THE-L0GIC-OF-HI5-CAREER 
 
 Charles G, Washburn 
 
Class 
 
 Book _ 
 
 GomTightN 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEFGSIT. 
 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 THE LOGIC OF HIS CAREER 
 
THEODORE 
 ROOSEVELT 
 
 THE LOGIC OF HIS 
 CAREER 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES G. WASHBURN 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 1916 
 
■ Wd 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY CHARLES G. WASHBURN » 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published February iqib 
 
 FEB 25 1916 
 
 ICU418978 j_ 
 
TO 
 
 The Wife, the Children, and the Grandchildren 
 
 OF 
 THEODORE R006EVELT 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. From the Time of his going to College in i 876 
 
 to his Accession to the Presidency in 1901 . 1 
 Roosevelt in College — Service in the Legislature — 
 Interest in Literature, Hunting, Travel — Repub- 
 lican Candidate for Mayor of New York — Civil 
 Service Commissioner — Police Commissioner — 
 Assistant Secretary of the Navy — Lieutenant-Colonel 
 of the Rough Riders — Governor of New York — 
 Vice-President of the United States — President. 
 
 II. Changing Social and Industrial Conditions . 43 
 Convention of 1 904. — New Leadership — The Trusts 
 
 and the Railroads — Northern Securities Case — 
 The Sherman Anti-Trust Act — The Negro Ques- 
 tion — Booker Washington — Discharge of Negro 
 Regiment at Brownsville — The Labor Question. 
 
 III. Roosevelt and the Monroe Doctrine ... 89 
 The Monroe Doctrine — Foreign Policy — The 
 Army and Navy — Nobel Prize — Arbitration — 
 Treaties — Preparedness — Merchant Marine — The 
 Tariff — Conservation — Relations with Congress — 
 Legislation during his Administration — Tennessee 
 Coal and Iron Company — End of his Term. 
 
 IV. The African and European Trips . . . . 144 
 The Vatican Incident — Return to New York — 
 Campaigns of 1 9 1 2 — Recall of Judicial Decisions. 
 
 V. Roosevelt's Personal Characteristics — Con- 
 clusion 
 
 196 
 
 Appendix 217 
 
 The Carnegie Hall Address. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Three T. R.'s Frontispiece 
 
 Photograph by Walter Scott Shirir, igij 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt on his Graduation from Har- 
 vard College in 1880 4 
 
 Photograph by Notman, Boston 
 
 Facsimile of Letter written by Roosevelt after his 
 Election to the New York Assembly in 188 i . 8 
 
 Roosevelt in 1897 22 
 
 Photograph by Rock-wood, i8gf 
 
 Roosevelt when President of the United States . 118 
 
 Photograph by E. S. Curtis, igoj. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt with their Grandson 
 Richard Derby, Jr 196 
 
 Photograph by the Campbell Studio, IQIJ \ 
 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FROM THE TIME OF HIS GOING TO COLLEGE IN 
 1876 UNTIL HE BECAME PRESIDENT IN I9OI 
 
 I HAVE known Theodore Roosevelt since we 
 entered Harvard together in the autumn of 
 1876. I knew him intimately in college; and, 
 while I have seen him only at irregular intervals 
 since we graduated in 1880, I have always fol- 
 lowed his career closely and with the most in- 
 tense interest. Through all these years I have 
 had very definite views of his character which I 
 have never seen any occasion to change. These 
 views differ radically from those held by many 
 people. I purpose to express them here, and if 
 no'one shall find the recital either instructive or 
 interesting, it will at least be a satisfaction to 
 me to leave a record of my estimate of a man 
 whom I have known and loved for nearly forty 
 years. This is in no sense a history or even a 
 finished sketch of his life. It is a record of my 
 personal impressions, fortified by such facts as 
 
2 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 would seem to justify my conclusions, and with 
 no attempt to secure a complete perspective, 
 through the relative amount of detail with 
 which Roosevelt's characteristics and the events 
 of the time are discussed. 
 
 In order to make the trend of my discourse 
 clear, I will say at the outset that my purpose is 
 to give the reasons upon which I base my con- 
 clusion that Roosevelt has never been a "politi- 
 cian"; that his opinions, regarded by many as 
 radical and by some as even revolutionary, were 
 carefully considered for many years before they 
 found expression; and that in the campaigns of 
 191 2 he was seeking to advance a cause and 
 not any personal ambition. I shall discuss 
 some of the great questions with which he 
 dealt, and shall not even refer to others per- 
 haps equally or more important. Incidentally 
 I shall give my reasons for believing that Roose- 
 velt is, and always has been, a person of great 
 simplicity of character, of the highest ideals, 
 and with a wider range of genuine human sym- 
 pathies than any other man who ever occupied 
 the Presidential office. I say wider range of 
 genuine human sympathies, not deeper sympa- 
 thies, for I have Lincoln in mind. I shall at- 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 3 
 
 tempt to account for his great popularity and to 
 state the reason why he deliberately and unself- 
 ishly, as I believe, chose a course which, for 
 the time being at least, has cast a shadow upon 
 his pathway. 
 
 I will say here, lest I forget to say it elsewhere, 
 that the qualities I knew in the boy are the quali- 
 ties most observed in the man, and that of all 
 the men I have known for as long a time he has 
 changed the least. 
 
 As a boy in college, he was a good student, 
 but not a "grind"; he entered into and enjoyed 
 every phase of college life — intellectual, physi- 
 cal, social; he was popular with all, loved by 
 many; the natural sciences, history, and politi- 
 cal economy were the studies that interested him 
 most; he had honorable mention in natural his- 
 tory, had a Commencement part, and was a 
 member of the Phi Beta Kappa. He was in- 
 tense in everything he did; his occupation for 
 the moment was to the exclusion of everything 
 else; if he were reading, the house might fall 
 about his head, he could not be diverted. This 
 power of concentration, a great gift, is one which 
 has contributed so largely to his ability to ac- 
 complish so much in so many fields of activity. 
 
4 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 He was fond of athletics, but never greatly 
 excelled; he never claimed to: he did the best 
 he could. Boxing was his favorite sport, but he 
 was greatly handicapped because he was near- 
 sighted. Many people have said that Roosevelt 
 wore glasses when he boxed. Referring to this, 
 he once said: — 
 
 No human being could box with spectacles or 
 glasses on. It would be absolutely certain that he 
 would have them broken in the first minute or two, 
 and in all human probability he would then be 
 blinded permanently. The usual result when I boxed 
 with any really first-class man . . . was that I got 
 thoroughly well pounded, and with no one of those 
 men would my glasses have lasted thirty seconds. 
 
 He had a lively sense of humor. I remember 
 well with what glee he told us that he had gone 
 to Boston to get a basket of live lobsters for 
 laboratory purposes, and on the way back they 
 escaped, much to the consternation of the wo- 
 men in the horse-car. 
 
 His love for the open was in constant evi- 
 dence. During the intervals in the semi-an- 
 nual examinations it frequently happened that 
 a boy would have a little time at his disposal. 
 "Teddy" would take advantage of the oppor- 
 tunity to go to the Maine woods to hunt and 
 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 At the time of his Graduation in 1880 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 5 
 
 trap. He would come back with tales of expo- 
 sure and hardship, as it seemed to us, which he 
 had enjoyed. He was then, as a boy, in a class 
 by himself, as he has been ever since. 
 
 "Teddy," as he was called in college, was 
 always immune from the criticism which would 
 be visited upon another under the same condi- 
 tions. 
 
 He was far from being a ready speaker. I 
 remember that at the "Pudding," we often in- 
 cited a discussion for the purpose of rousing 
 "Teddy." In his excitement he would some- 
 times lose altogether the power of articulation, 
 much to our delight. He had then almost a 
 defect in his speech which made his utterance 
 at times deliberate and even halting. It became 
 evident very early that Roosevelt was a person 
 sui generis, and not to be judged by the ordinary 
 standards, and very early in our college life I 
 came to believe in his star of destiny. I once 
 received a note from him, of no great conse- 
 quence which I carefully preserved, thinking, as 
 I said at the time, that some day it would pos- 
 sess a peculiar value. 
 
 Roosevelt was married in October, 1880; he 
 spent the summer of 1881 in Europe, and while 
 
6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 in Switzerland made the ascent of the Matter- 
 horn and the Jungfrau — the initiatory expe- 
 rience of so many explorers. 
 
 His entrance into politics can best be recorded 
 by the introduction here of his appeal to his 
 constituents dated November I, 1881, and his 
 endorsement by certain residents of the 21 st 
 Assembly District in New York: — 
 
 New York, November 1st, 1881. 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 Having been nominated as a candidate for member 
 of Assembly for this District, I would esteem it a 
 compliment if you honor me with your vote and per- 
 sonal influence on Election day. 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt. 
 
 TWENTY-FIRST ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 
 40th to 86th Sts., Lexington to 7th Aves. 
 
 We cordially recommend the voters of the Twenty- 
 first Assembly District to cast their ballots for 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 for Member of Assembly, 
 
 and take much pleasure in testifying to our appreci- 
 ation of his high character and standing in the 
 community. He is conspicuous for his honesty and 
 
FROM 1876 TO 190 1 7 
 
 integrity, and eminently qualified to represent the 
 District in the Assembly. 
 
 New York, November 1st, 1881. 
 
 F. A. P. Barnard, William T. Black, Willard 
 Bullard, Joseph H. Choate, Wm. A. Darling, 
 Henry E. Davies, Theodore W. Dwight, Jacob 
 Hess, Morris K. Jesup, Edward Mitchell, Wil- 
 liam F. Morgan, Chas. S. Robinson, Elihu Root, 
 Jackson S. Schultz, Elliott F. Shepard, Gus- 
 tavus Tuckerman, S. H. Wales, W. H. Webb. 
 
 At about this time I wrote him a letter evi- 
 dently containing some jocular charge that he 
 had become a politician, for I received the fol- 
 lowing reply : — 
 
 6 W. 57 St,, 
 
 New York, 
 
 Nov. 10, '81. 
 Too true, too true; I have become a "political 
 hack." Finding it would not interfere much with my 
 law, I accepted the nomination to the Assembly and 
 was elected by 1500 majority, leading the ticket by 
 800 votes. But don't think I am going to go into 
 politics after this year, for I am not. 
 
 This letter is evidence that Roosevelt at that 
 time had a serious purpose to become a lawyer 
 and had no intention of remaining in politics. 
 His chief interest in the Legislature is thus de- 
 scribed in his own words: — 
 
8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 I paid attention chiefly while in the Legislature to 
 laws for the reformation of Primaries and of the 
 Civil Service and endeavored to have a certain Judge 
 Westbrook impeached, on the ground of corrupt col- 
 lusion with Jay Gould and the prostitution of his 
 high judicial office to serve the purpose of wealthy and 
 unscrupulous stock gamblers, but was voted down. 
 
 This has a familiar sound: the reform of what 
 he regarded as abuses was Roosevelt's occupa- 
 tion thirty years ago and has been ever since. 
 
 Contrary to the purpose expressed in the let- 
 ter I have quoted, Roosevelt was again a candi- 
 date in 1882 and ran 2000 ahead of his ticket. 
 He was nominated as the Republican candidate 
 for Speaker in 1883, but as his was the minority 
 party, the nomination was a mere compliment. 
 
 "Harper's Weekly" for April 21, 1883, said 
 
 of him: — 
 
 With energy and ardor and with a directness and 
 plainness of speech from which older legislators 
 shrink, Mr. Roosevelt, in the last session, moved the 
 Westbrook inquiry, and in the present session he has 
 urged proceedings to vacate the charter of the Man- 
 hattan Elevated Railway Company. He has also 
 introduced the Municipal Civil Service Reform Bill, 
 and his voice and vote are sure for whatever is honest, 
 wise and progressive. Like many of the younger 
 Republicans, Mr. Roosevelt holds the soundest views 
 upon public questions with the feeling - that the 
 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT, THEODORE ROOSEVELT, Jr. 
 AND THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 3 d 
 
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 Joz? J^XX, f J* /Let** £& ci^n^xj^ 
 
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FACSIMILE OF LETTER FROM THEODORE 
 ROOSEVELT TO CHARLES G. WASHBURN 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 9 
 
 Republican party is the organization which, from its 
 traditional principles and the character of its mem- 
 bership, is more likely wisely to secure the public 
 welfare. 
 
 Meantime, in 1882, his first book was pub- 
 lished, "The Naval War of 1812." Here is a 
 striking instance of Roosevelt's versatility; the 
 subject interested him, and he wrote the book. 
 He was twenty-four years old at the time. I 
 shall make the following quotation from the 
 preface for future reference: — 
 
 At present people are beginning to realize that it 
 is folly for the great English-speaking Republic to 
 rely for defense upon a navy composed partly of anti- 
 quated hulks, and partly of new vessels rather more 
 worthless than the old. 
 
 He was reelected for a third term, and was 
 made chairman of the Committee on Cities and 
 of a legislative investigating committee which 
 passed a series of laws which practically revolu- 
 tionized the municipal government of the City 
 of New York. The session of 1884 ended his 
 service in the Assembly. He refused a renomina- 
 tion and two nominations for Congress. His 
 purpose to abandon political life seems clear. 
 
 One of the early cartoons of Roosevelt, in 
 February, 1884, represents him in the act of 
 
io THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 cutting the claws of the Tammany tiger, de- 
 stroying the confirming power of the Board of 
 Aldermen by an act of the Legislature; and 
 again, a month later, the Tammany tiger is 
 exhibited in a state of total collapse, teeth and 
 claws scattered about, while Roosevelt and 
 Governor Cleveland, arm in arm, survey the 
 wreck, Roosevelt holding in one hand a pair of 
 shears inscribed, "Roosevelt Bill." 
 
 I will refer here to an act in the passage of 
 which Roosevelt was interested, entitled "An 
 act to improve the public health by prohibiting 
 the manufacture and preparations of tobacco in 
 any form in tenement houses, in certain cases." 
 The law was passed to remedy a very real evil 
 which Roosevelt had appreciated through a 
 personal investigation of conditions in tenement 
 houses, where a family with a boarder or two 
 might be found living in one or two rooms, while 
 the manufacture of cigars was being carried on 
 in close proximity to the stove or kitchen sink. 
 The law was passed in 1884, and was declared 
 unconstitutional by the Court of Appeals in 
 January, 1885. The court held in general terms 
 that this was not a proper exercise of the "police 
 power," and that the law interfered with the 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 11 
 
 profitable and free use of his property by the 
 owner or his lessee and that a constitutional 
 guaranty was violated. The court said, among 
 other things: — 
 
 It cannot be perceived how the cigar-maker is to 
 be improved in his health or his morals by forcing 
 him from his home and its hallowed associations and 
 beneficent influences to ply his trade elsewhere. 
 
 As applied to the kind of tenement I have 
 referred to, this reference to the "home and 
 its hallowed associations" seems grotesque or 
 tragic, depending upon the point of view. It 
 is not surprising that Roosevelt's wrath should 
 have blazed up at such a narrow view of the 
 police power. I have referred to this matter in 
 some detail, because, as I shall point out later, 
 I find here the beginning of Roosevelt's revolt 
 against the disposition of some courts in this 
 class of cases unduly to restrict the exercise of 
 the police power in safeguarding the health and 
 morals of the people. The recall of judicial de- 
 cisions advocated in the Columbus speech of 
 191 2 is an attempt to remedy what Roosevelt 
 recognized as an abuse in 1884. It was not, as 
 some of his critics have suggested, the unrea- 
 soning appeal of the demagogue, but the result 
 
12 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 of years of reflection. Whether one agrees with 
 his conclusion or not, — and I do not, — one 
 must acquit Roosevelt of any other purpose 
 than to right what he believed to be a wrong, 
 and what in many cases is a wrong. 
 
 His wife and mother died in February, 1884, 
 and thereafter for several years, Roosevelt 
 spent most of his summers on his cattle ranch 
 on the Little Missouri in western Dakota and 
 in making hunting trips from it after bear, 
 elk, and buffalo. His time was pretty evenly di- 
 vided, as he said, between ranching, literature, 
 and politics. 
 
 In the campaign of 1884, Roosevelt was for 
 Edmunds for President and against Blaine and 
 Arthur. He headed the New York delegation 
 to the National Convention. The Chairman 
 of the National Committee nominated Powell 
 Clayton, of Arkansas, for temporary chairman. 
 Henry Cabot Lodge nominated John R. Lynch, 
 a colored man, of Mississippi. In speaking to 
 this nomination, Theodore Roosevelt said: — 
 
 I trust that the motion made by the gentleman 
 from Massachusetts [Mr. Lodge] will be adopted, 
 and that we will select as Chairman of this Conven- 
 tion that representative Republican, Mr. Lynch, of 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 13 
 
 Mississippi. Mr. Chairman, it has been said by the 
 distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
 Stewart] that it is without precedent to reverse the 
 action of the National Committee. Who has not 
 known numerous instances where the action of a 
 State Committee has been reversed by the State 
 Convention? Not one of us but has known such in- 
 stances. Now, there are, as I understand it, but two 
 delegates to this Convention who have seats on the 
 National Committee; and I hold it to be deroga- 
 tory to our honor, to our capacity for self-govern- 
 ment, to say that we must accept the nomination of 
 a presiding officer by another body; and that our 
 hands are tied, and we dare not reverse its action. 
 
 Now, one word more. I trust that the vote will be 
 taken by individual members, and not by States. Let 
 each man stand accountable to those whom he repre- 
 sents for his vote. Let no man be able to shelter him- 
 self behind the shield of his State. What we say is, 
 that one of the cardinal doctrines of the American 
 political government is the accountability of each 
 man to his people; and let each man stand up here 
 and cast his vote, and then go home and abide by 
 what he has done. 
 
 It is now, Mr. Chairman, less than a quarter of a 
 century since, in this city, the great Republican party 
 for the first time organized for victory, and nomi- 
 nated Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, who broke the fet- 
 ters of the slave and rent them asunder forever. It is 
 a fitting thing for us to choose to preside over this 
 Convention one of that race whose right to sit within 
 these walls is due to the blood and the treasure so 
 
i 4 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 lavishly spent by the founders of the Republican 
 party. And it is but a further vindication of the 
 principles for which the Republican party so long 
 struggled. I trust that the Hon. Mr. Lynch will 
 be elected Temporary Chairman of this Conven- 
 tion. 
 
 Blaine was nominated, and a serious defec- 
 tion of Republicans led to the election of Cleve- 
 land. Roosevelt voted for Blaine. I met him 
 in New York about this time, and he told me 
 that while he was opposed to Blaine, he did not 
 feel justified in bolting the ticket as he had par- 
 ticipated in the deliberations of the Convention, 
 but that in the course he had taken he had 
 alienated many friends and the only kind of 
 political support he valued. I always felt that 
 Roosevelt did right in supporting the ticket, 
 although I did not do so myself. In judging of 
 a man's actions, his motive must be first con- 
 sidered. Roosevelt's action was governed in 
 this case by what he regarded as his duty, 
 which was opposed to his inclination as well as 
 to what he believed to be for his interest. 
 
 At this point should be noted the fact that 
 Roosevelt showed no desire to continue in poli- 
 tics. The usual course, if he had cared for a polit- 
 ical career, would have been to go to Congress 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 15 
 
 as he had opportunities to do, but he turned 
 in another direction, and for the following five 
 years devoted himself to literature, hunting, 
 and travel. At this time he contributed a num- 
 ber of political essays and sketches of sport and 
 adventure to the "Century Magazine," the 
 "North American Review," the "New Prince- 
 ton Review," and to "Harper's." He pub- 
 lished an enlarged edition of the "Naval War 
 of 1812" and wrote in 1885, in two volumes, 
 the "Hunting Trips of a Ranchman," in 1886, 
 the "Life of Thomas H. Benton," and in 1889 
 published the "Winning of the West." 
 
 Roosevelt's love of nature and his exultation 
 in physical life is well illustrated in the quota- 
 tion from Browning with which "Ranch Life 
 and the Hunting Trail" opens: — 
 
 "Oh, our manhood's prime vigor! No spirit feels waste; 
 Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced. 
 Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock to 
 
 rock, 
 The strong rending of boughs from the fir tree, the cool 
 
 silver shock 
 Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt of the 
 
 bear, — 
 And the sleep in the dried river channel where bulrushes 
 
 tell 
 That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well. 
 How good is man's life, the mere living." 
 
16 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 One can understand how such a spirit could 
 enjoy a trip down the Little Missouri during the 
 spring freshet. I happened to meet Roosevelt 
 going West in February, 1886. Evidently I 
 had sent him a newspaper clipping, for I find 
 the following letter from him: — 
 
 Elkhorn Ranch, 
 
 Medora, Dakota, 
 
 Mar. 27, '86. 
 
 The slip of paper was very amusing; I counted my- 
 self lucky to meet you as I did. I am now about start- 
 ing off down the river, which is swollen and full of 
 ice, to go to Mandan about three hundred miles off. 
 
 It was on this trip, I imagine, that Roose- 
 velt, acting as deputy sheriff, and his associates 
 chased down the river three men who had stolen 
 his boat. They overtook the men, and finally, 
 after a journey of great hardship, delivered the 
 thieves into the hands of the sheriff. 
 
 It was Roosevelt's experience with frontier 
 life that led to his writing the "Winning of the 
 West," in the preface of which he said: — 
 
 In conclusion, I would say that it has been to me 
 emphatically a labor of love to write of the great 
 deeds of the border people. I am not blind to their 
 manifold shortcomings, nor yet am I ignorant of their 
 many strong and good qualities. For a number of 
 years I spent most of my time on the frontier, and 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 17 
 
 lived and worked like any other frontiersman. The 
 wild country in which we dwelt and across which we 
 wandered was in the Far West; and there were, of 
 course, many features in which the life of a cattleman 
 on the great plains and among the Rockies differed 
 from that led by a backwoodsman in the Alleghany 
 forests a century before. Yet the points of resem- 
 blance were far more numerous and striking. We 
 guarded our herds of branded cattle and shaggy 
 horses, hunted bear, bison, elk, and deer, establishing 
 civil government, and put down evildoers, white and 
 red, on the banks of the Little Missouri, and among 
 the wooded, precipitous foothills of the Bighorn, ex- 
 actly as did the pioneers who a hundred years previ- 
 ously built their log cabins beside the Kentucky or in 
 the valleys of the Great Smokies. The men who have 
 shared in the fast vanishing frontier life of the present 
 feel a peculiar sympathy with the already long van- 
 ished frontier life of the past. 
 
 What lover of nature can fail to be thrilled by 
 the introduction to "The Wilderness Hunter"? 
 
 In hunting, the finding and killing of the game is, 
 after all, but a part of the whole. The free, self- 
 reliant, adventurous life, with its rugged and stal- 
 wart democracy; the wild surroundings, the grand 
 beauty of the scenery, the chance to study the ways 
 and habits of the woodland creatures — all these 
 unite to give to the career of the wilderness hunter 
 its peculiar charm. 
 
 The chase is among the best of all national pas- 
 times; it cultivates that vigorous manliness for the 
 
1 8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 lack of which in a nation, as in an individual, the 
 possession of no other qualities can possibly atone. 
 No one but he who has partaken thereof can under- 
 stand the keen delight of hunting in lonely lands. 
 For him is the joy of the horse well ridden and the 
 rifle well held; for him the long days of toil and hard- 
 ship, resolutely endured and crowned at the end with 
 triumph. In after years, there shall come forever to 
 his mind the memory of endless prairies shimmering 
 in the bright sun; of vast snow-clad wastes lying deso- 
 late under gray skies; of the melancholy marshes, of 
 the rush of mighty rivers; of the breath of the ever- 
 green forest in summer; of the crooning of ice-armored 
 pines at the touch of the winds of winter; of cataracts 
 roaring between hoary mountain masses; of all the 
 innumerable sights and sounds of the wilderness; of 
 its immensity and mystery and of the silences that 
 brood in its still depths. 
 
 In the fall of 1886, he was the Republican 
 candidate for Mayor of New York against 
 Henry George, the Labor candidate, and Abram 
 S. Hewitt, the nominee of the United Democ- 
 racy, who was elected. 
 
 On May 10, 1889, Roosevelt was appointed 
 a member of the United States Civil Service 
 Commission, and, to quote his own words some 
 time later: — 
 
 Have been up to my ears in one unending fight to 
 take and keep the Civil Service out of the hands of 
 the politicians; and I may say without question that 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 19 
 
 during this year the law has been observed in the 
 classified service under our charge more rigidly and 
 impartially than ever before. 
 
 President Harrison, who was not given to 
 exuberance of expression, said of him: — 
 
 If he had no other record than his service as an em- 
 ployee of the Civil Service Commission, he would be 
 deserving of the nation's gratitude and confidence. 
 
 Roosevelt continued as Civil Service Com- 
 missioner until April, 1895, a period of nearly 
 six years. It was not a place that any one with 
 any political ambition would have sought, and 
 would, I think, be commonly regarded as a 
 veritable graveyard for any political aspira- 
 tions. I remember seeing in the New York 
 "Tribune," about this time, an interview with 
 Roosevelt in which he said that he might like 
 to go into politics, but that he had no constit- 
 uency, by which I understood him to mean 
 that his prolonged absence from New York had 
 put him completely out of touch with political 
 affairs there. It is reasonably clear that at this 
 time and during his term as Civil Service Com- 
 missioner, Roosevelt had no expectation of en- 
 tering politics. Meantime, in November, 1890, 
 he had published a history of the City of New 
 
20 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 York; in 1893, in two volumes, "The Wilder- 
 ness Hunter"; and in April, 1895, in conjunc- 
 tion with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, "Hero 
 Tales from American History." 
 
 In April, 1895, Roosevelt was appointed Po- 
 lice Commissioner in the City of New York, 
 and continued in that office until April, 1897. 
 Again he filled a position which led nowhere in 
 politics, however great the opportunities for ser- 
 vice that it offered, evidence that opportunity for 
 service without the slightest regard for politi- 
 cal advancement was the controlling motive of 
 Roosevelt's life. 
 
 His sense of humor, often light, sometimes 
 grim, but always palpably present or lurking 
 in the near background is well illustrated in an 
 article on the Vice-Presidency, written in Sep- 
 tember, 1896; speaking of the Southern Popu- 
 lists, he said: — 
 
 They distrust anything they cannot understand; 
 and as they understand but little, this opens a very 
 wide field for distrust. They are apt to be emotion- 
 ally religious. If not, they are then at least atheists 
 of an archaic type. Refinement and comfort they are 
 apt to consider quite as objectionable as immorality. 
 That a man should change his clothes in the evening, 
 that he should dine at any other hour than noon, 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 21 
 
 impress these good people as being symptoms of de- 
 pravity instead of merely trivial. A taste for learning 
 and cultivated friends, and a tendency to bathe fre- 
 quently, cause them the deepest suspicion. . . . Sen- 
 ator Tillman, the great Populist, or Democratic, 
 orator from South Carolina, possesses an untram- 
 meled tongue any middle-of-the-road man would envy; 
 and, moreover, Mr. Tillman's brother has been fre- 
 quently elected to Congress upon the issue that he 
 never wore either an overcoat or an undershirt, an 
 issue which any Populist statesman finds readily 
 comprehensible, and which he would recognize at 
 first glance as being strong before the people. 
 
 In April, 1897, he was appointed Assistant 
 Secretary of the Navy by President McKinley, 
 John D. Long, of Massachusetts, being Secre- 
 tary. This was a most congenial place for 
 Roosevelt, and he devoted himself with his cus- 
 tomary energy to the duties of his office. He 
 not only got the navy ready for war, but, to 
 put it mildly, did not shrink from the then im- 
 pending conflict with Spain. Against the urgent 
 advice of most of his friends, he resigned his 
 position May 6, 1898, and entered the mili- 
 tary service as lieutenant-colonel, 1 First United 
 
 1 He declined the Colonelcy. " Fortunately," said Roosevelt, 
 " I was wise enough to tell the Secretary that while I believed I 
 could learn to command the regiment in a month, yet that it 
 was just this very month which I could not afford to spare, and 
 
22 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 States Cavalry Volunteers, "The Rough Rid- 
 ers," organized by Colonel Leonard Wood and 
 himself. Secretary Long said of him : — 
 
 He was heart and soul in his work. His typewriters 
 had no rest. He, like most of us, lacks the rare knack 
 of brevity. He was especially stimulating to the 
 younger officers who gathered about him and made 
 his office as busy as a hive. He was especially helpful 
 in the purchasing of ships and in every line where he 
 could push on the work of preparation for war. Al- 
 most as soon, however, as it was declared, he resigned 
 the assistant-secretaryship of the navy to accept the 
 lieutenant-colonelcy of the Rough Rider regiment in 
 the army. Together with many of his friends, I urged 
 him strenuously to remain in the navy, arguing that 
 he would there make a signal reputation, and that to 
 go into the army would be only to fight mosquitoes 
 on the Florida sands or fret in camp at Chickamauga. 
 How right he was in his prognosis and how wrong 
 we were in ours, the result has shown. He took the 
 straight course to fame, to the governorship of New 
 York and to the presidency of the United States. He 
 has the dash of Henry of Navarre without any of his 
 vices. His room in the Navy Department after his 
 decision to enter the army, which preceded for some 
 time his resignation as Assistant Secretary, was an 
 interesting scene. It bubbled over with enthusiasm, 
 and was filled with bright young fellows from all over 
 the country, college graduates and old associates 
 
 that, therefore, I would be quite content to go as Lieutenant- 
 Colonel, if he would make Wood Colonel." 
 
Copyright by Rockwood , 1897 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 1897 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 23 
 
 from the Western ranches, all eager to serve with 
 Roosevelt. The Rough Rider uniform was in evi- 
 dence; it climbed the steps of the Navy Department; 
 it filled the corridors; guns, uniforms, all sorts of 
 military traps, and piles of papers littered the Assist- 
 ant Secretary's room, but it was all the very inspira- 
 tion of young manhood. 
 
 This is the reason he gave for his action : — 
 While my party was in opposition, I had preached 
 with all the fervor and zeal I possessed our duty to in- 
 tervene in Cuba and to take this opportunity of driv- 
 ing the Spaniard from the Western world. Now that 
 my party had come to power, I felt it incumbent on 
 me, by word and deed, to do all I could to secure the 
 carrying-out of the policy in which I so heartily be- 
 lieved; and from the beginning, I had determined 
 that, if a war came, somehow or other, I was going 
 to the front. 
 
 Meantime he had published in October, 1897, 
 his "American Ideals" in two volumes, and in 
 April, 1898, the "Life of Gouverneur Morris." 
 
 Of the Cuban campaign it is enough to say 
 here that Roosevelt was commended for gal- 
 lantry and promoted colonel, and was in com- 
 mand at San Juan Hill. I once asked him what 
 act of his life or what experience had given him 
 the most pleasure and satisfaction. He re- 
 flected for a moment, and then replied, "The 
 charge up San Juan Hill." 
 
24 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 I do not mean to suggest that he attached 
 
 undue importance to that battle. Speaking at 
 
 Chattanooga in 1902 he said: — 
 
 Compared to the giant death wrestle that reeled 
 over the mountains roundabout this city, the fight at 
 Santiago was the merest skirmish; but the spirit in 
 which we handled ourselves there, I hope, was the 
 spirit in which we have to face our duties as citizens 
 if we are to make this Republic what it must be made. 
 
 On July 27, 1898, Hay wrote to Roosevelt: 1 
 I am afraid I am the last of your friends to con- 
 gratulate you on the brilliant campaign which now 
 seems drawing to a close, and in which you have 
 gained so much experience and glory. When the war 
 began I was like the rest; I deplored your place in the 
 navy, where you were so useful and so acceptable. 
 But I knew it was idle to preach to a young man. 
 You obeyed your own daemon, and I imagine we older 
 fellows will all have to confess that you were in the 
 right. As Sir Walter wrote: — 
 
 " One crowded hour of glorious life 
 Is worth an age without a name." 
 You have written your name on several pages of 
 your country's history, and they are all honorable to 
 you and comfortable to your friends. 
 
 A characteristic remark was reported of 
 Roosevelt upon his return from Cuba. As the 
 Transport cast anchor off Montauk some one 
 
 1 The quotations from John Hay's Letters are as they appear 
 in Mr. William Roscoe Thayer's Life and Letters of John Hay. 
 Boston, 1915. 
 
FROM 1876 TO 190 1 25 
 
 called out and asked him how he was feeling — 
 "Disgracefully well," was his reply. He seemed 
 to think that when so many were returning sick 
 and weak, it was not creditable to him to be in 
 such good physical condition. 
 
 He was mustered out at Camp WickofF, Long 
 Island, September 15, 1898. 
 
 Certainly, up to this point, there has been dis- 
 closed no settled purpose in Roosevelt's life, 
 excepting to be hard at work in some field of 
 activity — physical or mental. And now he was 
 to enter politics again, not by his own volition, 
 but because of the desire of others. A Repub- 
 lican candidate for Governor of New York was 
 wanted who could carry the State. Roosevelt 
 with his military record was the only man who 
 could do it. The politicians took him, not be- 
 cause they wanted him, but because they needed 
 him, and he was elected for the term beginning 
 January 1, 1899, and ending December 31, 1900. 
 
 Speaking of the negotiations which led up to 
 his nomination, Roosevelt says in his "Autobi- 
 ography": — 
 
 It was Mr. Quigg who called on me at Montauk 
 Point to sound me about the governorship; Mr. Piatt 
 being by no means enthusiastic over Mr. Quigg's 
 
26 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 mission, largely because he disapproved of the Span- 
 ish 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 Rob- 
 inson, 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 Re- 
 publican voters in the State so desired, but that the 
 organization and the State Convention would finally 
 do what Senator Piatt desired. He said that county 
 leaders were already coming to Senator Piatt, 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. Piatt and his friends, 
 or whether I would confer with them and with the 
 organization leaders generally, and give fair consider- 
 ation 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 
 toward existing party conditions. 
 
 To this I replied that I should like to be nominated, 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 27 
 
 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. Piatt 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. 
 Piatt and the organization leaders, I would do so in 
 the sincere hope that there might always result har- 
 mony of opinion and purpose; but that while I would 
 try to get on well with the organization, the organiza- 
 tion 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 every- 
 body 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 any- 
 body could expect, and that he would state it to 
 Senator Piatt precisely as I had put it to him, which 
 he accordingly did; and, throughout my term as 
 Governor, Quigg lived loyally up to our understand- 
 ing. 
 
 Letter from Roosevelt to Quigg 
 
 Camp Wickoff, 
 
 Montauk Point, L.I., 
 
 Sept. 12, 1898. 
 
 I hope that Saturday will do with the mustering-out. 
 
 It is a simple impossibility for me to get in before. 
 
 As I telegraphed, your representation of what I 
 
28 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 said was substantially right; that is, it gave just the 
 spirit. But I don't like the wording of some of your 
 sentences. At first, on account of this, I hesitated 
 how to reply; but finally came to the conclusion that 
 the last sentence of your "report" covered the whole 
 matter sufficiently. I shan't try to go over your dif- 
 ferent sentences in detail; but for instance, instead of 
 saying that I would not "wish" to be a figurehead 
 you should have used the word "consent," and there 
 are various other similar verbal changes to which I 
 think you would agree. Then I wish you could have 
 brought out the fact that these statements were not 
 in the nature of bids for the nomination, or of pledges 
 by me, and that you made no effort to exact any 
 pledges, but that they were statements which I freely 
 made when you asked me what my position would 
 be if nominated and elected (you having already 
 stated that you wished me nominated and elected). 
 However, I need not go into the matter more in de- 
 tail, and I am not sure that it is necessary for me to 
 write this at all, for I know that you did not in any 
 way wish to represent me as willing to consent to act 
 otherwise than in accordance with my conscience; 
 indeed, you said you knew that I would be incapable 
 of acting save with good faith to the people at large, 
 to the Republicans of the United States, and to the 
 New York Republican organizations; and this seems 
 to about cover it. 
 
 P.S. In short, I want to make clear that there was 
 no question of pledges or promises, least of all a ques- 
 tion of bargaining for the nomination; but that I 
 promptly told you the position I would take if I was 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1 90 1 29 
 
 elected Governor and suggested what I thought it 
 would be best for both Senator Piatt and myself to 
 do so as to prevent the chance of any smash-up, 
 which would be disastrous to the welfare of the party 
 and equally disastrous from the standpoint of good 
 government. I was not making any agreement as to 
 what I would do on consideration that I received the 
 nomination; I was stating the course which I thought 
 it would be best to follow, for the sake of the party, 
 and for the sake of the State — both considerations 
 outweighing infinitely the question of my own nomi- 
 nation. 
 
 During his term as Governor, he published 
 "The Rough Riders," "The Strenuous Life," 
 and the "Life of Oliver Cromwell." Roosevelt 
 had the confidence of the people in larger meas- 
 ure than any other Governor of New York for 
 years. He promised to pursue Republican with 
 even greater avidity than Democratic rascals, 
 and kept his promise by making a Democratic 
 lawyer the prosecutor of those involved in the- 
 Canal frauds. Roosevelt carried out the prin- 
 ciple which he expressed in his inaugural ad- 
 dress, that 
 
 in the long run, he serves his party best who most 
 helps to make it instantly responsive to every need 
 of the people, and to the highest demands of that 
 spirit which tends to drive us onward and upward. 
 
30 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 He demanded the repeal of the law enacted in 
 the administration of his predecessor, Governor 
 Black, for the purpose of taking the "starch" 
 out of the Civil Service law and showed little 
 regard for the spoilsmen. A paper constantly 
 critical of him said: "Roosevelt is probably the 
 only Republican in the State capable of an act 
 so contrary to party amenities as this." 
 
 He was strong for the enforcement of the 
 state law regulating the employment of women 
 and children in factories and to prevent exces- 
 sive hours of labor on surface railroads. The 
 Civil Service and Labor portions of his first mes- 
 sage were the most prominent. He favored the 
 equipment of the National Guards with mod- 
 ern arms, the substitution of biennial for annual 
 sessions of the Legislature, and the extension 
 of the area within which suffrage could be exer- 
 cised by women, particularly in reference to the 
 schools. 1 He searched the State for the best 
 men he could find, urged legislation in the best 
 interests of the people and put every stumbling- 
 block possible in the way of bad legislation. He 
 defied both machines. 
 
 1 Some years later (1908), Roosevelt said, "Personally I believe 
 in Woman's Suffrage, but I am not an enthusiastic advocate of it 
 because I do not regard it as a very important matter." 
 
FROM 1876 TO 190 1 31 
 
 His message in January, 1900, dealt largely 
 
 with the subject of taxation. He suggested that 
 
 trusts should be subject to the law of publicity, 
 
 and that 
 
 where a trust becomes a monopoly, the State has 
 an immediate right to interfere. Care should be 
 taken not to stifle enterprise or disclose any facts of a 
 business that are essentially private, but the State, 
 for the protection of the public, should exercise the 
 right to inspect, to examine thoroughly all the work- 
 ings of great corporations, just as is now done with 
 banks; and wherever the interests of the public 
 demand it, it should publish the results of its exami- 
 nation. Then, if there are inordinate profits, com- 
 petition or public sentiment will give the public the 
 benefit in lowered prices; and if not, the power of tax- 
 ation remains. 
 
 The principle of government regulation and 
 not the disintegration of large corporations is 
 one that he has always adhered to. 
 
 Much was made by his critics of the fact that 
 Roosevelt occasionally "had breakfast with 
 Piatt," as evidence that he was under the domi- 
 nation of the latter, then the "boss" of the Re- 
 publican party in New York, and also United 
 States Senator. The fact is that while Roose- 
 velt was a reformer, he was not one of those 
 unpractical persons who railed at the shortcom- 
 
32 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 ings of others and refused to take a hand him- 
 self in the remedy of abuses. The role of critic 
 is a pretty contemptible one unless accompan- 
 ied by the desire and ability for effective per- 
 formance. Roosevelt would always work with 
 such tools as he had at his command, but never 
 refused to work because the tools were not per- 
 fect or to his liking. He has often been bitterly 
 condemned by well-meaning people who stood 
 on the side lines with folded hands, because he 
 was working with "corrupt politicians." Well, 
 he did work with them when they served his pur- 
 pose for the very simple reason that he had to 
 work with them or not work at all. He would 
 have been delighted if the people had given him 
 tools more to his liking, but as they failed to do 
 this, and still demanded that the work should be 
 done, Roosevelt went ahead and did it. 
 
 In his article on "Latitude and Longitude 
 among Reformers" he said: — 
 
 The cloistered virtue which timidly shrinks from 
 all contact with the rough world of actual life, and the 
 uneasy, self-conscious vanity which misnames itself 
 virtue, and which declines to cooperate with what- 
 ever does not adopt its own fantastic standard, are 
 rather worse than valueless, because they tend to 
 rob the forces of good of elements on which they 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 33 
 
 ought to be able to count in the ceaseless contest with 
 the forces of evil. 
 
 This determination to do the best he could 
 under existing conditions, whatever they might 
 be, was always characteristic of him. 
 
 Meantime, Governor Roosevelt attracted the 
 attention of the country by his direct and fear- 
 less manner of dealing with public affairs. In 
 1899, Mr. James Bryce said of him, "Theodore 
 Roosevelt is the hope of American politics." 
 
 As his term drew to a close, his desire was for 
 reelection to carry to full completion some of his 
 plans, but in this he was thwarted, and, much 
 against his will, was elected Vice-President of 
 the United States for the term beginning March 
 4, 1901. "Shelved," as many of his political 
 enemies said, with keen satisfaction that the 
 New York "boss" had kicked him upstairs in 
 fulfillment of his vow that Roosevelt should 
 not be Governor again. Roosevelt's relations 
 with Piatt at this time, both as regards the 
 Vice-Presidency and as to his successor in the 
 Governorship, are disclosed in the following let- 
 ters dated February 1, August 13, and August 
 20, 1900, respectively:- — 
 
34 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 Roosevelt to Piatt 
 
 February 1st, 1900. 
 
 First, and least important. If you happened to 
 have seen the "Evening Post" recently, you ought 
 to be amused, for it is moralizing with lofty indigna- 
 tion over the cringing servility I have displayed in 
 the matter of the insurance superintendent. I fear it 
 will soon take the view that it cannot possibly sup- 
 port you as long as you associate with me! 
 
 Now as to serious matters. I have, of course, done 
 a great deal of thinking about the Vice-Presidency 
 since the talk I had with you followed by the letter 
 from Lodge and the visit from Payne, of Wisconsin. 
 I have been reserving the matter to talk over with 
 you, but in view of the publication in the "Sun" this 
 morning, I would like to begin the conversation, as it 
 were, by just a line or two now. I need not speak of 
 the confidence I have in the judgment of you and 
 Lodge, yet I can't help feeling more and more that 
 the Vice-Presidency is not an office in which I could 
 do anything and not an office in which a man who is 
 still vigorous and not past middle life has much 
 chance of doing anything. As you know, I am of an 
 active nature. In spite of all the work and all the 
 worry, — and very largely because of your own con- 
 stant courtesy and consideration, my dear Senator, 
 — I have thoroughly enjoyed being Governor. I 
 have kept every promise, express or implied, I made 
 on the stump, and I feel that the Republican party is 
 stronger before the State because of my incumbency. 
 Certainly everything is being managed now on a 
 perfectly straight basis and every office is as clean as 
 a whistle. 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 35 
 
 Now, I should like to be Governor for another 
 term, especially if we are able to take hold of the 
 canals in serious shape. But as Vice-President, I 
 don't see there is anything I can do. I would be 
 simply a presiding officer, and that I should find a 
 bore. As you know, I am a man of moderate means 
 [although I am a little better off than the "Sun's" 
 article would indicate], and I should have to live 
 very simply in Washington and could not entertain 
 in any way as Mr. Hobart and Mr. Morton enter- 
 tained. My children are all growing up and I find 
 the burden of their education constantly heavier, so 
 that I am by no means sure that I ought to go into 
 public life at all, provided some remunerative work 
 offered itself. The only reason I would like to go on 
 is that as I have not been a money-maker I feel rather 
 in honor bound to leave my children the equivalent 
 in a way of a substantial sum of actual achievement 
 in politics or letters. Now, as Governor, I can achieve 
 something, but as Vice-President I should achieve 
 nothing. The more I look at it, the less I feel as if 
 the Vice-Presidency offered anything to me that 
 would warrant my taking it. 
 
 Of course, I shall not say anything until I hear 
 from you, and possibly not until I see you, but I did 
 want you to know just how I felt. 
 
 Roosevelt to Piatt 
 
 Oyster Bay, August 13th, 1900. 
 I noticed in Saturday's paper that you had spoken 
 of my suggesting Judge Andrews. I did not intend 
 to make the suggestion public, and I wrote you with 
 
36 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 entire freedom, hoping that perhaps I could suggest 
 some man who would commend himself to your judg- 
 ment as being acceptable generally to the Republi- 
 can party. I am an organization Republican of a 
 very strong type, as I understand the word "organi- 
 zation," but in trying to suggest a candidate for 
 Governor, I am not seeking either to put up an 
 organization or a non-organization man, but simply 
 a first-class Republican, who will commend himself 
 to all Republicans, and, for the matter of that, to all 
 citizens who wish good government. Judge Andrews 
 needs no endorsement from any man living as to his 
 Republicanism. From the time he was Mayor of 
 Syracuse through his long and distinguished service 
 on the bench he has been recognized as a Republican 
 and a citizen of the highest type. I write this because 
 your interview seems to convey the impression, which 
 I am sure you did not mean to convey, that in some 
 way my suggestions are antagonistic to the organi- 
 zation. I do not understand quite what you mean by 
 the suggestion of my friends, for I do not know who 
 the men are to whom you thus refer, nor why they 
 are singled out for reference as making any sugges- 
 tions about the governorship. 
 
 In your last interview, I understood that you 
 wished me to be back in the State at the time of the 
 convention. As I wish to be able to give the nominee 
 hearty and effective support, this necessarily means 
 that I do have a great interest in whom is nominated. 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 37 
 
 Roosevelt to Piatt 
 
 Oyster Bay, August 20th, 1900. 
 
 I have your letter of the 16th. I wish to see a 
 straight Republican nomination for the governor- 
 ship. The men whom I have mentioned, such as ex- 
 Judge Andrews and Secretary Root, are as good 
 Republicans as can be found in the State, and I con- 
 fess I have n't the slightest idea what you mean 
 when you say, "if we are to lower the standard and 
 nominate such men as you suggest, we might as well 
 die first as last." To nominate such a man as either 
 of these is to raise the standard; to speak of it as 
 lowering the standard is an utter misuse of words. 
 
 You say that we must nominate some Republican 
 who "will carry out the wishes of the organization," 
 and add that "I have not yet made up my mind who 
 that man is." Of one thing I am certain, that, to 
 have it publicly known that the candidate, whoever 
 he may be, "will carry out the wishes of the organi- 
 zation," would insure his defeat; for such a statement 
 implies that he would merely register the decrees of 
 a small body of men inside the Republican party, 
 instead of trying to work for the success of the party 
 as a whole and of good citizenship generally. It is 
 not the business of a Governor to "carry out the 
 wishes of the organization" unless these wishes coin- 
 cide with the good of the party and of the State. If 
 they do, then he ought to have them put into effect; 
 if they do not, then as a matter of course he ought to 
 disregard them. To pursue any other course would 
 be to show servility; and a servile man is always an 
 undesirable — not to say a contemptible — public 
 
38 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 servant. A Governor should, of course, try in good 
 faith to work with the organization; but under no 
 circumstances should he be servile to it, or "carry- 
 out its wishes" unless his own best judgment is that 
 they ought to be carried out. 
 
 I am a good organization man myself, as I under- 
 stand the word "organization," but it is in the high- 
 est degree foolish to make a fetish of the word 
 "organization" and to treat any man or any small 
 group of men as embodying the organization. The 
 organization should strive to give effective, intelli- 
 gent and honest leadership to and representation of 
 the Republican party, just as the Republican party 
 strives to give wise and upright government to the 
 State. When what I have said ceases to be true of 
 either organization or party, it means that the organ- 
 ization or party is not performing its duty, and is 
 losing the reason for its existence. 
 
 The fact is that the delegates to the National 
 Convention at Philadelphia, without much re- 
 gard to the wishes of any one, wanted Roosevelt. 
 As one of the Southern delegates said, "We 
 want a candidate we can yell for." And so the 
 ticket was made up, as some one has put it, — 
 McKinley, "the Western man with Eastern 
 sympathies," and Roosevelt," the Eastern man 
 with Western sympathies." He took a very 
 active part in the campaign. In October, 1900, 
 he wrote me: "You have no conception of the 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 39 
 
 strain I am under. The National Committee 
 have worked me nearly to death. I have spoken 
 300 times already and my voice is on the verge 
 of a complete breakdown." 
 
 I am not a superstitious person, but I said at 
 that time to a friend who has since reminded 
 me of it: "I would not like to be in McKinley's 
 shoes. He has a man of destiny behind him." 
 
 Chief Justice White told me within two years 
 that when Roosevelt came to Washington as 
 Vice-President, he called upon him, and Roose- 
 velt said that he expected to have some time on 
 his hands, as the duties of his office would not 
 be onerous. He asked Mr. Justice White, as 
 he was then, if it would be infra dig. for him to 
 attend law lectures in Washington with a view 
 to being admitted to the bar. After some re- 
 flection, Mr. Justice White said that he did not 
 think that he could with propriety do this, but 
 offered to supply Roosevelt with law books and 
 to give him a "quiz" every Saturday evening. 
 The offer was accepted with alacrity and the 
 books were collected, but before the plan could 
 be carried out, Roosevelt had ceased to be Vice- 
 President. This is a good illustration of his pas- 
 sion for improving his time. 
 
4 o THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 September 6, 1901, President McKinley was 
 shot at Buffalo. He died on Friday, September 
 13, and Theodore Roosevelt became President 
 of the United States. 
 
 The news of McKinley's death, conveyed by 
 messenger, found Roosevelt in the Adirondacks 
 on a tramping expedition just returning from 
 the top of Mount Marcy. A ten-mile walk, a 
 rapid and reckless ride in the storm, and a flight 
 of a mile a minute by railroad brought him to 
 Buffalo, where he took the oath of office on 
 Saturday, September 14. In response to the 
 request of Mr. Root, then Secretary of War, 
 that he take the oath of office at once, Roose- 
 velt said : — 
 
 I shall take the oath of office in obedience to your 
 request, sir, and in doing so, it shall be my aim to 
 continue absolutely unbroken the policies of Presi- 
 dent McKinley for the peace, prosperity, and honor 
 of our beloved country. 
 
 After he had taken the oath of office, he 
 said: — 
 
 In order to help me keep the promise I have taken, 
 I would ask the Cabinet to retain their positions at 
 least for some months to come. I shall rely upon 
 you, gentlemen, upon your loyalty and fidelity, to 
 help me. 
 
FROM 1876 TO 1901 41 
 
 At this time I wrote Roosevelt as follows: — 
 
 Princeton, Massachusetts, 
 22 Sept., 1901. 
 
 I have been profoundly moved by the sad incidents 
 of the recent past, but am beginning to see that 
 out of this great sorrow much good may come to us. 
 You cannot move eighty millions of people with a 
 common impulse without bringing them permanently 
 into closer sympathy. 
 
 If William McKinley has cemented this Union 
 with his blood, the sacrifice becomes a triumph. I 
 have for a long time felt certain that you would be 
 President of the United States by nomination and 
 election. I feel so now. Meantime, is it not some- 
 thing to be deeply grateful for, that you have a 
 united country and a united party behind you, free 
 from any bitterness that always accompanies a con- 
 test for nomination and election? 
 
 May God give you the strength and wisdom, as I 
 know He will, to fill the great office, to which you 
 have been so mysteriously called, to the lasting bene- 
 fit of your countrymen. 
 
 To this I received the following reply : — 
 
 Executive Mansion 
 Washington 
 
 September 25, 1901. 
 
 I thank you for your letter and appreciate it. 
 
 Certainly no one had ever reached the office 
 of President through such an unusual pathway. 
 No one would seriously contend that, up to this 
 
42 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 point, Roosevelt had given evidence of any 
 political ambition or done anything with the 
 purpose to advance his political fortunes. He 
 entered the Legislature unexpectedly and, as he 
 thought and intended, for a single year. After 
 three years of service, he voluntarily abandoned 
 politics and engaged in other pursuits. He was 
 called to a place in the Civil Service Commis- 
 sion and as Police Commissioner, neither office 
 offering the slightest hope of political prefer- 
 ment. He became Assistant Secretary of the 
 Navy and left the office to be a soldier. He was 
 elected Governor without the slightest volition 
 of his own, was forced into the Vice-Presidency, 
 and made President by the act of God. There 
 is lacking in his progress every element that 
 usually makes for political advancement. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CHANGING SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL 
 CONDITIONS 
 
 I SHALL in what follows disregard the chron- 
 ological order of events and treat separately 
 the different topics which I discuss. Before 
 dealing with the Roosevelt Administration, it 
 may be well to consider some of the changes 
 that had taken place in the country since the 
 Republican party was founded. Not only were 
 the political problems very different in 1900 
 from those in 1865, but the electorate had ex- 
 perienced a complete transformation. New gen- 
 erations had been born and our population 
 had been greatly increased by immigration 
 from many foreign countries, at first from the 
 north and then from the south of Europe. I 
 have a theory that the Civil War had a far 
 greater influence upon the political history of 
 the country subsequent to 1865 than is gener- 
 ally realized. Up to that time it was the great- 
 est war of history; more men were engaged in it, 
 and more were lost upon the field of battle and 
 
44 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 by disease than in any other one conflict until 
 the present colossal struggle in Europe. The 
 character of the men was higher on both sides 
 than in any of the armies the world had ever 
 seen. The soldiers, for the most part, were mere 
 boys. Speaking now of the North, we had, I 
 believe, at one time or another, something like 
 2,650,000 enlistments in the army and navy 
 out of a population of 22,000,000. In Massa- 
 chusetts we had 152,000 enlistments out of a 
 population of 1,230,000. Suppose that three 
 individuals were, through family and other ties, 
 vitally interested in the fortunes of every sol- 
 dier, we had out of our population of 1,230,000, 
 say 600,000 who were in or followed every battle 
 with the keenest personal solicitude, and there 
 should be added to this number many more 
 who, without any direct personal stake in the 
 conflict through near kinsmen in the field, were 
 engaged actively in relief work for the soldiers 
 or for their families at home. 
 
 Apply this same measure to all of the twenty- 
 three loyal States, and we should find over nine 
 millions of our people who were in the army or 
 had a direct personal interest in its fortunes. 
 Similarly, in the South, out of a white popula- 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 45 
 
 tion of something less than 5,500,000 with an 
 enrollment of 1,100,000 in their armies, there 
 were 4,400,000 persons who were serving at one 
 time or another, or had a direct personal in- 
 terest in the army. When these men were mus- 
 tered out, being still, for the most part, young in 
 years, but hardened veterans in the sternest of 
 experiences and prematurely matured, they 
 were scattered North and South among our 
 32,000,000 people. 
 
 At the North, through the Grand Army of 
 the Republic, and at the South, through a similar 
 organization, the war spirit was kept active in 
 every community in the country with all the 
 convictions and prejudices inseparable there- 
 from. The experience on the field of battle by 
 the men, and at home by the men and women 
 who waited anxiously, was one never to be for- 
 gotten by that generation. The rank and file of 
 these great armies was speedily absorbed in civil 
 life. Many of the soldiers entered public life and 
 were members of our State Legislatures and of 
 both houses of Congress. In the 54th Congress, 
 veterans were a majority of the Judiciary, Mili- 
 tary Affairs, Appropriations, and Ways and 
 Means Committees. It is a fair statement that 
 
46 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 our industrial and political life was dominated 
 by the opinions that had been formed and 
 hardened during the war, and even our best 
 men, or some of them, took into the field of 
 business and politics the rule of conduct of the 
 battlefield, that might makes right, that the end 
 justifies the means. Burke says somewhere: 
 "Wars suspend the rules of moral obligation 
 and what is long suspended is in danger of being 
 totally abrogated. Civil Wars strike deepest of 
 all into the manners of the people; they vitiate 
 their politics, they pervert their natural taste 
 and relish of equity and justice." 
 
 Democrats and Republicans fought shoulder 
 to shoulder in the Northern armies. Never- 
 theless, the North looked upon the war as a 
 Republican war and upon the great war meas- 
 ures as Republican measures, and so it hap- 
 pened that the same spirit that animated the 
 army in the field dominated the party in poli- 
 tics. An election must be carried — why! to 
 save the country, and in that holy cause all 
 means were justifiable, that were necessary to 
 attain that end. The Republican party that had 
 fought the war through was the dominant party, 
 its policies were carried into execution with 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 47 
 
 the determination and precision which charac- 
 terized the movements of an army. The govern- 
 ment which had been saved at a fearful cost 
 was to be administered by those who had saved 
 it, as they thought best. To illustrate the hold 
 the Republican party had on its members who 
 had lived through the Civil War, I shall quote, 
 from an article that appeared in one of the mag- 
 azines some time ago, what a young man said 
 of his father: — 
 
 To him it was little short of treason to vote any 
 other than the Republican ticket. I remember now 
 the gloom in our family when we heard that Blaine 
 was beaten. I think my father had an idea that 
 Cleveland would undo all the achievements of the 
 war. At that time it was impressed on us children 
 that the Republican party had saved the Union. The 
 name "Republican" became pretty nearly sacred 
 to us. 
 
 I am not now criticizing the spirit, — indeed, 
 I have much sympathy with it, — I am stat- 
 ing the fact. It was a great generation of men 
 that the war developed. Every President from 
 Grant to McKinley, save Arthur and Cleve- 
 land, had served in the war, and Arthur was, I 
 believe, prominent in the administration of the 
 New York militia, and was trained in the same 
 
48 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 school with the other Republican leaders. Is it 
 any cause for surprise, then, that the purpose, 
 the discipline, the determination which domi- 
 nated the Union army on the battlefield should 
 have dominated the Republican party in poli- 
 tics. Thus animated, it accomplished much 
 and also afforded much just ground for criti- 
 cism, for the very reason that some of its leaders 
 carried the ethics of war into political strife, 
 and, with their experience, could hardly have 
 been expected to do anything else. While that 
 generation lived, there was nothing of doubt 
 or uncertainty in the policies or management of 
 the party. When that generation passed off 
 the stage, — as it did with the death of Mc- 
 Kinley and Hanna, — a new generation suc- 
 ceeded to the management of the affairs of state; 
 a generation to which the war was a matter of 
 history, rather than of experience; a generation 
 that had not passed through that awful trial; 
 in some ways, perhaps, a better generation, in 
 others not so well disciplined; certainly a differ- 
 ent one. 
 
 It was by men of this later generation that 
 our political and social questions were to be 
 discussed and settled. The men of the former 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 49 
 
 generation could not do more than save the 
 country; that certainly was a service that en- 
 titles them to our gratitude for all time: to them, 
 other questions by comparison naturally seemed 
 insignificant. Thus it happened that the men 
 of the new generation, secure in their citizen- 
 ship and threatened by no great calamity, were 
 engaged in building a superstructure upon 
 foundations which were laid under conditions 
 of extreme difficulty. Meantime, the spirit of 
 grim determination of those who, in sweat and 
 blood, preserved the Union was succeeded by a 
 spirit of unrest, of doubt, and of inquiry. That 
 feeling was increasing when Roosevelt became 
 President and was more clearly accentuated 
 when he was nominated in 1904 and became the 
 dominant force in our political life. 
 
 If, then, we can assume that the war spirit, 
 as I will call it for lack of a better name, per- 
 vaded the Republican party and the North and 
 insured unity of action for so many years, what 
 happened to weaken it and to make discord 
 where, in spite of temporary lapses, compara- 
 tive harmony so long prevailed? I have sug- 
 gested that the war spirit had not only grown 
 weaker because the generation inspired by it 
 
5 o THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 had passed on, but also because the weakening 
 influence was being spread over a constantly 
 increasing number of people through the in- 
 crease in our population, by the birth of new 
 generations, and by immigration. The popula- 
 tion of the twenty-three loyal States, in i860, 
 was 22,044,714. The population of all the States, 
 excluding the eleven States once in rebellion, 
 was, in 1910, 69,572,332, an increase of 47,527,- 
 618; so that even had the Northern war spirit 
 continued in unabated strength it must have 
 influenced a constantly and rapidly diminishing 
 proportion of the people. Then, too, the spirit 
 could not be inherited, for the reason that much 
 of this increase in the population of the North- 
 ern States was due to immigrants who can have 
 little share in our traditions. Since i860 we have 
 received into the country, including the year 
 1912, 24,573,337 immigrants, and most of them 
 settled in the North and West. Many, no doubt, 
 have returned to their native countries. Of the 
 total white male population, twenty-one years 
 old or over, North Dakota contains of foreign- 
 born, fifty-eight per cent; Minnesota, fifty-one 
 per cent; Wisconsin, forty-five per cent; one third 
 of the population of Massachusetts is foreign- 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 51 
 
 born. In 1910, there were about 13,345,545 f° r_ 
 eign-born whites in the United States. In the 
 eleven seceding States about 3 per cent of the 
 white population were foreign-born. In the 
 States other than the eleven seceding States, 
 including the colored people, about 19 per cent 
 of the entire population were foreign-born. It 
 is hardly necessary to multiply statistics to 
 show how disproportionately small the foreign- 
 born population is in the South. My conclu- 
 sion, then, as to the section of country outside 
 of the seceding States, is that a very potent 
 influence in the apparent lack of unity in the 
 Republican party in these latter days, and one 
 to which too little importance has been at- 
 tached, has been the weakening of the war spirit 
 accompanied by a large increase in our popula- 
 tion, a considerable portion of which is unin- 
 fluenced by our traditions. The question might 
 naturally be asked, if what I say about the 
 Northern section of the country be true, why 
 is it that there has been no disintegration of the 
 solid South? The answer is that the animosity 
 engendered by the war was naturally very much 
 more intense in the South than in the North 
 and that the native population in the South has 
 
52 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 not been increased by immigration to the extent 
 that it has been in the North. 
 
 Atone time or another substantially 1,200,000 
 men from the Confederate States were under 
 arms during the Civil War, — practically the 
 entire population available for military service, 
 — so that it is fair to say — assuming, as I 
 have for the North, that three of the population 
 of the South were vitally interested in the for- 
 tunes of each soldier — that between four and 
 five millions of the population of the South 
 had a direct personal contact with the opera- 
 tions of the war. The white population was 
 5,469,462. We may go even further and say 
 that the entire white population of the South 
 was brought in direct personal contact with the 
 experience of the battlefield. Almost all the 
 battles were fought in the South, sections of 
 the country were stripped bare by both armies, 
 the fortunes of many great families were en- 
 tirely destroyed, and very naturally, when the 
 war was over, a feeling of great bitterness re- 
 mained, a feeling that has been transmitted from 
 one generation to another. For this reason we 
 have had in the South what we would naturally 
 expect to find under these conditions, a solid 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 53 
 
 support for the Democratic party, representing 
 not so much allegiance to that party as an un- 
 dying hostility to the Republican party, which 
 the Southern people held responsible for the 
 war, for the equally cruel experiences of the re- 
 construction period, and for the negro problem. 
 It may be added that in the South the de- 
 scendants of those who lived through the Civil 
 War feel, at least some of them, even more bit- 
 terly than their elders, because, as a result of 
 the losses incident upon the war, they have 
 been denied opportunities for education and a 
 position which by inheritance is theirs, and have 
 been compelled to turn for a bare livelihood to 
 occupations which in the earlier days would 
 have been considered ill suited to them. 
 
 That feeling of bitterness is, of course, grow- 
 ing weaker as new generations enter upon the 
 duties of citizenship, but it has remained a very 
 potent influence much longer than the corre- 
 sponding influence in the North. 
 
 I was a delegate to the Convention that nomi- 
 nated Roosevelt for President in 1904. A por- 
 trait, of heroic size, of Mark Hanna, hung over 
 the platform. I said to a man who sat next 
 to me, "What would happen if Hanna were 
 
54 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 living?" He said in reply, "He would be nomi- 
 nated here to-day." Of course he would not 
 have been nominated; I merely mention this 
 as indicating that the "old order" which was 
 incarnated in Hanna had not then passed away; 
 but it was passing. I felt it in the atmosphere 
 ofj the Convention. An entirely new type of 
 man was President, who had no knowledge of 
 the Civil War excepting that gained from books 
 and from his family associations both with the 
 North and with the South. When McKinley 
 and Hanna died, the old dynasty fell. Roose- 
 velt became President in his own right March 
 4, 1905. He was not hampered by either a busi- 
 ness or professional experience. I mean by this 
 that he had not acquired that over-caution which 
 is inseparable from either calling; the former 
 leading to a dread of anything that will "dis- 
 turb business," and the latter forbidding any 
 action based upon anything short of legal evi- 
 dence. Roosevelt, as I have tried to demon- 
 strate, was intense in his devotion to the job in 
 hand, whatever it might be, intent upon achiev- 
 ing results, and a man who never took counsel 
 of his fears. I do not mean by that to say that 
 he acted purely from impulse, though his acts 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 55 
 
 may sometimes have given that impression. 
 John Hay, after he had been in his cabinet for 
 three years, said of him: — 
 
 Roosevelt is prompt and energetic, but he takes 
 infinite pains to get at the facts before he acts. In all 
 the crises in which he has been accused of undue 
 haste, his action has been the result of long medita- 
 tion and well-reasoned conviction. If he thinks rap- 
 idly, that is no fault; he thinks thoroughly, and that 
 is the essential. 
 
 The people were ready to follow a new leader- 
 ship. The former generation had successfully 
 fought for the preservation of the nation, had 
 stimulated the building of railroads by lavish 
 government grants, had tempted settlers to take 
 up lands in the West upon their own terms. 
 The new generation, under the leadership of 
 Roosevelt, was to fight for conservation of our 
 resources, for the quickening of the public con- 
 science which, once enlightened, would demand 
 the proper regulation of corporations, would 
 curb the tendency to private monopoly in public 
 land and natural resources, and would recognize 
 that labor has its rights as well as capital, and 
 that neither should prey upon the other. It 
 must in truth be said that the people were far 
 in advance of Congress when Roosevelt became 
 
56 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 President and Congress continued to lag behind 
 for some time thereafter. Both branches were 
 still largely in control of men bred in the "war 
 school" of which I have spoken. They led well 
 and wisely for the most part, but looked with 
 suspicion upon the new school of thought, and 
 while they granted much, it was with a some- 
 what niggardly hand and protesting spirit. Do 
 not imagine that I am over-critical of these men. 
 I belonged myself to that wing of the party. In 
 safe progress there must always be those who 
 press forward, the pioneers, and others of just 
 as patriotic purpose who perform the perhaps 
 more ignoble but no less necessary task of seeing 
 that the wheels of progress do not revolve in 
 the wrong direction. The conservative of to-day 
 was the progressive of yesterday, the progres- 
 sive of to-day is the conservative of to-morrow, 
 so rapidly do our views change in response to 
 public opinion. 
 
 I must not omit to say a few words about 
 changed industrial conditions between 1865 and 
 1900 which created an entirely new set of prob- 
 lems to be dealt with. Our great industrial 
 progress has been made since the Civil War, 
 and it was not until 1894 that we became first 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 57 
 
 among the manufacturing nations of the world; 
 but it is to the development in the years follow- 
 ing upon 1897 that I would call particular atten- 
 tion, for it was then that the problems with 
 which we have been and are attempting to deal 
 were thrust upon us with startling rapidity. 
 
 There had been a growing practice, among 
 our manufacturers and managers of railroads, to 
 have some understanding among themselves as 
 to the prices at which their commodities should 
 be sold, in order to prevent disastrous competi- 
 tion. I shall here discontinue further reference 
 by name to railroads, as I shall discuss them 
 elsewhere. This led to the formation of trade 
 combinations and pools, in different branches 
 of business, more or less protective, the weakest 
 form being a simple understanding as to prices 
 and the strongest form a pool when, say, five 
 companies engaged in the same industry would 
 allot the sale of their product in certain propor- 
 tions: one, fifty per cent; another, thirty, an- 
 other, ten, and so on, aggregating one hundred 
 per cent. Any one overselling his allotment paid 
 into the pool, any one underselling his allotment 
 received from the pool. All these devices were 
 more or less ineffective. A disturbing influence 
 
S 8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 now appeared, as a result of the decision, in 1897, 
 in the Trans-Missouri cases, construing the Sher- 
 man Anti-trust Act of 1890, which I shall ex- 
 amine in more detail later. The Supreme Court 
 in this decision held that the Sherman Act 
 applied to all contracts in restraint of trade, 
 whether they be reasonable or unreasonable, j 
 
 It followed from this decision that all con- 
 tracts affecting interstate commerce which in 
 any way restrained trade were invalid and 
 criminal. 
 
 s It became impossible, therefore, for manu- 
 facturers and others safely to enter into any 
 agreement, however reasonable, for the main- 
 tenance of prices, and hence they were driven 
 to the conclusion that if they could not combine 
 they must unite; in other words, it being a crimi- 
 nal offense for A, B, and C to agree together 
 to maintain reasonable prices for their products, 
 they were compelled to consolidate their in- 
 terests to get the protection they needed, and 
 thus it appears that the decision in the Trans- 
 Missouri cases had a powerful influence in has- 
 tening the formation of the great consolidations 
 or trusts with which we are familiar. 
 
 And here another factor entered the field of 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 59 
 
 business consolidation — the bankers; there- 
 tofore any permanent consolidation of interests 
 in the form of combinations and pools had been 
 unsatisfactory because the members would not 
 all keep faith, and often one stubborn person 
 refusing to make any kind of a trade agreement 
 would impose disastrous conditions upon his 
 business competitors. It was never dreamed 
 prior to 1897 that some outside power could 
 step in and, if necessary, buy out all the mem- 
 bers of any given industry, but this power the 
 bankers, with their great financial resources, 
 supplied. It was a sort of Aladdin's lamp. A 
 given industry, if controlled, could make prof- 
 its of #500,000 per year; the bankers stepped in 
 and would offer #5,000,000 for all the companies 
 involved — the individual companies could take 
 cash or stock for their properties. The sanguine 
 took stock, the pessimists took cash, and the 
 deal was closed overnight. A certain amount of 
 preferred stock was issued — cumulative, per- 
 haps, and sold to the banker's customers; the 
 promoters took the common stock, and would 
 at a later day perhaps sell at a good price what 
 had cost them little. There was nothing neces- 
 sarily immoral about this, but it created a large 
 
60 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 number of consolidations or trusts, as they were 
 miscalled, concentrated the control of enormous 
 capitalization, and made the "trust problem," 
 which we are far from having settled yet. These, 
 then, were the conditions, political and indus- 
 trial, which confronted Roosevelt when he be- 
 came President, and if he pressed new questions 
 upon the country for consideration, it was be- 
 cause changed conditions demanded their dis- 
 cussion and settlement. 
 
 These questions were forced upon him by the 
 progress of events over which he had no con- 
 trol. He, undaunted, did not dodge them, but 
 insistently and persistently forced their consid- 
 eration upon the country. 
 
 It is not my purpose to consider in any de- 
 tail all the events of the Roosevelt Administra- 
 tion. If one would get a correct impression of 
 a rugged coast, it is only necessary to note the 
 prominent headlands and the deep indenta- 
 tions, and with these alone history will be con- 
 cerned. Roosevelt brought to his great task 
 high ideals, prodigious industry, an active and 
 an educated mind, a good deal of political ex- 
 perience, and an honest desire to do his best. 
 
 There are many subjects to which he devoted 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 61 
 
 much attention and of which he spoke in almost 
 all his messages to Congress. Prominent among 
 them was the proper method of dealing with 
 the trusts. In his first message to Congress, 
 delivered in December, 1901, after he had been 
 President for three months, he spoke of changed 
 business conditions, urged caution in dealing 
 with corporations, and deprecated legislation 
 in the absence of calm inquiry. He recognized, 
 however, certain harmful tendencies and ex- 
 pressed the opinion that combinations should 
 be supervised rather than prohibited. He 
 thought publicity the first essential in dealing 
 with the subject — a suggestion he had made 
 when he was Governor of New York. He added 
 that, in his opinion, a law could be drafted akin 
 to the Interstate Commerce Act which would 
 give Congress effective control over these large 
 corporations. 
 
 At this point it may be well to state what I 
 understand to have been the law on this subject 
 when Roosevelt succeeded to the Presidency, 
 to which I have already briefly alluded. 
 
 The Sherman Act was passed July 2 y 1890, 
 for the purpose, as it was then stated, of ex- 
 tending the provisions of the common law to 
 
62 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 interstate commerce and to enforce them by 
 suitable penalties. By the common law is meant, 
 "those principles, usages, and rules of action 
 applicable to the government and security of 
 persons and of property which do not rest for 
 their authority upon any express and positive 
 declaration of the will of the legislature." 
 
 Contracts in unreasonable restraint of trade 
 had always been void at common law. The 
 enactment of the Sherman Act made the com- 
 mon law statute law for the United States and 
 something more, and declared, in substance, 
 every contract in whatever form in restraint of 
 interstate trade to be illegal, and that every 
 person making such contract should be deemed 
 guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by fine or 
 imprisonment at the discretion of the court; and 
 that every person monopolizing or attempting 
 to monopolize any part of interstate trade 
 should be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor 
 punishable by fine or imprisonment at the dis- 
 cretion of the court. 
 
 The act as at first interpreted by the courts 
 did not seriously embarrass business combina- 
 tions, for the reason that it was held not to ap- 
 ply to contracts not in unreasonable restraint 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 63 
 
 of trade. As a rule, where the combination 
 affected did not control the entire product in 
 any given industry, it was held to be not in- 
 hibited by the Sherman Act, which was passed 
 with the declared purpose to extend to inter- 
 state commerce the common law affecting con- 
 tracts in restraint of trade. It was a well-known 
 doctrine of the common law that the validity 
 of contracts restricting competition was to be 
 determined by the reasonableness of the restric- 
 tion, and hence contracts made for a legal pur- 
 pose, which were not unreasonably injurious 
 to the public welfare, and which imposed no 
 heavier restraint on trade than the interest of 
 the favored party required, were, as a rule, held 
 to be valid, both before and for a time after the 
 passage of the Sherman Act. 
 
 In March, 1897, in the Trans-Missouri cases, 
 to which I have referred, the Supreme Court 
 placed the construction upon the Sherman 
 Anti-Trust Act (at least it was generally so 
 understood) that all contracts affecting inter- 
 state commerce which in any way restrained 
 trade, whether reasonable or not, were invalid, 
 the conclusion of a majority of the court being 
 that "Congress has, so far as its jurisdiction 
 
64 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 extends, prohibited all contracts or combina- 
 tions in the form of trusts entered into for the 
 purpose of restraining trade and commerce." 
 
 This decision was, as a matter of course, fol- 
 lowed by the lower courts, and the trade com- 
 binations which before the decision had been 
 held to be legal were by it made illegal. This 
 construction of the act led, as we all remember, 
 to much disturbance because business men, act- 
 ing in good faith in entering into trade agree- 
 ments for the control of prices to prevent dis- 
 astrous competition, agreements which were 
 very common in the business world, made 
 themselves liable to criminal prosecution. 
 
 The gravity of the situation was widely rec- 
 ognized not only by lawyers and business men, 
 but by publicists and all thoughtful men in- 
 terested in public affairs. Such, in brief, was 
 the condition of this matter when Roosevelt 
 came to the Presidency, and for this he sought 
 a remedy. 
 
 In 1902, he received the degree of LL.D. from 
 Harvard, which President Eliot conferred in 
 these words: — 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United 
 States, from his youth a member of this Society of 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 65 
 
 Scholars, now in his prime, a true type of the sturdy 
 gentleman and high-minded public servant in a 
 democracy. 
 
 At this time Secretary Hay, in a letter to 
 Roosevelt, referring to the Alumni Dinner, 
 wrote: "President Eliot, when he sat down, 
 said: 'What a man! Genius, force, and courage, 
 and such evident honesty!'" 
 
 In Roosevelt's message of December, 1902, 
 he asked for a special appropriation to enforce 
 the Anti-Trust Act and condemned the reduc- 
 tion of the tariff as a means for reaching the 
 trusts. He demanded fair treatment for both 
 capital and labor, and said: — 
 
 Exactly as business men find that they must often 
 work through corporations, ... so it is often neces- 
 sary for laboring men to work in federation. Both 
 kinds of federation, capitalistic and labor, can do 
 much good, and, as a necessary corollary, they can 
 both do evil . . . attack should be made not upon 
 either form, but upon what may be bad in both. 
 
 In response to the President's recommenda- 
 tion, Congress, in February, 1903, created the 
 Department of Commerce and Labor, including 
 the Bureau of Corporations, with authority to 
 secure proper publicity. 
 
 It may be said here that Roosevelt pressed 
 
66 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 to a hearing, in 1904, the case of the Northern 
 Securities Company, which involved the valid- 
 ity of an agreement between the majority 
 owners in the Great Northern Railroad and the 
 Northern Pacific Railroad to consolidate their 
 interests in a holding company. The relief 
 sought in the courts was an injunction against 
 the perfecting of the arrangement and its dis- 
 ruption so far as it might have been effected, 
 the allegation being that this was such a com- 
 bination in restraint of trade as was inhibited 
 by the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The court sus- 
 tained the contention and held that this was 
 an arrangement to avoid competition and to 
 monopolize transportation in the territory 
 affected. This effectually fixed the jurisdiction 
 of the Government over this class of transac- 
 tions and was the purpose which Roosevelt had 
 in view in pressing the suit. Some doubt upon 
 this point had existed because of the Knight 
 case, decided in January, 1895. This involved 
 the purchase, by the American Sugar Refining 
 Company, of the stock of four corporations 
 engaged in the refining and sale of sugar in 
 Philadelphia. The court held that the acquisi- 
 tion of the stock did not bring the case within 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 67 
 
 the provisions of the Sherman Act, and evi- 
 dently disregarded the purpose, which was to 
 effect a monopoly in the sale of sugar. It will 
 be noticed that this narrow construction of the 
 act, which was thought at the time to defeat 
 the purpose of the Sherman Act, was practi- 
 cally abandoned in the decision of the case of 
 the Northern Securities Company. 
 
 In a speech made at the Union League Club, 
 February 3, 1904, Elihu Root said of the Presi- 
 dent: "You say he is an unsafe man. I tell you 
 he is really the great conservator of property 
 and of rights." And in support of this asser- 
 tion Mr. Root spoke of the President's attitude 
 toward labor unions and toward trusts, for- 
 bidding, on the one hand, the unionizing of 
 government employment, and, on the other 
 hand, the pressing of the Northern Securities 
 case which checked speculation and avoided a 
 panic. 
 
 Speaking of the Northern Securities case, 
 
 Roosevelt once said to me: — ■ 
 
 I talked over the matter in full with Knox. He 
 believed that the Knight case would not have been 
 decided over again as it actually was decided, and 
 that if we could differentiate the Northern Securities 
 case from it, we could secure what would be in fact 
 
68 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 (although not in name) a reversal of it. This I felt it 
 imperative to secure. The Knight case practically 
 denied the Federal Government power over corpora- 
 tions, because it whittled to nothing the meaning of 
 "commerce between the States." It had to be upset 
 or we could not get any efficient control by the 
 National Government. 
 
 In his message of December, 1905, the Presi- 
 dent reiterated his views about corporations 
 and said that during the previous four years 
 the Department of Justice had devoted more 
 time to the enforcement of the Anti-Trust Law 
 than to anything else, and added: — 
 
 I do not believe in the Government interfering 
 with private business more than is necessary. I do 
 not believe in the Government undertaking any work 
 which can with propriety be left in private hands. 
 But neither do I believe in the Government flinching 
 from overseeing any work when it becomes evident 
 that abuses are sure to obtain therein unless there is 
 government supervision. 
 
 In his message of January, 1908, he said, 
 what he had so often said in substance before: — 
 
 The law should correct that portion of the Sher- 
 man Act which prohibits all combinations of the 
 character above described, whether they be reason- 
 able or unreasonable, but this should be done only 
 as part of a general scheme to provide for this effec- 
 tive and thoroughgoing supervision by the National 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 69 
 
 Government of all the operations of the big inter- 
 state business concerns. 
 
 In his special message of March, 1908, the 
 President said: — 
 
 This Anti-Trust Act was a most unwisely drawn 
 statute. ... It is mischievous and unwholesome to 
 keep upon the statute book, unmodified, a law like 
 the Anti-Trust Law, which, while in practice only 
 partially effective against vicious combinations, has 
 nevertheless in theory been construed so as sweep- 
 ingly to prohibit every combination for the trans- 
 action of modern business. . . . The Congress cannot 
 afford to leave it on the statute books in its present 
 shape. 
 
 And he added that a bill had been presented 
 to remedy the situation. So far as business 
 combinations were concerned, this bill provided 
 that any party to a contract or combination 
 might file a copy of such contract with the Com- 
 missioner of Corporations, whereupon the com- 
 missioner, with the concurrence of the Secre- 
 tary of Commerce and Labor, might, with or 
 without a hearing, enter an order declaring that 
 in his judgment such contract or combination 
 is in unreasonable restraint of trade. If no such 
 order should be made within thirty days after 
 filing such contract, no prosecution by the 
 
70 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 United States should lie unless the same be in 
 unreasonable restraint of trade among the sev- 
 eral States or foreign nations. However, the 
 United States might institute a suit on account 
 of any contract or combination of which a copy 
 should not have been filed or as to which an 
 order should have been entered as provided. 
 
 This bill was considered by a subcommittee 
 of the House Committee on the Judiciary, but 
 was never reported. It will be noticed that none 
 of the legal questions were avoided in this bill. 
 The duty of determining whether a contract 
 is or is not in unreasonable restraint of trade 
 was in the first instance merely shifted from the 
 court to the Commissioner of Corporations. 
 This was not a very good remedy for the de- 
 fects in the Sherman Act, and I told the Presi- 
 dent so at the time. "You may be right," he 
 said; "we may have to try something else." 
 He had no personal pride in any particular 
 bill; what he wanted was a remedy. I am em- 
 phasizing here his readiness to deal with the 
 question in a constructive and not a destructive 
 manner, and the entire absence on his part of 
 hostility to combined capital as such, but merely 
 to the attendant evils. 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 71 
 
 In the Standard Oil and Tobacco cases, de- 
 cided in 191 1, the Supreme Court adopted the 
 "rule of reason" in the interpretation of the 
 Sherman Act. Just how far it will extend is 
 uncertain, as these cases involved monopolies. 
 
 The uncertainty as to the scope of the deci- 
 sion must probably remain until a case is de- 
 cided involving the control of a considerable 
 percentage, say, fifty per cent, or less, of a busi- 
 ness into which others are free to enter or in 
 which they are actually engaged. The case of 
 the United States Steel Corporation, recently 
 decided in the District Court of New Jersey, 
 favorably to the corporation, and the pending 
 Harvester Case are of this sort. 
 
 [A wise construction of the Sherman Act 
 would seem to be that no combination required 
 by the business necessities of those entering it 
 should, where the monopoly feature is absent, 
 and where the business is one into which others 
 are free to enter, be held to be a contract in re- 
 straint of trade within the terms of the Sher- 
 man Act. 
 
 The Sherman Act as applied to railroads in- 
 volves a somewhat different question, and con- 
 cerning this President Roosevelt said in 1908: — 
 
72 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 The railways of the country should be put com- 
 pletely under the Interstate Commerce Commission 
 and removed from the domain of the Anti-Trust Law. 
 The power of the Commission should be made thor- 
 oughgoing, so that it could exercise complete super- 
 vision and control over the issue of securities as well 
 as over the raising and lowering of rates. As regards 
 rates, at least, this power should be summary. The 
 power to investigate the financial operations and 
 accounts of the railways has been one of the most 
 valuable features in recent legislation. Power to 
 make combinations and traffic agreements should 
 be explicitly conferred upon the railroads, the per- 
 mission of the Commission being first gained and the 
 combination or agreement being published in all its 
 details. 
 
 This seems to me entirely sound. The fact 
 is that in the Trans-Missouri cases, in 1897, 
 the minority opinion raised the question as to 
 whether the provisions of the Act of 1890 were 
 intended to apply to contracts between inter- 
 state carriers, entered into for the purpose of 
 securing fairness in their dealings with each 
 other, and tending to protect the public against 
 improper discrimination and sudden changes in 
 rates, and whether that statute was intended 
 to abrogate the power of railway companies to 
 make contracts that were expressly sanctioned 
 by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. It 
 
CHANGING CONDITIONS 73 
 
 was pointed out that the Interstate Commerce 
 Act was intended to regulate interstate com- 
 merce transported by railway carriers, and that 
 the Act of 1890 was a general law not referring 
 to carriers of interstate commerce. The minor- 
 ity opinion, concurred in by four justices of the 
 court, was, that there was no intention on the 
 part of Congress to abrogate, in whole or in 
 part, the provisions of the Act of 1887 by the 
 general Act of 1890, and that the Interstate 
 Commerce Act of 1887 expressed the purpose 
 of Congress to deal with a complicated, partic- 
 ular subject requiring special legislation, and 
 that the act was an initiation of a policy by 
 Congress looking to the development and work- 
 ing-out of a harmonious system to regulate 
 interstate transportation. There is grave doubt 
 as to whether Congress ever intended that con- 
 tracts for the transportation of persons or prop- 
 erty from one State to another should be cov- 
 ered by the provisions of the Sherman Act of 
 1890. 
 
 It may fairly be added that the power now 
 possessed by the office of the Attorney-General 
 over interstate transportation is one that should 
 not exist. Under the penal section of the Sher- 
 
74 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 man Act, the Attorney-General is practically 
 given the power to compel the readjustment 
 of the ownership of railroad properties under 
 threat of criminal prosecution of individuals. 
 This power, rightly exercised by one Adminis- 
 tration, might be wrongly exercised by another, 
 and two individuals holding the office of Attor- 
 ney-General might reach different conclusions 
 upon the same state of facts. Our railroad sys- 
 tems should not be at the mercy of any indi- 
 vidual, but should be under the absolute control 
 of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and 
 once under such control should be free from the 
 harassment and great expense both to them and 
 to the Government of suits under the Sherman 
 Act which can only confuse the situation, al- 
 ready sufficiently complex. The transportation 
 business should be and must be, if efficient, a 
 government-regulated monopoly. 
 
 Roosevelt and the Negro 
 
 Several incidents in Roosevelt's Administra- 
 tion brought the race question into great promi- 
 nence. 
 
 In October, 1901, he invited Booker Wash- 
 ington to dine at the White House. The South 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE NEGRO 75 
 
 uttered angry protests and many people in the 
 North condemned the act. 
 
 The Memphis "Commercial Appeal" said: 
 "President Roosevelt has committed a blunder 
 that is worse than a crime." 
 
 The New Orleans "Statesman" said that 
 "his action was little less than a studied insult 
 to the South." 
 
 The Memphis "Scimiter" said that it was 
 "the most damnable outrage that has ever been 
 perpetrated by any citizen of the United 
 States." 
 
 On Memorial Day in 1902, Roosevelt, in his 
 address, condemned lynching, which the South 
 regarded as a sectional utterance. 
 
 The President appointed Dr. Crum, a negro, 
 Collector of the Port of Charleston. A great 
 protest was made, and Republican Senators 
 asked him to withdraw the appointment, which 
 he refused to do, saying that if the matter were 
 not acted upon he would make a recess appoint- 
 ment. This he did. 
 
 In a letter to a citizen of Charleston, South 
 Carolina, who protested against the appoint- 
 ment of Dr. Crum, the President stated his 
 general principle as follows: — 
 
76 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office. 
 So far as I legitimately can, I shall always endeavor 
 to pay regard to the wishes and feelings of the people 
 of each locality; but I cannot consent to take the 
 position that the doorway of hope — the door of 
 opportunity — is to be shut upon any man, no mat- 
 ter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or 
 color. Such an attitude would, according to my con- 
 tentions, be fundamentally wrong. If, as you hold, 
 the great bulk of the colored people are not yet fit in 
 point of character and influence to hold such posi- 
 tions, it seems to me that it is worth while putting a 
 premium upon the effort among them to achieve the 
 character and standing which will fit them. 
 
 An article by John J. Vertrees in the June, 
 1903, number of the "Olympian," a magazine 
 then published in Nashville, Tennessee, con- 
 tained the following comment on Roosevelt's 
 negro appointments: — 
 
 Mr. McKinley appointed negroes to office because 
 they were negroes — thus making, as all perceived, 
 a mere political play which was expected as a matter 
 of course, and therefore gave no concern, but Mr. 
 Roosevelt appoints regardless of race and because 
 negroes are equal men — thus revealing a faith in 
 that "solidarity" which Anglo-Saxons know can 
 come only through the mongrelizing of their race. 
 This is the reason why the negro looks to the Presi- 
 dent as a deliverer and the people of the South turn 
 from him as one recreant and irresponsive to the 
 instincts and appeals of his own blood and race. 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE NEGRO 77 
 
 Commenting on this, the Nashville "Ameri- 
 can" said: — 
 
 Mr. Vertrees has admirably given expression to 
 the Southern sentiment on the negro question. 
 
 It was suggested at the time that Hanna 
 never affronted Southern sentiment and angered 
 a Republican machine in the South by naming 
 educated and independent negroes for office, 
 and that what inflamed the South was not negro 
 appointments, but high-class negro appoint- 
 ments. 
 
 Roused by the prevalence of lynching in the 
 South, the President wrote a letter on the sub- 
 ject to Governor Durbin, of Indiana, upon 
 which the "Nation" made the following com- 
 ment: — 
 
 President Roosevelt has put us all in his debt. 
 From his letter to Governor Durbin there might well 
 date a new patriotic and civilizing impulse, leading 
 honest men everywhere to unite, in word and deed, 
 and with every instrument of persuasion and of 
 power, to put down those lawless bands that are to- 
 day our greatest national danger as they are our 
 deepest disgrace. 
 
 The President was rebuked by a Democratic 
 Senator for having precipitated the race issue, 
 and was reported to have said that if he could 
 
78 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 be sure of reelection on condition of turning his 
 back on the principles of Abraham Lincoln, he 
 would be incapable of making the bargain and 
 that he would be unfit to be President if he 
 could think of doing such a thing. And yet he 
 retained some friends in the South. Upon the 
 occasion of his Southern tour in 1905, the Bir- 
 mingham "Age Herald" said: — 
 
 The man whom the people came from all parts of 
 Alabama to honor yesterday is emphatically an 
 American who stands for all regardless of social lines 
 or the size of pocket-books. A man of heartier 
 American spirit and impulses has never occupied the 
 presidential chair. He is an American from the 
 ground up, a true type of the best aspirations of the 
 Republic; the first citizen of this glorious land of 
 liberty. 
 
 The Southern Democratic newspapers gen- 
 erally expressed a change of attitude toward 
 him and said that he was more popular than 
 any of his Republican predecessors. 
 
 In 1906, three companies of colored soldiers 
 were discharged from the United States Army 
 without honor because of the shooting-up by 
 some of them of Brownsville, Texas. The guilty 
 men could not be individually determined, — 
 there was a "conspiracy of silence" among their 
 
ROOSEVELT AND LABOR 79 
 
 comrades to protect them, — and so the Presi- 
 dent discharged all and said of his action, "If 
 any organization of troops, white or black, is 
 guilty of similar conduct in the future, I shall 
 follow precisely the same course." This incident 
 aroused a great deal of criticism and led to an 
 investigation and prolonged debate in the Sen- 
 ate. The matter was finally disposed of in 
 1909. A commission was appointed to deter- 
 mine what members of the battalion were eli- 
 gible for reenlistment. 
 
 I mention these incidents to demonstrate that 
 Roosevelt's conduct was not affected by any feel- 
 ing of race prejudice. It was fair play and justice 
 which the President was striving for. In one 
 case it enraged the whites of the South; in the 
 other, it provoked the hostility of the negroes 
 North and South. He may have been wrong in 
 one or in both, or in neither, but certainly no 
 one can fairly question the honesty of his pur- 
 pose. 
 
 Roosevelt and Labor 
 Roosevelt always showed sympathetic in- 
 terest in the welfare of the wage-earner, but 
 never failed to condemn the excesses of labor 
 
80 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 unions. In his first message to Congress, he 
 said: — 
 
 Not only must our labor be protected by the tariff, 
 but it should also be protected so far as it is possible 
 from the presence in this country of any laborers 
 brought over by contract, or of those who, coming 
 freely, yet represent a standard of living so depressed 
 that they can undersell our men in the labor market 
 and drag them to a lower level. 
 
 The most vital problem with which this country, 
 and, for that matter, the whole civilized world, has to 
 deal, is the problem which has for one side the bet- 
 terment of social conditions, moral and physical, in 
 large cities, and for another side the effort to deal 
 with that tangle of far-reaching questions which we 
 group together when we speak of "labor." 
 
 He speaks of the enforcement of the eight- 
 hour law, the protection of women and children 
 from excessive and unreasonable hours for work, 
 under unsanitary conditions, and then says: — 
 
 When all is said and done, the rule of brotherhood 
 remains as the indispensable prerequisite to success 
 in the kind of national life for which we strive. Each 
 man must work for himself, and unless he so works 
 no outside help can avail him; but each man must 
 remember also that he is indeed his brother's keeper, 
 and that while no man who refuses to walk can be 
 carried with advantage to himself or any one else, 
 yet that each at times stumbles or halts, that each 
 
ROOSEVELT AND LABOR 81 
 
 at times needs to have the helping hand outstretched 
 to him. To be permanently effective, aid must al- 
 ways take the form of helping a man to help himself; 
 and we can all best help ourselves by joining together 
 in the work that is of common interest to all. 
 
 Subsequently, he said in another message: — 
 
 In the vast and complicated mechanism of our 
 modern civilized life, the dominant note is the note 
 of industrialism, and the relations of capital and 
 labor, and especially of organized capital and organ- 
 ized labor, to each other and to the public at large, 
 come second in importance only to the intimate 
 questions of family life. 
 
 He recognized organized labor as a necessity, 
 but insisted that it must not seek to attain its 
 ends by improper means, and said: — 
 
 There is no objection to employees of the Govern- 
 ment forming or belonging to unions; but the Govern- 
 ment can neither discriminate for nor discriminate 
 against non-union men who are in its employment. 
 
 He recognized the necessity both of organ- 
 ized capital and organized labor under proper 
 supervision: — 
 
 The corporation has come to stay, just as the 
 trade union has come to stay. Each can do and has 
 done great good. Each should be favored as long as 
 it does good, but each should be sharply checked 
 where it acts against law and justice. 
 
 He believed that the rule of contributory 
 
82 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 negligence should be abolished and that the loss 
 in industrial accidents should fall on the em- 
 ployer. Is it not reasonable that the human 
 machine, in its relations with capital, should be 
 placed at least on terms of equality with the inani- 
 mate machine the entire cost and maintenance 
 of which is met by the employer? Theoretically, 
 of course, no one will dispute that a man should 
 be able to earn enough through the bread-win- 
 ning period, say from twenty to sixty, to carry 
 him through life, the difficulty, of course, being 
 in the number of factors — illness, bad habits, 
 unemployment and the like — affecting the 
 efficiency of the man which do not touch the 
 inanimate machine. In the case of the latter, 
 the prudent owner fixes a fair period of life for 
 the machine, and then charges off enough each 
 year, in addition to the cost of maintenance, 
 to pay for the machine within the period. The 
 same rule should, as far as feasible, apply to 
 the human machine. 
 
 Roosevelt regarded his intervention in the 
 coal strike, in the spring of 1902, as his most 
 important act in connection with the labor 
 question. It also illustrated his theory that 
 when action is necessary, the Executive should 
 
ROOSEVELT AND LABOR 83 
 
 do everything not prohibited by law which he 
 considers for the public welfare, and that any 
 doubt should be resolved in favor of action. 
 
 It will be remembered that the strike began 
 early in the spring of 1902 and continued 
 through the summer and early autumn. Winter 
 was approaching and a coal famine was immi- 
 nent. The mines were located in the State of 
 Pennsylvania, and the President had no power 
 to act directly unless requested to do so by the 
 state authorities, on the ground that, as com- 
 mander-in-chief of the army, he must intervene 
 to keep order. Meantime, he had caused the 
 situation to be thoroughly investigated, and 
 after somewhat prolonged negotiations, secured 
 an agreement between the miners and operators 
 to abide by the decision of a commission of 
 arbitration which the President appointed — 
 in the month of October — and the trouble was 
 over. Had this method of settling the dispute 
 not been agreed to, the President was ready to 
 deal with the matter in drastic fashion. He has 
 said that he would have requested the Governor 
 of Pennsylvania to ask him to keep order, and 
 that he would have then instructed the general 
 in command to protect those who wanted to 
 
84 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 work from the strikers, to dispossess the opera- 
 tors, and run the mines as a receiver. 
 
 When the Employers' Liability Act relating 
 to common carriers was declared unconstitu- 
 tional by the Supreme Court, on the ground 
 that it applied to intra-state commerce, the 
 President, in his special message of March, 
 1908, suggested that it be reenacted to meet the 
 objections of the court, and that a further law 
 be enacted to provide government employees 
 with compensation for injury or death incurred 
 in service. He also urged that child labor should 
 be prohibited throughout the nation and that 
 a model child-labor law should be passed for the 
 District of Columbia. 
 
 He recommended that in injunctions in labor 
 disputes — 
 
 No temporary restraining order should be issued 
 by any court without notice; and the petition for a 
 permanent injunction upon which such temporary 
 restraining order has been issued should be heard by 
 the court issuing the same within a reasonable time 
 — say, not to exceed a week or thereabouts from the 
 date when the order was issued . . . the issue should 
 be decided by another judge than the one issuing 
 the injunction except where the contempt is commit- 
 ted in the presence of the court or in other case of 
 urgency. 
 
ROOSEVELT AND LABOR 85 
 
 Elsewhere he expressed condemnation of la- 
 bor leaders who demand that in a labor dispute 
 no injunction should issue except to protect a 
 property right and that the right to carry on 
 a business should not be construed as a prop- 
 erty right; that in a labor dispute any act or 
 agreement between two or more persons should 
 be legal if not unlawful when done by a single 
 person, thus legalizing blacklisting and boy- 
 cott, and that there should be a trial by jury 
 in contempt cases. 
 
 The President summarized his views as fol- 
 lows: — 
 
 The right of employers to combine and contract 
 with one another and with their employees should be 
 explicitly recognized; and so should the right of the 
 employees to combine and to contract with one 
 another and with the employers, and to seek peace- 
 ably to persuade others to accept their views, and to 
 strike for the purpose of peaceably obtaining from 
 employers satisfactory terms for their labor. Nothing 
 should be done to legalize either a blacklist or a boy- 
 cott that would be illegal at common law; this being 
 the type of boycott defined and condemned by the 
 Anthracite Strike Commission. 
 
 The President, in harmony with the doctrine 
 he had always preached, ordered the reinstate- 
 ment (1903) of Miller, who had been expelled 
 
86 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 from his union and in consequence dismissed 
 from the Government Printing Office. In ad- 
 dressing a note to several departments about 
 union and non-union men, the President called 
 attention to the findings of the Anthracite Coal 
 Strike Commission, "that no person shall be 
 refused employment or in any way discrimi- 
 nated against on account of membership or non- 
 membership in any labor organization"; and 
 declared that it is "mere elementary decency 
 to require that the government departments 
 shall be handled in accordance with the prin- 
 ciples thus clearly and fearlessly enunciated." 
 
 In an interview with Samuel Gompers, James 
 Duncan, John Mitchell, and other members of 
 the Executive Council of the American Federa- 
 tion of Labor, in regard to the Miller case, the 
 President said: — 
 
 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 employ- 
 ment and dismissal of men in the government service, 
 I can no more recognize the fact that a man 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, or a Jew or a Gentile, as being for or 
 against him. 
 
ROOSEVELT AND LABOR 87 
 
 The "Nation" said, "the President has 
 shown courage and statesmanship in refusing 
 to let the unions hope for a moment that the 
 nation will aid them in coercing unwilling work- 
 men into the ranks of organized labor." 
 
 In 1903, the President made a Labor Day- 
 address at Syracuse in which he spoke of the 
 community of interests among all Americans, 
 and said: — 
 
 We can keep our Government on a sane and health- 
 ful basis, we can make and keep our social system 
 what it should be, only on condition of judging each 
 man, not as a member of a class, but on his worth 
 as a man. . . . 
 
 The line of cleavage between good and bad citizen- 
 ship lies, not between the man of wealth who acts 
 squarely by his fellows and the man who seeks each 
 day's wage by that day's work, wronging no one and 
 doing his duty by his neighbor; nor yet does this line 
 of cleavage divide the unscrupulous wealthy man 
 who exploits others in his own interest from the dema- 
 gogue, or from the sullen and envious being who 
 wishes to attack all men of property, whether they 
 do well or ill. On the contrary, the line of cleavage 
 between good citizenship and bad citizenship sepa- 
 rates the rich man who does well from the rich man 
 who does ill, the poor man of good conduct from the 
 poor man of bad conduct. This line of cleavage 
 lies at right angles to any such arbitrary line of divi- 
 sion as that separating one class from another, one 
 
88 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 locality from another, or men with a certain degree 
 of property from those of a less degree of property. 
 
 And on another occasion, referring to the 
 lawlessness of some labor leaders, the President 
 said: — 
 
 I urge my fellow citizens, the American men and 
 women who earn their livelihood as wage-workers, 
 to see that their leaders stand for honesty and obedi- 
 ence to law, and to set their faces like flint against 
 any effort to identify the cause of organized labor, 
 directly or indirectly, with any movement which in 
 any shape or way benefits by the commission of 
 crimes or lawless and murderous violence. 
 
 I think I have said enough to demonstrate 
 that Roosevelt's attitude toward labor was per- 
 fectly fair, and that, while recognizing fully its 
 right to organize, and while active in his sup- 
 port of legislation to remove from the back of 
 labor every unnecessary burden, he was un- 
 sparing in his denunciation of lawless or unfair 
 practices. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ROOSEVELT AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE 
 His Foreign Policy. The Army and Navy 
 T DISCUSS the Monroe Doctrine, foreign 
 A policy, and the army and navy in this order 
 for the reason that the size of our army and 
 navy is somewhat dependent upon the views 
 held both of the Monroe Doctrine and of our 
 foreign policy generally. 
 
 Roosevelt defined the Monroe Doctrine as a 
 "declaration that there must be no territorial 
 aggrandizement by any non-American power at 
 the expense of any American power on American 
 soil." He said: — 
 
 We have deliberately made our own certain foreign 
 policies which demand the possession of a first-class 
 navy. 
 
 The Monroe Doctrine should be treated as the 
 cardinal feature of American foreign policy; but it 
 would be worse than idle to assert it unless we in- 
 tended to back it up, and it can be backed up only 
 by a thoroughly good navy. 
 
 As to which the London "Spectator" said: — 
 If the Monroe Doctrine is not to be consigned to 
 
go THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 the waste-paper basket, it must rest in the last re- 
 source upon the naval and military power; and if 
 America has not a fleet strong enough to say "Thus 
 far, and no farther" to those who shall challenge the 
 doctrine, that doctrine in the future will not prove 
 worth the paper on which the Presidential Message 
 of 1823 was written. 
 
 Commenting further upon the Monroe Doc- 
 trine and our duty to our sister American re- 
 publics, Roosevelt said, in substance, in his 
 message of December, 1905, that under no cir- 
 cumstances would the United States use the 
 Monroe Doctrine as a cloak for territorial ag- 
 gression, nor should it be used by any nation 
 on this continent as a shield to protect it from 
 the consequences of its own misdeeds against 
 foreign nations, but that the punishment by 
 the foreign nation must not take the form of 
 territorial occupation; that it would be inad- 
 visable to permit a foreign government to take 
 possession, even temporarily, of the custom- 
 houses of an American republic, and hence we 
 might have to intervene to bring about some 
 arrangement under which the obligation should 
 be met; that this would be the only possible 
 way to insure us against a clash with some for- 
 eign power; and that this position is in the 
 
FOREIGN POLICY 91 
 
 interest of peace as well as in the interest of 
 justice. He adds: — 
 
 This brings me to what should be one of the funda- 
 mental objects of the Monroe Doctrine. We must 
 ourselves, in good faith, try to help upward toward 
 peace and order those of our sister republics which 
 need such help. Just as there has been a gradual 
 growth of the ethical element in the relations of one 
 individual to another, so we are, even though slowly, 
 more and more coming to recognize the duty of bear- 
 ing one another's burdens, not only as among indi- 
 viduals but also as among nations. 
 
 This he illustrates by reference to our policy 
 toward San Domingo, when a foreign nation 
 was about to seize her territory as security for 
 debts incurred. 
 
 The President elsewhere described the ar- 
 rangement as follows : — 
 
 It was agreed that we should put a man in as head 
 of the custom-houses, that the collection of customs 
 should be entirely under the management of that 
 man, and that no one should be allowed to interfere 
 with the custom-houses. Revolutions could go on 
 outside them without interference from us; but the 
 custom-houses were not to be touched. We agreed 
 to turn over to the San Domingo Government forty- 
 five per cent of the revenue, keeping fifty-five per cent 
 as a fund to be applied to a settlement with the cred- 
 itors. The creditors also acquiesced in what we had 
 done, and we started the new arrangement. ... I 
 
92 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 was actually assailed, right and left, by the more 
 extreme members of the peace propaganda in the 
 United States for what I did in San Domingo; most 
 of the other professional peace advocates took no 
 interest in the matter, or were tepidly hostile; how- 
 ever, I went straight ahead and did the job. The 
 ultra-peace people attacked me on the ground that 
 I had "declared war" against San Domingo, the 
 "war" taking the shape of the one man put in charge 
 of the custom-house! ... I disregarded those foolish 
 people, as I shall always disregard sentimentalists 
 of that type when they are guilty of folly. At the 
 present we have comparative peace and prosperity 
 in the island, in consequence of my action, and of my 
 disregard of these self-styled advocates of peace. 
 
 Our acquisition of the Philippines imposed 
 
 obligations upon our Government which could 
 
 not be discharged without the army and navy, 
 
 and Roosevelt's position upon this subject may 
 
 properly be discussed here. From the first he 
 
 stood with the great majority of his party in 
 
 favor of the acquisition of those islands, and 
 
 said in 1899: — 
 
 Of course there are some anti-expansionists whose 
 opposition to expansion takes the form of opposition 
 to American interests, and with these gentry there is 
 no use dealing at all. Whether from credulity, from 
 timidity, or from sheer lack of patriotism, their atti- 
 tude during the war was as profoundly un-American 
 as was that of the "Copperheads" in 1861. Starting 
 
FOREIGN POLICY 93 
 
 from the position of desiring to avoid war even when 
 it had become unavoidable if our national honor was 
 to be preserved, they readily passed into a frame of 
 mind which made them really chagrined at every 
 American triumph, while they showed very poorly 
 concealed satisfaction over every American short- 
 coming; and now they permit their hostility to the 
 principle of expansion to lead them into persistent 
 effort to misrepresent what is being done on the 
 Islands and parts of islands which we have actually 
 conquered. 
 
 He always asserted that we occupied the 
 Islands for the good we could do there, and 
 speaking of the anti-imperialists said: "Those 
 of our people here at home who have specially 
 claimed to be the champions of the Filipinos 
 have in reality been their worst enemies." And 
 in commenting upon their desire to grant self- 
 government to Luzon under Aguinaldo, he said 
 that it "would be like granting self-government 
 to an Apache Reservation under a local chief." 
 He always said, however, that when the peo- 
 ple should have shown their capacity for real 
 freedom by their power of self-government, 
 then it would be possible to decide whether they 
 are to exist independently, but that he could 
 not turn loose the Islands to be butchered. 
 Roosevelt here speaks of the band of anti- 
 
94 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 imperialists who continuously kept up their 
 opposition to the policy of the Government 
 toward the Philippines. I did not belong to 
 that body, but I was strongly opposed to the 
 policy of our Government and was in a very 
 small and ill-thought-of minority in my own 
 party. 
 
 There will never be recorded a more sudden 
 and revolutionary change in a fundamental 
 policy of a great nation than that manifested 
 in our acquirement of the Philippine Islands. 
 For over a hundred years we had adhered closely 
 to our continental policy of keeping aloof from 
 European politics and the entangling alliances 
 against which Washington warned us in his Fare- 
 well Address. In a single night this policy was 
 abandoned, and we placed our foreign relations 
 at the mercy of the fortunes of island posses- 
 sions on the other side of the globe, inhabited by 
 people with whom we had no affiliations of race, 
 language, creed, or color, and toward whom we 
 had no responsibilities excepting those which 
 we chose to assume or forcibly to acquire. This 
 is not the place for any extended discussion of 
 the subject, the great difficulties of which I 
 appreciate. I only mention it here as having a 
 
FOREIGN POLICY 95 
 
 bearing upon Roosevelt's views of our army and 
 navy. 
 
 His foreign policy was based upon a very sim- 
 ple rule, which was, as he puts it, to behave 
 toward other nations as a strong and self-re- 
 specting man should behave toward the other 
 men with whom he is brought into contact. In 
 other words, our aim is disinterestedly to help 
 other nations where such help can be wisely 
 given without the appearance of meddling with 
 what does not concern us; to be careful to act 
 as a good neighbor and at the same time in 
 good-natured fashion to make it evident that 
 we do not intend to be imposed upon. Or, as he 
 put it in another way, " Speak softly and carry 
 a big stick." 
 
 With these views of our duties, it is less neces- 
 sary to say that Roosevelt always favored pre- 
 paredness for war, as the best means, however, 
 for securing peace, than to say that he regarded 
 war as something to be avoided if possible and 
 honorable peace to be desired above all things. 
 On one occasion he said: — 
 
 . . . Unjust war is to be abhorred; but woe to the 
 nation that does not make ready to hold its own in 
 time of need against all who would harm it! And woe 
 
96 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 thrice over to the nation in which the average man 
 loses the fighting edge, loses the power to serve as a 
 soldier if the day of need should arise! 
 
 And on another: — 
 
 A wanton or useless war, or a war of mere aggres- 
 sion, is to be condemned as a peculiarly atrocious 
 crime against humanity. As the world is now, only 
 that nation is equipped for peace that knows how to 
 fight and that will not shirk from fighting if ever the 
 conditions become such that war is demanded in the 
 name of the highest morality. 
 
 He was continually preaching the necessity 
 for cultivating the stern virtues always needed 
 when a crisis comes to the nation or the indi- 
 vidual. As he put it: — 
 
 One of the prime dangers of civilization has always 
 been its tendency to cause the loss of virile fighting 
 virtues, of the fighting edge. When men get too com- 
 fortable and lead too luxurious lives, there is always 
 danger lest the softness eat like an acid into their 
 manliness of fibre. 
 
 That there was need for such preachment, 
 I think no thoughtful person will deny. This is 
 and has been for some time an age of luxury in 
 America. We have been free from any great 
 catastrophe; and, as a nation, have been largely 
 engaged in getting and spending. Until the 
 national income tax was imposed, a man might 
 
FOREIGN POLICY 97 
 
 go from the cradle to the grave without realiz- 
 ing that he had any relation with the National 
 Government, much less that he owed it any duty. 
 The national taxes were for the most part, as 
 they affected the individual, indirect. There 
 was no compulsory military service and our citi- 
 zens came naturally to think of the nation as a 
 benevolent institution from which much was to 
 be expected and to which nothing should be 
 given of treasure or service. That this is a dan- 
 gerous attitude of mind, I think all will agree. 
 Nor were the conditions surrounding the indi- 
 vidual such as to develop the sterner virtues in 
 those who were removed from the privations of 
 poverty. The character of the early settler was 
 hardened by the daily struggle with nature for 
 a livelihood and with the savages to preserve 
 life. This may have developed natures which 
 were stern and forbidding, but it bred into our 
 people some great qualities, and it was well for 
 Roosevelt to call the attention of his country- 
 men to the fact that if we are to hold our own, 
 these qualities must be preserved: well that in 
 the days of personal indulgence and enervating 
 influences there should be an apostle to preach 
 and practice the doctrine of " the strenuous life." 
 
98 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 Roosevelt's desire for peace was not confined 
 
 to words. Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, 
 
 the French pacifist, said: — 
 
 President Roosevelt has already given four striking 
 lessons to Europe — first, in having brought before 
 the Arbitration Tribunal at The Hague the question 
 between Mexico and the United States over the 
 Pious Fund claims, while Europe was scoffing at the 
 peace court which it had created; second, in obliging 
 Europe to settle pacifically the Venezuelan affair; 
 third, in proposing a second Peace Conference at 
 The Hague to complete the work of the first; and, 
 fourth, in now intervening to put an end to the heca- 
 tombs in the Far East. 
 
 Of the negotiations undertaken by Roose- 
 velt to bring about peace between Russia and 
 Japan, the London "Times" said, in August, 
 1905: — 
 
 Whatever may be the outcome of the negotiations, 
 civilized mankind will not forget or undervalue the 
 part Mr. Roosevelt has played in bringing them 
 about. The issue rests in other hands than his, but 
 the efforts he has made in the cause of peace, whether 
 followed by success or failure, have won for him the 
 gratitude of the world. He has done his duty as 
 peacemaker faithfully and with a single mind. 
 
 Because of these services, Roosevelt received 
 the Nobel Prize of about $40,000, which he gave 
 in support of a plan to establish at Washington, 
 
FOREIGN POLICY 99 
 
 a permanent industrial peace committee — a 
 plan which it has not been found practicable 
 to carry out. 
 
 Roosevelt was not opposed to disarmament so 
 far as it was a safe thing to do; but he said on 
 one occasion: — 
 
 Nothing would more promote iniquity, nothing 
 would further defer the reign upon earth of peace and 
 righteousness than for the free and enlightened 
 peoples which, though with much stumbling and 
 many shortcomings, nevertheless strive toward jus- 
 tice, deliberately to render themselves powerless 
 while leaving every despotism and barbarism armed 
 and able to work their wicked will. 
 
 Roosevelt has been criticized for his opposi- 
 tion to some of the so-called "Arbitration Trea- 
 ties," but his reasons seem sound: — 
 
 We, the people of the United States, cannot and 
 will not surrender to outsiders the power to deter- 
 mine whether or not we are fit to decide for ourselves 
 what are our vital needs, and what are the policies 
 proper for meeting these needs. In other words, 
 Uncle Sam does not intend to wrong any one, but 
 neither does he intend to bind himself, if his pocket is 
 picked, his house burglarized, or his face slapped, to 
 "arbitrate" with the wrong-doer; and as long as he 
 does not intend so to bind himself, it would be offen- 
 sive hypocrisy for him to say that he will so bind 
 himself. 
 
ioo THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 He was not disposed to rest in any position 
 of false security or to make or permit to be 
 made promises that could not be kept. His 
 course may not have been satisfactory to those 
 who prefer to see things as they would have 
 them and not as they are, but it was honest. 
 He was continually commenting upon the na- 
 tional short-sightedness in failing to provide for 
 the efficiency of the army in times of peace and 
 had little patience with those who feared that 
 this would tend to militarism. He said: — 
 
 Declamation against militarism has no more seri- 
 ous place than declamation against Baal or Astaroth. 
 
 The only way to have men ready in time of war, 
 is to teach them in time of peace. 
 
 He believed in teaching men and boys to 
 shoot straight. He said: — 
 
 We should establish shooting-galleries in all the 
 large public and military schools; should maintain 
 national target ranges in different parts of the coun- 
 try and should in every way encourage the formation 
 of rifle clubs throughout all parts of the land. The 
 little Republic of Switzerland offers us an excellent 
 example in all matters connected with building up an 
 efficient citizen soldiery. 
 
 The training of our young men in field maneuvers 
 and in marksmanship, as is done in Switzerland, and 
 to a slightly less extent in Australia, would be of 
 
FOREIGN POLICY 101 
 
 immense advantage to the physique and morale of 
 our whole population. It would not represent any 
 withdrawal of our population from civil pursuits, 
 such as occurs among the great military states of the 
 European Continent. 
 
 Roosevelt was always impatient of humbug 
 and "hifalutin'," particularly in connection with 
 practical matters. For instance, when recently 
 some Senator said that we needed no regular 
 army, because in the event of war "ten million 
 freemen would spring to arms, the equals of any 
 regular soldiers in the world," Roosevelt, in his 
 whimsical way said: — 
 
 If the Senator's ten million men sprang to arms at 
 this moment, they would have at the outside some 
 four hundred thousand modern rifles to which to 
 "spring." Perhaps six hundred thousand more could 
 "spring" to squirrel pieces and fairly good shotguns. 
 The remaining nine million men would have to 
 "spring" to axes, scythes, hand-saws, gimlets, and 
 similar arms. 
 
 He was always particularly interested in the 
 navy. He had written a book about it from 
 which I have quoted, had been Assistant Secre- 
 tary, and had much technical knowledge of the 
 subject. He urged that the upbuilding of the 
 navy, begun in 1882, be continued, and that a 
 national naval reserve be established. During 
 
102 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 his Administration, we had naval maneuvers 
 on a large scale for the first time in our history, 
 with constantly increasing attention paid to 
 gunnery. As Roosevelt tersely put the fact, 
 "In battle the only shots that count are the 
 shots that hit." 
 
 He took the very sensible view that our ships 
 must be at sea in order that the men and equip- 
 ment might be kept at the highest point of effi- 
 ciency. 
 
 On one occasion he said: — 
 
 No lighting ship of the first class should ever be 
 laid up save for necessary repairs; and her crew should 
 be kept constantly exercised on the high seas, so that 
 she may stand at the highest point of perfection. 
 
 No one can fairly dispute the soundness of 
 this position. One might say that we should have 
 no ships and make an argument, but no one 
 could defend the position that we should have 
 inefficient ships. 
 
 A battleship is a machine; not only that, 
 but a very complicated machine. Every one 
 knows, who knows anything of the subject, 
 that a machine of any kind to be kept efficient 
 must be run and run constantly, not inter- 
 mittently. A machine which to the eye of the 
 
FOREIGN POLICY 103 
 
 novice is complete is very far from being so; 
 it is not completed until it is efficient, and that 
 can only be when every part is working per- 
 fectly under the guidance of experienced and 
 trained human intelligence. This requires con- 
 stant use. A ship that is not efficient is worse 
 than no ship, because it holds out the promise 
 of offense or defense that cannot be kept, just 
 as a battery that can't shoot straight might just 
 as well be without ammunition. It was with 
 this end in view — to keep our fleet efficient — 
 that it was sent to the Pacific and then around 
 the world. Both events were sharply criticized, 
 but both were abundantly justified by those who 
 apply the rules of ordinary common sense to a 
 practical question. The fleet reached Hamp- 
 ton Roads, at the conclusion of its 42,000-mile 
 cruise, on February 21, 1909. Upon this occa- 
 sion President Roosevelt made the following 
 speech: — 
 
 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 
 southern hemispheres; four times you have crossed 
 
104 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 the line; you have steamed through all the great 
 oceans; you have touched the coast of every conti- 
 nent. 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 halfway 
 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 returned with your efficiency in- 
 creased, 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 
 skillful 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 
 
FOREIGN POLICY 105 
 
 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 men 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. 
 
 When I left the Presidency [said Roosevelt], there 
 was not a cloud on the horizon — and one of the 
 reasons why there was not a cloud on the horizon 
 was that the American battle fleet had just returned 
 from its sixteen months' trip around the world, a 
 trip such as no other battle fleet of any power had 
 ever taken, which it had not been supposed could be 
 taken, and which exercised a greater influence for 
 peace than all the peace congresses of the last fifty 
 years. With Lowell I most emphatically believe that 
 peace is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of 
 cowards; and the fool and the weakling are no im- 
 provement on the coward. 
 
 In his special message of April 14, 1908, Roose- 
 velt again urged upon Congress the need of pro- 
 viding four battleships of the best and most 
 advanced type — action which was recom- 
 mended by the General Board and by the Secre- 
 tary of the Navy. In this message Roosevelt 
 said: — 
 
106 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 . . . Prior to the recent Hague Conference it had 
 been my hope that an agreement could be reached 
 between the different nations to limit the increase of 
 naval armaments, and especially to limit the size of 
 warships. Under these circumstances I felt that the 
 construction of one battleship a year would keep our 
 navy up to its then positive and relative strength. 
 But actual experience showed not merely that it was 
 impossible to obtain such an agreement for the limi- 
 tation of armaments among the various leading 
 powers, but that there was no likelihood whatever of 
 obtaining it in the future within any reasonable time. 
 Coincidentally with this discovery occurred a radi- 
 cal change in the building of battleships among the 
 great military nations — a change in accordance 
 with which the most modern battleships have been or 
 are being constructed, of a size and armament which 
 doubles, or more probably trebles, their effectiveness. 
 Every other great naval nation has or is building a 
 number of ships of this kind; we have provided for 
 but two, and therefore the balance of power is now 
 inclining against us. Under these conditions, to pro- 
 vide for but one or two battleships a year is to pro- 
 vide that this nation, instead of advancing, shall go 
 backward in naval rank and relative power among 
 the great nations. Such a course would be unwise for 
 us if we fronted merely on one ocean, and it is doubly 
 unwise when we front on two oceans. ... I earnestly 
 advise that the Congress now provide four battle- 
 ships of the most advanced type. I cannot too em- 
 phatically say that this is a measure of peace and not 
 of war. I can conceive of no circumstances under 
 which this Republic would enter into an aggressive 
 
FOREIGN POLICY 107 
 
 war; most certainly, under no circumstances would 
 it enter into an aggressive war to extend its territory 
 or in any other manner seek material aggrandize- 
 ment. I advocate that the United States build a 
 navy commensurate with its powers and its needs, 
 because I feel that such a navy will be the surest 
 guaranty and safeguard of peace. ... It is idle to 
 assume, and from the standpoint of national interest 
 and honor it is mischievous folly for any statesman 
 to assume, that this world has yet reached the stage, 
 or has come within measurable distance of the stage, 
 when a proud nation, jealous of its honor and con- 
 scious of its great mission in the world, can be con- 
 tent to rely for peace upon the forbearance of other 
 powers. It would be equally foolish to rely upon each 
 of them possessing at all times and under all circum- 
 stances and provocations an altruistic regard for the 
 rights of others. . . . 
 
 ... To any public man who knows of the com- 
 plaints continually made to the State Department 
 there is an element of grim tragedy in the claim that 
 the time has gone by when weak nations or peoples 
 can be oppressed by those that are stronger without 
 arousing effective protest from other strong interests. 
 Events still fresh in the mind of every thinking man 
 show that neither arbitration nor any other device 
 can as yet be invoked to prevent the graves^ and 
 most terrible wrong-doing to peoples who are either 
 few in numbers or who, if numerous, have lost the 
 first and most important of national virtues — the 
 capacity for self-defense. 
 
 When a nation is so happily situated as is ours — 
 that is, when it has no reason to fear or to be feared 
 
108 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 by its land neighbors — the fleet is all the more neces- 
 sary for the preservation of peace. Great Britain has 
 been saved by its fleet from the necessity of facing 
 one of the two alternatives — of submission to con- 
 quest by a foreign power or of itself becoming a great 
 military power. The United States can hope for a 
 permanent career of peace on only one condition, 
 and that is, on condition of building and maintaining 
 a first-class navy; and the step to be taken toward 
 this end at this time is to provide for the building of 
 four additional battleships. I earnestly wish that the 
 Congress would pass the measures for which I have 
 asked for strengthening and rendering more efficient 
 the army as well as the navy; all of these measures as 
 affecting every branch and detail of both services are 
 sorely needed, and it would be the part of far-sighted 
 wisdom to enact them all into laws, but the most 
 vital and immediate need is that of the four battle- 
 ships. 
 
 I cannot recommend to your notice measures for 
 the fulfillment of our duties to the rest of the world 
 without again pressing upon you the necessity of 
 placing ourselves in a condition of complete defense 
 and of exacting from them the fulfillment of their 
 duties toward us. The United States ought not to 
 indulge a persuasion that, contrary to the order of 
 human events, they will forever keep at a distance 
 those painful appeals to arms with which the history 
 of every other nation abounds. There is a rank due 
 to the United States among nations which will be 
 withheld, if not absolutely lost, by the reputation of 
 weakness. If we desire to avoid insult, we must be 
 
FOREIGN POLICY 109 
 
 able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of 
 the most powerful instruments of our rising pros- 
 perity, it must be known that we are at all times 
 ready for war. 
 
 This recommendation of four battleships was 
 not adopted by Congress. I voted to sustain 
 the committee which favored two, and the 
 views then expressed by Roosevelt excited only 
 languid interest among the people of the coun- 
 try _ excepting where they aroused sharp con- 
 demnation. As one paper expressed it, "The 
 sober part of this nation is not inclined to the 
 reckless policy of building enormous fleets." 
 But be it observed, the arguments used by 
 Roosevelt in 1908 are the arguments which in 
 191 5 are being urged from every platform where 
 "national defense" is discussed and by those 
 who have been very recent converts to the 
 cause. The policy now advocated by Roosevelt 
 is what it has always been. 
 
 Perhaps the time is at hand when we should 
 diminish the zone of our responsibilities. To 
 accomplish this would make necessary our relin- 
 quishment of the Philippines and the restric- 
 tion of the Monroe Doctrine to an area essen- 
 tial to the protection of our own territory. We 
 
no THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 could then confine our efforts to an army and 
 navy best adapted for purposes of defense and 
 feel certain that we were undertaking a task 
 we might expect adequately to perform. We 
 might, too, then feel that we were more strictly 
 following in the pathway marked out by Wash- 
 ington in his Farewell Address; which is read 
 annually in both Houses of Congress for our 
 guidance. 
 
 Roosevelt always showed great interest in 
 the restoration and development of our mer- 
 chant marine, so essential to the permanent 
 prosperity of the country. 
 
 In his first message to the Fifty-seventh Con- 
 gress, in 1901, the President called attention to 
 the condition of the American merchant ma- 
 rine, and said that it called for immediate reme- 
 dial action to the end that it might be restored 
 to the ocean. In his message to the Fifty-eighth 
 Congress, at the second session, in December, 
 1903, he recommended the appointment of a 
 commission to report to the next session of 
 Congress "what legislation is desirable or nec- 
 essary for the development of the American 
 merchant marine and American commerce, and 
 incidentally of a national ocean mail service 
 
FOREIGN POLICY in 
 
 of adequate auxiliary naval cruisers and naval 
 reserves." 
 
 In his message at the opening of the Fifty- 
 ninth Congress, the President referred to the 
 report of this commission, made at the previous 
 session, and expressed the hope that the views 
 therein expressed or a major part of them might 
 be enacted into law, and said: — 
 
 If it prove impracticable to enact a law for the 
 encouragement of shipping generally, then at least 
 provision should be made for better communication 
 with South America, notably for fast mail lines to 
 the chief South American ports. It is discreditable to 
 us that our business people, for lack of direct com- 
 munication in the shape of lines of steamers with 
 South America, should, in that great sister continent, 
 be at a disadvantage compared to the business 
 people of Europe. 
 
 A bill passed the Senate, and then the House 
 with some modifications. It then went back to 
 the Senate for concurrence, and was talked to 
 death by two Democratic Senators whose terms 
 of office expired with that Congress on March 
 4, 1907. 
 
 In his message of December, 1907, the Presi- 
 dent referred to the "unfortunate failure of the 
 shipping bill at the last session of the last Con- 
 
n: THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 gress," and called attention to the fact that It 
 "was followed by the taking off of certain Paci- 
 fic steamships." Later in this message, he rec- 
 ommended "the extension of the ocean mail act 
 of 1891," upon the theory "that it is the duty 
 of a first-class power, so far as practicable, 
 to carry its ocean mails under its own flag; 
 that the fast ocean steamships and their crews, 
 required for such mail sen-ice, are valuable aux- 
 iliaries to the sea power of a nation." Legis- 
 lation based upon this recommendation also 
 failed of enactment. 
 
 The Tariff 
 Speaking of his study of political economy in 
 college, Roosevelt said in his autobiography: 
 "As regards political economy, I was, of course, 
 while in college, taught the laissez-faire doctrines 
 — one of them being free trade — then ac- 
 cepted as canonical." He was one of the origi- 
 nal members of the Finance Club at Harvard, 
 organized when we were students to promote the 
 discussion of financial and kindred questions. 
 He took courses in political economy under the 
 late Professor Charles F. Dunbar and Professor 
 J. Laurence Laughlin, now of Chicago Univer- 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE TARIFF 113 
 
 sity. His principal textbooks were "Principles 
 of Political Economy," by John Stuart Mill, 
 and "Some Leading Principles of Political 
 Economy," by J. E. Cairnes. Like most col- 
 lege graduates, he was disposed to be a free 
 trader. As he has never engaged in any busi- 
 ness affected by the tariff, the practical consid- 
 erations involved in the subject have never been 
 brought home to him. 
 
 When he wrote the "Life of Benton," in 1886, 
 he said, speaking of the tariff: — 
 
 Free traders are apt to look at the tariff from a 
 sentimental standpoint; but it is in reality a purely 
 business matter, and should be decided solely on 
 grounds of expediency. Political economists have 
 pretty generally agreed that protection is vicious in 
 theory and harmful in practice; but if the majority 
 of the people in interest wish it, and it affects only 
 themselves, there is no earthly reason why they 
 should not be allowed to try the experiment to their 
 hearts' content. 
 
 His position on this question when he was 
 President was that he did not believe that the 
 question of lowering or raising the duties as 
 proposed by the two parties, in any way ap- 
 proached in importance the trust or labor prob- 
 lems, so called. He believed that those who 
 
ii 4 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 urged upon him the necessity for taking up the 
 tariff knew that the tariff would be a red herring 
 across the path of moral and industrial reform. 
 He believed in a protective tariff, administered 
 under a tariff commission like that in Germany, 
 a plan which neither party would support. He 
 believes that the Taft and Woodrow Wilson 
 tariffs both did damage and that the result 
 demonstrates that he was right in thinking 
 that if he had taken up the tariff no good 
 would have followed, and that he would have 
 played into the hands of those who wished the 
 tariff thrown open to discussion merely to avoid 
 action on matters which he regarded as of in- 
 finitely greater importance. 
 
 I think that in his political life he had very 
 little interest in the subject, very likely because 
 there was no revision of the tariff while he was 
 President, which was perhaps fortunate. He 
 accepted the party position and stated it for- 
 cibly in his various messages. Had the need 
 arisen I do not doubt that he would have dealt 
 with the matter with his customary vigor and 
 intelligence, and he would, I am sure, have lis- 
 tened patiently to the great variety of views so 
 tenaciously held on this most perplexing subject. 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE TARIFF n 5 
 
 We have not had a President in recent times 
 who so generously invited opinions from every 
 quarter as did Roosevelt. He did not assume in 
 advance that he knew everything about a sub- 
 ject and was quick to admit his lack of knowl- 
 edge. What I have said is well illustrated by the 
 following correspondence. I wrote him as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 Worcester, Mass., 
 August 31, 1911. 
 I fear that we are in for a very discouraging year in 
 politics; the evil day of tariff revision is merely post- 
 poned, and I fear that too much is expected of the 
 Tariff Board. It sounds well to talk about scientific 
 revision of the tariff, but it is an idle dream. The 
 difference in cost of production varies from day to 
 day, and cannot be definitely ascertained. It will 
 vary in our own cotton mills from time to time, 
 sometimes as much as one half a cent a yard, or 
 more, depending upon the variation in the price of 
 cotton due to natural causes. The 1908 tariff plank 
 was most unhappily phrased, and the guarantee of a 
 reasonable profit was almost a crime. A tariff high 
 enough to insure the home market to the home pro- 
 ducer at reasonable prices is as near as we can ever 
 get to an enunciation of the protective policy, and 
 where this point is can be better ascertained by study- 
 ing our imports than by trying to ascertain difference 
 in cost of production. I do not see any escape from 
 a prolonged and perhaps acrimonious discussion in the 
 
n6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 next session of Congress. One discouraging condition 
 is the utter lack of candor in discussing the matter. 
 We hear much of the "Woolen Trust," the "Worsted 
 Trust," "Cotton Trust," — all creations of the 
 imagination, but creative of much unrest with the 
 people. The people do not seem to realize that what 
 manufacturers want is a big output at small margins. 
 A man who wears a fifty-cent shirt would not com- 
 plain if he knew what is the fact — that the manu- 
 facturer of the cloth is happy to make half a cent on 
 the two and a half yards it takes to make the shirt. 
 The unhappy man who wears the shirt probably has 
 an idea that the "trust" pockets forty-nine cents. If 
 the Tariff Board performs any valuable service, it will 
 not be in discovering the difference in cost of produc- 
 tion between here and " abroad," but in putting before 
 the people some facts in regard to the conditions 
 under which our staples are produced which will con- 
 vince the public that, take them as a whole, the man- 
 ufacturers are not making unduly large profits, and 
 which will lead our people to see that, in order to 
 insure low cost of production, we must keep for our- 
 selves the home market. Otherwise our mills will run 
 on short time, our people will be idle, and our cost of 
 production will be high. I had the curiosity last 
 autumn to have computed the difference in the cost 
 of a certain kind of cotton goods running the mill 
 twelve months in the year and running it nine months, 
 and found that the difference would be about three- 
 tenths of a cent per yard, which is quite a good profit. 
 In other words, if the Lancashire spinners send goods 
 enough into New England to keep our mills running 
 three fourths of the time, we will not only have our 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE TARIFF 117 
 
 streets full of the idle and suffering poor, but the cost 
 of the goods we do make will be very considerably 
 increased. I am not deceived at all by the popular 
 delusion touching wages here and abroad. I know 
 very well that the most efficient labor is the cheapest 
 and that the lowest cost of production is sometimes 
 accompanied by the highest rate of wages, so that in 
 some lines of business, — for example, the manufac- 
 ture of steel rails, — no tariff at all is needed because 
 of the labor cost, but it is very important to protect 
 our markets against the importation of large quanti- 
 ties of foreign goods when the foreign demand may 
 be small, because that utterly disarranges the run- 
 ning of our own mills and puts them on short time, 
 which, as I have suggested above, not only means 
 suffering for our people, but high cost of production. 
 I doubt myself the wisdom of the reciprocity arrange- 
 ment at this time with Canada, and for the reason 
 that politically it seems to me a very unwise thing for 
 a Republican President to force through a proposition 
 which splits his own party in two. I think the propo- 
 sition is, for the moment, popular with the people, 
 but I fear that the interests affected or thought to be 
 are likely to resent the discrimination which has been 
 made, manifested in a willingness to legislate upon 
 them before any investigation by the Tariff Board, 
 when other interests are very jealously protected 
 until they shall have been investigated by the Tariff 
 Board. I earnestly hope that the party will not suffer, 
 but profit by the policy which has been pursued, but 
 I have my doubts about it. 
 
 To which Roosevelt made the following reply: 
 
n8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 September 2d, 191 1. 
 That is a most interesting letter of yours. It gave 
 me some totally new ideas; and when missionary 
 work is needed for me, it must be needed for some 
 other people too. As regards Canadian Reciprocity, 
 the trouble is, as you say, that to push it through at 
 the expense of the farmers, who are restive about the 
 tariff anyhow, tends to make them ready to favor 
 any cut at the expense of the manufacturers. 
 
 Upon this point of his willingness to receive 
 suggestions, Secretary Hay wrote in his Diary, 
 November 20, 1904: — 
 
 I read the President's message in the afternoon. 
 . . . Made several suggestions as to changes and 
 omissions. The President came in just as I had fin- 
 ished and we went over the matter together. He 
 accepted my ideas with that singular amiability and 
 open-mindedness which form so striking a contrast 
 with the general idea of his brusque and arbitrary 
 character, j 
 
 In his message of December, 1907, he said 
 that the country was committed to the system 
 of protection, but that every dozen years, or 
 so, the tariff" should be scrutinized and should 
 compensate for the difference in labor cost; a 
 view which, as I have said, I consider rather 
 superficial. 
 
 Some of his other comments on the tariff will 
 
Copyright by E. S. Curti 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT, 1904 
 
ROOSEVELT AND THE TARIFF 119 
 
 not stand the test of analysis; for example, he 
 once said: "I am for a protective tariff that gets 
 past the mill offices down into the pockets of 
 the workingman." Now, the only way that the 
 tariff can benefit the workingman is to provide 
 him with employment. The rate of wages is 
 determined by other influences, and in the long 
 run must be substantially the market rate for 
 labor of the same sort in the same locality. To 
 say, as Roosevelt once did, — " If the wage rate 
 is not proper, if the conditions of life among 
 laboring people are not proper, then we recom- 
 mend that the tariff be taken off entirely," — 
 is merely another way of saying that low wages 
 are worse than lower wages, or no wages at all. 
 I do not know of any great protected product 
 in the manufacture of which there is not pres- 
 ent the element of competition. Where this is 
 true, domestic competition insures the sale of 
 the product at as low prices as are possible 
 under conditions prevailing here. Roosevelt 
 distinctly repudiated the erroneous doctrine 
 that the trusts could be destroyed by removing 
 the tariff. 
 
120 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 Conservation 
 
 There is no great movement championed 
 by Roosevelt and urged by him upon Congress 
 and the nation which will be of more lasting 
 benefit to his countrymen than that for the 
 conservation of our national resources, which, 
 up to almost the present time, have been used 
 with reckless prodigality. 
 
 Roosevelt's interest in this subject was roused 
 when he was Governor of New York and had 
 under consideration the Adirondack forests, 
 in connection with which he consulted Gifford 
 Pinchot. In January, 1900, an agreement was 
 made between New York State and the Federal 
 Government by which the latter began sys- 
 tematic measurement of the streams of the 
 State. 
 
 The beginnings of the conservation move- 
 ment are recorded in a book on the "Arid 
 Lands of the West," written, about 1880, by 
 Major John W. Powell, then Director of the 
 Geological Survey. Frederick H. Newell, Direc- 
 tor of the Reclamation Service, printed the 
 results of his investigation under the title of 
 "The Public Lands and their Water Supply," 
 
ROOSEVELT AND CONSERVATION 121 
 
 in the 16th Annual Report of the United States 
 Geological Survey. 
 
 When Roosevelt became President, he re- 
 quested Newell and Pinchot to prepare memo- 
 randa for his use in writing his first message to 
 the Fifty-seventh Congress. 
 
 In that message he recommended that addi- 
 tions be made to the forest reserves and that 
 their protection be transferred from the Gen- 
 eral Land Office to the Bureau of Forestry. The 
 President said: — 
 
 The water-supply itself depends upon the forest. 
 In the arid region it is water, not land, which meas- 
 ures production. The western half of the United 
 States would sustain a population greater than that 
 of our whole country to-day if the waters that now 
 run to waste were saved and used for irrigation. The 
 forest and water problems are perhaps the most 
 vital internal questions of the United States. 
 
 He suggested that great storage works were 
 necessary to save the flood waters and that 
 irrigation works would open up to homestead 
 settlement great areas of the public land. He 
 also recommended preserves for the wild forest 
 creatures. In October, 1903, Roosevelt desig- 
 nated Pinchot and Newell, together with W. A. 
 Richards, the Land Commissioner, as a Public 
 
122 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 Lands Commission, to report to him. This was 
 the beginning of the movement. The problem, 
 as Roosevelt once put it, was one "of utilizing 
 the natural resources of the nation in a way that 
 will be of the most benefit to the nation as a 
 whole." 
 
 The subject was again referred to in the mes- 
 sage of December, 1904; and in that of 1906, the 
 President recommended the withdrawal of coal 
 lands, which should be owned by the Govern- 
 ment, but worked by private individuals under 
 a royalty system; and elsewhere he favored the 
 preservation of the forests of the White Moun- 
 tains and of the Southern Appalachians, a pro- 
 ject which was subsequently undertaken by the 
 Government. In his message of December, 
 1907, he favored the development of reclama- 
 tion work and the stopping of unlawful fencing 
 of public lands. He uttered a warning that the 
 country was in danger of a timber famine and 
 that the forests should be conserved. Again, 
 in January, 1908, he spoke of the effort to secure 
 equality of opportunity: — 
 
 In the interest of the small settlers and land- 
 owners, and against the embittered opposition of 
 wealthy owners of huge wandering flocks of sheep, 
 
ROOSEVELT AND CONSERVATION 123 
 
 or of corporations desiring to rob the people of coal 
 and timber, we strive to put an end to the theft of 
 public land in the West. 
 
 In his message of March, 1908, he repeats a 
 recommendation for the development of our 
 inland waterways and the appointment of a 
 permanent Waterways Commission, speaks of 
 the conservation of our natural resources as 
 vital for the future of the nation, and states 
 that he "will veto any water-power bill not pro- 
 viding for time limit and for the right of the 
 President or Secretary concerned to fix and 
 collect such a charge as he may find just and 
 reasonable in each case." 
 
 In December, 1908, he urges short-time 
 franchises for corporations getting power from 
 water rights and recommends national as well 
 as state guardianship of mines and forests. He 
 insists that "we should leave our national do- 
 main to our children increased in value and not 
 worn out," and by pictorial illustrations graph- 
 ically shows the results in China of deforesta- 
 tion. He recommends that the national parks 
 be placed under the control of the Forest Serv- 
 ice of the Agricultural Department. 
 
 In March, 1907, he added sixteen million 
 
124 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 acres to the forest reservations just before he 
 signed an act of Congress forbidding such reser- 
 vations hereafter to be made except by Con- 
 gress itself. Roosevelt's explanation of this in- 
 cident is somewhat amusing. In speaking of the 
 attacks upon the Forest Service, he said: — 
 
 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 pre- 
 pared 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 forests 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 
 
ROOSEVELT AND CONSERVATION 125 
 
 forests before the land-grabbers could get at them. 
 The opponents of the Forest Service turned hand- 
 springs 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. 
 
 Roosevelt vetoed a bill authorizing the con- 
 struction of a dam across the James River in 
 Missouri, for the reason that it gave to the 
 grantee a valuable privilege which by its very 
 nature is monopolistic and does not contain the 
 conditions essential to protect the public in- 
 terest. The bill was similar to the Rainy River 
 Dam Bill of the previous spring, April 13, 1908, 
 vetoed by the President, which ultimately be- 
 came a law because the company then agreed 
 in writing to submit to such conditions as might 
 be imposed by the Secretary of War, including 
 a time limit and a reasonable charge. In May, 
 1908, and again in December, 1908, there was, 
 at the request of the President, a convention in 
 Washington of the governors of the different 
 States upon the subject of conservation, which 
 did much to stimulate national interest in the 
 subject. This suggested a North American Con- 
 servation Conference, and in January, 1909, the 
 President, through Gifford Pinchot, asked Earl 
 
126 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 Grey, Governor-General of Canada, Sir Wilfrid 
 Laurier, and President Diaz of Mexico to send 
 representatives to a conference on the conserva- 
 tion of the natural resources of North America, 
 to be held in Washington in February, 1909. 
 This meeting suggested^ conference of all the 
 nations on the subject of "world resources," 
 and an invitation was sent by our Secretary of 
 State to forty-five nations to a conference to 
 be held at The Hague. The project, however, 
 lapsed with the Roosevelt Administration. 
 
 Some doubt was expressed as to the right of 
 the President to withdraw public lands from 
 location. Touching this question it was de- 
 cided, by the Supreme Court, in United States 
 vs. The Midwest Oil Company, February 23, 
 191 5, that the long-continued practice, the ac- 
 quiescence of Congress, as well as the decisions 
 of the court, all show that the President had 
 the power. 
 
 I happened to pick up, some time ago, an 
 
 Arizona paper. My eye fell on the following 
 
 statement: — 
 
 Ten years ago farm land in the Salt River Valley- 
 was worth from thirty-five to a hundred dollars per 
 acre. It is now worth from seventy-five to five hun- 
 dred dollars. . . . 
 
RELATIONS WITH CONGRESS 127 
 
 What effected the change? 
 
 The credit should be given to the Roosevelt Reser- 
 voir. . . . The Roosevelt Reservoir right now has 
 more water in it than it ever had before, giving posi- 
 tive insurance of crops in the Salt River Valley for 
 years to come. It is three fourths full, and will be 
 entirely filled before the snow stops melting this 
 spring. 
 
 A reservoir in the desert which insures con- 
 stant and increasing benefit to mankind is a 
 much finer memorial than the great pyramid of 
 Cheops, likewise in the desert, but serving no 
 useful purpose excepting to remind us of an 
 ancient superstition. 
 
 Relations with Congress 
 
 I shall now speak briefly of Roosevelt's rela- 
 tions with Congress. His first message was en- 
 tirely characteristic. He gave adequate consid- 
 eration to the great tragedy that made him 
 President, but he was from the outset his own 
 master. His messages were always addressed 
 quite as much to the people as to Congress, and 
 in time it came to be generally accepted that 
 whenever he thought it necessary he went over 
 the heads of Congress to the people. 
 
 In speaking of the President's power, Mr. 
 
128 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 Bryce says, in the "American Commonwealth" 
 (vol. i, p. 223) : — 
 
 An individual man has some great advantages in 
 combating an assembly. His counsels are less dis- 
 tracted. His secrets are better kept. He may sow 
 discord among his antagonists. He can strike a more 
 sudden blow. Julius Csesar was more than a match 
 for the Senate, Cromwell for the Long Parliament, 
 even Louis Napoleon for the French Assembly of 
 1 85 1. Hence, when the President happens to be a 
 strong man, resolute, prudent, and popular, he may 
 well hope to prevail against a body whom he may 
 divide by the dexterous use of patronage, may weary 
 out by inflexible patience, may overawe by winning 
 the admiration of the masses, always disposed to 
 rally round a striking personality. 
 
 His Administration, speaking now of his serv- 
 ice of seven and a half years, was fruitful of legis- 
 lation by a Republican House and a Republican 
 Senate. The following were among the princi- 
 pal acts passed: The Elkins Anti-Rebate Law 
 applying to railroads; the creation of the De- 
 partment of Commerce and Labor and the Bu- 
 reau of Corporations; the law authorizing the 
 building of the Panama Canal; the Hepburn 
 Bill amending and vitalizing the Interstate 
 Commerce Act; the Pure-Food and Meat In- 
 spection laws; the law creating the Bureau of 
 
RELATIONS WITH CONGRESS 129 
 
 Immigration; the Employer's Liability and 
 Safety Appliance laws, that limited the working 
 hours of employees; the law making the Gov- 
 ernment liable for injuries to its employees; 
 the law forbidding child labor in the District 
 of Columbia; the reformation of the Consular 
 Service; prohibition of campaign contributions 
 from corporations; the Emergency Currency 
 Law, which also provided for the creation of 
 the Monetary Commission. This was a part of 
 the legislative accomplishment of these years, 
 stimulated by the aggressiveness of the Ex- 
 ecutive. It will be observed that most of these 
 acts are to insure justice of treatment between 
 man and man, to protect the weak, to curb the 
 strong. 
 
 The passage of the Hepburn Bill, amending 
 the Interstate Commerce Act, was attended 
 by more or less friction. The President at first 
 favored giving to the Interstate Commerce 
 Commission the power to make railroad rates 
 independent of review by the courts. This was 
 resisted by Congress, and finally the bill passed, 
 embodying the three principles laid down in 
 the President's message of December, 1905: 
 Power in some administrative body to decide 
 
130 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 whether a railway rate complained of is reason- 
 able and just; and, if not, to prescribe a maxi- 
 mum rate, the decision to go into effect within 
 a reasonable time; and subject to review by the 
 courts. 
 
 The Pure-Food Law was the result of the re- 
 volting conditions shown in the Chicago stock- 
 yards in a report made by James B. Reynolds 
 and Labor Commissioner Charles P. Neill, 
 which the President sent to Congress with a spe- 
 cial message. Considerable friction developed 
 between the President and the chairman of the 
 Committee on Agriculture before this bill be- 
 came a law. 
 
 It has been said, and is no doubt true, that 
 in the openness and the directness of his dealing 
 with Congress, Roosevelt surpassed all of his 
 predecessors, and that no President ever equaled 
 him in the amount of legislation he asked of 
 Congress. 
 
 Entirely characteristic of Roosevelt's methods 
 was his action in the case of the Tennessee Coal 
 and Iron Company. The Senate passed a reso- 
 lution calling on the Attorney-General to state 
 to the Senate why he had not prosecuted the 
 Steel Trust, under the Anti-Trust Law, for the 
 
RELATIONS WITH CONGRESS 131 
 
 purchase of the Tennessee Coal Company in 
 the fall of 1907. The President instructed the 
 Attorney-General not to answer the question, 
 and then answered the question himself. He 
 said that Mr. Gary and Mr. Frick called on 
 him in November, 1907, in regard to the mat- 
 ter, and asked if the acquisition of the Tennes- 
 see Coal Company would be regarded by the 
 President as a violation of the law. " They as- 
 serted 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 objection." It 
 appears that the President was subsequently 
 advised in writing by the Attorney-General 
 that there was no legal ground for proceedings 
 against the Steel Corporation, and the pur- 
 chase of the Tennessee Coal Company would 
 constitute no ground for such prosecution. 
 
 Roosevelt's action was abundantly vindi- 
 cated in the opinion of the Court in the case 
 of the United States vs. United States Steel 
 Corporation, decided June 3, 191 5, in the 
 United States District Court for the District 
 of New Jersey, in which, referring to the pur- 
 
i 3 2 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 chase by the Steel Corporation of the Tennes- 
 see Coal and Iron Company, the court said: — 
 
 We shall next consider the purchase by the Steel 
 Company of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Company, 
 which was made in November, 1907. On the one 
 hand, it is alleged the Tennessee Company was a 
 competitor of great power and that its purchase was 
 for the purpose of suppressing competition and effect- 
 ing monopoly and restraint of trade. On the other 
 hand, it is contended that the competition of the 
 Tennessee Company was of relatively small extent, 
 that its purchase was practically forced upon the 
 Steel Company as a means of averting a threatening 
 financial crisis during the panic of 1907, and that 
 such purchase neither did nor tended to monopolize 
 or restrain the steel and iron industry of the United 
 States. . . . 
 
 [We] have arrived at the following conclusions: — ■ 
 At the time the Steel Company bought the Ten- 
 nessee Company, the latter's production of iron and 
 steel was 1.7 per cent of the production of the coun- 
 try; that up to that time the Tennessee Company 
 had not been a business success; that it was making 
 rails, which was its principal steel product, at a loss; 
 that its ultimate success was problematic; that such 
 success involved an outlay of upward of #25,000,000 
 to put it upon a dividend basis; that it had never 
 really earned any dividends up to the time of its 
 sale; that the whole testimony shows its relation as 
 a successful, substantial competitor with the Steel 
 Company in the volume of its business, the character 
 of its product, and the breadth of its market was neg- 
 
RELATIONS WITH CONGRESS 133 
 
 ligible. We are warranted by this testimony and find 
 the fact to be that its purchase by the Steel Company 
 in no way tended to monopolize the steel and iron 
 trade, and that it was not bought with the purpose 
 or intent of monopolizing, or attempting to monopo- 
 lize, or restrain that trade. Such negative conclu- 
 sions and findings are confirmed by the affirmative 
 proofs showing just how the purchase was made, 
 namely, as a necessary part of comprehensive plans 
 of bankers and business men, sanctioned by Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt, to check the panic of 1907, which 
 was then at its height. Without entering into details, 
 we may say the situation was summed up in the letter 
 of President Roosevelt to Attorney-General Bona- 
 parte, as follows: — 
 
 " 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 inform 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 
 
i 3 4 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 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 inform 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 accu- 
 sations, 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 busi- 
 ness man, to try to prevent a panic and general indus- 
 trial 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 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 objection. 
 
 "Sincerely, yours, 
 
 "Theodore Roosevelt." 
 
RELATIONS WITH CONGRESS 135 
 
 When called by the Government as a witness, 
 President Roosevelt testified as to this letter as 
 follows : — 
 
 "I was dealing with a panic and a situation where 
 not merely twenty-four hours, but one hour might 
 cause widespread disaster to the public. . . . 
 
 "I ought to say that from New York I had been 
 told by banker after banker that the Tennessee Coal 
 and Iron securities were valueless as securities that 
 counted in that panic. . . . 
 
 "There were two matters to which my attention 
 was especially directed. One was the condition of 
 things in New York, the relief that the action would 
 bring, not merely to New York, but throughout the 
 entire country — just as much in Louisiana and 
 Minnesota and California as in New York. That was 
 one thing. The other thing to which my attention 
 was particularly directed was the percentage of 
 holdings the Steel Corporation had, and had had and 
 would have after the Tennessee Coal and Iron prop- 
 erties were acquired. . . . 
 
 "The knowledge that I had was that the Steel 
 Corporation had some years previously possessed 
 nearly sixty per cent of the holdings of the steel 
 industry in the country; that its percentage had 
 shrunk steadily; that the addition of the Tennessee 
 Coal and Iron Company, which was something in the 
 nature of four per cent, — somewhere between two 
 and four per cent, I have forgotten the exact amount, 
 somewhere around there, — did not bring up the 
 percentage of holdings of the Steel Corporation to 
 what it had been a few years previously. . . . 
 
 "My knowledge was simply this, that it was a 
 
136 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 matter of general opinion among experts that the 
 Tennessee Coal and Iron people had a property which 
 was almost worthless in their hands, nearly worthless 
 to them, nearly worthless to the communities in 
 which it was situated, and entirely worthless to any 
 financial institution that had the securities the min- 
 ute that any panic came, and that the only way to 
 give value to it was to put it in the hands of people 
 whose possession of it would be a guaranty that there 
 was value to it. . . . 
 
 " 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 con- 
 vinced 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 Corpora- 
 tion; and further inquiry has confirmed to 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 repre- 
 sentatives 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." 
 
 An examination of the testimony shows that the 
 matter was as stated by the President and that the 
 Steel Corporation's chairman absolutely refused to 
 purchase unless the matter was submitted to the 
 government authorities, his testimony in that regard 
 being: — 
 
 "While the President of the United States could 
 
RELATIONS WITH CONGRESS 137 
 
 not say that we might purchase this, or that we 
 should not purchase this property, yet I believed, 
 inasmuch as he had the general direction of the law 
 department of the United States, certainly we ought 
 to know what would be the attitude of the Adminis- 
 tration in case we did buy this property." 
 
 The Court goes on to say: — 
 
 Indeed, as to this purchase as well as the others 
 which we have discussed above, sales made under 
 different circumstances and for various reasons, we 
 cannot but feel in the light of proofs that they were 
 made in fair business course; and were, to use the 
 language of the Supreme Court in the Standard Oil 
 case, "The honest exertion of one's right to contract 
 for his own benefit, unaccompanied by a wrongful 
 motive to injure others." 
 
 Toward the end of his term, the relations be- 
 tween Roosevelt and Congress became some- 
 what strained. This was due to a variety of 
 causes. The President was, very properly, con- 
 stantly pressing an elaborate programme of 
 legislation. Congress could never meet his ex- 
 pectations or the expectations of the people, 
 and the legislative body came to feel that its 
 efforts were not properly appreciated and that 
 the Executive held a place in the confidence of 
 the people that properly belonged to Congress. 
 The President prefered pretty direct methods 
 
138 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 to the arts of diplomacy. I think that the coun- 
 try rather enjoyed his controversies with Con- 
 gress, and, as a rule, sided with him. 
 
 Senator Lodge, in his admirable address upon 
 "The Constitution and its Makers," in speak- 
 ing of Congress, said: — 
 
 Yet whatever praise history accords to the Con- 
 gress of the United States in the past, the Congress 
 of the moment and the members of that body in 
 either branch receive but little commendation from 
 their contemporaries. This is perhaps not unnatural 
 and it certainly has always been customary. . . . The 
 men who fight by land and sea, rouse immediate 
 popular enthusiasm, but a body of men engaged in 
 legislation does not and cannot offer the fascination 
 or the attraction which are inseparable from the 
 individual man who stands forth alone from the 
 crowd in any great work of life, whether of war or 
 peace. 
 
 It was early suggested to the President that 
 the most powerful members of his party did 
 not like his ways and that if he asserted his in- 
 dependence he would get no favors from Con- 
 gress and no renomination by the party; that 
 he had trodden on "many gouty, Senatorial 
 toes." The relations were so "strained" at one 
 time that a resolution was in preparation requir- 
 ing the President to file a copy of every execu- 
 
END OF HIS TERM 139 
 
 tive order with a citation of the law following it, 
 and also for the creation of a committee of dis- 
 tinguished lawyers to report on the President's 
 acts and orders. In spite of all the criticism of 
 Roosevelt by the party managers before 1904, 
 he was reelected by such a majority as to leave 
 no doubt as to his strength, and went out of 
 office with his great popularity with the people 
 unimpaired. 
 
 End of his Term 
 
 As the end of Roosevelt's Administration 
 approached, his friends became solicitous as to 
 his future. He was a comparatively young man, 
 little over fifty, possessed of unbounded energy, 
 and by inclination and habit of untiring indus- 
 try. In what direction could his energies be best 
 directed to secure the greatest results and at the 
 same time not impair his prestige ? The first year 
 was provided for by the African trip; but after 
 that, what? Three months before the end of 
 his term, I called at the White House to talk 
 with him about a matter of legislation. It was 
 in the afternoon of December 9, 1908. 
 
 After I had finished my business, Roosevelt 
 asked me to stay, and then told me what he 
 
1 4 o THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 was going to do when he left the White House. 
 He said that he had received a number of of- 
 fers, one the presidency of a large corporation 
 with a salary of #100,000, but that he was de- 
 termined to make no commercial use of his 
 name; another the associate editorship of the 
 "Outlook" at $12,000 salary, which he had 
 accepted because that would enable him to 
 reach the people he wanted to reach. As I was 
 leaving, I said, "Mr. President, I want to say 
 one thing to you. Never, under any circum- 
 stances, become a candidate for any political 
 office — unless, perchance, you should some- 
 time be called back here — because, if you do, 
 your prestige will be ruined, and it is the great- 
 est asset the American people possess." As I 
 recall it, the exact expression I used was, "Do 
 not let any friend persuade or any enemy coerce 
 you into becoming a candidate for office." " Do 
 you mean the senatorship?" said he, for he had 
 been considered for Piatt's place. "I had not 
 thought of that at present." " I mean any po- 
 litical office," said I. 
 
 I remember that at this time a member of 
 Roosevelt's family asked me what I would have 
 him do after he left the Presidency. I replied 
 
END OF HIS TERM 141 
 
 that I thought it would be a great misfortune 
 for him to engage in any kind of business or 
 have anything to do with politics. I said that 
 after he returned from his projected African 
 trip, I would have him settle at Sagamore Hill, 
 and, for his serious occupation, write the his- 
 tory of his Administration. Parts of it could 
 be published during his lifetime, and it could 
 be published as an entirety after his death. For 
 his bread-winning occupation, I would have him 
 write for the magazines, as he had always done. 
 I said that his house would become a Mecca for 
 distinguished men from all over the world, and 
 that, acting in an advisory capacity and with 
 his great prestige, he would continue a very po- 
 tent force in our national life. I further suggested 
 that perhaps he might deliver four addresses a 
 year at the great universities, — North, South, 
 East, and West, — and thus continue to be a 
 great inspiration for young American manhood. 
 I do not assert that the course I would have 
 had him follow was the best one, or possible for 
 him, but these are the views which I held at the 
 time and which I expressed. 
 
 The period covered by Roosevelt's service had 
 been, generally speaking, one of great indus- 
 
i 4 2 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 trial prosperity, of a singularly honest and effi- 
 cient administration of the Government, and 
 one in which the conscience of the people — and 
 here was Roosevelt's most conspicuous accom- 
 plishment — had been wonderfully quickened. 
 Several years ago I happened to be sitting 
 next President Eliot at a public dinner — Roose- 
 velt was then President. Mr. Eliot said to me 
 that a certain prominent banker had told him 
 that the banking fraternity would not then do 
 things which they would have done two years 
 before — fine testimony to the changed feeling in 
 commercial circles; it was a feeling very differ- 
 ent in 1907 from that which prevailed in 1897, 
 and one which has continued to the present 
 time. We grew better in that decade; we were 
 not bad at the beginning, but we were better 
 at the end. For this Roosevelt was largely 
 responsible. His great power was a moral power. 
 As to his popularity, the New York "Times" 
 said, in an editorial, at a little later period: 
 "They who dislike Colonel Roosevelt, or think 
 they do, scarcely count in the census." 
 
 The Administration of Theodore Roosevelt 
 ended on March 4, 1909, when his successor, 
 William H. Taft, was inaugurated. It will be 
 
END OF HIS TERM 143 
 
 remembered that Washington was swept by a 
 blizzard which seriously interfered with the cere- 
 monies of the day. The usual preparations had 
 been made for the delivery of the inaugural 
 address on the east portico of the Capitol. The 
 snow forbade and at the last moment it was 
 decided that it should be delivered in the Sen- 
 ate Chamber where all of the dignitaries as- 
 sembled. In accordance with custom, Presi- 
 dent Roosevelt had driven from the White 
 House to the Capitol with his successor, but 
 contrary to custom he did not return with him. 
 Immediately after President Taft delivered his 
 address, the ex-President left the Chamber and 
 went directly to the railway station. The man, 
 who for seven years had been the most prom- 
 inent and talked-about person in the world, 
 became a private citizen. There was a hush 
 over the Chamber as he left, and one could al- 
 most hear the unexpressed but common thought 
 of that great assemblage, "He has gone." 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE AFRICAN AND EUROPEAN TRIPS 
 
 AFTER a few days spent at Oyster Bay, 
 Roosevelt, on March 23, 1909, sailed from 
 New York for Africa in charge of a scientific ex- 
 pedition sent out by the Smithsonian Institution 
 to collect birds, mammals, reptiles, and plants, 
 but especially specimens of big game, for the 
 National Museum at Washington. Speaking of 
 this approaching trip, he said that "nothing 
 will be shot unless for food or for preservation 
 as a specimen, or unless the animal is of a nox- 
 ious kind. There will be no wanton destruc- 
 tion whatever." And writing at a later time 
 while on the expedition, he wrote: — 
 
 As a matter of fact, every animal I have shot, with 
 the exception of six or eight for food, has been care- 
 fully preserved for the National Museum. I can be 
 condemned only if the existence of the National 
 Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, 
 and all similar zoological collections are to be con- 
 demned. 
 
 It is not my purpose to speak in detail of this 
 expedition. I may, perhaps, take the space to 
 
THE AFRICAN TRIP 145 
 
 say that the achievements are recorded in a 
 most interesting book called "African Game 
 Trails." The foreword is dated Khartoum, 
 March 15, 1910, and every sentence suggests 
 Roosevelt's love for nature and the open. These 
 are the closing lines: — 
 
 There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit 
 of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its 
 melancholy, and its charm. There is delight in the 
 hardy life of the open, in long rides, rifle in hand, in 
 the thrill of the fight with dangerous game. Apart 
 from this, yet mingled with it, is the strong attrac- 
 tion of the silent places, of the large tropic moons, 
 and the splendor of the new stars; where the wanderer 
 sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide 
 waste spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and changed 
 only by the slow change of the ages through time 
 everlasting. 
 
 In these lines both the hunter and the poet 
 speak. This book is not only full of interest to 
 the sportsman, but to the naturalist as well. 
 At the end is a list of game shot with the rifle 
 by Roosevelt and his son Kermit, with the 
 following note: — 
 
 Kermit and I kept about a dozen trophies for our- 
 selves, otherwise we shot nothing that was not used 
 either as a museum specimen or for meat — usually 
 for both purposes. We were in hunting grounds 
 practically as good as any that have ever existed; 
 
t 4 6 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 but we did not kill a tenth, not a hundredth part of 
 what we might have killed had we been willing. The 
 mere size of the bag indicates little as to a man's 
 prowess as a hunter, and almost nothing as to the 
 interest or value of his achievement. 
 
 One of the appendices contains a list of ani- 
 mals killed and of the species to which they 
 belong, of great interest and value to the sci- 
 entist. Another contains an elaborate argu- 
 ment by Roosevelt upon "protective colora- 
 tion" in which he takes issue with some of the 
 extreme members of the protective coloration 
 school. Another contains the original list of the 
 "Pigskin Library." 
 
 Speaking of his books, Roosevelt says: — 
 
 ' Where possible, I had them bound in pigskin. 
 They were for use, not ornament. I almost always 
 had some volume with me, either in my saddle- 
 pocket or in the cartridge-bag which one of my gun- 
 bearers carried to hold odds and ends. Often my 
 reading would be done while resting under a tree at 
 noon, perhaps beside the carcass of a beast I had 
 killed, or else while waiting for camp to be pitched; 
 and in either case it might be impossible to get 
 water for washing. In consequence the books were 
 stained with blood, sweat, gun-oil, dust, and ashes; 
 ordinary bindings either vanished or became loath- 
 some; whereas pigskin merely grew to look as a well- 
 used saddle looks. 
 
THE AFRICAN TRIP H7 
 
 His discussion of these books and of others, 
 his reasons for selecting them, and his com- 
 ments upon President Eliot's "five-foot li- 
 brary" are full of interest and suggest the fact 
 that Roosevelt had always been a most omnivo- 
 rous reader. The word is apt, because he was 
 literally a devourer of books. This book of 
 travel alone, with its notes and appendices, 
 might well embody the full measure of accom- 
 plishment of a hunter and naturalist, but is 
 merely one among the many of his prodigious 
 activities. 
 
 It was just the sort of trip which would at- 
 tract him, and was full of thrilling incidents, all 
 of which appealed to some craving of his. He ran 
 the whole gamut of experiences common to the 
 hunter and explorer who never spared himself. 
 Some idea of the variety of his activities may 
 be gained from the following programme for a 
 single day: — 
 
 Colonel Roosevelt, after an antelope hunt this 
 morning, called upon Mother Paul, the American 
 superior of the convent here, visited the Catholic 
 mission, helped to dedicate a wing recently added 
 to the Church Mission Society's hospital, and took 
 luncheon with Bishop Hanlon. This afternoon he 
 received the King of Uganda, and with him attended 
 a dinner. 
 
i 4 8 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 The expedition ended on March 14, 1910, 
 when it reached Khartoum, and then began 
 that extraordinary journey through Europe 
 during which Roosevelt delivered a series of 
 addresses which attracted world-wide atten- 
 tion. In some quarters he was criticized for 
 his blunt comments upon political conditions in 
 Egypt which were called "hasty," "impulsive," 
 and "unwise." One thing is certain, they were 
 characteristic, a frank expression of his views. 
 They were, however, neither "hasty" nor "im- 
 pulsive," because they had been considered 
 with the greatest care, and Roosevelt once told 
 me that he said nothing of political conditions 
 which had not been submitted in advance to 
 those men of the country whose judgment he 
 considered the best. 
 
 I cannot better describe the conditions un- 
 der which these addresses came to be delivered 
 than to quote the foreword in the book con- 
 taining them: — 
 
 My original intention had been to return to the 
 United States direct from Africa, by the same route 
 I took when going out. I altered this intention be- 
 cause of receiving from the Chancellor of Oxford 
 University, Lord Curzon, an invitation to deliver 
 the Romanes Lecture at Oxford. The Romanes 
 
THE AFRICAN TRIP 149 
 
 Foundation had always greatly interested me, and 
 I had been much struck by the general character of 
 the annual addresses, so that I was glad to accept. 
 Immediately afterwards, I received and accepted 
 invitations to speak at the Sorbonne in Paris, and at 
 the University of Berlin. In Berlin and at Oxford, 
 my addresses were of a scholastic character, designed 
 especially for the learned bodies which I was address- 
 ing, and for men who shared their interests in scien- 
 tific and historical matters. In Paris, after consult- 
 ing with the French Ambassador, M. Jusserand, 
 through whom the invitation was tendered, I decided 
 to speak more generally, as the citizen of one repub- 
 lic addressing the citizens of another republic. 
 
 When, for these reasons, I had decided to stop in 
 Europe on my way home, it, of course, became neces- 
 sary that I should speak to the Nobel Prize Commit- 
 tee in Christiania, in acknowledgment of the Com- 
 mittee's award of the peace prize, after the Peace of 
 Portsmouth had closed the war between Japan and 
 Russia. 
 
 While in Africa, I became greatly interested in the 
 work of the government officials and soldiers who 
 were there upholding the cause of civilization. These 
 men appealed to me; in the first place, because they 
 reminded me so much of our own officials and soldiers 
 who have reflected such credit on the American name 
 in the Philippines, in Panama, in Cuba, in Porto 
 Rico; and in the next place, because I was really 
 touched by the way in which they turned to me, 
 with the certainty that I understood and believed in 
 their work, and with the eagerly expressed hope that 
 when I got the chance I would tell the people at 
 
ISO THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 home what they were doing and would urge that 
 they be supported in doing it. 
 
 In my Egyptian address, my endeavor was to hold 
 up the hands of these men, and at the same time to 
 champion the cause of the missionaries, of the native 
 Christians, and of the advanced and enlightened 
 Mohammedans in Egypt. To do this it was neces- 
 sary emphatically to discourage the anti-foreign 
 movement, led, as it is, by a band of reckless, foolish, 
 and sometimes murderous agitators. In other words, 
 I spoke with the purpose of doing good to Egypt, 
 and with the hope of deserving well of the Egyptian 
 people of the future, unwilling to pursue the easy line 
 of moral culpability which is implied in saying pleas- 
 ant things of that noisy portion of the Egyptian 
 people of to-day, who, if they could have their way, 
 would irretrievably and utterly ruin Egypt's future. 
 In the Guildhall Address, I carried out the same idea. 
 
 I made a number of other addresses, some of which 
 — those, for instance, at Budapest, Amsterdam, 
 Copenhagen, Stockholm, and the University of 
 Christiania — I would like to present here; but un- 
 fortunately they were made without preparation, 
 and were not taken down in shorthand, so that, with 
 the exception of the address made at the dinner in 
 Christiania and the address at the Cambridge Union, 
 these cannot be included. 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt. 
 
 Sagamore Hill, 
 July 15, 1910. 
 
 This leads me to say a few words about 
 Roosevelt as a speaker and a writer. 
 
THE EUROPEAN TRIP 151 
 
 As I have said he was not in his youth a 
 ready speaker. He was halting and hesitating 
 in his delivery. In the early days no one would 
 have predicted a great future for him as an 
 "orator." In the later years, while he has had 
 none of the arts of the orator, the subject-mat- 
 ter of his addresses has been so interesting and 
 his personality so compelling that he has be- 
 come a most impressive speaker. He has, as 
 every one knows, been a most voluminous 
 writer, and I was surprised when he said to me 
 about three years ago, in substance: "Do you 
 know I am not a very ready writer. No one 
 knows how much time I put into my articles 
 for the 'Outlook.'" He then pulled a type- 
 written manuscript from his pocket and said, 
 "Here is an article that I am going over, as I 
 have opportunity, correcting and recasting it," 
 and then he added, "but my work is done three 
 months ahead." Here is one great secret of 
 his ability to accomplish so much: he is always 
 doing to-day the work of to-morrow, of next 
 week, or of next year. During the winter of 
 1909, Roosevelt was at work on the addresses 
 he was to deliver after his African trip and 
 while in Europe. 
 
152 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 I have no space for extended comment on 
 these addresses. They are easily accessible and 
 should be read in their entirety. The first was 
 delivered at the American Mission at Khar- 
 toum on March 16, 1910; the second, on "Law 
 and Order in Egypt," before the National Uni- 
 versity in Cairo, March 28, 1910. This was 
 delivered under rather disturbed conditions 
 because of the recent assassination of Boutros 
 Pasha and in spite of threats against Roose- 
 velt's life. Sir Eldon Gorst advised him not to 
 deliver it, as he could not guarantee his safety. 
 Roosevelt replied that he was not nervous about 
 that, that he would guarantee his own safety. 
 Later there was a mob demonstration in front 
 of Shepheard's Hotel. The third, on "Citizen- 
 ship in a Republic," was delivered at the Sor- 
 bonne in Paris, April 23, 1910. I have always 
 wondered how the following anecdote, told by 
 Roosevelt in this address, affected a Parisian 
 audience: — 
 
 A number of years ago I was engaged in cattle- 
 ranching on the great plains of the western United 
 States. There were no fences. The cattle wandered 
 free, the ownership of each being determined by the 
 brand; the calves were branded with the brand of the 
 cows they followed. If on the round-up an animal 
 
THE EUROPEAN TRIP 153 
 
 was passed by, the following year it would appear as 
 an unbranded yearling, and was then called a "maver- 
 ick." By the custom of the country these mavericks 
 were branded with the brand of the man on whose 
 range they were found. One day I was riding the 
 range with a newly hired cowboy, and we came upon 
 a maverick. He roped and threw it; then we built a 
 little fire, took out a cinch-ring, heated it at the fire; 
 and the cowboy started to put on the brand. I said 
 to him, "It is So-and-So's brand," naming the man 
 on whose range we happened to be. He answered: 
 "That's all right, boss; I know my business." In 
 another moment I said to him, "Hold on, you are 
 putting on my brand!" To which he answered, 
 "That's all right; I always put on the boss's brand.'' 
 I answered, "Oh, very well. Now, you go straight 
 back to the ranch and get what is owing you; I 
 don't need you any longer." He jumped up and 
 said: "Why, what's the matter? I was putting on 
 your brand." And I answered: "Yes, my friend, 
 and if you will steal for me you will steal from 
 me." 
 
 Now, the same principle which applies in private 
 life applies also in public life. If a public man tries 
 to get your vote by saying that he will do something 
 wrong in your interest, you can be absolutely certain 
 that if ever it becomes worth while he will do some- 
 thing wrong against your interest. 
 
 Fifty-nine thousand copies of this address 
 were printed and a copy given to each school- 
 master in France. The speech had a real effect 
 
154 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 in diminishing the bitterness of the clerical con- 
 troversy. 
 
 The fourth was an address delivered before the 
 Nobel Prize Committee at Christiania, Norway, 
 May 5, 1910, in which he said in opening: — 
 
 It is with peculiar pleasure that I stand here to-day 
 to express the deep appreciation I feel of the high 
 honor conferred upon me by the presentation of the 
 Nobel Peace Prize. The gold medal which formed 
 part of the prize I shall always keep, and I shall hand 
 it on to my children as a precious heirloom. The sum 
 of money provided as part of the prize by the wise 
 generosity of the illustrious founder of this world- 
 famous prize system, I did not, under the peculiar 
 circumstances of the case, feel at liberty to keep. I 
 think it eminently just and proper that in most cases 
 the recipient of the prize should keep for his own use 
 the prize in its entirety. But in this case, while I did 
 not act officially as President of the United States, it 
 was nevertheless only because I was President that I 
 was enabled to act at all; and I felt that the money 
 must be considered as having been given me in trust 
 for the United States. I therefore used it as a nucleus 
 for a foundation to forward the cause of industrial 
 peace, as being well within the general purpose of 
 your Committee; for in our complex industrial civili- 
 zation of to-day the peace of righteousness and jus- 
 tice, the only kind of peace worth having, is at least 
 as necessary in the industrial world as it is among 
 nations. There is at least as much need to curb the 
 cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of 
 
THE EUROPEAN TRIP 155 
 
 capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part 
 of the world of labor, as to check the cruel and un- 
 healthy militarism in international relationships. 
 
 The fifth, "The Colonial Policy of the United 
 States," was given at Christiania, Norway, on 
 the evening of May 5, 1910. 
 
 The sixth, "The World Movement," was de- 
 livered at the University of Berlin, May 12, 
 1910. 
 
 On the day preceding the lecture in Berlin, 
 Roosevelt was present, by the Emperor's invi- 
 tation, to review twelve thousand picked Ger- 
 man troops. The Emperor said: "My friend 
 Roosevelt, I am glad to welcome you, the most 
 distinguished American citizen. You are the 
 first civilian who has ever reviewed German 
 troops." 
 
 The seventh, "The Condition of Success," 
 was delivered at the Cambridge Union, May 
 26, 1910, from which I make one quotation to 
 support what I say elsewhere: — 
 
 ... I never was an athlete, although I have always 
 led an outdoor life, and have accomplished something 
 in it, simply because my theory is that almost any 
 man can do a great deal, if he will, by getting the 
 utmost possible service out of the qualities that he 
 actually possesses. 
 
156 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 . . . The average man who is successful — the 
 average statesman, the average public servant, the 
 average soldier, who wins what we call great success 
 — is not a genius. He is a man who has merely the 
 ordinary qualities that he shares with his fellows, 
 but who has developed those ordinary qualities to a 
 more than ordinary degree. 
 
 The eighth, "British Rule in Africa," was 
 given at the Guildhall in London, May 31, 1910. 
 Sir Edward Grey stated in Parliament that this 
 address was shown to him before it was deliv- 
 ered, was approved by him, and was made by 
 his desire. It has been said that as a result of 
 this speech, Kitchener was sent to Egypt. 
 
 The ninth, "Biological Analogies in His- 
 tory," at Oxford, June 7, 1910, was perhaps the 
 most scholarly of all the addresses. It was the 
 Romanes Lecture, and before it was delivered 
 Roosevelt had conferred upon him the highest 
 honorary degree Oxford could give. In this ad- 
 dress he states some interesting conclusions he 
 had reached as a student of biology and his- 
 tory, and draws, as he says, — 
 
 certain analogies between what has occurred to forms 
 of animal life through the procession of the ages on 
 this planet, and what has occurred and is occurring 
 to the great artificial civilizations which have gradu- 
 
THE EUROPEAN TRIP 157 
 
 ally spread over the world's surface, during the thou- 
 sands of years that have elapsed since cities of tem- 
 ples and palaces first rose beside the Nile and the 
 Euphrates, and the harbors of Minoan Crete bristled 
 with the masts of the JEgean craft. 
 
 The formal proceedings were in Latin, of 
 
 which the following is a translation, as it is given 
 
 in the appendix to "African and European 
 
 Addresses" by Theodore Roosevelt: — 
 
 CONVOCATION 
 
 June 7, 1910 
 
 Followed by the Delivery of 
 
 THE ROMANES LECTURE 
 
 by 
 
 THE HON BLE THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 Hon. D.C.L 
 
 The Right Honorable 
 LORD CURZON OF KEDLESTON 
 
 Chancellor 
 PRESIDING 
 
 Convocation and the Romanes Lecture 
 (Translation of the Latin) 
 
 The Chancellor: 
 
 The object of this Convocation is, that if it be your 
 pleasure, Gentlemen of the University, the Honorary 
 Degree of Doctor of Civil Law may be conferred on 
 
158 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 the Honorable Theodore Roosevelt, ex-President of 
 the United States of America, that the long-expected 
 Romanes Lecture may be delivered by him, when 
 he has been made the youngest Doctor in the Uni- 
 versity, and that any other business should be trans- 
 acted which may belong to this Venerable House. 
 
 Is it the pleasure, then, of this Venerable House 
 that the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Civil Law 
 should be conferred upon the Honorable Theodore 
 Roosevelt? Is it your pleasure, Reverend Doctors? 
 Is it your pleisure, Masters of the University? 
 
 Go, Bedels, and bring in the Honorable gentleman! 
 
 The Chancellor to the Vice-Chancellor: 
 
 Behold, Vice-Chancellor, the promised wight, 
 Before whose coming comets turned to flight, 
 And all the startled mouths of sevenfold Nile took fright! 
 
 Presentation Speech by Dr. Henry Goudy 
 
 It has been my privilege to present in former years 
 many distinguished citizens of the great American 
 Republic for our honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, 
 but none of them have surpassed in merit or obtained 
 such world-wide celebrity as he whom I now present 
 to you. Of ancient Dutch lineage, as his name indi- 
 cates, but still a genuine American, he has long been 
 an outstanding figure among his fellow citizens. He 
 first became known to us in England during the 
 Spanish-American War, when he commanded a regi- 
 ment of cavalry and proved himself a most capable 
 military leader. Omnivorous in his quest of knowl- 
 edge, nothing in human affairs seemed to him super- 
 fluous or negligible. In the language of the poet, one 
 
THE EUROPEAN TRIP 159 
 
 might say of him — "Non sibi sed toti genitum se 
 credere mundo." Twice has he been elevated to the 
 position of President of the Republic, and in per- 
 forming the duties of that high office has acquired a 
 title to be ranked with his great predecessor Abraham 
 Lincoln — " Quorum alter servitudinem, alter corrup- 
 tionem vicit." May we not presage that still a third 
 time — most auspicious of numbers — he may be 
 called upon to take the reins of government? 
 
 With unrivaled energy and tenacity of purpose he 
 has combined lofty ideals with a sincere devotion to 
 the practical needs not only of his fellow countrymen, 
 but of humanity at large. A sincere friend of peace 
 among nations — who does not know of his successful 
 efforts to terminate the devastating war between 
 Russia and Japan? — he has also firmly held that 
 peace is only a good thing when combined with jus- 
 tice and right. He has ever asserted that a nation 
 can only hope to survive if it be self-respecting and 
 makes itself respected by others. 
 
 A noted sportsman and lover of natural history, 
 he has recently, after his arduous labors as Head of 
 the State, been seeking relaxation in distant Africa, 
 where his onslaughts on the wild beasts of the desert 
 have been not less fierce nor less successful than over 
 the many-headed hydra of corruption in his own 
 land. 
 
 Now, like another Ulysses, on his homeward way 
 he has come to us for a brief interval, after visiting 
 many cities and discoursing on many themes. 
 
 Nor must I omit to remind you that our guest, 
 amid his engrossing duties of State, has not neglected 
 
160 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 the Muses. Not less facile with the pen than the 
 tongue, he has written on many topics, and this 
 afternoon it will be our privilege to listen to him 
 discoursing on a lofty theme. 
 
 By the Chancellor: 
 
 Most strenuous of men, most distinguished of citi- 
 zens to-day playing a part on the stage of the world, 
 you who have twice administered with purity the 
 first Magistracy of the Great Republic (and may 
 perhaps administer it a third time), peer of the most 
 august Kings, queller of men, destroyer of monsters 
 wherever found, yet the most human of mankind, 
 deeming nothing indifferent to you, not even the 
 blackest of the black; I, by my authority and that of 
 the whole University, admit you to the Degree of 
 Doctor of Civil Law, honoris causa. 
 
 Go, Bedels, conduct the Honorable Doctor to the 
 Lectern ! 
 
 [Here follows the Chancellor's welcome, and the 
 Romanes Lecture. 
 
 After the Lecture, the Chancellor to the Vice- 
 Chancellor.] 
 
 And now, my dear Vice-Chancellor — for it is 
 time — be good enough to dissolve the Convocation! 
 
 The Vice-Chancellor: 
 
 Exalted Lord Chancellor, at your bidding we dis- 
 solve the Convocation. 
 
 In reply to the criticisms sometimes made that 
 these addresses contain many commonplace ob- 
 
THE EUROPEAN TRIP 161 
 
 servations, it may be said that this is true of 
 nine tenths of what is spoken and written. The 
 timeliness and fitness of an observation most 
 often determine its value, and the application 
 of old and homely truths to new situations is 
 often as striking and frequently as effective as 
 if they had never been heard before. 
 
 Certainly few will dissent from the precepts 
 contained in these addresses or, if familiar with 
 the local conditions, question their timeliness. 
 The doctrine of charity preached at Khartoum; 
 the danger of exalting literature and a literary 
 education unduly and at the expense of the ap- 
 plied sciences so necessary to the advancement 
 of mankind, pointed out at Cairo, and the un- 
 sparing condemnation of lawlessness exempli- 
 fied in the assassination of Boutros Pasha; con- 
 demnation of the cynic and the critic who seek 
 to tear down the well-intended work of others 
 while contributing nothing themselves; giving 
 the preeminent place to honesty in the adminis- 
 tration of affairs of business or of politics: surely 
 these are all sentiments that cannot be too often 
 repeated. 
 
 The opinion expressed by Roosevelt at Paris 
 that some other agency than force should be 
 
1 62 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 found in the settlement of international dis- 
 putes must command approval. Nor can one 
 dissent from his proposition that where the 
 claims of peace and justice conflict, there must 
 be resort to arms. In the address before the 
 Nobel Prize Committee at Christiania he took 
 advantage of an opportunity to advocate that 
 the growth of armaments be checked by inter- 
 national agreement. In speaking at Berlin, he 
 seized an excellent opportunity to emphasize 
 the community of interest of all the peoples of 
 the world, the wisdom of utilizing the experience 
 of all countries in the settlement of any great 
 social or economic problem, and the value of 
 everyday virtues as essential to the permanence 
 of the State. 
 
 At Cambridge, the proper place that sport 
 should have in our lives is considered, and atten- 
 tion is directed to that fact, which cannot be 
 too often stated, that the best accomplishment 
 is not by the man of genius, but by the man in 
 whom the ordinary gifts are developed to their 
 full capacity. No more important lesson can 
 be taught the young, for it places success with- 
 in the reach of all who are willing to practice 
 the virtues of industry, patience, and honesty. 
 
THE VATICAN INCIDENT 163 
 
 Roosevelt had a very modest opinion of some 
 of his speeches. Secretary Hay in his Diary 
 mentions the following conversation with the 
 President on June 5, 1904: — 
 
 [The President] spoke of his own speeches, saying 
 he knew there was not much in them except a certain 
 sincerity and kind of commonplace morality which 
 put him en rapport with the people he talked with. 
 
 This remark to John Hay no doubt referred 
 to the speeches in which Roosevelt was seeking 
 to get the people to take what he considered 
 the right view of some matters of policy and 
 morality which were vital but commonplace. 
 
 It is not true that what Roosevelt said and 
 wrote was at all lacking in originality both of 
 thought and of expression, as much that I have 
 quoted will demonstrate. Other examples may 
 be found in all the books and state papers he 
 has written. A striking one is the ninth chap- 
 ter of his autobiography which he regards as 
 the best chapter he ever wrote. 
 
 The Vatican Incident 
 One matter to which I wish to refer occurred 
 during Roosevelt's stay in Europe and was the 
 so-called Vatican incident. When in Africa, 
 
1 64 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 in reply to an inquiry from our Ambassador at 
 Rome, he stated that of course he would be glad 
 to be received by the King of Italy and to be 
 presented to the Pope. Our Ambassador, in 
 response to this suggestion, received the follow- 
 ing message from the Rector of the American 
 Catholic College: "The Holy Father will be 
 delighted to grant audience to Mr. Roosevelt 
 on April 5th, and hopes nothing will arise to 
 prevent it, such as the much-regretted incident 
 which made the reception of Mr. Fairbanks 
 impossible." Roosevelt replied to our Ambassa- 
 dor as follows: "On the other hand, I in my 
 turn must decline to have any stipulations 
 made or submit to any conditions which in any 
 way limit my freedom of conduct." To this the 
 Vatican replied through our Ambassador: "On 
 the other hand, in view of the circumstances 
 for which neither His Holiness nor Mr. Roose- 
 velt is responsible, an audience could not occur 
 except on the understanding expressed in the 
 former message." 
 
 In response to this, Roosevelt sent the fol- 
 lowing message to our Ambassador: "Proposed 
 presentation is, of course, now impossible." 
 Cardinal Merry del Val said to Mr. O'Loughlin, 
 
THE VATICAN INCIDENT 165 
 
 "Can you guarantee that Mr. Roosevelt will 
 not visit the Methodists here ? " Mr. O'Loughlin 
 said in reply, "I cannot. Indeed, I believe that 
 Mr. Roosevelt is just the man to go there. He 
 will do as he pleases." 
 
 Roosevelt subsequently issued the following 
 statement: — 
 
 I had made no arrangements to speak at any church 
 or clerical organization in Rome. I have received a 
 number of gentlemen of all religious faiths who have 
 called at my rooms or at the American Embassy. 
 Under the circumstances, I have requested the 
 American Ambassador not to hold the reception 
 which he had intended to hold. 
 
 Roosevelt met the issue squarely, and in 
 doing so ran great risk of offending both the 
 Catholics and Methodists in this country in- 
 stead of winning the approval of either, a risk 
 no "politician" would have run, particularly 
 one looking for political preferment. 
 
 Roosevelt had been advised and urged not to 
 go to Rome and thus to avoid trouble. He said 
 that he would not invite trouble, but would not 
 go a hand's breadth out of his way to avoid 
 trouble when he knew that he was in the right. 
 
 His journey through Europe had been a royal 
 progress and he had been received on every hand 
 
1 66 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 with great acclaim as the champion of the doc- 
 trine of equality of opportunity for all men, ir- 
 respective of race, creed, or color. He reached 
 New York on Saturday, June 18, 1910, and re- 
 ceived a wonderful welcome. Measuring by 
 human standards, I suppose that he reached on 
 that day the zenith of his fame. At the dinner 
 given for him at that time, he said to a friend: 
 "I am like Peary at the North Pole; there is no 
 way for me to travel except South." 
 
 A member of his family has told me that on 
 the afternoon of the dinner some one saw Roose- 
 velt coming out of Scribner's bookstore. In- 
 stantly a great, cheering crowd gathered, all 
 struggling to get at him and shake his hand. 
 Speaking of this incident he said, "It is a kind 
 of hysteria. They will soon be throwing rotten 
 eggs at me." 
 
 Roosevelt and His Candidacy for the Republican 
 Nomination in IQI2 
 
 Properly to understand the situation from 
 my point of view, we must go back to the elec- 
 tion of 1904, of which Roosevelt said in his ad- 
 dress before the Cambridge (England) Union, 
 in 1910: — 
 
CAMPAIGN OF 1912 167 
 
 During my first term of office as President of the 
 United States, I said: "Now, I do not wish there to 
 be any misunderstanding. I like my job, and I want 
 to keep it for four years longer." [Loud laughter and 
 applause.] I don't think any President ever enjoyed 
 himself more than I did. Moreover, I don't think 
 any ex-President ever enjoyed himself more. I have 
 enjoyed my life and my work because I thoroughly 
 believe that success — the real success — does not 
 depend upon the position you hold, but upon how 
 you carry yourself in that position. 
 
 There is no doubt in the mind of any one, I 
 think, that the President did like his job and 
 wanted to be elected in 1904, as he was by a 
 majority staggering in its size. There is no 
 doubt whatever that he liked the job equally 
 well when he finished his term in 1909, and I 
 have never heard any doubt expressed that he 
 could have received the nomination in 1908, for 
 a second "elective term," as some liked to ex- 
 press it, had he desired it or even said that he 
 would accept it. He was not weary of the office 
 in 1908, nor was he unduly oppressed and 
 weighed down, as many men have been, by its 
 responsibilities. If he ever had an overpowering 
 ambition to continue to be President, he must 
 have had it then; and had he possessed the lust 
 for power that has been credited to him by some 
 
1 68 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 of his critics, it would have led him then to ac- 
 cept a nomination which his party was ready- 
 to thrust upon him. What a personal triumph 
 it would have been from the point of view of 
 the ambitious man to hold the office for practi- 
 cally three consecutive terms, something that 
 no President had ever done, and yet Roosevelt 
 turned away from it. On the night of the elec- 
 tion in 1904, when his election was assured, he 
 said: — 
 
 The wise custom which limits the President to two 
 terms regards the substance and not the form, and 
 under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or 
 accept another nomination. 
 
 And he repeated the statement in December, 
 1907, and devoted himself, with all his energy, 
 to aiding in the nomination of Mr. Taft. Not 
 only that, but every precaution was taken to 
 prevent the stampeding to Roosevelt of the 
 1908 Convention, of which there was always 
 danger. His trusted personal and political 
 friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, was chair- 
 man of the convention, occupying that position 
 for two purposes — to make impossible the nomi- 
 nation of Roosevelt, to make certain the nomina- 
 tion of Taft. In his speech Senator Lodge said : — 
 
CAMPAIGN OF 1912 169 
 
 That man is no friend of Theodore Roosevelt and 
 does not cherish his name and fame who, now, from 
 any motive, seeks to urge him as a candidate for the 
 great office which he has finally declined. The Presi- 
 dent has refused what his countrymen would have 
 gladly given him. He says what he means and means 
 what he says, and his party and his country will 
 respect his wishes, as they honor his high character 
 and his great public services. 
 
 There is no evidence of which I ever heard 
 that Roosevelt on his European trip gave a 
 thought to the nomination in 191 2. Upon his 
 return in May, 1910, at a public dinner given 
 for him in New York, he said: — 
 
 I am ready and eager to do my part, so far as I am 
 able, in helping solve problems which must be solved 
 if we, in this the greatest democratic republic upon 
 which the sun has ever shone, are to see its destinies 
 rise to the high level of our hopes and its opportuni- 
 ties. 
 
 I think the suggestion here that he was 
 "ready and eager to do his part" gave some 
 anxiety to his friends, who were more jealous 
 than he of his great fame. This anxiety was 
 increased two months later when at Harvard 
 Commencement, as President of the Alumni 
 Association, Roosevelt, at the request of Gov- 
 ernor Hughes, of New York, sent the following 
 
170 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 telegram to Mr. Griscom, Chairman of the 
 
 Republican State Committee: — 
 
 During the last week, great numbers of Republi- 
 cans and independent voters from all over the State 
 [New York] having written me urging the passage 
 of Direct Primary legislation. I have seen Governor 
 Hughes and have learned your views from your 
 representative. It seems to me that the Cobb Bill, 
 with the amendments proposed by you, meets the 
 needs of the situation. I believe that the people de- 
 mand it. I most earnestly hope that it will be enacted 
 into law. 
 
 Roosevelt was again in politics, to the regret, 
 I think, of many of his friends, and to his own 
 surprise, I firmly believe. This was his explana- 
 tion of it at the time. In introducing Governor 
 Hughes at the Alumni luncheon, Roosevelt 
 said: — 
 
 Our Governor has a very persuasive way with him. 
 I had intended to keep absolutely clear from any 
 kind of public or political question after coming 
 home, and I could carry out my resolution all right 
 until I met the Governor this morning, and he then 
 explained to me that I had come back to live in New 
 York now; that I had to help him out, and after a 
 very brief conversation, I put up my hands and 
 agreed to help him. 
 
 In October of that year, Roosevelt was 
 Chairman of the New York Republican State 
 
CAMPAIGN OF 19 12 171 
 
 Convention, defeating James S. Sherman, then 
 Vice-President of the United States. Mr. Stim- 
 son was nominated for governor as a Roosevelt 
 candidate and was defeated by 100,000 votes. 
 In commenting on the election, Roosevelt said 
 at a later period, when he had become a candi- 
 date for the Republican nomination for Presi- 
 dent: — 
 
 In that contest, as in this, I was exceedingly reluc- 
 tant to be drawn into the contest. In that contest, as 
 in this, I acted only from a sense of duty to the people 
 as a whole, and in that contest I was assailed with 
 precisely the same arguments by the great majority 
 of those who are now assailing me. If I had consid- 
 ered only my own personal interests and personal 
 preferences, I would, of course, have kept out of the 
 1910 campaign, have let the machine remain in con- 
 trol at Saratoga, and have seen the State go Demo- 
 cratic by 300,000 majority, as under those circum- 
 stances it certainly would have gone. I went in 
 because I conscientiously felt that it was my duty to 
 take my part in the fight for honest government, for 
 genuine self-government by the people, without 
 regard to the consequences to myself, and I am in 
 this fight on precisely the same basis and for pre- 
 cisely the same reasons. 
 
 As the Convention of 191 2 drew near, there 
 was much speculation as to whether Roosevelt 
 would be a candidate or not. Many people 
 
172 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 regarded his statement which I have quoted as 
 a bar to his doing so. It was obviously open to 
 the construction that he would never under any 
 circumstances at any time be a candidate. As 
 to what it was intended to express, Mr. Loeb, 
 who was Roosevelt's secretary at the time, has 
 told me that when the statement was drafted, 
 it was suggested that it be limited in express 
 terms to the election of 1908, but that that was 
 disapproved for the reason that a declaration 
 that Roosevelt would not run in 1908 would be 
 accepted as tantamount to a statement that he 
 would run in 191 2, which Roosevelt then had 
 no intention of doing, nor had he any intention 
 of saying anything that would not leave him 
 free after 1908. A reporter present asked Roose- 
 velt if this applied to 1912. He replied: — 
 
 Now, gentlemen, that is something I don't intend 
 to speak about. You accept my statement just as I 
 have made it. 
 
 A prominent newspaper man recently said 
 to me : — 
 
 At that time none of the correspondents dreamed 
 of interpreting his refusal to be a candidate as apply- 
 ing to any other year than 1908. It was made to set 
 at rest the rumors that he would try to succeed him- 
 self at the end of the term to which he had just been 
 
CAMPAIGN OF 19 1 2 173 
 
 elected, and none of us interpreted it in any other 
 way. Not until he began to be talked of as a candi- 
 date in 191 2 did anybody try to make it appear that 
 his 1904 statement was intended to cover all the rest 
 of his life so as to bar him from running forever. 
 
 I regard the episode as unfortunate, but as in 
 no way reflecting upon Roosevelt's good faith. 
 
 I had a long talk with Roosevelt in Novem- 
 ber, 191 1. I spoke to him of the convention and 
 of his possible candidacy. He said, in sub- 
 stance, that he did not want to be a candidate 
 — that he did not want the office again, and 
 that he believed that it would be a great risk 
 for him to take it, and that he had no idea that 
 conditions would arise that would make it neces- 
 sary. If, however, such conditions should arise 
 and it should become in his opinion a duty, he 
 would not decline to be drafted. As late as 
 December, 191 1, he wrote to influential men of 
 the party in Washington urging them to do 
 everything they could to stop any mention of 
 his name in connection with the office. I talked 
 with him again in January, 191 2, and again he 
 said he did not want the nomination, he doubted 
 if any Republican could be elected, and that he 
 personally had everything to lose and nothing 
 
.174 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 to gain if he should enter the contest, but again 
 he said that if there should be an uprising of 
 the people, which he did not anticipate, he might 
 consider it. When I asked him why he did not 
 say that under no circumstances would he ac- 
 cept the office if it were tendered him, — and 
 be it remembered that I was in favor of Mr. 
 Taft's nomination, — he said, in substance, "I 
 had to eat my words once in connection with 
 the Vice-Presidency, and I don't want to run 
 any chance of having to do it again." 
 
 During all this time the supporters of all the 
 candidates had been hard at work to secure 
 delegates, but nothing was done by Roosevelt, 
 nor did he want anything done. He stated over 
 and over again that he did not want anything 
 done and wanted nothing left undone that would 
 prevent anything being done. 
 
 Meantime, as he has told me, Republican 
 governors of several States were writing him 
 and seeing him, urging that he be a candidate. 
 He told them that he was not convinced that 
 there was any popular demand for his candi- 
 dacy. Gradually, however, through all kinds 
 of interviews, through all kinds of articles in 
 the papers, through all kinds of letters and other 
 
CAMPAIGN OF 19 1 2 175 
 
 communications, he became convinced, by a sort 
 of cumulative process, that two thirds of the 
 rank and file of the Republican party wished 
 him to run; and further, that unless he made 
 the fight for the principles in which he believed 
 with all his heart and soul, there would be no 
 fight at all made for them. He was in this state 
 of mind when, on February 10, 191 2, at a meet- 
 ing in Chicago, the Republican governors of 
 seven States, West Virginia, Nebraska, New 
 Hampshire, Wyoming, Michigan, Kansas, and 
 Missouri, asked Roosevelt in the following let- 
 ter to become a candidate for the Presidency: — 
 
 We, the undersigned Republican governors, as- 
 sembled for the purpose of considering what will 
 best insure the continuation of the Republican party 
 as a useful agency of good government, declare it our 
 belief, after a careful investigation of the facts, that 
 a large majority of the Republican voters of the 
 country favor your nomination, and a large majority 
 of the people favor your election, as the next Presi- 
 dent of the United States. 
 
 We believe that your candidacy will insure success 
 in the next campaign. We believe that you repre- 
 sent, as no other man represents, those principles 
 and policies upon which we must appeal for a major- 
 ity of the votes of the American people, and which, 
 in our opinion, are necessary for the happiness and 
 prosperity of the country. 
 
176 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 We believe that, in view of this public demand, 
 you should soon declare whether, if the nomination 
 for the Presidency come to you unsolicited and un- 
 sought, you will accept it. 
 
 In submitting this request we are not considering 
 your personal interests. We do not regard it as 
 proper to consider either the interests or the prefer- 
 ence of any man as regards the nomination for the 
 Presidency. We are expressing our sincere belief and 
 best judgment as to what is demanded of you in the 
 interests of the people as a whole. And we feel that 
 you would be unresponsive to a plain public duty if 
 you should decline to accept the nomination, coming 
 as the voluntary expression of the wishes of a major- 
 ity of the Republican voters of the United States, 
 through the action of their delegates in the next 
 National Convention. 
 
 With the knowledge that he would be a 
 candidate, Roosevelt made, on February 21, 
 191 2, his Columbus speech on "A Charter of 
 Democracy," in which, among other things, he 
 advocated the recall of judicial decisions. This 
 speech alienated hundreds of thousands of Re- 
 publican votes. He did not need to make it to 
 secure the votes of radicals — those were his 
 already. He must have known, as well as any 
 one, what the result would be. And then, when 
 he had left nothing undone and had done every- 
 thing to make his nomination in a Republican 
 
CAMPAIGN OF 19 1 2 177 
 
 Convention impossible, he replied, under date 
 of February 24, 191 2, to the letter of the seven 
 governors, as follows : — 
 
 I deeply appreciate your letter, and I realize to 
 the full the heavy responsibility it puts upon me, 
 expressing as it does the carefully considered convic- 
 tions of the men elected by popular vote to stand as 
 the heads of government in their several States. 
 
 I absolutely agree with you that this matter is not 
 one to be decided with any reference to the personal 
 preferences or interests of any man, but purely from 
 the standpoint of the interests of the people as a 
 whole. I will accept the nomination for President if 
 it is tendered to me, and I will adhere to this decision 
 until the convention has expressed its preference. 
 One of the chief principles for which I have stood and 
 for which I now stand, and which I have always en- 
 deavored and always shall endeavor to reduce to 
 action, is the genuine rule of the people; and there- 
 fore I hope that so far as possible the people may be 
 given the chance, through direct primaries, to express 
 their preference as to who shall be the nominee of the 
 Republican Presidential Convention. 
 
 It is my conviction that Roosevelt entered 
 this campaign without any desire to gratify a 
 personal ambition, but as the leader of a cause 
 in which he believed and without any thought as 
 to how his personal fortunes would be affected. 
 Recently he wrote me : — 
 
178 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 You know that 1912 really represented merely the 
 goal of thought for which I had always been heading. 
 From my standpoint it was merely the effort to 
 apply the principles of Abraham Lincoln to the con- 
 ditions of the twentieth century. 
 
 His political creed is contained in the Car- 
 negie Hall Address of March 20, 1912, printed 
 in the Appendix, in which he said toward the 
 close: — 
 
 In order to succeed we need leaders of inspired 
 idealism, leaders to whom are granted great visions, 
 who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams 
 come true; who can kindle the people with the fire 
 from their own burning souls. The leader for the 
 time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, 
 to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; 
 and if he is worth his salt he will care no more when 
 he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent 
 where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may 
 be won. In the long fight for righteousness the watch- 
 word for all of us is, spend and be spent. It is of little 
 matter whether any one man fails or succeeds; but 
 the cause shall not fail, for it is the cause of mankind. 
 
 This expressed his state of mind. Many of 
 his friends would have preferred to have him 
 preserve the great fame that was his, undimmed 
 by any conflict in the political arena that might 
 well lead to reverses. He chose for himself the 
 other course. "In the long fight for righteous- 
 
RECALL OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS 179 
 
 ness, the watchword for all of us is, spend and 
 be spent. It is of little matter whether any one 
 man fails or succeeds, but the cause shall not 
 fail, for it is the cause of mankind." 
 
 Roosevelt and the Recall of Judicial Decisions 
 There is probably no one doctrine urged by 
 Roosevelt that has aroused so much criticism 
 or alienated so many of his conservative sup- 
 porters as that of the recall of judicial decisions 
 advocated in his Columbus speech. Whether 
 one agrees with him or not (and I am one of 
 those who do not), his position should be fairly 
 understood and he should not be charged with 
 having advanced this doctrine in any dema- 
 gogic spirit. That he was absolutely sincere in 
 his opinion, and that it was the result of many 
 years of thought, is not only, I believe, true, 
 but can easily be demonstrated to be so. 
 
 I have referred earlier in this narrative to 
 the decision, in 1885, of the Court of Appeals 
 of New York in finding unconstitutional the 
 act of the Legislature declaring unlawful the 
 manufacture in tenement houses of cigars or of 
 tobacco into other forms, and stated that then, 
 nearly thirty years before the Columbus speech, 
 
180 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 Roosevelt's wrath was roused against that kind 
 of judicial mind, which, as he said, was blind 
 to changed social conditions and which was dis- 
 posed so to limit the area of the "police power" 
 as to make it impossible to legislate for the cor- 
 rection of such abuses as the one I have men- 
 tioned, namely, the limiting of the number of 
 hours of work in unhealthy occupations, and 
 others of a kindred nature. He gave expression 
 to his views from time to time in his messages 
 to Congress and elsewhere, and was for many 
 years seeking a remedy which finally he thought 
 he had found in the recall of judicial decisions. 
 Before considering in detail what Roosevelt's 
 views are upon this subject, let us understand 
 just what the police power is, how it has been 
 invoked by legislatures, and how construed by 
 the courts. As an original proposition, one can 
 engage in any lawful undertaking and make 
 any kind of a contract, lawful in its purpose, 
 without interference by either the legislatures 
 or the courts; but as time has gone on and 
 social conditions have changed, certain restric- 
 tions have been imposed upon the way in which 
 a man may carry on his business and the kind of 
 contracts he can make, involving the welfare of 
 
RECALL OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS 181 
 
 others. For example, trie slaughter of cattle is 
 a necessary and useful business, but attended 
 necessarily by disagreeable incidents, so that 
 it has been found necessary in thickly settled 
 communities to impose certain conditions under 
 which the business must be carried on. This is 
 an exercise of the police power. Similarly, the 
 right to contract with a woman for her labor is 
 restricted in order that her strength may not 
 be unduly wasted and deterioration of the race 
 follow. This is another exercise of the police 
 power. As the Supreme Court once said: — 
 
 Of course, it is impossible to forecast the character 
 and extent of these changes, but in view of the fact 
 that, from the day Magna Charta was signed to the 
 present moment, amendments to the structure of 
 the law have been made with increasing frequency, 
 it is impossible to suppose that they will not continue, 
 and the law be forced to adapt itself to the new con- 
 dition of society, and, particularly to new relations 
 between employers and employees, as they arise. 
 
 And, on another occasion: — 
 
 It is the thoroughly established doctrine of the court 
 that liberty of contract may be circumscribed in the 
 interest of the State and welfare of the people, and 
 whether a given exercise of such authority transcends 
 the limits of legislative authority must be determined 
 in each case as it arises. 
 
1 82 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 In the tenement-house decision to which I 
 have referred, the court held that a man should 
 be permitted to manufacture cigars in a tene- 
 ment and that it was not harmful to proper 
 conditions of living or to society. This was a 
 naked question of fact, and Roosevelt's recall 
 of judicial decisions amounts simply to this: 
 that the people who made the Constitution 
 shall in this and kindred cases have an oppor- 
 tunity to say what is and what is not an exer- 
 cise of the police power necessary to meet exist- 
 ing conditions, and that the final settlement of 
 the question shall not rest with perhaps a bare 
 majority of seven or nine judges. 
 
 For example, in his message of December, 
 1908, he said, speaking of judicial decisions 
 which nullify legislative attempts to protect 
 wage- workers : — 
 
 The talk about preserving, to the misery-hunted 
 beings who make contracts for such service, their 
 "liberty" to make them, is either to speak in a spirit 
 of heartless irony or else to show an utter lack of 
 knowledge of the conditions of life among the great 
 mass of fellow countrymen, a lack which unfits a 
 judge to do good service just as it would unfit any 
 executive or legislative officer. 
 
 Speaking of the decision of the New York 
 
RECALL OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS 183 
 
 Court of Appeals declaring unconstitutional the 
 New York law to provide for Workmen's Com- 
 pensation on the ground that the proposed 
 law is in conflict with the Constitution of the 
 United States, he said (May, 191 1): — 
 
 It is not merely the right but the duty of every 
 friend of genuine justice and progress to protest 
 against the decision in question. When the Supreme 
 Court of Connecticut rendered a decision akin to 
 that rendered by the Court of Appeals on the same 
 subject, this decision was circulated by the great 
 railway corporations very widely before the legisla- 
 tures and courts in other States in order to prevent 
 or nullify legislation designed to secure compensation 
 to workingmen. Exactly similar action is now being 
 taken in connection with this decision of the New 
 York Court of Appeals. . . . The Court of Appeals 
 in this decision fully admits the iniquity and injustice 
 wrought by the principles which it proceeds to up- 
 hold. Its contention is that the hands of the legisla- 
 tures, the hands of the people, are tied by the Con- 
 stitution of the United States, and that we cannot 
 get justice for workingmen or secure them against 
 the most cruel wrong because the Federal Constitu- 
 tion and the State Constitution of New York, in the 
 narrowest and most technical spirit, guarantee all 
 persons against deprivation of liberty or property 
 without due process of law. . . . The people must 
 have the right ultimately to determine for them- 
 selves what great lines of government policy are to 
 be followed by the State; they have never surrendered 
 
1 84 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 this ultimate right to the judges or any one else, and 
 it is our duty to see that it is not kept merely as a 
 nominal and unreal right, a sham right, but that 
 machinery shall be devised to make it a real, working 
 right, which can be invoked and put into effect, but 
 without too much difficulty. 
 
 And in his Osawatomie speech of September, 
 1910, he includes the following among the aims 
 of the New Nationalism: — 
 
 It demands of the judiciary that it shall be inter- 
 ested primarily in human welfare rather than in 
 property, just as it demands that the representative 
 body shall represent all the people rather than one 
 class or section of the people. 
 
 In his speech before the Colorado Legisla- 
 ture, in August, 1910, he justified his criticisms 
 of the courts by referring to Lincoln's comment 
 on the Dred Scott case, and to Judge Har- 
 lan's comments on the majority opinion in the 
 Knight case. Had his speech been made a year 
 later, he might well have referred to Judge Har- 
 lan's criticism of the majority opinion of the Su- 
 preme Court in the Standard Oil Company and 
 American Tobacco Company cases. In the case 
 of the Standard Oil Company, decided May 15, 
 191 1, the learned justice said, speaking of the 
 majority opinion: — 
 
RECALL OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS 185 
 
 After many years of public service at the National 
 Capital and after a somewhat close observation of 
 the conduct of public affairs, I am impelled to say 
 that there is abroad in our land a most harmful 
 tendency to bring about the amending of constitu- 
 tions and legislative enactments by means alone of 
 judicial construction. . . . To overreach the action 
 of Congress merely by judicial construction — that 
 is, by indirection — is a blow at the integrity of our 
 governmental system, and in the end will prove most 
 dangerous to all. 
 
 And again, in the case of the American To- 
 bacco Company, decided two weeks later: — 
 
 In short, the court now, by judicial legislation, in 
 effect amends an act of Congress relating to a subject 
 over which that department of the Government has 
 exclusive cognizance. 
 
 An early example of the criticism of the 
 courts is found in a letter from Thomas Jeffer- 
 son to a Mr. Jarvis, dated Monticello, Sep- 
 tember 28, 1820, from which the following is 
 an extract: — 
 
 You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate 
 arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dan- 
 gerous doctrine, indeed, and one which would place 
 us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges 
 are as honest as other men and no more so. They 
 have, with others, the same passions for party, for 
 power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim 
 
186 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 is "boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem" and 
 their power the more dangerous as they are in office 
 for life, and not responsible, as the other function- 
 aries are, to the elective control. ... I know no safe 
 depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but 
 the people themselves; and if we think them not 
 enlightened enough to exercise their control with a 
 wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it 
 from them, but to inform their discretion by education. 
 
 A case illustrating how judges may differ is 
 that of Coppage vs. Kansas, decided by the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, January 
 25, 191 5. It was this: There was a statute of 
 the State of Kansas forbidding employers to 
 exact from employees, as a condition of secur- 
 ing or retaining employment, a promise not to 
 join or retain membership in a labor organiza- 
 tion. The local court found a defendant guilty 
 of this offense and the judgment was affirmed 
 by the Supreme Court of Kansas. The case was 
 appealed to the Supreme Court of the United 
 States on the ground that the statute as con- 
 strued was in conflict with that provision of the 
 Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of 
 the United States which declares that no State 
 shall deprive any person of liberty or property 
 without due process of law. The majority of 
 
RECALL OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS 187 
 
 the court held that if freedom to contract is to 
 be preserved, the employer must be left at lib- 
 erty to decide for himself whether such mem- 
 bership by his employee is consistent with the 
 satisfactory performance of the duties of the 
 employment. The minority of the court agreed 
 with the Kansas court, which took the view that 
 employees are not financially able to be as in- 
 dependent in making contracts for selling their 
 labor as employers in buying it, and that the 
 statute did not go beyond the legitimate exer- 
 cise of the police power. Here are opposing 
 views of the same statute, the majority view 
 being held by six members of the court and the 
 minority view by three. Who shall say which is 
 right? Upon this question of fact, the minority 
 view certainly shows the trend of thought at 
 the present time when we recognize that asso- 
 ciations of employees are necessary to place 
 them on an. equality with their employers in 
 bargaining for the sale of service. It is on this 
 class of cases in the lower courts that the recall 
 of judicial decisions would operate. 
 
 Evidence of a recent change of attitude to- 
 ward laws involving an exercise of the police 
 power is found in the subject-matter of three 
 
188 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 cases much criticized by Roosevelt. In Sarah 
 Knisley vs. Pratt, 148 N.Y. 372, decided in 
 February, 1896, the court held that a woman 
 employee who had assumed the risk of operat- 
 ing a dangerous machine, not safeguarded as 
 the law required, could not recover for the loss 
 of an arm. This case was overruled in Fitz- 
 water vs. Warren, 206 N.Y. 355, decided in 
 October, 191 2. The court held in this case that 
 a servant does not assume the risk caused by a 
 master's violation of the law. 
 
 In People vs. Williams, 189 N.Y. 131, decided 
 in June, 1907, the court held unconstitutional 
 a provision in the Labor Law of New York 
 which prohibited the employment of an adult 
 female in a factory before six o'clock in the 
 morning or after nine o'clock in the evening. 
 The reason given was that it 
 
 violates the constitutional provisions guaranteeing 
 to every citizen the right to pursue any lawful em- 
 ployment in a lawful manner, and is discrimina- 
 tive against female citizens in denying to them equal 
 rights with men with respect to liberty of person, or 
 of contract. It cannot be upheld as a proper exercise 
 of the police power, having for its purpose the preser- 
 vation of the health of female citizens, since it arbi- 
 trarily takes away the right of a woman to labor in 
 
RECALL OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS 189 
 
 a factory during the prohibited hours without any 
 reference to the number of hours of such labor or the 
 healthfulness of the employment. 
 
 On March 26, 19 15, the Court of Appeals, in 
 People vs. Schweinler Press, 214 N.Y. 395, sus- 
 tained a similar statute providing "that no 
 woman shall work in any factory in the State 
 before six o'clock in the morning or after ten 
 o'clock in the evening," and held that the law 
 entitled "Period of rest at night for women" 
 violated no provision of the Federal or State 
 Constitution. 
 
 In Ives vs. South Buffalo R.R. Co., 201 N.Y. 
 271, decided March, 191 1, the court held un- 
 constitutional, under both Federal and State 
 Constitutions, a provision relating to "work- 
 men's compensation in certain dangerous em- 
 ployments." Among other things, the court held 
 that 
 
 the right given to the employee by this statute does 
 not preserve to the employer the "due process" of 
 law guaranteed by the Constitution, for it authorizes 
 the taking of the employer's property without his 
 consent and without his fault. 
 
 The State Constitution was subsequently 
 amended to obviate the difficulty found by the 
 
190 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 court. The Federal Constitution remained un- 
 unchanged. 
 
 In Jenson vs. Southern Pacific, 215 N.Y. 514, 
 decided in July, 191 5, the court held that the 
 Workmen's Compensation Law 
 
 is not violative of the Fourteenth Amendment of the 
 United States Constitution for taking property with- 
 out due process of law . . . and is a valid enactment 
 within the police power of the State for the promo- 
 tion of the general welfare. 
 
 I think that the real difference, on this sub- 
 ject, between the position of the conservative 
 of open mind and Roosevelt is not so much the 
 end to be sought as the method to pursue. The 
 conservative, and I am one, thinks it wiser to 
 wait for public opinion, changing as it does with 
 changing conditions, to have its effect upon the 
 judicial mind; or, if necessary, to resort to an 
 amendment of the Constitution, State or Na- 
 tional. Roosevelt, impatient to reach the goal, 
 desired some more immediate influence of pub- 
 lic opinion upon this class of judicial decisions. 
 That he is lacking in respect for or confidence 
 in our judicial system is not true. 
 
 In his special message of January, 1908, he 
 said: — 
 
RECALL OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS 191 
 
 Most certainly 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 . . . 
 the judges stand in character and service above all 
 other men among their fellow servants of the public. 
 There is all the greater need that the few who fail in 
 this great office, who fall below this high standard of 
 integrity, of wisdom, of sympathetic understanding 
 and of courage should have their eyes opened to the 
 needs of their countrymen. 
 
 Two books had great influence upon Roose- 
 velt in his consideration of this subject which 
 led to the remedy he proposed known as the 
 "Recall of Judicial Decisions." One, called 
 "Moral Overstrain," was written in 1906 by 
 George W. Alger. The chapter which particu- 
 larly attracted Roosevelt's attention was that 
 on "Some Equivocal Rights of Labor." This 
 states the wrongs to be remedied. The case 
 there related of the Knisley girl who lost her 
 arm in a machine she was operating was the 
 basis of Roosevelt's story, "Sarah Knisley's 
 Arm," printed originally in "Collier's Weekly," 
 in March, 191 3. 
 
 The other book, which recognized the danger of 
 the misuse of power by the courts, was "Legal 
 Essays," by James Bradley Thayer, LL.D., late 
 
192 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 Weld Professor of Law in Harvard University, 
 published in 1908. In the first chapter on 
 "The Origin and Scope of the American Doc- 
 trine of Constitutional Law," prepared in 1893, 
 Professor Thayer proposes this question: — 
 
 How did our American doctrine, which allows to 
 the judiciary the power to declare legislative acts 
 unconstitutional, and to treat them as null, come 
 about, and what is the true scope of it? 
 
 Later, Professor Thayer says : — 
 
 When at last this power of the judiciary was every- 
 where established, and added to the other bulwarks 
 of our written constitutions, how was the power to 
 be conceived of? 
 
 And he answers the question, "Strictly as a 
 judicial one," and then goes on to say: — 
 
 Again, where the power of the judiciary did have 
 place, its whole scope was this; namely, to determine 
 for the mere purpose of deciding a litigated question 
 properly submitted to the court, whether a particu- 
 lar disputed exercise of power was forbidden by the 
 Constitution. In doing this the court was so to dis- 
 charge its office as not to deprive another department 
 of any of its proper power, or to limit it in the proper 
 range of its discretion. Not merely, then, do these 
 questions, when presenting themselves in the courts 
 for judicial action, call for a peculiarly large method 
 in the treatment of them, but especially they require 
 an allowance to be made by the judges for the vast 
 
RECALL OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS 193 
 
 and not definable range of legislative power and 
 choice, for that wide margin of considerations which 
 address themselves only to the practical judgment 
 of a legislative body. Within that margin, as among 
 all these legislative considerations, the constitutional 
 lawmakers must be allowed a free foot. In so far as 
 legislative choice, ranging here unfettered, may select 
 one form of action or another, the judges must not 
 interfere, since their question is a naked judicial one. 
 Moreover, such is the nature of this particular 
 judicial question that the preliminary determination 
 by the legislature is a fact of very great importance, 
 since the constitutions expressly entrust to the legis- 
 lature this determination; they cannot act without 
 making it. 
 
 And he makes the following quotation from 
 5 Mass. 524, 533 : — 
 
 It is true that the legislature, in consequence of 
 their construction of the constitution, cannot make 
 laws repugnant to it. But every department of gov- 
 ernment, invested with certain constitutional powers, 
 must, in the first instance, but not exclusively, be the 
 judge of its powers, or it could not act. And certainly 
 the construction of the constitution by the legislature 
 ought to have great weight, and not be overruled, 
 unless manifestly erroneous. 
 
 Roosevelt was particularly impressed by the 
 following quotation from an opinion by Mr. 
 Chief Justice Tilghman, of Pennsylvania, in 
 1811: — 
 
i 9 4 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 For weighty reasons, it has been assumed as a 
 principle in constitutional construction by the Su- 
 preme Court of the United States, by this court, 
 and every other court of reputation in the United 
 States, that an act of the legislature is not to be 
 declared void unless the violation of the constitution 
 is so manifest as to leave no room for reasonable 
 doubt. 
 
 And also by the following quotation from an 
 opinion by Mr. Justice Charlton, in Georgia, in 
 1808, upon the manner in which this power 
 should be exercised by the court: — 
 
 No nice doubts, no critical exposition of words, no 
 abstract rules of interpretation, suitable in a contest 
 between individuals, ought to be resorted to in decid- 
 ing on the constitutional operation of a statute. This 
 violation of a constitutional right ought to be as 
 obvious to the comprehension of every one as an 
 axiomatic truth, as that the parts are equal to the 
 whole. I shall endeavor to illustrate this: the first 
 section of the second article of the constitution de- 
 clares that the executive function shall be vested in 
 the governor. Now, if the legislature were to vest 
 the executive power in a standing committee of the 
 House of Representatives, every mind would at once 
 perceive the unconstitutionality of the statute. The 
 judiciary would be authorized without hesitation to 
 declare the act unconstitutional. But when it remains 
 doubtful whether the legislature have or have not 
 trespassed on the constitution, a conflict ought to be 
 
RECALL OF JUDICIAL DECISIONS 195 
 
 avoided, because there is a possibility in such a case 
 of the constitution being with the legislature. 
 
 And again by the following quotation from 
 an opinion by Chancellor Waties, of South 
 Carolina, in 1812, who said upon this subject: — 
 
 . . . The interference of the judiciary with legisla- 
 tive acts, if frequent or on dubious grounds, might 
 occasion so great a jealousy of this power and so 
 general a prejudice against it as to lead to measures 
 ending in the total overthrow of the independence 
 of the judges, and so of the best preservative of their 
 constitution. The validity of the law ought not, then, 
 to be questioned unless it is so obviously repugnant 
 to the constitution that, when pointed out by the 
 judges, all men of sense and reflection in the commu- 
 nity may perceive the repugnancy. By such a cautious 
 exercise of this judicial check, no jealousy of it will 
 be excited, the public confidence in it will be pro- 
 moted, and its salutary effects be justly and fully 
 appreciated. 
 
 I am not contending that Roosevelt was 
 right in his conclusions, with which I did not 
 agree, but am merely reciting the processes 
 through which his mind passed in reaching 
 them, and attempting to make clear the fact 
 that they were the result of long reflection and 
 careful investigation. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 roosevelt's personal characteristics — 
 conclusion 
 
 IN what I have written, I have sought to 
 lay the foundation for certain conclusions in 
 regard to the character and accomplishments of 
 Theodore Roosevelt, to which I will add the 
 reasons as I see them for his great popularity 
 and extraordinary success in so many distinct 
 fields of human endeavor. In tracing his his- 
 tory, I think I have demonstrated that his 
 political advancement was in no way due to 
 anything he consciously did with that end in 
 view. 
 
 He was never an extreme party man. I 
 think that "Harper's Weekly," which I have 
 quoted, stated his position correctly, in 1883, 
 when it said: — 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt holds the soundest views upon pub- 
 lic questions with the feeling that the Republican 
 party is the organization which, from its traditional 
 principles and the character of its membership, is 
 more likely wisely to secure the public welfare. 
 
 Roosevelt has always regarded a party as a 
 
MR. AND MRS ROOSEVELT WITH THEIR GRANDSON 
 RICHARD DERBY, Jr. 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 197 
 
 means to an end, and when, in his opinion, it 
 ceases to be an instrument for good, he is ready 
 to cast it aside. That is a very different feeling 
 from that to which I have referred of the man 
 to whom "it was little short of treason to vote 
 any other than the Republican ticket." 
 
 Roosevelt has always been a radical "demo- 
 crat." Of course, I use the word in its broader 
 sense and not as the designation of a party. 
 He said so in his Oxford address. He once said 
 to me at Oyster Bay after he had finished his 
 term as President: "I am a democrat and a 
 radical. I like to go to the Lodge here and sit 
 on the benches while my cousin's gardener pre- 
 sides." 
 
 Earlier in this sketch I introduced Roose- 
 velt's speech seconding the nomination of Mr. 
 Lynch as temporary chairman of the 1884 Na- 
 tional Convention, in which he said: — 
 
 Let each man stand accountable to those whom he 
 represents for his vote. Let no man be able to shelter 
 himself behind the shield of his State. What we say 
 is, that one of the cardinal doctrines of the American 
 political government is the accountability of each 
 man to his people. 
 
 Here we find, over thirty years ago, the same 
 
 idea that later found expression in the direct 
 
198 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 primary, the initiative and the referendum, the 
 direct and immediate connection of the people 
 with the thing done, as in the case of the recall 
 of judicial decisions. 
 
 He always spoke of himself with extreme 
 modesty. I remember that at the twenty-fifth 
 anniversary of the graduation of our class, while 
 he was President, he said in substance that he 
 was not a great man, that there were very few 
 such, but that he had improved his opportuni- 
 ties. For example, said he: — 
 
 Many other men have had the same experience in 
 the West and could have raised a regiment in the 
 Spanish War as I did, but they did not. I was afraid 
 at first that they would call the regiment "Teddy's 
 Terrors," which would have covered it with ridicule. 
 I did not want any name, but "Rough Riders" was 
 the one that finally stuck. 
 
 It was a necessity to get this regiment into action, 
 otherwise it would have been laughed at. We came 
 near being left behind, and I admit that I pulled every 
 wire in sight to get that regiment to Cuba, and we 
 got there. If we had not, I should never have been 
 President. 
 
 Speaking of the Panama matter, he said: "I 
 had to act quickly, and I did — and we are now 
 building the canal." Criticism of his action did 
 not create in his mind any doubt as to its 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 199 
 
 righteousness. Speaking in Denver in 1905, he 
 
 said: — 
 
 It is perhaps unnecessary for me to say that I am 
 perfectly aware that many most admirable gentle- 
 men disagree with me in my action toward the Pan- 
 ama Canal. But I am in a wholly unrepentant frame 
 of mind in reference thereto. The ethical conception 
 upon which I acted was that I did not intend that 
 Uncle Sam should be held up while he was doing a 
 great work for himself and all mankind. 
 
 It seems to be agreed that the responsibility 
 for the settlement of the difficulties between 
 Colombia and Panama, which made possible 
 the building of the canal, was assumed by 
 President Roosevelt. John Hay was then Sec- 
 retary of State. From Mr. Hay's letters I make 
 the following quotations: — 
 
 December 8, 1903, he wrote to Mr. James 
 Ford Rhodes: — 
 
 It is hard for me to understand how any one can 
 criticize our action in Panama on the grounds upon 
 which it is ordinarily attacked. The matter came on 
 us with amazing celerity. We had to decide on the 
 instant whether we would take possession of the 
 ends of the railroad and keep the traffic clear, or 
 whether we would stand back and let those gentle- 
 men cut each other's throats for an indefinite time, 
 and destroy whatever remnant of our property and 
 our interests we had there. I had no hesitation as to 
 
200 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 the proper course to take, and have had no doubt of 
 the propriety of it since. 
 
 January 20, 1904, to Professor George P. 
 Fisher, of Yale University: — 
 
 Some of our greatest scholars, in their criticisms of 
 public life, suffer from the defect of arguing from 
 pure reason and taking no account of circumstances. 
 While I agree that no circumstances can ever justify 
 a Government in doing wrong, the question as to 
 whether the Government has acted rightly or wrongly 
 can never be justly judged without the circumstances 
 being considered. I am sure that if the President had 
 acted differently when, the 3d of November, he was 
 confronted by a critical situation which might easily 
 have turned to disaster, the attacks which are now 
 made on him would have been ten times more viru- 
 lent and more effective. He must have done exactly 
 as he did, or the only alternative would have been 
 an indefinite duration of bloodshed and devastation 
 through the whole extent of the Isthmus. It was a 
 time to act and not to theorize, and my judgment at 
 least is clear that he acted rightly. 
 
 Roosevelt utilized to the utmost every oppor- 
 tunity; for example, he spent some time on his 
 ranch. This was a very common experience. 
 Many men have done the same thing, but the 
 experience in Roosevelt's case led to the writing 
 of the "Winning of the West" by American 
 pioneer explorers. That was not all: it led to 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 201 
 
 the writing of several most interesting books on 
 frontier life, and then to the forming of the 
 Rough Riders in the Cuban War which, Roose- 
 velt said, made him President. Of course, I 
 should qualify this; if the Rough Riders had 
 not made Roosevelt President, some other influ- 
 ence would. What made him President was the 
 cumulative force of his achievements brought 
 into a high light through picturesque circum- 
 stances made possible by his unique personality. 
 I do not find any evidence that Roosevelt 
 became a politician after he became President. 
 I think that enough can be found in what I 
 have written to demonstrate my right to this 
 belief. No politician would have invited Booker 
 Washington to the White House to dinner. 
 No politician would at the same time have 
 denounced the abuses tolerated or practiced by 
 organized capital and organized labor. No poli- 
 tician would have discharged the negro regi- 
 ment at Brownsville, or been so regardless of 
 the amenities in dealing with Congress, an er- 
 ror and a weakness, but not the error of a self- 
 seeking man. We often heard when Roosevelt 
 was filling out McKinley's unexpired term that 
 labor was against him, that capital was against 
 
202 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 him, that the politicians were against him; but 
 when in 1904 the votes were counted, it be- 
 came quite apparent that the people, or most 
 of them, were with him. The fact is they be- 
 lieved in him. Of course, it must be remem- 
 bered that Roosevelt had a most extraordinary 
 personality. He had, I think, more genuine 
 sympathy with more classes of people than 
 any man ever in public life in this country. I 
 can best illustrate what I mean by two stories, 
 both of which I heard him tell. 
 
 It seems that when he was hunting in Colo- 
 rado several years ago, he met a cowboy who 
 had been with him with the Rough Riders in 
 Cuba. 
 
 The man came up to speak to Roosevelt, and 
 said, "Mr. President, I have been in jail a year 
 for killing a gentleman." 
 
 "How did you do it?" asked the President, 
 meaning to inquire as to the circumstances. 
 
 "Thirty-eight on a forty-five frame," replied 
 the man, thinking that the only interest the 
 President had was that of a comrade who 
 wanted to know with what kind of a tool the 
 trick was done. Now, I will venture to say that 
 to no other President, from Washington down 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 203 
 
 to and including Wilson, would the man-killer 
 have made that response. This same live sym- 
 pathy existed between Roosevelt and every class 
 of men with whom he ever came in contact, 
 and he has come in contact with all classes from 
 kings and princes to Digger Indians. 
 
 Another old comrade, sure of his sympathy, 
 wrote from a jail in Arizona: — 
 
 Dear Colonel: 
 
 I am in trouble. I shot a lady in the eye, but I did 
 not intend to hit the lady; I was shooting at my wife. 
 
 Any one who wants to get some adequate 
 notion of Roosevelt as a naturalist and lover of 
 nature can do so in a most agreeable way by 
 reading "Camping and Tramping," by John 
 Burroughs. This book was written in 1907, and 
 is descriptive of Roosevelt's trip to Yellowstone 
 Park in 1903. The introduction should not be 
 overlooked, because it contains a most charac- 
 teristic letter from Roosevelt to Burroughs, 
 written in 1892 in response to a suggestion from 
 the latter that the European forms of animal 
 life were, as a rule, larger and more hardy and 
 prolific than the corresponding forms in this 
 country, with which statement Roosevelt takes 
 issue. 
 
204 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 I have never been disturbed [Burroughs says] by 
 the President's hunting trips. It is to such men as 
 he that the big game legitimately belongs — men 
 who regard it from the point of view of the naturalist 
 as well as from that of the sportsman, who are inter- 
 ested in its preservation, and who share with the 
 world the delight they experience in the chase. Such 
 a hunter as Roosevelt is as far removed from the 
 game butcher as day is from night; and as for this 
 killing of the "Varmints," — bears, cougars, and 
 bobcats, — the fewer of these there are the better 
 for the useful and beautiful game. 
 
 In the trip to the Yellowstone, Burroughs 
 said, "I was able to help him identify only one 
 new bird; all the other birds he recognized as 
 quickly as I did." 
 
 The following story illustrates Roosevelt's 
 tender and sympathetic nature: — 
 
 Near a little brown school house [Burroughs 
 writes], by the railroad track, the schoolma'am and 
 her scholars were drawn up in line to see the Presi- 
 dential train pass. The President was at luncheon, 
 but leaving the table rushed to the platform and 
 waved his napkin. When he came back he said: 
 "Those children wanted to see the President of the 
 United States, and I could not disappoint them. 
 They may never have another chance. What a deep 
 impression such things make when we are young." 
 
 There was a reception at Medora where 
 Roosevelt's old ranch was located. Shaking one 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 205 
 
 man by the hand, he said: "You once mended 
 my gunlock for me, — put on a new hammer." 
 "Yes," said the old chap, "I'm the man, Mr. 
 President." "Hell-Roaring Bill Jones" was 
 missing, he began to celebrate so early that he 
 was "all in" before the train arrived. 
 
 What other hunter in Africa would have had 
 a "pigskin library" and have given the reason 
 for the presence of every book in it? He was a 
 constant surprise, even to those who knew him 
 best, in some manifestation of his activity. I 
 remember that one of my brothers wrote an 
 article in the "Atlantic" of May, 1908, entitled 
 "Shall We Hunt and Fish — The Confessions 
 of a Sentimentalist." In it he was somewhat 
 critical of Roosevelt's views of hunting as ex- 
 pressed in "Outdoor Pastimes of an American 
 Hunter" in which Roosevelt said, "There is no 
 need to exercise much patience with men who 
 protest against field sports, unless, indeed, they 
 are logical vegetarians of the flabbiest Hindoo 
 type." I knew when the magazine was coming 
 out, and on the day bought a copy on my way 
 home from the Capitol. The next morning, I 
 went to the White House on some errand, and 
 when Roosevelt came out of his office to make 
 
206 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 the rounds of those gathered in the Cabinet 
 room, I said, when he got along to me, "Mr. 
 President, here is an article written by a 
 brother of mine in which he throws some stones 
 at you." "Oh!" said Roosevelt, "I have read 
 the article and agree with a good deal of it — 
 but," said he, "you know you must always 
 have fresh meat in camp." He had read it before 
 I had. 
 
 He always invited confidence and was most 
 delicate and sympathetic in his response to any 
 expression of sentiment. I remember that once 
 I sent him a letter my mother had written me, 
 referring to a recent message of his, of which 
 the following is a copy: — 
 
 Letter from my Mother 
 
 February 2, 1908. 
 I am greatly interested in reading now and then 
 a little about you in the papers. How perplexing 
 everything is, how difficult to know the right course 
 to take. I read with deep interest the President's 
 message. I liked it all. If public credit is to be shaken 
 by exposing a wrong, it ought to be shaken; the men 
 guilty of wrong are the ones who weaken public 
 credit, not the President who exposes them. How 
 corrupt the politicians who would keep up public 
 credit at any cost. The right is the "only thing that 
 will wash" in the long run, so President Eliot seems 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 207 
 
 to think about the President's policy. There would 
 be no difficulty in dying game in defense of the right, 
 if only we were dead sure what right is. It is a help 
 to feel that our views of right must help along the 
 real right in the grand economy of things. To be 
 sure that you are not swerved in your conscientious 
 decisions by any thought of your own advantage is 
 the great thing, the only thing if you would be a man 
 "without a cross." 
 
 Two days later I received the following reply: 
 
 The White House, Washington, 
 February 5, 1908. 
 
 I very sincerely appreciate your having shown me 
 your mother's letter, which I return herewith. No 
 wonder you are devoted to her. What she says in 
 her letter represents, I am confident, the principles 
 for which this nation must stand if it is to endure. I 
 am very much pleased at the dear lady's high spirit 
 as well as her conscientiousness. I love that sentence 
 of hers, "There would be no difficulty in dying game, 
 in defense of the right, if only we were dead sure 
 what right is." That is the kind of sentence I like to 
 read. 
 
 Letter to my Mother 
 
 6 Feb'y, 1908, 
 
 1721 Rhode Island Avenue, 
 
 Washington, D.C. 
 
 I liked your letter so much that acting (a some- 
 what unusual thing for me) a little on impulse, I sent 
 it to the President with the statement that it was 
 
208 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 the first time I had ever shown a letter of yours to 
 another. 
 
 His note in reply was so sympathetic that I think 
 it will interest you. 
 
 I read your letter and the President's to Slater 
 [my son, a boy of twelve]. He said of yours, — "Gee, 
 it sounds like Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 Roosevelt had time to do these things. Some- 
 times apparently superficial signs indicate the 
 great qualities that lie beneath. I was looking 
 over his autobiography the other day, and the 
 illustrations interested me. They did not so 
 much suggest associations with the great men 
 in this and other lands, as with old compan- 
 ions in the Legislature or members of the police 
 force, with social workers, and children of the 
 slums; and when Roosevelt emerged from the 
 atmosphere of kings and princes in Europe, he 
 sought relief by telegraphing for Seth Bullock 
 and his wife to meet him in London. Seth Bul- 
 lock was at one time sheriff in the Black Hills 
 district, who, the first time he met Roosevelt, 
 said to him and his companions, "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." .This man later, as 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 209 
 
 Roosevelt has said, "became, and has ever 
 since remained, one of my stanchest and most 
 valued friends," and he telegraphed for him 
 because, as he said, "by that time I felt that I 
 just had to meet my own people, who spoke 
 my neighborhood dialect." 
 
 This is all real. No veneer of affectation can 
 stand the stress of thirty years of public life. 
 Roosevelt has been a great preacher as well as a 
 great performer, and the combination has made 
 him an immense power for good in our political, 
 business, and social life. The following is typi- 
 cal of much that he said: — 
 
 I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, 
 but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil 
 and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest 
 form of success which comes, not to the man who 
 desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does 
 not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter 
 toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate 
 triumph. 
 
 Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glori- 
 ous triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than 
 to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy 
 much nor suffer much because they live in the gray 
 twilight that knows not victory or defeat. 
 
 Fine expression of his dauntless spirit; and, 
 again: — 
 
210 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 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 dealings 
 as between man and man. ... In the work we of this 
 generation are in there is, thanks to the Almighty, 
 no danger of bloodshed and no use for the sword; but 
 there is grave need of those stern qualities shown 
 alike by the men of the North and the men of the 
 South in the dark days when each valiantly battled 
 for the light as it was given him to see the light. This 
 spirit should be our spirit, as we strive to bring nearer 
 the day when greed and trickery and cunning shall 
 be trampled under foot by those who fight for the 
 righteousness that exalteth a nation. 
 
 Sometimes, in almost a whimsical manner, 
 Roosevelt impresses a lesson to be derived from 
 some Biblical quotation. In "Character and 
 Success," for example, published in March, 
 1900, he said: — 
 
 The Bible always inculcates the need of the posi- 
 tive no less than negative virtues, although certain 
 people who profess to teach Christianity are apt to 
 dwell wholly on the negative; we are bidden not 
 merely to be harmless as doves, but also as wise as 
 serpents. It is very much easier to carry out the for- 
 mer part of the order than the latter; while, on the 
 other hand, it is of much more importance for the 
 good of mankind that our goodness should be accom- 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 211 
 
 panied by wisdom than that we should merely be 
 harmless. If with the serpent wisdom we unite the 
 serpent guile, terrible will be the damage we do; and 
 if with the best of intentions, we can only manage to 
 deserve the epithet of "harmless," it is hardly worth 
 while to have lived in the world at all. 
 
 His power of vigorous statement was great. 
 When he was asked to abandon certain investi- 
 gations as to the alleged violation of the Anti- 
 Trust Law which were said to implicate some 
 wealthy contributors to the campaign fund in 
 the Taft campaign, Roosevelt wrote Attorney- 
 General Bonaparte as follows: — 
 
 Oyster Bay, New York, 1908. 
 
 . . . What a scoundrel must be! If he comes 
 
 to you again I shall be really delighted to have you 
 tell him straight from me that the investigation will 
 be pressed with the utmost energy to a conclusion, 
 and that this will be done whether his clients con- 
 tribute a million for the election of Taft or a million 
 for the election of Bryan, or whether they fail to 
 contribute a cent to either side. I would really like 
 to have you give him just this message from me, and 
 put it in writing if you desire. 
 
 And yet he is a man of the most lovable quali- 
 ties. A Catholic priest once said he had sat on 
 the platform near Roosevelt at some meeting 
 — "The man had not spoken three minutes 
 
212 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 before I loved him, and had any one tried to 
 molest him, I could have torn him to pieces." 
 Nor is there anything of arrogance about him. 
 He never claimed to be preeminent in any field 
 of human endeavor. He never laid claim to any- 
 thing but doing the best he could; he freely ad- 
 mitted that he made mistakes. A characteristic 
 story is that of a friend who took him to task 
 for some mistake he had made in one of his ap- 
 pointments: "My dear sir," replied the Presi- 
 dent, "where you know of one mistake I have 
 made, I know of ten." 
 
 He talked with a freedom that fairly took 
 one's breath away. I remember once at luncheon 
 at the White House, in speaking of two men, 
 both of whom were then living and one of whom 
 was then in the Senate, he said, "I think that 
 is the more adroit rascal." 
 
 A story which I heard of Roosevelt nearly at 
 first hand, and which I believe has never been 
 in print, admirably illustrates his great cour- 
 age or lack of fear. Mr. Henry White told it 
 to Senator Lodge, who told it to me. It seems 
 that Mr. White said to Roosevelt, speaking of 
 his being shot in Milwaukee "I think you were 
 foolhardy to make a speech after you had been 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 213 
 
 shot." "Why," said Roosevelt in reply, "you 
 know I did n't think I had been mortally 
 wounded. If I had been mortally wounded, I 
 would have bled from the lungs. When I got 
 into the motor I coughed hard three times, and 
 put my hand up to my mouth; as I did not find 
 any blood, I thought that I was not seriously 
 hurt, and went on with my speech." 
 
 I began to write these notes in November, 
 
 1914, and continued at intervals for several 
 months. As I write on the train on April 30, 
 
 191 5, between San Francisco and Portland, 
 Oregon, I have just been reading such of the 
 testimony as is reported in the papers in the 
 pending libel suit brought by Mr. Barnes, of 
 New York, against Mr. Roosevelt. 1 I find 
 nothing in Roosevelt's testimony which is not 
 perfectly consistent with his acts and speech 
 for the past twenty years, most of which can 
 be found recorded in his autobiography. When 
 he entered public life, he found certain condi- 
 tions; he dealt with them as best he could. To 
 have refused to work with men of whose every 
 act he did not approve would have meant that 
 
 1 The jury in May, 1915, brought in a verdict favorable to 
 Roosevelt. 
 
214 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 he could accomplish nothing. He always acted 
 upon the adage that "half a loaf is better than 
 no bread." As he wrote in 1904: — 
 
 A man who goes into the actual battles of the 
 political world must prepare himself much as he 
 would for the struggle in any other branch of our life. 
 He must be prepared to meet men of far lower ideals 
 than his own, and to face things, not as he would wish 
 them, but as they are. He must not lose his own high 
 ideal, and yet he must face the fact that the majority 
 of the men with whom he must work have lower 
 ideals. He must stand firmly for what he believes, 
 and yet he must realize that political action, to be 
 effective, must be the joint action of many men, and 
 that he must sacrifice somewhat of his own opinions 
 to those of his associates if he ever hopes to see his 
 desires take practical shape. 
 
 Roosevelt has wisely acted upon this prin- 
 ciple. In the fallibility of human judgment, he 
 may sometimes have gone too far with this 
 man or that, or perhaps not far enough, but his 
 policy has not changed. 
 
 Whatever many of his friends may have 
 wished, Roosevelt made up his own mind in 
 191 2, and in the campaigns that followed in- 
 flicted and received many wounds. If he caused 
 suffering, he endured much himself. No one 
 
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 215 
 
 would feel more keenly than he the loss of the 
 political sympathy and support of those of his 
 old friends who did not follow him, and this is to 
 me convincing proof of his confidence in the 
 righteousness of his cause. To many of them, to 
 me, I am sure, parting company with him was 
 deeply painful. I count it among the sorrows of 
 my life. He was imbued with the spirit of the 
 crusader; he believed that he was leading a great 
 cause, and that in doing so he was serving the 
 best interests of his countrymen. A leader on 
 the field of battle sees nothing but his goal, and 
 in his progress tramples alike on friend and foe. 
 Such was Roosevelt's relation to the conflict. 
 This is the reply to the charge that he wantonly 
 maimed and bruised many of his former asso- 
 ciates who differed with him politically. 
 
 Roosevelt had the choice, at the end of his 
 presidential term, between resting upon his 
 accomplishments, secure in the position of first 
 citizen of the Republic and idolized by his 
 countrymen, and again entering the arena of 
 political strife to battle for the causes he be- 
 lieved in. He chose the latter course, in which 
 personally he had everything to lose and noth- 
 ing to gain. "Spend and be spent" was the 
 
216 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 motto emblazoned on his shield, which was al- 
 ways found in the forefront of battle. Who will 
 say that he should or could have followed any 
 other course; or, with our poor mortal vision, 
 that in the end his countrymen may not profit 
 by what many of his friends then regarded as 
 his great sacrifice? 
 
 "In the long fight for righteousness the 
 watchword for all of us is, ' Spend and be spent.' 
 It is of little matter whether any one man fails 
 or succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is 
 the cause of mankind." 
 
 THE END 
 
APPENDIX 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO RULE 
 
 (An Address by Theodore Roosevelt at Carnegie Hall, New York 
 City, under the auspices of the Civic Forum, Wednesday evening, 
 March 20, 19 12.) 
 
 The great fundamental issue now before the Re- 
 publican party and before our people can be stated 
 briefly. It is, Are the American people fit to govern 
 themselves, to rule themselves, to control them- 
 selves? I believe they are. My opponents do not. 
 I believe in the right of the people to rule. I believe 
 that the majority of the plain people of the United 
 States will, day in and day out, make fewer mistakes 
 in governing themselves than any smaller class or 
 body of men, no matter what their training, will 
 make in trying to govern them. I believe, again, 
 that the American people are, as a whole, capable 
 of self-control and of learning by their mistakes. 
 Our opponents pay lip-loyalty to this doctrine; but 
 they show their real beliefs by the way in which they 
 champion every device to make the nominal rule of 
 the people a sham. 
 
 I have scant patience with this talk of the tyranny 
 of the majority. Whenever there is tyranny of the 
 majority, I shall protest against it with all my heart 
 and soul. But we are to-day suffering from the tyr- 
 anny of minorities. It is a small minority that is 
 
220 APPENDIX 
 
 grabbing our coal deposits, our water-powers, and 
 our harbor fronts. A small minority is battening 
 on the sale of adulterated foods and drugs. It is a 
 small minority that lies behind monopolies and 
 trusts. It is a small minority that stands behind the 
 present law of master and servant, the sweat-shops, 
 and the whole calendar of social and industrial 
 injustice. It is a small minority that is to-day using 
 our convention system to defeat the will of a ma- 
 jority of the people in the choice of delegates to 
 the Chicago Convention. The only tyrannies from 
 which men, women, and children are suffering in real 
 life are the tyrannies of minorities. 
 
 If the majority of the American people were in 
 fact tyrannous over the minority, if democracy had 
 no greater self-control than empire, then indeed no 
 written words which our forefathers put into the 
 Constitution could stay that tyranny. 
 
 No sane man who has been familiar with the gov- 
 ernment of this country for the last twenty years 
 will complain that we have had too much of the rule 
 of the majority. The trouble has been a far differ- 
 ent one — that, at many times and in many locali- 
 ties, there have held public office in the States and 
 in the Nation men who have, in fact, served not 
 the whole people, but some special class or special 
 interest. I am not thinking only of those special 
 interests which by grosser methods, by bribery and 
 crime, have stolen from the people. I am thinking 
 as much of their respectable allies and figureheads, 
 who have ruled and legislated and decided as if in 
 some way the vested rights of privilege had a first 
 
APPENDIX 221 
 
 mortgage on the whole United States, while the rights 
 of all the people were merely an unsecured debt. Am 
 I overstating the case? Have our political leaders 
 always, or generally, recognized their duty to the 
 people as anything more than a duty to disperse the 
 mob, see that the ashes are taken away, and distrib- 
 ute patronage? Have our leaders always, or gener- 
 ally, worked for the benefit of human beings, to in- 
 crease the prosperity of all the people, to give to each 
 some opportunity of living decently and bringing up 
 his children well? The questions need no answer. 
 
 Now, there has sprung up a feeling deep in the hearts 
 of the people — not of the bosses and professional 
 politicians, not of the beneficiaries of special privilege 
 — a pervading belief of thinking men that when the 
 majority of the people do in fact, as well as in theory, 
 rule, then the servants of the people will come more 
 quickly to answer and obey, not the commands of the 
 special interests, but those of the whole people. To 
 reach toward that end the Progressives of the Repub- 
 lican party in certain States have formulated certain 
 proposals for change in the form of the state govern- 
 ment — certain new "checks and balances" which 
 may check and balance the special interests and their 
 allies. That is their purpose. Now, turn for a mo- 
 ment to their proposed methods. 
 
 First, there are the "initiative and referendum," 
 which are so framed that if the Legislatures obey 
 the command of some special interest, and obsti- 
 nately refuse the will of the majority, the majority 
 may step in and legislate directly. No man would 
 say that it was best to conduct all legislation by 
 
222 APPENDIX 
 
 direct vote of the people, — it would mean the loss 
 of deliberation, of patient consideration, — but, on 
 the other hand, no one whose mental arteries have 
 not long since hardened can doubt that the proposed 
 changes are needed when the Legislatures refuse to 
 carry out the will of the people. The proposal is a 
 method to reach an undeniable evil. Then there is 
 the recall of public officers — the principle that an 
 officer chosen by the people who is unfaithful may 
 be recalled by vote of the majority before he finishes 
 his term. I will speak of the recall of judges in a 
 moment, — leave that aside, — but as to the other 
 officers, I have heard no argument advanced against 
 the proposition, save that it will make the public 
 officer timid and always currying favor with the 
 mob. That argument means that you can fool all 
 the people all the time, and is an avowal of disbelief 
 in democracy. If it be true, — and I believe it is 
 not, — it is less important than to stop those pub- 
 lic officers from currying favor with the interests. 
 Certain States may need the recall, others may not; 
 where the term of elective office is short, it may be 
 quite needless; but there are occasions when it meets 
 a real evil, and provides a needed check and balance 
 against the special interests. 
 
 Then there is the direct primary, — the real one, 
 not the New York one, — and that, too, the Pro- 
 gressives offer as a check on the special interests. 
 Most clearly of all does it seem to me that this 
 change is wholly good — for every State. The sys- 
 tem of party government is not written in our Con- 
 stitutions, but it is none the less a vital and essential 
 
APPENDIX 223 
 
 part of our form of government. In that system 
 the party leaders should serve and carry out the will 
 of their own party. There is no need to show how 
 far that theory is from the facts, or to rehearse the 
 vulgar thieving partnerships of the corporations and 
 the bosses, or to show how many times the real 
 government lies in the hands of the boss, protected 
 from the commands and revenge of the voters by his 
 puppets in office and the power of patronage. We 
 need not be told how he is thus entrenched nor how 
 hard he is to overthrow. The facts stand out in the 
 history of nearly every State in the Union. They are 
 blots on our political system. The direct primary 
 will give the voters a method ever ready to use, by 
 which the party leader shall be made to obey their 
 command. The direct primary, if accompanied by a 
 stringent corrupt practices act, will help break up the 
 corrupt partnership of corporations and politicians. 
 
 My opponents charge that two things in my pro- 
 gramme are wrong because they intrude into the 
 sanctuary of the judiciary. The first is the recall of 
 judges; and the second, the review by the people 
 of judicial decisions on certain constitutional ques- 
 tions. I have said again and again that I do not 
 advocate the recall of judges in all States and in all 
 communities. In my own State I do not advocate 
 it or believe it to be needed, for in this State our 
 trouble lies not with corruption on the bench, but 
 with the effort by the honest but wrong-headed 
 judges to thwart the people in their struggle for social 
 justice and fair-dealing. The integrity of our judges 
 from Marshall to White and Holmes — and to Cullen 
 
224 APPENDIX 
 
 and many others in our own State — is a fine page 
 of American history. But — I say it soberly — de- 
 mocracy has a right to approach the sanctuary of 
 the courts when a special interest has corruptly found 
 sanctuary there; and this is exactly what has hap- 
 pened in some of the States where the recall of the 
 judges is a living issue. I would far more willingly 
 trust the whole people to judge such a case than some 
 special tribunal — perhaps appointed by the same 
 power that chose the judge — if that tribunal is not 
 itself really responsible to the people and is ham- 
 pered and clogged by the technicalities of impeach- 
 ment proceedings. 
 
 I have stated that the courts of the several States 
 — not always but often — have construed the "due 
 process" clause of the State Constitutions as if it 
 prohibited the whole people of the State from adopt- 
 ing methods of regulating the use of property so that 
 human life, particularly the lives of the working- 
 men, shall be safer, freer, and happier. No one can 
 successfully impeach this statement. I have in- 
 sisted that the true construction of "due process" 
 is that pronounced by Justice Holmes in delivering 
 the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, when he said: "The police power 
 extends to all the great public needs. It may be put 
 forth in aid of what is sanctioned by usage, or held 
 by the prevailing morality or strong and preponder- 
 ant opinion to be greatly and immediately necessary 
 to the public welfare." 
 
 I insist that the decision of the New York Court of 
 Appeals in the Ives case, which set aside the will of 
 
APPENDIX 225 
 
 the majority of the people as to the compensation 
 of injured workmen in dangerous trades, was intoler- 
 able and based on a wrong political philosophy. I 
 urge that in such cases where the courts construe the 
 "due process" clause as if property rights, to the 
 exclusion of human rights, had a first mortgage on the 
 Constitution, the people may, after sober delibera- 
 tion, vote, and finally determine, whether the law 
 which the court set aside shall be valid or not. By 
 this method can be clearly and finally ascertained 
 the preponderant opinion of the people which Justice 
 Holmes makes the test of "due process" in the case 
 of laws enacted in the exercise of the police power. 
 The ordinary methods now in vogue of amending 
 the Constitution have in actual practice proved 
 wholly inadequate to secure justice in such cases with 
 reasonable speed, and cause intolerable delay and 
 injustice, and those who stand against the changes 
 I propose are champions of wrong and injustice, and 
 of tyranny by the wealthy and the strong over the 
 weak and the helpless. 
 
 So that no man may misunderstand me, let me 
 recapitulate: — 
 
 (1) I am not proposing anything in connection 
 with the Supreme Court of the United States, or 
 with the Federal Constitution. 
 
 (2) I am not proposing anything having any con- 
 nection with ordinary suits, civil or criminal, as be- 
 tween individuals. 
 
 (3) I am not speaking of the recall of judges. 
 
 (4) I am proposing merely that in a certain class of 
 cases involving the police power, when a state court 
 
226 APPENDIX 
 
 has set aside as unconstitutional a law passed by the 
 Legislature for the general welfare, the question of 
 the validity of the law — which should depend, as 
 Justice Holmes so well phrases it, upon the prevailing 
 morality or preponderant opinion — be submitted 
 for final determination to a vote of the people, taken 
 after due time for consideration. And I contend that 
 the people, in the nature of things, must be better 
 judges of what is the preponderant opinion than the 
 courts, and that the courts should not be allowed to 
 reverse the political philosophy of the people. My 
 point is well illustrated by a recent decision of the 
 Supreme Court, holding that the court would not 
 take jurisdiction of a case involving the constitution- 
 ality of the initiative and referendum laws of Oregon. 
 The ground of the decision was that such a question 
 was not judicial in its nature, but should be left for 
 determination to the other coordinate departments 
 of the Government. Is it not equally plain that the 
 question whether a given social policy is for the pub- 
 lic good is not of a judicial nature, but should be 
 settled by the Legislature, or in the final instance by 
 the people themselves? 
 
 The President of the United States, Mr. Taft, 
 devoted most of a recent speech to criticism of this 
 proposition. He says that it "is utterly without 
 merit or utility, and, instead of being ... in the in- 
 terest of all the people, and of the stability of pop- 
 ular government, is sowing the seeds of confusion 
 and tyranny." (By this he, of course, means the 
 tyranny of the majority, that is, the tyranny of the 
 American people as a whole.) He also says that my 
 
APPENDIX 227 
 
 proposal (which, as he rightly sees, is merely a pro- 
 posal to give the people a real, instead of only a 
 nominal, chance to construe and amend a State Con- 
 stitution with reasonable rapidity) would make such 
 amendment and interpretation " depend on the fever- 
 ish, uncertain, and unstable determination of suc- 
 cessive votes on different laws by temporary and 
 changing majorities"; and that "it lays the axe at 
 the root of the tree of well-ordered freedom, and sub- 
 jects the guarantees of life, liberty, and property 
 without remedy to the fitful impulse of a temporary 
 majority of an electorate." 
 
 This criticism is really less a criticism of my pro- 
 posal than a criticism of all popular government. It 
 is wholly unfounded, unless it is founded on the 
 belief that the people are fundamentally untrust- 
 worthy. If the Supreme Court's definition of " due 
 process" in relation to the police power is sound, then 
 an act of the Legislature to promote the collective 
 interests of the community must be valid if it em- 
 bodies a policy held by the prevailing morality or a 
 preponderant opinion to be necessary to the public 
 welfare. This is the question that I propose to sub- 
 mit to the people. How can the prevailing moral- 
 ity or a preponderant opinion be better and more 
 exactly ascertained than by a vote of the people? 
 The people must know better than the court what 
 their own morality and their own opinion is. I ask 
 that you, here, you and the others like you, you the 
 people, be given the chance to state your own views 
 of justice and public morality, and not sit meekly 
 by and have your views announced for you by well- 
 
228 APPENDIX 
 
 meaning adherents of outworn philosophies, who 
 exalt the pedantry of formulas above the vital needs 
 of human life. 
 
 The object I have in view could probably be ac- 
 complished by an amendment of the State Consti- 
 tutions taking away from the courts the power to 
 review the Legislature's determination of a policy 
 of social justice, by denning "due process of law" 
 in accordance with the views expressed by Justice 
 Holmes for the Supreme Court. But my proposal 
 seems to me more democratic and, I may add, less 
 radical. For under the method I suggest the people 
 may sustain the court as against the Legislature, 
 whereas, if "due process" were denned in the Con- 
 stitution, the decision of the Legislature would be 
 final. 
 
 Mr. Taft's position is the position that has been 
 held from the beginning of our Government, although 
 not always so openly held, by a large number of repu- 
 table and honorable men who, down at bottom, dis- 
 trust popular government, and, when they must 
 accept it, accept it with reluctance, and hedge it 
 around with every species of restriction and check 
 and balance, so as to make the power of the people as 
 limited and as ineffective as possible. Mr. Taft fairly 
 defines the issue when he says that our Government 
 is and should be a government of all the people by a 
 representative part of the people. This is an excellent 
 and moderate description of an oligarchy. It defines 
 our Government as a government of all the people by 
 a few of the people. Mr. Taft, in his able speech, has 
 made what is probably the best possible presentation 
 
APPENDIX 229 
 
 of the case for those who feel in this manner. Essen- 
 tially this view differs only in its expression from the 
 view nakedly set forth by one of his supporters, 
 Congressman Campbell. Congressman Campbell, in 
 a public speech in New Hampshire, in opposing the 
 proposition to give the people real and effective con- 
 trol over all their servants, including the judges, 
 stated that this was equivalent to allowing an appeal 
 from the umpire to the bleachers. Doubtless Con- 
 gressman Campbell was not himself aware of the 
 cynical truthfulness with which he was putting the 
 real attitude of those for whom he spoke. But it un- 
 questionably is their real attitude. Mr. Campbell's 
 conception of the part the American people should 
 play in self-government is that they should sit on 
 the bleachers and pay the price of admission, but 
 should have nothing to say as to the contest which 
 is waged in the arena by the professional politicians. 
 Apparently Mr. Campbell ignores the fact that the 
 American people are not mere onlookers at a game, 
 that they have a vital stake in the contest, and that 
 democracy means nothing unless they are able and 
 willing to show that they are their own masters. 
 
 I am not speaking jokingly, nor do I mean to be 
 unkind; for I repeat that many honorable and well- 
 meaning men of high character take this view, and 
 have taken it from the time of the formation of the 
 Nation. Essentially this view is that the Constitu- 
 tion is a strait-jacket to be used for the control of an 
 unruly patient — the people. Now, I hold that this 
 view is not only false but mischievous, that our 
 Constitutions are instruments designed to secure 
 
230 APPENDIX 
 
 justice by securing the deliberate but effective ex- 
 pression of the popular will; that the checks and 
 balances are valuable as far, and only so far, as they 
 accomplish that deliberation; and that it is a warped 
 and unworthy and improper construction of our form 
 of government to see in it only a means of thwarting 
 the popular will and of preventing justice. Mr. Taft 
 says that "every class" should have a "voice" in the 
 government. That seems to me a very serious mis- 
 conception of the American political situation. The 
 real trouble with us is that some classes have had too 
 much voice. One of the most important of all the 
 lessons to be taught and to be learned is that a man 
 should vote, not as a representative of a class, but 
 merely as a good citizen, whose prime interests are 
 the same as those of all other good citizens. The 
 belief in different classes, each having a voice in the 
 government, has given rise to much of our present 
 difficulty; for whosoever believes in these separate 
 classes, each with a voice, inevitably, even although 
 unconsciously, tends to work, not for the good of the 
 whole people, but for the protection of some special 
 class — usually that to which he himself belongs. 
 
 The same principle applies when Mr. Taft says 
 that the judiciary ought not to be "representative" 
 of the people in the sense that the Legislature and 
 the Executive are. This is perfectly true of the judge 
 when he is performing merely the ordinary functions 
 of a judge in suits between man and man. It is not 
 true of the judge engaged in interpreting, for instance, 
 the "due process" clause — where the judge is ascer- 
 taining the preponderant opinion of the people (as 
 
APPENDIX 231 
 
 Judge Holmes states it). When he exercises that 
 function he has no right to let his political philosophy- 
 reverse and thwart the will of the majority. In that 
 function the judge must represent the people or he 
 fails in the test the Supreme Court has laid down. 
 Take the Workmen's Compensation Act here in New 
 York. The legislators gave us a law in the interest of 
 humanity and decency and fair dealing. In so doing 
 they represented the people, and represented them 
 well. Several judges declared that law constitutional 
 in our State, and several courts in other States de- 
 clared similar laws constitutional, and the Supreme 
 Court of the Nation declared a similar law affecting 
 men in interstate business constitutional; but the 
 highest court in the State of New York, the Court of 
 Appeals, declared that we, the people of New York, 
 could not have such a law. I hold that in this case 
 the legislators and the judges alike occupied repre- 
 sentative positions; the difference was merely that 
 the former represented us well and the latter repre- 
 sented us ill. Remember that the legislators promised 
 that law, and were returned by the people partly in 
 consequence of such promise. That judgment of the 
 people should not have been set aside unless it were 
 irrational. Yet in the Ives case the New York Court 
 of Appeals praised the policy of the law and the end 
 it sought to obtain; and then declared that the people 
 lacked power to do justice! 
 
 Mr. Taft again and again, in quotations I have 
 given and elsewhere through his speech, expresses his 
 disbelief in the people when they vote at the polls. 
 In one sentence he says that the proposition gives 
 
232 APPENDIX 
 
 "powerful effect to the momentary impulse of a 
 majority of an electorate and prepares the way for 
 the possible exercise of the grossest tyranny." Else- 
 where he speaks of the "feverish uncertainty" and 
 "unstable determination" of laws by "temporary 
 and changing majorities"; and again he says that 
 the system I propose "would result in suspension or 
 application of constitutional guarantees according 
 to popular whim," which would destroy "all possi- 
 ble consistency" in constitutional interpretation. I 
 should much like to know the exact distinction that 
 is to be made between what Mr. Taft calls "the fitful 
 impulse of a temporary majority" when applied to 
 a question such as that I raise and any other ques- 
 tion. Remember that under my proposal to review 
 a rule of decision by popular vote, amending or con- 
 struing, to that extent, the Constitution, would cer- 
 tainly take at least two years from the time of the 
 election of the Legislature which passed the act. 
 Now, only four months elapse between the nomina- 
 tion and the election of a man as President, to fill for 
 four years the most important office in the land. In 
 one of Mr. Taft's speeches he speaks of "the voice 
 of the people as coming next to the voice of God." 
 Apparently, then, the decision of the people about 
 the Presidency, after four months' deliberation, is 
 to be treated as "next to the voice of God"; but if, 
 after two years of sober thought, they decide that 
 women and children shall be protected in industry, 
 or men protected from excessive hours of labor under 
 unhygienic conditions, or wage-workers compensated 
 when they lose life or limb in the service of others, 
 
APPENDIX 233 
 
 then their decision forthwith becomes a "whim" and 
 "feverish" and "unstable" and an exercise of "the 
 grossest tyranny" and the "laying of the axe to the 
 root of the tree of freedom." It seems absurd to 
 speak of a conclusion reached by the people after two 
 years' deliberation, after threshing the matter out 
 before the Legislature, after threshing it out be- 
 fore the governor, after threshing it out before the 
 court and by the court, and then after full debate 
 for four or six months, as "the fitful impulse of a 
 temporary majority." If Mr. Taft's language cor- 
 rectly describes such action by the people, then he 
 himself and all other Presidents have been elected by 
 "the fitful impulse of a temporary majority"; then 
 the Constitution of each State, and the Constitution 
 of the Nation, have been adopted, and all amend- 
 ments thereto have been adopted, by "the fitful 
 impulse of a temporary majority." If he is right, it 
 was "the fitful impulse of a temporary majority" 
 which founded, and another fitful impulse which 
 perpetuated, this Nation. Mr. Taft's position is per- 
 fectly clear. It is that we have in this country a 
 special class of persons wiser than the people, who 
 are above the people, who cannot be reached by the 
 people, but who govern them and ought to govern 
 them; and who protect various classes of the people 
 from the whole people. That is the old, old doctrine 
 which has been acted upon for thousands of years 
 abroad; and which here in America has been acted 
 upon sometimes openly, sometimes secretly, for forty 
 years by many men in public and in private life, and 
 I am sorry to say by many judges; a doctrine which 
 
234 APPENDIX 
 
 has in fact tended to create a bulwark for privilege, 
 — a bulwark unjustly protecting special interests 
 against the rights of the people as a whole. This doc- 
 trine to me is a dreadful doctrine; for its effect is, and 
 can only be, to make the courts the shield of privilege 
 against popular rights. Naturally, every upholder 
 and beneficiary of crooked privilege loudly applauds 
 the doctrine. It is behind the shield of that doctrine 
 that crooked clauses creep into laws, that men of 
 wealth and power control legislation. The men of 
 wealth who praise this doctrine, this theory, would 
 do well to remember that to its adoption by the courts 
 is due the distrust so many of our wage-workers now 
 feel for the courts. I deny that that theory has 
 worked so well that we should continue it. I most 
 earnestly urge that the evils and abuses it has pro- 
 duced cry aloud for remedy; and the only remedy is 
 in fact to restore the power to govern directly to the 
 people, and to make the public servant directly 
 responsible to the whole people — and to no part of 
 them, to no "class" of them. 
 
 Mr. Taft is very much afraid of the tyranny of 
 majorities. For forty-five years here in New York 
 State, in our efforts to get social and industrial jus- 
 tice, we have suffered from the tyranny of a small 
 minority. We have been denied, now by one court, 
 now by another, as in the Bakeshop case, where the 
 courts set aside the law limiting the hours of labor 
 in bakeries, — the "due process" clause again, — as 
 in the Workmen's Compensation Act, as in the 
 Tenement-House Cigar Factory case, — in all these 
 and many other cases we have been denied by small 
 
APPENDIX 235 
 
 minorities, by a few worthy men of wrong political 
 philosophy on the bench, the right to protect our 
 people in their lives, their liberty, and their pur- 
 suit of happiness. As for "consistency" — why, the 
 record of the courts, in such a case as the income 
 tax, for instance, is so full of inconsistencies as to 
 make the fear expressed of "inconsistency" on the 
 part of the people seem childish. 
 
 Well-meaning, short-sighted persons have held up 
 their hands in horror at my proposal to allow the 
 people themselves to construe the Constitution which 
 they themselves made. Yet this is precisely what the 
 Association of the Bar of the City of New York pro- 
 posed to do in the concurrent resolution which was 
 introduced at their request in our Legislature on 
 January 16 last, proposing to amend the State Con- 
 stitution by a section reading as follows: "Nothing 
 contained in this Constitution shall be construed to 
 limit the powers of the Legislature to enact laws" 
 such as the Workmen's Compensation Act. In other 
 words, the New York Bar Association is proposing 
 to appeal to the people to construe the Constitution 
 in such a way as will directly reverse the court. They 
 are proposing to appeal from the highest court of the 
 State to the people. That is just what I propose to 
 do; the difference is only one of method, not of pur- 
 pose; my method will give better results, and will 
 give them more quickly. The Bar Association by its 
 action admits that the court was wrong, and sets to 
 work to change the rule which it laid down. As 
 Lincoln announced of the Dred Scott decision in his 
 debates with Douglas: "Somebody has to reverse 
 
236 APPENDIX 
 
 that decision, since it is made, and we mean to reverse 
 it, and we mean to do it peaceably." Was Lincoln 
 wrong? Was the spirit of the Nation that wiped out 
 slavery " the fitful impulse of a temporary majority " ? 
 
 Remember, I am not discussing the recall of 
 judges — although I wish it distinctly understood 
 that the recall is a mere piece of machinery to take 
 the place of the unworkable impeachment which 
 Mr. Taft in effect defends, and that if the days of 
 Maynard ever came back again in the State of New 
 York I should favor it. I have no wish to come to it; 
 but our opponents, when they object to all efforts to 
 secure real justice from the courts, are strengthening 
 the hands of those who demand the recall. In a great 
 many States there has been for many years a real 
 recall of judges as regards appointments, promotions, 
 reappointments, and reflections; and this recall was 
 through the turn of a thumbscrew at the end of a 
 long-distance rod in the hands of great interests. I 
 believe that a just judge would feel far safer in the 
 hands of the people than in the hands of those 
 interests. 
 
 I stand on the Columbus speech. The principles 
 there asserted are not new, but I believe that they 
 are necessary to the maintenance of free democratic 
 government. The part of my speech in which I advo- 
 cated the right of the people to be the final arbiters 
 of what is due process of law in the case of statutes 
 enacted for the general welfare will ultimately, I am 
 confident, be recognized as giving strength and sup- 
 port to the courts instead of being revolutionary and 
 subversive. The courts to-day owe the country no 
 
APPENDIX 237 
 
 greater or clearer duty than to keep their hands off 
 such statutes when they have any reasonably per- 
 missible relation to the public good. In the past the 
 courts have often failed to perform this duty, and 
 their failure is the chief cause of whatever dissatisfac- 
 tion there is with the working of our judicial system. 
 One who seeks to prevent the irrevocable commission 
 of such mistakes in the future may justly claim to be 
 regarded as aiming to preserve and not to destroy 
 the independence and power of the judiciary. 
 
 My remedy is not the result of a library study of 
 constitutional law, but of actual and long-continued 
 experience in the use of governmental power to re- 
 dress social and industrial evils. Again and again 
 earnest workers for social justice have said to me 
 that the most serious obstacles that they have en- 
 countered during the many years that they have been 
 trying to save American women and children from 
 destruction in American industry have been the 
 courts. That is the judgment of almost all the social 
 workers I know, and of dozens of parish priests and 
 clergymen, and of every executive and legislator who 
 has been seriously attempting to use government 
 as an agency for social and industrial betterment. 
 What is the result of this system of judicial nullifi- 
 cation? It was accurately stated by the Court of 
 Appeals of New York in the Employers' Liability 
 case, where it was calmly and judicially declared that 
 the people under our republican government are less 
 free to correct the evils that oppress them than are 
 the people of the monarchies of Europe. To any man 
 with vision, to any man with broad and real social 
 
238 APPENDIX 
 
 sympathies, to any man who believes with all his 
 heart in this great democratic republic of ours, such 
 a condition is intolerable. It is not government by 
 the people, but mere sham government in which the 
 will of the people is constantly defeated. It is out of 
 this experience that my remedy has come; and let it 
 be tried in this field. When, as the result of years of 
 education and debate, a majority of the people have 
 decided upon a remedy for an evil from which they 
 suffer, and have chosen a legislature and executive 
 pledged to embody that remedy in law, and the law 
 has been finally passed and approved, I regard it as 
 monstrous that a bench of judges shall then say to 
 the people: "You must begin all over again. First 
 amend your Constitution [which will take four years]; 
 second, secure the passage of a new law [which will 
 take two years more]; third, carry that new law over 
 the weary course of litigation [which will take no 
 human being knows how long]; fourth, submit the 
 whole matter over again to the very same judges 
 who have rendered the decision to which you object. 
 Then, if your patience holds out and you finally pre- 
 vail, the will of the majority of the people may have 
 its way." Such a system is not popular government, 
 but a mere mockery of popular government. It is a 
 system framed to maintain and perpetuate social 
 injustice, and it can be defended only by those who 
 disbelieve in the people, who do not trust them, and, 
 I am afraid I must add, who have no real and living 
 sympathy with them as they struggle for better 
 things. In lieu of it I propose a practice by which the 
 will of a majority of the people, when they have 
 
APPENDIX 239 
 
 determined upon a remedy, shall, if their will persists 
 for a minimum period of two years, go straight for- 
 ward until it becomes a ruling force of life. I ex- 
 pressly propose to provide that sufficient time be 
 taken to make sure that the remedy expresses the 
 will, the sober and well-thought-out judgment, and 
 not the whim, of the people; but, when that has been 
 ascertained, I am not willing that the will of the 
 people shall be frustrated. If this be not a wise rem- 
 edy, let those who criticize it propose a wise remedy, 
 and not confine themselves to railing at government 
 by a majority of the American people as government 
 by the mob. To propose, as an alternative remedy, 
 slight modifications of impeachment proceedings is 
 to propose no remedy at all — it is to bid us be con- 
 tent with chaff when we demand bread. 
 
 The decisions of which we complain are, as a rule, 
 based upon the constitutional provision that no per- 
 son shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property 
 without due process of law. The terms "life, liberty, 
 and property" have been used in the constitutions of 
 the English-speaking peoples since Magna Charta. 
 Until within the last sixty years they were treated as 
 having specific meanings; "property" meant tangi- 
 ble property; "liberty" meant freedom from per- 
 sonal restraint, or, in other words, from imprison- 
 ment in its largest definition. About 1870 our courts 
 began to attach to these terms new meanings. Now 
 "property" has come to mean every right of value 
 which a person could enjoy, and "liberty" has been 
 made to include the right to make contracts. As a 
 
2 4 o APPENDIX 
 
 result, when the State limits the hours for which 
 women may labor, it is told by the courts that this 
 law deprives them of their "liberty"; and when it 
 restricts the manufacture of tobacco in a tenement, 
 it is told that the law deprives the landlord of his 
 "property." Now, I do not believe that any people, 
 and especially our free American people, will long 
 consent that the term "liberty" shall be defined for 
 them by a bench of judges. Every people has defined 
 that term for itself in the course of its historic devel- 
 opment. Of course, it is plain enough to see that, in 
 a large way, the political history of man may be 
 grouped about these three terms, "life, liberty, and 
 property." There is no act of government which 
 cannot be brought within their definition, and if the 
 courts are to cease to treat them as words having a 
 limited, specific meaning, then our whole govern- 
 ment is brought under the practically irresponsible 
 supervision of judges. As against that kind of a 
 government I insist that the people have the right, 
 and can be trusted, to govern themselves. This our 
 opponents deny; and the issue is sharply drawn be- 
 tween us. 
 
 If my critics would only show the same sober judg- 
 ment of which they declare the people at large to be 
 incapable, they would realize that my proposal is one 
 of moderation and common sense. I wish to quote 
 the remarks of William Draper Lewis, Dean of the 
 Law School of the University of Pennsylvania: — 
 
 "To a lawyer the most interesting suggestion 
 Colonel Roosevelt has made is to allow the people, 
 after consideration, to reenact legislation which a 
 
APPENDIX 241 
 
 court decision has declared is contrary to some clause 
 in the existing State Constitution. 
 
 "Any one who has been asked to draft specific 
 amendments to State Constitutions will hesitate to 
 condemn, without serious consideration, the sug- 
 gestion made by Colonel Roosevelt. To take a con- 
 crete instance: The New York Court of Appeals 
 declared the Workmen's Compensation Act, passed 
 by the New York Legislature, unconstitutional, as 
 depriving in its operation the employer of his prop- 
 erty without due process of law. A number of amend- 
 ments to the New York Constitution, designed to 
 validate a compensation act, have been drafted, and 
 it is not unlikely that one of them will be adopted. 
 Personally, one or more of these amendments having 
 been shown to me, I cannot but feel that constitu- 
 tional amendments, designed to meet particular cases, 
 run the danger of being so worded as to produce far- 
 reaching results not anticipated or desired by the 
 people. Colonel Roosevelt's suggestion avoids this 
 difficulty and danger. If a persistent majority of the 
 people of New York State want a workmen's com- 
 pensation act, they should have it. But, in order to 
 obtain it, they should not be driven to pass an amend- 
 ment to their State Constitution, which may have 
 effects which they do not anticipate or desire. Let 
 them pass on the act, as passed by the Legislature, 
 after a full knowledge that their highest court has 
 unanimously expressed its opinion that the act is 
 contrary to the Constitution which the people at a 
 prior election have declared to be their fundamental 
 law. 
 
242 APPENDIX 
 
 " I may not always approve of what the persistent 
 majority wants. I might sometimes think the meas- 
 ure unwise. But that does n't alter the right of that 
 majority to enforce its will in government. The 
 Roosevelt idea, it seems to me, supplies an instru- 
 ment by which that majority can enforce its will in 
 the most conservative way. It makes explosions 
 unnecessary. 
 
 "I would have been very proud to have been the 
 author of that plan, although I want to emphasize 
 the fact that it involves no new principle, only a new 
 method. 
 
 "I don't mind saying, however, that I think it 
 unfortunate that it should have been proposed by 
 Colonel Roosevelt. He is a man of such marked char- 
 acteristics, and his place in the political world is such, 
 that he arouses intense enthusiasm on the one hand, 
 and intense animosity on the other. Because of this, 
 the great idea which he has propounded is bound to 
 be beclouded, and its adoption to be delayed. It is a 
 pity that anything so important should be confounded 
 with any man's personality." 
 
 As regards the Dean's last paragraph, I can only 
 say that I wish somebody else whose suggestions 
 would arouse less antagonism had proposed it; but 
 nobody else did propose it, and so I had to. I am not 
 leading this fight as a matter of aesthetic pleasure. 
 I am leading because somebody must lead, or else 
 the fight would not be made at all. 
 
 I prefer to work with moderate, with rational, con- 
 servatives, provided only that they do in good faith 
 strive forward toward the light. But when they halt 
 
APPENDIX 243 
 
 and turn their backs to the light, and sit with the 
 scorners on the seats of reaction, then I must part 
 company with them. We the people cannot turn 
 back. Our aim must be steady, wise progress. It 
 would be well if our people would study the history 
 of a sister republic. All the woes of France for a 
 century and a quarter have been due to the folly of 
 her people in splitting into the two camps of unrea- 
 sonable conservatism and unreasonable radicalism. 
 Had pre-Revolutionary France listened to men like 
 Turgot, and backed them up, all would have gone 
 well. But the beneficiaries of privilege, the Bourbon 
 reactionaries, the short-sighted ultra-conservatives, 
 turned down Turgot; and then found that instead of 
 him they had obtained Robespierre. They gained 
 twenty years' freedom from all restraint and reform, 
 at the cost of the whirlwind of the red Terror; and in 
 their turn the unbridled extremists of the Terror in- 
 duced a blind reaction; and so, with convulsion and 
 oscillation from one extreme to another, with alter- 
 nations of violent radicalism and violent Bourbon- 
 ism, the French people went through misery toward 
 a shattered goal. May we profit by the experiences 
 of our brother republicans across the water, and go 
 forward steadily, avoiding all wild extremes; and 
 may our ultra-conservatives remember that the rule 
 of the Bourbons brought on the Revolution, and may 
 our would-be revolutionaries remember that no 
 Bourbon was ever such a dangerous enemy of the 
 people and of freedom as the professed friend of both, 
 Robespierre. There is no danger of a revolution in 
 this country ; but there is grave discontent and unrest, 
 
244 APPENDIX 
 
 and in order to remove them there is need of all the 
 wisdom and probity and deep-seated faith in, and 
 purpose to uplift, humanity, we have at our command. 
 Friends, our task as Americans is to strive for 
 social and industrial justice, achieved through the 
 genuine rule of the people. This is our end, our pur- 
 pose. The methods for achieving the end are merely 
 expedients, to be finally accepted or rejected accord- 
 ing as actual experience shows that they work well 
 or ill. But in our hearts we must have this lofty pur- 
 pose, and we must strive for it in all earnestness and 
 sincerity, or our work will come to nothing. In order 
 to succeed we need leaders of inspired idealism, lead- 
 ers to whom are granted great visions, who dream 
 greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; 
 who can kindle the people with the fire from their 
 own burning souls. The leader for the time being, 
 whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used 
 until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is 
 worth his salt, he will care no more when he is broken 
 than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is 
 forfeit in order that the victory may be won. In the 
 long fight for righteousness the watchword for all of 
 us is, Spend and be spent. It is of little matter 
 whether any one man fails or succeeds; but the cause 
 shall not fail, for it is the cause of mankind. We, here 
 in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, 
 the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace 
 will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve 
 is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes 
 of men. If on this new continent we merely build 
 another country of great but unjustly divided ma- 
 
APPENDIX 245 
 
 terial prosperity, we shall have done nothing; and 
 we shall do little if we merely set the greed of envy 
 against the greed of arrogance, and thereby destroy 
 the material well-being of all of us. To turn this 
 Government either into government by a plutocracy 
 or government by a mob would be to repeat on a 
 larger scale the lamentable failures of the world that 
 is dead. We stand against all tyranny, by the few or 
 by the many. We stand for the rule of the many in 
 the interest of all of us, for the rule of the many in a 
 spirit of courage, of common sense, of high purpose; 
 above all, in a spirit of kindly justice toward every 
 man and every woman. We not merely admit, but 
 insist, that there must be self-control on the part of 
 the people, that they must keenly perceive their own 
 duties as well as the rights of others; but we also 
 insist that the people can do nothing unless they not 
 merely have, but exercise to the full, their own rights. 
 The worth of our great experiment depends upon its 
 being in good faith an experiment — the first that 
 has ever been tried — in true democracy on the scale 
 of a continent, on a scale as vast as that of the 
 mightiest empires of the Old World. Surely this is a 
 noble ideal, an ideal for which it is worth while to 
 strive, an ideal for which at need it is worth while to 
 sacrifice much; for our ideal is the rule of all the peo- 
 ple in a spirit of friendliest brotherhood toward each 
 and every one of the people. 
 
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 U . S . A