestimable service by caring for the sanitary
conditions so thoroughly as to make the Isthmus as safe as a health
resort. Colonel Goethals proved to be the man of all others to do the
job. It would be impossible to overstate what he has done. It is the
greatest task of any kind that any man in the world has accomplished
during the years that Colonel Goethals has been at work. It is the
greatest task of its own kind that has ever been performed in the world
at all. Colonel Goethals has succeeded in instilling into the men under
him a spirit which elsewhere has been found only in a few victorious
armies. It is proper and appropriate that, like the soldiers of such
armies, they should receive medals which are allotted each man who has
served for a sufficient length of time. A finer body of men has never
been gathered by any nation than the men who have done the work of
building the Panama Canal; the conditions under which they have lived
and have done their work have been better than in any similar work ever
undertaken in the tropics; they have all felt an eager pride in their
work; and they have made not only America but the whole world their
debtors by what they have accomplished.
APPENDIX
COLOMBIA: THE PROPOSED MESSAGE TO CONGRESS
The rough draft of the message I had proposed to send Congress ran as
follows:
"The Colombian Government, through its representative here, and directly
in communication with our representative at Colombia, has refused to
come to any agreement with us, and has delayed action so as to make it
evident that it intends to make extortionate and improper terms with us.
The Isthmian Canal bill was, of course, passed upon the assumption that
whatever route was used, the benefit to the particular section of the
Isthmus through which it passed would be so great that the country
controlling this part would be eager to facilitate the building of the
canal. It is out of the question to submit to extortion on the part of a
beneficiary of the scheme. All the labor, all the expense, all the risk
are to be assumed by us and all the skill shown by us. Those controlling
the ground through which the canal is to be put are wholly incapable of
building it.
"Yet the interest of international commerce generally and the interest
of this country generally demands that the canal should be begun with
no needless delay. The refusal of Colombia properly to respond to our
sincere and earnest efforts to come to an agreement, or to pay heed to
the many concessions we have made, renders it in my judgment necessary
that the United States should take immediate action on one of two lines:
either we should drop the Panama canal project and immediately begin
work on the Nicaraguan canal, or else we should purchase all the rights
of the French company, and, without any further parley with Colombia,
enter upon the completion of the canal which the French company
has begun. I feel that the latter course is the one demanded by the
interests of this Nation, and I therefore bring the matter to your
attention for such action in the premises as you may deem wise. If in
your judgment it is better not to take such action, then I shall proceed
at once with the Nicaraguan canal.
"The reason that I advocate the action above outlined in regard to the
Panama canal is, in the first place, the strong testimony of the
experts that this route is the most feasible; and in the next place, the
impropriety from an international standpoint of permitting such conduct
as that to which Colombia seems to incline. The testimony of the experts
is very strong, not only that the Panama route is feasible, but that in
the Nicaragua route we may encounter some unpleasant surprises, and that
it is far more difficult to forecast the result with any certainty
as regards this latter route. As for Colombia's attitude, it is
incomprehensible upon any theory of desire to see the canal built upon
the basis of mutual advantage alike to those building it and to Colombia
herself. All we desire to do is to take up the work begun by the French
Government and to finish it. Obviously it is Colombia's duty to help
towards such completion. We are most anxious to come to an agreement
with her in which most scrupulous care should be taken to guard her
interests and ours. But we cannot consent to permit her to block
the performance of the work which it is so greatly to our interest
immediately to begin and carry through."
Shortly after this rough draft was dictated the Panama revolution came,
and I never thought of the rough draft again until I was accused of
having instigated the revolution. This accusation is preposterous in
the eyes of any one who knows the actual conditions at Panama. Only the
menace of action by us in the interest of Colombia kept down revolution;
as soon as Colombia's own conduct removed such menace, all check on the
various revolutionary movements (there were at least three from entirely
separate sources) ceased; and then an explosion was inevitable, for
the French company knew that all their property would be confiscated
if Colombia put through her plans, and the entire people of Panama felt
that if in disgust with Colombia's extortions the United States turned
to Nicaragua, they, the people of Panama, would be ruined. Knowing the
character of those then in charge of the Colombian Government, I was not
surprised at their bad faith; but I was surprised at their folly. They
apparently had no idea either of the power of France or the power of
the United States, and expected to be permitted to commit wrong with
impunity, just as Castro in Venezuela had done. The difference was that,
unless we acted in self-defense, Colombia had it in her power to do
us serious harm, and Venezuela did not have such power. Colombia's
wrongdoing, therefore, recoiled on her own head. There was no new
lesson taught; it ought already to have been known to every one that
wickedness, weakness, and folly combined rarely fail to meet punishment,
and that the intent to do wrong, when joined to inability to carry
the evil purpose to a successful conclusion, inevitably reacts on the
wrongdoer.
For the full history of the acquisition and building of the canal see
"The Panama Gateway," by Joseph Bucklin Bishop (Scribner's Sons). Mr.
Bishop has been for eight years secretary of the commission and is one
of the most efficient of the many efficient men to whose work on the
Isthmus America owes so much.
CHAPTER XV
THE PEACE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
There can be no nobler cause for which to work than the peace of
righteousness; and high honor is due those serene and lofty souls who
with wisdom and courage, with high idealism tempered by sane facing
of the actual facts of life, have striven to bring nearer the day when
armed strife between nation and nation, between class and class, between
man and man shall end throughout the world. Because all this is true, it
is also true that there are no men more ignoble or more foolish, no men
whose actions are fraught with greater possibility of mischief to their
country and to mankind, than those who exalt unrighteous peace as better
than righteous war. The men who have stood highest in our history, as in
the history of all countries, are those who scorned injustice, who were
incapable of oppressing the weak, or of permitting their country, with
their consent, to oppress the weak, but who did not hesitate to draw
the sword when to leave it undrawn meant inability to arrest triumphant
wrong.
All this is so obvious that it ought not to be necessary to repeat it.
Yet every man in active affairs, who also reads about the past, grows
by bitter experience to realize that there are plenty of men, not only
among those who mean ill, but among those who mean well, who are ready
enough to praise what was done in the past, and yet are incapable of
profiting by it when faced by the needs of the present. During our
generation this seems to have been peculiarly the case among the men who
have become obsessed with the idea of obtaining universal peace by some
cheap patent panacea.
There has been a real and substantial growth in the feeling for
international responsibility and justice among the great civilized
nations during the past threescore or fourscore years. There has been a
real growth of recognition of the fact that moral turpitude is involved
in the wronging of one nation by another, and that in most cases war is
an evil method of settling international difficulties. But as yet
there has been only a rudimentary beginning of the development of
international tribunals of justice, and there has been no development at
all of any international police power. Now, as I have already said,
the whole fabric of municipal law, of law within each nation, rests
ultimately upon the judge and the policeman; and the complete absence
of the policeman, and the almost complete absence of the judge, in
international affairs, prevents there being as yet any real homology
between municipal and international law.
Moreover, the questions which sometimes involve nations in war are
far more difficult and complex than any questions that affect merely
individuals. Almost every great nation has inherited certain questions,
either with other nations or with sections of its own people, which it
is quite impossible, in the present state of civilization, to decide
as matters between private individuals can be decided. During the last
century at least half of the wars that have been fought have been
civil and not foreign wars. There are big and powerful nations which
habitually commit, either upon other nations or upon sections of their
own people, wrongs so outrageous as to justify even the most peaceful
persons in going to war. There are also weak nations so utterly
incompetent either to protect the rights of foreigners against their own
citizens, or to protect their own citizens against foreigners, that it
becomes a matter of sheer duty for some outside power to interfere in
connection with them. As yet in neither case is there any efficient
method of getting international action; and if joint action by several
powers is secured, the result is usually considerably worse than if only
one Power interfered. The worst infamies of modern times--such affairs
as the massacres of the Armenians by the Turks, for instance--have been
perpetrated in a time of nominally profound international peace, when
there has been a concert of big Powers to prevent the breaking of this
peace, although only by breaking it could the outrages be stopped. Be it
remembered that the peoples who suffered by these hideous massacres,
who saw their women violated and their children tortured, were actually
enjoying all the benefits of "disarmament." Otherwise they would not
have been massacred; for if the Jews in Russia and the Armenians in
Turkey had been armed, and had been efficient in the use of their arms,
no mob would have meddled with them.
Yet amiable but fatuous persons, with all these facts before their eyes,
pass resolutions demanding universal arbitration for everything, and the
disarmament of the free civilized powers and their abandonment of their
armed forces; or else they write well-meaning, solemn little books, or
pamphlets or editorials, and articles in magazines or newspapers, to
show that it is "an illusion" to believe that war ever pays, because it
is expensive. This is precisely like arguing that we should disband the
police and devote our sole attention to persuading criminals that it
is "an illusion" to suppose that burglary, highway robbery and white
slavery are profitable. It is almost useless to attempt to argue with
these well-intentioned persons, because they are suffering under an
obsession and are not open to reason. They go wrong at the outset, for
they lay all the emphasis on peace and none at all on righteousness.
They are not all of them physically timid men; but they are usually men
of soft life; and they rarely possess a high sense of honor or a keen
patriotism. They rarely try to prevent their fellow countrymen from
insulting or wronging the people of other nations; but they always
ardently advocate that we, in our turn, shall tamely submit to wrong
and insult from other nations. As Americans their folly is peculiarly
scandalous, because if the principles they now uphold are right, it
means that it would have been better that Americans should never have
achieved their independence, and better that, in 1861, they should have
peacefully submitted to seeing their country split into half a dozen
jangling confederacies and slavery made perpetual. If unwilling to learn
from their own history, let those who think that it is an "illusion" to
believe that a war ever benefits a nation look at the difference between
China and Japan. China has neither a fleet nor an efficient army. It is
a huge civilized empire, one of the most populous on the globe; and it
has been the helpless prey of outsiders because it does not possess the
power to fight. Japan stands on a footing of equality with European
and American nations because it does possess this power. China now sees
Japan, Russia, Germany, England and France in possession of fragments of
her empire, and has twice within the lifetime of the present generation
seen her capital in the hands of allied invaders, because she in very
fact realizes the ideals of the persons who wish the United States
to disarm, and then trust that our helplessness will secure us a
contemptuous immunity from attack by outside nations.
The chief trouble comes from the entire inability of these worthy
people to understand that they are demanding things that are mutually
incompatible when they demand peace at any price, and also justice and
righteousness. I remember one representative of their number, who used
to write little sonnets on behalf of the Mahdi and the Sudanese, these
sonnets setting forth the need that the Sudan should be both independent
and peaceful. As a matter of fact, the Sudan valued independence only
because it desired to war against all Christians and to carry on an
unlimited slave trade. It was "independent" under the Mahdi for a dozen
years, and during those dozen years the bigotry, tyranny, and cruel
religious intolerance were such as flourished in the seventh century,
and in spite of systematic slave raids the population decreased by
nearly two-thirds, and practically all the children died. Peace came,
well-being came, freedom from rape and murder and torture and highway
robbery, and every brutal gratification of lust and greed came, only
when the Sudan lost its independence and passed under English rule. Yet
this well-meaning little sonneteer sincerely felt that his verses were
issued in the cause of humanity. Looking back from the vantage point of
a score of years, probably every one will agree that he was an absurd
person. But he was not one whit more absurd than most of the more
prominent persons who advocate disarmament by the United States, the
cessation of up-building the navy, and the promise to agree to arbitrate
all matters, including those affecting our national interests and honor,
with all foreign nations.
These persons would do no harm if they affected only themselves. Many
of them are, in the ordinary relations of life, good citizens. They are
exactly like the other good citizens who believe that enforced universal
vegetarianism or anti-vaccination is the panacea for all ills. But in
their particular case they are able to do harm because they affect our
relations with foreign powers, so that other men pay the debt which they
themselves have really incurred. It is the foolish, peace-at-any-price
persons who try to persuade our people to make unwise and improper
treaties, or to stop building up the navy. But if trouble comes and the
treaties are repudiated, or there is a demand for armed intervention,
it is not these people who will pay anything; they will stay at home in
safety, and leave brave men to pay in blood, and honest men to pay in
shame, for their folly.
The trouble is that our policy is apt to go in zigzags, because
different sections of our people exercise at different times unequal
pressure on our government. One class of our citizens clamors for
treaties impossible of fulfilment, and improper to fulfil; another class
has no objection to the passage of these treaties so long as there is no
concrete case to which they apply, but instantly oppose a veto on their
application when any concrete case does actually arise. One of our
cardinal doctrines is freedom of speech, which means freedom of speech
about foreigners as well as about ourselves; and, inasmuch as we
exercise this right with complete absence of restraint, we cannot expect
other nations to hold us harmless unless in the last resort we are
able to make our own words good by our deeds. One class of our citizens
indulges in gushing promises to do everything for foreigners, another
class offensively and improperly reviles them; and it is hard to say
which class more thoroughly misrepresents the sober, self-respecting
judgment of the American people as a whole. The only safe rule is to
promise little, and faithfully to keep every promise; to "speak softly
and carry a big stick."
A prime need for our nation, as of course for every other nation, is
to make up its mind definitely what it wishes, and not to try to pursue
paths of conduct incompatible one with the other. If this nation is
content to be the China of the New World, then and then only can it
afford to do away with the navy and the army. If it is content to
abandon Hawaii and the Panama Canal, to cease to talk of the Monroe
Doctrine, and to admit the right of any European or Asiatic power to
dictate what immigrants shall be sent to and received in America,
and whether or not they shall be allowed to become citizens and hold
land--why, of course, if America is content to have nothing to say
on any of these matters and to keep silent in the presence of armed
outsiders, then it can abandon its navy and agree to arbitrate all
questions of all kinds with every foreign power. In such event it can
afford to pass its spare time in one continuous round of universal
peace celebrations, and of smug self-satisfaction in having earned the
derision of all the virile peoples of mankind. Those who advocate such
a policy do not occupy a lofty position. But at least their position is
understandable.
It is entirely inexcusable, however, to try to combine the unready hand
with the unbridled tongue. It is folly to permit freedom of speech about
foreigners as well as ourselves--and the peace-at-any-price persons are
much too feeble a folk to try to interfere with freedom of speech--and
yet to try to shirk the consequences of freedom of speech. It is folly
to try to abolish our navy, and at the same time to insist that we have
a right to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, that we have a right to control
the Panama Canal which we ourselves dug, that we have a right to retain
Hawaii and prevent foreign nations from taking Cuba, and a right to
determine what immigrants, Asiatic or European, shall come to our
shores, and the terms on which they shall be naturalized and shall
hold land and exercise other privileges. We are a rich people, and
an unmilitary people. In international affairs we are a short-sighted
people. But I know my countrymen. Down at bottom their temper is such
that they will not permanently tolerate injustice done to them. In the
long run they will no more permit affronts to their National honor than
injuries to their national interest. Such being the case, they will do
well to remember that the surest of all ways to invite disaster is to be
opulent, aggressive and unarmed.
Throughout the seven and a half years that I was President, I pursued
without faltering one consistent foreign policy, a policy of genuine
international good will and of consideration for the rights of others,
and at the same time of steady preparedness. The weakest nations knew
that they, no less than the strongest, were safe from insult and injury
at our hands; and the strong and the weak alike also knew that we
possessed both the will and the ability to guard ourselves from wrong or
insult at the hands of any one.
It was under my administration that the Hague Court was saved from
becoming an empty farce. It had been established by joint international
agreement, but no Power had been willing to resort to it. Those
establishing it had grown to realize that it was in danger of becoming a
mere paper court, so that it would never really come into being at all.
M. d'Estournelles de Constant had been especially alive to this danger.
By correspondence and in personal interviews he impressed upon me the
need not only of making advances by actually applying arbitration--not
merely promising by treaty to apply it--to questions that were up
for settlement, but of using the Hague tribunal for this purpose. I
cordially sympathized with these views. On the recommendation of John
Hay, I succeeded in getting an agreement with Mexico to lay a matter in
dispute between the two republics before the Hague Court. This was
the first case ever brought before the Hague Court. It was followed by
numerous others; and it definitely established that court as the great
international peace tribunal. By mutual agreement with Great Britain,
through the decision of a joint commission, of which the American
members were Senators Lodge and Turner, and Secretary Root, we were able
peacefully to settle the Alaska Boundary question, the only question
remaining between ourselves and the British Empire which it was not
possible to settle by friendly arbitration; this therefore represented
the removal of the last obstacle to absolute agreement between the two
peoples. We were of substantial service in bringing to a satisfactory
conclusion the negotiations at Algeciras concerning Morocco. We
concluded with Great Britain, and with most of the other great nations,
arbitration treaties specifically agreeing to arbitrate all matters,
and especially the interpretation of treaties, save only as regards
questions affecting territorial integrity, national honor and vital
national interest. We made with Great Britain a treaty guaranteeing the
free use of the Panama Canal on equal terms to the ships of all nations,
while reserving to ourselves the right to police and fortify the canal,
and therefore to control it in time of war. Under this treaty we are
in honor bound to arbitrate the question of canal tolls for coastwise
traffic between the Western and Eastern coasts of the United States. I
believe that the American position as regards this matter is right; but
I also believe that under the arbitration treaty we are in honor
bound to submit the matter to arbitration in view of Great Britain's
contention--although I hold it to be an unwise contention--that our
position is unsound. I emphatically disbelieve in making universal
arbitration treaties which neither the makers nor any one else would for
a moment dream of keeping. I no less emphatically insist that it is our
duty to keep the limited and sensible arbitration treaties which we have
already made. The importance of a promise lies not in making it, but in
keeping it; and the poorest of all positions for a nation to occupy in
such a matter is readiness to make impossible promises at the same time
that there is failure to keep promises which have been made, which can
be kept, and which it is discreditable to break.
During the early part of the year 1905, the strain on the civilized
world caused by the Russo-Japanese War became serious. The losses of
life and of treasure were frightful. From all the sources of information
at hand, I grew most strongly to believe that a further continuation
of the struggle would be a very bad thing for Japan, and an even worse
thing for Russia. Japan was already suffering terribly from the drain
upon her men, and especially upon her resources, and had nothing further
to gain from continuance of the struggle; its continuance meant to her
more loss than gain, even if she were victorious. Russia, in spite of
her gigantic strength, was, in my judgment, apt to lose even more than
she had already lost if the struggle continued. I deemed it probable
that she would no more be able successfully to defend Eastern Siberia
and Northern Manchuria than she had been able to defend Southern
Manchuria and Korea. If the war went on, I thought it, on the whole,
likely that Russia would be driven west of Lake Baikal. But it was very
far from certain. There is no certainty in such a war. Japan might have
met defeat, and defeat to her would have spelt overwhelming disaster;
and even if she had continued to win, what she thus won would have been
of no value to her, and the cost in blood and money would have left her
drained white. I believed, therefore, that the time had come when it
was greatly to the interest of both combatants to have peace, and when
therefore it was possible to get both to agree to peace.
I first satisfied myself that each side wished me to act, but that,
naturally and properly, each side was exceedingly anxious that the other
should not believe that the action was taken on its initiative. I then
sent an identical note to the two powers proposing that they should
meet, through their representatives, to see if peace could not be made
directly between them, and offered to act as an intermediary in bringing
about such a meeting, but not for any other purpose. Each assented to my
proposal in principle. There was difficulty in getting them to agree
on a common meeting place; but each finally abandoned its original
contention in the matter, and the representatives of the two nations
finally met at Portsmouth, in New Hampshire. I previously received the
two delegations at Oyster Bay on the U. S. S. Mayflower, which, together
with another naval vessel, I put at their disposal, on behalf of the
United States Government, to take them from Oyster Bay to Portsmouth.
As is customary--but both unwise and undesirable--in such cases,
each side advanced claims which the other could not grant. The chief
difficulty came because of Japan's demand for a money indemnity. I felt
that it would be better for Russia to pay some indemnity than to go on
with the war, for there was little chance, in my judgment, of the war
turning out favorably for Russia, and the revolutionary movement already
under way bade fair to overthrow the negotiations entirely. I advised
the Russian Government to this effect, at the same time urging them to
abandon their pretensions on certain other points, notably concerning
the southern half of Saghalien, which the Japanese had taken. I also,
however, and equally strongly, advised the Japanese that in my judgment
it would be the gravest mistake on their part to insist on continuing
the war for the sake of a money indemnity; for Russia was absolutely
firm in refusing to give them an indemnity, and the longer the war
continued the less able she would be to pay. I pointed out that there
was no possible analogy between their case and that of Germany in the
war with France, which they were fond of quoting. The Germans held Paris
and half of France, and gave up much territory in lieu of the indemnity,
whereas the Japanese were still many thousand miles from Moscow, and had
no territory whatever which they wished to give up. I also pointed out
that in my judgment whereas the Japanese had enjoyed the sympathy of
most of the civilized powers at the outset of and during the continuance
of the war, they would forfeit it if they turned the war into one merely
for getting money--and, moreover, they would almost certainly fail to
get the money, and would simply find themselves at the end of a year,
even if things prospered with them, in possession of territory they
did not want, having spent enormous additional sums of money, and
lost enormous additional numbers of men, and yet without a penny of
remuneration. The treaty of peace was finally signed.
As is inevitable under such circumstances, each side felt that it ought
to have got better terms; and when the danger was well past each side
felt that it had been over-reached by the other, and that if the war had
gone on it would have gotten more than it actually did get. The Japanese
Government had been wise throughout, except in the matter of announcing
that it would insist on a money indemnity. Neither in national nor in
private affairs is it ordinarily advisable to make a bluff which cannot
be put through--personally, I never believe in doing it under any
circumstances. The Japanese people had been misled by this bluff of
their Government; and the unwisdom of the Government's action in the
matter was shown by the great resentment the treaty aroused in
Japan, although it was so beneficial to Japan. There were various mob
outbreaks, especially in the Japanese cities; the police were roughly
handled, and several Christian churches were burned, as reported to me
by the American Minister. In both Russia and Japan I believe that the
net result as regards myself was a feeling of injury, and of dislike
of me, among the people at large. I had expected this; I regarded it as
entirely natural; and I did not resent it in the least. The Governments
of both nations behaved toward me not only with correct and entire
propriety, but with much courtesy and the fullest acknowledgment of the
good effect of what I had done; and in Japan, at least, I believe that
the leading men sincerely felt that I had been their friend. I had
certainly tried my best to be the friend not only of the Japanese people
but of the Russian people, and I believe that what I did was for the
best interests of both and of the world at large.
During the course of the negotiations I tried to enlist the aid of the
Governments of one nation which was friendly to Russia, and of another
nation which was friendly to Japan, in helping bring about peace. I
got no aid from either. I did, however, receive aid from the Emperor
of Germany. His Ambassador at St. Petersburg was the one Ambassador
who helped the American Ambassador, Mr. Meyer, at delicate and doubtful
points of the negotiations. Mr. Meyer, who was, with the exception of
Mr. White, the most useful diplomat in the American service, rendered
literally invaluable aid by insisting upon himself seeing the Czar at
critical periods of the transaction, when it was no longer possible for
me to act successfully through the representatives of the Czar, who were
often at cross purposes with one another.
As a result of the Portsmouth peace, I was given the Nobel Peace Prize.
This consisted of a medal, which I kept, and a sum of $40,000, which I
turned over as a foundation of industrial peace to a board of trustees
which included Oscar Straus, Seth Low and John Mitchell. In the present
state of the world's development industrial peace is even more essential
than international peace; and it was fitting and appropriate to devote
the peace prize to such a purpose. In 1910, while in Europe, one of my
most pleasant experiences was my visit to Norway, where I addressed the
Nobel Committee, and set forth in full the principles upon which I
had acted, not only in this particular case but throughout my
administration.
I received another gift which I deeply appreciated, an original copy
of Sully's "Memoires" of "Henry le Grand," sent me with the following
inscription (I translate it roughly):
PARIS, January, 1906.
"The undersigned members of the French Parliamentary Group of
International Arbitration and Conciliation have decided to tender
President Roosevelt a token of their high esteem and their sympathetic
recognition of the persistent and decisive initiative he has taken
towards gradually substituting friendly and judicial for violent methods
in case of conflict between Nations.
"They believe that the action of President Roosevelt, which has realized
the most generous hopes to be found in history, should be classed as a
continuance of similar illustrious attempts of former times, notably
the project for international concord known under the name of the 'Great
Design of Henry IV' in the memoirs of his Prime Minister, the Duke de
Sully. In consequence they have sought out a copy of the first edition
of these memoirs, and they take pleasure in offering it to him, with the
request that he will keep it among his family papers."
The signatures include those of Emile Loubet, A. Carnot, d'Estournelles
de Constant, Aristide Briand, Sully Prudhomme, Jean Jaurés, A.
Fallieres, R. Poincare, and two or three hundred others.
Of course what I had done in connection with the Portsmouth peace
was misunderstood by some good and sincere people. Just as after the
settlement of the coal strike, there were persons who thereupon thought
that it was in my power, and was my duty, to settle all other strikes,
so after the peace of Portsmouth there were other persons--not only
Americans, by the way,--who thought it my duty forthwith to make myself
a kind of international Meddlesome Mattie and interfere for peace
and justice promiscuously over the world. Others, with a delightful
non-sequitur, jumped to the conclusion that inasmuch as I had helped to
bring about a beneficent and necessary peace I must of necessity have
changed my mind about war being ever necessary. A couple of days after
peace was concluded I wrote to a friend: "Don't you be misled by the
fact that just at the moment men are speaking well of me. They will
speak ill soon enough. As Loeb remarked to me to-day, some time soon I
shall have to spank some little international brigand, and then all the
well-meaning idiots will turn and shriek that this is inconsistent
with what I did at the Peace Conference, whereas in reality it will be
exactly in line with it."
To one of my political opponents, Mr. Schurz, who wrote me
congratulating me upon the outcome at Portsmouth, and suggesting that
the time was opportune for a move towards disarmament, I answered in a
letter setting forth views which I thought sound then, and think sound
now. The letter ran as follows:
OYSTER BAY, N. Y., September 8, 1905.
My dear Mr. Schurz: I thank you for your congratulations. As to what you
say about disarmament--which I suppose is the rough equivalent of "the
gradual diminution of the oppressive burdens imposed upon the world by
armed peace"--I am not clear either as to what can be done or what ought
to be done. If I had been known as one of the conventional type of peace
advocates I could have done nothing whatever in bringing about peace
now, I would be powerless in the future to accomplish anything, and
I would not have been able to help confer the boons upon Cuba, the
Philippines, Porto Rico and Panama, brought about by our action therein.
If the Japanese had not armed during the last twenty years, this would
indeed be a sorrowful century for Japan. If this country had not fought
the Spanish War; if we had failed to take the action we did about
Panama; all mankind would have been the loser. While the Turks were
butchering the Armenians the European powers kept the peace and thereby
added a burden of infamy to the Nineteenth Century, for in keeping that
peace a greater number of lives were lost than in any European war since
the days of Napoleon, and these lives were those of women and children
as well as of men; while the moral degradation, the brutality inflicted
and endured, the aggregate of hideous wrong done, surpassed that of any
war of which we have record in modern times. Until people get it firmly
fixed in their minds that peace is valuable chiefly as a means to
righteousness, and that it can only be considered as an end when it also
coincides with righteousness, we can do only a limited amount to advance
its coming on this earth. There is of course no analogy at present
between international law and private or municipal law, because there
is no sanction of force for the former, while there is for the latter.
Inside our own nation the law-abiding man does not have to arm himself
against the lawless simply because there is some armed force--the
police, the sheriff's posse, the national guard, the regulars--which
can be called out to enforce the laws. At present there is no similar
international force to call on, and I do not as yet see how it could
at present be created. Hitherto peace has often come only because some
strong and on the whole just power has by armed force, or the threat of
armed force, put a stop to disorder. In a very interesting French book
the other day I was reading how the Mediterranean was freed from pirates
only by the "pax Britannica," established by England's naval force. The
hopeless and hideous bloodshed and wickedness of Algiers and Turkestan
was stopped, and could only be stopped, when civilized nations in the
shape of Russia and France took possession of them. The same was true
of Burma and the Malay States, as well as Egypt, with regard to England.
Peace has come only as the sequel to the armed interference of a
civilized power which, relatively to its opponent, was a just and
beneficent power. If England had disarmed to the point of being unable
to conquer the Sudan and protect Egypt, so that the Mahdists had
established their supremacy in northeastern Africa, the result would
have been a horrible and bloody calamity to mankind. It was only the
growth of the European powers in military efficiency that freed eastern
Europe from the dreadful scourge of the Tartar and partially freed it
from the dreadful scourge of the Turk. Unjust war is dreadful; a just
war may be the highest duty. To have the best nations, the free and
civilized nations, disarm and leave the despotisms and barbarisms
with great military force, would be a calamity compared to which the
calamities caused by all the wars of the nineteenth century would be
trivial. Yet it is not easy to see how we can by international agreement
state exactly which power ceases to be free and civilized and which
comes near the line of barbarism or despotism. For example, I suppose
it would be very difficult to get Russia and Japan to come to a common
agreement on this point; and there are at least some citizens of other
nations, not to speak of their governments, whom it would also be hard
to get together.
This does not in the least mean that it is hopeless to make the effort.
It may be that some scheme will be developed. America, fortunately,
can cordially assist in such an effort, for no one in his senses would
suggest our disarmament; and though we should continue to perfect our
small navy and our minute army, I do not think it necessary to increase
the number of our ships--at any rate as things look now--nor the number
of our soldiers. Of course our navy must be kept up to the highest
point of efficiency, and the replacing of old and worthless vessels by
first-class new ones may involve an increase in the personnel; but not
enough to interfere with our action along the lines you have suggested.
But before I would know how to advocate such action, save in some such
way as commending it to the attention of The Hague Tribunal, I would
have to have a feasible and rational plan of action presented.
It seems to me that a general stop in the increase of the war navies
of the world _might_ be a good thing; but I would not like to speak too
positively offhand. Of course it is only in continental Europe that the
armies are too large; and before advocating action as regards them I
should have to weigh matters carefully--including by the way such a
matter as the Turkish army. At any rate nothing useful can be done
unless with the clear recognition that we object to putting peace second
to righteousness.
Sincerely yours, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
HON. CARL SCHURZ, Bolton Landing, Lake George, N. Y.
In my own judgment the most important service that I rendered to
peace was the voyage of the battle fleet round the world. I had become
convinced that for many reasons it was essential that we should have
it clearly understood, by our own people especially, but also by other
peoples, that the Pacific was as much our home waters as the Atlantic,
and that our fleet could and would at will pass from one to the other of
the two great oceans. It seemed to me evident that such a voyage would
greatly benefit the navy itself; would arouse popular interest in and
enthusiasm for the navy; and would make foreign nations accept as a
matter of course that our fleet should from time to time be gathered in
the Pacific, just as from time to time it was gathered in the Atlantic,
and that its presence in one ocean was no more to be accepted as a mark
of hostility to any Asiatic power than its presence in the Atlantic
was to be accepted as a mark of hostility to any European power. I
determined on the move without consulting the Cabinet, precisely as
I took Panama without consulting the Cabinet. A council of war never
fights, and in a crisis the duty of a leader is to lead and not to take
refuge behind the generally timid wisdom of a multitude of councillors.
At that time, as I happen to know, neither the English nor the German
authorities believed it possible to take a fleet of great battleships
round the world. They did not believe that their own fleets could
perform the feat, and still less did they believe that the American
fleet could. I made up my mind that it was time to have a show down in
the matter; because if it was really true that our fleet could not get
from the Atlantic to the Pacific, it was much better to know it and be
able to shape our policy in view of the knowledge. Many persons publicly
and privately protested against the move on the ground that Japan would
accept it as a threat. To this I answered nothing in public. In private
I said that I did not believe Japan would so regard it because Japan
knew my sincere friendship and admiration for her and realized that we
could not as a Nation have any intention of attacking her; and that if
there were any such feeling on the part of Japan as was alleged that
very fact rendered it imperative that that fleet should go. When in the
spring of 1910 I was in Europe I was interested to find that high naval
authorities in both Germany and Italy had expected that war would come
at the time of the voyage. They asked me if I had not been afraid of it,
and if I had not expected that hostilities would begin at least by the
time that the fleet reached the Straits of Magellan? I answered that I
did not expect it; that I believed that Japan would feel as friendly in
the matter as we did; but that if my expectations had proved mistaken,
it would have been proof positive that we were going to be attacked
anyhow, and that in such event it would have been an enormous gain to
have had the three months' preliminary preparation which enabled the
fleet to start perfectly equipped. In a personal interview before they
left I had explained to the officers in command that I believed the trip
would be one of absolute peace, but that they were to take exactly the
same precautions against sudden attack of any kind as if we were at war
with all the nations of the earth; and that no excuse of any kind would
be accepted if there were a sudden attack of any kind and we were taken
unawares.
My prime purpose was to impress the American people; and this purpose
was fully achieved. The cruise did make a very deep impression abroad;
boasting about what we have done does not impress foreign nations at
all, except unfavorably, but positive achievement does; and the two
American achievements that really impressed foreign peoples during the
first dozen years of this century were the digging of the Panama Canal
and the cruise of the battle fleet round the world. But the impression
made on our own people was of far greater consequence. No single
thing in the history of the new United States Navy has done as much to
stimulate popular interest and belief in it as the world cruise. This
effect was forecast in a well-informed and friendly English periodical,
the London _Spectator_. Writing in October, 1907, a month before the
fleet sailed from Hampton Roads, the _Spectator said_:
"All over America the people will follow the movements of the fleet;
they will learn something of the intricate details of the coaling
and commissariat work under warlike conditions; and in a word
their attention will be aroused. Next time Mr. Roosevelt or his
representatives appeal to the country for new battleships they will do
so to people whose minds have been influenced one way or the other. The
naval programme will not have stood still. We are sure that, apart from
increasing the efficiency of the existing fleet, this is the aim which
Mr. Roosevelt has in mind. He has a policy which projects itself far
into the future, but it is an entire misreading of it to suppose that it
is aimed narrowly and definitely at any single Power."
I first directed the fleet, of sixteen battleships, to go round through
the Straits of Magellan to San Francisco. From thence I ordered them to
New Zealand and Australia, then to the Philippines, China and Japan,
and home through Suez--they stopped in the Mediterranean to help the
sufferers from the earthquake at Messina, by the way, and did this work
as effectively as they had done all their other work. Admiral Evans
commanded the fleet to San Francisco; there Admiral Sperry took it;
Admirals Thomas, Wainwright and Schroeder rendered distinguished service
under Evans and Sperry. The coaling and other preparations were made in
such excellent shape by the Department that there was never a hitch, not
so much as the delay of an hour, in keeping every appointment made.
All the repairs were made without difficulty, the ship concerned
merely falling out of column for a few hours, and when the job was done
steaming at speed until she regained her position. Not a ship was left
in any port; and there was hardly a desertion. As soon as it was known
that the voyage was to be undertaken men crowded to enlist, just as
freely from the Mississippi Valley as from the seaboard, and for the
first time since the Spanish War the ships put to sea overmanned--and by
as stalwart a set of men-of-war's men as ever looked through a porthole,
game for a fight or a frolic, but withal so self-respecting and with
such a sense of responsibility that in all the ports in which they
landed their conduct was exemplary. The fleet practiced incessantly
during the voyage, both with the guns and in battle tactics, and came
home a much more efficient fighting instrument than when it started
sixteen months before.
The best men of command rank in our own service were confident that the
fleet would go round in safety, in spite of the incredulity of foreign
critics. Even they, however, did not believe that it was wise to send
the torpedo craft around. I accordingly acquiesced in their views, as it
did not occur to me to consult the lieutenants. But shortly before the
fleet started, I went in the Government yacht Mayflower to inspect the
target practice off Provincetown. I was accompanied by two torpedo
boat destroyers, in charge of a couple of naval lieutenants, thorough
gamecocks; and I had the two lieutenants aboard to dine one evening.
Towards the end of the dinner they could not refrain from asking if the
torpedo flotilla was to go round with the big ships. I told them no,
that the admirals and captains did not believe that the torpedo boats
could stand it, and believed that the officers and crews aboard the
cockle shells would be worn out by the constant pitching and bouncing
and the everlasting need to make repairs. My two guests chorused an
eager assurance that the boats could stand it. They assured me that
the enlisted men were even more anxious to go than were the officers,
mentioning that on one of their boats the terms of enlistment of most
of the crew were out, and the men were waiting to see whether or not to
reenlist, as they did not care to do so unless the boats were to go on
the cruise. I answered that I was only too glad to accept the word of
the men who were to do the job, and that they should certainly go; and
within half an hour I sent out the order for the flotilla to be got
ready. It went round in fine shape, not a boat being laid up. I felt
that the feat reflected even more credit upon the navy than did the
circumnavigation of the big ships, and I wrote the flotilla commander
the following letter:
May 18, 1908.
My dear Captain Cone:
A great deal of attention has been paid to the feat of our battleship
fleet in encircling South America and getting to San Francisco; and it
would be hard too highly to compliment the officers and enlisted men of
that fleet for what they have done. Yet if I should draw any distinction
at all it would be in favor of you and your associates who have taken
out the torpedo flotilla. Yours was an even more notable feat, and every
officer and every enlisted man in the torpedo boat flotilla has the
right to feel that he has rendered distinguished service to the United
States navy and therefore to the people of the United States; and I wish
I could thank each of them personally. Will you have this letter read by
the commanding officer of each torpedo boat to his officers and crew?
Sincerely yours, THEODORE ROOSEVELT.
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER HUTCH. I. CONE, U. S. N., Commanding Second Torpedo
Flotilla, Care Postmaster, San Francisco, Cal.
There were various amusing features connected with the trip. Most of
the wealthy people and "leaders of opinion" in the Eastern cities
were panic-struck at the proposal to take the fleet away from Atlantic
waters. The great New York dailies issued frantic appeals to Congress
to stop the fleet from going. The head of the Senate Committee on Naval
Affairs announced that the fleet should not and could not go because
Congress would refuse to appropriate the money--he being from an Eastern
seaboard State. However, I announced in response that I had enough money
to take the fleet around to the Pacific anyhow, that the fleet would
certainly go, and that if Congress did not choose to appropriate enough
money to get the fleet back, why, it would stay in the Pacific. There
was no further difficulty about the money.
It was not originally my intention that the fleet should visit
Australia, but the Australian Government sent a most cordial invitation,
which I gladly accepted; for I have, as every American ought to have, a
hearty admiration for, and fellow feeling with, Australia, and I believe
that America should be ready to stand back of Australia in any serious
emergency. The reception accorded the fleet in Australia was wonderful,
and it showed the fundamental community of feeling between ourselves and
the great commonwealth of the South Seas. The considerate, generous, and
open-handed hospitality with which the entire Australian people treated
our officers and men could not have been surpassed had they been our
own countrymen. The fleet first visited Sydney, which has a singularly
beautiful harbor. The day after the arrival one of our captains noticed
a member of his crew trying to go to sleep on a bench in the park.
He had fixed above his head a large paper with some lines evidently
designed to forestall any questions from friendly would-be hosts: "I am
delighted with the Australian people. I think your harbor the finest in
the world. I am very tired and would like to go to sleep."
The most noteworthy incident of the cruise was the reception given to
our fleet in Japan. In courtesy and good breeding, the Japanese can
certainly teach much to the nations of the Western world. I had been
very sure that the people of Japan would understand aright what the
cruise meant, and would accept the visit of our fleet as the signal
honor which it was meant to be, a proof of the high regard and
friendship I felt, and which I was certain the American people felt,
for the great Island Empire. The event even surpassed my expectations. I
cannot too strongly express my appreciation of the generous courtesy the
Japanese showed the officers and crews of our fleet; and I may add
that every man of them came back a friend and admirer of the Japanese.
Admiral Sperry wrote me a letter of much interest, dealing not only with
the reception in Tokyo but with the work of our men at sea; I herewith
give it almost in full:
28 October, 1908.
Dear Mr. Roosevelt:
My official report of the visit to Japan goes forward in this mail, but
there are certain aspects of the affair so successfully concluded which
cannot well be included in the report.
You are perhaps aware that Mr. Denison of the Japanese Foreign Office
was one of my colleagues at The Hague, for whom I have a very
high regard. Desiring to avoid every possibility of trouble or
misunderstanding, I wrote to him last June explaining fully the
character of our men, which they have so well lived up to, the
desirability of ample landing places, guides, rest houses and places for
changing money in order that there might be no delay in getting the men
away from the docks on the excursions in which they delight. Very few of
them go into a drinking place, except to get a resting place not to be
found elsewhere, paying for it by taking a drink.
I also explained our system of landing with liberty men an unarmed
patrol, properly officered, to quietly take in charge and send off
to their ships any men who showed the slightest trace of disorderly
conduct. This letter he showed to the Minister of the Navy, who highly
approved of all our arrangements, including the patrol, of which I
feared they might be jealous. Mr. Denison's reply reached me in Manila,
with a memorandum from the Minister of the Navy which removed all
doubts. Three temporary piers were built for our boat landings, each
300 feet long, brilliantly lighted and decorated. The sleeping
accommodations did not permit two or three thousand sailors to remain on
shore, but the ample landings permitted them to be handled night and day
with perfect order and safety.
At the landings and railroad station in Yokohama there were rest
houses or booths, reputable money changers and as many as a thousand
English-speaking Japanese college students acted as volunteer guides,
besides Japanese sailors and petty officers detailed for the purpose.
In Tokyo there were a great many excellent refreshment places, where the
men got excellent meals and could rest, smoke, and write letters, and
in none of these places would they allow the men to pay anything, though
they were more than ready to do so. The arrangements were marvelously
perfect.
As soon as your telegram of October 18, giving the address to be made to
the Emperor, was received, I gave copies of it to our Ambassador to
be sent to the Foreign Office. It seems that the Emperor had already
prepared a very cordial address to be forwarded through me to you, after
delivery at the audience, but your telegram reversed the situation and
his reply was prepared. I am convinced that your kind and courteous
initiative on this occasion helped cause the pleasant feeling which was
so obvious in the Emperor's bearing at the luncheon which followed the
audience. X., who is reticent and conservative, told me that not only
the Emperor but all the Ministers were profoundly gratified by the
course of events. I am confident that not even the most trifling
incident has taken place which could in any way mar the general
satisfaction, and our Ambassador has expressed to me his great
satisfaction with all that has taken place.
Owing to heavy weather encountered on the passage up from Manila the
fleet was obliged to take about 3500 tons of coal.
The Yankton remained behind to keep up communication for a few days, and
yesterday she transmitted the Emperor's telegram to you, which was sent
in reply to your message through our Ambassador after the sailing of the
fleet. It must be profoundly gratifying to you to have the mission
on which you sent the fleet terminate so happily, and I am profoundly
thankful that, owing to the confidence which you displayed in giving
me this command, my active career draws to a close with such honorable
distinction.
As for the effect of the cruise upon the training, discipline and
effectiveness of the fleet, the good cannot be exaggerated. It is a war
game in every detail. The wireless communication has been maintained
with an efficiency hitherto unheard of. Between Honolulu and Auckland,
3850 miles, we were out of communication with a cable station for only
one night, whereas three [non-American] men-of-war trying recently to
maintain a chain of only 1250 miles, between Auckland and Sydney, were
only able to do so for a few hours.
The officers and men as soon as we put to sea turn to their gunnery and
tactical work far more eagerly than they go to functions. Every morning
certain ships leave the column and move off seven or eight thousand
yards as targets for range measuring fire control and battery practice
for the others, and at night certain ships do the same thing for
night battery practice. I am sorry to say that this practice is
unsatisfactory, and in some points misleading, owing to the fact
that the ships are painted white. At Portland, in 1903, I saw Admiral
Barker's white battleships under the searchlights of the army at a
distance of 14,000 yards, seven sea miles, without glasses, while the
Hartford, a black ship, was never discovered at all, though she passed
within a mile and a half. I have for years, while a member of the
General Board, advocated painting the ships war color at all times, and
by this mail I am asking the Department to make the necessary change in
the Regulations and paint the ships properly. I do not know that any one
now dissents from my view. Admiral Wainwright strongly concurs, and
the War College Conference recommended it year after year without a
dissenting voice.
In the afternoons the fleet has two or three hours' practice at battle
maneuvers, which excite as keen interest as gunnery exercises.
The competition in coal economy goes on automatically and reacts in a
hundred ways. It has reduced the waste in the use of electric light and
water, and certain chief engineers are said to keep men ranging over the
ships all night turning out every light not in actual and immediate use.
Perhaps the most important effect is the keen hunt for defects in
the machinery causing waste of power. The Yankton by resetting valves
increased her speed from 10 to 11 1/2 knots on the same expenditure.
All this has been done, but the field is widening, the work has only
begun.
* * * * *
C. S. SPERRY.
When I left the Presidency I finished seven and a half years of
administration, during which not one shot had been fired against a
foreign foe. We were at absolute peace, and there was no nation in the
world with whom a war cloud threatened, no nation in the world whom we
had wronged, or from whom we had anything to fear. The cruise of the
battle fleet was not the least of the causes which ensured so peaceful
an outlook.
When the fleet returned after its sixteen months' voyage around the
world I went down to Hampton Roads to greet it. The day was Washington's
Birthday, February 22, 1907. Literally on the minute the homing
battlecraft came into view. On the flagship of the Admiral I spoke to
the officers and enlisted men, as follows:
"Admiral Sperry, Officers and Men of the Battle Fleet:
"Over a year has passed since you steamed out of this harbor, and over
the world's rim, and this morning the hearts of all who saw you thrilled
with pride as the hulls of the mighty warships lifted above the horizon.
You have been in the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres; four times
you have crossed the line; you have steamed through all the great
oceans; you have touched the coast of every continent. Ever your general
course has been westward; and now you come back to the port from
which you set sail. This is the first battle fleet that has ever
circumnavigated the globe. Those who perform the feat again can but
follow in your footsteps.
"The little torpedo flotilla went with you around South America, through
the Straits of Magellan, to our own Pacific Coast. The armored cruiser
squadron met you, and left you again, when you were half way round the
world. You have falsified every prediction of the prophets of failure.
In all your long cruise not an accident worthy of mention has happened
to a single battleship, nor yet to the cruisers or torpedo boats. You
left this coast in a high state of battle efficiency, and you return
with your efficiency increased; better prepared than when you left, not
only in personnel but even in material. During your world cruise you
have taken your regular gunnery practice, and skilled though you were
before with the guns, you have grown more skilful still; and through
practice you have improved in battle tactics, though here there is more
room for improvement than in your gunnery. Incidentally, I suppose I
need hardly say that one measure of your fitness must be your clear
recognition of the need always steadily to strive to render yourselves
more fit; if you ever grow to think that you are fit enough, you can
make up your minds that from that moment you will begin to go backward.
"As a war-machine, the fleet comes back in better shape than it went
out. In addition, you, the officers and men of this formidable fighting
force, have shown yourselves the best of all possible ambassadors and
heralds of peace. Wherever you have landed you have borne yourselves
so as to make us at home proud of being your countrymen. You have shown
that the best type of fighting man of the sea knows how to appear to
the utmost possible advantage when his business is to behave himself on
shore, and to make a good impression in a foreign land. We are proud of
all the ships and all the men in this whole fleet, and we welcome you
home to the country whose good repute among nations has been raised by
what you have done."
APPENDIX A
THE TRUSTS, THE PEOPLE, AND THE SQUARE DEAL
[Written when Mr. Taft's administration brought suit to dissolve the
steel corporation, one of the grounds for the suit being the acquisition
by the Corporation of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; this action
was taken, with my acquiescence, while I was President, and while Mr.
Taft was a member of my cabinet; at the time he never protested against,
and as far as I knew approved of my action in this case, as in the
Harvester Trust case, and all similar cases.]
The suit against the Steel Trust by the Government has brought vividly
before our people the need of reducing to order our chaotic Government
policy as regards business. As President, in Messages to Congress I
repeatedly called the attention of that body and of the public to the
inadequacy of the Anti-Trust Law by itself to meet business conditions
and secure justice to the people, and to the further fact that it might,
if left unsupplemented by additional legislation, work mischief, with no
compensating advantage; and I urged as strongly as I knew how that
the policy followed with relation to railways in connection with the
Inter-State Commerce Law should be followed by the National Government
as regards all great business concerns; and therefore that, as a
first step, the powers of the Bureau of Corporations should be greatly
enlarged, or else that there should be created a Governmental board or
commission, with powers somewhat similar to those of the Inter-State
Commerce Commission, but covering the whole field of inter-State
business, exclusive of transportation (which should, by law, be kept
wholly separate from ordinary industrial business, all common ownership
of the industry and the railway being forbidden). In the end I have
always believed that it would also be necessary to give the National
Government complete power over the organization and capitalization of
all business concerns engaged in inter-State commerce.
A member of my Cabinet with whom, even more than with the various
Attorneys-General, I went over every detail of the trust situation, was
the one time Secretary of the Interior, Mr. James R. Garfield. He writes
me as follows concerning the suit against the Steel Corporation:
"Nothing appeared before the House Committee that made me believe we
were deceived by Judge Gary.
"This, I think, is a case that shows clearly the difference between
destructive litigation and constructive legislation. I have not yet seen
a full copy of the Government's petition, but our papers give nothing
that indicates any kind of unfair or dishonest competition such as
existed in both the Standard Oil and Tobacco Cases. As I understand it,
the competitors of the Steel Company have steadily increased in strength
during the last six or seven years. Furthermore, the per cent of the
business done by the Steel Corporation has decreased during that time.
As you will remember, at our first conference with Judge Gary, the Judge
stated that it was the desire and purpose of the Company to conform
to what the Government wished, it being the purpose of the Company
absolutely to obey the law both in spirit and letter. Throughout the
time that I had charge of the investigation, and while we were in
Washington, I do not know of a single instance where the Steel Company
refused any information requested; but, on the contrary, aided in every
possible way our investigation.
"The position now taken by the Government is absolutely destructive
of legitimate business, because they outline no rule of conduct for
business of any magnitude. It is absurd to say that the courts can
lay down such rules. The most the courts can do is to find as legal or
illegal the particular transactions brought before them. Hence, after
years of tedious litigation there would be no clear-cut rule for future
action. This method of procedure is dealing with the device, not the
result, and drives business to the elaboration of clever devices, each
of which must be tested in the courts.
"I have yet to find a better method of dealing with the anti-trust
situation than that suggested by the bill which we agreed upon in the
last days of your Administration. That bill should be used as a basis
for legislation, and there could be incorporated upon it whatever may
be determined wise regarding the direct control and supervision of
the National Government, either through a commission similar to the
Inter-State Commerce Commission or otherwise."
Before taking up the matter in its large aspect, I wish to say one word
as to one feature of the Government suit against the Steel Corporation.
One of the grounds for the suit is the acquisition by the Steel
Corporation of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company; and it has been
alleged, on the authority of the Government officials engaged in
carrying on the suit, that as regards this transaction I was misled by
the representatives of the Steel Corporation, and that the facts were
not accurately or truthfully laid before me. This statement is not
correct. I believed at the time that the facts in the case were as
represented to me on behalf of the Steel Corporation, and my further
knowledge has convinced me that this was true. I believed at the time
that the representatives of the Steel Corporation told me the truth as
to the change that would be worked in the percentage of the business
which the proposed acquisition would give the Steel Corporation, and
further inquiry has convinced me that they did so. I was not misled. The
representatives of the Steel Corporation told me the truth as to what
the effect of the action at that time would be, and any statement that I
was misled or that the representatives of the Steel Corporation did
not thus tell me the truth as to the facts of the case is itself not in
accordance with the truth. In _The Outlook_ of August 19 last I gave
in full the statement I had made to the Investigating Committee of the
House of Representatives on this matter. That statement is accurate, and
I reaffirm everything I therein said, not only as to what occurred, but
also as to my belief in the wisdom and propriety of my action--indeed,
the action not merely was wise and proper, but it would have been a
calamity from every standpoint had I failed to take it. On page 137 of
the printed report of the testimony before the Committee will be found
Judge Gary's account of the meeting between himself and Mr. Frick and
Mr. Root and myself. This account states the facts accurately. It has
been alleged that the purchase by the Steel Corporation of the property
of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company gave the Steel Corporation
practically a monopoly of the Southern iron ores--that is, of the iron
ores south of the Potomac and the Ohio. My information, which I
have every reason to believe is accurate and not successfully to be
challenged, is that, of these Southern iron ores the Steel Corporation
has, including the property gained from the Tennessee Coal and Iron
Company, less than 20 per cent--perhaps not over 16 per cent. This is
a very much smaller percentage than the percentage it holds of the Lake
Superior ores, which even after the surrender of the Hill lease will
be slightly over 50 per cent. According to my view, therefore,
and unless--which I do not believe possible--these figures can be
successfully challenged, the acquisition of the Tennessee Coal and Iron
Company's ores in no way changed the situation as regards making the
Steel Corporation a monopoly.[*] The showing as to the percentage of
production of all kinds of steel ingots and steel castings in the
United States by the Steel Corporation and by all other manufacturers
respectively makes an even stronger case. It makes the case even
stronger than I put it in my testimony before the Investigating
Committee, for I was scrupulously careful to make statements that erred,
if at all, against my own position. It appears from the figures of
production that in 1901 the Steel Corporation had to its credit nearly
66 per cent of the total production as against a little over 34 per cent
by all other steel manufacturers. The percentage then shrank steadily,
until in 1906, the year before the acquisition of the Tennessee Coal and
Iron properties, the percentage was a little under 58 per cent. In spite
of the acquisition of these properties, the following year, 1907, the
total percentage shrank slightly, and this shrinking has continued until
in 1910 the total percentage of the Steel Corporation is but a little
over 54 per cent, and the percentage by all other steel manufacturers
but a fraction less than 46 per cent. Of the 54 3_10 per cent produced
by the Steel Corporation 1 9_10 per cent is produced by the former
Tennessee Coal and Iron Company. In other words, these figures show that
the acquisition of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company did not in the
slightest degree change the situation, and that during the ten
years which include the acquisition of these properties by the Steel
Corporation the percentage of total output of steel manufacturers in
this country by the Steel Corporation has shrunk from nearly 66 per cent
to but a trifle over 54 per cent. I do not believe that these figures
can be successfully controverted, and if not successfully controverted
they show clearly not only that the acquisition of the Tennessee
Coal and Iron properties wrought no change in the status of the Steel
Corporation, but that the Steel Corporation during the decade has
steadily lost, instead of gained, in monopolistic character.
[*] My own belief is that our Nation should long ago have
adopted the policy of merely leasing for a term of years
mineral-bearing land; but it is the fault of us ourselves,
of the people, not of the Steel Corporation, that this
policy has not been adopted.
So much for the facts in this particular case. Now for the general
subject. When my Administration took office, I found, not only that
there had been little real enforcement of the Anti-Trust Law and but
little more effective enforcement of the Inter-State Commerce Law,
but also that the decisions were so chaotic and the laws themselves so
vaguely drawn, or at least interpreted in such widely varying fashions,
that the biggest business men tended to treat both laws as dead letters.
The series of actions by which we succeeded in making the Inter-State
Commerce Law an efficient and most useful instrument in regulating the
transportation of the country and exacting justice from the big railways
without doing them injustice--while, indeed, on the contrary, securing
them against injustice--need not here be related. The Anti-Trust Law it
was also necessary to enforce as it had never hitherto been enforced;
both because it was on the statute-books and because it was imperative
to teach the masters of the biggest corporations in the land that they
were not, and would not be permitted to regard themselves as, above
the law. Moreover, where the combination has really been guilty of
misconduct the law serves a useful purpose, and in such cases as those
of the Standard Oil and Tobacco Trusts, if effectively enforced, the law
confers a real and great good.
Suits were brought against the most powerful corporations in the land,
which we were convinced had clearly and beyond question violated the
Anti-Trust Law. These suits were brought with great care, and only where
we felt so sure of our facts that we could be fairly certain that
there was a likelihood of success. As a matter of fact, in most of the
important suits we were successful. It was imperative that these suits
should be brought, and very real good was achieved by bringing them, for
it was only these suits that made the great masters of corporate capital
in America fully realize that they were the servants and not the masters
of the people, that they were subject to the law, and that they would
not be permitted to be a law unto themselves; and the corporations
against which we proceeded had sinned, not merely by being big (which
we did not regard as in itself a sin), but by being guilty of unfair
practices towards their competitors, and by procuring fair advantages
from the railways. But the resulting situation has made it evident that
the Anti-Trust Law is not adequate to meet the situation that has grown
up because of modern business conditions and the accompanying tremendous
increase in the business use of vast quantities of corporate wealth. As
I have said, this was already evident to my mind when I was President,
and in communications to Congress I repeatedly stated the facts. But
when I made these communications there were still plenty of people
who did not believe that we would succeed in the suits that had
been instituted against the Standard Oil, the Tobacco, and other
corporations, and it was impossible to get the public as a whole to
realize what the situation was. Sincere zealots who believed that
all combinations could be destroyed and the old-time conditions of
unregulated competition restored, insincere politicians who knew better
but made believe that they thought whatever their constituents
wished them to think, crafty reactionaries who wished to see on the
statute-books laws which they believed unenforceable, and the almost
solid "Wall Street crowd" or representatives of "big business" who at
that time opposed with equal violence both wise and necessary and unwise
and improper regulation of business-all fought against the adoption of a
sane, effective, and far-reaching policy.
It is a vitally necessary thing to have the persons in control of big
trusts of the character of the Standard Oil Trust and Tobacco Trust
taught that they are under the law, just as it was a necessary thing to
have the Sugar Trust taught the same lesson in drastic fashion by Mr.
Henry L. Stimson when he was United States District Attorney in the
city of New York. But to attempt to meet the whole problem not by
administrative governmental action but by a succession of lawsuits is
hopeless from the standpoint of working out a permanently satisfactory
solution. Moreover, the results sought to be achieved are achieved only
in extremely insufficient and fragmentary measure by breaking up all big
corporations, whether they have behaved well or ill, into a number of
little corporations which it is perfectly certain will be largely, and
perhaps altogether, under the same control. Such action is harsh and
mischievous if the corporation is guilty of nothing except its size; and
where, as in the case of the Standard Oil, and especially the Tobacco,
trusts, the corporation has been guilty of immoral and anti-social
practices, there is need for far more drastic and thoroughgoing action
than any that has been taken, under the recent decree of the Supreme
Court. In the case of the Tobacco Trust, for instance, the settlement in
the Circuit Court, in which the representatives of the Government
seem inclined to concur, practically leaves all of the companies still
substantially under the control of the twenty-nine original defendants.
Such a result is lamentable from the standpoint of justice. The decision
of the Circuit Court, if allowed to stand, means that the Tobacco Trust
has merely been obliged to change its clothes, that none of the real
offenders have received any real punishment, while, as the New York
Times, a pro-trust paper, says, the tobacco concerns, in their new
clothes, are in positions of "ease and luxury," and "immune from
prosecution under the law."
Surely, miscarriage of justice is not too strong a term to apply to such
a result when considered in connection with what the Supreme Court said
of this Trust. That great Court in its decision used language which,
in spite of its habitual and severe self-restraint in stigmatizing
wrong-doing, yet unhesitatingly condemns the Tobacco Trust for moral
turpitude, saying that the case shows an "ever present manifestation
. . . of conscious wrong-doing" by the Trust, whose history is "replete
with the doing of acts which it was the obvious purpose of the statute
to forbid, . . . demonstrative of the existence from the beginning of a
purpose to acquire dominion and control of the tobacco trade, not by the
mere exertion of the ordinary right to contract and to trade, but by
methods devised in order to monopolize the trade by driving competitors
out of business, which were ruthlessly carried out upon the assumption
that to work upon the fears or play upon the cupidity of competitors
would make success possible." The letters from and to various officials
of the Trust, which were put in evidence, show a literally astounding
and horrifying indulgence by the Trust in wicked and depraved business
methods--such as the "endeavor to cause a strike in their [a rival
business firm's] factory," or the "shutting off the market" of an
independent tobacco firm by "taking the necessary steps to give them a
warm reception," or forcing importers into a price agreement by causing
and continuing "a demoralization of the business for such length of time
as may be deemed desirable" (I quote from the letters). A Trust guilty
of such conduct should be absolutely disbanded, and the only way to
prevent the repetition of such conduct is by strict Government
supervision, and not merely by lawsuits.
The Anti-Trust Law cannot meet the whole situation, nor can any
modification of the principle of the Anti-Trust Law avail to meet
the whole situation. The fact is that many of the men who have called
themselves Progressives, and who certainly believe that they are
Progressives, represent in reality in this matter not progress at
all but a kind of sincere rural toryism. These men believe that it is
possible by strengthening the Anti-Trust Law to restore business to
the competitive conditions of the middle of the last century. Any such
effort is foredoomed to end in failure, and, if successful, would
be mischievous to the last degree. Business cannot be successfully
conducted in accordance with the practices and theories of sixty years
ago unless we abolish steam, electricity, big cities, and, in short, not
only all modern business and modern industrial conditions, but all the
modern conditions of our civilization. The effort to restore competition
as it was sixty years ago, and to trust for justice solely to this
proposed restoration of competition, is just as foolish as if we should
go back to the flintlocks of Washington's Continentals as a
substitute for modern weapons of precision. The effort to prohibit all
combinations, good or bad, is bound to fail, and ought to fail; when
made, it merely means that some of the worst combinations are not
checked and that honest business is checked. Our purpose should be, not
to strangle business as an incident of strangling combinations, but to
regulate big corporations in thoroughgoing and effective fashion, so as
to help legitimate business as an incident to thoroughly and completely
safeguarding the interests of the people as a whole. Against all such
increase of Government regulation the argument is raised that it
would amount to a form of Socialism. This argument is familiar; it is
precisely the same as that which was raised against the creation of
the Inter-State Commerce Commission, and of all the different utilities
commissions in the different States, as I myself saw, thirty years
ago, when I was a legislator at Albany, and these questions came up
in connection with our State Government. Nor can action be effectively
taken by any one State. Congress alone has power under the Constitution
effectively and thoroughly and at all points to deal with inter-State
commerce, and where Congress, as it should do, provides laws that
will give the Nation full jurisdiction over the whole field, then that
jurisdiction becomes, of necessity, exclusive--although until Congress
does act affirmatively and thoroughly it is idle to expect that the
States will or ought to rest content with non-action on the part of both
Federal and State authorities. This statement, by the way, applies also
to the question of "usurpation" by any one branch of our Government
of the rights of another branch. It is contended that in these recent
decisions the Supreme Court legislated; so it did; and it had to;
because Congress had signally failed to do its duty by legislating.
For the Supreme Court to nullify an act of the Legislature as
unconstitutional except on the clearest grounds is usurpation; to
interpret such an act in an obviously wrong sense is usurpation; but
where the legislative body persistently leaves open a field which it
is absolutely imperative, from the public standpoint, to fill, then no
possible blame attaches to the official or officials who step in because
they have to, and who then do the needed work in the interest of the
people. The blame in such cases lies with the body which has been
derelict, and not with the body which reluctantly makes good the
dereliction.
A quarter of a century ago, Senator Cushman K. Davis, a statesman who
amply deserved the title of statesman, a man of the highest courage, of
the sternest adherence to the principles laid down by an exacting sense
of duty, an unflinching believer in democracy, who was as little to be
cowed by a mob as by a plutocrat, and moreover a man who possessed the
priceless gift of imagination, a gift as important to a statesman as to
a historian, in an address delivered at the annual commencement of
the University of Michigan on July 1, 1886, spoke as follows of
corporations:
"Feudalism, with its domains, its untaxed lords, their retainers,
its exemptions and privileges, made war upon the aspiring spirit of
humanity, and fell with all its grandeurs. Its spirit walks the earth
and haunts the institutions of to-day, in the great corporations, with
the control of the National highways, their occupation of great domains,
their power to tax, their cynical contempt for the law, their sorcery
to debase most gifted men to the capacity of splendid slaves, their
pollution of the ermine of the judge and the robe of the Senator, their
aggregation in one man of wealth so enormous as to make Croesus seem a
pauper, their picked, paid, and skilled retainers who are summoned by
the message of electricity and appear upon the wings of steam. If we
look into the origin of feudalism and of the modern corporations--those
Dromios of history--we find that the former originated in a strict
paternalism, which is scouted by modern economists, and that the latter
has grown from an unrestrained freedom of action, aggression, and
development, which they commend as the very ideal of political wisdom.
_Laissez-faire_, says the professor, when it often means bind and gag
that the strongest may work his will. It is a plea for the survival of
the fittest--for the strongest male to take possession of the herd by
a process of extermination. If we examine this battle cry of political
polemics, we find that it is based upon the conception of the divine
right of property, and the preoccupation by older or more favored or
more alert or richer men or nations, of territory, of the forces of
nature, of machinery, of all the functions of what we call civilization.
Some of these men, who are really great, follow these conceptions to
their conclusions with dauntless intrepidity."
When Senator Davis spoke, few men of great power had the sympathy and
the vision necessary to perceive the menace contained in the growth of
corporations; and the men who did see the evil were struggling blindly
to get rid of it, not by frankly meeting the new situation with new
methods, but by insisting upon the entirely futile effort to abolish
what modern conditions had rendered absolutely inevitable. Senator Davis
was under no such illusion. He realized keenly that it was absolutely
impossible to go back to an outworn social status, and that we must
abandon definitely the _laissez-faire_ theory of political economy, and
fearlessly champion a system of increased Governmental control,
paying no heed to the cries of the worthy people who denounce this as
Socialistic. He saw that, in order to meet the inevitable increase in
the power of corporations produced by modern industrial conditions,
it would be necessary to increase in like fashion the activity of the
sovereign power which alone could control such corporations. As has
been aptly said, the only way to meet a billion-dollar corporation is by
invoking the protection of a hundred-billion-dollar government; in other
words, of the National Government, for no State Government is strong
enough both to do justice to corporations and to exact justice from
them. Said Senator Davis in this admirable address, which should be
reprinted and distributed broadcast:
"The liberty of the individual has been annihilated by the logical
process constructed to maintain it. We have come to a political
deification of Mammon. _Laissez-faire_ is not utterly blameworthy. It
begat modern democracy, and made the modern republic possible. There
can be no doubt of that. But there it reached its limit of political
benefaction, and began to incline toward the point where extremes meet.
. . . To every assertion that the people in their collective capacity of
a government ought to exert their indefeasible right of self-defense, it
is said you touch the sacred rights of property."
The Senator then goes on to say that we now have to deal with an
oligarchy of wealth, and that the Government must develop power
sufficient enough to enable it to do the task.
Few will dispute the fact that the present situation is not
satisfactory, and cannot be put on a permanently satisfactory basis
unless we put an end to the period of groping and declare for a fixed
policy, a policy which shall clearly define and punish wrong-doing,
which shall put a stop to the iniquities done in the name of business,
but which shall do strict equity to business. We demand that big
business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that
when any one engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right
he shall himself be given a square deal; and the first, and most
elementary, kind of square deal is to give him in advance full
information as to just what he can, and what he cannot, legally and
properly do. It is absurd, and much worse than absurd, to treat the
deliberate lawbreaker as on an exact par with the man eager to obey the
law, whose only desire is to find out from some competent Governmental
authority what the law is, and then to live up to it. Moreover, it is
absurd to treat the size of a corporation as in itself a crime. As
Judge Hook says in his opinion in the Standard Oil Case: "Magnitude
of business does not alone constitute a monopoly . . . the genius and
industry of man when kept to ethical standards still have full play,
and what he achieves is his . . . success and magnitude of business, the
rewards of fair and honorable endeavor [are not forbidden] . . . [the
public welfare is threatened only when success is attained] by
wrongful or unlawful methods." Size may, and in my opinion does, make a
corporation fraught with potential menace to the community; and may, and
in my opinion should, therefore make it incumbent upon the community to
exercise through its administrative (not merely through its judicial)
officers a strict supervision over that corporation in order to see
that it does not go wrong; but the size in itself does not signify
wrong-doing, and should not be held to signify wrong-doing.
Not only should any huge corporation which has gained its position
by unfair methods, and by interference with the rights of others, by
demoralizing and corrupt practices, in short, by sheer baseness and
wrong-doing, be broken up, but it should be made the business of some
administrative governmental body, by constant supervision, to see that
it does not come together again, save under such strict control as shall
insure the community against all repetition of the bad conduct--and it
should never be permitted thus to assemble its parts as long as these
parts are under the control of the original offenders, for actual
experience has shown that these men are, from the standpoint of the
people at large, unfit to be trusted with the power implied in the
management of a large corporation. But nothing of importance is
gained by breaking up a huge inter-State and international industrial
organization _which has not offended otherwise than by its size_, into
a number of small concerns without any attempt to regulate the way in
which those concerns as a whole shall do business. Nothing is gained by
depriving the American Nation of good weapons wherewith to fight in the
great field of international industrial competition. Those who would
seek to restore the days of unlimited and uncontrolled competition, and
who believe that a panacea for our industrial and economic ills is to
be found in the mere breaking up of all big corporations, simply because
they are big, are attempting not only the impossible, but what, if
possible, would be undesirable. They are acting as we should act if
we tried to dam the Mississippi, to stop its flow outright. The effort
would be certain to result in failure and disaster; we would have
attempted the impossible, and so would have achieved nothing, or worse
than nothing. But by building levees along the Mississippi, not seeking
to dam the stream, but to control it, we are able to achieve our object
and to confer inestimable good in the course of so doing.
This Nation should definitely adopt the policy of attacking, not
the mere fact of combination, but the evils and wrong-doing which so
frequently accompany combination. The fact that a combination is very
big is ample reason for exercising a close and jealous supervision over
it, because its size renders it potent for mischief; but it should not
be punished unless it actually does the mischief; it should merely be
so supervised and controlled as to guarantee us, the people, against
its doing mischief. We should not strive for a policy of unregulated
competition and of the destruction of all big corporations, that is, of
all the most efficient business industries in the land. Nor should
we persevere in the hopeless experiment of trying to regulate these
industries by means only of lawsuits, each lasting several years, and of
uncertain result. We should enter upon a course of supervision, control,
and regulation of these great corporations--a regulation which we should
not fear, if necessary, to bring to the point of control of monopoly
prices, just as in exceptional cases railway rates are now regulated.
Either the Bureau of Corporations should be authorized, or some other
governmental body similar to the Inter-State Commerce Commission should
be created, to exercise this supervision, this authoritative control.
When once immoral business practices have been eliminated by such
control, competition will thereby be again revived as a healthy factor,
although not as formerly an all-sufficient factor, in keeping the
general business situation sound. Wherever immoral business practices
still obtain--as they obtained in the cases of the Standard Oil Trust
and Tobacco Trust--the Anti-Trust Law can be invoked; and wherever such
a prosecution is successful, and the courts declare a corporation
to possess a monopolistic character, then that corporation should be
completely dissolved, and the parts ought never to be again assembled
save on whatever terms and under whatever conditions may be imposed by
the governmental body in which is vested the regulatory power. Methods
can readily be devised by which corporations sincerely desiring to
act fairly and honestly can on their own initiative come under this
thoroughgoing administrative control by the Government and thereby be
free from the working of the Anti-Trust Law. But the law will remain
to be invoked against wrongdoers; and under such conditions it could be
invoked far more vigorously and successfully than at present.
It is not necessary in an article like this to attempt to work out
such a plan in detail. It can assuredly be worked out. Moreover, in my
opinion, substantially some such plan must be worked out or business
chaos will continue. Wrongdoing such as was perpetrated by the Standard
Oil Trust, and especially by the Tobacco Trust, should not only be
punished, but if possible punished in the persons of the chief authors
and beneficiaries of the wrong, far more severely than at present. But
punishment should not be the only, or indeed the main, end in view. Our
aim should be a policy of construction and not one of destruction. Our
aim should not be to punish the men who have made a big corporation
successful merely because they have made it big and successful, but
to exercise such thoroughgoing supervision and control over them as
to insure their business skill being exercised in the interest of the
public and not against the public interest. Ultimately, I believe that
this control should undoubtedly indirectly or directly extend to dealing
with all questions connected with their treatment of their employees,
including the wages, the hours of labor, and the like. Not only is the
proper treatment of a corporation, from the standpoint of the managers,
shareholders, and employees, compatible with securing from that
corporation the best standard of public service, but when the effort
is wisely made it results in benefit both to the corporation and to the
public. The success of Wisconsin in dealing with the corporations within
her borders, so as both to do them justice and to exact justice in
return from them toward the public, has been signal; and this Nation
should adopt a progressive policy in substance akin to the progressive
policy not merely formulated in theory but reduced to actual practice
with such striking success in Wisconsin.
To sum up, then. It is practically impossible, and, if possible,
it would be mischievous and undesirable, to try to break up all
combinations merely because they are large and successful, and to put
the business of the country back into the middle of the eighteenth
century conditions of intense and unregulated competition between
small and weak business concerns. Such an effort represents not
progressiveness but an unintelligent though doubtless entirely
well-meaning toryism. Moreover, the effort to administer a law merely
by lawsuits and court decisions is bound to end in signal failure, and
meanwhile to be attended with delays and uncertainties, and to put a
premium upon legal sharp practice. Such an effort does not adequately
punish the guilty, and yet works great harm to the innocent. Moreover,
it entirely fails to give the publicity which is one of the best
by-products of the system of control by administrative officials;
publicity, which is not only good in itself, but furnishes the data
for whatever further action may be necessary. We need to formulate
immediately and definitely a policy which, in dealing with big
corporations that behave themselves and which contain no menace save
what is necessarily potential in any corporation which is of great size
and very well managed, shall aim not at their destruction but at their
regulation and supervision, so that the Government shall control them
in such fashion as amply to safeguard the interests of the whole public,
including producers, consumers, and wage-workers. This control should,
if necessary, be pushed in extreme cases to the point of exercising
control over monopoly prices, as rates on railways are now controlled;
although this is not a power that should be used when it is possible to
avoid it. The law should be clear, unambiguous, certain, so that honest
men may not find that unwittingly they have violated it. In short, our
aim should be, not to destroy, but effectively and in thoroughgoing
fashion to regulate and control, in the public interest, the great
instrumentalities of modern business, which it is destructive of the
general welfare of the community to destroy, and which nevertheless it
is vitally necessary to that general welfare to regulate and control.
Competition will remain as a very important factor when once we have
destroyed the unfair business methods, the criminal interference with
the rights of others, which alone enabled certain swollen combinations
to crush out their competitors--and, incidentally, the "conservatives"
will do well to remember that these unfair and iniquitous methods by
great masters of corporate capital have done more to cause popular
discontent with the propertied classes than all the orations of all the
Socialist orators in the country put together.
I have spoken above of Senator Davis's admirable address delivered a
quarter of a century ago. Senator Davis's one-time partner, Frank B.
Kellogg, the Government counsel who did so much to win success for the
Government in its prosecutions of the trusts, has recently delivered
before the Palimpsest Club of Omaha an excellent address on the subject;
Mr. Prouty, of the Inter-State Commerce Commission, has recently, in
his speech before the Congregational Club of Brooklyn, dealt with
the subject from the constructive side; and in the proceedings of the
American Bar Association for 1904 there is an admirable paper on
the need of thoroughgoing Federal control over corporations doing an
inter-State business, by Professor Horace L. Wilgus, of the University
of Michigan. The National Government exercises control over inter-State
commerce railways, and it can in similar fashion, through an appropriate
governmental body, exercise control over all industrial organizations
engaged in inter-State commerce. This control should be exercised, not
by the courts, but by an administrative bureau or board such as the
Bureau of Corporations or the Inter-State Commerce Commission; for
the courts cannot with advantage permanently perform executive and
administrative functions.
APPENDIX B
THE CONTROL OF CORPORATIONS AND "THE NEW FREEDOM"
In his book "The New Freedom," and in the magazine articles of which
it is composed, which appeared just after he had been inaugurated as
President, Mr. Woodrow Wilson made an entirely unprovoked attack upon
me and upon the Progressive party in connection with what he asserts
the policy of that party to be concerning the trusts, and as regards my
attitude while President about the trusts.
I am reluctant to say anything whatever about President Wilson at the
outset of his Administration unless I can speak of him with praise.
I have scrupulously refrained from saying or doing one thing
since election that could put the slightest obstacle, even of
misinterpretation, in his path. It is to the interest of the country
that he should succeed in his office. I cordially wish him success, and
I shall cordially support any policy of his that I believe to be in the
interests of the people of the United States. But when Mr. Wilson, after
being elected President, within the first fortnight after he has been
inaugurated into that high office, permits himself to be betrayed into
a public misstatement of what I have said, and what I stand for, then he
forces me to correct his statements.
Mr. Wilson opens his article by saying that the Progressive "doctrine is
that monopoly is inevitable, and that the only course open to the people
of the United States is to submit to it." This statement is without one
particle of foundation in fact. I challenge him to point out a sentence
in the Progressive platform or in any speech of mine which bears him
out. I can point him out any number which flatly contradict him. We have
never made any such statement as he alleges about monopolies. We have
said: "The corporation is an essential part of modern business. The
concentration of modern business, in some degree, is both inevitable and
necessary for National and international business efficiency." Does Mr.
Wilson deny this? Let him answer yes or no, directly. It is easy for
a politician detected in a misstatement to take refuge in evasive
rhetorical hyperbole. But Mr. Wilson is President of the United States,
and as such he is bound to candid utterance on every subject of public
interest which he himself has broached. If he disagrees with us, let him
be frank and consistent, and recommend to Congress that all corporations
be made illegal. Mr. Wilson's whole attack is largely based on a deft
but far from ingenuous confounding of what we have said of monopoly,
which we propose so far as possible to abolish, and what we have said of
big corporations, which we propose to regulate; Mr. Wilson's own vaguely
set forth proposals being to attempt the destruction of both in ways
that would harm neither. In our platform we use the word "monopoly" but
once, and then we speak of it as an abuse of power, coupling it with
stock-watering, unfair competition and unfair privileges. Does Mr.
Wilson deny this? If he does, then where else will he assert that we
speak of monopoly as he says we do? He certainly owes the people of the
United States a plain answer to the question. In my speech of acceptance
I said: "We favor strengthening the Sherman Law by prohibiting
agreements to divide territory or limit output; refusing to sell to
customers who buy from business rivals; to sell below cost in certain
areas while maintaining higher prices in other places; using the power
of transportation to aid or injure special business concerns; and all
other unfair trade practices." The platform pledges us to "guard and
keep open equally to all, the highways of American commerce." This is
the exact negation of monopoly. Unless Mr. Wilson is prepared to show
the contrary, surely he is bound in honor to admit frankly that he has
been betrayed into a misrepresentation, and to correct it.
Mr. Wilson says that for sixteen years the National Administration has
"been virtually under the regulation of the trusts," and that the big
business men "have already captured the Government." Such a statement as
this might perhaps be pardoned as mere rhetoric in a candidate seeking
office--although it is the kind of statement that never under any
circumstances have I permitted myself to make, whether on the stump or
off the stump, about any opponent, unless I was prepared to back it up
with explicit facts. But there is an added seriousness to the charge
when it is made deliberately and in cold blood by a man who is at the
time President. In this volume I have set forth my relations with the
trusts. I challenge Mr. Wilson to controvert anything I have said, or to
name any trusts or any big business men who regulated, or in any
shape or way controlled, or captured, the Government during my term
as President. He must furnish specifications if his words are taken at
their face value--and I venture to say in advance that the absurdity
of such a charge is patent to all my fellow-citizens, not excepting Mr.
Wilson.
Mr. Wilson says that the new party was founded "under the leadership of
Mr. Roosevelt, with the conspicuous aid--I mention him with no satirical
intention, but merely to set the facts down accurately--of Mr. George W.
Perkins, organizer of the Steel Trust." Whether Mr. Wilson's intention
was satirical or not is of no concern; but I call his attention to the
fact that he has conspicuously and strikingly failed "to set the facts
down accurately." Mr. Perkins was not the organizer of the Steel Trust,
and when it was organized he had no connection with it or with the
Morgan people. This is well known, and it has again and again been
testified to before Congressional committees controlled by Mr. Wilson's
friends who were endeavoring to find out something against Mr. Perkins.
If Mr. Wilson does not know that my statement is correct, he ought to
know it, and he is not to be excused for making such a misstatement as
he has made when he has not a particle of evidence in support of it.
Mr. Perkins was from the beginning in the Harvester Trust but, when Mr.
Wilson points out this fact, why does he not add that he was the only
man in that trust who supported me, and that the President of the trust
ardently supported Mr. Wilson himself? It is disingenuous to endeavor to
conceal these facts, and to mislead ordinary citizens about them. Under
the administrations of both Mr. Taft and Mr. Wilson, Mr. Perkins has
been singled out for special attack, obviously not because he belonged
to the Harvester and Steel Trusts, but because he alone among the
prominent men of the two corporations, fearlessly supported the only
party which afforded any real hope of checking the evil of the trusts.
Mr. Wilson states that the Progressives have "a programme perfectly
agreeable to monopolies."
The plain and unmistakable inference to be drawn from this and other
similar statements in his article, and the inference which he obviously
desired to have drawn, is that the big corporations approved the
Progressive plan and supported the Progressive candidate. If President
Wilson does not know perfectly well that this is not the case, he is
the only intelligent person in the United States who is thus ignorant.
Everybody knows that the overwhelming majority of the heads of the big
corporations supported him or Mr. Taft. It is equally well known that of
the corporations he mentions, the Steel and the Harvester Trusts, there
was but one man who took any part in the Progressive campaign, and that
almost all the others, some thirty in number, were against us, and some
of them, including the President of the Harvester Trust, openly and
enthusiastically for Mr. Wilson himself. If he reads the newspapers
at all, he must know that practically every man representing the
great financial interests of the country, and without exception every
newspaper controlled by Wall Street or State Street, actively supported
either him or Mr. Taft, and showed perfect willingness to accept either
if only they could prevent the Progressive party from coming into power
and from putting its platform into effect.
Mr. Wilson says of the trust plank in that platform that it "did not
anywhere condemn monopoly except in words." Exactly of what else could a
platform consist? Does Mr. Wilson expect us to use algebraic signs? This
criticism is much as if he said the Constitution or the Declaration of
Independence contained nothing but words. The Progressive platform did
contain words, and the words were admirably designed to express thought
and meaning and purpose. Mr. Wilson says that I long ago "classified
trusts for us as good and bad," and said that I was "afraid only of the
bad ones." Mr. Wilson would do well to quote exactly what my language
was, and where it was used, for I am at a loss to know what statement
of mine it is to which he refers. But if he means that I say that
corporations can do well, and that corporations can also do ill, he is
stating my position correctly. I hold that a corporation does ill if it
seeks profit in restricting production and then by extorting high prices
from the community by reason of the scarcity of the product; through
adulterating, lyingly advertising, or over-driving the help; or
replacing men workers with children; or by rebates; or in any illegal
or improper manner driving competitors out of its way; or seeking to
achieve monopoly by illegal or unethical treatment of its competitors,
or in any shape or way offending against the moral law either in
connection with the public or with its employees or with its rivals. Any
corporation which seeks its profit in such fashion is acting badly.
It is, in fact, a conspiracy against the public welfare which the
Government should use all its powers to suppress. If, on the other hand,
a corporation seeks profit solely by increasing its products through
eliminating waste, improving its processes, utilizing its by-products,
installing better machines, raising wages in the effort to secure more
efficient help, introducing the principle of cooperation and mutual
benefit, dealing fairly with labor unions, setting its face against
the underpayment of women and the employment of children; in a
word, treating the public fairly and its rivals fairly: then such a
corporation is behaving well. It is an instrumentality of civilization
operating to promote abundance by cheapening the cost of living so as to
improve conditions everywhere throughout the whole community. Does Mr.
Wilson controvert either of these statements? If so, let him answer
directly. It is a matter of capital importance to the country that his
position in this respect be stated directly, not by indirect suggestion.
Much of Mr. Wilson's article, although apparently aimed at the
Progressive party, is both so rhetorical and so vague as to need no
answer. He does, however, specifically assert (among other things
equally without warrant in fact) that the Progressive party says that it
is "futile to undertake to prevent monopoly," and only ventures to
ask the trusts to be "kind" and "pitiful"! It is a little difficult
to answer a misrepresentation of the facts so radical--not to say
preposterous--with the respect that one desires to use in speaking of or
to the President of the United States. I challenge President Wilson to
point to one sentence of our platform or of my speeches which affords
the faintest justification for these assertions. Having made this
statement in the course of an unprovoked attack on me, he cannot refuse
to show that it is true. I deem it necessary to emphasize here (but with
perfect respect) that I am asking for a plain statement of fact, not
for a display of rhetoric. I ask him, as is my right under the
circumstances, to quote the exact language which justifies him in
attributing these views to us. If he cannot do this, then a frank
acknowledgment on his part is due to himself and to the people. I quote
from the Progressive platform: "Behind the ostensible Government sits
enthroned an invisible Government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging
no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible Government,
to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt
politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. . . . This
country belongs to the people. Its resources, its business, its laws,
its institutions, should be utilized, maintained, or altered in whatever
manner will best promote the general interest." This assertion is
explicit. We say directly that "the people" are absolutely to control in
any way they see fit, the "business" of the country. I again challenge
Mr. Wilson to quote any words of the platform that justify the
statements he has made to the contrary. If he cannot do it--and of
course he cannot do it, and he must know that he cannot do it--surely he
will not hesitate to say so frankly.
Mr. Wilson must know that every monopoly in the United States opposes
the Progressive party. If he challenges this statement, I challenge him
in return (as is clearly my right) to name the monopoly that did support
the Progressive party, whether it was the Sugar Trust, the Steel Trust,
the Harvester Trust, the Standard Oil Trust, the Tobacco Trust, or any
other. Every sane man in the country knows well that there is not one
word of justification that can truthfully be adduced for Mr. Wilson's
statement that the Progressive programme was agreeable to the
monopolies. Ours was the only programme to which they objected, and they
supported either Mr. Wilson or Mr. Taft against me, indifferent as to
which of them might be elected so long as I was defeated. Mr. Wilson
says that I got my "idea with regard to the regulation of monopoly from
the gentlemen who form the United States Steel Corporation." Does Mr.
Wilson pretend that Mr. Van Hise and Mr. Croly got their ideas from the
Steel Corporation? Is Mr. Wilson unaware of the elementary fact that
most modern economists believe that unlimited, unregulated competition
is the source of evils which all men now concede must be remedied if
this civilization of ours is to survive? Is he ignorant of the fact that
the Socialist party has long been against unlimited competition? This
statement of Mr. Wilson cannot be characterized properly with any degree
of regard for the office Mr. Wilson holds. Why, the ideas that I
have championed as to controlling and regulating both competition and
combination in the interest of the people, so that the people shall be
masters over both, have been in the air in this country for a quarter of
a century. I was merely the first prominent candidate for President who
took them up. They are the progressive ideas, and progressive business
men must in the end come to them, for I firmly believe that in the
end all wise and honest business men, big and little, will support our
programme. Mr. Wilson in opposing them is the mere apostle of reaction.
He says that I got my "ideas from the gentlemen who form the Steel
Corporation." I did not. But I will point out to him something in
return. It was he himself, and Mr. Taft, who got the votes and the money
of these same gentlemen, and of those in the Harvester Trust.
Mr. Wilson has promised to break up all trusts. He can do so only by
proceeding at law. If he proceeds at law, he can hope for success
only by taking what I have done as a precedent. In fact, what I did as
President is the base of every action now taken or that can be now
taken looking toward the control of corporations, or the suppression
of monopolies. The decisions rendered in various cases brought by my
direction constitute the authority on which Mr. Wilson must base any
action that he may bring to curb monopolistic control. Will Mr. Wilson
deny this, or question it in any way? With what grace can he describe
my Administration as satisfactory to the trusts when he knows that he
cannot redeem a single promise that he has made to war upon the trusts
unless he avails himself of weapons of which the Federal Government had
been deprived before I became President, and which were restored to
it during my Administration and through proceedings which I directed?
Without my action Mr. Wilson could not now undertake or carry on a
single suit against a monopoly, and, moreover, if it had not been for my
action and for the judicial decision in consequence obtained, Congress
would be helpless to pass a single law against monopoly.
Let Mr. Wilson mark that the men who organized and directed the Northern
Securities Company were also the controlling forces in the very Steel
Corporation which Mr. Wilson makes believe to think was supporting me.
I challenge Mr. Wilson to deny this, and yet he well knew that it was
my successful suit against the Northern Securities Company which first
efficiently established the power of the people over the trusts.
After reading Mr. Wilson's book, I am still entirely in the dark as to
what he means by the "New Freedom." Mr. Wilson is an accomplished and
scholarly man, a master of rhetoric, and the sentences in the book are
well-phrased statements, usually inculcating a morality which is sound
although vague and ill defined. There are certain proposals (already
long set forth and practiced by me and by others who have recently
formed the Progressive party) made by Mr. Wilson with which I cordially
agree. There are, however, certain things he has said, even as regards
matters of abstract morality, with which I emphatically disagree.
For example, in arguing for proper business publicity, as to which I
cordially agree with Mr. Wilson, he commits himself to the following
statement:
"You know there is temptation in loneliness and secrecy. Haven't you
experienced it? I have. We are never so proper in our conduct as when
everybody can look and see exactly what we are doing. If you are off in
some distant part of the world and suppose that nobody who lives within
a mile of your home is anywhere around, there are times when you adjourn
your ordinary standards. You say to yourself, 'Well, I'll have a fling
this time; nobody will know anything about it.' If you were on the
Desert of Sahara, you would feel that you might permit yourself--well,
say, some slight latitude of conduct; but if you saw one of your
immediate neighbors coming the other way on a camel, you would behave
yourself until he got out of sight. The most dangerous thing in the
world is to get off where nobody knows you. I advise you to stay around
among the neighbors, and then you may keep out of jail. That is the only
way some of us can keep out of jail."
I emphatically disagree with what seems to be the morality inculcated
in this statement, which is that a man is expected to do and is to be
pardoned for doing all kinds of immoral things if he does them alone
and does not expect to be found out. Surely it is not necessary, in
insisting upon proper publicity, to preach a morality of so basely
material a character.
There is much more that Mr. Wilson says as to which I do not understand
him clearly, and where I condemn what I do understand. In economic
matters the course he advocates as part of the "New Freedom" simply
means the old, old "freedom" of leaving the individual strong man
at liberty, unchecked by common action, to prey on the weak and the
helpless. The "New Freedom" in the abstract seems to be the freedom
of the big to devour the little. In the concrete I may add that Mr.
Wilson's misrepresentations of what I have said seem to indicate that he
regards the new freedom as freedom from all obligation to obey the Ninth
Commandment.
But, after all, my views or the principles of the Progressive party are
of much less importance now than the purposes of Mr. Wilson. These are
wrapped in impenetrable mystery. His speeches and writings serve but
to make them more obscure. If these attempts to refute his
misrepresentation of my attitude towards the trusts should result in
making his own clear, then this discussion will have borne fruits of
substantial value to the country. If Mr. Wilson has any plan of his
own for dealing with the trusts, it is to suppress all great industrial
organizations--presumably on the principle proclaimed by his Secretary
of State four years ago, that every corporation which produced more than
a certain percentage of a given commodity--I think the amount specified
was twenty-five per cent--no matter how valuable its service, should be
suppressed. The simple fact is that such a plan is futile. In operation
it would do far more damage than it could remedy. The Progressive plan
would give the people full control of, and in masterful fashion prevent
all wrongdoing by, the trusts, while utilizing for the public welfare
every industrial energy and ability that operates to swell abundance,
while obeying strictly the moral law and the law of the land. Mr.
Wilson's plan would ultimately benefit the trusts and would permanently
damage nobody but the people. For example, one of the steel corporations
which has been guilty of the worst practices towards its employees is
the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan's plan
would, if successful, merely mean permitting four such companies,
absolutely uncontrolled, to monopolize every big industry in the
country. To talk of such an accomplishment as being "The New Freedom" is
enough to make the term one of contemptuous derision.
President Wilson has made explicit promises, and the Democratic
platform has made explicit promises. Mr. Wilson is now in power, with
a Democratic Congress in both branches. He and the Democratic platform
have promised to destroy the trusts, to reduce the cost of living, and
at the same time to increase the well-being of the farmer and of the
workingman--which of course must mean to increase the profits of
the farmer and the wages of the workingman. He and his party won the
election on this promise. We have a right to expect that they will keep
it. If Mr. Wilson's promises mean anything except the very emptiest
words, he is pledged to accomplish the beneficent purposes he avows by
breaking up all the trusts and combinations and corporations so as to
restore competition precisely as it was fifty years ago. If he does not
mean this, he means nothing. He cannot do anything else under penalty
of showing that his promise and his performance do not square with each
other.
Mr. Wilson says that "the trusts are our masters now, but I for one
do not care to live in a country called free even under kind masters."
Good! The Progressives are opposed to having masters, kind or unkind,
and they do not believe that a "new freedom" which in practice would
mean leaving four Fuel and Iron Companies free to do what they like in
every industry would be of much benefit to the country. The Progressives
have a clear and definite programme by which the people would be the
masters of the trusts instead of the trusts being their masters, as Mr.
Wilson says they are. With practical unanimity the trusts supported the
opponents of this programme, Mr. Taft and Mr. Wilson, and they evidently
dreaded our programme infinitely more than anything that Mr. Wilson
threatened. The people have accepted Mr. Wilson's assurances. Now let
him make his promises good. He is committed, if his words mean anything,
to the promise to break up every trust, every big corporation--perhaps
every small corporation--in the United States--not to go through
the motions of breaking them up, but really to break them up. He is
committed against the policy (of efficient control and mastery of
the big corporations both by law and by administrative action in
cooperation) proposed by the Progressives. Let him keep faith with
the people; let him in good faith try to keep the promises he has thus
repeatedly made. I believe that his promise is futile and cannot be
kept. I believe that any attempt sincerely to keep it and in good faith
to carry it out will end in either nothing at all or in disaster. But my
beliefs are of no consequence. Mr. Wilson is President. It is his acts
that are of consequence. He is bound in honor to the people of the
United States to keep his promise, and to break up, not nominally but in
reality, all big business, all trusts, all combinations of every sort,
kind, and description, and probably all corporations. What he says is
henceforth of little consequence. The important thing is what he
does, and how the results of what he does square with the promises and
prophecies he made when all he had to do was to speak, not to act.
APPENDIX C
THE BLAINE CAMPAIGN
In "The House of Harper," written by J. Henry Harper, the following
passage occurs: "Curtis returned from the convention in company with
young Theodore Roosevelt and they discussed the situation thoroughly on
their trip to New York and came to the conclusion that it would be very
difficult to consistently support Blaine. Roosevelt, however, had a
conference afterward with Senator Lodge and eventually fell in line
behind Blaine. Curtis came to our office and found that we were
unanimously opposed to the support of Blaine, and with a hearty
good-will he trained his editorial guns on the 'Plumed Knight' of
Mulligan letter fame. His work was as effective and deadly as any fight
he ever conducted in the _Weekly_." This statement has no foundation
whatever in fact. I did not return from the convention in company with
Mr. Curtis. He went back to New York from the convention, whereas I
went to my ranch in North Dakota. No such conversation as that ever took
place between me and Mr. Curtis. In my presence, in speaking to a number
of men at the time in Chicago, Mr. Curtis said: "You younger men can,
if you think right, refuse to support Mr. Blaine, but I am too old a
Republican, and have too long been associated with the party, to break
with it now." Not only did I never entertain after the convention, but
I never during the convention or at any other time, entertained the
intention alleged in the quotation in question. I discussed the whole
situation with Mr. Lodge before going to the convention, and we had made
up our minds that if the nomination of Mr. Blaine was fairly made we
would with equal good faith support him.
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