YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THEODORE ROOSEVELT. PARTY LEADERS OF THE TIME Character Studies of Public Men at Washington, Senate Portraits, House Etchings, Snapshots at Ex ecutive Officers and Diplomats, and Flashlights in the Country at Large By CHARLES WILLIS THOMPSON ILLUSTRATED WITH MANY PORTRAITS G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK Copyright, 1906, by G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY (Issued March, iqob) Net Party Leaders of the Time CONTENTS I. SOME ASPECTS OF EOOSEVELT PAGE 11 II. SENATE PORTRAITS I. The Rulers of the Senate . II. Hale, the New Floor Leader III. The Recreations of John C. Spooner . IV. George Frisbie Hoar : The Last of a Loxg Line V. The Vendetta of Hanna ax d Pettigrew . VI. Platt of New York VII. The Two Gormans VIII. The Evolution of Bailey .... IX. Senator Tillman, Despair of Analysts X. "The Grand Young Man of Indiana " 2538 475779 94 109 119129 137 I. 149 II. The House Triumvirate 157 III. The Aristocracy of the House . 165 IV. 173 V. Williams, a Leader Who Leads 184 VI. The Rebellions of Tawney .... 194 VII. The Stampedes of William Alden Smith , 205 mi. BOURKE COCKKAN : AND LiTTLEFIELD, THE NEYi 217 IX. Hearst in Congress . . . . 232 X. Marse Sydney Mudd and His Kingdom 3 248 4 CONTENTS TV. "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" I. John Hay 261 II. Interviewing Secretary Root .... 283 III. Taft, Spokesman of the Administration . . 301 IV. Knox the Lawyer 310 V. Wynne, the Ring-Breaker 320 VI. Ihonquill of Kansas 328 VII. Count Cassini, a Diplomatic Ideal . . . 337 VIII. Dunnell : a Portrait from the Press Gallery 350 V. OUT IN THE FIELD I. Bryan the Fighter 363 II. Weaver and Durham : A Ring-Smasher and a Boss 386 III. Governor Higgins — New York's New Leader? 399 IV. Woodruff, Boss of Brooklyn .... 412 ILLUSTRATIONS Theodore Roosevelt Nelson W. Aldrich William B. Allison Orville H. Piatt Eugene Hale John C. Spooner George Frisbie Hoar Marcus A. Hanna Thomas C. Piatt Arthur P. Gorman Joseph W. Bailey Benjamin R. Tillman Albert J. Beveridge John Dalzell Sereno E. Payne Charles H Grosvenor Joseph G. Cannon John Sharp Williams James A. Tawney W. Bourke Cockran Charles E. Littlefield William Randolph Hearst Sydney E. Mudd John Hay Elihu Root William J. Taft Philander C. Knox Robert J. Wynne Count Cassini William J. Bryan John Weaver . Frank Wayland Higgins Page Frontispiece INTRODUCTORY NOTE The public men of our time are much talked of but little known. It is the aim of this book to make their personalities clear, to make visible human beings and not mere names out of them. No one familiar with Washington life can doubt that the opportu nities for making such studies belong to the newspaper correspondents in greater measure than to any other men who come to meet and know our statesmen. Whether these opportunities have been well used in the present work or not is for the reader to say. All the writer claims is that he has had these opportunities as Washington correspondent of the New York Times and the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and that, having them, he has set down what he believes to be the absolute truth, without fear or favor. Washington is the head centre for American public men, and the writer has confined his sketches chiefly to the men met there. In the last division of the book, entitled " Out in the Field," he has tried to portray a few of the more interesting personalities of the day 7 INTRODUCTORY NOTE outside the capital whom he has met in the course of the staff work that Washington cor respondents are called upon to perform. In addition to the party leaders described here the writer has taken a few steps outside his proper field to describe one or two of the men who have left their impress upon the public life of Washington, though they were not party leaders or even party men. Count Cassini, for example, has been selected as the most interesting personality of his time in the diplomatic corps of which he was so long the dean. I SOME ASPECTS OF ROOSEVELT SOME ASPECTS OF ROOSEVELT It would not be possible in a single sketch to sum up the character of President Roose velt. Francis E. Leupp and Jacob A. Riis each tried to do it in a book. Neither of them trod on the other's heels, and both of them left material for several more books be yond their own boundaries. Therefore this sketch is no exhaustive analysis of Mr. Roosevelt. All it aims to do is to clear up a few matters connected with a many-sided personality that is always full of new and surprising features to those who thinkthey know it best. In the universal chorus of gush about the President no account has been taken of those who feel that they have real grievances against him. When some senator or represent ative rebels, the general disposition is to say, " Aha, another politician sore because Teddy has spoiled his graft." There are many sena tors and representatives who are high-minded and honorable men, and who do not like the President for what they consider good reasons. ll 12 SOME ASPECTS OF ROOSEVELT And yet the reasons are not always as good as they appear to those who entertain them. It may be a matter of surprise, for instance, to many readers of the general avalanche of gush to know that there are men here who quite honestly believe the President to be in sincere. They are wrong about it, but their opposition to him is quite honest. There are drawbacks as well as joys about the incumbency of the Presidency by a man who is violently impulsive as well as roar- ingly honest. The trouble is that as a rule these drawbacks have been described in affrighted tones by solemn men who saw ghosts. A sense of humor is badly needed by the men who see the defects of Roose velt, For example, they see the possibility of an imminent wreck of the Constitution in some spasmodic moment. The Constitution may fall, as other Constitutions have, but it will not be swept overboard by the sudden rush of an irritated president who finds it momentar ily in his way. On the other hand — it is impossible to write a truthful article about Roosevelt with out saying " on the other hand " every other paragraph, his nature is so full of contradic tions — it is indisputably true that when Mr. SOME ASPECTS OF ROOSEVELT 13 Roosevelt finds the laws, whether of the Con stitution or otherwise, in his way, he is not appalled thereby ; he is only impelled to the use of a short-cut somewhere. As the phre nologists say, reverence is not well developed ; audacity is well developed. He loves the Constitution, but it is impossible to conceive him in an awe-stricken attitude, on his knees, towards anything, a Constitution or anything else. A few highly commonplace illustrations may illustrate both the safety and the danger of Roosevelt. For he is an ark of safety to this government in some ways, and a danger in others. There has never been a president since 1789 who could so surely be relied upon in a case where the forms of law were being used by the criminal rich or the criminal poor ; for he would break through the forms to save the substance. There has never been a president so dangerous in any emergency which might arise where he happened to be wrong ; for he would break through the forms of law then as in the other case, because of his belief in his own divine Tightness. Whether the good outweighs the evil or not is a ques tion to be decided according to partisan prej udices. According to the opinion of one who has watched him long at close range, with 14 SOME ASPECTS OF ROOSEVELT every desire to be perfectly impartial in judg ment, it does. But here are the illustrations. The first is the case of Judge John C. Pollock of Topeka. The Kansas delegation was split up over the appointment. Senator Long was backing Pollock and Senator Burton, the same who has since become undesirably famous, was backing Charles Blood Smith. The repre sentatives were still more divided, having several candidates. When the fight grew hot the friends of other candidates made charges against Pol lock. The Kansas delegation besieged the president daily and poured into his impatient ear tales of the worth of this candidate and the viciousness of that. One day the presi dent seemed to lean one way, another day he lent a more attentive ear to a different candi date. At last he told the Kansas delegation that he would be bothered no more ; that they must go to the capitol, swoop on some unoc cupied committee room, and there ballot till they came to a decision ; and the man they elected he would appoint. The Kansans went their way with much misgiving, for they foresaw only the dimmest possibility that they could agree. They were SOME ASPECTS OF ROOSEVELT 15 quite right about that. They cast eight bal lots without result, and were just cutting up slips of paper for the ninth when a senator lounged in. " What are you doing? " he inquired. " We are balloting for a Federal judgeship," they explained. " The president has told us he would appoint the man we selected." " Well, you needn't ballot any more," said the senator. " The president has just this minute sent in the name of Judge Pollock." At first the Kansans could not believe it, and when they found it was correct they were vastly wroth, at least all of them but the Pol lock faction. Naturally it looked to them as if the president had tricked them. The simple fact was that as they left the White House " Cy " Leland, of much fame as a political leader in Kansas, came in. He talked in a general way of the judge ship fight, and told the president how much distressed Pollock's family were over the charges which had been filed against him. The president said he didn't think much of the charges. " Well, they are distressed about them all thex same," said Leland. " Just look at this letter which the judge got to-day from his little fifteen-year-old daughter Lucile, who is 16 SOME ASPECTS OF ROOSEVELT in school at Topeka. The judge, you know, is in Washington, and here is what she writes to him : " ' Dear Papa : Why don't you go to the president and tell him about it? If he sees your face he will never believe those nasty charges.' " The president took a rose from the flowers on his table, handed it to Leland, and said : " You send that flower to Miss Lucile and tell her I like a little girl who has that kind of faith in her father and I have a lot of faith in a father who has that kind of a little girl." Then he called up the Department of Jus tice and learned that an investigation showed that the charges against Pollock were untrue, and in Leland's presence he wrote out Pol lock's nomination and dispatched the messen ger to the Senate. Lucile landed her father on the Federal bench within ten minutes after her letter was read. It is on such occurrences as this that politi cians found their belief in Roosevelt's insin cerity. The Kansans thought he had buncoed them. As a matter of fact there was no insin cerity about it. He knew well enough that they would never agree, and Lucile's letter, coming at a time when he was tired of the SOME ASPECTS OF ROOSEVELT 17 whole thing, decided him. It was impulsive ness, not insincerity. One evening General Basil W. Duke, of Mor gan's rough riders in civil war times, came to Washington from Kentucky and made a speech at an alumni dinner. He eulogized Roosevelt and his policy. Duke was a Gold Democrat who left his party in 1896. He had never become a Republican, but was pretty independent. At that time there was a hot contest on for a Federal judgeship — a Circuit Court ap pointment, including Kentucky. Senator Foraker had a candidate and so did several other Ohio and Kentucky Republicans, and the president could not make up his mind whom to appoint. The next morning, Gen eral Duke's speech having been printed in the papers, the general went to the White House to pay his respects. The president was de lighted to see him and offered him the Circuit Court appointment on the spot. General Duke was astounded. He told the president he didn't want it and couldn't take it. The president insisted, and Duke had the hardest time of his life getting away from the judgeship. He finally succeeded in getting back to Louisville without an appointment, but it was a hard job. The president subse- 18 SOME ASPECTS OF ROOSEVELT quently and reluctantly appointed one of the men suggested by congressmen. It is on such occurrences as these that men base the belief on Roosevelt's vanity, which is as currently insisted upon as the belief in his insincerity. There was no vanity about it. Men will argue to this day that Mr. Roose velt offered the place to Duke because his vanity was tickled by the speech. The fact was that none of the candidates suggested pleased the president. When he saw Duke's speech, it immediately suggested to his mind a new name and the name of a man who seemed to him to fill the bill. The speech showed that Duke was not enough of a Demo crat to hurt, and on the spot the president made up his mind. It was another case of impulsiveness, not of vanity. Once Representative Hunter of Kentucky went to the White House to urge the ap pointment of a candidate for an office in his district. The president told him that he had not yet decided the case. Dr. Hunter strolled down to the capitol in a leisurely way, and when he arrived the correspondent of a Ken tucky paper rushed up and said, " Dr. Hunter, what do you think of Blank's appointment ? " " Oh, Blank hasn't been appointed," replied Hunter. " I have just left the White House, SOME ASPECTS OE ROOSEVELT 19 and the president told me he had come to no decision in that matter." " But he has," responded the reporter. " The name has just been sent in to the Senate." Hunter would not believe it, and when at last convinced he turned all colors and re fused to discuss it. For Blank was not his candidate, but the candidate of persons op posed to Hunter. That too was quoted as a proof of this much-talked-of insincerity, which no one ever hears of in the world at large, but which is heard of constantly in Washington. And again it was not insincerity, but impulsive ness. Hunter's visit suggested to the presi dent's mind the idea that he ought to decide that case soon, and thinking over the situa tion he came to an instant decision. In went the appointee's name, and it reached the capitol before Hunter did. It is this impulsiveness, this habit of doing things at the drop of the hat, which consti tutes the chief fault in Roosevelt as a presi dent. For he often decides wrongly. On the other hand, his decisions in the three cases cited were made not at the dictation of any politician, but either in flat opposition to them or in utter indifference to them, and always in 20 SOME ASPECTS OF ROOSEVELT accordance with what Roosevelt believed the interests of the public. In this lies his chief value as a president. It is less easy to explain away other defects, high among which ranks a certain divine Tightness which covers not only himself but his friends. The president is not more confident of the absolute all-rightness of himself than he is convinced that none of his friends can err. This is what has led him into such colossal blunders as his persistent de fense of Loomis. He has been criticised — here, of course, in this unsympathetic and half-hostile city — for vanity and love of posing ; and the chief counts in the indictment are his having him self photographed in the act of chopping trees, jumping his horse over fences, etc. It is not vanity ; it is that sense which Mark Twain describes as "the circus side of my nature." Tom Sawyer had it, and so did the immortal Yankee who stayed so long in King Arthur's court. It was not vanity which led Tom to get himself in the limelight ; it was an appreciation of dramatic effect combined with a natural preference for himself as the star. The president never loses that sense. The Yankee at King Arthur's court was nat urally glad to escape death by surprising the SOME ASPECTS OF ROOSEVELT 21 Britons with an eclipse, but not even the joy of escape was eminent in his mind over the delight of being the centre of the situation, and such a situation. A trait like that is as far removed from vanity as from mock-modesty. II SENATE PORTRAITS NELSON W. ALDRICH. "Aldrich is a chess-plaver with men.' THE RULERS OF THE SENATE There was some talk of tariff revision shortly after President Roosevelt's election, and although there was not a ghost of a chance for it then the talk kept up in a des ultory fashion among the uninformed until it was effectively quieted by a conference at the White House wherein Senator Aldrich participated. Whereupon one of the comic weeklies observed that the principal result of this White House conference was the acqui sition by the president of the knowledge that a gentleman by the name of Aldrich was run ning the United States. This resembles many other things that ap pear in comic weeklies by not being comic at all. The chief inaccuracy in the statement is the implication that the president had only just become aware of the autocracy of Aldrich. Of course it did not take the president three years and a half to learn elementary facts in civil government. 80 far from being comic, the epigram in 25 26 SENATE PORTRAITS question has some solid title to inclusion in a text-book on the government of the United States ; yet in it there are a couple of minor inaccuracies, both being of implication rather than of statement. The first is the implica tion that Mr. Aldrich is running the United States aU by himself. In the days of the Roman Empire it was customary for an em peror to associate with himself another em peror, both wearing the title of Augustus, and sometimes Rome had three or four emperors at once. Similarly the title of Augustus in the Senate is divided. Associated with Mr. Aldrich, at the time the comic paper became thus unwittingly philosophic, were four other emperors, Messrs. Hale of Maine, Spooner of Wisconsin, Allison of Iowa and Piatt of Con necticut. Now his colleagues are only three. In the early months of 1905 Piatt died, and the vacancy remains unfilled. It is not necessary that it ever should be filled, though it doubt less will be, in the course of time. The power lodged in him he won by merit ; it will not devolve upon any one, but it may again be won by merit. The second implication is that the empire is unchallenged. A year or more before the second inauguration of President Roosevelt SENATE PORTRAITS 27 this would have been true. Within that space of time the new speaker had manifested such a lusty disposition to revive the vanished powers of his office that even the mighty Aid- rich had been forced reluctantly to turn to him a bored and pettish ear. There are also stray indications that at some time in the near future the president of the United States may place himself across the path of the Senate machine, though he has not done so yet. These inaccuracies do not necessarily indi cate ignorance on the part of the comic phi losopher, but are attributable rather to the exigency of epigram. It is not possible to say everything in a sentence. The four bosses of the Senate can and do control that body. This means that these four men can block and defeat anything that the president or the House may desire. It necessarily follows that they must be respect fully consulted on every proposition ; and this carries with it the further implication that pretty nearly everything they want to do they can do. The result is that these five men, Piatt being included, have often shaped the policy of the United States. On many an occasion, not at all remote, it has been simple fact and not hyperbole that these five men were the government of the United States. 28 SENATE PORTRAITS The rule of the bosses of the House machine is a simple matter, easily explained. They rule the House not because of any towering ability, but because they are on the Rules Committee, which can tie up any legislation and has the House by the throat all the time. But the rule of the Senate bosses is founded on a principle a little more complex. The two great committees of the Senate are Appropriations and Finance. Of Appropria tions Allison is the chairman, and he and Hale control the committee. There is no other member of it who has the ability to cope with them, or the courage either. Aid- rich is chairman of Finance, and associated with him on the committee are Allison and Spooner, and, until his death, Piatt ; and these four men ran that committee. The Republican Steering Committee con sists of nine members, and the five bosses con trolled the Steering Committee. All the im portant committees of the Senate are so con structed as to be easily controllable by the associated Csesars of the Senate empire. But after all this has been said, another potent factor in their rule, not the least potent, remains. The House bosses are so by reason of their official position, and whether they are men of ability or not has nothing to do WILLIAM B. ALLISON. r The sage old pilot of the Senate." SENATE PORTRAITS 29 with the case. Men of no special ability can run the House as well as Cannon, Payne, Grosvenor and Dalzell. But the Senate bosses are men of might. The day of great debates in the Senate is not gone, as is erroneously supposed ; the only difference is that the great debates are not held in the public eye and never leak into the public ear. The great debates of the Senate for years have been held in whatever room Allison, Aldrich, Hale, Spooner and Piatt of Connecticut may have been gathered to decide what should be the policy of these United States on a given subject. The public "debates" to which the eager- eyed tourists listen so reverently are in the nature of a dramatic performance. They have nothing to do with the legislation to be en acted. While senators are going through the motions of arguing a great question, the real debate is taking place or has already taken place in some little room where two or three are gathered together. Oftentimes the real debate is over and the whole question settled before ever the mock debate in the Senate begins. Some of the four bosses occasionally con descend to take part in the mock debates on the Senate floor. But when they do so it is 30 SENATE PORTRAITS in their capacity as politicians, not as legis lators. They are saying such things as they think should be published for the benefit of their political party. The performance has nothing in the remotest way to do with legis lation. The legislation has been settled in the private debates. No one should suppose these private debates to be restricted to the four bosses. Other senators take part in them. When a great question steps into the Senate and asks to be settled, those senators who have ideas about the solution express them, not in the Senate but in private forums. The question is thrashed out there, the four bosses agree on which of the plans proposed should be adopted, and then begins the solemn mock debate in the Senate. If these real debates were reported as the stage debates in open Senate are, the litera ture of American oratory would be enriched — not by flowers of speech, but by downright, direct, sledge-hammer arguments. Oftentimes the four bosses disagree. They fight out their disagreements, come to a conclusion by rule of the majority, and then solidly stand together for the result. The secrets of death are not more closely guarded than the secrets of these real debates, SENATE PORTRAITS 31 the debates which decide the policies of the United States and make history. Seldom is it that any vaguest rumor of the differences in the camp of the four Csesars trickles through the cracks in those closed doors. When they reappear in the public view they are united and are handing out their orders to their fol lowers, and the differences which preceded the agreement may never be known even to their colleagues. One exception was in the settlement of the fate of the Philippine Islands. It did become known that Spooner and Hale disagreed vehemently with the " imperialist " policy, and that the battles in the councils of the Big Five were protracted and exciting. But when the doors were thrown open and the mock de bate in the Senate began, Spooner was the spokesman chosen to put forward the " im perialist " policy, and he did it with the fire and power which characterize all his utter ances in the mock debates. So great a man is Spooner in the mock de bates that no man can question the deep loss to American literature resulting from the failure to report his speeches in the real de bates. It has been said above that the five bosses have ruled not merely by virtue of the way 32 SENATE PORTRAITS they interpenetrate the really potent commit tees of the Senate, but also by virtue of in tellectual might. This means not only the ability of the statesman, but also the genius for control of men. No man has such a mastery of the latter science as the silent Aldrich, he who, almost alone of the Senate bosses, disdains the farce of mixing in the mock debates. Aldrich is a chess player with men. No one in the Senate and few outside it equal him in that peculiar talent which gives one man the mastery of others. It is but seldom that his voice is heard on the floor, and when he does speak it is always as an actor. He hardly conceals the fact that he breaks his silence merely to make a polit ical point. His part in the machine is that of political manager. A type more irreconcil able with the vulgar political boss can hardly be imagined. He is a handsome man with piercing eyes and a flowing white mustache. He is a gentleman, a man of pleasant address and with a voice agreeable to hear ; but there is about him a constant indefinable impres sion of power and command, the product of long habit in ruling men. Allison is the man of experience, the sage old pilot of the Senate. They say that no SENATE PORTRAITS 33 man who has ever been in the Senate knew so much about it as he does. He is the political forecaster, the compromiser, the weather prophet, the man who brings irreconcilable things together. It is said that the oldest inhabitant cannot recall having heard Allison give utterance to an opinion on any subject whatever. Doubtless he does give utter ance to them, but never except in the inner councils of the Caesars. Sagacious to the point of craft, it does not annoy him to know that the epithet most frequently applied to him is " the Old Fox." He looks the Solon, with his massive leonine head and its immense forehead and mass of gray hair. When he rises in his place in the Senate, he disdains to talk as if he were making a speech ; he leaves all that to the youngsters, whose sum of knowledge does not equal all that he has forgotten. He never rises except to shed light on some knotty point, and when he does it is always as briefly as possible, and in a conversational voice that is almost an undertone. Then he drops back into his seat and, with sublime in difference, lets the talk go on. In that part of the United States which lies outside the city of Washington, it was cus tomary to refer to Piatt as " Piatt of Connecti- 34 SENATE PORTRAITS cut." In Washington there was no such cus tom. When one spoke in Washington of, Piatt, it was assumed that of course he spoke of the Connecticut man, the great Piatt, un less he specifically added the words " of New York." It was but seldom that this occurred, for Piatt of New York has no more influence on legislation in Washington than the corusca tions of a lightning-bug have on the solar system. He goes his way unregarded and not discussed ; and it was an uneventful day in which the name of the other Piatt was not heard in corridor gossip on the day's topics. A mild, stately old gentleman with a long white beard and deep furrows under his eyes ; quiet of manner and soft of voice, tall and angular of frame, who seemed to have a diffi culty in disposing of all his bones, with a frame like Lincoln and the face and manner of a pastor emeritus — that was Piatt, the con structive legislator of the Senate machine. These three gentlemen of scanty speech are but little known to the public except by name. It is different with the other two. Spooner is the orator and the lawyer, and he conducts the public battles of the machine. He and Piatt were regarded as the statesmen of the combination. He is an enthralling ORVILLE H. PLATT. " The face and manner of a pastor- emeritus." SENATE PORTRAITS 35 speaker, a man whose words are of fire and whose arguments are of iron. He has not his match in the Senate except perhaps Bailey. When, deserting his desk and taking the aisle, Spooner swings his short form from one side of the aisle to the other, hurling his hand like a weapon at the Democratic side, every man in the Senate is in his seat and listening with all his ears. It is an intellectual treat of the first order. Hale is less under the necessity of observing the rule of secrecy about differences in the councils of the Big Four than any of the others. He often blurts out in the open Sen ate his sublime disregard of the prevailing policy ; but he observes the rule of the major ity so far as not to fight it except in the inner councils of the Board of Control. He looks as little like the three mild- spoken bosses first mentioned as does the fiery Spooner. He is a red-faced man with a pointed gray beard and a countenance made up for war. He looks always as if he were getting ready for a fight with somebody ; and when he does speak the most biting irony falls from his lips in measured, unemotional tones. Unlike Spooner, he does not go into the aisle and wave his fist. He stands by his desk, holding the corners of it rigidly, and 36 SENATE PORTRAITS lets his boiling sarcasm drip word by word, or drop by drop. Prior to the present session he seldom ventured into the range of public vision. When he did, it was generally in the atti tude of serving notice on somebody that this nonsense must stop. When Hale is in terviewed it is a significant event ; it is not an interview, it is an occurrence in history. An interview from (not with) him is an an nouncement of the policy of the government ; an interview with any one of the Senate rank and file is merely an interview. None of the other three is ever interviewed. Whether the Senate bosses have deputed that role to Hale or not cannot be known. An interview with him appears with the rarity of a comet. But when it comes it is generally like the roar of a lion or a blast of dynamite. After the interview the air is full of debris for awhile, and then things proceed to shape themselves in accordance with the interview. It may be remembered that there was con siderable talk of tariff revision at the last ses sion of the Fifty-eighth Congress until Mr. Hale, for the first time in a couple of years, was interviewed. No, the comic paper was not saying any thing funny ; it was verging closely on things SENATE PORTRAITS 37 so serious as to be almost sad. And yet the " running of the United States " by the ma chine of which Mr. Aldrich is the head is not nearly so absolute now as it was a year or two ago. The history of the next four years will be interesting, and may perhaps record a change in the American form of government ; not in the theoretical form recorded in the text-books, but the real form. Persons to whom this is a consummation devoutly to be wished are glad to see that Speaker Cannon was never healthier and that Mr. Roosevelt shows no signs of consumption. II HALE, THE NEW FLOOR LEADER The current session of Congress has pro duced a realignment of leadership in the Sen ate. Mr. Gorman's virtual disappearance has left Mr. Bailey the foremost figure on the Democratic side, despite his refusal to take the nominal chieftainship, and whoever may be elected to that position Bailey will continue to be the man who really directs Democratic policies. On the Republican side Mr. Hale has come to the front as the floor leader. This is no sudden revolution. For years Mr. Hale has been forging quietly to the front, and he has now stepped into the position to which great ability entitles him and for which long ex perience has been preparing him. He has long been one of the most potent forces in that little clique generally known as the senatorial oligarchy, which rules the Senate. Now he is its foremost figure. This is not to intimate that Senator Aldrich has been unhorsed or driven from power. He is a great manager, and is not in conflict 38 EUGENE HALE. "A grim-visaged man, red of face, with a sort of war-map all over it.'' SENATE PORTRAITS 39 with Mr. Hale on any important point. Of late years he has manifested less and less dis position to take on himself the responsibilities of active leadership. He is the chess-player of the senate, the wire-puller, the manager of votes. But Hale has come to be the great force in arranging party policies. By Democrats and Republicans alike Mr. Hale is to-day recognized as " the leader of the Senate." The words are put in quotation marks because, question anybody you will, they are the ones in which he is described. It is a distinct gain for public life that Mr. Hale has come to take that position. There are men of as ripe experience as his, such as Mr. Allison ; there are men of as great inde pendence as his ; there are men as sagacious and broad of view, and there are men of his iron determination and tremendous force. But the combination is his alone, so far as the Senate is concerned. He is not a poser. He is not fond of speechmaking. He is simply a great worker and a man who stands absolutely immovable amid public clamor and private pressure. There is no more erect man in public life. Congress is not a debating society. Its work is not done by speeches. It is done in private confabs. These confabs are often paj> 40 SENATE PORTRAITS ticipated in by not more than half a dozen men. Of late years they have been held mostly in Hale's little committee-room. In that room the nation's policies have been decided. It is worth while to know something about Hale, for at the present moment he and Speaker Cannon and President Roosevelt are the men who are making the history of the United States, if any three men can be said to do so. He is a grim-visaged man, red of face, with a sort of war-map all over it, and it terminates in a pugnacious iron-gray beard with an ag gressive point at the end of it. He is square of body, and his head, well-built as it is, car ries out the warlike appearance of the rest of him. He never delivers orations. When he is compelled to drop a few tons of common sense into a debate, he does it in the briefest possible compass of sentences. While he is doing it he holds on to the corners of his desk tightly, with both hands. He speaks with an aggravating deliberation and without empha sis. A sort of sandy grain runs through his voice, which is extra dry. He opposed the Spanish war, which was about the most unpopular thing a man could do. Any blatherskite could win the halo of SENATE PORTRAITS 41 a patriot by whooping it up. Hale, doubtless, was wrong ; but his mind was made up in his usual deliberate, careful fashion, and when once made up it was as unchangeable as the combined minds of all the men who enacted all the codes of the Medes and Persians. In Maine, where they were sending men to the front, Hale's action was resented. But they stick in Maine to a good old custom of giving their representatives free rein in matters of principle. They look on those things as Edmund Burke did, and Hale was reelected. He knew, however, when he took that un popular ground that he was in danger of making Maine do that almost unprecedented thing in that State — turn down one of her senators for reelection. Then he opposed the Philippine War. He did not get so much fame out of it as Senator Hoar, because he did not deliver orations of that senator's kind. But he opposed it none the less, though he was one of the senatorial oligarchy. He is as independent of President Roosevelt as of everybody else. He has opposed and thwarted the president on his naval extension programme and other matters. But he is not one of the senators who secretly oppose Roosevelt while pretending to support him. 42 SENATE PORTRAITS On the contrary he is about the best friend the president has in the Senate, for his sup port of Roosevelt where he can support him is sincere and his opposition is openly and frankly expressed at the White House. Hale is one of the very few men who can tell the truth to Roosevelt when they oppose him, for the president trusts the senator and respects him. By virtue of his new position as leader he has been more at the front and has been obliged to deliver more speeches at this ses sion than ever before. But he does not like senatorial speechmaking, and never speaks except when it is absolutely necessary. When he does he compresses his utterance into the fewest possible words and then drops into his seat with a thud and crosses his legs and leans back in his chair as if he never meant to make a speech again. This does not mean that he is a poor speaker. On the contrary, the words of no senator are listened to with such breathless interest by his colleagues — not even those of Aldrich. That sandy grain in his dry voice accentuates the cutting satire with which he sometimes speaks. He can dis miss a subject with magnificent contempt in a way that few senators can equal. He is what in Maine they call an " Oxford SENATE PORTRAITS 43 Bear." That is what they call the men from Oxford County, that fine little breeding-ground of strong men to the northeast of Portland, where Lake Pennesseewassee is. There have been many Oxford Bears who have won high place in the nation, but none to whom the word seems more thoroughly applicable than to Hale. The square-built man with the angry square face looks the part. If you knew that a certain breed of Maine men were called Oxford Bears, and you met Hale and were told that he came from Maine, you would put him down instinctively as one. He disposes of immense quantities of work. They wonder in the Senate how he can do it with so little excitement. Hale tells them that it is because he has learned how to work, and that when a man complains of overwork there must be something the matter with his method. He has been a national figure for nearly forty years. He has read omnivo- rously for many years on legislation. Now he seldom reads on that subject ; he reads gen eral literature. The reason is that in forty years he has arrived at such a command of national legislation that there is little he can get out of a book. He comes nearer than any other nian in public life to knowing it all. 44 SENATE PORTRAITS If the real landmarks of American history were known as well as those battle-fields where nothing was decided, but where guides are hired to tell the story, men would be em ployed to point out Hale's committee-room. That is where the course of history for the United States has come to be determined of late years. It is the committee-room of naval affairs, for he is chairman of that committee. It is a little room, and may have been too small sometimes for the men who came to decide on the nation's policy ; but that cannot often have been the case, for it does not take many men to do that. In it, alongside his table, is a rocking-chair of the kind you see in every well-regulated Maine farmhouse. You know the Maine rocking-chair ; there is a distinctive character about it that you don't find in any other kind of chair. Hale comes here a week before Congress convenes and busies himself fixing up senato rial policies. He plunges into work and never looks up until about the middle of February. Then, being a sane man who knows how to protect his health, he takes a week's vacation. In former years he would go to Virginia. Now he knows better. He goes home to SENATE PORTRAITS 45 Maine and plunges into the depths of a shrieking, windy Maine winter. There he stays, along the coast, breathing that man- making air, and comes back refreshed and ready for the rest of the session. Under his leadership the Senate and the House have grown into better relations. He and Speaker Cannon are very fond of each other. They are chums. Now and then it becomes necessary for the House to hurl a shriek of defiance at the Senate. It does so with Hale's full concurrence, and then things jog along as before. He is fond of sea trips, and is a true son of the salt air. He likes to breathe it on trips with congenial speakers of the House and secre taries of the navy. It was on one such trip that he offered the canal chairmanship to Shonts. He is a pretty big, wise, broad man, and yet he is a thorough partisan. When he has to oppose his party it is not with tears, as did Senator Hoar, but with his usual grim-visaged and emotionless manner ; and yet it hurts him, because of his intense partisanship. His principal differences with his party of late years have been upon war issues. Concern ing these differences a friend quotes him as saying in a private conversation, and it is a pretty fair measure of the broad-gauge way 46 SENATE PORTRAITS Hale looks on the questions that come before him : " Every generation desires war. Peace is a question of how soon the generation gets its fill. The generation of the Civil War got enough to see what it meant. The present generation got only a taste in the Spanish skirmish, and is eager for more." So he knows that he is against the spirit of the age, and yet has the courage to take that stand. Not everybody in Washington has that particular kind of courage. Ill THE RECREATIONS OF JOHN C. SPOONER The bright spring days when mankind and especially womankind gravitates to Washing ton on excursion tickets and throngs the Senate galleries are the days when the fame of the Hon. John C. Spooner goes traveling to all parts of the country on every home-bound train. They are seed days for Spooner, and his harvest of reputation is later garnered in every home that has sent an eager-eyed tourist to Washington in the spring. For some reason, although everybody has heard Spooner's name, the man himself is not so well known as many a senator far inferior to him in ability. Because of this he dawns on the tourist as a surprise, and when the tourist goes back home he is fuller of Spooner than of any other sight of Washington. Spooner is certainly the great feature of the annual spring pilgrimage to the capital. To everybody in Washington, Spooner is known as far and away the best debater in the ' Senate. In a debate he is the biggest gun the Republicans have, and they rush him into 47 48 SENATE PORTRAITS service and fire him off whenever there is a stress of Democratic attack. He is always primed and ready. There is much of mischief about Spooner's make-up. He delights in malicious drollery, and longs continually to prod some Democrat into undue heat which will make the Democrat ridiculous and supply grinning material for the galleries. And when he sets himself about this task he seldom fails. He does it in a casual, inconsequent sort of way, to the never-ending surprise and delight of the tourist- filled galleries. The Senate is droning along in a sleepy debate. Some prosy senator has the floor ; the chamber is half empty, and nobody is paying any attention to the speaker. The door opens and the mischievous Spooner drifts in. He stands in the aisle a moment with his hands behind his back, surveying the pastoral scene. He catches the last sen tence of the droning senator — the only one he has heard in the speech — and it supplies him with a text. In his suave and gentle manner he begs leave to interrupt. Instantly every senatorial eye is fixed on Spooner and his victim, and a fearful joy fills every senatorial face. In a moment the scene is transformed ; the prosy senator is talking four ways at once, SENATE PORTRAITS 49 and with every sentence of his comes an inter ruption from Spooner, barbed with sarcasm. The other senator is perspiring and red-faced ; he has forgotten what he meant to say, and is getting into deeper water every moment. Some other senator rushes to his aid, and in a moment the mischief-maker from Wisconsin / has them both tangled up and is juggling with them like a sleight-of-hand man who is keeping a lot of glass balls in the air at once. When he has got the Senate thoroughly waked up and his victims desperate, he grins a wide, satisfied grin, and steps out again amid a sigh of regret from the gallery. He is the Robin Goodfellow of the Senate, , and looks not unlike that mischievous wight. He has a large face, a short, plump body, wavy hair, a smile with a comical twirl in it, and eyes that are always glinting with half- malicious humor. No man is so dreaded by the Democrats, and some of them will go almost to the point of rudeness to avoid one of his terrifying interruptions. When Spooner himself is making a speech every senator is in his place and listening hard, for it is sure to be eloquent and power ful, as well as sharp and witty. The Demo crats fight shy of interrupting him and bring ing down one of his landslide retorts, but, 50 SENATE PORTRAITS nevertheless, his speeches are fuller of inter ruptions than those of any other senator. Spooner causes this himself, and he does it in a characteristically Spoonerian way. The Democrats resolve not to interrupt and not to pull down the avalanche, but they are unable to keep their resolutions. After Spooner has been talking long enough to feel the need of a little excitement, he turns to wards some Democrat and waves his finger at him. He bends over in the Democrat's direc tion and shouts sentence after sentence di rectly at him. They sound like personal insults, and yet when you read the speech over in the Congressional Record it turns out that what Spooner was saying had no relation whatever to his victim. Spooner can recite a tariff schedule or discuss elementary princi ples of civil government in such a tone of voice that it seems as if he were personally insulting the man he is looking at. After awhile the Democrat can stand it no longer. He loses control of himself, bounds up, and interrupts. This is what Spooner has been working for, yet he immediately assumes a pathetic air of baby-like innocence and grieved resignation, and looks to the chair for protection against this uncalled-for inter ruption. This proceeding never fails to com- JOHN C. SPOONER. " He is the Robin Goodfellow of the Senate, and looks not unlike that mischievous wight." SENATE PORTRAITS 51 pletely "rattle" the interrupter. Sometimes Spooner carries this fiendish humor of his so far as to refuse to be interrupted. The inter rupter then becomes warm and insists, and Spooner gracefully yields and lets him make the interruption Spooner has been angling for all along; and it brings down a retort that sounds like the fall of a trip-hammer, and spells confusion for the interrupter. Although this is a regular feature of Spooner's method, it never fails to work, and never fails to make the interrupting senator appear ridiculous. At the moment the inter rupter really thinks that Spooner has been attacking him, such is the deceptive power of Spooner's ferocious manner ; but in the cold print of the Record there is nothing to show why the interruption was made, and it always seems foolish and irrelevant. One day, in the course of a long and able speech, Spooner selected Tillman as his vic tim. He frequently does, for he delights in spurring Tillman into doing things that look ridiculous, and the impetuosity of the South Carolinian's temperament makes him an easy prey. On this occasion Spooner ramped up and down the floor in front of Tillman, wav ing his finger at him and keeping his fiery eye fixed upon the " Pitchfork's " fierce face. 52 SENATE PORTRAITS What he was saying had no more to do with Tillman than the man in the moon. At last Tillman became so restless that he could stand it no longer, and, leaping to his feet, he started to make an impetuous reply. In stantly the heat disappeared from Spooner's manner and was succeeded by the baby stare, and in a voice as plaintive as the cry of a wild heron and a tone of injured innocence, the sprite of the Senate asked pathetically what he had done to deserve this interruption. Tillman was so surprised that he fairly stuttered, and the flood of eloquence that was boiling in him choked in his throat. He tried to think what was the Spoonerian insult which had goaded him to rise, and could not ; and all the time Spooner was looking at him with a resigned air and folded hands, waiting for the explanation. " Well— well— why," Tillman blurted out at last ; " anyway, the senator looked at me." " But I can't help looking at the senator," meekly answered Robin Goodfellow ; " he is so handsome." The one-eyed wielder of the pitchfork started to say something, choked, spluttered, and fell into his seat. And yet, within fif teen minutes, Spooner was doing it again, and Tillman was on his feet roaring like a mad SENATE PORTRAITS 53 bull. This is no reflection on Tillman's intelli gence ; no other senator could stand Spooner's manner any better. This time, having goaded Tillman into interrupting, Spooner meekly gave way, with a sigh of protest, and let Till man begin his question ; but after Tillman had uttered one sentence, to which Spooner had listened as one thirsty for instruction, the Wisconsin senator gave a violent start, pulled out his watch, and then turned quickly to compare it with the Senate clock. Tillman attempted to go on, but could not. The expression of rapt interest that Spooner wore as he conferred with the clock was a death-blow to speech. Tillman stammered, forgot what he wanted to say, tried to think, gave it up, and, completely " rattled," burst out furiously with : " Why does the senator look at the clock?" Spooner's eyes dropped from the clock and sought Tillman's lone orb with an air of re signed surprise. " The senator does not own the clock," he said in a mild, remonstrating tone of voice. " I know I don't," replied Tillman, " but— but " and then he gave it up and sat down, sheepishly. The cold type of the Record, of course, made this occurrence look as if Till- 54 SENATE PORTRAITS man had interrupted causelessly and foolishly when he had nothing to say. But Spooner's chosen victims are serious- minded senators like Money, who are not good in give-and-take debate. Money dreads Spooner as he does the plague. When he is speaking he will go to any length to keep Spooner from interrupting. Spooner knows it, and when Money is talking the Wisconsin man sits across the aisle and listens to him with an air of gentle interest. Money cannot keep his eyes off Spooner, and momentarily dreads an interruption, and it has the same encouraging effect upon his powers of oratory as a rattlesnake coiled in the next seat would have. One day while Money was delivering an ex tremely serious speech about oleomargarine, Spooner came in, and as the door closed be hind him he began to question Money about the deleterious effects of oleomargarine. " Has the senator," demanded Money, ve hemently, " ever been injured by eating oleo margarine?" " No, but my wife has," answered Spooner in a tone of passionate regret, and Money was so surprised that he gasped. Then Spooner took the floor to argue against oleomargarine, and he resorted to his old trick SENATE PORTRAITS 55 of talking directly at Money. He was quoting legal authorities, but it sounded for all the world as if he were flaying Money. At last the Mississippian was forced up from his seat and began an interruption. " I said nothing about the senator," said Spooner in a pleading voice. Money smiled feebly. He knew the trick, but he could no more have kept his seat than he could have kept it if a charge of dynamite had been touched off under him. " But the senator looked at me," he said weakly, well knowing how it would look in the Record. " If the senator will only refrain from inter rupting me," promised Spooner, " I will keep my eyes off his face, though it is hard." These are but the recreations of Spooner. When he is engaged in serious business things are different. Then has he little difficulty in demonstrating that he is one of the ablest men in the Senate. Then is every seat in the Senate taken, then do the newspapers to which senators flee for refuge during speeches dis appear ; then does calm exultation fill every Republican and gloom every Democratic visage, and then do the hardened cynics of the press gallery forsake the story-telling nooks in their own quarters and throng the seats above the vice-president's head. Which 56 SENATE PORTRAITS last is the most unaccustomed sight of all. For years Spooner went unchallenged in the Senate. Then a new senator, Bailey of Texas, took his place on the Democratic side, whose skill in debate was soon proved as great as Spooner's own. From the first Spooner was under no illusions about Bailey and never assumed his tired air when the Texan talked ; and when they clash in debate — as they often do, for the two men seek each other — each recognizes in the other a foeman worthy of his steel. Not seldom has the unconquered Spooner been obliged to draw back after a duel with Bailey and admit that it was a drawn battle. Frequenters of the gallery have grown to wish that a debate on some really great sub ject may arise while these two men are in the Senate. If it does, it is a moral certainty that the clash between these two men in that de bate will make it little less than great. IV GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR : THE LAST OF A LONG LINE With the death of George Frisbie Hoar, the United States Senate, as it was once known to the popular imagination, vanished. He, was the last of the line. He was the lasti senator whose deportment, behavior, and words would not have been strange to Sum ner, Fessenden, or even to Webster. The half-tender feeling with which the ma jority of his countrymen regarded Hoar in his later years was unconsciously due to the fact that he was a survival. In his earlier years in the Senate this tribute was not his. In those days he was not a survival, for Ed munds, Bayard, Lamar, and others of a dif ferent type than the modern senator were still in public life, and Hoar came in for hard knocks. He came to stand alone, and the public mind changed towards him ; his faults were glossed over, his virtues extolled, and himself became the object of an affectionate veneration. 57 58 SENATE PORTRAITS Whenever it was said that Hoar was one of the few and fast disappearing relics of a van ished senatorial age, the retort generally was that the Senate never was so high in character and average ability as now. This may be true, but the kind of ability has unquestion ably changed, and Hoar did stand almost alone as a representative of the Senate of an elder day. Blaine, in his " Twenty Years of Congress," takes up a page with the names of the great debaters on the Compromise of 1850, and every one of their speeches was great. Great debates of that kind cannot be held in the Senate to-day. Great questions may arise, and great speeches may be made by a senator or two — Spooner, perhaps, and Bailey. But two senators cannot make a great debate. Spooner, with his statesmanlike grasp, his keen wit and his acutely legal mind ; Bailey, with almost the same equipment and a pro found knowledge of the Constitution ; and Hoar, with his high ideals and his perfect lit erary touch, could almost have made a great debate, but not quite. The ability of the Senate may be as great as it was in the days of Lamar and Thurman and Conkling and Blaine. But there is no likeness to the tra ditions of the past. GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR. ' A lonely reminder of a vanished Senate." SENATE PORTRAITS 59 Senatorial ability now finds its expression in the silent mastery of men, the chess-play ing with senators for pawns, of Aldrich ; the sturdy common sense and directness of the late Mark Hanna, which achieved great re sults with no circumlocution and no elo quence ; the businesslike and downright speeches of Teller. And Hoar at last seemed almost a pathetic figure, a lonely reminder of a vanished Senate. The ability may be as great, the results are as great, but the method has changed ; and with the rapid increase of simple business men like Dryden and Burn- ham and of alert young politicians like Car- mack and Dick, the time seems short when the change will be complete. The change, doubtless, is more in the out ward aspect than in the reality. The Senate does not look so statesmanlike and its debates are not so great. But Mr. Hoar's high ideals did not always, though almost always they did, prevent him from meekly accepting a thing he had denounced ; while so strictly modern a senator as Bard of California — a business man throughout, with no eloquence and no pretensions to statesmanship, a man who cannot even make a speech — hesitated not a moment to defy the administration and to vote the way he talked. There is none of 60 SENATE PORTRAITS the glamour of Webster's day about the busi ness senator, but perhaps what the country has lost has been more in what touches the imagination than in what appeals to the reason. The key-note of all Hoar's speeches was liberty and the traditions of the old-time Re public. Whether he was right or wrong in the application is a matter of opinion ; about the fact of his dominant note there is no doubt whatever. And of late years, as he had come to believe that the Republic was drifting from its ancient moorings, there was an added in sistence to the strain. Liberty and constitu tionalism, as he understood them, were always his guiding spirits ; and he battled for them with added vigor as he felt them slipping away. Hoar linked the old with the new, for he was in Congress when senators of the old type were still fairly numerous, and he lived to be the last relic of that type. The senators of the new type themselves felt and acknowl edged this and conceded their respect to Hoar. Even when they attacked him in debate, some times severely, the recognition of his lone place won from them unusual tributes. In the last forensic quarrel in which Hoar was en gaged, that with Senator Foraker over the SENATE PORTRAITS 61 Panama question, where both men were striv ing desperately to put each other in unpleas ant positions, there was an incident of this kind — a momentary pause in the battle while Foraker tendered to his opponent an almost tender tribute. It was, at that stage of the fight, a duel which suggested the duels of knighthood. Hoar had spoken of the fact that since the birth of the Republican party, half a century before, Massachusetts had kept an unbroken line of Republican senators at Washington, and he had mentioned some of the great names in that glorious company. He had said, with a melancholy pride, that though he was the humblest and least worthy of that long line, Massachusetts had seen fit to keep him in the Senate longer than any other of her chosen sons. Foraker spoke of it when his time to reply came ; and although he was pillorying Hoar for his attitude on the Panama question, he said this, a thing very different from the ordinary meaningless compliment of the senatorial arena : " I will go further and say in this presence what I know every member of this body on either side of the chamber will concur in, that, great as were Webster and Sumner and 62 SENATE PORTRAITS the other great men to whom he referred, they were not so great but that the senior senator from Massachusetts is a worthy successor in that great line. There is not a man here, on either side of this chamber, who does not re spect him for his great learning, for his great ability, for his zeal in the public welfare, for his fidelity to duty in all the relations of life, both public and private." It is not, however, to be inferred that in the Senate the affection and esteem for Hoar were as unmitigated and complete as in the nation at large. That would not be in the course of nature. The nation saw only Hoar's virtues ; the Senate felt the unsparing lash of his satire and wit, and no man in all that body could wield so sharp a weapon. Wounds were left ; and the Republican senators, pushing a policy through, were often irritated to find the old man from Massa chusetts placing himself in their path and bringing to the blocking of their programme ten times the power that could be brought by any one of their party opponents. This, too, left scars. But such scars are left often ; there is not a senator who has not irritated or offended some other senator at some stage of his career, un less, indeed, it be some agreeable and voiceless SENATE PORTRAITS 63 person like Wetmore of Rhode Island. Even the men who carried the deepest scars did not withhold from their venerable antagonist that feeling to which Foraker gave vent. Oftentimes he was wrong. His fight against President Arthur when the latter vetoed the River and Harbor bill was an instance. In his earlier years in the Senate, indeed, he had not grown to his full proportions. He was a more violent partisan. He was always a par tisan, but in his later years that partisanship mellowed. It was not long before his death, for ex ample, that he delivered on the Southern question a singularly broad-minded utterance, coming from a New England statesmen. It was reprinted with surprise and delight in the South, a region not accustomed to have Massachusetts Republicans publicly plead for a generous recognition of the difficulties con fronting the South in her treatment of her peculiar problems. The Hoar of twenty years ago could not have delivered that speech. To him the South was " still rebel." Mr. Hoar has come in for a good deal of criticism because he did not stand by his ideals, particularly on the Philippine question. He did stand by them, usually; he voted against the Philippine bills, despite the state- 64 SENATE PORTRAITS ments made to the contrary by ill-informed or careless writers. The only occasion of real importance where he failed to stand by his guns was on the Panama matter. And it must be remembered that to a man of Hoar's peculiar views, his pride in the Republican party and his belief that the wel fare of the nation was bound up in that or ganization, it was no light matter to have his vote recorded in the Democratic column. It must have cost the old man a bitter struggle every time that happened. The impression that Hoar did not stand by his guns probably has its origin in the fact that the Democrats were continually expect ing him to bolt his party and support Bryan, and that he never did. Such a course was un thinkable with Hoar. Deeply as his party's course on the Philippine matter grieved him, he was at one with that party on nearly every thing else, and the idea of installing all the Democratic policies was even more abhorrent to him than it was to ex-Speaker Reed, ex- President Harrison, and Senator Hale, who were all anti-imperialists like himself. The only weak spot in his attitude here was that he worked out to his own satisfaction a mysterious course of reasoning by which Bryan was made to appear even more of an SENATE PORTRAITS 65 imperialist than McKinley, and hence more objectionable to anti-imperialists. The un reasonableness of this gave rise to accusations against Hoar of quibbling and pettifogging, although even then no one directly attacked his sincerity, as would certainly have been done with anybody else. His last great speech was on the Panama question, in December, 1903. His review of the figure cut by the administration before the world made his fellow-Republicans writhe. The case against them has never been set forth in a more complete and masterly way. He reviewed the evidence in the case in a style that spread unhappiness all about him in waves on the Republican side, and unholy glee on the Democratic side — for not a man in the minority, unless it was Bailey, could have done the work in so impressive and complete a fashion — and then said : " Now, Mr. President, I want to know, I think the American people want to know, and have the right to know, whether this mighty policeman, instructed to keep the peace on that Isthmus, seeing a man about to attack another, before he had struck the blow, manacled the arms of the man attacked so that he could not defend himself, leaving the assailant free, and then instantly proceeded to 6Q SENATE PORTRAITS secure from the assailant the pocketbook of the victim, on the ground that he was de facto the owner." He cited the treaty requiring the United States to keep the peace on the Isthmus, and then came this, an example of Mr. Hoar's ter rible power of compact and condemnatory statement : " As the statement is now left in the official communication to Congress, this revolution was known at Washington before it was known on the Isthmus. All our government, by its own statement, seems to have done, in its anxiety that transit should not be disturbed, was not to take measures that violence should not occur, but to take measures that violence should not be prevented. " It performed its duty of keeping uninter rupted the transit across the Isthmus only by interrupting it itself — interrupting it itself in its most sacred and rightful use, that of the lawful government of the country moving its own troops over its own territory, that it might prevent the breach of its peace and an unlawful revolution against its authority. " Mr. President, is there any doubt that, as now standing unexplained, this was an act of war?" The sequel to this notable speech was the SENATE PORTRAITS 67 most saddening incident of Mr. Hoar's later career. He had become sickened by his long position of semi-ostracism from his party, and he gave up the fight. In February Senator Foraker taunted him into disavowing that he had ever criticised the president for the Panama revolution, and there was a long and painful wrangle between the two senators, in which both quibbled over the meaning of words and sentences in their prior speeches. The impression left by the wrangle was dis tinctly unfavorable to Senator Hoar, and his best friends regretted that it had occurred. Senator Hoar was a kindly man, with a high regard for senatorial dignity. He was tenacious of his opinions on private matters as well as on public matters, and sometimes was led into unpleasant positions by the extremity of his views. The most remarkable instance of the kind was when he entered the Senate elevator and met there a western senator who had with him a constituent, an editor. The western senator introduced his friend, and when Senator Hoar heard the name of the man's paper he turned his back on him, say ing : " I don't care to know you. Your paper was the one that said twenty years ago that my friend Senator Morrill was living be- 68 SENATE PORTRAITS cause he was too mean to pay funeral ex penses." The astonished editor replied that he had never written anything of the kind. But Mr., Hoar was not in the least moved. He replied that it did not make any difference, as long as the editor was on the paper that printed the paragraph. The editor replied that he did not care to meet a man so bigoted and unreasonable, and the two stood with their backs turned to each other, leaving the western senator feeling as if he had stepped on a pair of hot coals. A Washington correspondent once called upon Mr. Hoar at his home in that city with a question which the senator did not want to answer. The newspaper man knew before hand that Mr. Hoar would not want to answer it, so he thought out a statement of the case which would make it as strong and plausible as possible. As finally framed the question ought to have drawn something from the senator, but it didn't. The senator listened to it with his most benevolent air, and at the end shook his head slowly and convincingly a dozen times, all the time saying, in a slow, gentle, but absolutely immovable voice : "No. No. No." This was a new way of refusing to be inter- SENATE PORTRAITS 69 viewed. The correspondent saw that there was nothing to be gained by waiting, so he arose and bade Mr. Hoar good-night. As he turned the door-knob the senator called after him, and he turned, to see the most benevo lent smile that ever adorned a human counte nance. " I suppose," said Mr. Hoar, in his amiable drawl, " that you must feel a great deal like the small boy who learned the alphabet and when he got to the letter Z remarked that it was hardly worth while going so far to learn so little. Don't you ? " He was a tremendous fighter when once enlisted in a cause, and he sometimes stickled on technicalities in a way that exasperated his senatorial colleagues. He wielded a sharp-edged rapier in debate, and in give- and-take was the equal of almost any man in the' chamber. There are other men with ideals as high as his, but none in the Senate who has his great armory of weapons with which to fight for them. In the long session of each new Congress Senator Hoar would always seize some topic, become immersed in it, and throughout the session be so identified with it that no man can speak of it without a picture of the old statesman rising before his eyes. This does 70 SENATE PORTRAITS not imply playing to the galleries or seek ing the calcium ; it was Hoar's nature and habit. Thus, for example, in the long session of the Fifty -eighth Congress the " anti-Smoot- ing," as the late Henry L. Merrick used to call it, served one purpose besides holding Mormonism up by the scruff of the neck to the eyes of a surprised and not enthusiastic nation. It furnished Senator Hoar with his biennial place in the centre of the stage at the first session of a new Congress. In the short session no one ever heard of him. He did not derive any inspiration from the opportunities of the hurried and business like period preceding the death of a Congress. He tried to, but could not. In the second session of the Fifty-seventh Congress he made an effort to get interested in the trust ques tion, and introduced a bill which was the wonder of an hour. It was no use ; the at mosphere of a short session was uncongenial, and the trust question was disposed of for that session with Mr. Hoar lost among the rank and file, instead of leading the army. In three congresses Mr. Hoar seized the Philippine question, and to this day he is about all that is remembered of those historic debates. There were other speakers, but SENATE PORTRAITS 71 when one thinks of the Philippine discus sions he thinks only of Hoar. It was always as the representative of a day gone by that Hoar addressed the Senate and commanded its attention. It was unconscious with him, of course ; if he had deliberately assumed that attitude he would have been laughed at. The very unconsciousness of it added something noble and forlorn to his ap pearances, and there was not a senator who did not recognize it and was not touched by it. It was this more than anything else that insured him the respectful and admiring at tention of senators who knew perfectly well that he might not follow his voice with his vote. Look in the Congressional Record at Hoar's great speeches for years past, and you will find that after every one of them occurs this sentence : " The Presiding Officer. Visitors in the galleries will please remember that under the rules of the Senate no expressions of approval or disapproval are permitted, and if there is a repetition of the applause the sergeant-at- arms will be required to clear the galleries at once." The last time this happened, in 1902, Sen ator Bacon observed, " I think it should be 72 SENATE PORTRAITS noted that the main applause was on the floor of the Senate." These set speeches of Hoar's were always very long and crammed to the muzzle with both facts and eloquence. They were elabo rate, leisurely arguments, moving majestically to a conclusion that was an irresistible climax. Again, they were the speeches of an elder day ; the meteoric and flashy peroration of to-day, following a pyrotechnic speech, is a strange contrast to these slow-moving, gradu ally-ascending flights, moving on the wings of Webster and Sumner. The style was as elaborate as that of Mil ton's prose, and, for the Senate, not much less archaic. The peroration consisted in the de liberate and leisurely painting of a picture. The modern climax is a paragraph long ; one of Hoar's takes up a page of the Congressional Record, because it is a picture painted with scrupulous care in every detail, and of won drous beauty. The grace and beauty of each speech as a whole is unmatched by the utterances of any man now in public life. Webster is re called in the orderly arrangement, the lei surely knitting together of argument and fact to make it unanswerable ; but for the ponder ous and periodic solemnity of Webster is sub- SENATE PORTRAITS 73 stituted a fine and gentle touch which does not impair the majesty and impressiveness of the work. These speeches were for years in opposition to the policy of his party, and some feeling of his loneliness moved the old man to an emotion that was visible and was shared by the most callous of his listeners. Nature did not give him an orator's voice ; it was high- pitched and shrill and wavering, but he so used that poor weapon as to remind one of Sill's poem of the king's son who found a broken sword and with it " saved a great cause that heroic day." Nor did he gesticulate in the ordinary sense. When deeply moved he walked out into the aisle and back again ; his body shook with the force of his indignation, and he would rise on his toes when he was delivering an in vective ; but he seldom moved his hands at all. When he had prepared his audience for the painting of the picture he came out into the aisle and stood there, generally with his hands folded. That voice, which had so won upon his hearers, was broken with feeling and the old man himself was so evidently and sin cerely moved that a touch of compassion was added to the feeling evoked by his solemn appeals. 74 SENATE PORTRAITS Once, for example — in the speech of 1900, on the Philippine question — he began his pic ture with this touch of the brush : " I have sometimes fancied that the question before us now might be decided not alone by the votes of us who sit here to-day, but of the great men who have been our predecessors in this chamber and in the Continental Congress from the beginning of the Republic." Then he walked slowly into the aisle and called the roll. The first name was that of George Washington, and he called it in a voice so deep and solemn, and so reverent, that the thrilled men about him seemed al most to expect that the Father of his Country would rise at the invocation and answer. After pausing a moment, Hoar gave the answer, with the reason for the vote ; and so he went on, calling the roll of all the fathers in such> a way that the auditors hardly drew a breath, till he ended with the name of Will iam McKinley. That name he called twice, as if McKinley was reluctant to answer ; and when the answer came it was so tactfully made that while conveying an impression of rebuke to the president, it violated no one's sense of decorum and jarred not the least upon the impressiveness of the scene. " Mr. President," he concluded, " I know SENATE PORTRAITS 75 how feeble is a single voice amid this din and tempest, this delirium of empire. It may be that the battle for this day is lost. But I have an assured faith in the future. I have an assured faith in justice and the love of lib erty of the American people. The stars in their courses fight for freedom. The Ruler of the heavens is on that side. If the battle to-day goes against it, I appeal to another day, not distant and sure to come. I appeal from the clapping of hands and the stamping of feet and the brawling and the shouting to the quiet chamber where the fathers gathered in Philadelphia. I appeal from the spirit of trade to the spirit of liberty. I appeal from the empire to the republic. I appeal from the millionaire, and the boss, and the wire puller, and the manager, to the statesman of the elder time, in whose eyes a guinea never glistened, who lived and died poor, and who left to his children and to his countrymen a good name far better than riches. I appeal from the Present, bloated with material prosperity, drunk with the lust of empire, to another and a better age. I appeal from the Present to the Future and to the Past." And as the old man ceased, the vision seemed fulfilled, and that statesman of the 76 SENATE PORTRAITS bygone day to stand again in the venerable figure there in the Senate aisle. That appeal was an utterance almost of despair. The Philippine question had been discussed from a standpoint which had a for eign and shocking sound in Hoar's ears. He had appealed to the honored maxims of the eighteenth century in full confidence of their potency, and they had fallen on deaf ears. Senator Beveridge on the Republican side and other senators on the Democratic side had dis cussed the issue from a commercial stand point. Beveridge told of the great commer cial opportunities open in Asia, while Hoar listened stupefied with pain and amazement at the lack of arguments on either side which came obviously from love and knowledge of the old American traditions. The age had gone on and left him behind. His own con juring up of the ghosts of the fathers had met only with respectful tenderness for himself, and had moved no man. And hence came this despairing appeal to the statesmen of the past, in drawing whose picture he uncon sciously drew his own. As in his peroration of 1900 he painted the roll-call of the fathers, so the peroration of his set speech of 1902 was a picture of the erec tion of a column to American liberty, with SENATE PORTRAITS 77 each generation bringing an inscription which should recite its own contribution to that cause. First came the 'generation of the Puritans, with the inscription, " I brought the torch of Freedom across the sea. I laid in Christian liberty and law the foundations of empire." And so the generations came on, marshaled by the old man in the aisle, and there was not a man there who did not see the sight as plainly as if the column were going up before his eyes. At last came the present genera tion, but Hoar left its place upon the column blank. He stayed the coming sculptor with his hand, and asked if that inscription should be, " We repealed the Declaration of Inde pendence. We crushed the only republic in Asia. We baffled the aspirations of a people for liberty." " No ! " he cried. " Never, never ! Other and better counsels will yet prevail. The hours are long in the life of a great people." So the old man stood there, almost solitary and getting lonelier every year ; and when he died Massachusetts did not fill his place. It was inevitable that the Bay State should at last yield to the custom of her sister states and have herself represented by a senator of the modern type ; and yet it somehow seems a 78 SENATE PORTRAITS pity that she could not have continued a few years longer her honorable isolation in that chamber. Perhaps it is honor enough for the State of Sumner that so long she stood alone on the floor of the Senate, in the person of George Frisbie Hoar. He had foibles and weaknesses in plenty, and was far from perfect, even as a senator ; yet when at last his chair was vacant and a successful business man came to Washington from the State House at Boston, it almost seemed to many that the grave of the old-time Senate was the new-made grave at Worcester. THE VENDETTA OF HANNA AND PETTIGREW Mark Hanna became a national figure in 1896, when he was well on in years, and he died eight years later. In that time he con siderably altered the / public opinion of him ; and also he altered the part he had expected to play on the national stage. He came to Washington as a successful business man and a man with a just- won fame as an equally successful politician. It was the fashion then to sneer at his intellectual endowments and to sigh over the decadence of the Senate. When he died he had done things in this world, short as was the period in which he had a real part to play. He had become one of the most influential men in public life ; and to mention no more than one of his titles to fame, he had brought to an end the quib- blings of fifty years and had made possible an interoceanic canal. But for Mark Hanna there might have been another half-century of battledore and shut tlecock across Nicaragua and Panama. The canal had to wait five decades for Mark 79 80 SENATE PORTRAITS Hanna ; if he had not come it might have been five more before his like appeared. Now, all this could not be the work of a dull money-bag, and it was not. Hanna died with the public perception of him readjusted. He came into a Senate that was chilly, because it doubted his ability to do greater things than coin money, manipulate delegates, and per haps — for the charges of his enemies were loudly uttered — buy legislatures. He lived to be one of the most influential men in that Senate, hearkened to by men who had looked askance at the mere money-bag they thought they saw. He died satisfied with the full knowledge that this influence had been won by force of character and brains. Hanna surprised himself by his own de velopment. When he went into the Senate, for example, he thought he could not make a speech. It was Richard Franklin Pettigrew of South Dakota who transformed Hanna into a speechmaker. Nothing was further from Pettigrew's mind ; but he accomplished the feat by the simple process of making Hanna angry. After the discovery that he could talk, Hanna went on talking. He improved as he went along, and in course of time became one of the most effective speakers in the Senate. MARCUS A. HANNA. "Firm of face and square of chin, with an eye that seemed to bore its way into you." SENATE PORTRAITS 81 There was a breezy directness about him, a blunt downrightness, that gave his speeches a charm all their own. The difference between him and some other senatorial orators was illustrated once when he and Senator Fairbanks, now vice-president, spoke on the Chinese exclusion bill, in 1902. He and Fairbanks were then the only Repub licans generally talked of as presidential can didates, Mr. Roosevelt being new in the White House and still on trial. The appear ance of the two senators on the same after noon attracted a crowd. Later on both presi dential booms fizzled out, but that joint debate illustrated luminously two kinds of senatorial oratory, as it did two very different characters. First came Hanna, firm of face and square of chin, with an eye that seemed to bore its way into you. Then came Fairbanks, a bald- headed man without the courage of his bald ness ; with three long black locks plastered across the front of his pate where the begin ning of the whole thatch was twenty years ago. These three hairs look as if they were painted on. Perhaps they are ; the mystery of the Fairbanks hair has never been officially explained. Hanna was frankly opposed to the proposi- 82 SENATE PORTRAITS tion before the Senate, which was strongly anti-Chinese and devised in the interest of labor. He swung his arms and hammered himself in like a nail. His talk was made in a sturdy, common-sense, businesslike manner that was like fresh air. He talked about the down-trodden laboring man, but not in the usual politician fashion ; for the drift of his remarks was to the effect that while he loved the down-trodden laboring man, that down trodden person had been trying to bulldoze him into voting against his convictions, and that he would not be dictated to. Which never did him a bit of harm, though it took courage to say it ; for a man of courage loses nothing by letting it be known. It was a regulation Hanna speech, but it was accentuated by the appearance of Fair banks immediately after him. Fairbanks came like a humming-bird after an elephant. He gesticulated with just the proper gestures ; spread his hands in front of his face at the proper moment, clenched his fist when he was expressing indignation, uplifted his fore finger to indicate warning, and otherwise fol lowed the approved elocution standards of the Boys' High School. And he closed every sentence with a rising inflection, whereas Hanna bore down on the last word of a sen- SENATE PORTRAITS 83 tence as if he were burying it six feet deep. It is needless to add that Fairbanks was strongly in favor of the down-trodden labor ing man and ready to go any length to please him. These two senators had often enough given specimens of two standards of oratory and two types of character, but never before in conjunction and under such interesting cir cumstances. It was an instructive contrast. That was the orator Hanna, two years after Pettigrew had made that revolution in his enemy and had blown himself out of the Senate in the doing of it. Thereby hangs a tale — the tale of a senatorial feud. It is five years now since Richard Franklin Pettigrew made Hanna an orator and made himself an ex-senator, but the story is not likely soon to be forgotten in Washington. The Senate was not so interesting after Pettigrew packed his grip and went back to South Dakota. Even the Republican sena tors had to admit that life was shorn of much of its excitement. None of the Republican leaders had ever come down to the chamber in the morning without a feeling of wonder mixed with dread about what Pettigrew was going to do to them that day. The days were few when the South Dakotan had not some 84 SENATE PORTRAITS ambuscade carefully prepared for his former friends on the Republican side. He had not his equal for industry and pertinacity. His attacks were like those of a mosquito, and his energy was as tireless and his activity as con stant as those of that unpopular insect. Pettigrew's defeat in 1900 is one of the most curious things in politics. He had prodded and stung Republican senators all the session, irritating them beyond measure, and at last, in the closing hours, he unex pectedly swooped down on Mark Hanna and drew blood. The big Republican, who had borne assaults from other quarters without opening his mouth, was aroused by Petti grew's attack, and there was a senatorial fracas for half an hour. Hanna then first entered the arena as a senatorial speech- maker. The incident apparently ended, and Pettigrew certainly expected no worse results from it than had followed his nagging of other senators. But Mark Hanna was aroused. It was a personal matter with him now. All the other personal attacks of the last four years had drawn from him nothing but an occasional protest. But he now vowed vengeance on the man who had carried the attacks on his char acter into the Senate and had rubbed them SENATE PORTRAITS 85 ih. He had been accused of dishonesty to his face and in the Senate. It was this latter fact that infuriated Hanna most of all. It may not be generally known, but there was no man in the Senate — not even Mr. Hoar — who had such an appreciation of the dignity and majesty of that body as Mr. Hanna. His conception of it was even higher than the fact. He could hardly have considered himself a member of a more august body if he had been a justice of the supreme court. He even had an idea that the dignity of the Senate was such that the newspapers should hesitate to criticise a member of it, though he would not have applied that idea to any other legislative body. And here, in this sacred chamber itself, he was assailed with a partisan viru lence which had never been surpassed and hardly ever equaled in editorials and car toons. The campaign came up just then, and Mr. Hanna's vow of vengeance was forgotten. Probably those who remembered it thought, when the Republican chairman threw himself heart and soul into the fray for McKinley, that he himself had forgotten it in the pursuit of more important matters, or that his anger had cooled. That betrayed an ignorance of Mark Hanna. As soon as he felt absolutely 86 SENATE PORTRAITS confident that McKinley was sure to be elected, Mr. Hanna dropped everything, left the national campaign in the hands of subordinates, and began the carrying out of his long-cherished project for vengeance against his personal enemy. It was a ven detta of politics. During the remainder of the campaign Hanna camped on the trail of his enemy. He went through South Dakota from end to end, speaking and working, and left no stone unturned to complete the undoing of Petti grew. As it was generally believed that South Dakota would give her electoral vote to McKinley, Hanna's devotion to that State be came inexplicable. The fact was that the political prophets conceded the senatorship to Pettigrew, while giving the electoral vote to McKinley, and until the very eve of election this was the slate. Hanna's work undid that. He came back from South Dakota not only with the electoral vote for his chief, but with the scalp of Pettigrew dangling at his belt. It was a curious and interesting feud. No two men could be more unlike than Hanna and Pettigrew, and yet there was a similarity in the positions they occupied. Hanna was the business man in politics ; so was Petti- SENATE PORTRAITS 87 grew. Both were or had been financial magnates. Hanna was the type of the busi ness man in politics who upholds political systems as they are ; Pettigrew was the much rarer type of the business man in politics who would tear down and destroy, as his enemies would put it ; or, as he would prefer to put it, to reform and regenerate. Pettigrew had met with financial losses lately, but he entered the Senate as a rich man. He was the best-known capitalist in his state, occupying in that respect the same position that Hanna did in Ohio. His own community was covered with Pettigrew's business enterprises. Hanna started as an em ployee of a wholesale grocery house ; Pettigrew started as a laborer. Both men made their way in the world by indomitable energy and business ability. Both were educated in Western colleges. Both came to the Senate as Republicans ; but Hanna's bent was in the di rection of extreme conservatism and Pettigrew's in the direction of extreme radicalism, and each had gone to the fullest extremity of his views when they met as antagonists in the United States Senate. The radical was unhorsed and thrown out of public life, and the conserva tive could say with truth that it was he who did it. Nor would he have been slow to 88 SENATE PORTRAITS acknowledge that he did it as a punishment for the radical's daring to assail him person ally and publicly. In fact, Hanna was proud of the feat. From the time that Pettigrew tied himself up to the Silver Republican party he devoted himself to making life unpleasant for the Republicans, but he never developed this faculty so fully and completely as in the long session of the Fifty-sixth Congress. No man on the opposition side was so dreaded and dis liked. He was continually digging traps for the administration senators. Some of them were serious pitfalls, and the Republicans avoided them only by great agility, as when he introduced a resolution that the Republi cans could hardly avoid passing without being put in a bad light, but drew it so cunningly that to pass it would be an official acknowl edgment of Aguinaldo's government. Others were of a humorous nature, and tended to put the Republicans in a harmlessly ridiculous light. One such was when he asked leave to print a pamphlet prepared by himself and containing quotations from the writings of " distinguished Populists," extracts from which he read. The Republicans fell over themselves to ob ject, and then it turned out that the quota- SENATE PORTRAITS 89 tions were from the writings of Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson. At times the badgered Republicans, worried beyond endurance, turned savagely on Petti grew, but they could not affect him. Their invective, sarcasm, and anger made no im pression. There was only one occasion when Pettigrew's composure left him and he became angry. It was when he was nlade the victim of a tremendous rebuke by the late Senator Wolcott of Colorado, who, like Pettigrew, failed of reelection in 1900. The scene was a remarkable one. Not even Pettigrew and Hanna were more unlike than Pettigrew and Wolcott. Pettigrew is a tall man, with stooped shoulders and a pale face, deeply lined. His voice is shrill and high — almost whining. To listen to it long sets the nerves on edge. Wolcott was a big man with a bronzed, jolly face and a thunderous voice. He IdOked as much like a commercial traveler as Petti grew did like a retail dry goods clerk. He Was an orator with a magical voice, to whom Garrick might have paid the tribute he did to Whitfield, " I would give a thousand pounds if I could say * Oh ' as Whitfield does." Petti grew had triumphantly concluded one of his assaults on the administration, when Wolcott 90 SENATE PORTRAITS arose, and instantly the doors opened and the senators who had gone into the cloakroom when Pettigrew began rolled in like a tide. Standing not more than ten feet away from Pettigrew, Wolcott began his speech. He drew a picture of the South Dakotan that was pitiless in its cruelty. As he warmed up to his work he began to walk up and down, never taking his eyes off Pettigrew, who sat huddled up in his chair, his pale face chang ing to a dull red and his fingers spread over his left cheek. Occasionally he strode up to within a desk's length of his victim and waved his big arm in the air. His great voice pealed and rolled through the Senate like an organ symphony. All the powers of that re markable voice were displayed to their fullest extent for the dissection and pulverization of Pettigrew. He painted a man whose nature was poi soned with suspicion, hatred, and malevo lence ; who " views the world with jaundiced vision," and " when the sun shines sees only the shadows it casts." He held Pettigrew up as a warning to mankind. In his peroration he strode up to Pettigrew, and, shaking his big finger at him, thundered, in the voice of a human ocean : " I believe that if he changed places with SENATE PORTRAITS 91 Aguinaldo, who is brave, loyal and patriotic, and Aguinaldo stood in the Senate represent ing the great State of South Dakota which sent its soldiers to the Philippines and left some of them dead in the trenches there, Aguinaldo would never — Tagal though he is — be found in this body traducing the presi dent of the United States and slandering and maligning our officers now at the front and charging them with being swindlers and de- frauders ! " Pettigrew's face had changed from its dull flush to a dead white when Wolcott concluded. He rose and made a low-voiced and bitter re ply, in which he made a slur at Wolcott's private life. Wolcott had angered him above all by some references to Pettigrew's relations with his fellow senators, and Pettigrew bitterly replied, " My relations are pleasant with most of them, and I hope the senator from Colo rado will not hide the whole Senate behind his large personality." Pettigrew went on day by day hurling darts into the hide of the Republican elephant just to hear the huge beast trumpet, until June 5th, when he made the fatal mistake of waking up Mark Hanna. But for that he might still be in the Senate. He had been bitterly assailing another senator with the 92 SENATE PORTRAITS usuai results. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, he fell upon Hanna ahd tore hhri) tooth and nail. He raked Up the story of Hanha's election to the Senate, made flat- footed charges of bribery, and provoked Hanha to do something he had never done before — make an extemporaneous reply. Hanna denounced Pettigrew as a " traitor," and read a clipping from a South Dakota paper Calling Pettigrew a " Judas " and an " Arnold." At the end of his speech, leaning over his desk until he almost touched Pettigrew, whose back was towards him, he shouted : " Oh, no, Mr. President ; the gentleman will find that he is mistaken in the people of the United States when he attempts through mud- slinging to influence their decision at the polls next November. When it comes to per- sonalitj', I will stand up against him and com pare my character with his. I will let him tell what he knows ; then," and Mr. Hanna made a long pause after each word, " I—Will — tell — what — I — know — about — him." The threat was fulfilled. In private Hanna vowed vengeance on Pettigrew, and he pursued him relentlessly. The vendetta of politics ended in victory for the avenger. Bitter as were Pettigrew's speeches, in SENATE PORTRAITS 93 private he was an affable and courteous gentle man. His public personality was so strong, however, that it completely effaced his private personality in the way men regarded him. He became personally unpopular among the Republican senators and some of the Demo crats. At the same time he was an interest ing figure in public life, and Washington was not so lively after the fulfilment of Mark Hanna's revenge. VI PLATT OF NEW YORK The boss emeritus of the New York Repub lican party, the one pathetic figure of the party crash of 1904 and 1905, is spending in Washington the days of his isolation, as some of the dethroned Roman emperors spent their declining days in dignified idleness on estates or in humble labor in monasteries far from the scene of their glories. In Washington, too, much of the time when he was active and dominant was spent ; here he has served one senatorial term and parts of two others ; and yet, with all that has been written about him as boss, little has been said of him as senator ; as New Yorker he has lived in the calcium, as Washingtonian in the shade. Here, for three years longer, is his safe and comfortable retreat, whatever storms may beat upon the broken wreck of the Piatt machine in New York. Long before those three years are out the last plank of the wrecked ship will have disappeared beneath the waves, and Piatt will be, in Washington, that strange figure in the modern Senate — a senator with 94 SENATE PORTRAITS 95 no machine and no influence behind him, with nothing but the memory of a boss-ship that is history. All his political life Piatt was the object of abuse and ridicule ; the fiercest storms beat upon his head ; and yet, now that the twenty years of his boss-ship are gone, it is difficult for an honest thinker to avoid the conclusion that, as bosses go, he was a pleasant figUre. He was not a vulgar boss. Despite the hot white light that beat upon him all those twenty years, he emerges at the end with no suspicion of having used^ his place for per sonal gain. He played the game because he loved it, as other men play chess. The men who were his instruments were not always clean ; no boss can choose his instruments. But, re membering what the modern boss so often is, it is much to say that, his long domination being now done, no one has ever succeeded, though many have tried it, in fixing any stigma upon his personal honor. He laughingly said of himself that he was an " Easy Boss," and the name stuck to him. Sometimes it was uttered in derision ; but it was truth. Conkling, who preceded him, ruled with an iron hand. But Conkling was not comparable to the bosses who followed. 96 SENATE PORTRAITS The brute ferocity of the methods which sucr ceeded Piatt's were suggestive, not even qf Murphy's methods in Tammany Hal}, but of Croker's ; and even Croker could have called hirnself an " Easy Boss " compared with Odell. Higgins, not naturally a man of the Odell type, fell heir to the Odell methods and im proved upon his master. " Trample " has been the watchword and the method ever since Piatt passed out. Be cause Piatt played the game for love and not for money, he was not prone to cherish long animosities or to pursue bitter revenges. Piatt was a gentleman. So long has the voice of unreasoning con demnation classified him with bosses like Murphy and Croker that it is time, now that he has passed as a leader, to call attention to the fact that he was a man of culture and of gentle breeding. They talk much of the "scholar in politics." Piatt was not exactly a scholar in politics, but he had more title to the name than many of the men who flaunt it. He took a prize in Latin at Yale. He has written, but not published; he has written for his qwn pleasure. He is not a speechmaker, but on the rare occasions when he reads an essay and calls it a speech the English is as pure and clear and the diction THOMAS C. PLATT. ' The one pathetic figure of the party crash of 1904 and 1905.' SENATE PORTRAITS 97 as fine as one can discover in contemporary literature. Piatt was not only a gentleman, but he was a great leader. The genius required to lead a great political party is entitled to rank high ; and Piatt led one for twenty years. So easily did he lead it that it seemed to run itself. It was compact and perfect, despite defeats. Yet as soon as he had fallen and Odell had taken hold, the organization began to break. Odell was a strong man ; he had been sup posed to be stronger than Piatt, because he looked and talked the part. But his utmost endeavors could not hold together the great organization which Piatt had so magnificently managed seemingly without an effort. Odell's failure demonstrates the difficulty of the task Piatt so easily performed. The same thing was true in Pennsylvania, when Quay died. But Quay, though a great political genius, was not comparable to Piatt. The charges against Quay, touching his per sonal honor, could never have been made against Piatt. As bosses go, he was a pleasant figure to contemplate and by no means a bad element in politics. To those who question this it is only needful to point to the fallen estate of the Republican party in New York the mo- 98 SENATE PORTRAITS ment his hand was taken off the lever. The management has been pitted with more scandals in the two years from 1904 to 1906 than in all the twenty which preceded them. So much for Piatt as a party leader — his true title to fame. But he has been a figure in the nation's life as well as in the life of the State of New York, and the contrast be tween his genius in the one field and the part he played in the other is so great as to make one wonder if the two records can belong to the same man. Because there is somewhat of the pathetic in the violent wresting of power from an old man by a young one, it may seem unkind to set forth the truth about Piatt's service of the State of New York in the national cap ital. The truth about it cannot be entirely kind ; and yet " nothing but good of the dead " is a principle which can hardly govern in the case of a man who is dead as a boss, but alive as a senator, the chosen representative of the Empire State in the upper house of Con gress. Piatt's position in Washington does not seem to be very thoroughly understood in his own State, perhaps because so little has been written about it. When he was seen to be the slated successor of David B. Hill in the SENATE PORTRAITS 99 Senate in 1897 there was a protest by inde pendent Republicans, who rallied around Joseph H. Choate, and one of their most pow erful arguments against Mr. Piatt was that he had been in the Senate before and had not made a single speech. Speechmaking is no final test, standing by itself, of a senator's usefulness. There are sometimes senators who never talk, but who are as influential as any in the chamber. This does not happen often, but it is quite customary for a senator who makes but few speeches to be a man of weight. Mr. Aldrich, for instance, is not a very frequent talker, and yet he comes as near to running the Senate as any man in it. The painful truth is that so far as Mr. Piatt is concerned New York is not represented at all in the Senate ; her voice is unheard, except in purely local matters. When any public question comes up in the Senate no one seeks Mr. Piatt. The great affairs of this country are transacted without him. No senator ever goes up to New York's senior representative and asks what he thinks of any pending measure. No senator ever tells him that this or that measure is under contemplation. No senator seeks him in the cloakroom to obtain New York's opinion, and 100 SENATE PORTRAITS no senator finds the way to his committee room to inform him of what is going on. He is simply one of the rank and file. The great leaders of the Senate make up their pro grammes without him, and he learns of the thing projected when his vote is needed. When the bill comes up he votes with the rest of the rank and file ; he offers no amendments and he never speaks. Reporters, seeking to know what is contemplated by the Republican leaders, often go to other senators who are not leaders, thinking that these men may have gleaned something of the leaders' plans. But they never go to Piatt. He has a committee, of course ; nearly every senator has a committee. He has one so that he can have an office. Many of the commit tees transact no business and never were meant to transact any ; but every committee has a room, and it is the Senate's way of giv ing a member a place where he can sit down and write his letters. When a new State is created the Senate will often create two new committees, so that each of the new senators can have an office. When that frank and cynical person, Matthew Stanley Quay, came back to the Senate, they gave him a room bearing the imposing if mysterious title, " Committee SENATE PORTRAITS 101 on Organization, Conduct and Expenditures of the Executive Departments." Mr. Quay despised humbug. His enemies called him a political pirate, but if so, he was an en gagingly frank pirate. He ignored the pre tense, and hung over his door the legend, " Senator Quay." Later this candid practice was followed by others. Mr. Piatt's committee is that on Printing ; a harmless and innocuous committee, which at intervals submits resolutions providing that five hundred copies of some document about hydraulic rams or boll weevils be printed. It is needless to say that the influence of this committee on the world's progress is not radical. He is not often in his seat in the Senate, but this is because of his bodily infirmities. He goes to his committee room every day — not, of course, to transact committee business, but to use his office. And this is the sum total of the work of the senior senator from New York, so far as general legislation is concerned. As to New York matters, he introduces many bills and resolutions. There he is active. He undertakes to see that New York gets her fair share of the appropriations, just as the other senators do fqr their respective States. Here he is a much more influential and active senator than Depew. 102 SENATE PORTRAITS Mainly his activities centre around New York politics and patronage. Here he is the whole thing ; Depew simply trails in after him. But, as federal patronage is a small part of a boss's duties, his activities here are concerned mainly with what goes on in New York and not in Washington. This, at least, has been the rule in the past ; but so closely did the strong young boss who dethroned him clip and shear him that hereafter Federal patronage will be the only thing to give oc cupation to the old man's declining years. Even on New York matters his ascendancy has been due to the fact that other senators have concurred in it. The time-honored rule of " senatorial courtesy " would not prevent them from doing as they pleased, for all Piatt could do to defend himself. This was shown in the case of the nomination of William H. Plimley to be assistant treasurer at New York. Piatt secured the assent of a majority of the Finance Committee, and Plimley's nomination was reported. Aldrich of Rhode Island, chair man of the committee, who spends more time in New York than he does in Rhode Island and nearly as much as he does in Washington, was in New York that day. He came back and moved that the nomination be recommit ted so that he could have a look at it. Piatt SENATE PORTRAITS 103 and Depew unsuspiciously agreed, thinking it was a formal affair ; whereupon charges against Plimley were filed, and the president with drew Plimley's name. The crafty Aldrich, of course, knew that the charges would be filed when he made the motion. It was a most suggestive incident, and one of the things it suggested was that even on New York mat ters Nelson W. Aldrich, of New York and Rhode Island, was " the senator from New York." It is a strange old age that Piatt is passing and will pass in Washington ; hardly a senator, hardly more than a member of a club of ninety members. Even of the club life of the Senate, if it can be called that, he does not get the full enjoyment. He is not and never has been a member of Washington "society." The man's whole life was in his boss-ship, and with that gone he is a more melancholy and pathetic figure than even those imagine who see the pathos of an old man's fall at the hands of the governor he made. For there is nothing left. Had Foraker wrested Mark Hanna's machine away from him, there would have been plenty left in life, for Hanna, and he would still have been a senator in the full sense of the word. The tearing away of Aldrich's strength in Rhode 104 SENATE PORTRAITS Island would not impair one whit his domina tion of the Senate. But Piatt had nothing else ; that gone, all is gone. This lends new pathos to a scene that enacted itself in Washington for two years ; Piatt's tragic struggle to keep the people here from seeing his coming fall. He knew, of course, that it was coming, long before it did. Odell's inroads grew more and more patent, and as each new citadel was wrested from him the declining boss made an effort so eager that it was almost frantic to keep the significance of it all away from the people here who looked up to him as New York's chief. It seemed pathetic then ; it was additionally pathetic afterwards, when the issue of Odell's remorseless march was plain to all. He clung desperately to the last shred of his only title to Washington's admiration. Once, for example, Odell announced that a bill would be dragooned through the Legislature. It was a bill which Piatt had always opposed, and at Albany Odell's announcement was ac cepted as the beginning of the end. A news paper man went to Piatt's lonely committee room, and asked him about it. It was fairly pitiful to see the frenzy with which the old man insisted that he had himself urged Odell to put the bill through. SENATE PORTRAITS 105 " But," said the reporter, " John Raines, your lieutenant, says you knew nothing about it and that it is in opposition to your wishes." The old boss became frantic. " John Raines doesn't know anything about it ; he doesn't know anything about it ! " he cried. And thus, at each new stage of the decline, each time when Odell brutally and remorse lessly tore away the veil with which the old man was feebly and nervously trying to hide his mortal wound, Piatt pathetically persisted that the act was his own. So it went until the night at the White House in 1904, where in President Roosevelt's presence the strong new boss struck his pred ecessor down and announced that there should be no more pretense. The demeanor of the two men as they left the White House after that four-hour talk was worthy the brush of a historical painter. Piatt, bowed, broken, utterly crushed, tottered to his carriage, refus ing to say a word except to refer all question ers to the man who had conquered him ; Odell, flushed, triumphant, strode away with the light of battle still in his eyes and an air upon him so militant and victorious that, had there been passers-by in those deserted streets, his look might have told the veriest stranger all, 106 SENATE PORTRAITS Some time afterwards there was a sad and melancholy farce in New York, when some of Mr. Piatt's friends, headed by Depew, went to Odell after a conference and extorted a " com promise." By this " compromise " Piatt was to remain nominal leader and Odell was to run the State campaign. It might have interested those who read with open mouths of this happy settlement and compact to know that this was precisely the thing for which Odell contended at the White House the night he wrested the Republican standard from the old flag-bearer's hands. By the trembling, nervous efforts Piatt long continued to make to cover his naked ness with some rag of authority, one could see that he had drunk deep of humiliation ; but he did not, as it once appeared certain he would, come to drink to the dregs. That was expected to come when Odell either came to the Senate himself or sent some representative of the new knock-down-and-drag-out system of leadership which had replaced the " Easy Boss." Then would have been seen the spectacle of the wreck of a senator, the ghost of a boss, sitting unregarded, impotent and useless in his senatorial place, while over his head his new colleague cracked the whip of party rule, and while his old acquaintances SENATE PORTRAITS 107 crowded around the new man to learn New York's desires. Had that taken place, this tragedy of politics would have reached its climax ; it would have been time for the cur tain to fall. From that last humiliation some one, at the last moment, rescued Piatt. Whether it was Roosevelt, as Odell says, or Harriman, as is more generally believed, the rescuer came in the nick of time ; for Odell was remorselessly bent upon his purpose. But Piatt was saved — saved for a humiliation hardly less great, when the president, late in 1905, turned upon Odell, and Piatt came hurriedly to Washing ton to ally himself with the president. For a moment the old man dreamed of restoration to his last throne, with the president's power ful aid. For a few days after that interview he went about in his old pathetic fashion, making the reporters believe that the presi dent had fallen in with his desires. Then the facts became too plain ; it was too evident that Roosevelt was not dethroning Odell to reinstall Piatt ; and for the first time in his life the boss of so many years threw up his hands. " No," he said to the reporters on his next return to Washington, " I have nothing to do with this fight except as a spectator." Piatt had been driven to confess his fall. 108 SENATE PORTRAITS What that means with him cannot be esti mated save by those who know how long and how valiantly he strove to hide the truth. The crowning tragedy had been averted, but it is a tragedy of politics just the same. VII THE TWO GORMANS As these lines are being written the Demo cratic minority in the United States Senate is preparing to enter upon the great labor of the first session of the Fifty-ninth Congress — the work of building up public confidence in a shattered party ; and entering upon it lead- erless. They did not depose Arthur Pue Gorman from his nominal captaincy ; he continued at the head of their Steering Com mittee ; but they were leaderless when James K. Jones held that place, and there is no es sential difference between their position now and then. Jones presided over their caucus and bore the name of leader ; but every sena tor was his own captain. The wreck of Gorman as a political leader is a thing which has been proceeding ever since he reentered the Senate in 1903 and was hoisted immediately and with acclaim to the leadership. It met completion on election day, in 1905. When Gorman came back to Washington in 1903 Democracy everywhere was glad. 109 110 SENATE PORTRAITS Now, it was said, the rudderless craft was to have a true helmsman, and Gorman was to swing her immediately into the course from which she had strayed. The most extrava gant prophecies were put forth, and the jubi lation was not modified by any recognition of the bounds of possibility. Incidentally John Sharp Williams was elevated at the same time to the leadership of the House minority, but that event escaped comment ; no one ex pected anything from Williams. From the day Gorman took the leadership his fame began to crumble. There is nothing left of it now. The Democrats have ceased now to expect pyrotechnics of glittering genius from him ; they have ceased to look for ordi narily sagacious leadership. At first they looked on with stupefaction ; they kept expecting that to-morrow, or next week, or next month, Gorman would display some of the old-time genius which once had made him the wonder of his followers. But the day and the week and the month passed by, and the Senate Democrats trod deeper and deeper into the swamp. Now they are offer ing explanations, and saying that Gorman was a great man once, but is not a great man now because his right hand has lost its cun ning ; and they are preparing to follow Bailey, SENATE PORTRAITS 111 or each other, or themselves, in the fight of this session. But Gorman's right hand has not lost its cunning. He is the old Gorman ; only the age has passed by and left him. There are two Gormans — the Gorman of legend and the Gorman of reality. The Gor man of legend was a great politician, a wizard of his craft, a magician, a man who could do miracles. That was the Gorman who was hailed as the Moses of the party in 1903. It is the Gorman of reality whom the Democrats are contemplating now, in the cold gray dawn of the morning after the defeat in Maryland. " The state of politics has changed entirely," was Danton's explanation to the mystified politicians of France, who tried to stem 1791 with the broom of 1785, of why their efforts failed. That is what is the matter with Gor man. Politics to-day is not what it was in 1880. It has changed, and for the better. The politics of petty chicane has had its day. Tricks that thirty years ago were chuckled at with more or less approval, and resented only by the victims, arouse a storm to-day. Morey letters and Murchison letters are not sprung on the eve of an election now. Gorman cannot realize it, and he tries pathetically to patch up his defeats with new 112 SENATE PORTRAITS tricks. Least of all does he understand his own State. Ten years ago Maryland took its place, not only in the column with States of the new politics, but at the very head of that column. Gravestones used to vote in Mary land. In default of a handy gravestone, you could have voted your pet dog. With the revolution of ten years ago there was such a sweeping change that Maryland is intolerant now of even what the men of Gorman's day looked upon as a smart but honest trick. Maryland is naturally Democratic, and in 1899 she came back to the Democratic column with a large fat majority. Gorman resumed power. The legendary Gorman, the great political wizard, would have seen the portents of the times ; he would have taken the helm with a chastened spirit and ruled in accord ance with the spirit of the strange and evil days he had fallen upon. Instead, the real Gorman began just where he left off. As a means of regaining the confidence of Mary land, he devised the trick ballot. The trick ballot is a device to prevent voters from voting as they intend. It can be shifted around from year to year, to meet exigencies and to foil persons who laboriously learned how to meet the trick of last year. For in stance, having abolished party emblems on ARTHUR P. GORMAN. 1 A politician of suavity and whispers.* SENATE PORTRAITS 113 the ballot, one year Gorman arranged to have the names of the Democratic candidates printed in Roman and those of the Republi cans in Old English ; rightly reckoning that it would be hard for an ignorant voter to read Old English. Another year, the illiterate voter having learned to recognize the letters " Rep," Gorman brought into being a phan tom third party and named it " Repudiation Party," to bring to no account this hard-won education of the illiterate. Another year, he hit on the clever idea of printing a broad black line under the Democratic column and leaving all other columns innocent of black lines, so that the illiterate Democrat might find his way with ease along the ballot and the illiterate Republican might flounder. To Gorman all these things seemed honest enough and in accordance with the spirit of the times. They were merely smart. In 1880 everybody would have called them ingenious. And why Maryland should take them so seriously the Gorman of reality could not see. The Gorman of legend, the great Gorman, would have known. It was Gorman, they say, who defeated Blaine by seizing upon Burchard's hapless " Rum, Romanism and Rebellion " utterance and plastering the dead walls of New York 114 SENATE PORTRAITS with it just before election. Whether Gorman deserves the credit of this or not, it was a Gormanism in spirit. That was in 1884, and Gorman is living in that year yet. When he came to the Senate leadership his course seemed simple. It was to oppose every thing President Roosevelt might do — oppose it quite impartially and without regard to any other consideration than its authorship — and pick up, by clever maneuvering in the Senate, little feathers of party prestige to be added to the Democratic plume. The despised Williams hit on the other policy. He ranged the House Democrats up for Cuban reciprocity, because it promised a reduction of the tariff and the Democrats were pledged to tariff reduction. About half Williams's followers were opposed to Cuban reciprocity. No matter, he drove them into line, and they supported it. The wrecked and chaotic minority which Richardson had led swung into line and voted almost solidly for it under Williams. Gorman observed that the reciprocity plan proceeded from Roosevelt, so he opposed it. When it came to a vote he had been so thor oughly deserted by his followers that he voted for it. Williams supported the president on the SENATE PORTRAITS 115 Panama Canal issue. Gorman opposed the canal. He was astonished to find that his fol lowers would not follow him. The reason was that the South had to have the canal — as Representative Richardson of Alabama said, " We must have it if we have to take stolen property " — and Mr. Gorman's followers were chiefly from the South. The legendary Gor man would have known that. The Gorman of reality saw only a chance to oppose the president. These were the only great issues of the Fifty-eighth Congress, and on both Gorman was out-voted by his followers. He could not understand such an extraordinary situation. He, who had always been a politician of suavity and whispers, lost his temper and raised his voice when he talked to his fol lowers ; and made them angry. Meanwhile the Democrats were beginning to look askance at their leader. While this was going on in Washington, other things were happening in Maryland. He had prom ised the senatorship to John Walter Smith, then governor. When the time came for election Gorman decided not to deliver the goods. This, too, was the politics of 1884 ; but in 1884 it would have succeeded. In 1904 it elected Rayner to the Senate; and 116 SENATE PORTRAITS Gorman was faced at the same time with a revolt against his leadership in Washington and a defeat in the Legislature of his own State. In 1905 he tried to impose on Maryland a system which, according to the independent Democrats of his State, would have enabled the Gorman machine to decide whether an anti-Gorman voter should vote or not, and thus perpetuate the control of his dynasty. He was dimly aware, by this time, that things had changed since 1884 ; so he masked the device by making it appear that it was a plan to disfranchise the negroes, a popular scheme in Maryland. This would have been a clever stratagem in 1884. In 1905 it re sulted in a smash for the Democratic party. It had gone into power in 1899 with every chance to perpetuate its control. That chance had been frittered away by the use of the clever stratagems of 1884 ; by the use of anti quated weapons. Gorman in 1905 was still using Springfield rifles. Away back in 1903, when Gorman assumed the leadership, there were a few persons who did not burst their gloves in the general Democratic handclapping. They were young Democratic senators from the West and South; men who were unknown in politics when SENATE PORTRAITS 117 Gorman was great. They never did trust him as a leader, and as time went on they kept saying, " I told you so." To-day their ranks in the Senate are much swollen. The great fight before the Fifty-ninth Con gress is on the railroad rate question. It is a Roosevelt policy, and Gorman was expected to lead the opposition to it. In the House Williams has been declaring himself strongly for it. In the Senate the outlook is that many, probably a majority, of the Democrats will declare themselves for it. Their leader will be Bailey. Whenever any one, in the casual gossip of hotels and other political centres, speaks of the Democratic policy in the coming session, he speaks of Bailey. If any one mentions Gorman, he says, " Oh, yes, of course — Gor man." But after that he goes on talking about Bailey. Bailey wants it understood that he is not a follower of the president. He says he advo cated railroad rate regulation before ever Roosevelt did. If Roosevelt has come into line, that is no reason why he, Bailey, should desert his own colors merely for the childish luxury of opposition. If this sounds like a satire on Gorman, Bailey cannot help it; neither does he care. 118 SENATE PORTRAITS There is nothing of 1884 about Bailey. The Southern politicians admire him and love him. They regard him as a great leader. In the Senate the Republicans respect him very much, fear him a little, and like him a great deal. He is a big, calm-eyed man, slow of speech, tremendously prepared on all ques tions senatorial. He does not play tricks, and is hotly contemptuous and intolerant of them. He does not maneuvre for little petty points of party advantage, and is ferociously wrathful when one seeks so to maneuvre at his expense. That was why he upset an inkstand on Mr. Beveridge on a certain historic occasion, much to the detriment of his own fame. For Bai ley's weak point, as a leader, is his hot temper. Gorman has no such weak point. He is suavity itself. He is as voiceless, privately, as Samuel J. Tilden. He is a man of confabs in corners. He is a handsome man, with a fine mane of gray hair. He is good to look at and pleasant to hear. He looks so much like a great leader that it is hard to realize that he is not. He was, once — in 1884. In fact, he was up to 1895. But times have changed. The Gor man of legend is gone, VIII THE EVOLUTION OF BAILEY As the convening of the Fifty-ninth Con gress marked the end of Gorman's real leader ship, so it marked the definite advance of Bailey to a position in which such leadership as attaches to intellectual preeminence was his. He never could be a party general, as Gorman was. He is not a manipulator and could not become one. His leadership in the House of Representatives was unsuccessful for that reason. In the sense of being a maneu vered a strategist, a political chess-player, Bai ley can never be a leader anywhere. But he is a leader on great public questions. He stands head and shoulders above the other Demo crats of the Senate. He is a commanding fig ure among his fellows. He can lead them on questions of principle ; never in chess-playing. His full proportions are becoming known to his countrymen, and he is unquestionably the foremost figure in the minority. He has been forging resistlessly to the front for years, and to-day there is no dissent anywhere in the Senate from his recognition as the strongest 119 120 SENATE PORTRAITS personality and ablest man on the Democratic side. He is a politician of a highly modern type — so far as he is a politician at all ; for you can start an argument in Washington at any time by calling Bailey a politician. He dis dains the ordinary arts of politics. He pulls no wires and has not the patience to roll a log. If he had had to run a machine to get into the Senate, as they do in some northern States, he would never have got out of Gaines ville. In Washington he is regarded as the near est approach to a great statesman the Demo cratic party can muster. In Texas there are many who hate him bitterly, but none of those who hate him attempt to detract from his great ability. On the Democratic side of the Senate he is looked upon as the coming man. He is a growing man, too. He is not the Bailey of Gainesville nor the Bailey of the House of Representatives ; he is not even the Bailey of a year or two years ago. He is young. It has been a misfortune for him, in some respects, that he began his public career as a boy and that his character has developed and shaped itself in the glare of public re nown. Other men go through years of JOSEPH W. BAILEY. There is an accent of finality about a, Bailey speech.'' SENATE PORTRAITS 121 preparation and are seasoned and developed by the time they attract public attention. Bailey had to commit his mistakes and learn his lessons after he had become a national figure. In the campaign of 1904 a New York paper published some scathing editorials recalling some lawlessness of Bailey's years ago, and inquiring whether such a man could be taken as a fit guide by men who were law-abiding and safe and sane. The charge was that Bailey in 1884 had taken the lead in some illegal suppression of negro votes in Copiah County, Mississippi. It looked convincing. What was omitted was the fact that at the time of this discouragement of the negro vote Bailey had reached the mature age of twenty. It is much to Bailey's credit that a man who began amid such surroundings as his could have carved out such a career. His early life in Mississippi was spent amid a rough and lawless environment. The at mosphere of his boyhood was that of a coun try groggery ; for it was in a tavern that Bailey grew to manhood. His boy companions were rough and reckless spirits. It was in those days that Bailey took those measures to en large the Democratic majority which rose to plague him in the last campaign. 122 SENATE PORTRAITS All the time Bailey had it in him to do better things. He could not do them in Copiah County. An uncle in Philadelphia, a merchant, named Joseph Weldon, gave his young namesake his chance to get into dif ferent surroundings, where his ability could have a chance. He sent the boy to Texas. One day there dawned upon Gainesville an apparition which made that town sit up and rub its eyes. It was a tall, lank young man with an enormous slouch hat and enveloped in a tremendous coat. His hair hung down on his shoulders in a fashion to give pangs of envy to Buffalo Bill and Colonel John A. Joyce. He was not at all a typical South erner ; he was the South intensified and exag gerated a hundred times. He was the stage Southerner done into real life. In Gainesville they were not used to such sights. Bailey did not know there was any thing wrong with his appearance ; his make up was all right for Copiah County. It had never attracted any attention in those wilds. But Gainesville did not get much chance to laugh at Bailey. Raw boy as he was, queer and countrified as his aspect was, and full of strange affectations as he was, there was that in him which compelled not only attention but respect and could not be hidden or per- SENATE PORTRAITS 123 verted by all the eccentricities and crude- nesses of youthful egotism. At once he sprang to prominence and leadership. He was a delegate to a dead locked Congressional Convention. Some one proposed to break the deadlock by nominating Bailey. The suggestion swept the convention like wildfire. Bailey was pledged to another candidate and did everything he could to de feat himself, but in vain. At last he had an inspiration. Springing on a chair, he shouted out that he was not old enough to be elected ; he was not yet twenty-five. That settled it, and his own candidate was nominated. Strictly speaking, he had told the truth ; but he had suppressed the fact that he would be twenty-five by the following year, when he would have taken his seat if elected. It was a generous subterfuge, the whitest of white lies, and saved the candidate whom Bailey was supporting at a cost which many an ambitious young man in his place would not have paid. Two years later he entered the field "against his former candidate and won hands down. He was a marked man from the day he took his seat in Congress, fourteen years ago. His many eccentricities were ridiculed and lam pooned mercilessly ; but no ridicule could so 124 SENATE PORTRAITS much as dent the solid fact of his great ability, and he continued to advance resistlessly to the front. All the time he was fighting down his own errors and learning, under the unsympathetic scrutiny of millions of eyes, those lessons of bitter experience which other men learn long before they meet the test of fame. That lanky youth with the black mane seems an impos sibility now as one looks at the Bailey of to day ; a full-faced, , handsome, stately man, moving with a lazy majesty and commanding the strained attention of the nation's solons when his slow, sonorous voice begins to roll out across the Senate chamber. It is not merely to his ability that the senators pay tribute. They pay it also to his character ; to the tremendous sincerity of the man and to his dead-level loyalty to his own convictions. Nothing on earth could induce Bailey to support a measure he did not think right ; and he thinks out his positions for him self. He is incapable, too, of taking an atti tude on a public question for the sake of play ing politics. His presence in the Senate has been for two years a standing satire on Gor man. It is a hard matter to affect the Senate by a speech. Except Spooner, there is no man in SENATE PORTRAITS 125 its membership who can do it as Bailey can. The clearness and resistlessness of his logic have a compelling force that works powerfully on even so cynical a body as the upper House. It is a sight worth seeing when Spooner sits under the fall of Bailey's slow drip of oratory, as deeply engrossed and painfully attentive as a schoolgirl on the last lap of the latest novel. It is a tribute Spooner does not pay to his own party colleagues ; he is frivolous about Republican oratory, Spooner is. Spooner is mentioned because everybody regards him as the ablest thinker and speaker on the Republican side. Everybody else is similarly attentive when Bailey speaks. There is an accent of finality about a Bailey speech. When he slowly emerges from be hind his desk and begins to drop his argument into some hotly-debated question, the argu ment goes to the bottom of that question with a crash. After it there is nothing more to say, on the Democratic side. It is very seldom indeed that any Democratic senator makes a speech after Bailey. When he finishes there is nothing left of the subject that people who agree with him can talk about. He has gone around it and through it and behind it. It must not be understood that Bailey is a 126 SENATE PORTRAITS prolix talker, despite his thoroughness. He does not often speak. When he does he has steeped himself so thoroughly in his subject that he does not need to talk all day. Every sentence is compact and full of meat. It would be unthinkable for Bailey to talk for a week in the fashion of John T. Morgan. It takes a good deal of churning to get a pat of butter out of a pan of milk. A Bailey speech is the pat of butter and a Morgan speech is the pan of milk. When Bailey arises to deliver one of these speeches he usually stands with the tips of his fingers touching his desk and lets his talk fall with a slow, indolent, resistless drip. He often parts his words in the middle, leaving a pause between syllables. When he rises to an occasional flight of eloquence it is not lugged in ; it belongs there and could not be left out. On such occasions his slow voice rises and booms out like a church organ ; the fingers leave the desk and the hands rise in gestures that are not of elocution schools like Fair- banks's or of imitation wrath and excitement like Beveridge's, but of natural grace. He despises the conventional oratorical tricks, such as the rising inflection at the end of the sentence ; but he has one effective oratorical trick of his own, which consists of bringing SENATE PORTRAITS 127 one of his bursts of eloquence by slow degrees to its highest point of voice and gesture and closing it by uttering the last three or four words of the sentence in a conversational tone. It is difficult to give an idea of the effect of this in print, but when it happens persons who are amenable to such things find little thrills running up and down their spines and feel a desire to bite pieces out of the furniture. His worst mistake since he came to the Senate was committed when he administered to Mr. Beveridge a course of treatment that was utterly improper but urgently invited. Those who read the colloquy which preceded this castigation were at a loss to account for it. There was nothing in Beveridge's language which called for heroics. To those who were present there was no mystery about it. Bailey was delivering a serious argument, and Bev eridge was harassing him with petty pin pricks. It was Beveridge's object to turn and twist and distort some Bailey sentence into something which would serve as an admission to the credit of the Republican party. The nature of Bailey's argument was several de grees above Beveridge. Bailey tried to avoid him and go on in the path of his argument. The pin-pricks continued, hour by hour, un til persons familiar with Bailey's hot temper 128 SENATE PORTRAITS began to wonder how soon Beveridge would succeed in provoking a breach of the peace. The scene suggested an Indian elephant try ing to make a path through the jungle and being interrupted by the attentions of a mos quito. At last Bailey gave up trying to talk at all. He waited till the Senate had ad journed and then indulged himself in the colossal error of his career. As he grows older he is getting better con trol of his temper. With that conquered no debits will be recorded on his standing as a statesman. If he came from the North the Democrats would undoubtedly nominate him for president some day, for they all admire him intensely. Even as it is, there has been presidential talk about him. In 1904 some enthusiasts waited on him to urge him to run. Bailey listened to them with serious courtesy, and then said in his tone of grave finality : " Gentlemen, I thank you, but your sug gestion is impossible. On the wall of my office at Gainesville there hangs a picture of Jefferson Davis." IX SENATOR TILLMAN, DESPAIR OF ANALYSTS There was nothing epoch-making, nothing historic, about the long session of the Fifty- eighth Congress ; not even the birth of the Panama Canal and the Panama Republic, for thereon Congress was a ratification meeting. History, dealing with Panama, will concern itself with what was done by the administra tion before Congress convened, and will men tion, not the solemn debates and the foregone conclusion of a treaty, but the conferences at the White House the previous summer and the November telegrams of "Loomis, Acting." And yet the session of 1904 deserves one niche in history. It was the only one in many years which passed on to its grave among dead Congresses with a record of only one characteristic outbreak by Benjamin Ryan Tillman. And that outbreak was a very mild one. In this regard this do-nothing session is certainly enabled to shine with a bright historical light. It holds the grand prix among all expositions where Tillman has been an exhibitor. 129 130 SENATE PORTRAITS The exhibition referred to was displayed for a more or less admiring world about the middle of the session. Mr. Warren, a humble senator from Wyoming who had never before attracted the calcium rays from the top gallery, wandered into the Senate feeling very happy from some unspecified cause, and observed Tillman making gyrations of a Tillmanesque sort and holding forth to the discomfiture and rout of Mr. Bailey of Texas. Mr. Bailey did not know he was being routed, but that is a side issue. Mr. Warren, feeling frisky as aforesaid, glanced towards the gyrating and expostu lating Tillman, and perceived a large thick bottle protruding from his pocket. He slipped across the aisle, abstracted the bottle, publicly and ostentatiously smelt thereof, and returned it to the Pitchfork pocket. Later a serious-minded senator informed Tillman of the incident and he arose and de claimed. Warren abjectly apologized, but later the observations of both gentlemen, by unanimous consent, were stricken out of that unreliable and mendacious publication, the Congressional Record. The burden of Till man's remarks was that he did not like to be held forth to the country as a person of loose habits, when the bottle contained boracic acid, BENJAMIN R. TILLMAN. 1 A strange man, little known even by his colleagues." SENATE PORTRAITS 131 with which he was trying to repel the ravages of something which had recently assailed his throat. All would have been well had not Tillman added to this one of his characteristic out breaks. He said he never got drunk except at banquets, and even then he could find his way home without being loaded into a cab. Though this was excised from the Con gressional Record after Mr. Hoar and other dignified gentlemen had argued with Mr. Tillman, it got into the newspapers, and there was more matter for horrified gesticulation on the part of the good people whom the Pitch fork senator delights to horrify. There is no doubt that an additional shade of red was added to the mental picture of the brutal, savage, cannibal senator from South Carolina which many good people of the North use for baby-frightening purposes. It is good time to tell the truth about Till man, though he will not tell it about himself, and though he delights to say things that make it well-nigh impossible for even his well-wishers to ascertain it. This incident is a genre picture of it. So serious was that throat trouble, at which many people scoffed and in which few (in the North) believed, that for the rest of the session Tillman was down 132 SENATE PORTRAITS in South Carolina battling with it, withdrawn from a scene in which he delights and where he would rather be, war-paint on, than any where else in the world. Boracic acid had to give way to more stringent remedies, and Till man for months was fighting, if not for life, at least for health. It affords a side-light on the whole. De liberately Tillman holds out his worst side to the public. Deliberately he paints himself as a savage, wearing a breech-clout and brandish ing a spear, and deliberately he shocks and paralyzes decent sentiment in the North and the best part of the South. Even in his own home of South Carolina, there are good mothers who at night hush their offspring to sleep with the name of Tillman. And all the time he is as good a fellow, as sensible and decent a citizen, and as wise a man, as one could wish to meet with. The proof? If proof be asked, what more con vincing proof could be offered than the fact that his warmest admirer in the Senate was George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts ? The two men were thicker than thieves ; like seeks like, even though it be disguised by a rough outside and a savage mask, and Hoar knew Tillman to be a man. The Pilgrim an swered to the Palmetto as old Butler and SENATE PORTRAITS 133 Hampton and all those cavaliers were never able to make him do. Why did Tillman deliberately seek to spread abroad the impression that he retired from banquets1 in delirium, that his sobriety was only for the Senate ? The question is the despair of his admirers, all the more their de spair for the reason that the man is absolutely sober, temperate, in every way decent and re spectable. But the deeper question is, Why does he spread abroad the idea that he is a Wild man politically ; that he drinks blood and eats raw meat, when he is as level-headed and sane a man as the world ever saw ? Why does he pose as a Wilkes, and seek that place in history, When his friends know better ? It is the unsolvable mystery of this complex character. It is probable that " Silas Larra- bee," that Wise old Maine philosopher, solved the question in his dialect sketches in the New York Times some years ago, when he said that the lion Tillman loved the jackass's hide, and that it was a pity. He does seem to love it. It is not long ago that Tillman, rising in his place in the Senate, declared that Abra ham Lincoln Was the greatest figure of the Civil War. "And I," he said, and then paused and looked upon the men who re- 134 SENATE PORTRAITS membered South Carolina's outbreak which established the Southern Confederacy — " and I, from South Carolina " — and he emphasized the name of his State, and stopped and waited — "I, from South Carolina, tell you so, and feel honored in doing it." Does any one think this mere clap-trap, platitude — that South Carolina to-day accepts Lincoln as the greatest of modern men, and that Tillman voiced a platitude ? The bloody shirt still waves in South Carolina, if nowhere else ; and it is much to be doubted if any member of the old Hampton aristocracy, which Tillman unhorsed, would feel safe in saying that. And having said it, with his friend Hoar's face lifted admiringly and gratefully towards his, Tillman plunged into more excesses of speech and tore the welkin into ribbons. Such a man is the despair of analysts. Men come here bitterly prejudiced against him, hating his name ; they meet him and go away his admirers, puzzled about him, but trusting him unalterably. He is the most extraordinary compound in the United States Senate. He walked out of the Senate into the marble room one day after a speech which set the whole North raving against this man SENATE PORTRAITS 135 who ate the flesh and drank the blood of negroes ; and what he had said well justified the raving. Even his Southern colleagues looked shocked. " Well," he said, meeting the writer, " I suppose I'll be a demon in the papers to-mor row. They'll leave out all the serious things I said, and publish the hifalutin. It's my fault, though, and I don't mind it. Still, I would have liked to get my real ideas before the people." This man, this bitter enemy of the negroes, according to common report, is better loved by negroes than any man in Washington. There is not a negro who has ever met him whose face will not light up if you mention Tillman's name. In moments of unusual candor Tillman has himself admitted that he loves the negroes and that he is proud of their love. That he is more liberal to wards the North, in his candid moments, than any other Southern senator, is a fact well known. Is it not strange, then, that some peculiar mental twist impels this man of gentle life, of broad views, and of soft and kindly character, to hold himself out as the worst representative of savagery and the reactionary element in civilization ? Yet it would be unfair to call 136 SENATE PORTRAITS Tillman uncandid and a poseur ; when he is uttering these things he believes them. A strange combination of characteristics is Benjamin Ryan Tillman, defender of lynch law in the Senate, on his South Carolina plan tation the idol of his " darkies." A strange man, little known even by his colleagues. He will be fortunate if this generation learns him aright ; it will be a miracle if posterity ever knows the real man. X "THE GRAND YOUNG MAN OF INDIANA" When the big debates of the Fifty-ninth Congress begin there will be, as always, the usual alignment of the cast. In the Senate each man will drop naturally into the part as signed to him, which, at least as far as the leaders are concerned, will be quite different from the part played by anybody else. Some of the parts are already cast. The duty of dispensing flowers of rhetoric, for instance, will be discharged on the Democratic side by Senator Rayner and on the Republican side by Senator Beveridge. The parts played by Aldrich, Bailey, Elkins and others will be quite different. There is this difference between Rayner and Beveridge, that Rayner's part will not be con fined to the dispensing of rhetoric. Rayner has a habit of emotional eloquence which is as thoroughly confirmed in him as is the same habit in Beveridge. But, in addition to that, he is a man whose judgment is respected and whose utterances, despite the fervid form in which they are sometimes couched, Command 137 138 SENATE PORTRAITS attention and are thoughtfully digested. This is not always the case with Beveridge. The fact that Rayner is more mature than Beveridge is not due to the difference in their ages. Rayner is only twelve years older than Beveridge, but he has been mature all that time and much longer. Beveridge's warmest admirers offer no hope that he will ever be any maturer than he is now. The references to Beveridge as " the young senator from Indiana " create the impression of giddy and irresponsible youth. As a fact he is forty- three years old, four years younger than President Roosevelt and three years older than Mayor McClellan, and eight years past the time of life at which some railroads refuse to employ new men because of their advanced age. Beveridge came to the Senate heralded by a great reputation as a " boy orator." Some men live down that reputation ; Bryan did, for instance. Beveridge has never lived it down. He is a great weaver of words, and Mr. Dooley appreciatively and admiringly re marked of his first speech in the Senate, " 'Twas a speech ye cud waltz to." And yet his word symphonies do not profoundly move men, as did those of Ingersoll and of Hay, and as do, on some occasions, those of Rayner. SENATE PORTRAITS 139 It is partly on account of his voice, which is rather metallic and not very flexible, and partly because of something in his personality. He is a man that men like. There is nothing about him that could be described as either charming or magnetic, but there is a buoyant, fresh and bubbling enthusiasm about him that makes it hard to feel antagonistic. But this likable personality is not one that stirs people below the skin when he makes a speech. They sit back and enjoy it critically. The Senate abhors boy orators, but usually waits for the sure influences of time and sad experience to wear them down. In Bever idge's case it was forced to resort to sterner measures. Beveridge broke into those waltz- time speeches too often, and on each occasion the event was heralded far and wide and the galleries filled with young ladies of the same type as attends matinees, reads the • Ladies' Home Journal, and goes to hear the Rev. Newell Dwight Hillis. It was felt that some thing must be done. Hence came the tem porary obliteration of Beveridge at the hands of Pettus. Pettus is the oldest man in the Senate, eighty -four years of age. He was an officer in the Mexican war sixteen years before Beveridge was born. When Beveridge was born Pettus 140 SENATE PORTRAITS was nearly as old as Beveridge is now. He is" as complete a contrast to Beveridge as could be imagined. His oratory is quaint and old- fashioned, and studded with scriptural quota tions. His words fall slowly, in that quaint, kindly, high-pitched drawl which character izes so many of the older type of Southern speakers. He arose, and buttoning his long frock coat about him he stuck his thumb in it in the ap proved oratorical fashion. As he talked he somehow suggested all Beveridge's favorite gestures without doing a thing so undignified as to imitate them. In his way of buttoning the top button of his coat, in his gentle move ment of the chest and slight oscillation of the shoulders, he conveyed such an idea of ridic ulous pomposity that the Senate lost all con trol of itself. Neve? mentioning Beveridge's name, he punctured the Indianian's claims to be what he called " our great orator " with a gentle and poignant ridicule. He pictured Beveridge as indulging in a soliloquy in which he pledged himself to throw aside all considera tions of common sense and devote himself to building up a reputation as an orator. He rung the changes on the word " or — a — tor," each time dividing it carefully into three SENATE PORTRAITS 141 words and making each bear the burden of a world of scorn. He suggested to Allison and Hale, the two wise old heads of the Republi can machine, the necessity of calling a caucus to consider the question what should be done with Beveridge. " I tell you," drawled old Pettus in that de licious liquid monotone he brought up from Alabama, " the senator from Iowa and the senator from Maine will have to take some action in reference to that or — a — tor. There is no doubt about it in the world. There will surely have to be some caucus on the matter." While the old man was doing this dreadful deed, now and then stopping to mop his face with an immense red handkerchief imported from Selma, all the rules of the Senate were forgotten. Democrats and Republicans alike were lying sprawled across their desks, their faces contorted in an agony of merriment. The president of the Senate, gavel in hand, lay back in his chair, not only not enforcing but flagrantly breaking all the rules by howl ing like a hyena. It did have an effect. It suppressed Bever idge for a time, and after that his Senate speeches were not so flowery. He delivered many to which a man could not waltz and 142 SENATE PORTRAITS which barely sufficed for a lancers. But that was in 1900, and occasionally there is waltz music in a Beveridge speech now. The trouble with Beveridge is that he is always intellectually in a frock coat. He is a good man in his way, and within certain lim its is a bad man to go up against in a debate. It is not a very big way, however, that way of his. He once tackled Simmons of North Carolina and . so wound him up in an endless maze of contradictions that Simmons was re duced to pulp. It so mortified the North Carolinian that he actually took to his bed and was ill for a week. This gift of Beveridge's consists in the harassment of a cross-examination such as one meets in a criminal court. It has no effect on the really big senators, except to en rage such of them as have hot tempers. This is the history of the Bailey-Beveridge affray, when Bailey's line of argument was so broken in upon by Beveridge's narrow line of cross- examination that he lost control of himself. What Bailey did, as has heretofore been pointed out, was all wrong, but urgently in vited. Bailey might have pleaded the excuse that Tom Sawyer gave for feeding the cat with Pain Killer : " If you don't like this, Peter, remember that you asked for it." SENATE PORTRAITS 143 When Beveridge and Quay locked horns over the Statehood bill in 1903 the daily scene was an inspiration. Men neglected their busi ness to attend it. Its general tenor was illus trated by this conversation between two capi tol habitues : "You ought to have been there to-day. You missed it. Beveridge was plumb severe with Quay." " Did Quay grin ? " " Oh, yes, he grinned. And when Bever idge was through he got up in that calm, half-asleep manner of his and said, ' The sen ator's statement is entirely false.' Then he sat down. Then he got up again and said, ' I retract that. I will not say it was false. I will say it was untrue.' Then he sat down again. " And Beveridge arose in his most terrible manner and said, ' What part of it was un true?' 'All of it,' said Quay in his placid manner. Then he grinned." When Beveridge was out in the Philippines gathering material for his works on the road to success for young men, he was deeply im pressed with the opportunities open there. " Great heavens," said he to Captain David Stanley of the transport he was on, " what a wonderful country for a young man ! What 144 SENATE PORTRAITS limitless opportunities ! Why don't young men come out here? With $10,000 a man can make a fortume." He fixed Stanley with his eye, and the captain apologetically murmured that many young men did not have $10,000. " Borrow it ! Borrow it ! " exclaimed Bev eridge. " Well, you see, senator," said Stanley, " many a young man has not got $10,000 worth of credit." Beveridge looked at him reproachfully, even contemptuously. " Young man," said he severely, " I perceive that you lack moral fibre." Beveridge does not lack personal courage. On this same Philippine excursion of his he was with General Lawton in an engagement. Lawton and his men were on a ridge. The Filipinos were on another ridge and firing tumultuously. Lawton perceived that the men on horseback were affording too good a mark, and roared, " Dismount ! " Everybody got down from his horse except Lawton himself and Beveridge. The senator made a move to do so, and then, seeing that Lawton was still on horseback, he remained where he was. There they were, the general and the senator, affording the finest marks ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE. "Always intellectually in a frock coat.' SENATE PORTRAITS 145 imaginable. Presently the general looked around and saw the senator, serenely facing the rebel fire. His eyes flamed. " Blank blank you to blank," he roared, " I thought I told you to get down ! " And before that terrific fire of profanity the senator from the august State of Indiana quailed as he had not done before the Filipino bullets. He slid meekly off his horse and stayed off. Despite all his idiosyncrasies and defects Beveridge is a likable and even a popular man. His staginess and, what Dickens de scribed in Mr. Podsnap as " a fatal freshness " are his main drawbacks to a popular appre ciation such as, in many ways, he really de serves. If he could shake these off his really good qualities would have no trouble in win ning recognition. THE HOUSE MACHINE There are several machines in different parts of the country, if the daily newspapers are to be relied on ; but one of the strongest and most ironclad of the lot is comparatively unknown except by name. Not Tammany Hall itself is such a close corporation as the House machine at Washington. Nowhere in the land is any body of men ruled with so despotic a hand by so small a governing body. In Tammany Hall the boss has a cabinet, but the four rulers of the House of Representatives are a law unto themselves. There are just four of them, and they hold their sway not by any of the forces that lift men to the control of other machines — not by graft, not by force of character, not by patron age. They hold it by virtue of the official positions they occupy in the House. They are the speaker, the two majority members of the Committee on Rules, and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, who is by reason of his office the floor leader of the majority. In recent years they have been, 149 150 SEEN IN THE HOUSE and doubtless will be for some time to come, Joseph G. Cannon of Illinois, Charles H. Grosvenor of Ohio, John Dalzell of Pennsyl vania, and Sereno E. Payne of New York. The House machine can be whittled down still finer. It really resolves itself into the speaker and the two majority members of the Committee on Rules. For if the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee should fall out with his colleagues they would run over him like a steam roller. The same power by which they reduce other congressmen to obedi ence would be equally efficacious with him. The only real power he has is by their con sent. Personality enters into the matter very lit tle. It is not by the force of an irresistible genius for leadership that Dalzell and Grosve nor, for example, have climbed to a position where they practically legislate for the country, so far as the lower House is con cerned. They are able men as congressmen go, but do not overtop many men who might be mentioned among their Republican col leagues. Put any one of these in the place held by Dalzell or Grosvenor or Payne, and he would straightway become as towering a despot as they. The proof is that the omnip otent boss of the House, the chief of the SEEN IN THE HOUSE 151 House machine, Speaker Cannon, was utterly powerless to oppose the House machine when he was on the floor. He was just as able then as now, just as much of a natural leader, but whenever he opposed his will to theirs, as he sometimes did, they tossed him out of their way as easily as they would a new congress man just learning his way about the streets. What is the source of this power? How does the House machine establish its rule ? The average newspaper reader is likely to attach little significance to the name " Com mittee on Rules." He probably thinks it is a committee to establish or revise rules of procedure — a sort of parliamentary committee. When a bill is reported in the House a " rule " is reported too. The " rule " defines the scope, not only of the discussion, but if necessary" of the conditions under which the bill can be passed. For example, if the Com mittee on Rules chooses, it can prohibit amendments. It can have the bill made to suit its preferences, and then prevent the House from changing it. In other words it can absolutely prescribe the form of the legis lation to be enacted, for the power to amend is as much a part of the legislative power as anything else, but the Committee on Rules can shear the House of that power. 152 SEEN IN THE HOUSE The two Democratic members of the com mittee count for nothing in the machine, of course. They are merely informed of what is to be done after the speaker, Mr. Dalzell and General Grosvenor have agreed upon it. The Committee on Rules and the speaker can prevent the consideration of any bill. Now suppose the case of a new congressman, just elected, who has only a few months in which to " make good " with his constituents and secure a renomination. He has got to get that new public building and get the appro priation for deepening the creek. He knows perfectly well, even if he is the newest of new congressmen, that both these propositions will die if he antagonizes the measure which the Committee on Rules is now bringing in. Of course he votes for the measure, what ever may be his convictions on the subject. Revolt ? How can he revolt ? He is tied hand and foot, with political ruin at the hands of his enraged constituents staring him in the face if he does not hasten to comply with the lightest wish of the House machine. One of the notable figures of Congress is James A. Tawney of Minnesota, a man of power and force. When the House machine SEEN IN THE HOUSE 153 brought all its power to bear for the passage of the Cuban reciprocity bill, in 1902, this man was the leader of the beet-sugar insurgents. He was supposed to be too big a man to come under the ban of the House machine. One day after the fight had been going on for some time, Tawney went to the speaker's desk and asked what had become of a bill in which he was interested. Mr. Henderson's jaws came to with a snap ; he looked straight at Tawney from under his heavy brows and growled : " You'll have to see the Committee on Rules about that." When the news of this was spread among Tawney's supporters it carried panic ; it did more to take the heart out of the insurgents than anything else. If the mighty Tawney, the Republican whip of the House and the friend of the leaders, could be thus treated, what hope was there for the rank and file ? In that fight Tawney snatched victory out of the jaws of defeat and routed the House machine at the last moment, by sheer force of his own indomitable personality and splendid fighting powers. But the exception proves the rule. For once that the House machine has been beaten it has been successful a hun dred times. Yet Tawney's victory weakened the control 154 SEEN IN THE HOUSE of the machine, for in addition to its real and tremendous powers it had an asset of immense value — fear, coupled with a superstitious be lief in the hopelessness of opposition. When the House machine had been beaten once, this asset was depreciated. It was based mainly on the actual fact that resistance was hopeless in Reed's day. But Henderson was a differ ent man from Reed, nothing like so strong ; and once his prestige was damaged by defeat, his power waned. Throughout the last session of the Fifty- seventh Congress signs of revolt multiplied. What might have happened had Henderson remained speaker can only be surmised ; but the advent of Cannon settled all that, and to day the power of the House machine is more strongly intrenched than ever, to all appear ances. The final seat of power in the machine is with the speaker. A revolt of the Committee on Rules against him would supply an excit ing fight, but the result would not be long in doubt. Of which no stronger proof can be found than that the fight of House against Senate in the early days of the Fifty-eighth Congress was a complete reversal of the old policy of Payne, Grosvenor and Dalzell. When they were co-leaders with Henderson SEEN IN THE HOUSE 155 they never forgot the Senate, and the House was a mere appendage of the other body. They had to fall in line with the new speaker's policy. What Payne and Dalzell thought of it cannot be said, but it was highly distasteful to Grosvenor. The old man seemed not only worried, but lost. He felt that he had fallen on evil days, and that all the habits of mind of years were being torn up by an iconoclastic hand. But he had to follow his leader. This then is the explanation of why the lower House is a compact body which can be moved this way and that at a touch, while the Senate, despite its coterie of bosses, is often uncontrollable. It explains equally the past talk about the degeneracy of the House and the present talk about the House's re gaining its old position. For the great body of representatives are puppets, moved by the irresistible power of the machine ; and when the chief of that machine, the speaker, is will ing to let his branch of Congress be degraded to a mere tail to the Senate, the House may grumble, but must obey. When the speaker, as is the case with Cannon, has higher ambi tions for the House and has the willingness to fight, the representatives must follow him again. With Joseph G. Cannon as the chief 156 SEEN IN THE HOUSE of the machine, the real legislator of the pop ular branch, there are brighter days in store for the House, and it seems coming to its own again. II THE HOUSE TRIUMVIRATE " He grins like a Cheshire cat, and but for that he might have been speaker of the House of Representatives." In this fashion a veteran Washingtonian summarized for the benefit of a newcomer the career of Sereno E. Payne, and accounted for his failure to attain the summit of his ambi tion. Mr. Payne has become resigned to it now, and knows he will never be speaker, but he still grins. His two associates in the triumvirate which — subject to the speaker — runs the House of Representatives, have no such handicap, and John Dalzell still cherishes in his heart of hearts the hope that he may some day sit in the speaker's chair. The rank and file of the House smile at this vision of Dalzell's and term it a hallucination. They did that when Speaker Henderson stepped down from the throne, and it was patent to every man but one in Washington, in the House and out of it, that Dalzell had not the ghost of a chance. 157 158 SEEN IN THE HOUSE It was not patent to Dalzell. He really thought he was in the running, and he actu ally continued to think so after Mr. Cannon had driven everybody else out of the field. Dalzell does not grin. He does not even smile. He is a profoundly serious man. General Grosvenor, the third member of the triumvirate, does not smile either. Neither is he a profoundly serious man. He has a scorching and lightning-like wit and the temper of a buzz-saw. When he speaks in the House all the seats are occupied, and no body goes to sleep. A Grosvenor speech is an event. His private conversation is studded with epigrams, to say nothing of swear words. He is a very human person, is Grosvenor. But he will never be speaker, either. All three have gone as high as they are likely to in the House of Representatives. They are the triple-headed boss system of the lower House. It is an honor, and many a new member, rusticating in unnoticed ob scurity and trying hard to " make good " with his constituents by getting through that bill to deepen the creek, looks on with envious eyes, and thinks he would be perfectly con tented if he could get as high as that, and would never ask to be speaker. Yet they are not popular with their col- JOHN DALZELL. ' The brains of the House triumvirate." SEEN IN THE HOUSE 159 leagues. Two of them are decidedly un popular. Why ? " I have been a member of this House nine years, and a Republican member at that, and this is the first time John Dalzell ever spoke to me," said a beet-sugar Republican, whose vote Dalzell had asked for in the Cuban reci procity fight in 1902. " What is the matter with Sereno Payne? " said an observer in the gallery during the same big fight. " He has just invited a man in the back part of the House to come up where he can hear better. Has the millennium come ? " The House triumvirate has ridden rough shod over opposition, has settled the fate of aspiring congressmen by killing the bills their communities demanded, has filled more than one ambitious politician with despair and hatred : but some men could do these things and still be popular. The characteristic of Dalzell's to which the beet-sugar Republican referred is not caused by any pride of position or any overfed vanity of mind. Dalzell is shy. It seems a strange thing to say of a man in his position, but his friends assert that it is an unconquerable con stitutional defect of his. Besides, he is a man who cannot warm up to save his life. He would like to, he tries to, but it is not in him. 160 SEEN IN THE HOUSE Coldness, reserve, shyness were born in him : magnetism, tact, the art of being winning were left out of him. He is a very considerable man. It is a stock saying that the greatest two States in the Union, Penns3Tlvania and New York, are rep resented by the poorest outfit of congressmen, and that the whole delegation from both these States, leaving out Dalzell, Payne and one or two others, would kick the beam weighed against what one barren, hilly, scantily popu lated district in Maine can send to Washing ton. Above that mass of mediocrity or worse Dalzell looms. Protection, of course, is his hobby, and he has not only enthusiasm for the cause of his town and section, but brains wherewith to battle for it. Any Pennsylvania congressman could give him points on how to look out for one's constituents. Dalzell is not much of a " local " man. But he is a national man, and Pittsburg overlooks his defects for the dis tinction there is in it. He is a little man, with an unimpressive figure and a small head. His eves are brilliant and his face would be handsome if his head were not so small. He is slightly deaf, and when in charge of a bill his hand is constantly at his ear and his body bent forward. His SEEN IN THE HOUSE 161 head he always carries on one side like a bird, probably because of some muscular in firmity. As a speaker he is full Qf facts and logic, but his voice is unattractive and his style dry. He is not an impressive figure, and visitors in the gallery generally get restless when he is on the floor, until they are told that this man is one of the ablest in the House and one of the three men who rule it. He is more than that ; he is, according to the general verdict, the brains of the House triumvirate. Sereno Payne is the most benevolent look ing man that has ever been seen on the banks of the Potomac. White hair, baby blue eyes and a constant, kindly smile endear him at a glance to the casual stranger. Hearts open instantly to Sereno Payne. But after that glance, disillusion comes. For that kindly smile is something that Sereno cannot help. It stays with him al ways. When he is sternly refusing the request which some new congressman, emboldened by that ingratiating smile, has made, the smile is still there. He refuses in hpavy, savage ac cents ; he does not soften the thud by any regrets or kind words ; his refusal comes with all the gentleness and moderation of a falling pile-driver ; but the smile is there as he does 162 SEEN IN THE HOUSE it, and he is still smiling as he turns brusquely away. He would stop smiling if he could, but to save his life he cannot. This it is which infuriates the stricken con gressman. He could put up with Dalzell's cold, formal refusal ; he could stand Gros- venor's rough denial, flavored with tobasco and wit ; but the most gentle disposition is ruffled and the meekest heart enraged by the combination of cold, hard, iron despotism and that benevolent smile. Sereno knows it, and would stop smiling if he could ; but he can't. Mr. Payne is built tremendously amidships and fills the aisle when he arises to speak. He is not an eloquent talker, and there is something in his voice that reminds one of the rising of the tide. He is strong on tariff matters, as becomes the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Wit does not garnish his retorts, but he has a sledge-hammer fashion of dealing with Democratic interrupters. Grosvenor is the most nearly popular of the three. There are many men in the House who like him well, and yet there are so many who dislike him that, striking a balance, he cannot really be called popular. His biting tongue and ferocious wit are perhaps responsi ble. In private he is as biting and ferocious as in public — more so, if anything — and his SERENO E. PAYNE. " That kindly smile is something that Sereno cannot help." SEEN IN THE HOUSE 163 epigrams are helped out by locutions which the amenities of the House prohibit. There is nothing deceptive about his ap pearance ; he differs from Payne. A sardonic twinkle in his blue eye contrasts vastly with that misleading benevolence in Payne's. But with his sturdy form and his abundance of white hair and beard, he is an attractive man to look at. Vandiver, of Missouri, once summed up his appearance comprehensively in a sentence, being impelled thereto by an exigency of debate. Vandiver had been referring to " the gen tleman from Ohio," when some mischievous person demanded that Vandiver specify which gentleman from Ohio was the subject of his excoriation. " Being prohibited by the rules," replied Vandiver, " from mentioning the name of the gentleman from Ohio, and yet desiring to answer the question, I will designate him as the gentleman from Ohio who looks like Santa Claus and talks like Satan." He is a striking and imposing figure as he stands in the aisle delivering broadsides of slashing wit at his opponents. Never does , he arise without attracting Democratic inter ruptions as a light attracts flies. When they come he is in his element. Terrific retorts, 164 SEEN IN THE HOUSE fired off like bombs, annihilate those who as sail him. There is only one man in the House with whom Grosvenor measures swords in vain. Not even his bosom friend, Hepburn, of Iowa, another gladiator of debate, has ever come off the victor in a wordy war with Grosvenor. But when the melancholy voice of De Ar mond, of Missouri, is heard, then it is that Grosvenor becomes aware that trouble is im pending. He first became aware of this one day when he interrupted De Armond with one of those terrific sarcasms which usually over whelm his victims. The moment the words were out of his mouth the measured, precise voice of the Missourian arose in a torrent of sarcasm so much more ferocious than the worst that Grosvenor had ever done that it left " Old Tabasco " astounded and breathless. It was directed at Grosyenor's assumption that he was the personal spokesman of President McKinley. When De Armond got through with him there were tears in Grosvenor's eyes. No man has ever seen him so shaken and broken before or since. CHARLES H. GROSVENOR. 'He has a scorching and lightning-like wit and the temper of a buzz-saw." Ill THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE HOUSE Occasionally it grinds the very soul of a member of the House to know that by long effort he has won his way to a place in the House aristocracy and that there is no Way of making his people at home see the significance of the great event. They do not even know that there is a House aristocracy. He has perhaps, after ten years' striving, Won his way to a place on the Appropriations Committee- — the lowest seat at that stately board, but still a seat— and to his people at home it means no more than if he had been appointed to the Committee on Census. Of course his colleagues know the signifi cance of it, and show it in their demeanor. His hand is wrung off by congratulatory con gressmen, and his breast swells as it did at home when he won his first election to Con gress. Envy pays its tribute, too. He knows as well as if he could hear it that that fellow Higginbottom, in his own delegation, is say ing to sympathizing friends that he can't for the life of him see what the speaker sees in 165 166 SEEN IN THE HOUSE that man Brown to put him on Appropria tions. He is secretly aware, too, that McGin- nis is telling everybody that he, McGinnis, could have had that place if he had wanted it, but he told the speaker he would rather wait for a chance at Ways and Means. Candid friends tell him that O'Rourke is " knocking " him and saying that he is un fit for the job, and other candid friends tell him that it's a big thing and they hope he will measure up to it. All these currents of congrat ulation, the tributes of friendship and of en mity, assure him that he has at last won his place into the House aristocracy and inflate his head. Then he goes home and can't explain it ; he can't make those stupid constituents see it. And it is borne in upon him bitterly that if he had won a chairmanship — some insignif icant chairmanship not worth holding — he would have met understanding and congratu lation ; and he cannot explain that he could have had any one of a dozen chairmanships and passed them all over to win this place of real dignity and power. It is an aristocracy, or rather oligarchy, well worth belonging to, too. For it is an aristocracy of brains. Not everybody who gets into the House aristocrac}' is a man of brains, but everybody who gets into it is sup- SEEN IN THE HOUSE 167 posed to be such a man and has won his place for that reason. There are sixty-two committees in the House, and most of them are mere names. Many of these committees never hold a ses sion ; never did hold one and never will hold one, to the end of time. Other committees there are that are active and useful, but not great. There are a mere handful of commit tees that compose the House aristocracy. To win his way into one of these a man must labor long and hard to establish his standing among his colleagues, and to make the powers that be hold him a man worthy of high place. This is true of majority and minority alike. A member of the minority may not hope for chairmanships ; but the reward of a place in the House aristocracy he may hope to win. When he enters one of the " great commit tees," he takes his place at the bottom, and slowly works up towards the top as other men drop out through death, promotion or defeat for reelection to Congress. If he stands at the head of the minority when the longed-for turn of the tide comes and his party wins the House, he will probably be chairman. But the chairmanship is only the crowning honor ; to be on the committee at all, even in the lowest seat, is almost honor enough. 168 SEEN IN THE HOUSE The Chairman bf one of " the great commit tees," as they are called, is a man of tremen dous power and high standing. Sometimes he exercises the power of political life or death over his colleagues. One day in 1904 the Pennsylvania delegation met to devise means for pushing the measure for the im provement of the Delaware River. Philadel phia was all wrought up over that, and some of these nieii felt that their political lives de pended upon it. They were busy talking about various Ways of forcing Pennsylvania's demands upon the House, when a blunt} practical man named Butler broke in, say ing : " What does Mr. Burton say? There is no Use wasting time talking about anything else. What Mr. Burton says will be law for the House of Representatives." Mr. Burton, of Ohio, is chairman of the Rivers and Harbors Committee. A wet blan ket fell on the delegation at this burst of cold, hard Common sense, and the belligerent talk melted and vanished on the spot. Mr. Sibley, indeed, did combat the idea that Bur ton's will was law, but he admitted that it could only be overridden by getting the House to defeat the entire River and Harbor bill ; which will be done in some future Con- SEEN IN THE HOUSE 169 gress when the skies fall and Pennsylvania congressmen can catch larks. At the head of the House aristocracy stands the Rules Committee, the mighty House ma chine, whose will is law and whose veto is final on anything and everything. It is made up of Speaker Cannon, John Dalzell, General Grosvenor, and two Democrats, John Sharp Williams and David A. De Armond. The placing of De Armond on this committee was one of the greatest tributes the caustic Mis sourian ever received, and caused much heart burning among the friends of Oscar W. Un derwood. If De Armond's head was at all swelled by the great promotion, it Was doubt less promptly reduced when he went home to Missouri and found the significance of the event unanimously unappreciated. Next comes the Ways and Means Committee — so great a committee that the chairmanship of it carries, ex officio, the title of majority leader of the House and a seat among the rulers of the House machine. That chairman to-day is Sereno E. Payne of New York, and next to him ranks Dalzell. Second man on Rules and second man on Ways and Means, ho man familiar with Washington ways would ask further information as to Dalzell's standing ambng his fellows in the aristocracy 170 SEEN IN THE HOUSE of brains. Grosvenor comes third, as he does on Rules. The roll of this committee includes names that, to congressmen, carry their own descrip tion — such names as McCall of Massachusetts, Hill of Connecticut, Boutell of Illinois, and others, on the Republican side ; Williams of Mississippi, Clark of Missouri, Cockran of New York, and others, on the Democratic side. The roll is a roll of the men of highest standing in the House. Mayor McClellan of New York, during his service in the House, was long honored with a place on this committee, and it was his elec tion to the mayoralty that made a place for Cockran. To Cockran was paid the unprece dented honor of having a place on the Ways and Means Committee left vacant until he could be elected to Congress to take it. It was known that he would be elected, and Speaker Cannon neglected to fill the vacancy until he arrived, more than a month later. Secretary Metcalf was promoted from this committee to the head of the Department of Commerce and Labor, succeeding Mr. Cortel- you. His promotion left a vacancy which was filled by the promotion of Needham of California. Hardly less eminent among the aristocrats SEEN IN THE HOUSE 171 of the House are the members of " Appropria tions," the committee of which for so many years Speaker Cannon was the head, and which he left only to take the higher honor that is now his. He was succeeded in the chairmanship by James A. Hemenway of Indiana, who has just been promoted to the Senate as the successor of Vice-President Fair banks, and Hemenway in turn was succeeded by Tawney. The Military Affairs and Naval Affairs rank among the great committees, for a place on which the struggle is keen. Foreign Affairs is not a great committee, whereas the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate is one of the greatest in that body. The reason is simple — the foreign affairs that come before the Senate include treaties and other im portant matters that do not come before the House. On occasion the House Committee on Foreign Affairs rises to sudden importance, and for this reason a strong and able man — Robert R. Hitt of Illinois — is placed at its head ; but in ordinary times it troubles the deliberations of the House very little. In the class of important, active and useful committees which nevertheless do not belong to the aristocracy of the House come such bodies as Colonel Hepburn's Committee on 172 SEEN IN THE HOUSE Interstate and Foreign Commerce and General Grosvenor's Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. Each is a committee which, like the Foreign Affairs Committee, frequently rises to great importance, and hence a strong man is placed at the head of each. But they do not rank among the great committees, membership in which is itself a badge of honor. From these to the committees with im posing names which never meet is a terrific drop. There is no sadder awakening than that which comes to the new member who has fixed his eyes on some high-sounding committee like " Pacific Railroads" or "Coin age, Weights and Measures," and pulled all kinds of wires to get there, and finally won the place, and has then been aroused to the fact that he has nothing to do and nowhere to go, and that the place he has won has doomed him to perpetual unimportance. It is a sad, sad story, but it has to do with the proletariat, not the aristocracy, of the House. IV UNCLE JOE " Uncle Joe " Cannon has been having his picture painted, an operation which all good speakers must undergo. He has submitted to it with stoical resignation, knowing that it is part of the job he holds ; and he has un complainingly suffered himself to be led to various photograph galleries and " taken " in statesmanlike poses. The various artists have done what they conceive to be their duty in such cases ; they have undertaken to present the speaker in a favorable light to posterity. It is for pos terity's sake that each new speaker undergoes this course of artistic sprouts. He has to con tribute an oil painting of himself to the gallery of speakers and to leave his photograph for future historians. And these photographers have performed their labors conscientiously. They have en deavored to give him a stern and statesman like look, as of one whose mind is engrossed with matters of deep public import ; they have wiped the half-humorous glint out of his 173 174 SEEN IN THE HOUSE eye, and they have toned down into lines of severity the curious crease at his mouth which gives him the appearance of always smiling. They have done their duty as they see it, and in years to come a commonplace face will look from the pages of history, instead of the most striking and unforgettable face in all the Fifty-ninth Congress. It will be the face of an imaginary Speaker Cannon, the Speaker Cannon who ought to have been ; not the face of " Uncle Joe." It has been the duty of everybody connected with Mr. Cannon's official duties to metamor phose him from " Uncle Joe " into the speaker, and they have worked indefatigably at it ; this picture-making is merely an example of it ; but the work has been a failure, for the unconquerable Uncle-Joeness of him rises and protrudes as soon as their labors are done, as a pompadour head of hair rises obstinately the moment you take your hand off it. Two days before the meeting of that Con gress which was to make Cannon speaker, an old friend of his met him in his old committee room, Appropriations, and said, " Joe, I had it in mind to drop in on you and say good-bye to Joe Cannon." " What do you mean ? " said the speaker- to-be. SEEN IN THE HOUSE 175 " Well, I have known Joe Cannon many years, and I thought I might never see him again, but would hereafter have to deal en tirely with the speaker." The speaker took his constant companion from Havana out of his mouth, pointed it to wards the Hall of Representatives, and said : " In there I'll be the speaker ; away from there you'll find that I'll be Joe Cannon." The suggestion had been prompted by a bit ter memory of how " Dave " Henderson ceased to be " Dave " and became an inflated and swollen person under the dignity of office. Cannon is of a different make. In fact, he could not cease to be " Uncle Joe " if he tried. Of course, his personality is less obtrusively in evidence than it was when he was on the floor. He cannot make speeches now ; neither can he preside a great deal of the time. The popular notion of the speakership is that that officer is continually in the chair, presiding over the work of Congress. As a matter of fact, when the big bills are being debated the speaker is not in the chair more than half an hour a day. The bill is taken up in Committee of the Whole, and the speaker turns it over to some trusted chairman, a man whose parliamentary ability is so generally recognized that he can 176 SEEN IN THE HOUSE be trusted, should any emergency call for it, to hand down one of those decisions which will be consulted as precedents half a century hence ; some pilot who can guide the bill past any rock or shoal. There are only four of these chairmen in the House at present, and they preside alternately over the debates on the great bills. They are Olmsted of Pennsylvania, Sherman of New York, Boutell of Illinois and Burton of Ohio. The speaker takes the chair again when the bill is put upon its passage, but as the amend ments have been voted upon in committee it is seldom that there is any real fight left to make. So the speaker is seen but little in the House ; his work is not that of an active participant ; it is done behind the scenes. He is the head of the House, the general director of legislation, the man who determines in ad vance what shall be done and has charge of the way to do it. And hence it is that while Cannon is " Uncle Joe " as much as ever, the fighting, rough-and-ready " Uncle Joe " of parliamentary catch-as-catch-can is a fading tradition, growing dimmer all the while. The " Uncle Joe " who for so many years was chairman of the Appropriations Com mittee, the official watchdog of the Treasury, JOSEPH G. CANNON. " The most striking and positive character in all the House." SEEN IN THE HOUSE 177 was a sight worth seeing when a debate was on. His delivery was slashing, sledge-ham- mery, full of fire and fury. When he got thoroughly interested in his subject the fact was made known in an infallible way. On such occasions he would take off his coat and throw it on his desk. Provoked by opposition and getting warmed to his subject, his waist coat would follow his coat ; and if the occasion was of sufficient moment to warrant it, off would come collar and necktie. Thus stripped for action, " Uncle Joe " would move up and down the aisles in long strides, waving his fists in the air and pouring forth a continual flood of sarcasm, invective and denunciation at a rate that taxed the stenographers. He would roll up his shirt sleeves to give him greater freedom, and his bony fists would fly around in the heat of his wrath so that the ducking heads of congress men, dodging to avoid a punch in the eye, marked his dashes up and down the aisles. If some unlucky opponent interrupted, Cannon would stride up and down the aisle, jerking his shirt-sleeved arms about in a fury of impatience. As the last word left the questioner's mouth a gigantic roar of " Oh, Mr. Chairman," would burst from Cannon as if his pent-up feelings had torn that torrent 178 SEEN IN THE HOUSE of sound from his bosom, and behind it would come such a flood of sarcasm, couched in homely language and mingled with soundest sense, that the interrupter wilted under a laugh that shook the house. And when it was over Cannon would go back to his place and put on his collar and necktie and waist-coat and coat, and retire to the Appropriations room. These speeches were seldom partisan ones ; he was engrossed in his work of watching ap propriations and defeating extravagance. He never hesitated to beard the House leaders, the august triumvirate of the machine, nor to defy the speaker himself. Breaks and bulls were frequent in these speeches, for he always spoke extemporaneously, and his ideas boiled over with such rapidity that he could not always choose his words. As for example when he was opposing the proposition to have the national government pay the losses of the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition, and was exasperated by the certainty that the House would override him. " Yes," he roared, shaking his fists high in the air at Representative Alexander of Buf falo, the sponsor of the measure ; " make the government a partner in your expositions. Then the next step will be to make the United SEEN IN THE HOUSE 179 States pay the losses of the county fairs ; and after that, I suppose, we'll become the backers of a Wild Bill West Show ! " The howl that greeted this only annoyed him ; he was too excited and too dead in earnest to see anything wrong with his sen tence, and "Wild Bill West Show" it re mained. Now all this is changed. He is the picture of dignity as he stands in the speaker's place, and it is quaint, natural, unforced dignity ; nothing put on about it. Yet he is the same old " Uncle Joe," and he had not been speaker ten minutes before the House was in a roar because he told the new congressmen to " step up to the area and be sworn." And not long thereafter, when the Postal Appropriation bill was being passed, and some one asked what was before the House, this unconventional speaker bluntly replied, " The subsidy for the Southern Railway." The brutal word " sub sidy " struck the House dumb for a moment, for the members had been calling it all kinds of fine names, and then they all joined in a shout of laughter. He is as much of a czar as ever was Hen derson or Reed, but his despotism is not re sented as theirs was. Such acts as letting the Democrats apportion their own committee 180 SEEN IN THE HOUSE places make a tempered tyranny. Besides, even when he is most tyrannical, there is a sunny charm about his despotism. Once the Democrats happened to have a momentary majority in the House, due to the desire of the Republican majority for food. While the Republicans were unsuspiciously dining amid the comforts of home the Democrats brought up a bill and carried it to a vote. Hurry calls were sent out for the Republican laggards, while the speaker protracted the voting by every means in his power. The Democrats pressed home their advantage, and at last, in desperation, the speaker had the roll called a third time. This was a sheer violation of all the rules of the House. For a moment things looked stormy. " Why does the chair call the roll a third time ? " demanded one of the Democratic leaders, indignantly, while a score of enraged Democrats leaped to their feet and thronged the aisles. " The chair will inform the gentleman," replied " Uncle Joe." " The chair is hoping that a few more Republicans will come in." The threatened squall evaporated in a great storm of laughter. The Democrats sat down, chuckling ; and the Republicans came in. Henderson would have done the same thing; SEEN IN THE HOUSE 181 but Henderson's assumption of authority would have left heart-burnings after it. When that session closed, the Democrats joined in presenting a loving-cup to the speaker, and deputed their leader, John Sharp Williams, to make a speech about him. Cannon had never bowed the knee to the House machine, and he had never surrendered to the Senate. He thinks the House the greatest legislative body on earth, and he grieved over its continual sinking, under the Henderson regime, to be a mere appendage to the Senate. " The deterioration of the House " was a stock subject for newspaper and maga zine moralizing ; and it sank lower and lower every, year. Cannon could not prevent it ; he was not of the House machine. But at last one day, in the closing hours of a legislative session, a new piece of senatorial aggression unlocked his tongue. It was three o'clock in the morning when " Uncle Joe," mounting on his desk and stripped to the shirt, delivered such a speech about the rights of the House and such a defiance of the Senate that a House half-asleep and dog-tired Woke to frenzied thunders of applause. He knew he was to be speaker then, and the speech was a gage of battle; The Senate re garded it but little. But Congress had hardly 182 SEEN IN THE HOUSE met when the Solons at the other end of the capitol found that a man had become speaker who was determined that the House should regain its ancient prestige. Again and again the Senate went forth to battle, and every time it was defeated. At every point the House won what it contended for. The House was a solid army under a be loved and trusted leader ; and that to-day it comes so near to standing coequal with the Senate, taking the place the founders of the government meant it to hold, and that this change was wrought within four months, is due to the iron strength and unflinching pluck of Speaker Cannon. The House loves and trusts him ; he is the most popular man in all its membership. The Democrats are little less fond of him than the Republicans. He has not followed the Hen derson policy of treating the minority like cap tives in a Roman triumph ; he has treated them fairly and even generously. And the House admires him no less than it loves and trusts him. It will follow him to battle anywhere and for any cause, as it rose from its degradation and followed him solidly to battle with the Senate. It knows him as an uncommon man ; a man of high ideals and firm convictions and definite purposes. It SEEN IN THE HOUSE 183 knows him as a true man, one who will not go back on his word nor weaken in the face of odds. He is the most striking and positive charac ter in all its membership. With all his oddi ties and quaintnesses he is what they call " a big man." Their admiration for him and confidence in him is not second to that which they gave to Reed ; and he has what Reed never had, their affections. WILLIAMS, A LEADER WHO LEADS To have transformed a bucking, stampeding mob into a disciplined and soldierly army — to have transformed that which for six years was the Democratic minority in the House into that which is the Democratic minority to-day — is a feat of political generalship which must excite interest in the man who performed it. To have done that in the space of five days suggests the return of the age of miracles. That the man who did it was a man who never before had been suspected of talents for leader ship, and whose selection for the captaincy was the signal for head-shaking among the wiseacres, makes the event stand out boldly from all party reorganizations of the past. Hence is it that John Sharp Williams of Mis sissippi is one of the most interesting men in the country to-day. The condition of the Democratic minority in the House from the time of Charles F. Crisp's death and the defeat of Bryan is a matter of national notoriety. Chaos is its best word of description. A ploughing, snort- 184 SEEN IN THE HOUSE 185 ing herd of Texas steers, suddenly released from all restraint, is its nearest analogue. Bailey's nominal leadership was flouted and shattered by the men he attempted to lead. Under him it was every man for himself. Richardson was recognized as leader, unlike Bailey, but under him the minority was a nerveless, wrangling, disorganized, undisci plined mob, which could not by any possibil ity be united for anything except the River and Harbor bill. This condition grew worse and worse as the years went on, until the country had lost all respect for the minority and it had none for itself. On the Democratic side there was no longer a party ; there was only a horde. Even the Republicans, who at first had re joiced at the plight of their enemies, began to wish for a respectable and worthy body of op position. There were perils for the majority in having no opposition worth the name. When Richardson retired from the leader ship the only names mentioned for his place were those of Williams, De Armond and Champ Clark. There was little interest in the fight on the part of the country, for it was assumed that whoever was elected, the Demo cratic party was past redemption. Williams was chosen. He had never had a chance to 186 SEEN IN THi, xxkjuosu do any leading, and no one knew whether he could do it or not. He was known as a bril liant and magnetic speaker, and that was all. " Simply an orator," was the general com ment, and it was predicted freely that he would be a second Richardson. The only hope for the party seemed to be in the simultaneous appearance of Gorman as the head of the party in the Senate. There was such faith in the senator's executive abil ity and power of leadership as amounted almost to fetich worship. He was to be the party Moses, and there was nothing he could not do. It took Williams five days to turn the mob into the army it now is — an army at present better drilled and disciplined than the Re publican majority. His policies may be dis sented from, but of the fact that the Demo crats will follow him for those policies with the coolness and indomitableness of veterans, and that they cannot be shaken or rattled for a moment, there is nowhere any doubt. Nor is there any doubt that they are pressing those policies home with a sleepless vigilance and a tactical skill worthy of the best Republican days of Reed. The five days spoken of were the days of the only fight Williams had to wage within SEEN IN THE HOUSE 187 his party. The Cuban reciprocity problem confronted him, an issue on which his party had been as hopelessly irreconcilable as a crowd of street arabs disputing over a crap game. Williams had already determined that tariff revision should be the Democratic watchword as far as he could make it, and he determined that the party must support the bill. His determination evoked unspeakable dis may among the Democratic senators. His position was not known until his fight was begun and under way. There were hard words, but Williams, gently and affably and treading on no one's corns, conducted his gum shoe campaign until, for the first time in years, the Democratic minority was pre senting a united front. After that he had no more fights to wage. The Democrats only needed the hand of a true leader to guide them. His Panama policy differed from that of many senators, but the House minority swung into line for it like regulars. They were all split up about it when they came to Washington, and half of them were loaded to the muzzle with speeches which were never delivered. On the tariff his belief is that the Repub licans have injured themselves, especially in 188 SEEN IN THE HOUSE the West, by their open and cynical abandon ment of the policies of Blaine and McKinley. He is determined to move the Democratic army up into that abandoned citadel. He deprecates free trade talk ; there is no hori zontal reduction in his programme ; moderate tariff revision, the abandoned reciprocity treaties, and the flagrancy of the Dingley rates, are the burden of his song. These principles are hammered home at every opportunity, and he makes opportunities. In one form or another bills and resolutions are continually being introduced. Now it is a resolution calling on the president to get the High Joint Commission together, now a bill for a drawback for the benefit of sufferers by the Baltimore fire. At every point the Re publicans have to meet him, and the resulting campaign material is sown broadcast in the West. And all this time Gorman, the much- heralded Moses, was failing dismally to unite the Democratic senators on either Cuban reci procity, the tariff, the Panama issue or any thing else. True, he had a hard situation to meet ; but so did Williams. When they as sumed their respective leaderships the House minority was more of a mob than the Senate minority. SEEN IN THE HOUSE 189 Before Congress met in 1903 there was a lot of talk about raising the race issue, about bills to repeal the war amendments, and about throwing down the gauntlet to the North. Williams suppressed it. He is a Southerner and sympathizes with his section, but he does not see any good in irritating the North. He took that stand when Gorman was making his campaign on the race issue and disfran chisement in Maryland. Williams's methods are an interesting study. He is persuasive, not domineering. He has a winning manner, and he seems to be seeking help and light from you at the very time he is bringing you around to his views. Con gressmen who go into his little room in the library wing determined to let Williams un derstand that they will put up with no non sense, go forth pleased and flattered and in clined to help him out. On the rare occasions where it is necessary for him to show his au thority the iron hand comes out of the velvet glove, and the insurgent knows what has hap pened without having any one tell him. He is not an impressive man to look at ; in fact, he is homely in face and careless in dress. A tangled mass of hair grows down to a point not far from his eyes. A straggling mustache covers a mouth of generous size and irregular 190 SEEN IN THE HOUSE outline. His manners are as easy and unpre tentious as an old shoe. He would not be a rich man in New York, but he is a rich man for Mississippi. He is a lawyer and a planter, with a country fortune. But he does not look as if he had a dollar, and all the advice of his friends cannot make him spruce up. His autobiography in the " Congressional Directory " says that " he received a fair edu cation " at private schools, the Kentucky Mil itary Institute, the University of the South, the University of Virginia, and the University of Heidelberg. Whether the words " fair edu cation " were written in boast or modesty may be a question to strangers, but no man who knows " John Sharp," as they call him in Mississippi, and is aware of his total lack of " front," has any doubt that he meant what he said. His election to the leadership proceeded in the first place from the fact that he was con ceded to be the best speaker on the Democratic side. He has a remarkable voice. It is some what nasal and rather incisive, but his com mand of it is as perfect as that of a musician over a musical instrument. He plays upon it like a violin ; it sweeps from high to low, from loud to soft, in perfect tune with the SEEN IN THE HOUSE 191 modulations of his theme. He need hardly speak above a whisper to attract the close and strained attention of the whole House in a moment. His command of sarcasm is, it is generally agreed, unequaled in the House except by De Armond ; but De Armond's sarcasm is of the bitter sort, while Williams exposes the weak points of the enemy's armor in such a way that the enemy laughs, though ruefully, while he writhes. He is a story-teller of wide cloakroom fame, and he likes to write verses, though he will not admit their authorship, as he has a fear of the reputation that dogs the rhyming statesman. Occasionally the temptation over powers him, and he reads some stinging bit of versification in the House. Most famous of these occasions was his production in honor of Rear Admiral Crowninshield at the time of the Schley investigation. He read it with such unction that Democrats and Republicans alike shouted and pounded their desks in un controllable and hysterical mirth. It was a parody on Little Peterkin's inquiries about the " famous victory " at Blenheim, and began : 192 SEEN IN THE HOUSE "Oh, who is Crowninshield, papa, That he should have the best Of everything there is to have, And shine o'er all the rest? " The father explains that " Great Crownin shield has done a lot of glorious things," but Little Peterkin presses his query : "What were the virtuous deeds he did, That he should simply name The things he wants for his rewards And straight annex the same?" Being assured that Crowninshield was a great naval commander, Peterkin persists : "But when and where did Crowninshield Stand on the bridge and show His ' bullies ' how to train their guns Against the firing foe ? " At last the badgered parent replies : "Go out and chase the put, my son, And bother me no more ; Great Crowninshield' s the greatest tar That ever stayed ashore." Though a Southerner, Williams is almost exempt from the prejudices of his section. One of his most striking speeches was that in which he defended General Sherman from the JOHN SHARP WILLIAMS. " His manners are as easy and unpretentious as an old shoe." SEEN IN THE HOUSE 193 charge of violating the laws of war in his march to the sea. It was a remarkable ad dress, and was listened to with breathless at tention by a crowded House. One of its sentences was this : " As an American citizen, as the son of a ' rebel ' soldier, as a man who is intensely American, although he is intensely Southern, I want the world to know that when civilized men were fighting civilized men upon the American continent — one of them in behalf of the cause of the preservation of the Union as he understood it, and the other in behalf of the cause of local independence as he un derstood it — the watchword was chivalry and fair fight." In 1904 there was some sporadic talk of Williams for the presidency. He viewed it with gentle and humorous tolerance and some weariness. A newspaper man asked him earnestly what there was in the talk. " My boy," said Mr. Williams, impressively, " my boom is making tremendous strides. My private secretary is unreservedly for me, and I have hopes of securing the support of Charley Edwards, the clerk of the minority room." VI THE REBELLIONS OF TAWNEY From a congressional standpoint the biggest event of the first fortnight of the Fifty-ninth Congress, in December, 1905, was the an nouncement that James A. Tawney of Minne sota was at the head of a new revolt. It was well known aforetime that Tawney was the incorrigible, untamable wild Indian of the Republican reservation, but for a few days the leaders of the House in the Fifty-ninth Con gress had an idea that they had suppressed Tawney by promoting him to the chairman ship of Appropriations, the best committee in the House after Ways and Means — indeed the best committee anyway, except when a big tariff bill is under consideration. It was a weird mistake, based on an utterly insufficient appreciation of the extent to which James A. Tawney does his own think ing. He is not an insurgent for the love of it ; he is an insurgent because he will think for himself, and on occasion the path of thinking for one's self leads past the machine line of march. If you abruptly ask any Washington 194 SEEN IN THE HOUSE 195 looker-on who are the men of real brains on the Republican side of the House he will mention Hepburn, Tawney, McCall, Burton and Littlefield in a breath, and then hesitate for the next name. The curious thing about it is that all of them except Hepburn are chronic insurgents, and even Hepburn has been known to revolt. There is a difference, however. Littlefield is a born insurgent, who tries not to be one and does not succeed. McCall is of the class of George Frisbie Hoar. Burton cares not a continental for insurrection. He is engrossed in the particular affairs to which he has de voted his Congressional attention. If the House machine gets in the way of them Burton uprises and fights. Otherwise he does not. He simply treads his own road, and House machines and House kickers are of no interest to him. Tawney, on the other hand, has no antip athy to machines. He likes them. He is the Republican whip of the House. He does his best to be a loyal Republican. So far has he carried this that Mr. Cannon, who much prefers him to the portly and innocuous Payne, has had it in his mind to devolve upon him much of the leadership which that som nolent statesman has exercised. 196 SEEN IN THE HOUSE But Tawney is the victim of an utter in capacity for supporting anything he does not believe in. He is not a mugwump ; he is a bitter partisan. Unlike Burton, he does not concern himself with the matters relating to his own department ; he is actively and com batively interested in everything that takes place anywhere in the United States. Unlike Littlefield, he does not try against an inborn insurgency to be good ; he does as he pleases. There is nothing of McCall and Hoar about him ; he is a roaring Republican. He simply cannot avoid doing as he thinks right on everything that comes up. Place he is glad to get, and has got ; but no promotion can budge him an inch from his love of fight and his determination to do as he pleases. Hence, within a few days after Speaker Cannon has promoted him to the glory of the Appropria tions chairmanship, Tawney appears in the Republican caucus at the head of sixty-five bolters on the Statehood proposition, and serves notice that he has got the other side buffaloed. That is another of Tawney's characteristics. He does not enter on losing fights ; he enters on winning ones, and he is the only man who has ever driven the House machine to in glorious rout on anything it really had its mighty mind set on. He is what is technic- SEEN IN THE HOUSE 197 ally known as a " scrapper." No one could doubt it, looking on that fierce fighting pro file, with those flashing black eyes and that dark skin which flushes as the fight goes on. TaWney saw the light in Gettysburg, Penn. His father was a blacksmith, with the usual blacksmith notions on the subject of race suicide. Hence it came about that when Tawney had learned the blacksmith trade, he looked about and saw other little Tawneys as far as the eye could reach. He perceived that if he was to do anything with the blacksmith business he must leave Gettysburg to the other little Tawneys, go west, and forge up with the country. Hence the irrUptiOn of young Jim TaWhey, blacksmith, in Winona. That town is located in the right lower jaw Of Minnesota. There are in it many people who have lived in Minnesota since the Indians quit. It is one of the older portions of the State, one Of the portions which are dedicated to the old families. These old families would be looked on in Boston as parvenus, but every State has its own definition for the term. Young Jim Tawney, blacksmith, started at his trade. Then he undertook to become a master mechanic, and he became one. After that he studied law at hie forge. The old 198 SEEN IN THE HOUSE families thought this hustling and handsome young blacksmith with the fighting face ought to be encouraged, and they encouraged him. Hence he quit the forge and practiced law. Then Lawyer Tawney was elected to the State Senate. He served two terms in a con stant turmoil ; for he would not vote for any thing he did not think right, and when he did not consider anything right he mixed war medicine, raised the long howl, and quit the reservation. Then they nominated him for Congress. That was going a little too far. The old families of the lower right jaw of Minnesota resented the idea that Jim Tawney, black smith, interloper, stranger, butter-in, should go so far, so high and so fast. Men who had ex tended to him the helping hand in his days of poverty turned in to beat him. It was one of the hottest campaigns ever known in that lower jaw. The convention was held in Waseca, with the accent on the second syllable. Tawney's only daughter was born that day — he has a host of little sons, all strong-beaked and flashing-eyed, like himself — and he named her Waseca. If there is anything in omens, Tawney was justified, for he was elected with a whooping majority. SEEN IN THE HOUSE 199 He got into Congress and straightway started on his old course. They tried to tame him. They usually tame fresh new congressmen by refusing them recognition. Tawney was not suppressed that way. He put up with his lack of recognition until he had made himself so troublesome that they had to give it to him. The mighty and omnipotent House machine had no terrors for Tawney. When they con centrated their terrific power on him he went out and fought them. When even the presi dent of the United States, meaning Theodore Roosevelt, undertook to drag Tawney into the right path, Tawney simply hurled disrespect ful defiance at the White House and stayed off the reservation. Meanwhile the oldest families of Winona were making trouble for Tawney. Year after year he beat them. Finally came the year 1902, when Minnesota did away with nomi nating conventions and made her nominations directly from the people, as she does yet. The foes of Tawney said that here was their chance. Tawney had controlled the conventions. Now they would go ahead and beat him at the primaries. Tawney carried the primaries by the most tremendous majority that any one got that 200 SEEN IN THE HOUSE year, though they raised the cry against him that he was an enemy of the president. He is not an enemy of the president. He sup ports Mr. Roosevelt, but when Mr. Roosevelt gets in the way Tawney lowers his horns just as he does for anybody else. In 1902 Tawney did not think Cuban reci procity right. He organized the opposition. In those days everybody laughed at the idea of ever beating the House machine under any circumstances, and in this case the president was with the Henderson-Payne-Grosvenor- Dalzell machine. It would do some assorted constituents — carefully assorted so that they did not come from one spot in the country — much gOod to come here some time wheh they are com plaining because their Congressmen are hot great statesmen and are not getting enough for the district. They should stay here long enough to see the mighty power of the House machine as it crushes and treads all indi viduality out of the helpless congressman. Tammany Hall is a baby to it. After watch ing the reduction of the House to putty the assorted constituents would repair to their various homes with a better feeling towards their representatives. They would have some JAMES A. TAWNEY. ' The incorrigible, untamable wild Indian of the Republican reservation." SEEN IN THE HOUSE 201 idea of how all but impossible it is for the strongest man to stand up against the irresist ible and tremendous power of the speaker and the Committee on Rules. Tawney, by sheer force of his fighting per sonality, got enough insurgents in line to fight this great machine for months and to bring it to the verge of defeat before the White House and the House machine together, by all the arts of bullying and patronage, could get them away from him. Then, as usual, the insurgents began to weaken. They fell away from Tawney in droves. George B. McClel- lan, now Mayor of New York, stood up and taunted them. " You know of the soldier," he said, " who, when Napoleon asked what had become of the Old Guard, stepped forward and saluting respectfully, replied, ' I, sire, am the Old Guard.' Oh the day this bill comes to vote and the speaker derisively demands, ' Where now are the insurgents ? ' the gentleman from Minnesota will step forward and say, ' I, Mr. Speaker, am the insurgents.' " On the day before the bill came to vote the machine was triumphant and McClellan's pre diction on the verge Of vindication. They had won away all but half a dozen of his fol- 202 SEEN IN THE HOUSE lowers, and the chances were that those half dozen would disappear when the vote came to be taken. In those twenty-four hours Tawney won them all back with his bare hands. He had no patronage to give, no threats of his would be enforceable, and all the insurgents knew they were taking their political lives in their hands. Such is the force of that fighting per sonality that in defiance of probability, in de fiance of everything that had hitherto been reckoned as possibility, he got them all back. When the test vote came, thirty-one men arose from the Republican side, and, headed by Samuel W. Smith of Michigan, marched down the aisle to join the Democrats, amid the wildest cheering that had been heard in the Fifty-seventh Congress. They put through their amendment taking off the dif ferential on refined sugar, and the bill was killed so far as the Fifty-seventh Congress was concerned. The effect of Tawney's wonderful victory was such as to threaten the House machine with utter destruction. It was not until the retirement of Speaker Henderson and the election of Speaker Cannon that the old au tocracy was safe. Early in 1905 Tawney started out to make SEEN IN THE HOUSE 203 a crusade against the House machine on the subject of tariff revision. He was on the Ways and Means Committee. At first the speaker regarded him with tolerant amuse ment, and then was brought up standing with a jerk that shook all the complacency out of him. This happened by reason of the dis covery that Tawney had started in to make a canvass of votes and that he was winning away some of the speaker's strongest sup porters. When Sereno Payne himself began to wobble, the speaker fell into a panic. So he took Tawney off Ways and Means when he came to make up the committees and put in his place a violent stand-patter named McCleary. But for that it is highly possible that Tawney might have got some sort of a tariff revision bill out of the committee. The speaker loves a good fighter, however, and is fond of Tawney anyhow ; so he pro moted the man from Winona to be chairman of Appropriations, the greatest committee in the House on ordinary occasions, and taking place second to Ways and Means only in years when tariff bills have the floor. " Placated ; the insurgent in harness," was the universal comment. Not a bit of it. The Republicans called a caucus to decide on their policy in regard to Statehood. When the 204 SEEN IN THE HOUSE caucus convened it learned with horror that Tawney did not think the Statehood bill right and had not let the grass grow under his feet. He was off the reservation and had already collected sixty-five Republican votes. He was in a position to beat the House machine again and make hash of its Statehood policy. When the leaders had digested this they de^ cided that they would not call the meeting a caucus, but a " conference," which destroys its binding quality. Uncle Joe thought it was binding, but Tawney didn't, so the speaker was helpless. Hereafter efforts to make Tawney subside by giving him high honors will be at a dis count. There is nothing on earth that can shut him up or take away one inch of his ca pacity for trouble-making. He is the same unsuppressible fighter, the same yesterday, to-day, and until the oldest families in Winona can get some one here who stands more distinctly for the simple life. VII THE STAMPEDES OF WILLIAM ALDEN SMITH Two months before the Republicans unani mously nominated President Roosevelt to suc ceed himself one of the strangest attacks of hysteria on the political records swept over the House of Representatives. With frantic shouts and wild cheers it launched a presi dential boom for Speaker Cannon. This almost forgotten episode, which made a sensation at the time, came as a climax to a savage debate on the postal scandal. On the eve of a campaign which was not only presi dential but congressional, a report on As sistant Postmaster-General Bristow's investi gation had been made in which most of the leading men in Congress were mentioned as engaged in dealing with the Post-Office De partment. In many cases their connection, on investigation, proved to be innocent enough ; in most the worst that could be said of them was that they conformed to the old practice of getting what they could in the way of offices for their constituents ; in a few the evidence of corruption was unmistakable. 205 206 SEEN IN THE HOUSE But the public, excited by the postal revela tions already made, was not in a humor to discriminate, and every man mentioned, how ever harmlessly, in the Bristow report, was advertised in flaming letters in his home paper. On the eve of a congressional election such a thing was serious. It threatened political ruin for the men named, those who knew themselves to be innocent and those who were conscious of guilt alike. In the presence of this peril the House was wrought up to a frenzy of fear and rage. President Roosevelt was held responsible, and in the white-hot de bate that followed he was denounced by innu endo and almost by name, and this by Re publicans. The furious congressmen branded the editor of the Bristow report with such names as liar, scoundrel, coward and knave. The debate went on for days, getting hotter all the time. At last came the climax. The tension was tremendous when a Re publican, Jenkins of Wisconsin, demanded the removal of Bristow from office, and when a Democrat, Clayton of Alabama, made a ter rific personal attack on Postmaster-General Payne, branding him as an " imbecile " and an " ass." SEEN IN THE HOUSE 207 Then came William Alden Smith of Mich igan, who delivered a savage attack upon the executive departments in general, which roused the House to a frenzy of approval. As the excitement was at its height Mr. Smith shouted : " When the people want a really popular candidate for the presidency they take him from the House of Representatives ! " This utterance evoked a thunderclap of ap plause, and then Smith, raising his voice still higher and waving his fist, roared out : " And I hope the day is near when the people will crown the speaker of this House, who for years has faithfully served the people and stood between the Treasury and its assail ants, and lift him with the general consent of the nation into the executive office." At this the House, already worked to a high pitch of excitement, went crazy. Shrieks and yells rent the air, men waved their arms and rose spontaneously in their places. The Democrats joined in the demonstration. The speaker was talking earnestly to Mr. Olmsted of Pennsylvania, and had not heard what was said. " Mr. Speaker," gasped a clerk, " he's nom inated you for president, and they're cheering you I " 208 SEEN IN THE HOUSE The speaker sprang to his feet with his lips tight set and his eyes flashing, and crashed his gavel down with all his strength. The tumult was too great to be stopped so easily, and it had no effect at first. But the speaker stood *here banging his gavel as if he meant to break the desk, and at last he conquered the uproar. So great was the panic spread among the Republican leaders that they headed Smith off from continuing. Every man, except Smith, who asked for an extension of time that day got what he wanted, but when Smith asked the usual courtesy, the Republican leaders refused it. For some time after that the House con tinued to simmer and sputter over the Bristow report, and not a day passed that some white- hot Solon did not arise and emit sparks. But the prairie fire that had swept over the House was dying down, and in a week the only relics of it were the burning ruins of various once-promising campaigns for renomination. William Alden Smith could not then set the House shrieking hysterically like a girls' seminary in a fire panic, either by nominating Speaker Cannon for the presidency or by any other sensational " stunt." Smith had seized the psychological moment, which is a habit SEEN IN THE HOUSE 209 of his, remunerative in fame. A week later the House looked back upon that frenzied two minutes, without regret — for it was a cheap and easy way to express its real opinion — but with a conviction that it wouldn't happen again. It is not an easy thing to sweep the House off its feet with oratory, as William Alden Smith did then and as he has done before. The House is seasoned and cynical to oratory. Rhetoric is its daily food, and of eloquence it is deadly tired. It is the dream of many a young politician's life to stand in the House and address the assembled statesmen on the issues of the day, but he could not find a more unpromising audience. They are a cal lous lot, as to oratory. Yet the right man, cooperating with the right moment, can set these professional talkers and listeners in a wilder frenzy than can any spellbinder set a mass-meeting. It has been proved, though probably never so convincingly and startlingly as when William Alden Smith drove the House suddenly crazy by his unexpected utterance of its secret wish. It takes a man like Smith to do it. Not even the fury of that day would have moved the House to ratify the nomination of Cannon 210 SEEN IN THE HOUSE had a speaker of a different class made the nomination. The Michigan -man seems to study his opportunities. He does not speak very often, does not accustom the House too much to his voice, and when he does speak it is to seize the hour and dominate it. There was a rumor that Smith was going to follow his Cannon speech with another. " No," said he. " When you've made your bull's-eye, it won't do any good and may damage your reputation as a marksman if you fire the other barrel." That is Smith all over. He never fires without a bull's-eye in front of him and a dead certainty that he will hit it. He has a posi tive genius for such shots, and his Cannon boom was one of them. He ought to get a reputation as a great orator if he keeps it up, and yet he is nothing of the sort — he is merely a magnetic talker with a positive genius for seeing the psychological moment. In the tense days before the Spanish war, after the blowing up of the Maine, when Con gress was at a fever heat of excitement, Smith went to Cuba. He came back and, seizing the right moment, delivered a speech that set the House as stark, staring crazy as did his nomination of Cannon. He told what he had seen, the tears ran down his cheeks as he SEEN IN THE HOUSE 211 spoke, and the excited House bounded under his touch like a colt under the spur. In 1902 the House Republicans were wrought up over President Roosevelt's at tempt to drive them into a support of the Cu ban reciprocity bill which, at that time, was against their convictions. Excitement and resentment were rife, yet the sickening con sciousness of what happens to the congress man who " bucks " the White House palsied them. But all the efforts of the House leaders, Henderson, Payne, Dalzell and Grosvenor, backed with the White House threats and pleadings, were for a time ineffective. At last the insurgents began to weaken ; caucus after caucus was held, and at each recruits were las soed, branded and corralled. With each desertion the resentment and excitement grew higher. It was another psychological moment. William Alden Smith, with his unvarying and certain apprehension of such things, saw and seized it. The night when the Republi cans were most sullen and most vindictive, Smith took the floor and delivered a speech that swept them like a fire in a theatre. He told of a Republican administration's attempt to crucify an American industry for the sake 212 SEEN IN THE HOUSE of a trust, and he delivered this arraignment with flashing eyes and swinging arms. As it was a caucus, and its proceedings secret, no full report of that speech has ever been made, but the men who heard it came out with clinched fists and burning eyes. That night they were ready to beard the White House, the House machine, and every thing else. Yet, presumably, it wras like all Smith's speeches — merely the conjunction of the right man with the right moment, and not a great speech in itself. He is not a " stayer " in a fight ; if he were, with that talent to which reference has been made, he might make history. He was the first beet sugar man to make public his ad herence to the cause of Cuban reciprocity. He was at the White House bright and early to tell the president that he meant no harm by his Cannon speech. Hotty as he flames at the right moment, he knows the exact moment when to cool off. He is as adroit as he is fiery, this able politician — once bootblack, then page in the Michigan Legislature, then lawyer, now idol of his district. If not a great speaker, he is a brilliant one, whose stock in trade is a strong voice, a fine flow of words, a striking delivery and the psychological moment. Though not a big SEEN IN THE HOUSE 213 man, he fills the eye ; he has a larger display of teeth than the president himself, a rosy face that flushes when he speaks, eyes that flash, and a mane of prematurely gray hair that tosses back from his forehead. There are other men that can rouse the House from its cynical and skeptical apathy towards oratory. General Grosvenor can do it, though he is little of an orator in the ac cepted sense. His pungent style, and partic ularly the terrific retorts that are drawn from him by the slightest interruption, are the delight of both sides. When he is angry, which is often, his speeches are so full of ta basco that it would take a much more callous body than the House to refuse a response. Colonel Hepburn can do it, though he is no orator at all. His capital is a tremendous fund of common sense, expressed in a crisp, incisive style, and a stock of homely wit. As with Grosvenor, he is best when angry, and interruptions draw forth flashes of lightning. John Sharp Williams can do it, and he is an orator, though nature did not have that in mind when she created him. His voice is not naturally that of an orator any more than was Senator Hoar's, and yet he, like Hoar, has made it as fine a vehicle for speechmaking as any in Congress. Williams never gets angry, 214 SEEN IN THE HOUSE is always in full possession of his facts, and has a graceful and winning delivery. Champ Clark, with a big reputation as a spellbinder, interests the House but does not move it. They all come in to listen, to laugh, to applaud, but he does not stir them ; they regard his speeches merely as an entertain ment. This is Clark's own fault. He is a man of knowledge and breadth, but he volun tarily chooses to play to the galleries ; he cul tivates a rough, harsh style, a loud voice and the things that please the crowd. The House knows it, and refuses to be moved. De Armond of Missouri, can at any time move the House profoundly, not by elo quence but by sarcasm. There is nowhere in the capitol such a master of bitter, stinging, savage irony. He almost never makes a speech without it. He pillories, crucifies, his victims ; it is not the genial satire of Will iams nor the tabasco of Grosvenor and Hep burn. One almost pities the victim, and yet one has to laugh. He speaks extempora neously, and yet every sentence is as rounded and finished as if he had spent hours in re- polishing it. Others might be named who can at a mo ment's notice rouse the House from apathy and make it listen, and who can extort from SEEN IN THE HOUSE 215 it, cynical as it is, thunders of applause. One such is the new man from Kentucky, Ollie James, a giant in size, with a voice like a church-organ, who succeeded with one speech on the Goebel case in plunging the House into a whole afternoon of violent partisan re crimination and lashing it to fury. After all, the House, weary as it is of speechmaking, is a good, rich field for the right man. There is always an atmosphere of democratic turbulence about it. The cold dignity of the Senate chills oratory. Ap plause is strictly forbidden there, but there is hardly any need for the rule ; the man who would applaud in the Senate Avould sing coon songs in a cathedral. An ice-house is a happy and felicitous auditorium compared with the Senate. The restless, busy, quick-lunch atmosphere which hangs over the House, the driving gait at which business is transacted there, forbid that man should altogether forget that he has nerves. It looks suspiciously on oratory, does the House, but it can be convinced, and it can be taken by storm. The Senate cannot. The Senate has never forgotten its dignity since the epoch-making day in 1900 when old Senator Pettus addressed himself conscien tiously to the task of proving to young Sena- 216 SEEN IN THE HOUSE tor Beveridge that the Senate did not care for eloquence. That day the grave and reverend senators pounded their desks and roared their unwonted mirth in stentorian peals. It had the effect of moderating Beveridge's rhetoric, and then the Senate returned to its ancient dignity. The Senate will always be a morgue for oratory ; the House will always be the best possible field for the right man. VIII BOUEKE COCKEAN : AND LITTLEFIELD, THE NEW "MAN FEOM MAINE" The first session of the Fifty-eighth Con gress was a do-nothing session, so stigmatized at the time by the writers for the press, until its closing week. Not that it did anything momentous in that week, except in a measure to redeem itself from the charge of being a session as interesting as the dictionary and as sparkling as ditchwater. In that closing week the power of oratory awakened it, and for days there was a tariff debate which was as nearly great as any debate in the House ever is. It had been a debate, too, greater than any held in the Senate for some years. The stars were Cockran, Dalzell, Littlefield and Will iams. It had been long since cheers punctu ated every other sentence of a speech on an economic issue, or on anything, for that matter ; and not in many years had eloquence aroused such fervent enthusiasm as did all these speeches. The subject, of course, had much to do with 217 218 SEEN IN THE HOUSE it. For a moment, if no more, there was a sudden revival of interest in the tariff ques tion. It seemed likely then that that would be the issue of the coming presidential cam paign — though events ordered otherwise — and the subject drew forth the powers of these orators and set an apathetic, cynical, disgusted House cheering like rooters at a ball game. The debate threw tons of earth on the buried theory that " the House is no place for oratory." Such thin foundation as that yarn ever had is simply the fact that orators are scarce and vital questions not as common as huckleberries. The House, fed daily on ora tory, is cynical and suspicious towards orators ; but that very fact gives the true orator a tri umph far above the cheap triumphs of the stump. No man could ask for a better arena and a better audience than Cockran, Dalzell, Littlefield and Williams had in those closing days. Bourke Cockran 's reentry into the national field that year was practically a birth. He was not the Cockran of old ; he was a bigger, broader Cockran and a far more dangerous foe. In his previous service in Congress he had made " set speeches," and no one knew him for the wonderful debater that he now proved himself to be. For it was in this de- W. BOURKE COCKRAN. " It was a new Cockran who had come to Congress." SEEN IN THE HOUSE 219 bate that there came that dramatic scene be tween Cockran and Dalzell, when Dalzell made imputations on the New Yorker's in tegrity and met a Waterloo. There was a fine, even an artistic, gradation in the way Cockran met the reckless and un fortunate persons who were one by one sent forth by the Republican leaders to trip him up, culminating in the avalanche that fell on Dalzell. The first interruption to his speech came from old General Marsh of Illinois. Mr. Marsh's interruptions were not very weighty, and Cockran treated the old gentle man with a half-kindly, half-contemptuous, wholly weary good humor. He met General Grosvenor with a gentle shower of ridicule which aroused the peppery Ohioan's wrath ; and when Grosvenor became angry the ridi cule continued and made a contrast with the general's futile heat that made even the Re publicans laugh uncontrollably. Sereno Payne then entered the lists and brought forth a sharper touch of Cockran 's blade, for the Republican floor leader was unwise enough to make a slur at John Sharp Williams. The retort from Cockran was no longer merely humorous ; it made Payne wince and change color, for in the deftest and the most stinging manner Cockran managed to suggest the con- 220 SEEN IN THE HOUSE trast between Leader Williams's popularity with his followers and Leader Payne's un popularity with his. By this time the Republicans began to think the matter was past a joke. The three leaders (not including the speaker) conferred and fatuously agreed that Dalzell should be sent forth to attack Cockran's integrity. That mis guided man pranced forth gayly, as did Louis Napoleon to his doom at Sedan, and Cockran went over Dalzell like a steam roller. From the moment when, challenged to pro duce the name of his informant, Dalzell began to shake and wither before the blast of Cock ran's stormy rage, the battle was lost. Dal zell's prestige did not recover for many a long day. Impotent and silently furious, the wise old speaker watched helplessly the fiasco which his ill-advised lieutenants had brought about and saw with indignation the humiliat ing predicament of his Republican army. The newspaper reports of the time — and still more, of course, the Congressional Record — utterly fail to give any idea of the dramatic nature of the scene when the whole Demo cratic side, rising as one man, shouted " Name him!" at Cockran's accuser, and Cockran, striding down the aisle, seemed to have evoked a whirlwind that was rushing down upon SEEN IN THE HOUSE 221 Dalzell and swallowing him up. Dalzell is no novice ; he is accustomed to parliamentary storms, and had never before been taken off his feet ; but beneath the tremendous onrush of that storm of indignation he lost himself, speech failed him, and to the mighty roar of " Sit down ! sit down ! " he gave in, and sat down. That day and that night the Democrats celebrated as after a victory in a national election. It had been many years since the old " rebel yell " had rung out in Congress, but it was loud amid the shouts and cheers that greeted Dalzell's downfall. In the even ing the Democrats held a sort of jubilee all over Washington. Wherever one met a crowd of Democrats they were toasting each other, slapping each other on the back and reciting all they could remember of Cockran's speech. The Metropolitan and National Hotels and other centres of Democracy looked like the campaign headquarters of a political party on the night of a successful election. It was a new Cockran who had come to Congress, not the old Cockran returned after a lapse of years. The wizard voice and the magic words set the House cheering like schoolboys, but the enthusiasm for his elo quence was a mere shadow of the wild and 222 SEEN TN THE HOUSE boiling frenzy that seized upon those men so cynically sick of much speechmaking when adversaries rose to impede his path and he tossed them out of his way like feathers. In giving us the new Bourke Cockran the session made up in large degree for its lack of accom plishment in other directions, as it did in pre senting to the country the quaintest and most lovable of speakers and in lifting into the limelight such a sterling character as John Sharp Williams. It dawned then upon Washington that Cockran had not ceased to grow, and he seemed less a man of the present than of the future — a future which may recall the days of Phillips, Beecher and Sumner, and give the American galaxy of orators another star. Next in the quartet comes Williams. There are some who, setting up a hard-fast rule for oratory, say that Williams is not one. If to do as he did in that debate — if so to thrill your audience that one moment every man of them is painfully holding his breath, the next moment letting out a sigh or a gasp, and then cheering like a lunatic in defiance of all the rules and customs of the House of Representatives, is to be an orator, then Williams is one, whether he conforms to tape-measure rules or not. SEEN IN THE HOUSE 223 But Williams is a House orator. Take him away from those surroundings and he loses something. As temporary chairman of the St. Louis Convention in 1904 he disappointed the expectations of those who had heard of him but had never seen him ; for that soft, slender voice of his was lost in that great arena. On the stump he does not compare with men by no means his equal as a speaker. It is in the House that he finds his field, and as a debater that he is great. Dalzell is usually dry and uninteresting, and has the wearisome vice of making up his speeches out of elaborate quotations from doc uments, interspersed with editorial comment ; but on the day, several days removed from Cockran's defeat of him, that he came to re ply, he rose to unexpected heights and got an ovation that must have surprised him and for which a long search through his recollections of his own life could have given him no prec edent. Anger, rising to the fury point, and born of Cockran's terrific onslaught upon him, drew the dry plodder out of himself and for the moment made an orator of him, despite his high voice rising to a screech and his un impressive little figure. Had he not been again overwhelmed the next moment by the magic voice and terrible indignation of Cock- 224 SEEN IN THE HOUSE ran, the speech would have been far more notable than it was. It was not all an assault on Cockran's character, though that was the part which received most mention in the newspapers ; half of it was on the Democrat's tariff views, and even there Dalzell was so un usually forceful, so unlike himself, as to sur prise his opponents and please his friends. It remains to speak of Littlefield, the fourth voice in this remarkable quartet which fur nished music and drama to a Congress that had been all cacophony and snores, and which re deemed a paralyzed and imbecile session from the contempt of man. Tall and straight as a pine-tree of his native State, strongly built as the woodsmen of the Rangely Lakes, yet with not an ounce of superfluous flesh ; with the long face and jut ting chin that mark the Yankee, the eye of an eagle, and the voice of an ocean storm off the coast of Maine, Littlefield was New Eng land incarnate as he faced the mellow- voiced, liquid-spoken planter from Mississippi in the last hours of the debate. Aggressiveness and pugnacity seem to sur round the man as he rises, and before he has said a word. His gestures would be ungrace ful if anybody else used them, but they so fit in with his character that they seem ex- CHARLES E. LITTLEFIELD. "New England incarnate." SEEN IN THE HOUSE 225 actly right, and as if anything else would be inadequate to the rough and stormy nature of the man. He gesticulates chiefly with his head, beating down the air with it as he brings out his points. Then he takes his hand out of his trousers pocket and swings it through the air with the motion of a man sweeping everything out of the way before him. When he raises his finger in the air it is not with the argumentative manner of a man discuss ing a proposition, but as if it were a weapon with which he would cleave the skull of any one so rash as to get in the way. If this suggests that Littlefield is a swash. buckler or a ranter, it conveys an error. He is a great constitutional lawyer, a man of breadth and profundity, sagacious, clear headed and liberal. These qualities are gen erally associated with " sweet reasonableness," softness of manner, and reserve. Littlefield is a broad-minded man who is also a fighter ; he is a compound of Hoar and Tillman. There is no dissent on either the Republican or the Democratic side from the proposition that he is one of the clearest thinkers and ablest men who have ever sat in either branch of the American Congress. By nature he is an " insurgent." He is one of the few Republicans in Congress who will iWfi SEEN IN THE HOUSE not only fight against a party policy he does not like, but vote against it. He entered the House in 1899, and his first speech was on the case of the Mormon Roberts. He took the unpopular side ; he defied his party and the sentiment of his State. Instead of being knocked out of public life by this daring performance — daring on the part of a new congressman — Littlefield stepped with that speech into the front rank of the House, new though he was, and almost im possible as that feat is to a new man. It was the strongest argument from the standpoint of constitutional law that had been heard in Congress for many a day ; far and away the greatest speech of that session. Then came President McKinley's fight for a tariff with Porto Rico. The new congress man stood out against the White House influ ence and the lash of the House machine, while other protestants were meekly swallowing their words. He and McCall of Massachusetts, a man of the Hoar type, delivered two really great speeches in defiance of their party, and Littlefield pounded the air with his head and beat it with his finger in his dogmatic way as he sent this opening sentence at the Repub lican leaders like a bullet from a gun : "Mr. Chairman : I believe that the pend- SEEN IN THE HOUSE 227 ing bill is un-Republican, un-American, un warranted, unprecedented, and unconstitu tional." Again, he fought his party on the Cuban reciprocity bill, solely because he believed it wrong. There are no beet-sugar factories in his district and nobody could slur him by the epithet, " beet-sugar Republican." The course that the chronic insurgent runs in Congress is generally swift and to a painful goal. But with every fresh insurrection Lit tlefield rose higher and higher, because his splendid ability and commanding power re ceived fresh illustration with each. The Re publican triumvirate growled and muttered, and looked on his progress with dismay, but there was nothing that could be done. All the old home remedies, all the approved and time-sanctioned methods of dealing with in surgents by the House grandmothers, all the good old-fashioned punishments that mother used to make, failed in the presence of such an uncommon man. Littlefield's undoing came in another way ; it came by reason of the prominence in which the end of the first session of the Fifty-seventh Congress left him. The president had just begun his campaign on trusts, and it was semi officially given out that Mr. Littlefield would 228 SEEN IN THE HOUSE be called in conference and entrusted with the legislative part of the work, as his " knowl edge of constitutional law was admitted." Thereupon certain newspapers friendly to the trusts began a campaign of ridicule against Littlefield. His personal characteristics, his home life, everything about him, were merci lessly lampooned. " The Roosevelt-Knox- Littlefield triumvirate " was held up to ridi cule, and when the summer was over and Congress ready to meet again the president, whose sensitiveness to criticism is well known, was sensitive about Littlefield. Besides that, Littlefield was really desirous of putting through an anti-trust measure. The president early discovered that this could not be done, and his programme settled down into a bill against rebates, presented by Sen ator Elkins, and the creation of the Bureau of Corporations in the Department of Com merce, presented by Senator Nelson. These were, or became, the administration measures. Littlefield still supposed he was the representative of the administration, and he went ahead with his bill. He actually did not discover the full truth until the day the Department of Commerce bill was to be put upon its passage. Then he went to the White House, and there is said to have been a hot SEEN IN THE HOUSE 229 explanation on both sides. Littlefield's bill was beaten, and the administration measures went through. Littlefield was left in a most ridiculous po sition. He was a fallen giant, and the House leaders, who had hitherto discreetly kept out of range of his sledge-hammer, came out of their caves and openly taunted him, flouted him, jeered at him. The power of ridicule is as great here as in France. Littlefield knew it, and being a man as full of sense as he is of dash and pugnacity, acted accordingly. He determined to accept his overthrow, retire from public view, and bide his time. He was completely effaced, and though that all happened at the begin ning of 1903, the spring of 1904 found Little field still sitting in the background, as far from the rays of the calcium as he could get. He knew he had only to wait ; that a man of his uncommon breed could not be snuffed out forever by one fiasco. He waited until the closing days of the session of 1904, and then burst forth from his retirement, the Lit tlefield of old, the official representative of his party, put forth to cross swords with Cockran and Williams on the issue of the hour. Yet even here his old-time independence of thought could not be cast away, party spokes- 230 SEEN IN THE HOUSE man though he was. When De Armond de manded to know if he would keep the tariff on goods sold abroad cheaper than at home, Littlefield bluntly answered that he would take it off; and Democratic applause inter rupted the speech of the Republican mouth piece, who could not, to save his life, be noth ing but a mouthpiece. His opening sentences were such a tribute to Cockran as marked most emphatically his dissent from Dalzell's assault on the New Yorker. But here, while his utterance car ried confusion into the camp of Dalzell, Payne and Grosvenor, he was not such an insurgent as might be supposed. There was a well- founded suspicion that that wise old gentle man affectionately known as " Uncle Joe " knew what he was going to do, and was not displeased with it. Mr. Cannon's stock of common sense runs from his bald spot to his heels, and he did not regard the Dalzell pro ceeding as the flower of political wisdom. In the closing hours of the session it was a sight furnishing much food for thought to see " Un cle Joe " conducting public business with the gavel in his right hand and his left arm twined affectionately around Bourke Cockran. Littlefield's day of humiliation was over; he had come out of his sackcloth and ashes SEEN IN THE HOUSE 231 and had donned his armor again. There is a big future before this big-bodied, big-brained man. His colleagues know it ; and though there are four representatives and two senators from the Pine-Tree State, Littlefield alone bears, by general consent, that illustrious and significant title which was borne first by Blaine and then by Reed, but by no one else — " the Man from Maine." IX HEARST IN COXGEESS The fact that a new and unknown force has entered politics in recent years, a force un knowable by any of the old rules, was dem onstrated in New York in the election of 1905. It was a surprise only to those who have not bothered to follow the public career of William Randolph Hearst ; who have dis missed him lightly and with contempt, as a mere notoriety-seeker. In the loose and careless classification of such idle observers, Hearst has been roughly classified with Bryan. Yet in the fight for the control of the Democratic convention of 1904, when Bryan was making his last des perate contest for the control of the party : when he was grasping at any straw, and when in his struggle he snatched even at the will- o'-the-wisp which he saw dancing by in the cheers for Cockrell ; he refused all tempta tions to ally himself with Hearst, There is no keener observer than Bryan ; and although Hearst seemed to be the only refuge for him, he knew that an alliance with Hearst was for him an impossibility. 232 SEEN IN THE HOUSE 233 Bryan is a radical ? Yes ; but between his radical Democracy and the unconcealed So cialism of Hearst there lies the widest gulf. Bryan is a conservative, compared to Hearst. If that favorite speculation of fireside philoso phers, an American 1789, could come to pass, there would be all the difference between Bryan and Hearst that there was between Mirabeau and Desmoulins. Hearst in Congress has been working for a definite end ; and those who think it is mere self-advertisement will find more awakenings than the one of 1905. He aims to be the cap tain of the forces of social discontent. He aims to organize and become the leader of the radicals of the country ; and in that scheme there is no place for Bryan. There is no present prospect of success for him ; but whenever there are hard times the tide of radicalism rises a little higher than it did in the previous panic. There was radicalism after the panic of 1873 ; but after the panic of 1893 radicalism seized upon one of the great political parties of the country and nominated its candidate for president. That was an advance over what radicalism had accomplished after the panic of 1873. After the next panic there may be another advance. This is seed time for Hearst, and if he is to reap a harvest it will 234 SEEN IN THE HOUSE be in the next panic. It is all guesswork to speculate on how far he can go when those hard times come. That he will have to be reckoned with, no impartial observer of his steady course can doubt. Bryan certainly cannot doubt it. Hearst in Congress has been scoffed at be cause he was careless about his attendance and about his votes. Hearst was only nomi nally there as the representative of the Elev enth New York District. Actually he was there as the representative of certain definite aims in the politics of this country. He was there as the apostle of social discontent. For bills improving creeks and removing desertion records he cared nothing. He never cared to attend except when something bearing on his own definite line of policy was involved. He was on hand when labor bills were up ; any chance to advance his socialistic principles did not find him idle. For speechmaking in the House he had nothing but unconcealed contempt. In 1905, when Sullivan of Massachusetts made that savage attack upon him, Sullivan thought to hurt him b}' holding up to scorn his voicelessness. The .shot glanced off. " I do not know any way," remarked Hearst, with supreme contempt, "in which a man can be- SEEN IN THE HOUSE 235 less effective for his constituents and less use ful to them than in emitting chewed wind on the floor of this House." But it is not as a mere believer in certain principles that Hearst interests himself in Congress. He is there to make himself, not a follower in the ranks, but the leader. Hence he takes active part only in those things wherein he may lead. And by the very vio lence of his methods, the very grim determi nation evident in everything he did to make himself the captain of the social insurgents, he gathered about himself a small knot of followers in his first session. In the second it grew. In the first many men who believed as he did held aloof because of the obloquy which clung to him and still more because of the story that his followers were paid to be such. By the second session this pay-roll story had ceased to be so generally accepted, and men of unquestioned honesty did not hesitate occasionally to enroll themselves in what was called in Washington " the Hearst brigade." In the first session " the Hearst brigade " consisted of six men. In the second it had grown to a dozen or more. In the present Congress it will be interesting to see whether he is any more of a force in the House than 236 SEEN IN THE HOUSE he was in 1904-5. The majority of the Demo crats look upon him with hatred, and at first they looked upon him with contempt. It is not impossible that that hatred may soon be intermixed with fear ; not fear of what he can actually accomplish in Congress, but fear of what he may do to the Democratic party outside of it. He is much more seriously reckoned with now in the Democratic party of the nation than when he first came to Congress. The laughter has died away long since. Hearst came to Congress in December, 1903. At the same time he entered upon his canvass for the presidential nomination. It is no unusual thing for a member of the House to be a prominent presidential possibility, but it is a very unusual thing for a congressman to be thus vividly in the limelight and yet for so little to be known about his work in Congress as was the case with Hearst. Hearst's position in Congress was as strange and isolated as was his boom unique among booms. He is not a "mixer," and the ma jority of the Democrats were as aloof from him as he from them. As a presidential can didate it was to be expected that he would be the centre of a knot of politicians seeking conference and counsel, whenever he entered SEEN IN THE HOUSE 23V the hall ; that he would be a marked man, his opinion sought, his handshake desired. Yet he went the usual road of new con gressmen, sought only by his own little clique of friends, as is the custom with all legislative tyros. When he came into the hall he sat chatting with his friend Hughes or Livernash, unsought and unregarded ; and when he arose to go his progress to the door was unchecked by any eager partisan seeking light or pledging support. Nor did he make any impression on Con gress or on the Democratic minority by his advocacy of his own views on public ques tions. He made these fights now and then, and as soon as he began one all the old war riors would take their seats, a silence would fall on them, and Hearst and his supporters had the field entirely to themselves. The Democratic party in the House was smitten and frozen with a torpidity like that of the Sleeping Beauty's court, as if Hearst had been a political fairy godmother weaving a spell of lethargy ; and on their motionless ranks there sat a silence so ostentatious that it was fairly blatant. The whole side seemed to wear a sign saying, " This does not concern us. Be hold us as spectators." When the fight was over, and Hearst and y:is SEEN IN THE HOUSE his cohorts retired, the old-line Democrats would wake to life, and the never-ending bat tle of regular Democrats and regular Repub licans was resumed in the same old way. Hearst's methods in conducting one of these fights were as peculiar and unprecedented as were all the other features of his novel boom. Before describing them it should be premised that he is a congressman who is very seldom in his seat. For the first half of his first session he was almost as unknown by sight to the fre quenters of the galleries as " Tim " Sullivan ; and that, let it be explained to the uninitiated, is a phrase which represents the uttermost limit. To Congress " Tim " Sullivan is a Mrs. Harris. He dawned on the opening day of his first session in resplendent clothes, and then evidently came to the conclusion that as a show the House was not what it was cracked up to be. Since that time no vision of Sul livan has repaid the straining eyes in the gal leries, and it is a current and growing tenet of the habitual spectators that " there ain't no sich a person." After a while Hearst came into the hall of- tener, but his visits were still infrequent and he never stayed long. He was recorded on very few roll-calls, and he never heard more than a snatch of a single debate, except those SEEN IN THE HOUSE 239 which he personally directed. The moment one of these Hearst debates was over he would arise and, sticking his hands in his pockets, lounge out of the House. His face and figure gradually grew more familiar to the galleries. Frequently a whis per of " There's Hearst ! " rushed through them, and everybody looked at the candidate, while down on the floor no one batted an eye. But if you took your eye off him for a minute it was like putting your hand on a fly and then taking it off; when you looked for him again he was gone. In the House, to sum it up, Hearst was no more than a spectator except when one of his own fights was on. He was hardly even that, for when he came in he conferred continually with the five or six men of " the Hearst bri gade," and went out as soon as his conference was over ; and it is a safe bet that he did not even know what was up for consideration. But in committee work it was different. At the beginning of the session he desired a place on the Labor Committee. Leader Will iams had already made up his slate before Hearst entered the field, and he told the can didate so and expressed his regret. Mr. Hearst took the decision good-naturedly and made no comment. Shortly thereafter petitions from 240 SEEN IN THE HOUSE labor unions all over the country began to pour in on Speaker Cannon and Mr. Williams to put Hearst on the committee ; meetings be gan to be held, and organized labor appeared to be in a state of volcanic eruption. Cannon and Williams remained firm, but one of Williams's appointees bowed to the storm. This man gracefully resigned in Hearst's favor, and the Labor Committee was completed accordingly. Perhaps this will af ford illustration enough of the absolutely unique methods by which the Hearst contin gent prosecute every enterprise connected with their movement. Hearst also desired to get on the Ways and Means Committee, but this was totally impos sible, and he settled down to his work on the other. Here his work has been consistently in line with his views. He has attended all the meetings at which testimony has been taken, and has participated in them. The labor bills before the committee in that session were the eight-hour and convict-labor measures. The former was a sore point with the Republicans, with a presidential election coming on, and they were aware that Hearst and his lieutenant on the committee, Hughes of New- Jersey, would fight to have the measure brought up. They endeavored to meet the WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST. " The apostle of social discontent." SEEN IN THE HOUSE 241 emergency by the strategic device of holding endless hearings which were to string the thing out to the end of the session without re sult. In these hearings Hearst frequently asked questions and made suggestions designed to bring out the organized labor side of the case. He pointed to the trial of the eight-hour sys tem in England, and he crossed swords with witnesses over the argument against the eight- hour law on government contracts that it would delay the work. He opposed to this the shift system, pointing out how he, as an employer himself, kept his own plant running night and day. On the convict labor bill he produced testi mony, hunted up witnesses, and in general managed the discussion of the bill before the committee. In addition to this, he took a share in pushing labor bills before other com mittees. He worked for the anti-injunc tion bill before the Judiciary Committee and for the bill relieving unions from the opera tion of the anti-trust laws before the Ways and Means Committee. In both cases he pro duced witnesses and secured their attendance. It would probably not have detracted from Mr. Hearst's popularity with those who sup ported him if they had known that he paid 242 SEEN IN THE HOUSE absolutely no attention to any bills but labor bills, and that so far as legislation of any other kind is concerned he might as well not be a member of Congress. Nor should it ; he is in Congress for a purpose, laboring towards a single end, and does not scatter his fire. What he is doing is as nearly unique as the position he occupies, and it is not fair to judge him by the tests that are applied to other con gressmen. But the most picturesque side of Hearst's life in Congress was seen when a fight came up on one of his pet measures. A single ex ample will serve — the time in 1904 when " the Hearst brigade " attempted to add the eight-hour law to the Naval Appropriation bill, and thus flank the Republican plan of eternal oratory in the Labor Committee. Mr. Hearst surprised everybody by coming in, and there was the usual craning of necks in the gallery and the usual ostentatious in difference on the floor. Then began one of the strangest scenes ever witnessed in Con gress, and one absolutely without precedent. Without uttering a word except in a whis per ; sitting on the small of his back with one long knee in the air, and apparently having nothing to do with the debate, for three-quar ters of an hour he kept the House in a turmoil. SEEN IN THE HOUSE 243 He issued assignments to his followers as if he were issuing them to his reporters in his news paper office, first to one and then to another ; only instead of assignments to write " stories," they were assignments to offer amendments, make speeches or rise to parliamentary points. The old-line Democrats looked on silently at the curious scene. The members of " the Hearst brigade " would come over to their chief one after another and get their assign ments. Immediately afterwards the man as signed to the work would arise and throw a new bomb into the Republican side. All this time the chief never changed his position ex cept once when he walked around to give an assignment personally to Mr. Livernash — who was formerly a reporter on Mr. Hearst's San Francisco paper. Throughout the fight un versed and unsophisticated tourists in the gal leries never suspected that the silent man sitting crouched in his chair had anything to do with the fight ; much less that he was the head centre of it. He played on the House like a piano, and succeeded amply in his purpose — to put the Republicans on record against the eight-hour bill. There was a scene of confusion which attested how thoroughly the Republicans were scared, and at last they were forced to the 244 SEEN IN THE HOUSE expedient of depriving Hearst's supporter, Hughes, of the floor. It was an extraordinary sight. He and his handful of supporters were the whole show, and no debate so run has ever been witnessed in the house before. It was unique, like all the curiosities of the Hearst boom. When it was over and the eight-hour bill beaten, Hearst put his hands in his pockets and lounged out. The scene no longer interested him, and when the roll-call came on the pas sage of the bill he was absent, paired with Hepburn. But for three-quarters of an hour a man who had never uttered a word had been the dominating figure of the House. After he came to Washington the political atmosphere of that town was changed. Ru mors of money filled the air ; the atmosphere was thick with the talk of it. Every incom ing train to this centre of the nation's politics brought stories, whether true or false, of some new barrel tapped in some new town, brought reports of some new pay-roll opened. But believe the worst of it, believe all of it, and still he mightily deceives himself who thinks the Hearst boom was all a question of money. The leaders of the labor unions and the old-time radicals swarmed to Hearst, backed by moss-backed country politicians SEEN IN THE HOUSE 245 in the southwest who knew of Hearst only as the one New York editor who supported Bryan in 1896. It was not money with the radicals ; with them it was a fight for life, a desperate struggle in the stronghold, a wild effort to get out from under the wheels of the oncoming army. That decisive majority which wanted to win, even at the cost of abandoning the issues of 1896 and 1900 or of saying nothing about them, was coming over to fatten the slender ranks of the " gold-bug " Democracy ; doom was written large over the radicals ; in all the land they saw only one banner waving which offered any hope to them, and it was the banner of Hearst ; and they flocked to it. The meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Washington was a revelation. From every part of the land swarmed troops of radical politicians ; they flooded the Shore- ham's corridors and truculently read the riot act to the National Committee. They wanted the convention held at Chicago, and their demeanor was so Berserkian and their lan guage so much in King Camb}7ses' vein that the leaders took fright. " This is the mob," they said, " or rather the conjunction of the mob and the pay-roll. If it so vociferously swaggers here at the 246 SEEN IN THE HOUSE Shoreham, what will it do at the Chicago Convention ? " So, to save the Democratic Convention from a too close resemblance to a certain gallery- ruled convention which assembled in France a century ago, they changed their minds and sent it to St. Louis. It was a glimpse of the subterranean work ings of the Hearst movement, a sudden crop ping of unsuspected forces into the light of day, but it was enough. The Hearst move ment had not scared the party leaders — not then — but it came out of the caves and showed its teeth at the Shoreham, and the leaders took no chances. When, beaten at St. Louis, Hearst came back to Congress, he resumed his old tactics. In the short session of 1905 he actually suc ceeded several times in causing some embar rassment to the Democrats of the House ; notably in the case of the railroad rate bill. Yet so far he has accomplished nothing seri ous ; and as long as the present financial and commercial conditions endure, he will not have the slightest real effect on the solid and imperturbable body of Democrats who sit in the House of Representatives at the right hand of Speaker Cannon. What hard times might do is another question. SEEN IN THE HOUSE 24V For timid ones whose hearts misgive them and whose pocketbooks shrink at the name of Hearst, there may be comfort in the atti tude of the Congress Democrats. With all its fury, the Hearst movement has not even dented the solid minority. The " Hearst bri gade " has never enrolled above a dozen men ; and neither money, nor dash, nor the blud geon and sledge-hammer methods of Hearst's papers towards any one who looks askance at their chief, has moved that calm and stolid mass one inch. The old Democratic warriors of Congress look on the proceedings of the dozen men of the Hearst brigade as seasoned old tomcats, scratch-faced veterans of many a hard-fought back-fence, might look on the antics of a litter of new-born kittens in the sunshine. X MAESE SYDNEY MUDD AND HIS KINGDOM One of the most picturesque figures in Con gress is a man who in a Maryland district has built up an organization that makes Tammany look like a mass-meeting. It is a strictly per sonal organization, but it has all the star Tammany features, with a contemporaneous human interest that Tammany sometimes lacks. The man is " Marse Sydney," less widely known as Representative Sydney E. Mudd — a man who has established a kingdom under a republican form of government. The district takes in part of Baltimore City, but for the most part it stretches through the southern part of Maryland to the Potomac, a region of old families, old prejudices, sleepy colonialism, and the colored brother. The man is about the slickest politician in either House of Congress, and yet a man of character so forceful as to be almost brutal, were it not relieved by his abounding good humor. It has been jokingly said in the Fifth Dis trict, " If the opposition were to offer ten dol lars a vote, the niggers would vote for Marse Sydney if he only had two." Mudd himself 248 SEEN IN THE HOUSE 249 once said, when the opposition threatened to run a very popular man against him, one who had barrels of money at his command, " I hope they'll run him ; it will add to the pros perity of my district. My people will take his money and vote for me." Which was not a boast, an empty and vainglorious brag ; Mudd never indulges in such things. One of the characteristics of the Tammany organization is that the district leader takes an interest in his people all the year round, and looks out for their comfort and welfare and pays their fines. Mudd has this system beaten to a standstill. He does all that and more. If a man wants a job, Mudd will get it for him even if the difficulties in the way would overpower any ordinary politician ; but if the job is absolutely not to be had, Mudd will support the man out of his own pocket until a job can be found. Such are his ideas of the responsibilities of an un crowned king to his subjects. He keeps the State Central Committee out of his district. He will not allow the Repub lican organization to enter. " You'd only mix things up," he says to them ; " these peo ple wouldn't like your ways. Leave it to me." Not long ago one of his constituents came to him and asked him for a consulship. Mudd 250 SEEN IN THE HOUSE looked at him steadily out of his steely, cal culating blue eyes, and said, " I won't do it." "Why not?" demanded the constituent. " Haven't I done great work for the party ? " " Yes," said Mudd. " Do you suppose I'd send any man out of the country who had done good enough work to deserve a consul ship? I've been in Congress eight years, and I've never expatriated a good worker yet. No, sir ; I need your vote." The corridor of the capitol which leads to the file clerk's room is popularly known as " Mudd Avenue." Here the constituents of Mudd line up and wait for him, and along here he proceeds, dealing out justice, awarding plums and refusing them. It looks like an ancient crowd of Britons waiting to be touched for the king's evil. The wood-box outside the Republican exit from the House has been the scene of many embryo conventions. Here Mudd used to sit when constituents came to see him, and lay his plans for knocking out the Republican State organization headed by Senator McComas. When a new congressman comes here Mudd's favorite witticism is to tell the stran ger that if he is in danger of stage fright when he makes his first speech, he can practice on " the mass-meeting " assembled daily in Mudd SEEN IN THE HOUSE 251 Avenue. His reputation as a getter of jobs has extended so far that people outside his district come here and try to palm themselves off as constituents of his. Mudd claims that he has developed a sixth sense ; in ninety- nine cases out of a hundred he can tell at a glance whether a man comes from his district or not. He got a letter one day from a minister who wanted some congressional favor. " I do not live in your district, I must confess," he wrote ; " but I hope to die there." Mudd wrote back that he would like to oblige his corre spondent, but he always gave the preference to people whose residence in his district began before death. Once Mudd came out of his house at 8:30 o'clock in the morning to get breakfast at a hotel. It was two o'clock in the afternoon when he sat down to his coffee and rolls. Allowing five minutes to an interview, one can figure from this how many subjects were wait ing to be touched for the king's evil that day. A Marylander came to Mudd's house to see him, and at the close of the interview said, " I guess I'll put up here for the night." " I'm sorry," said Mudd, " but several of my constituents got here before you, and every bed in the house is occupied." 252 SEEN IN THE HOUSE "That's all right," said the subject; "I'll sleep on the sofa." And he did. But Mudd does not truckle to his subjects. They know their claims and their rights, but they are meekly and humbly submissive — at least the black ones are — and he cracks the whip over them like a feudal lord. He settles their family disputes and orders them around in a fashion that the Black Douglas would have envied and copied. " I haven't any place that I can give you," said Mudd autocratically to an importunate constituent. " Oh, yes, you have," replied the youth confidently. " I know you have. I have a brother-in-law in the navy yard, who controls fifty votes, and I think you'll find a job for me." " Oh ! " said Mudd, apparently crestfallen and humble. " I didn't know that. Why didn't you tell me that at first? Who is he?" " His name is ," replied the youth, swelling with his conquest over the un crowned king, and visibly adding to his chest measurement. " Oh ! " said Mudd, and his jaws snapped together and his eyes shot fire. " That's his name, eh ? Well, you go to that damned idiot SEEN IN THE HOUSE 253 and tell him that if he dares to open his head on any subject without my permission on a signed card, I'll have his head off before the morning." If a constituent of Mudd's wants a job he is pretty sure to get it. If there is no place in the government service, Mudd finds him one somewhere. He was long on the District of Columbia Committee, and the district corpora tions are as submissive to power as corporations elsewhere. When you ride on a Washington trolley-car, the conductor who rings up your fare is a Mudd constituent ; the motorman who stops to let you on is from Mudd's dis trict, and the inspector who comes in to look at the register is a subject too. The guides in the capitol are largely Mudd men. The indignation of congressmen has been aroused because when they go into the House restaurant the}7 cannot get waited on, while every waiter in the place flies to Mudd. "Marse Sydney" got them all their jobs. ' When a campaign is on, then Mudd is in his glory. He gets on a four-horse wagon, with a brass band, and dashes through the district ; and the negroes come out at the sound of the music and watch, with admiring eyes, Marse Sydney flashing by. It appeals to the negro idea of pomp and glory. 254 SEEN IN THE HOUSE When a crowd collects, Marse Sydney stops and addresses them, and nearly always in sonorous terms upon the issues of the day. He talks of currency and tariff in words high above their comprehension, and the negroes drink in every polysyllabled word and think of Marse Sydney as the president's chosen confidant. At a barbecue in Riverdale, four years ago, an interested spectator from Wash ington saw a roasting ox surrounded by hun dreds of negroes, all wearing as medals little disks of pasteboard, with " McKinley and Mudd " written on them ; and then Marse Sydney came out to face the adoring gaze of the populace. " You've never had a congressman as good as I am ! " he thundered to the crowd. " That sounds like egotism, but look at the record. Who was it that kept the Naval Academy from being taken away from here and put down somewhere on the coast of Maine? " " Mudd ! " roared a thunderous chorus. " You're right it was ; and where would you be without the Naval Academy ? " The Democrats have done everything im aginable to oust Mudd. They devised an intricate ballot, designed to fool the illiterate blacks. Nominally it was an " educational test " ballot. Mudd opened schools for his SEEN IN THE HOUSE 255 negroes, and lie opened them before the Demo crats could open similar schools for the whites. Every night the negroes were seen going to the schools in droves. The result was what Mudd had anticipated, from his knowledge of human nature. When it became a recognized custom for the negroes to go to school every night, the illiterate whites were ashamed to follow their example, for fear of being con founded with them. The result was a heavy falling-off in the Democratic vote and a big increase in Mudd's plurality. Mudd's school contained only one depart ment of instruction. All party emblems be ing banished from the ballot, he showed his pupils how to recognize the letter " R " so that they could vote the Republican ticket. " You all know what an ox-yoke looks like, don't you ? " he demanded. " Well, look on the printed words till you see an ox-yoke with one end hanging down," and he drew a large " R " on the blackboard. " Make your mark under that." The Democrats undertook to overcome this simple instruction by eliminating all party designations from the ballot. The words " Re publican " and " Democrat " have disappeared. Mudd taught his negroes to recognize the word " Mudd " if they saw it printed among 256 SEEN IN THE HOUSE a million. Then the Democrats took to print ing the ballot in old English script, and Mudd taught his faithful followers how to meet that obstacle. Finally the Democrats announced their intention to run a man named Samuel A. Mudd against him, as all Mudds would look alike to the colored brother. Mudd concen trated his attention upon teaching the negroes the difference between the letters A and E. In 1904 he was fighting not only the Demo crats but the Republican organization, and they had it all framed up to down him. Knowing that the enemy wTere counting con fidently on beating him, an acquaintance said, " Mr. Mudd, when do you expect to be re nominated? " " On May 3d," said he, " and at precisely 12:20 o'clock, if the convention meets promptly." He was. To a man who asked him for a job, Mudd asked if he were a resident of the district. " Not now, but I was until a month ago," said the applicant. " Young man," said Mudd, " the past tense doesn't go in politics." There was a story once that Speaker Reed had charged the Maryland delegation with being made up of " damned fools and damned rascals." " Well," said Mudd, with visible SYDNEY E. MUDD. ' His worst enemy never charged him with being a hypocrite." SEEN IN THE HOUSE 257 complacency, when he heard it, " he couldn't have meant me when he said damned fools." A curious thing about Mudd's following is that it is made up not only of negroes but of the old and aristocratic Maryland families. He comes of an excellent family himself and is a man of pretty good education. As speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates he intro duced the Reed rules before Reed ever heard of them, counting quorums, putting appeals only when he chose and failing to hear mo tions that he did not like. He told the House it was there to do business, and that it could not waste time on politics. The Democrats of his district like him as well as the Republicans, and he gets their votes. Once they proposed to endorse him, but Mudd sternly vetoed the project and insisted on their putting up a candidate. All the Democratic hostility to Mudd comes from outside the district. Olive-skinned, with wavy black hair, he would be a handsome man but for his cold and cynical blue eyes. His worst enemy never charged him with being a hypocrite. Though his domain is a small one, he is one of the most interesting politicians in the United States, and were it larger he would be a man of fame. IV THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" JOHN HAY No man in Washington was the object of more general affection than John Hay. To no man who has lived there can Tennyson's phrase be applied more truly : " He bore without abuse the grand old name of gentle man." Could the men who knew him there have the writing of his epitaph it would be that. His death in 1905 came as no surprise at home. He had never been a well man since the violent death of his son Adelbert on June 23, 1901. Following that shock came death after death in the circle of his own family and friends, including the assassination of President McKinley, whom his premier really loved. Within a few months it was common gossip that the secretary of state was ageing very fast. His old-time kindly humor seemed forced ; his conversational brilliancy shone with an effort, and he became almost a hypo chondriac. Long before his death he counted himself a dead man. His friends believed that there 261 262 " THE OTHER ujnd OF THE AVENUE" was nothing really very serious the matter, and held to that belief long after the secretary had given up hope of doing more than pro longing his life for a few years or months. He was right and they were wrong. In McKinley's administration Mr. Hay fitted well. His quiet dignity, his calmness, serenity, and gravity of judgment were har monious with the general background. When the next administration came in with its rush and hustle and its incessant bustling activity, Mr. Hay seemed for a long time to be out of the picture. It was freely predicted in those days that he would get out of the Cabinet, not that he did not admire Mr. Roosevelt, but be cause the atmosphere of the administration was so different from that to which he had been accustomed. The prophets were discomfited. Despite the antipodal differences between his character and Mr. Roosevelt's, Mr. Hay fell easily into the same place in the new administration that he had occupied in the preceding one, and demonstrated that he had the same place in Mr. Roosevelt's confidence and respect that he had enjoyed in Mr. McKinley's. The presi dent had a profound respect for Hay's judg ment, and at various times there have' been re ports that the secretary's advice saved his " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 263 chief from serious errors. Notable among these instances was the Venezuelan imbroglio with Great Britain and Germany. In Mr. Hay's early tenure of the secretary ship he was bitterly lampooned and savagely denounced. He was a mark for the most op probrious epithets, so much so that careless readers of newspapers got the idea that there was something scandalous in his retention in the Cabinet. In 1900, when Mark Hanna, stumping South Dakota for McKinley, was defending the administration, voices in the crowd shouted as an unanswerable argument : " How about Hay ? " Because of this Mr. Hay enjoyed such an experience as has fallen to few statesman in American history. The recognition of his great abilities and high worth came almost sud denly. The taunts were turned to tribute, the abuse to praise, and from all over the country there came a swelling chorus of admiration and appreciation which accompanied him down the last years of his life with no diminu tion. Rarely has it happened that an Ameri can statesman, by no force but the compel ling one of his own merit, has completely silenced criticism and spent the most active years of his life amid the unstinted applause of his fellow citizens. 264 "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" He was a sensitive man, and, had not this wonderful change come when it did, he would probably not have stayed in the Cabinet. His nature, gentle despite its strength, shrank from unfair and unfounded criticism. But sensi tive as he was, he was not so sensitive as some thought him. He suffered keenly from those taunts ; and yet so great was his sense of humor that even while he writhed, every thing that had any element of fun or wit in the criticism took his fancy. He collected the cartoons that were printed of him, getting the originals from their authors wherever he could, and the best he framed and hung in the innumerable rooms in his big house that were devoted to pictures and books. There is a little room in the beautiful Aay home, midway between the doorway and Hay's old study, wherein he received casual visitors. It was hung with pictures, not so pretentious as those outside ; and among them, for a long time, was the original of one of the cartoons which poked fun at him in the days before he won his tribute of universal praise. An over-sensitive man would have shrunk from having it on view ; but Hay framed it and hung it up, not only for the laughter of his friends, but for the mirth of visiting strangers. With the sudden revulsion in feel- JOHN HAY. "The statesman who labored most effectively in these days to make America great." " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 265 ing towards him the cartoons, too, changed and became genial instead of bitter. In the general admiration which he com pelled, there was always a note of surprise. His ways at last were better known to his countrymen than they were when, in 1900, he first evinced a disposition to claim for his country a new chieftainship among the nations of the world, to be first and topmost in a new way that was not the way of Jefferson Brick ; but every time he displayed it, it had the charm of novelty, because the swiftness and finality of his proceedings seemed so out of character in a gentleman who wore such a misleading aspect of gentleness and serenity. The Russo-Japanese war was exceedingly young, and the doddering chancelleries across the water had only begun to work themselves up to the point of thinking it might be well not to have the war get into China, when Mr. Hay, in his accustomed way, stepped to the front and drew a line around China, within which hostilities should not enter. He did it after his familiar precedent of drawing up a note to which everybody would assent, but which nobody else was anywhere near draw ing up. He was also two weeks ahead of anybody else in extracting from China the assurances of 266 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " neutrality that so comforted Russia's guilty conscience, exacerbated as it was by the pres ence of that Chinese army on Kuropatkin's flank. Mr. Hay's international primacy was always based on the fact that he worked while thev slept. Every international triumph of his, to the very last, came with a little shock of sur prise, because these triumphs seemed to belong to a more strenuous exterior and a more tooth-gnashing aspect ; and yet since 1900 the American public had become tolerably used to these things. In the presence of that sudden awakening of long-dormant and terrifying forces in 1900, when the ancient world suddenly awoke to life in China and confronted modern civiliza tion, the nations of the globe were taken by surprise, and stood irresolute, hesitating, wait ing for a leader. The foreign offices were in a helpless panic ; the rules for dealing with such convulsions were not laid down in their little books. Mr. Hay took the lead, without hesitating a moment, and the nations of the world, rec ognizing the hand of a master, fell in and followed. In every step of that crisis his was the initiative, and the " allied powers " were his regiment. With sure step he strode amid " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 267 the perils of that uprising, and what with weak or ignorant handling might have turned into a world-cataclysm, the conflict of antiq uity with modernity on a scale vaster than the fall of Rome, subsided into the record of a Boxer riot and a punitive expedition. Common sense and that out-of-character strenuousness were the guiding principles, when, after thus leading the world for three months, Hay opened communication with the beleaguered legations in the face of jeering and incredulous Europe; when he forced their relief after Europe had given up all idea of advancing on Peking till fall ; and having thus averted the massacre and saved China from crime and the world from a tragedy, he stepped in between the fallen old Empire and the wolves and saved China from a tragedy and Europe from a crime. In William Vaughn Moody's poem, "The Quarry," he imagines China as a sacred ele phant, decrepit with age, fleeing from pur suers. And thus he tells the figure the American eagle played : "Panting, foaming, on the slot Came many brutes of prey, their several hates Laid by until the sharing of the spoil. Just as they gathered stomach for the leap, The sun was darkened, and wide-balanced wings 26s " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" Beat downward on the trade-wind from the sea. A wheel of shadow sped along the fields And o'er the dreaming cities. Suddenly My heart misgave me, and I cried aloud, ' Alas ! What dost thou here ? What dost thou here?' The great beasts and the little halted sharp, Eyed the grand circler, doubting his intent. Straightway the wind flawed and he came about, Stooping to take the vanward of the pack ; Then turned, between the chasers and the chased, Crying a word I could not understand — But stiller-tongued, with eyes somewhat askance, They settled to the slot and disappeared.'' That was the beginning, and it was what brought the change from jeers to applause. That Chinese crisis was one long series of tri umphs. The first general recognition of it was when he insisted on opening communica tion with the beleaguered legations at Peking in the face of Great Britain's assurances that it was no use because the besieged were all dead. There was almost a tone of resentment in the British comments, for a memorial meet ing had been arranged in London for the de ceased, and it went against the British grain to have to accept the entirely new idea that the deceased were still alive. But aside from this barely perceptible note of protest, there was no dissent from the universal tribute which greeted this beginning. " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 269 And yet it was not a beginning ; for from the earliest days of the disturbances Hay had been assuming the international primacy in the same way. It took a spectacular event like the relief of the legations, however, to impress the fact upon the general mind. Of those earlier days, when he was still assuming this primacy, but before it had been generally recognized, and before yet the chorus of defa mation had died away, the writer published a sketch in The New York Times of that day. It is reprinted here, as a picture of the beginnings of Hay's greatness, and because of a certain personal satisfaction in the way it " came true " : " Mr. Secretary, there is a charge in this morning's Daily So-and-So " " Yes," interrupted the Hon. John Hay, energetically, " and there will be a charge in the Daily So-and-So every day from now until election, and you will get the first news of the scandal if you will be alert and get an early copy of the paper." This conversation is an extract from one of the regular daily seances which the newspaper correspondents hold with the secretary of state in his office in the big white building on Seventeenth Street. It is memorable as being perhaps the only instance in which the genial, courteous head of the nation's foreign affairs 270 « THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" ever gave evidence that he was aware of the malignant and unreasonable attacks which are being made upon him in some newspapers every day. Assailed, caricatured, ridiculed, and slan dered as he is, the secretary of state seldom gives any indication of being ruffled. He is always the personification of courtesy and kindness to newspaper men, and is invariably ready to assist them to a correct understand ing of what is going on. Another Cabinet officer, who has been better treated by the newspapers than any other member of the ad ministration, is the only one who makes a habit of sneering at them and appearing to consider himself injured by what they print. With few exceptions, the newspapers have treated this gentleman with the greatest re spect and fairness ever since he took office ; yet he rarely speaks of them without a sar casm. Mr. Hay, who has ground, if anybody has, to complain of misrepresentation and un reasonable vilification at the hands of some of them, never utters a word against them as a class. This is in line with Mr. Hay's deportment in everything. He is a quiet," reserved man, who makes no attempt to blow his own trumpet even when he has accomplished something of national importance. There are plenty of officials who never do anvthing without spreading it abroad with a mighty blare of the personal bugle. Mr. Hay simply attends to business, and never gives any indication " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 271 that he has accomplished anything worth mentioning. Always ready to give informa tion when it is not incompatible with the interests of the government, his own achieve ments are the things on which he is most re served, and a national triumph is quite likely to be among the things extorted from him by persistent questioning, among a lot of minor details. It is due to the newspaper men, and not to Secretary Hay, that the country has learned promptly of his success in many great affairs of state. Accustomed to disentangle the im portant from the mass of unimportant, they have again and again seized on real triumphs of the State Department and made them known, without any effort on the part of the secretary. His friends say that he is a man who likes to have his work appreciated, but he never gives any indication of it to the newspaper correspondents with whom he is in daily contact. He continually gives the im pression of a man who is so absorbed in doing his duty as best he knows how that he has not taken the time to think how it will strike the people or what measure of approbation it will bring to him. To the newspaper men, who have perhaps better opportunities of judging him than come to most persons, it seems that in this great crisis, in which a third of the world is arrayed against the rest, the interests of the United States are in the hands of a modest, self-reliant but not self-seeking gentle man, whose head is always cool, whose judg- 272 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " ment is always clear, and who holds the helm quietly and firmly with the hand of a master. Less has been written about the secretary of state than about any of the other members of the Cabinet. No secretary of state in re cent years has been less known to the public. The personalities of Root, Long, Gage and Smith are as familiar to the public as those of any other statesmen or politicians in the country. But the State Department runs so quietly under the hand of Hay that no one remembers or thinks of noticing the silent en gineer. With every new achievement of the State Department, quietly made and modestly recorded, some newspaper editor seizes upon it and records with surprise that this is indeed a triumph. It always comes with a little shock of surprise, because it is hard to asso ciate the idea of these triumphs with the quiet, silent man who seems fairly hidden from pub lic view behind a pile of hard work in the State Department. A few years ago it would have been regarded as a matter of momentous historical importance that, in a great world-wide crisis, the United States, a newcomer in the family of nations, should have stepped in and directed the policy of the whole world. But that is practically what the United States, under Mr. Hay's lead, has done. The nations of the world, all guided by famous statesmen with established reputations, were taken by surprise by the Chinese crisis, and halted, irresolutely wait ing for a leader. In that emergency the leader " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 273 was found. He was the quiet gentleman in Washington, with no reputation as a famous statesman. He did not announce himself as the leader of the nations nor make any blare of trumpets. He simply stepped in, in the same grave, quiet fashion in which he has directed every matter confided to his charge, and the nations recognized instinctively that a man of power had come. They have fol lowed him like lambs ever since. This would have been regarded as a tre mendous event a few years ago. Perhaps it would have attracted universal attention and aroused universal admiration as such now, if the secretary of state had had any genius or liking for self-advertisement. But he had not. When the reporters, having gathered enough elsewhere to convince them that such was the case, went to the secretary and asked him if it was not true that the United States had formulated the policy of the world in a certain important detail of the Chinese crisis, the secretary hesitated a moment, and then gravely and deprecatingly replied : " Well, perhaps we were the first to take that attitude." Since then the correspondents have seen every new phase of the Chinese crisis unfold, with the United States taking the lead and directing the Cabinets of the world in every one, and the conviction is growing that the solution of the great problem now upon the age will in the end depend more upon John Hay than upon any other man in the world. 274 " THE OTHER niyv ur 1 1 1 v, a v Ejn u jl- He created a new diplomacy, the diplomacy of blunt candor, good faith and doing things. It has been the tradition of diplomacy that everything is an insoluble problem, and must be approached with caution. Such was her attitude towards Roumania's treatment of the Jews. Hay simply walked up to the door of that insoluble problem and knocked. He ap pealed to Roumania to be decent. Not being a European premier, he could do no more; but it was a finger-post to Europe which the Foreign Offices might have followed, and it showed how the insoluble problem would have been approached had Roumania been on this continent or Hay in Downing Street. And it succeeded. In China he said, " Trust the Chinese," and though Europe laughed, it turned out to be the way to solve the problem. In Venezuela he stepped in between South America and the European powers and sent them to the court of arbitration, and at the same time he saved this country from the blunder of arbitrating between Venezuela and the powers. A score of triumphs dot his path. There have been some secretaries of state who were greater in other ways, such as Blaine and Seward and Webster ; but, looking solely at his record, it would be hard to find one "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 275 who has been greater simply as secretary of state. A short man, extraordinarily punctilious in dress, with an attentively combed beard, a pleasant manner, an attractive face, and a voice of singular precision and sibi lance ; a man of aristocratic tastes and ways, and democratic manners and language ; a man who could use slang efficiently in private conversation when there was need for it and who wielded the English language like a musical instrument in his public utterances, and who always wore evening dress in his own house after six o'clock — that was the outward man of the secretary of state who has done more to make America truly great among the nations of the earth than all the spread-eagle orators from the time of Martin Chuzzlewit to the era of Albert J. Beveridge. The impression was abroad that Hay was an aristocrat. In his tastes he was, but not in his manners. He was democratic, affable, though always dignified. He sometimes, when talk ing to one he could trust, discussed great in ternational questions in pungent idioms and with a Yankee rough-and-readiness that was proof positive of his authorship of " Pike County Ballads." That sense of humor of his, evident in his 276 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " writings, was as sunshiny and abundant as was that of his old chief, Abraham Lincoln. Epigrams and witticisms bubbled from him in the most casual conversation, and his fund of stories was equal to any draft. His stories were very short, usually only a few sentences long, and invariably fitted the case in point as if made for it. He was not a man who could be slapped on the back, even in a figurative sense. The rough democracy of American public life seemed to have found a partial exception in him. And yet, by a paradox, he was more really approachable, easier to get at and to be come confidential with, than most of the men who can be slapped on the back. His dainty precision of speech, his air of being always the gentleman, his lack of rough bonhomie, account for one feature of this para dox. His good nature, his bubbling humor and glittering wit, and his command at need of the great American slang habit may par tially explain the other. Often has the writer heard Mr. Hay discuss great international questions with an idiomatic fluency that would have given points to George Ade, and yet in such a manner that his dignity did not suffer the slightest damage. His relations with newspaper men were il- " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 277 lustrative of his character. The questions before his department were the gravest and most delicate that come before any. Inter national consequences of a serious character might follow any slip. Some previous secre taries of state — notably one who is famous for a rough manner that seems more democra tic than Mr. Hay's dainty dignity — had made it as difficult as possible for the correspondents here to get news. Mr. Hay treated them with the utmost con fidence, and did so in the most natural man ner, as if no other course could possibly have entered his head. He had not the least hesi tation in discussing any international ques tion with a newspaper man whom he knew, and would not even take the trouble to say : " Don't quote me." He relied on his inter viewer's honor not to do so, and to write the dispatch in such a way as to cause him no em barrassment. Never once, in all the six and a half years of his career as secretary, had he any reason to regret this confidence. Yet his communi cations to newspaper men were of the most open and free-handed sort. He would usually tell a new man, on first meeting, that, in what he said, the correspondent must not quote him and must use judgment about the way the 278 " THE OTHER xLssl) uf THE AVENUE " matter was written. Having done that, Mr. Hay would not make any further admonition in the years that followed. As they used to say he was an aristocrat, so they used to say that Hay was ashamed of " Jim Bludso " and " Little Breeches " and " Banty Tim," and did not like to be reminded of them. But this snobbish story was not true ; for on the wall, at the very door of his house, where no one could help seeing it, there hung until shortly before his death a fine painting of Jim Bludso " holding her nozzle agin the bank till the last galoot's ashore." It is probable, of course, that Hay looked with more pride upon his more pretentious works, such as his life of Lincoln, whose secretary he was. It would be interesting to know how much he wrote anonymously. It is nearly certain that he wrote " The Bread winners," the publishers of which announced at the time that the author's name could not be revealed because it would injure him in his public career if it were known that he had written such a book. Hay always steered clear of questions about " The Breadwin ners." His mastery of English was as great as that of any man of his time. In his hands the language was a musical instrument. In his " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 279 great oration upon McKinley, delivered before Congress, he said : "It is impossible to speak of William McKinley without remembering that no truer, tenderer knight to his chosen lady ever lived among mortal men. If to the spirits of the just made perfect is permitted the conscious ness of earthly things, we may be sure that his faithful soul is now watching over that gentle sufferer who counts the long hours over in their shattered home in the desolate splendor of his fame." As he first uttered this matchless phrase, it was, " Who counts the long hours over in the desolate splendor of his fame." Whether the additional phrase was left out by accident or not, and either with or without it, it is a beautiful instance of the felicitous wedding of words to sense. The whole address abounded with magnificent phrases, as when, speaking of the hideous uselessness of the murders of Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley, men who " walked before God and man with out blame," he said : " The only temptation to attack their lives was their gentle radiance — to eyes hating the light that was offense enough." To illustrate, not his greater works but his musical use of the language, that simple 280 " TPIE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" poem, " When the Boys Come Home," should be read. It has often been set to music, but the setting has always been a failure, because it is already music ; it sings itself. The effect produced is made by a perfect choice of words and syllables and still more by an artistically- employed and carefully-placed unevenness of rhythm ; and he made a song which must have made eyelids quiver and hearts throb in the days when men were looking to the South with straining eyes, and women with fainting hearts. He had a genius for hard work, and could dispose of immense quantities of it with lightning rapidity. This gift was especially valuable after his health began to fail, for often he could stay at the department only an hour or two a day, with perhaps a day's or a week's intermission. He paid the strictest attention to the nice ties of life. Evening never caught him in day dress. If he intended to devote the evening to delving among papers in his library, work ing on department matters, he nevertheless would attire himself in evening dress and omit no detail. Precise, dignified, and correct in all his ways, he was a man of strong feeling and could manifest it in a way that frightened men « THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 281 apparently much less reserved. The times have been when Mr. Hay, on learning of some act of treachery or incompetency in the State Department service, has walked up and down his room in the big building giving utterance to his opinions in a way that made his hearers quake. Yet never in public would he permit himself to be unmanned. When his son Adelbert was killed by a fall from a hotel window in New Haven, the news was brought to the father by a newspaper man at 3:30 o'clock in the morning. The secretary received his caller in his bedroom, and the news was broken to him as gently as possible. At the end of the sentence Mr. Hay gave a sigh and dropped his head. He buried his face in his hands. The next moment he had regained his outward self-command. In a grave, calm voice he thanked his informant for his trouble in bringing the news, and left the expression of his real emotions until he should be alone. On the night of the death of Mr. Hay's loved friend, President McKinley, the writer went to Mr. Hay's house to ask him if he had any news. Mr. Hay, in evening dress, was sitting in his study. Books and papers were on his , table, but he was not reading them. He spoke in a serious, steady, self-assured 2S2 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" voice as he told the caller that according to his advices from Buffalo the president was still alive. He seemed absolute master of himself, and his utterance was made in the most mat ter-of-fact way. But he was sitting behind a shaded lamp, in such a way that his face was in shadow. As the visitor reached the study door, he turned to bid Mr. Hay good-night, and in this new position he caught the light on the secre tary's countenance. Tears were rolling down that steady face. John Hay, poet, statesman, and gentleman. He should go into history as the statesman who labored most effectively in these days to make America great ; not with the greatness of strength and raw force from which Euro pean nations should shrink, but with that greatness which made Europe take our coun sel, respect our leadership, and recognize us as in truth a wise, able and honest marshal of the world's affairs. II INTERVIEWING SECRETARY ROOT When Elihu Root became secretary of state he entered upon his official duties in a way which startled the mossbacks of the depart ment. The thoroughness with which he went to work was without precedent in his office. Instead of taking the words of subordinates or taking anything for granted, he insisted upon informing himself of the entire history from A to Z of everything that was likely to come before him in any way whatever. Every afternoon as early as possible the secretary would cut short the business of the day, deny himself to visitors, order that no cards be sent him, leave his office and lock himself in the diplomatic room, where he buried himself in the records of cases. A force of messengers and clerks was kept busy bringing documents to him. Meanwhile swarms of visitors, including many of high degree, tried vainly to induce the messengers to take their cards in. Here he stayed till six or seven o'clock 283 284 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" every evening, working hard. The startled clerks came to the conclusion that by the time he finished these preliminary studies, at the rate he was going, he would know more about all matters of current diplomacy and all that had any chance of becoming current than any man, from secretary to messenger, who ever stepped foot in the department. That standby of all executive departments, the " veteran clerk who has the business of the department at his finger-ends," is finding his usefulness gone, because the secretary is rapidly getting to know more than he does. The labor of acquainting himself in a few weeks with the entire machinery and all the problems of the State Department and of American and foreign diplomacy and states manship is great, but Mr. Root's tremendous capacity for work is making it possible for him to do it in less time than it would take almost any one else. His manner of doing it has dismayed some of his subordinates, de lighted others, and astonished all. As an example of the way he went at it, the Critchfield case will serve as well as any one. Ploughing through the records of the department, the secretary discovered a claim made by George Washington Critelifield, of New York, against Venezuela. Critchfield " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 285 years ago obtained from President Castro an asphalt mine, with the express agreement that no tax should be placed upon his exports. He developed the mine to a point where it looked good to Castro, whereupon that cheer ful freebooter levied a prohibitive tax. Critch field had to go out of business, which left a nicely-developed mine for the Venezuelan government's use and profit — or in other words, for the use and profit of Castro. At least, this is Critchfield's story. He made a claim against Castro for heavy dam ages. That was in 1903, since which time the claim has slumbered peacefully in the State Department, " crowded out to make room for more important matter." Root ran across this claim, ordered that the papers be pre sented to him, and found that some of the papers were missing. That did not discourage Root. He telegraphed for Critchfield to come and see him. Critchfield, panoplied with at torneys, arrived and found Root delving in a mountain of manuscript relating to Morocco or Chile or some other remote clime. Root laid the mountain aside and listened to Critch field for a whole day. He had to break in once to go to a Cabinet meeting, but Critch field walked around the block a few times while this was going on and then returned to 286 "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" the conference. At the end thereof Root an nounced that he would telegraph Minister Russell at Caracas to take up the matter with Castro and push the claim vigorously. Which, with Root, meant that Castro must sit up and listen. Mr. Root's idiosyncrasies in the matter of shutting himself up and receiving no cards have given great scandal to self-important per sons, but he is beyond reform in that respect. He used to exhibit them as flagrantly when he was secretary of war. For a year or so, while he held that office, he put up with the con sumption of his time by calls from outsiders (congressmen included) and then set about devising a highly novel remedy. An hour before the time for closing the department the doors leading to his office were shut and locked. This did not mean that the office was closed ; on the contrary, work was going on as busily as ever. Inside the main room of the office were three or four sturdy colored men, who remained behind the locked doors to let out people who were in before the place was closed up, and to see that nobody slipped in. All through the rest of the big depart ment building there was every sign of life ; doors were swinging open, and clerks were constantly passing in and out, typewriters were "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 287 clicking, and messengers were bustling about. Only the doors leading to Mr. Root's sanctum were locked and guarded, and there a stranger could see no sign of life. But there were persons who had the right to see the secretary, such as the chief clerk. It was no use for them to knock, because the colored sentries within would pay no atten tion. Accordingly a cipher knock was in vented. When this knock was heard, one of the garrison approached the door, but did not open it. Some lurking congressman or other non-departmental person might, by dint of hanging around the door and listening for some time, have acquired the secret of the code and, after committing it to memory, have delivered an imitation which would have deceived the very elect. Hence the sentinel delivered on the inside of the door another cipher knock, which meant, " Advance, friend, with the countersign." Then if the person outside was really one of the initiated, he " came back " with the next number on the code, which was the countersign. Thereupon the door was unlocked for him. Secretary Hay once retired baffled from the unanswering door, and had to take private lessons in the knock. After awhile the door was locked at two o'clock instead of three, 288 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" after which the casualties were even greater than before. One day in 1901, however, Sen ator Foraker triumphed over the door without the faintest knowledge of the open sesame. So many congressmen had fallen victims to the countersign knock that Foraker knew what it meant when he got there and knocked in vain. He frowned again, bit his lip, and dashed his fist ferociously against the door. Then he listened, and thought he heard a far away chuckle on the other side. His scowl deepened and he rattled the door-knob impo- tently, conscious that a group of newspaper men, sworn to secrecy about the fraternity knock, were regarding him gravely and that the sturdy negro watchmen were doubtless chuckling inside. Then Mr. Foraker stepped away and thought for a moment. His anger overcame him, and he decided to return and give a few hammers on the door just to express his opin ion of it. Accordingly he raised his fist and put his whole soul into a complicated tattoo of rage. As the last knock rang out, an answering knuckle sounded on the inside. Mr. Foraker, deeming this mere sarcasm, hit the door again. To his intense astonishment it flew open, and a bowing attendant stood before him, inviting ELIHU ROOT. " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 289 him to the secretary's presence. He had ac cidentally hit on the right knock. As Foraker came out after a most satisfac tory interview, he was beaming all over. One of the gravely-watching newspaper men in the corridor remarked to a neighbor as the senator passed along : " Only one thing bothers him now. He wishes he could remember that knock." When William H. Taft succeeded him in the War Department there was not a mo ment's question in anybody's mind that Taft would hold the place up to the high level where Root had left it ; but in one respect Root's retirement left a hole utterly unfillable by Taft or anybody else. The tabasco-flavored retorts which for four years lent spice and flavor to the routine at, the big white build ing on Seventeenth Street could never be dupli cated- Within a week after Root's disappear ance persons having regular business at the War Department began to wear a look of miss ing something. The atmosphere was a little flat and tame after those pungent years. In addition to this Mr. Root holds a place in the hall of fame as an official who had more different ways of not telling newspaper men things they wanted to know than even the imagination of Shakespeare could have 290 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" conceived. In the course of his work at the department Mr. Root grew to know and like the correspondents on duty there, and they reciprocated the feeling ; but on occasions when he did not want to tell them things this liking on their part was increased by a cha grined admiration for his genius for silence. He seemed to enjoy a battle of wits of that kind more than anything else that came in the course of his routine. It was during the days of the Chinese trouble in 1900, when Mr. Root, in Mr. Hay's absence, was acting practically as secretary both of war and state, that this talent of his found its fullest play. It often happened that the fullest and most up-to-date news of the invasion came, not from Peking or from any European capital, but from Washington, and every afternoon a force of correspondents used to fill Mr. Root's room and ask him questions. He enjoyed these levees, and often gave the information desired. But when he did not there was fun. On such occasions the secre tary would swing back in his chair with an iron grin, brace himself for an onslaught, and pick up a pencil as a defensive weapon. By the operations of this pencil the cross-examin ing force could gauge the progress they were making. It was never still, but when it " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 291 tapped gently the secretary was having things his own way. When it tapped furiously, incessantly, and the iron grin shortened a trifle, the secretary was hard pressed and was busy finding new ways for not saying- things. One typical seance of that period may be described to give a view of Root in the act of not telling news. It was while the army was nearing Peking, but before the entry, and when a battle was momentarily expected. The correspondents had discovered that a dispatch had been received from Minister Conger, but Mr. Root did not seem inclined to tell what was in it. When the audience discovered this it was silent a moment and then resolved on strategy. " Mr. Secretary," said one strategian, " is this dispatch suppressed in accordance with the established policy of the government not to give out dispatches which give information about military operations? " If Mr. Root replied in the affirmative it would establish one theory about the dis patch, which was that it related to the best mode of attack on Peking ; if in the negative, that it was of a diplomatic character. " It isn't suppressed," said Mr. Root, tapping gently. 292 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" " Not suppressed ! " exclaimed the strate- gian, outflanked. " Well — what — what's been done with it, then ? " " It isn't given out," explained Mr. Root. " Oh ! " said the 6trategian, recovering. " Well, is this dispatch not given out because of the policy of the government to give qut nothing bearing on military operations?" Profound silence ; every ear strained. Root (lucidly, and with the air of oqe who expounds) : " The dispatch is not given out in accordance with the policy of this depart ment to give out nothing which in its judg ment is of such a nature that its contents ought not to be given out." Several seconds of dazed silence, followed by great laughter. " The Delphic oracle ! " said the strategian, sadly, and the secretary grinned, and tapped gently. " Mr. Secretary," said another strategian, taking up a new mode of attack, " isn't it pos sible that this Conger dispatch is similar to that sent by M. Pichon to the French Govern ment?" " Well, Mr. Blank," replied Root, " there is a wide range of possibilities about a dispatch which has not been given out." (Laughter, during which an inattentive person on t\\e " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 293 outskirts of the crowd shoved himself to the front and burst out eagerly) : " Oh, Mr. Secretary, can you tell us what is in the Conger dispatch?" (A roar of laugh ter, headed by the secretary, and utter efface- ment of the inattentive person.) At this point Acting Secretary of State Adee, who is very deaf, came in. A gleam of mischief shone in Root's eye. He went over to Adfee, put his ihouth to that official's ear, and shouted : " Mr. Adee, these gentlemen say you have a dispatch from Minister Conger, and have asked me what is in it. I have told them to ask you." (Which he had not.) " Tell them," replied Adee, gravely and majestically, " that there is such a dispatch ; but that it Will not be made public." Root grinned, and the audience roared ; but Adee was not looking at them, and so did not hear. " It's hard, Mr. Secretary," said a corre spondent, as they prepared to go, " that you won't tell us anything ; you are the whole government now, except Adee, and it's no use asking him." "No," returned Root, referring to Adee's deafness. " He is amply protected." Ohe day a party of eight caught him as he 294 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" was trying to get into his office surreptitiously, he having returned from a visit to the White House ; and one of them asked him what the policy of the government in the crisis was going to be. Root, who had answered that question a hundred times, threw up his hands. " Gentlemen," he exclaimed, " Blank, of the Associated Press, came in and asked me that this morning, and I just looked at him helplessly and then took out the Hay note which defined our policy on July 3d, and I asked him if he wouldn't accept that with my compliments and go away and study our policy out from that. " Now, gentlemen," continued Root, plead ingly, " if you will be so good as to go to your offices and each get out your copy of the old Hay note and look it over, you will know what our policy is ; and if, after studying that note, you will each get up a dispatch to your papers, each telling the contents of that note in your own peculiar and vivid styles, there will be in the papers to-morrow one — two — three," said Root, counting his visitors, " eight different and irreconcilable stories of what the policy of this government is going to be." The next day one of the eight came in look ing pleased. " That was a good tip of Root's," " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 295 he said ; " I went back to the office and got out the Hay note and got a good dispatch out of it." When the idea of modifying the Cuban tariff came up a newspaper man, in one of the daily seances, asked Mr. Root : " Mr. Secretary, has this modification scheme ever been proposed by this government? " It so happened that Root himself had pro posed it in his annual report in 1899, and he gave a cold, satiric grin and said : " You should read the standard authors, Mr. Blank." Eight correspondents lined up before him one day in a semicircle. There was a mo ment's silence. The secretary was reading some papers, but he looked up and bowed, and then the resemblance of the outfit to a glee club seemed to strike him. " We're all here, Mr. Secretary," observed one. "So I see," he remarked. " And you look as if you were going to sing." Then they asked him about a report that he was investigating to find out how foreign military attaches got American secrets. He said he had seen it in a Chicago paper, but that it was not true. Then the correspondent of a well-known yellow journal, which may 296 "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" be disguised under the title of the New York Whooper, began earnestly : " Mr. Secretary, the story also appeared in the Whooper " " Ah ! " interrupted Root, in a tone of trepi dation, wheeling around in his revolving chair with a look of alarm. " Now it begins to be serious." And he gave the yellow journalist such a look of frightened and respectful attention that the latter forgot what he was going to say, and the crowd laughed uproariously at his expense. Mr. Root did not think much of General Funston's spectacular hunt for Aguinaldo, Which was liberally advertised from the time he started out. When the papers first began to recount Funston's progress, one of the par ticipants in the daily levee remarked : "I see Funston has started after Aguinaldo with a brass band." Root grinned and ruminated a while, and then observed : " Curious disguise Funston has adopted." It was once announced that Mr. Root was going to the Philippines. He was asked about this story at the daily seance. " I suppose," he cynically remarked* look ing at the representative of the paper which " THE OTHE^R END OF THE AVENUE " 297 had made the announcement, " that I will have to go for the Biblical reason — that that which was written may be fulfilled." He was urged to say something about it, on the ground that " it's a dry time and we need a story," and finally he relented, unbent and said : "Well, all right. Say I'm going. The president sent the vice-president to me and asked me to go." This being interpreted as a reference to the time when Mr. McKinley, then president, sent Vice-President Hobart to Secretary Alger and asked him to resign, there was a howl of laughter. When the American evacuation of China was first contemplated, Mr. Root refused to admit it. The correspondents were pretty sure it was going to be done, but no device was so ingenious as to extort an admission from Robt. After trying everything else, one of the cross-examiners asked pleadingly : " Mr. Secretary, can't you at least tell us what position we will be in if we withdraw our troops, with regard to the rest of the pow ers? I don't ask you to admit that we are going to withdraw, but only to say What po sition we will be in if We do withdraw." " A power," replied Root, oracularly, knit- 298 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" ting his brows and speaking slowly as if weighing his words, "which removes all its troops from China will of necessity be in the position of a power which has no military force there." When General Wood suppressed the news paper La Discusion, in Havana, because it printed a cartoon making fun of him, Mr. Root was asked about it, but he said that General Wood had not reported his action and he knew nothing of it. "This, then," said the correspondent, "is not the sort of public act which General Wood thinks it necessary to inform the department about?" "Oh, no," replied Root, lightly. "It's a mere matter of detail — one newspaper more or less in the world." He then said he had to go to attend a meet ing of the Grant, Sherman and McClellan Monument Commissions. They had not se lected a site yet. "Do you think one will be selected this afternoon? " " Oh, I think so," said Root, optimistically; "the other gentlemen on the commission have nothing else to do." A certain improvement on Long Island was under discussion, and Mr. Root was being " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 299 questioned about it. Mr. Roosevelt was then vice-president. " Do you expect to have any communica tions from Oyster Bay ? " asked a correspond ent, meaning communications with regard to the improvement. "I suppose so," said Root, "unless I give appointments in the army to all the Rough Riders." Being asked what he was going to do with the transports when the Atlantic Transport line was discontinued, Mr. Root pondered awhile and said hopefully : " Well, if I could choose the passenger-list, I'd take 'em out in the Atlantic Ocean and sink 'em." " What are you doing, Mr. Secretary ? " he was asked one day when they came in and found him writing. "Appointing lieutenant-generals," replied Mr. Root. He was making out the commis sions for West Point graduates, and it is safe to say that none of those commissioned would have doubted the accuracy of his version. One day some Creek Indians got into his office by mistake for that of the secretary of the interior. There was a funny play of cross purposes for a few minutes, and then Root saw where the mistake lay. 300 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " " Oh," he said, " you have got intb the wrong place. I have jurisdiction over navi gable rivers, but not over Creeks." Ill TAFT, SPOKESMAN OP THE ADMINISTRATION Every Cabinet officer has, a part to play in the administration of which he is a num ber, except Mr. William Howard Taft, who hag several parts. He is secretary of war, for one thing. He is colonial secretary, for an other ; and that means a great deal more than it might mean with some secretaries, fpr Mr. Taft has been in the Philippines as governor- general and is all wrapped up in that subject. The Philippines are the apple of his eye. He is no cold-blooded and apathetic administra tor of a province he has seen on maps. The Philippines are Taft's hobby, just as some men make hobbies of posters or picture postal cards. Balzac, discoursing of the niighty part played in the world by hobbies, observes, that many a man on the brink of suicide has been plucked back from the river by the thought of his nightly game of dominoes. If Taft is ever driven to the edge of suicide by news paper artipjes annonncing that he is about to give up his presidential prospects for the chief justiceship of tiie Suprenie Court, or by any 301 302 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" other adequate cause, what will pluck him back will be the thought of the Philippines. Finally, and chiefly, Taft is the spokesman of the administration. Not literally; he does not do all its talking. But when the adminis tration strikes, it frequently strikes with Taft's large and competent fist ; and when he does talk, he talks for the administration. Taft announced some time ago that he was not a candidate for president. Neither is he. While Messrs. Fairbanks and Foraker are ran sacking the land for votes and combinations, and cultivating a foreign and difficult geni ality to all sorts and conditions of men, Taft is sticking to his shoemaker's bench. A presidential candidate would not have played the bull in the china-shop with the Republi can party in Ohio, as Taft did at the election of 1905. Taft hails from Ohio, and would need its votes. But a man large enough to be president is going to be talked of for president, and for that reason the barrenness of the Republican situation as to men of presidential size and the activity of Messrs. Fairbanks and Foraker engenders incessant talk of Taft. Occasion ally this perturbs the dreams of Foraker and leads to dispatches to the papers from cities he happens to be in, to the effect that Taft is "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 303 about to retire from the world and become chief justice of the Supreme Court. This presidential proposition is doubtless not unwelcome to Taft, since no man has yet been discovered who balks at the prospect, but it is afar and apart from his line of industry. He is interested at present and solely in his duties and pleasures as secretary of war, minister for the colonies, and spokesman of the administration. Whenever the president contemplates an important move, whether or not it relates to the army or the colonies, he calls Taft in consultation and seeks his advice. The War Department has nothing to do with railroad rates, yet Taft was in consultation with the president over the bill prepared by the Inter state Commerce Commission for submission to the Fifty-ninth Congress. It was Taft who' made the earliest pronouncement of the pres ident's policy on this subject, getting into a warm debate with Stuyvesant Fish about it at a dinner ; and when Foraker, with protesta tions of undying fealty to the president, aimed his knife at the president's fifth rib in the Ohio campaign, it was Taft who went out to Ohio to make answer for the administration. As a result of which the knife went into other fifth ribs than Roosevelt's. 304 " THE OTHER ENp OF THE AVENUE" "The political gpssips, prophets, seers a,n4 pipe-dreamers in which the town of Washing ton abounds like to prefigure the campaign of 1908 ; and when they do their prophepies, and dreams generally take this form : There is to be a division in the party before the conven tion, in which the supporters of the presi dent's policy and the old-line conservatives of the McKinley-Fairbanks, stripe arc to support opposing candidates. Sometimes, if the to bacco is good, this line of prophecy extends to the names of the opposing standand-hparers, For the chief of the conservatives there are many candidates ; but when it comes down to, the chief of thp administration men — -the men pledged to the restraining of the railroads, the curbing of the trusts, and the other policies that would haye been so. strange in the ears of McKinley and Hanna — the prophets cast about for a long time and finally turn back to Taft. For Taft, utterly unlike Roosevelt as he is in so many respects, is Rooseveltism embodied^ He stands four-square on every plank of tl^e Roosevelt platform. It is perfectly true, as to railroad rates, that La Follette was a veteran on that issue long before Roosevelt discovered it. It grinds somewhat the souls of La Fpl- lette's friends to have rate regulation spoken WILLIAM H. TAFT. '" A big man mentally and enormous physically.'' " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 305 of as a Roosevelt policy when they recall how La Follette discovered it, battled for it, risked his whole political life on it, and won victories on it before Roosevelt ever paid any attention to it. But the spectacle of La Follette as a leader of the Roosevelt ranks is unthinkable. It is believed that Roosevelt is not fond of him ; however that may be, La Follette is re garded, rightly or wrongly, as a radical, and Rooseveltism is a curious compound of radi calism and conservatism, of which Taft is a magnificent example. It would be impossible to picture Taft as leading any hosts of the House of Want against the House of Have. As a mob leader, and even as a radical chieftain, Taftis altogether out of the picture. He represents that com bination which Roosevelt represents, and which led millionaires and Socialists to vote for the Republican candidate in the campaign of 1904. Taft is a mighty hustler, but there is noth ing " strenuous," as that word has been de fined in later days, about him. He hustles calmly. He disposes of immense quantities of work with an air of beneficent leisure. He goes riding, and wears a riding costume even more wonderful than his chief 's, but no one prints pieces about it, although the spec- 306 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" tacle of his immense legs athwart a heroically resigned horse is really more worthy of pres ervation than the black slouch hat and com bination of statesman's coat and weird breeches which distinguish the president. He is a big man mentally and enormous physically. It is such a good old story that it can never be printed too often how, when he was governor-general of the Philippines, he cabled to Secretary Root : " Rode forty miles on horseback to-day ; feeling fine," and Root cabled back, " Glad you are feeling fine ; how is the horse ? " One day an inquisitive reporter asked, " Mr. Secretary, how much do you weigh ? " " I won't tell you," boomed the secretary. " But you know when somebody asked Speaker Reed that, he replied that no true gentleman would weigh more than two hun dred pounds. I have amended that to three hundred pounds." When Secretary Taft speaks, he speaks in a sunshiny roar. When he laughs, the sur rounding furniture shakes and rumbles. When he goes forth the room trembles. Yet he is as light on his feet as the frisky Beve ridge. You expect to see his horse sag in the middle when Taft mounts, accompanied by his slender, lath-like companion Colonel Ed- " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 307 wards, but Taft sits erect as an arrow and gal lops around like a West Point graduate. He walks erectly and sturdily, as little bothered by his great weight as if he were a schoolgirl in a gymnasium. Wherever he goes he takes life with a buoyant breeziness that makes it very difficult for political opponents to feel hard towards him. Altogether, he is a good-sized and thorough man. When he was young he was a reporter. There was an alleged society publication in the town of Cincinnati which made Town Topics look like a Sunday-school weekly. Its principal function was to print infamous libels on everybody who was prominent in Cincinnati. There was no use in suing it for libel, and the only remedy was to thrash the editor whenever he was to be reached. This remedy had been tried by numerous aggrieved and muscular citizens, without producing the least effect. Finally the sheet published a libel on Judge Alphonso Taft, the young re porter's father, who had been a member of Grant's Cabinet. Taft, Junior, saw it and did not like it. He hunted up the editor and asked if he were the editor. That person ad mitted it. " My name is Taft," said the large young reporter, " and my purpose is to whip you." 308 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" Wherewith he drubbed the libelous editor. That person had been drubbed before, as al ready narrated ; but the drubbing administered by Taft was so monumental, cataclysmic, cosmic and complete, that on the following day the editor suspended publication and took himself thence. Cincinnati saw him no more. As for Taft, after thus purging the community he washed his hands and went down to the City Hall after an item for his paper. With all the swiftness and finality of Taft's proceedings, the human side of him comes to the front in them more than it does with any other man of his kind in public life. When he drove Minister Bowen from the State De partment, for instance, his action was as re morseless and complete as Roosevelt's. But having to do it grieved him. He struck the blow with a sigh. He firmly believed he was right, but the hardship of inflicting pain, of terminating an honorable career, was fully as present in Taft's mind as the necessity of punishing a man who he believed deserved it Of Roosevelt, with all his fine qualities, that would be difficult to imagine. This human side of Taft is the one which endears him most to those who meet him. It does not detract in an}- degree from the great respect which is paid to his fine abilities and « THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 309 to his great force of character. In Washing ton folks are skeptical and cynical about public men, and even those who are admired are admired with limitations. Close contact rubs off a good deal of the illusion. But there are no limitations as to Taft ; and with the respect that is accorded him by all those who come in contact with him there is mingled real affection. IV KNOX THE LAWYER When the old-school playwright made a play or the old-school novelist a novel in which a lawyer figured, he conceived it his duty to make his character the law incarnate. The bar stuck out all over him ; there was nothing miscellaneously human about him, and you couldn't forget and were not meant to forget for one moment that he was the type. Everything that did not necessarily pertain to the bar was carefully squeezed out of him. Readers have wondered if any such typical lawyer ever existed, and remembering how little their own lawyer friends resemble the type, have decided in the negative. But the playwright is vindicated. Any one who doubts the existence of his character has only to journey to Washington and study Philander C. Knox, attorney-general under two presi dents and now senator from Pennsylvania. Not that he is the lawyer of the play and the novel ; he is a more modern type, but he is the law on two legs. It is difficult to think of him in any other capacity. After you have thought of Knox the lawyer, try and think of 310 "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 311 some other kind of Knox and your mind be comes a vacuum. After the lawyer is ex hausted there is nothing more to think about. Hence there comes about a very remarkable state of affairs. Never, probably, has there been a man so prominent in Washington who is the subject of so little anecdote. Knox has been there five years, and for four of them has been one of the most talked-about men in the country. But there are no stories about him. He is never credited with saying any witty things. He is not a story-teller, though he is a fisherman. He has figured in no humorous incidents in his term of office as a cabinet minister. Once, at Atlantic City, some wealthy hood lums indulged in indecent language in the hearing of some ladies who were dining with the attorney-general. Immediately afterwards the gilded youths were on the outside of the place, one of them nursing a black eye, the gift of Mr. Knox. This is the only " incident " of his career ; and yet, highly charged with con temporaneous human interest as it was, the re porters had a hard time filling the requisite amount of space about it. It had taken place in such a businesslike manner and was so to tally devoid of frills. There was nothing to touch up, nothing to ornament. There is not 312 " THE OTHEK END UJb XHE a v JfciSi u V another man in public life who could have done so thorough a job of the kind and have left such a distinct impression that it was quite ordinary, quite matter-of-fact and natu rally incidental to a dinner. Even the imagination of the summer resort reporters, the most inflammable imagination known to science, could not invest the affair with any entertaining and romantic details. It was as simple and businesslike an affair as the occasion when in his youth Knox was dropped out of college because, when the whole class was under sentence of suspension if it did not apologize to the faculty, the little, round-faced, bullet-headed fighter was the only one who would not apologize. He has done remarkable and striking things, but the newspaper correspondents have had nothing interesting to record about his way of doing them. When Hay called checkmate on the international board or Payne threw a postal grafter out, there were picturesque incidents to record ; but when Knox fired the first shot at some trust whose scalp he intended to have, there was abso lutely nothing to record except that he had done it. He is not a man that things happen to. You can as easily imagine things hap pening to the Code of Civil Procedure. PHILANDER C. KNOX. ' A little man, with a cherubic face and a brisk, alert manner." " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 313 Knox has spent his life in one of the most highly political states on the map, and he has lived in Pittsburg, where political things are always happening. But he never took part in any citizens' movements against the local ring. Neither did he ever figure as a sup porter of the local ring, or of the state ring. He was absolutely irreconcilable with poli tics. He was utterly wrapped up in the law. No Pittsburger could have imagined him in politics, not even in politics as a recreation. Knox was not a jury lawyer ; it would be impossible to think of that dry, keen, studi ous brain so employed. He was a corporation lawyer. He was the counsel for the Carnegie Steel Company and its allied interests, which paid him a salary variously reported as from $50,000 to $80,000 a year. President McKinley took him away from the steel people and made him attorney-gen eral at a salary of $8,000 a year. The infer-. ence was irresistible — to men who did not know Knox. No clearer case, they said, of putting a trust attorney in the office of trust prosecutor had ever been made ; if Knox took $8,000 a year to prosecute the trusts, it must be because the trusts meant him to and con sidered it a good investment. But those who reasoned in this way forgot 314 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" that Knox is first and last a lawyer. He has the lawyer's conscience as not one lawyer in a thousand has. It is the lawyer's conscience that makes the lawyer do his best for his client, even if he knows that client to be a murderer. Knox had served the trusts, his clients, with a skill and efficiency that had raised him to the front rank of his profession and won for him golden rewards. When his client was the United States government, Knox proceeded to serve it exactly as he had served his old client. Why, as a lawyer, he should have given up the magnificent salary his old client paid him to take the beggarly pay of his new one — a wage that does not pay the expenses of his beautiful establishment in Washington — is a mystery. But Knox is rich, and perhaps he counted in the glory that goes with public station and public achievement with the pic ayune salary his new client offered, and fig ured that the exchange was fair. At any rate, he entered on his new work with no prejudices. There were the lawyer's brain and hand, ready to serve the new client who had paid him a retainer. He awaited instructions. It was exactly as if a new cor poration had engaged him. He recognized President McKinley as the head of the cor- " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 315 poration. President McKinley did not indi cate that the interests of the corporation re quired any onslaught on the trusts. Knox did not make any. He went ahead with routine Department of Justice business, since that was what his client wanted him to do. It was all one to him. When President Roosevelt became head of the corporation and he wanted some suits brought, Knox took the orders of his client. It appeared that the suits were to be against trusts. Knox was perfectly satisfied. He went to work under Mr. Roosevelt's or ders with the hard, direct determination — not the enthusiasm, Knox is not enthusiastic — that he had displayed under the orders of his old clients, the trusts. He was no more emotional about it than he had been when he was doing routine business under Mr. McKinley's orders. When he said, after the Northern Securities decision, that the government was " not going to run amuck," he spoke for his client. He would prosecute trusts just as fast or as slowly as his client desired, and what he did would be done with a splendid efficiency ; that was the real meaning of that much- talked-of phrase. There would be no more emotion about it than if he were suing delin quent debtors in a magistrate's court. 316 "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" Knox's trust suits were conducted by sub ordinates, under his generalship. When he made a big killing and the newspaper men went to him for something interesting about it, Knox would tell them about these subor dinates and how the work was apportioned among them, insist that the full measure of credit be given them, and say nothing about himself. For Knox, though he is lawyerism incarnate, is not dried up nor dehumanized. He is a de lightful person, with something winning and instantly attractive about him. He is a little man, with a cherubic face and a brisk, alert manner. He bustles when he Avalks. He looks an inquisitor in the eye and replies in a prompt, staccato manner. There is nothing pompous or pretentious about him ; he is frankness itself, as candid as a lake. He has not the vice of lying to newspaper men ; if he does not want to give them the in formation sought, he tells them so with cheery directness. There is a bright freedom about his manner in conversation that is somewhat Western. He lives in a magnificent house, surrounded by every luxur}r, yet sometimes he comes to the door himself when the bell rings. Horses are his passion, even above golf; when he came to " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 317 Washington he bought two for which he paid several thousand dollars more than the Count of Monte Cristo did for the pair with which he astonished Paris. Between his departure from the Department of Justice and his entry into real senatorial work there has been a breathing spell. He left Roosevelt's Cabinet in 1904 and his only service in the Senate has been in the short winter session of 1904-5, in which nothing happened and he, as a new senator, had no chance to show what he could do. His sena torial service is really just beginning. And public curiosity is very busy about what that new career of his will be. In all the talk about how Knox will figure in the Senate the extraordinary development of his law-mind has been overlooked. There is no telling anything about it. When he left the Department of Justice the work which he had been doing for his old client was closed. In one sense he is still working for the same client, but in another sense he is not. It has been assumed that he would become a trust specialist in the Senate, but he is no longer under any obligation to his client to specialize. Perhaps he will consider himself perfectly free to interest himself in other mat ters than trusts. 318 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" Quite certain is it that there must be a client. Knox would not know himself with out one. His client is still the United States government, and it is strongly probable that he will continue to hold himself as being en listed in the service of the head of that cor poration. One thing is absolutely certain- he will not feel himself under the slightest ob ligation to his old clients, the trusts. He ren dered to them services which were paid for, and that book is closed. He is under obliga tions to nobody but the new client, Uncle Sam. As to patronage, how Knox will view his duty to his new client, a constituent part of which is the people of Pennsylvania, has not been sufficiently developed yet ; and no man can guess it who does not know the workings of this highly sensitized law-mind. That he will look upon it from the client point of view is not to be doubted ; he is constitutionally un able to do anything else. The thing may appear to be perfectly sim ple, since the Legislature of Pennsylvania gives him his commission ; but Pennsylvania senators have a way of regarding their com missions as coming from the machine, in which, up to the election of 1905, they were amply justified by the overwhelming public " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 319 sentiment of the State. Knox may have taken the same view. In New York there is often excellent reason to doubt that the ma chine represents the people, but in Pennsyl vania there was, unfortunately, no reason at all to doubt it. And Knox, while no politi cian, was a Quay man, so far as he ever gave any thought or attention to politics. He is perfectly incapable of being afraid of any boss or of bowing the knee to anybody on earth. But he probably did regard his obliga tion as a double one, to the machine and to the people, and intended to do his duty to both clients. At any rate he refused to come to the aid of the swamped machine in Pennsyl vania at the election of 1905, and yet would not give any aid to the reformers. If the State machine proves to be wrecked beyond salvation, he may consider that his obligation is solely to the one remaining client — the State. But if so, it will not be because the election has terrified him or convinced him of any sail- trimming necessity for him. When Philander C. Knox's career in the Senate begins to unfold there will be more than one reason to watch his career with in terest. An interesting political study will be presented, but there will also be a very inter esting psychological problem to solve. WYNNE, THE RING-BREAKEE Cabinet places are not often given as re wards of merit. Still rarer is the case of a Cabinet office given as a reward of merit to a man whose merit consisted in his hunting out graft in the department of which he is made the head. This it was which in 1904 and 1905 gave interest to the presence in President Roosevelt's Cabinet of Postmaster-General Wynne. A year before no one would have picked out Wynne as one ever likely to sit at a president's official table. He had never been in politics ; he had no pull ; he could deliver no delegates ; he had no " strength." He held an office, which was his first, though he was fifty years of age. He had been an active, industrious private citizen all his life. The astonishing rise of the stenographer Cortelyou to the Cab inet has been much commented upon; but Cortelyou rose through a service of years in what now comes pretty close to being a Cabi net place — that of secretary to the presideat — and Wynne, the newspaper reporter, did not. The}' often give first assistant postmaster- 320 ROBERT J. WYNNE. "A large, ruddy- faced man, fifty years old and good-humored." "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 321 generalships to newspaper men. Perry Heath, of much fame of a certain sort, was one drafted from the ranks of Washington correspondents. Wynne was another — of a very different sort. He stepped into the first assistant postmas ter-generalship, presumably to drone away his term as other eminent figureheads had done. There had been plenty of figureheads before him ; it was a figurehead office. A man who held that place, at least up to Cortelyou's ad vent in the department, was not expected to do much but sign things. The things were set before him, and he signed them. The second assistant was a man experienced in the post-office business ; so, once in awhile, was the fourth assistant. The first assistant looked wise and signed. In the Post-Office Department at that time there was a ring. It consisted of the bureau chiefs, who had established a machine of such strength and magnitude that first assistants, and even postmasters-general, were mere unre garded incidents of its career. Practically, it was the Post-Office Department ; it was the postmaster-gen eral . It did as it liked, and if the postmaster-gen eral, whoever he might be, ever suspected its presence, it was a suspicion about which he could not get excited. It had practically all 322 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " of Congress at its back, and postmasters-gen eral do not buck Congress. Still less do first assistants. It had won Congress, not through coarse corruption, but through being the only force to which the individual congressman could appeal for those things which are the breath of his political life. That may be hard to understand in a great city, but in the country districts they under stand it readily enough. A congressman who cannot get a salary raised, cannot get a store leased for a post-office, cannot do a thousand and one things for the financial uplifting of his district and the party warhorses, comes to be regarded as a " dead one," and must give place to a " live one " when the convention meets. He does business with all the depart ments, but the Post-Office Department is the most important one for this purpose. With the post-office ring ever ready to help him out, his sole salvation in many an embattled year, what wonder that he felt morally bound to stand by his saviours ? The ring, boiled down, amounted to two powerful bureau chiefs, Machen and Beavers, though there were others in it. They had so extended their sway in the course of years that their unfelt control was over every spring and pivot in that great department. The ma- "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 323 chinery moved smoothly, with hardly a creak, and the average postmaster-general was un aware of its presence, or barely aware. Charles Emory Smith was unaware, apparently. Perry Heath was aware, but not shocked. There succeeded him a mild, perfectly honest gentleman from New Jersey, who in the course of months became aware. This gentleman, Johnson by name, finding himself a mere cog in a machine and recognizing something of its maleficent influence, resigned to save his con science and keep his peace of mind. He was succeeded by Wynne ; a large, ruddy-faced man, fifty years old and good- humored. There was nothing of the Sherlock Holmes about him. He was a man disposed to take things as they came and never to get excited. Even-tempered, placid, kindly cyn ical, good-naturedly pessimistic and easy-go ing, was Wynne. That, at least, was the popular estimation. But also Wynne was a newspaper man of long experience, accustomed to sift things and not to take anything for granted. Also he was honest, of an honesty that knew no compro mises. Heath was a newspaper man, and Johnson was absolutely unwilling to compro mise with evil. But Wynne was the two combined, and the members of the post-office 324 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" ring who looked him over and decided that he would be " easy " were not aware that that would prove a hard combination to beat. The newspaper men of Washington could have told them something of Wynne's rugged and aggressive honesty, of the influence he had been in maintaining the press gallery free from a certain always lurking danger. If they had, however, the ring would still have scoffed at the idea of any man breaking the entrenchments, or even discovering their ex istence. How Wynne first discovered the ring has not been made known. Probably it was a gradual dawning. There is a story that his first realization came when he discovered a signature of his on something that had been represented to him as an entirely different matter. From that time his growing caution and desire to examine things became a matter of sore irritation and grievous suspicion to the ring. Even the congressmen who drew the breath of life from the ring were probably not aware, or at least not sure, that there was a ring. It took Wynne some time to make sure that there was one. When he found it out, the spies of the ring carried to them reports that a red-faced, good-humored looking man, who « THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 325 had, nevertheless, an eye not all of good humor and containing latent possibilities, was telling things to the president. Thereupon began a systematic effort to over throw and ruin this unprecedented first assist ant, this man not content with things as they were.. The ring awoke with amazement to the fact that there were honest men not of Johnson's type, newspaper men not of Heath's type, and that the presence of one such in the Post-Office Department boded ill. The ring was well aware that a whisper in the Post-Office Department was as dangerous as a shout in the avalanche-endangered regions of the Alps. A senator of the United States was per suaded to inveigle Wynne into free-and-easy observations, later reported to the White House with sinister surroundings, and the ring's press bureau sent out reports that Wynne was to be investigated. At least the senator reported that Wynne had been in veigled into saying these things, but his sim ple denial carried more weight at the White House than the senator's word. Foiled here, the ring turned to other meth ods of a still more devious kind. Every now and then a request from some very influential mm .would come in that So-and^o be prg. 326 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" moted. Wynne, in the regular course, would turn these requests over to the bureau chief to learn whether or not the man's standing warranted his promotion. Back would come the report that the man was a shiftless drunk ard, and Wynne would notify the influential backer, in the crisp and blunt way that he never can forsake, that he would not promote the man — thereby making an enemy of the influential backer. But the ring overdid it. One day it turned in such a report about a man recommended by a Cabinet officer, and the Cabinet officer, coming down to investigate, said, " But, Gen eral, this shiftless drunkard is my brother-in- law, and he is a total abstainer." Whereupon Wynne, the newspaper man, in vestigated. He found that the man's record was one of the best in the bureau ; and a new light on the resources of the ring dawned upon Wynne, the honest man. These will serve as samples. The warfare waged upon Wynne by the ring was wonder ful in its diabolic ingenuity. He had no backing, no pull, nothing but honesty, shrewd ness and the confidence of the president. He won. When the president was convinced that there should be an investigation it was turned " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 327 over to one who did somewhat resemble a Sherlock Holmes — Bristow, the fourth assist ant. He conducted the investigation which Wynne had incited. He had, too, the support of the postmaster-general — a much misunder stood man, whose ill-timed " hot air " witti cism was directed, not at the post-office inves tigation, but at the Tulloch feature of it. Bristow's results are known to all men. The man who did more than any one else to bring about this investigation received the promotion which two years before, a hard working newspaper man, he could not have expected. He was rewarded with a seat at the president's council table and with the right to sign himself " Postmaster-General." It was a reward of merit — a reward for root ing out grafting in the department of which he was made the chief. It does not seem so hard, now that Wynne has done it. But it looks like an achievement when one remembers the long line of first as sistants, and even postmasters-general, who had either failed to detect the evil or quailed before the task. There were other men as honest as Wynne, other men as shrewd as Wynne ; but Wynne was the combination. VI IRONQUILL OF KANSAS • Why don't you write poetry any more?" " As I grow older," responded Pension Com missioner Ware, " I find that I can cuss better in prose." With this parting aphorism he shook the snow of Washington from his feet — it was in December — and departed for Kansas. " I am going back to Kansas," said he, "to rest among the cyclones. Oh, yes, I have had several years in the pension office, and I think I shall find them restful." He has gone, and left behind him a memory much execrated by government clerks and much admired by persons who like to see government work done like other work. His unpopularity was of the same kind which is enjoyed by every official who tries to have a fair day's work rendered for a fair day's pay in the government service. Wash ington takes its tone from the government clerks ; the newspapers there breathe their ideas, and a man of the Ware type is bound t9 be regarded as a tyrant. m « THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 329 There have been other Wares. Auditor Morris was killed by an indignant and out raged clerk after having tried to introduce businesslike methods in his department, and the prevailing opinion was that an unright eous tyrant was gone. Assistant Secretary Vanderlip resigned from the Treasury Depart ment after threats had been made against his life by outraged and indignant clerks. Gen eral Ainsworth staggers under a heavy burden of odium ; so did Pension Commissioner Evans, and so did Secretary Gage, under whose inhuman administration a time-clock was in troduced in the Treasury Department, The indignant and outraged clerks went to Con gress to have the infamous thing removed. It is a little hard for an outsider to get the Washington viewpoint. There are plenty of clerks who work hard and do their best, but the tone of the town is that a government job is not a Jifework but a gift. When General Ainsworth introduced the rule that clerks in his bureau must stay there until four o'clock, the hour for closing, a mighty protest went up against this unheard of inhumanity. The women clerks held a mass-meeting, and sent a spokeswoman to Ainsworth. She asked Ainsworth if he had considered the fact that jf the women Qlwks wew^ Qut at the &&me hQUf 330 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" with the men clerks, they might be jostled in the corridors by the latter, who would natu rally be h urry ing home. Do ubtless he had not considered it, and would, on its being pointed out to him, restore the immemorial privilege of going home a half hour before closing time to the women clerks, at least. " Madam, I had not considered it," said Ainsworth. " But what you say is very true. I suggest that you and the other ladies who do not want to be jostled remain in your offices until one minute past four. I will guarantee that at that hour you will not be jostled in the corridors by anything except ghosts." Gage's time clock was attributed to the in cendiary advice of Vanderlip, and had much to do with the threats against that tyrant's life. The murdered tyrant Morris was also believed to have recommended something of the kind. Its adoption was due to the clerkly habit of arriving from fifteen minutes to half an hour behind time as well as leaving ahead of time. It must be remembered that from the Wash ington viewpoint the complaints of the clerks are just, and the officials referred to actually do appear to be martinets, really infringing on the human rights of their subordinates. No « THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 331 one has lived there long without listening to complaints made by some clerk against some bureau chief, complaints made in perfect good faith and with firm conviction that the com plainant had been most outrageously treated, when the acts complained of were simply the ordinary businesslike methods of commercial houses. It was into this atmosphere that Mr. Ware stepped. The clerks were glad of his coming, for Evans had been one of the tyrants above described. Their joy soon turned to mourn ing, for King Stork proved a thousand times worse than King Log. Ware never compromised with the easy going manana spirit of government clerkism, and went out of office one of the best hated men who ever set foot in Washington. For whereas other businesslike men had simply shouldered their burden of unpopularity and gone on with it, Ware was a fighter. He could not comprehend the Washington atmos phere ; his gorge rose at it, and he fought it with all the powers of his ironic and eccentric wit. He not only wrestled with it, but he ridiculed it and emblazoned his scorn of it in public places. His first and most famous eruption of this kind was in the case of Wiggins of Georgia, ?.?.¦>. " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" and it was not until then that the clerks really sized him up. They had already found him a strange customer, and he had mystified them. One woman clerk had related with great indignation how she had gone to Ware and had explained to him her services, her merit, and the great benefits that would inure to the department if she were promoted. She said that in the midst of her statement of her merits Ware sprang from his seat, took a turn around the room, and exclaimed, in a voice of absolute anguish : " Madam, you are, without exception, the most egotistical woman I ever met." The promotion of Wiggins of Georgia was accompanied by the bulletin, conspicuously posted in the Census Office. October 18, 1902. Record of J. S. Wiggins (Georgia) is as follows : 1. Annual leave in four years, fourteen days. 2. Not a day sick leave in eight years. 3. On merit, excellent. 4. His chief recommends him. 5. He has steered no statesmen up against the commissioner, 6. He has not told the commissioner about Ins pedigree and his distinguished relatives. 7, He has not to}4 the commissioner JjQW "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 333 capable he (Wiggins) is, and how deserving of promotion. Mr. Wiggins will be promoted to-day from $1,000 to $1,200, and chiefs are requested to furnish the commissioner with the names of all others in the bureau with a similar record. This has been idiotically commented on as if Ware were setting up for rising young men the standard of never taking a vacation. It was not so misunderstood in Washington. Every malingering or soldiering government clerk felt the notice to have been intended as a rebuke and satire to himself, and hated the commissioner with a consuming hatred. The Washington newspapers, always the stanch defenders of the clerks, began a lam pooning campaign against Ware and have never let up on him. Ware was provoked into new and severer satires. He said stinging things and posted new placards, including that which read, "The Lord hates a liar." He introduced a new system of promotions, mak ing his bureau chiefs into a sort of civil serv ice commission, directing each to select three men from whom Ware could make a selection for each promotion. In his letter of instruc tions to the bureau chiefs he said : " I want to establish an incentive. There fore you will not overlook the quiet man who 334 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " attends to his duty. Do not forget the man who has no statesman interceding for him." The " statesmen " ultimately became sore in their turn at the frequent satirical references to them and their time-honored habit of sug gesting promotions. When the Wiggins-of- Georgia notice appeared, they took much umbrage at Section 5, " He has steered no statesmen up against the commissioner." One Kansas congressman sent a man to Ware, with instructions to say, in a cold, dignified way, conveying something of rebuke and reproach into his tone : " Mr. Blank has instructed me to say that you need fear no requests from him for pro motions of clerks." The messenger delivered the message, and waited for Ware to shrivel and wilt. Ware thumped his desk with an expression of genu ine and heartfelt joy and said : " Fine ! Fine ! " This occurred before Ware's character was so generally understood as it was later. At last Ware gave up his long fight to make a hustling place out of Washington, to make Greek fire out of cold molasses, and went back to Kansas. But while he was there he did wonders. It is cold fact, not de nied, that the office never was run in so busi- "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE M 335 nesslike a manner as during his term and that the government never before got anything like so much for its money. For the first time in the entire history of the Pension Office the work was up-to-date when he left. Even the most optimistic of commissioners, those who did most towards bringing it up, never figured on a time when that would come. At the dinner of the Gridiron Club, in De cember, 1904, there was an imitation Dead Letter Office, and among the burlesque letters read, the authorship of which was asked, was the following : Farewell ! Farewell ! This office-holding is a sell. I tried to do my duty well ; But time is up, I hear the bell. Oh, hell ! By unanimous consent the authorship was attributed to Commissioner Ware. Perhaps, " resting among the cyclones of Kansas," he may regain his ancient cheerful ness and resume his pen, although when asked just before he went home if he intended to write any more poems, he replied, " Not if I feel the spell coming on in time." Away back among the half-forgotten verses he wrote a quarter of a century ago there is one 336 "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" which certain late events make worthy of res urrection. He wrote it in the time of the Russo-Turkish War, and it was entitled " The Siege of Djlkprwbz." Thus it ran : Before a Turkish town The Russians came, And with huge cannon Did bombard the same. They got up close And rained fat bombshells down, And blew out every Vowel in the town. And then the Turks, Becoming somewhat sad, Surrendered every Consonant they had. Those who were stirred to profanity in the course of the just ended Russo-Japanese War profoundly regretted the lack of a laureate of their emotions. Even among Mr. Ware's worst enemies, the government clerks, there probably lingers a hope that he will not feel the spell coming on in time. VII COUNT CASSINI, A DIPLOMATIC IDEAL To say that in December, 1904, the dean of the Diplomatic Corps in Washington cele brated the fiftieth anniversary of his entry into the diplomatic service of his country is to conjure up the vision of a bent and aged man, with retirement as an early goal. Strongly jn contrast with any such conception was the real dean, stalwart, active, vigorous, fujl of Hfe and wi|;h no sign of age about him but the gray in the liair apd the grizzle of the mustache. For Count Arthur Cassim was only eighteen years of age wfren he entered the czar's serv ice, and he is a youthful-looking diplomat to day for a man of sixty-nine. He is a hand some man, handsome in face and figure, well- prpportioned of frame, firm of step and bright of eye. He looks Hke a soldier, and like one who could still give account of himself on the field. And if there are not many years of service to the czar still before him, service in exacting and difficult posts which call for tact, energy and self-command, nobody will be more surprised than Count Cassini himself. 337 338 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" The memory of man runneth not back to the time when there has been in Washington a man who in port and manner so filled the measure of the diplomatic ideal. There is an ideal diplomat, as there is an ideal soldier and an ideal statesman, and except in plays the diplomat, like the soldier and the statesman, looks little like that ideal. A pudgy, hoarse- voiced diplomat, a mild and clerical-looking soldier, a low-statured and shrill-toned states man, are the commonest of truth's satires on the ideal. But Count Cassini looks what he is. He is gentle in voice, and there is in his manner something that invites confidence and puts the most bashful of strangers at instant ease. " A charming man " is the description always fitted to Cassini after an introduction and conversation, and that verdict, " a charm ing man," Cassini has been hearing about himself throughout all the fifty years in which he has served czar after czar. Which, of course, does not mean that there is anything " easy " about him. Russian dip lomats are not celebrated for that. If ever there was a Russian diplomat who was con fiding and easy to hoodwink, he did not cele brate a golden jubilee in the service. And a rather grim respect, somewhat infused with dread, has been the tribute of Cassini 's rivals THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 339 from countries whose interests had no identity with Cassini's. When Cassini arrived in Peking as envoy from Russia, he prepared, in accordance with custom, to present his credentials to the em peror. The first step in that direction was to visit the Tsung-li-Yamen, the Chinese foreign office. The almond-eyed statesmen who com posed it received him with Oriental courtesy, and after the usual formal preliminaries were over they told him on what date it would please the emperor to receive him. " I shall then appear at the palace on that day " began Count Cassini. The Tsung-li-Yamen suppressed their smiles with difficulty. They hastened to explain that the emperor never received the envoys of barbarian powers at the palace. They were always received in the imperial stables. The new minister was quite well aware of that, but he appeared to be vastly surprised. He said it was impossible for him to meet the emperor in a stable, or indeed to frequent a stable at all for any social purposes. The Tsung-li-Yamen, with forbearing pity for the barbarian's ignorance, explained that the stables were really quite handsomely fitted up and that there were no disagreeable surround ings. 340 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" " I understand that," said Count Cassini. " But as the representative of my imperial master, I cannot meet his Majesty anywhere except in the palace." That could never be, the Tsung-li-Yamen said. " Very well, gentlemen," said Count Cassini. " It desolates me to say that I cannot present my credentials to his Majesty. I shall furnish you a certified copy of them, so that we can do business together, but it will be impossible for me to present them until I am received in Peking as the Chinese minister is received in St. Petersburg." " We fear your Excellency will grow weary of waiting," said the senior dignitary solici tously. " For you will never be received in the palace." " You have patience, gentlemen," said Count Cassini. " You will find that I am as patient as you." Then he withdrew. He sent a copy of his credentials to the foreign office, but he did not see the emperor. Alone among the envoys of the barbarian clans, he rigidly refused to see the Son of Heaven. Interest in this wonderful barbarian spread rapidly in the celestial city. The man who refused to see the emperor became a subject » ffllE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 341 for teacup1 talk. Human euribsity exists eveti ill oriental and imperial breasts, and it was rumored that, as the years went on, even roy alty was prone to wonder and discuss the Un precedented situation. Strange to say, Russia's interests did not suffer. The new minister negotiated several important treaties With remarkable success, always working with the Tsung-li-Yamen, which grudgingly recognized the certified copy. He negotiated the Manchurian rail way treaty, the treaty to regulate telegraph concessions, and others in which Russia's in terests were opposed to those of the other European and barbarian Countries, and in no case did Russia get the Worst of it. One day there was to be a grand reception of the diplomats — in the stables of course. The Diplomatic Corps went to the residence of its dean, Minister von Brandt of Germany, to discuss it. The arrangements had all been made when the Russian minister remarked casually that, of course, he was not going. " And why not ? " said Minister von Bi'andt. " As the czar's representative, I decline to be received in a stable by anybody," said the Russian. Minister von Brandt felt that the time had Come to rebuke Cassini's arrogant follyj and 342 " THE OTHER END OE THU A VJ£« UE" that as dean the duty devolved upon him. " As for me," he said, with freezing hauteur, " wherever the emperor wishes to see me I shall be glad to go." " Yes," said Cassini calmly, " even if he re ceives you in the lavatory." Von Brandt turned purple and the other ministers gasped. Count Cassini withdrew and left them to wend their way to the sta bles. A few days after this a bombshell fell in the Diplomatic Corps. The emperor had con ferred upon the Russian envoy the Order of the Dragon, the greatest of Chinese orders, which no one of the other diplomats had ever received. They could hardly believe their ears ; it must be a joke ; but it was not. Cas sini wore the order, and stayed away from the palace as before. Then the war with Japan broke out, and the emperor was soon in a tight place. He needed Russian assistance to snatch from Japan the fruits of victory. One day an invi tation was conveyed to Count Cassini to come to the palace. He went, and was received in Peking as the Chinese minister is received in St. Petersburg. And this is the true story of how it hap pens that to-day the envoys of barbarian pow- "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 343 ers are received in the palace of the Son of Heaven. For after Cassini had been received the favor was gradually extended to the others. But in all the discussion this affair evoked among the members of the Diplomatic Corps there was one question which recurred oftener than any other. And it was this : When the emperor conferred the Order of the Dragon upon the Russian envoy, had he heard the story of the lavatory sarcasm ? Is it possible that the Chinese have a sense of humor ? Perhaps another emperor, he of Germany, heard the story. At any rate, Minister von Brandt was soon afterwards recalled. In the long game which Great Britain and Russia have been playing in China for as cendancy, each move, small as it might have been, has counted. It was a game wherein there were no moves to be presented to the other side. When Cassini was there, Russia did not often lose a trick. One of the moves in the game was the es tablishment of a diplomatic language. China had gradually been won to see that there were other languages beside Chinese, and that it might be well to adopt a European one for diplomatic purposes. French is the diplo- 344 « THti OtHiJR END OT* THE AVENUE * matic language in Europe, and France is trig ally of Russia. It would count as a move in the' game to have China adopt English. Sir Claude Macdonald, the British minister, engineered the thing in art ingenibus maftiier, ahd had managed it so craftily that he had practically won his object without a hint that he was even playing the game having gdt to" the ears of his rivals, or rather rival— for Russia was the only rival England feared in the Flowery Kingdom. The Tsung-li-Yamen had yielded to Macdon- ald's arguments, and had promised that Eng lish should be adopted. The order was to be duly promulgated on a certain day, and things had gotten along as far as this When Cassini heard of it. He heard of most things that he Wanted to know about in Peking ; how he heard about them is a question for the distrib utors of the czar's secret service fund. Sir Claude knew of this ubiquity of the gehtle'- voiced Cassini's ears, and had gone about his Work with particular regard thereto. The time was short, and Cassini knew it would be a waste of time to see the Tsung-li- Yamen. Only one appeal would avail, to the empress dowager. Nothing could be done in the way of seeihg that omnipotent person if Sir Claude Macdonald was arOUnd. Copyright, 1904, Clinedinst, Wash., D. (J. COUNT CASSINI. " A youthful-looking diplomat for a man of sixty-nine." " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 345 To the Belgian minister came a suggestion frbm the count that it would be a fine thing to give a hunting party. The Belgian minis ter fell into the suggestion with alacrity, and issued invitations to the entire Diplomatic Corps. The idea struck them all as magnifi cent ; great was the enthusiasm, and particu larly so with the English, who were yearning for a good old-fashioned hunt. On the day that the hunt was to take place Count Cassini fell ill, but the other diplomats were on hand. As soon as the hunt was well under way, the Russian invalid miraculously recovered and went to see the empress dowa ger. That day the empress notified the Tsung-li-Yamen that the official diplomatic language Would be French. When the diplo matic hunters returned they found a convales cent colleague, who had stayed home and bagged bigger game than any of them. In this country Count Cassini's task was unusually difficult, because the institutions Of this land are so different from Russia's. It would be hard, however, to find a man by temperament better fitted to get over the hard places and make things smooth. His task of building up better relations between the tWo countries he wrought at with the gentle per sistence which is a part Of his character, and 346 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" also with perhaps a touch of that resigned tolerance which envoys of despotic powers al ways feel towards the queer characteristics of this inexplicably shirt-sleeved land. One American institution which gave Count Cassini a great deal of trouble was the press. He accepted this untrammeled institution as one of the necessary peculiarities of life in a country so different from his own, but there were things about it that he never did get en tirely reconciled to. Criticism of himself, and even sensational articles in so-called " so ciety " journals about his family, concerned him very little. What came as near as any thing could to disturbing his calmness was the appearance of vivid articles on Russian cus toms and habits, generally designed to prove that Russian society is fairly representative of the infernal regions. " Why do these things get into print ? " he asked one day, lifting from his desk a highly entertaining " Sunday story," depicting some peculiarly atrocious institution of torture which was veraciously alleged to be one of the recognized and commonplace features of Rus sian life. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders with an expression of patient pain. " Can you explain to me, my friend ? " he "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 34Y went on. " It is not true, of course, this thing ; neither is there any truth in the others like it. We are not savages. I have seen these things many times, but never can I get over my astonishment. Each time I see one of them I am amazed again, and always ask the question, ' Why do men write these things, and if they are written, why are they printed? ' Can you tell me ? " The explanation offered in reply as the most probable one did not seem to enlighten Count Cassini very much. " It may be," he said. " But still I do not understand why these things are printed. It does not seem to me to be American. Some things are American and some are un-American, and if I have learned anything about the American spirit these things are not a part of it." When Representative Goldfogle introduced his resolution calling on the government to take steps for the securing of better treatment for American Jews visiting Russia, a friend of Count Cassini's asked him what he thought of Goldfogle. The friend expected something in the way of criticism or sarcasm. "I don't suppose you have a very high opinion of him," he added. " Why not ? " answered Count Cassini. " Mr. Goldfogle was here yesterday, and took 348 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" dinner with me. He is a very pleasant gen tleman." And, as a matter of fact, they had discussed the whole question with the greatest friendli ness. Perhaps this anecdote will not con vey much significance outside of Washington. It may be necessary to say in explanation, whether the explanation reflects much credit on the Diplomatic Corps or not, that Count Cassini was nearly the only one of the lot about whom, under such circumstances, such an anecdote could have been written. There is a strong streak of sentiment in Count Cassini's nature. He does not attempt to conceal it from his friends, either, as the average Anglo-Saxon would do, and as per haps most others would do. One of his pas sions is poetry, particularly French poetry. He has a great collection of it, and likes to quote. He has other collections, and in two of them he takes a good deal of pride. One is a col lection of arms, made gradually during his fifty years' experience. Originally it is said to have been one of the most wonderful col lections in the world, for in these fifty years the sovereigns in every land where he has been stationed, knowing his hobby, have made him presents of unusual and curious weapons « THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 349 of their countries. Unfortunately a great part of the collection was lost at sea, includ ing many of the most valuable gifts from monarchs. Another is a collection of cigarette cases. He has six thousand of them, many of them expensively made and of great value. A good many have been presents from monarchs and nobles, and the cases come from every country on the civilized globe. Representing the great autocracy of civili zation, Count Cassini was the most democratic man in the corps, and this despite the fact that he is unmistakably a " grand seigneur." He was approachable, easy and affable, though never undignified. There has seldom been in Washington a diplomat whose personal charm wag so great or whose manners were so simple and plain. VIII DUNNELL: A PORTRAIT FROM THE PRESS GALLERY One of the strongest characters and sharp est individualities that ever left their impress on the life of Washington passed away in the death of Elbridge Gerry Dunnell at East Orange in 1905. " Dunnell, famous for a bitter, frank integ rity," is the description Alfred Henry Lewis gives of him in one of his books, and it is so accurate that even the word " famous " is cor rect if understood in the sense only in which a newspaper correspondent can have fame. The fame of Dunnell was among newspaper men and public men ; he was the friend of many presidents and of countless men more famous in the public eye than he, but not nearly so well known nor so highly esteemed in the life of the national capital. In the twenty years during which he was the correspondent of The New York Times at Washington few public men were better known here than he, and none more respected or feared. He walked straight his own road, with an integrity that was fairly violent and an independence that was almost shocking. 350 « THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 351 He was a man of downright ways and rug ged manner, and he came as near to being an absolutely truthful man as any human being ever did, for he never hesitated to express his opinion to the face of the man of whom he entertained it. For many years this made him enemies, a fact of which he was perfectly aware and for which he cared as little as for the adverse opinion of so many bumblebees. In later years all antagonism died away, and his last years in Washington were spent in the midst of praise, though he never moder ated his plain-spoken ways to the last. Even presidents, accustomed to flattery and at the worst to barely suggested criticism, met with no such tribute from Dunnell, and re spected him none the less for it. On Presi dent Roosevelt's sensational stumping tour in 1900, in which he was mobbed in Colorado and hooted down in Kentucky and in parts of New York, he came into his car after a partic ularly rough experience and said to Dunnell, who accompanied him : " I wonder why it is that people seem so fond of throwing rocks at me? " " It is because your manner invites rocks," answered Dunnell, in his abrupt, staccato manner. Later, shortly after Mr. Roosevelt became 352 "THE U'l'llM 1DJND UF THE AVENUE" president, he issued several denials of erron eous newspaper stories about him. Dunnell called at the White House and found the president much exercised about a new canard, which he was about to deny. " You ought not to deny them," replied Dunnell. " The lies will kill themselves. The president of the United States does not need to kill them." After the Booker Washington luncheon the president, then breasting a torrent of criticism, greeted Dunnell with, " How are you, Dun nell ? I'm glad to see you. I need not de fend myself from you, at least, for having Booker Washington to lunch." " No," said Dunnell. " But it wasn't neces sary for you to do it." It means more in Washington than it can mean to the outside world that Dunnell was for eight years the official head of the body of newspaper correspondents in that city. The Press Committee, biennially elected by the one hundred and fifty or two hundred correspondents there, is recognized by Con gress as an official body. It has practically absolute control over the fortunes of the corps. It can refuse admission to the gallery to any man, and this carries far more than the mere refusal of a seat. It places the official stamp "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 353 of disapproval on such a man and, where the rejection is made on charges and after trial, usually ends by driving him out of the busi ness. Dunnell, the bitter of tongue, was for four Congresses the head of this body. Men who were writhing under his unsparing sarcasm or blunt condemnation yet voted for him because they knew the interests of the corps and its reputation would be absolutely safe in those incorruptible hands of his. Graft lies in every corner of this political city, ready to worm its way in wherever the least opening is afforded. Adventurers flock here, seeking any handle that may offer itself. With the immense opportunities open to the newspaper corps, graft is as ready to inject itself there as anywhere else. The press gal lery is the cleanest spot in Washington life, but it is not due to any hesitancy or bashful- ness on the part of the adventurers. It is due to the untiring watchfulness of the correspond ents themselves. This watchfulness has to be exercised through officials recognized by Congress and clothed with power, and hence the Press Com mittee. The correspondents know the neces sity of having men not only honest but strong in that place of power. There is not a cor- 354 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " respondent in Washington of many years' standing who does not remember to have overheard or participated in the following conversation at every biennial election : " They're trying to beat Dunnell because of his sharp, tongue. Are you going to vote for him?" "You bet I am, though he jumped on me the other day. With him on the committee the.gallery will be kept clean." It used to be a proverb in the press gallery that Dunnell would throw his own brother out of the gallery if he suspected the slightest blemish on his honesty. Certainly no appeal to friendship ever saved a grafter from Dun nell. The admiration for his uncompromising eliajracter and . his ¦¦ -rough honesty so mounted jua ilater years that he could no longer arouse ifostility and," hardly irritation by his plain ness (of;' speech/ f/:: He won not only respect but popularity,' and," from; the younger element at least, affection. Dunnell was an intimate friend of President Arthur, under ,whom he began his service in Washington. Later he became close to Presi dent Cleveland, but at the outset of that admin istration, before the new president had come to know the different correspondents, he of " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 355 course did not fare better than any one else ; in fact, Dunnell won his way to each new president solely by virtue of the esteem and respect which the presidents came to feel for him after they knew him. In the beginning of the first Cleveland ad ministration a good many of the newspaper correspondents found things a good deal changed. Particularly was this the case in the War Department. Secretary Endicott was a man of no national experience. He came of the blue-blooded old family founded by the colonial governor, and had the rigidity and hauteur of a British peer. He came to Wash ington knowing nothing of its ways, and the correspondents found that to approach Endi cott was somewhat more difficult than to be come chummy with the czar. They revealed in print the absurd cere monies of approach to Endicott, but at first he took it to be merely partisan criticism. When Dunnell gave an account of the progress to the throne-room, however, as it was done in a paper supporting the administration, Endicott perceived that perhaps he had not learned how to fit in with Washington customs. He sent for Dunnell and told him that he was sorry to learn that the newspaper men thought him discourteous. 356 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE » Endicott could not to save his life unbend and become democratic, but he did his best in this interview and thought he had succeeded. " I assure you," concluded the fine old aristo crat, "that I have no wish to make matters difficult for newspaper men. In fact," he added, with frosty graciousness, " in Massa chusetts I have always been glad to patronize them." The character of Dunnell has been imper fectly indicated if any one who reads this has any doubt about how the word " patronized " struck his ears. As Endicott ceased and looked expectantly at Dunnell, the latter said : " Mr. Secretary, I'm obliged to you, and I'd like to reply by telling you a story." Endicott looked a little shocked and raised his gray eyebrows at so plebeian a proposition as to conduct a discussion by means of story telling. But he signed to Dunnell to go on. " You may remember, Mr. Secretary," said Dunnell, " that in former days the whaling vessels that set out from your State were not commanded by saints. The captains used to knock their men about with anything that came handy by way of argument. One whal ing vessel set out under command of a cap tain who had the habit of knocking his men down with a belaying pin whenever he " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE " 35? wanted to explain anything, and he was par ticularly severe on his mate. " He used to cuss the mate — if you'll ex cuse the word, Mr. Secretary — and beat him over the head and raise the devil with him generally. The mate stood it with patience that kept growing less and less till he was al most at the point of revolt. "At this juncture they sighted a whale. The captain was below that morning, having had too much of a tussle with Medford rum the night before. The mate took charge of the whole thing, and they were cutting the blubber into strips when the captain came on deck. " He was delighted, and he thumped the mate on the back with joy. ' By jingo,' he roared, ' you are the best mate that ever sailed with me. You are a wonder. You are a daisy. You ' "The mate had been standing with his arms folded on his chest and his brow bent in a scowl. He turned around and interrupted the flow of praise. " ' Captain,' said he, ' compliments is all very well ; but what we've got to have on this ship, if you and me is to get along together, is ci — vil — I — tee, of the darndest, damnedest, commonest kind ! '" 358 " THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE.'! The secretary gave a shocked little laugh, and said " Very good," and Dunnell went out. From that day newspaper men had no trouble with the War Department. Of course it goes without saying that public men could confide all sorts of secrets to Dun nell without the slightest danger of ever see ing them in print if they were given under the seal of confidence. That sort of thing is the rule in Washington ; but in addition to that, Dunnell had a bitter, burning hatred of any man who violated the rule. - He resented it as a personal injury, and the most blazing words in his rich vocabulary of scorn were the portion of any one who was guilty in that way. For he regarded it as an injury to the newspaper corps, whose honor he held as dear as his own. He collapsed in health on the first day of the Schley inquiry, and should have retired from business at once ; but with dogged per tinacity he stuck to his desk, resisting all at tempts to make him leave his post. He could not attend the hearings of the court, but he looked forward eagerly to the day when a certain bosom friend of his was to testify. When the day came he impatiently awaited the arrival of the subordinate who covered' the hearings. "THE OTHER END OF THE AVENUE" 359 " Well," he cried, when the assistant came in, " how did my friend Commander Blank show up ? " "To be frank," was the answer, "Schley's counsel made a monkey of him. I hate to say it, as he is your friend. Do you want his defeat toned down any in my story ? " _ " Not by a damned sight ! " was the uncom promising retort. " Friend or no friend, you tell just what happened. We print the news." And yet one day, when an assistant brought in a story which, if told literally, would have inflicted pain on a certain man of gentle and retiring ways and soft heart, Dunnell refused to have it written that way. It was a curious and unexpected touch of inconsistency in a character of iron consistency, but it was not the only case of the kind. From that illness of 1901 he never recovered, and now he is dead. The light of esteem and affection that played around him, particularly in his later years, hovers now over his grave. The vacancy his going makes in the ranks of his old colleagues is in their hearts as well as in their respect. He was a man unique in his way ; and the memory he has left is exactly that which Ingersoll ascribed to Conkling : " The memory of a brave, imperious, honest man, who bowed alone to death." V OUT IN THE FIELD I BRYAN THE FIGHTER There are few men who have ever person ally known William J. Bryan without both liking and respecting him. The people who have managed to keep up a bitter hostility to him are able to do it only by not meeting him. The easy explanation of personal magnetism does not account for it. Magnetism has noth ing to do with it, or precious little. What silences men when they come to know Bryan is not such personal magnetism as he has got, but simply the effect produced upon the average man by the conviction that in knowing Bryan he knows an honest, manly, square man, one who believes everything he believes, and one who is a most tremendous fighter. The time has gone by when tho words "charlatan," "demagogue" and "trickster" were chirped at Bryan by any man who had ever met him. The same men may hate him to-day, but they know the grotesque inappli cability of words like these. They may find 363 364 OUT IN THE FIELD other words to express their honest disap proval and dread of him, but not these. He has lived such words down, as Henry George did. In the year 1896, the New York Tribune, in summing up the result on the day after Bryan's defeat, said : " The wretched, rattle-pated boy, posing in vapid vanity and mouthing resounding rot tenness, was not the real leader of that league of hell. He was only a puppet in the blood- imbrued hands of Altgeld the anarchist and Debs the revolutionist and other desperadoes of that stripe. But he was a willing puppet, Bryan was, willing and eager. Not one of his masters was more apt than he at lies and forgeries and blasphemies and all the nameless iniquities of that campaign against the Ten Commandments. He goes down with the cause, and must abide with it in the history of infamy. He had less provocation than Benedict Arnold, less intellectual force than Aaron Burr, less manliness and courage than Jefferson Davis. He was the rival of them all in deliberate wickedness and treason to the Republic. His name belongs with theirs, neither the most brilliant nor the least hateful in the list." This differs from the other newspaper esti- OUT IN THE FIELD 365 mates of Bryan in that year only in being somewhat more tersely put. Times have changed. This would no longer seem a calm, dispassionate and reasonably ac curate description of Bryan even to violent antagonists who have never been disarmed by meeting him. Shortly before the national convention of 1904, an acquaintance was arguing with Mr. Bryan about the folly and futility of his course. The Democratic party, it will be re membered, was about to be united. All hands were to forget their old differences and come together on a platform that would not hurt anybody's feet. Most of the old Bryanites were to be in line — and were, as a matter of fact. The radicals of four years ago were crowding the " gold-bugs " for room on the platform. Senator Carmack of Tennessee was in the front rank. Even General Weaver, who had come into the Democratic party by the Greenback route, was at least ready to be silent. Senator Dubois, who had left the Republican party because it would not stand for free silver, was one of the reorganized party's generals. Senator Tillman, though dis posed to be skeptical, was silent and acquies cent for the sake of party harmony. As far as the eye could reach there wasn't a 366 OUT IN THE FIELD Bryanite who was off* the reservation, except Bryan. The only jar in the general harmony was made by the motley aggregation under the banner of Hearst ; and they were not Bryanites, but radicals to whom Bryan was a conservative ; mingled, of course, with politi cians who supported Hearst for*other reasons, without caring a cent what his principles were. Bryan, deserted and hopelessly alone, was still standing out. He was being urged and implored by his friends to come into camp. His enemies were scoffing at him, as a broken and discredited leader whose end was political suicide. He was subjected to such pressure as few men have ever had to stand up against. He was standing up against it with that calm, imperturbable good humor which is his main surface characteristic. Neither friends nor enemies doubted that he was deliberately kill ing himself as a political leader. His acquaintance undertook to argue the case. First he pointed out the political ruin which was inevitable if he persisted in fight ing single-handed his united party. Bryan said he believed in standing by his principles. " That may be all right for you," said the acquaintance, " but how can you ever expect to get anywhere with it? You don't have to OUT IN THE FIELD 367 abandon your principles ; only not to obtrude them where it is hopeless. It's all very well for you to stand out forever for your princi ples, but how can you get the rank and file Democrat to go with you ? He doesn't un derstand these principles ; all he sees is that he is getting his mail from a Republican post master and that he'd like to hand out that mail himself." Bryan said he was not in despair about ul timate success ; by standing for one's princi ples one might sometime win, even if not now. " Not in 1908," said his acquaintance. " Well, in 1912," said Mr. Bryan. " No, sir, not in 1912." " Well, in 1916, then," said Mr. Bryan. "Not in 1916," was the emphatic answer, " not in 1920, not in 1924, not in seventy-five years." " Well, in seventy-five years, then," said Mr. Bryan. It does not appear that much headway can be made with a man like this by talking to him about pecuniary or political success. Yet in 1900 Mr. Joseph Pulitzer addressed to Mr. Bryan a personal letter strongly urging him to moderate somewhat the violence of his in sistence upon his principles. Mr. Pulitzer pointed out how Bryan could advance himself 368 OUT IN THE FIELD in his party, win the presidency, sjecure the support of the East, etc. Every argument in the letter was addressed, not to a sincere and unselfish statesman, but to a politician seeking his own advancement. Mr. Bryan replied, good-naturedly declining, even at the cost of losing the support of the World. Mr. Pulitzer secured his consent to the publication of the letter. It evidently never occurred to Mr. Pulitzer, and probably not to many of his readers, that in publishing this correspondence Mr. Pulitzer was painting the portrait of the real Bryan, and of a Bryan vastly different from the one to whom the first letter was ad dressed. Bryan in a fight is an interesting sight to see. He never loses his temper, never abates a jot of his grip upon that flowing good humor of his, and never loses an atom of his self-control. Yet he differs in aspect from the politicians who enter a fight with the " gambler's eye." The gambler's eye is apart of that steady, imperturbable face which be longs to race-track men and to many politi cians of the type of Patrick H. McCarren. With it goes the low voice and the equable temperament. " Bull " Andrews, Quay's old lieutenant in Pennsylvania, is a fine example of this type. WILLIAM J. BRYAN. ' A good fighter and a square man." OUT IN THE FIELD 369 But this steady, calm stolidity is utterly apart from Bryan's calmness. He is the pic ture of activity and life. His eyes gleam with the joy of fighting ; he is in his element ; he does not even lose or conceal his keen per ception of the ludicrous, even when the joke is on himself. No greater fight, single-handed, was ever made than the one he made at the St. Louis Convention of 1904. Everything was over when he arrived there, but he refused to admit it. He set himself to the task of overruling a decision already made, of overturning a pledged majority. He was in the thick of every fight ; in the Committee on Resolutions, in the fight over credentials. He was all alone, and so he could not miss a single fight ; there was no lieutenant to whom to turn the job over. He flashed from one room, where a fight had been just completed, to another, there to carry on the next one. Of course he did not sleep. After the battles of the day and night were over there were the plans for the next day to make, and belated persons to see. He was there several days before the con vention met, and he probably got a few hours' sleep in that time ; but he did not have over an hour's sleep from the day the convention met, on the morning of July 6, to the morn- 370 OUT IN THE FIELD ing of July 9, when Parker was nominated. The battle in the Committee on Resolutions alone lasted through an entire night and morning. The other fighters could get rest ; but the single-handed fighter could not. All these days were days of herculean bat tle. Alone he beat the triumphant chieftain, David B. Hill, to his knees in the Committee on Resolutions, and in an all-night battle forced that compromise which later was un done by Parker's famous " Gold Telegram." What this feat meant it is impossible to con vey to any one who was not there. It de served a place in Andrew Lang's collection of the "great fights of one against a multitude." Lang was able to find only four, including the fight of Hereward the Strong and the fight of Bussy d' Amboise. The ways of fighting have changed, and the weapons were not the same, but that is all the difference. This battle, fought all night long, was pro longed until about noon of July 8. When, at the close of the morning session, Ollie James of Kentucky upreared himself to all of his vast height and in stentorian tones announced that the Committee on Resolutions had " unani mously " agreed on a platform, there were all the elements of an explosion to beat all con vention records. For the Bryanites in the OUT IN THE FIELD 371 galleries knew the announcement was a vic tory for the single-handed fighter, and the moment the other side had finished their ap plause at the news that there was to be har mony a shrill yell of " Hurrah for Bryan ! " burst from the turbulent mob there. The demonstration was on and off in a moment. Champ Clark, the chairman, quelled it by the sheer force of his person ality. It was not so much the bang of his gavel as the fact that for more than an hour he had been instilling into the minds of the noisy occupants of the galleries the fact that he was not a man to be trifled with. Through out the whole morning session he had cracked the whip in a manner that compelled respect for his orders. And it was a session that would have got away from a feeble man, a session of long waits for the committee's report, with nothing but speechmaking and band playing to while away the time ; a session in which turbulence seemed the natural employ ment of the twelve thousand restless Amer ican citizens out for a holiday. He had done it at the very start, when his bulldog head and heavy shoulders first ap peared above the crowd on the speakers' plat form. It always took a lot of banging to bring about order, but the way in which 372 OUT IN THE FIELD Champ Clark's lips were compressed together and his square chin projected had more effect in quieting the crowd than all the clamor he made with the gavel. When there was order he sent forth this menace in a slow roar : " The chair is determined that there shall be order. At the slightest indication of dis order during the session all business will be suspended while the sergeant-at-arms and the police of St. Louis put the offender out of the building." The tone and manner of this menace car ried conviction and for the first time in that wild, turbulent convention there was order. Speaker after speaker was introduced to while away the time, while Clark, in the same fash ion, put an end to the jamming of the aisles. The crowd yelled for " Joe Bailey " to make a speech, until Clark got tired of it. When he did, he put the Bailey yell to rest with exactly three bangs of the gavel, two compressions of the lips, one projection of the chin, and one glare. Then at last came Ollie James's report. At first came the announcement that the report was unanimous. Bang, crash, boom, went the convention. As soon as the tumult had been ended James shouted out that " New York and Nebraska," meaning Hill and OUT IN THE FIELD 373 Bryan, had agreed, and all the convention knew that there was no gold plank in the platform and that the single-handed fighter had won. Pandemonium was unchained. Champ Clark leaped up like a tiger, seized his gavel and raised it above his head so far that it seemed to threaten the small of his back. Down it came with crash after crash. He was the model of a man who meant busi ness, the incarnation of the words " stop it." If this had been Clark's first appearance in the role of a trouble-queller, he might not have succeeded. But the galleries, Bryan's only friends, had learned to fear him, and he scared the demonstration out of them. Ad journment followed immediately, and the delegates excitedly poured out into the streets, discussing the wonderful victory of the single- handed fighter. Bryan was elsewhere, engaged in half a dozen new fights. At night came the nomi nations, in that record-breaking session which lasted until long after the convention had been illuminated by the light of day. It was five minutes to six when the delegates went out into the busy streets. And here was where Bryan made what, to one who has seen him under many aspects, was the most re markable appearance of his life. 374 OUT IN THE FIELD The scene must be understood to form an idea of the event. It was a session of thrills, turbulence and wild excitement. The day light, looking into the blazing hot hall which had been a furnace of emotion for hours, lighted a seething multitude howling like maniacs at every sentiment and every name, roaring down even good speakers and blowing tedious ones off the platform in gales of rage. It lighted a hall comprising an entire city block, in which were certainly fifteen thou sand people. It lighted galleries thronged with persons who, though they were merely onlookers and did not have to stay, had clung to their seats all night, and would see it through. Among them were thousands of daintily dressed women, who had come to see a show whether they missed a night's sleep or not. Their little handkerchiefs were wet, their palm leaf fans were broken into splinters from too much participation in wild demon strations, and they were eating thick ham sandwiches brought in from neighboring places with as much gusto as they ever ate the most tempting of breakfasts at home. As for the men, a coat was almost as rare as a petticoat with them. Their hair was di sheveled, their voices hoarse and broken, their tempers ruffled. They were drinking ginger OUT IN THE FIELD 375 ale out of bottles because there were no glasses to be .had. All over the hall was a perpetual roar of sound, lifted into violent gusts when ever occasion arose. Everywhere exhausted delegates who had been up for two nights and had given way to the strain were fast asleep in their chairs. In at the doors were crowding hundreds of men, although the hall had been taxed to its capacity hours before. Discipline and organi zation were at an end, tickets were no longer good, and the strongest man had the best chance. It was five o'clock when Senator Martin of Virginia, rushing like a madman down the aisle, his face distorted with rage, shouted to Senator Bailey, the chairman : " Bailey, stop the proceedings and put a stop to this infernal outrage. The doorkeep ers are letting everybody in. They are jam ming the aisles so that we cannot move around. Stop it, I say." It was little chance a speaker had in that maelstrom. The saddest fate was that of poor little Fitzgerald of Rhode Island, who tried to second Hearst in a voice that did not reach the middle of the hall. He knew the temper of the crowd, and he wore a fixed smile of good nature to disarm its wrath as he took the platform, but the smile only maddened 376 OUT IN THE FIELD them. He had not uttered a single sentence before thousands were shouting, " Sit down ! " Fitzgerald talked bravely along unheard. In the midst of the shrieks, with his original idea of disarming wrath by good nature, he called out : " Give me half a minute, men ; I won't keep you. I just want to say a word." This touching plea might have had its effect had any one heard it, but the galleries were singing " Dixie," and he sat down. When Mayor Rose of Milwaukee took the stand early in the morning, his clear voice ar rested the crowd for a moment, but he frit tered away his opportunity by making attacks upon candidates other than his own, and a storm broke forth. He made it worse by talk ing back, and his speech was wrecked. When South Carolina was called and the great rough head and fierce face of old Ben Tillman upreared themselves above the crowd, its temper changed on the instant and fifteen thousand voices yelled " Platform." The fierce face disappeared in the waves of human ity beneath, and a few seconds later the burly figure was seen climbing the platform. It was a remarkable speech that Tillman de livered. It was unusual for him ; it was an appeal and a reproach. Rose's attacks upon OUT IN THE FIELD 377 other candidates had grieved him. This was a time for Democrats to get together. He pleaded earnestly with them to forget their differences, to stop squabbling among them selves, and end the old unhappy days of the past ten years. There was a yearning note in it, and it melted the crowd as no other speech had done. Then came Champ Clark and the Cockrell demonstration, and had the convention been any less steel-riveted, copper-bound, signed, sealed and delivered than it was, it would have been swept off its feet. It was the great est demonstration of the convention. So great was it that Champ Clark did not finish his speech. He had only begun to mention the qualifications of his candidate. He had been laying down general propositions by way of introducing his candidate. Then, letting out that gigantic voice of his in a roar that rang and echoed and vibrated in every corner of that city block, he cried : "They talk of Roosevelt's bravery. Old Cockrell is braver than he." At these words the crowd went mad, the delegates and all. It was really only the be ginning of Clark's speech ; but he waited for fifteen or twenty minutes for it to die down, and then, realizing that it was only half over, 378 OUT IN THE FIELD and that he had done his work, he left the platform. For twenty minutes after that the crowd went on. The Cockrell boomers who distributed the flags probably hoped that a con siderable number of the flags would be waved, but they could not have expected that practic ally everybody there would seize a flag and wave it. The vast arena, the city block, was a vibrating, undulating, changing sea of red, white and blue, and for once the old toast which tells how " God never made a more beautiful thing than the American flag " was literally true. It was Bryan's opportunity, and the idea of seconding Cockrell came to him in a flash. At four o'clock in the morning he mounted the platform. The crowd cheered for nine minutes, and it was Bryan himself who stopped it. He scowled at the shouters, and imperi ously motioned them to stop shouting and sit down. After a minute or two they realized that he meant it, and they did so. It was the most remarkable speech Bryan ever delivered — not in rhetoric, but in the nature of its plea. It was as near to a har mony talk as a man of his pugnacity could make. Also, it was as near to a plea for the sympathies of his hearers as such a fighter could make. It was dignified and manly in OUT IN THE FIELD 379 tone, but the undercurrent was this, and everybody realized it as well as if it had been put in words instead of being deftly and subtly suggested by innuendo and inference : " I led you twice, and you have followed me and believed in me. Now you have overruled me and cast me out. I accept it because I am a loyal Democrat. But be merciful to your former leader and be not too brutal to your old principles. You have got plenty of good men ; take one — any one — whether he is a free silver man or not, but don't force me to take this candidate of yours, for he represents the money interests, the powers of greed that I have been fighting all these years." Over and over again this was suggested in sentences that came as near to the blunt and plain ones above as Bryan could in propriety make them. It was such a speech as he made at Chicago in 1896, but with the tawdriness gone and in its place a development of the larger dignity that has come to Bryan with years and experience. And this most certainly was a speech which would have swept a con vention less steel riveted. Of course it had no effect as far as votes were concerned, but it did have a good effect for Bryan's cause, for it led to a great feeling of sympathy and even admiration for a good 380 OUT IN THE FIELD fighter who was battling heroically against un conquerable odds. Wherever one looked men who had had no use for Bryan and were not supporting him, and were glad of his defeat, were looking at each other and nodding their heads, and say ing softly, " This is a great speech, the greatest he ever made." He was hoarse when he took the stand, and he apologized for it. " It's too bad that in this hour of extremity his voice should fail him," whispered many a man who, though against him, admired the fight he was making. But in a few moments the old inspiration came to him ; his eyes lighted up and his voice rang out firm, loud, and clear. To see Bryan pleading, pleading pathetically and desperately with the party whose idol he had been in two campaigns, pleading not for the nomination of a man of his own faith, but for the nomination of anybody at all who was not connected with what he called " the god of gold," was as dramatic and strange a sight as has ever been seen in a great gathering. Certainly it was without precedent in a na tional convention. At last came the climax. When, after say ing that even Pattison of Pennsylvania would be satisfactory to him, be suddenly announced OUT IN THE FIELD 381 that he had come to second the nomination of Cockrell, the crowd went wild. But it was all in vain. There are some things that even Hereward the Strong and Bussy d'Amboise could not do, and there are some things that Bryan could not do. It shows the extent to which Hill and his friends had the conven tion nailed down and sealed up that not even such a combination as the speeches of Bryan and Clark and the Cockrell demonstration could sweep it off its feet. Parker was nominated, nominated not by the despised " goldbugs " of 1896 and 1900, but by the ex-Bryanites who wanted to win. Bryan almost fell into his seat after his speech ; he had not even the strength to stay there as chairman of the Nebraska delegation and an nounce its vote. He was half-led, half-carried to a cab and taken to his hotel, where he fell immediately into a deep sleep. When he awoke his friends were worried about him. A doctor was summoned, who pronounced him a sick man and ordered him off for a month's rest and treatment, saying that otherwise his life was in possible danger. The defeated fighter prepared to carry out the order. That afternoon came the rumor of the " Gold Telegram " from Parker. The conven- 382 OUT IN THE FIELD tion, which had met to nominate a candidate for vice-president, adjourned in a hurry, breathing furious denunciations of its presi dential candidate. For two hours the streets and hotel lobbies were seething masses of in furiated men. In the lobby of the Planters' was Ollie James, forgetful of his desire for party harmony, delivering a tempestuous speech in favor of taking Parker off the ticket and nominating the hottest free silver man who could be found. Tillman, who had been dragged with difficulty into the harmony movement, was denouncing Hill for having led the party into such a ridiculous position. It looked as if Parker was gone from the ticket. The convention met at 8:30 o'clock, in a vastly different mood from the listless, tolerant, light-hearted frame of mind in which it had assembled in the afternoon. The fierce ness and determination that had characterized the previous night had returned, as had also the thirst for battle. Again were the galleries thronged and ready to hoot and yell at the first sign of excitement. John Sharp Williams and a few other re organization leaders deserve whatever credit may attach to the keeping of Parker on the ticket. They managed the thing with so much address and tact that they managed to OUT IN THE FIELD 383 allay the fury of the throng. While they were doing this, and making a fair success of it, there was an uproar. Down the aisle came Bryan, white-faced and ghastly, breathing with difficulty, his brows covered with sweat. On his sick-bed he had heard the news, had seen his last chance to turn defeat into victory, had diso beyed his physician, had thrown up his plans for a journey away for rest, and had come with difficulty into the hall to make his last fight. He took his stand upon the platform, and there, still single-handed, fought all night long his desperate battle. Defeated at one point, he turned to another. Again and again he all but won. Those standing near him could see with what an effort he spoke, how the perspiration started from his brow at every movement ; yet he was as thoroughly master of himself as at any time in his life. He so frightened the reorganizers that they resorted to insult to the presidential candidate of their party for two terms. John Sharp Williams once refused to allow him to speak ; Senator Carmack, long an ardent free silver man, be ing howled at by the galleries and unselfishly interceded for by Bryan, directed Bryan to mind his own business. These things should 384 OUT IN THE FIELD not be remembered against these gentlemen, with tempers as cracked and broken as their voices from long stress, and seeing the prize of victory about to be snatched from them. It was a situation in which no man could be blamed for losing himself. They are men tioned only to point the fact that Bryan never lost his ready courtesy, his good humor, his thorough self-control. And after it was all over and Bryan had lost, he went to his hotel and fell again into that bed of which he had seen so little for a week. For a man of such superb physique it does not take long to recover from things which would kill another ; and after a month of recuperation and medical treatment, Bryan was on the stump again, fighting valiantly for the Democratic ticket, and laying his plans for renewing the battle for his principles the moment the election was over. This battle of his is described so fully here because it was in most features absolutely unique in the history of the country, because it has been less dwelt upon than some of his lesser battles, and because it illustrates better than most the indomitable character of the man. His purity of character, his oratory, and other things about him, have been written about over and over again ; the aim here has OUT IN THE FIELD 385 been to show something of Bryan the warrior to a country that loves a good fighter and a square man. II WEAVER AND DUEHAM : A ELNG-SMASHEE AND A BOSS In the dramatic revolt against bossism which was the characteristic of the year 1905 all over the nation, the chief interest centred in the long, hot struggle in Philadelphia. The revolts in New York, Ohio, Maryland and elsewhere were interesting enough ; but in Philadelphia the political campaign was merely one incident of a long-drawn-out fight, full of spectacular features. From the day on which Mayor Weaver turned on the Durham machine and began his fight against the gas lease to the day on which the citizens of Philadelphia crushed the gang under their feet at the polls the eyes of the whole nation were on the Quaker city. No two men could be more unlike than the two opposing leaders who fought to a finish the most remarkable municipal battle in the history of American politics. Durham, the defeated leader, is one of the shrewdest politicians in the country, even though his domain is restricted to local poli tics. Weaver, the victorious leader, is no pol- 386 OUT IN THE FIELD 387 itician at all, and for him Durham and all the ring had a contempt so profound and bottom less that it could not find its expression in words. Durham is a quiet, self-contained man. Weaver is a bubbling, effervescent sort of per son. Durham is a man who makes no pre tenses at religion ; Weaver is a great Sunday- school man, and thereby hangs much of the tale of his revolt. For Weaver's break with the ring did not come until the clergymen and Sunday-school leaders of the city had de nounced him bitterly as recreant. He had stood by the ring until that happened. When it did it nearly broke his heart. Weaver has been in the limelight for so short a time, so far as the country at large is concerned, that his character and his true re lations with the ring are not generally under stood. When the limelight came his way he was in the act of smashing the ring, and it is as a ring-smasher that the country knows him. As a fact, he was for two years, a full half of his term, a ring mayor. But this is not to say that Weaver was ever a ring man in the full sense of the term. He writhed in his fetters. He carried out the ring's bidding with bitter protest, because he had to. When he received his orders and 388 OUT IN THE FIELD obeyed them it was with such open disgust and anger that the ring that had elected him hated him. For a year prior to the time of his revolt no ring man had ever referred to him by name. There is an unprintable epithet that had been set apart by the ring for Weaver, and when a ring man spoke of him it was always by this epithet. The fact that he loathed the ring, and yet carried out its orders, led it to make the huge mistake of thinking that he was a contemp tible puppet, from whom there was nothing to fear. When the city officials went out to the opening of the St. Louis World's Fair in a special train, no ring man would set foot in Weaver's car. In the buffet car was a pic ture of the mayor, and no ring man was al lowed to taye a 4*£flk of liquor Until he had spat on this, picture. All this time the ring was resting in pro found security. It looked for no revolt from Weaver. But the mayor was obeying orders merely because he could not find a chance to make a revolt with any hope of success. Prob ably he would have revolted long ago if there had been any chance of victory. In choosing the time for his revolt he acted with a shrewdness that astounded the ring. He waited till the Legislature had adjourned. OUT IN THE FIELD 389 If he had revolted before, a ripper bill would have been put through the Legislature in twenty-four hours, and Weaver would have been "ripped" out of office. Therefore Weaver bided his time. When he acted, even though he is no poli tician, his plan of campaign was something that could not be surpassed, and he acted with a decision that put the ring on the run from the start. The first fight was over the gas lease. First the mayor announced that he would veto the lease, and then he removed from office the Director of Public Safety and the Director of Public Works. The former had nothing what ever to do with the gas works officially, and the latter had nothing to do with the lease. The blow was struck for the purpose of para lyzing the ring. Every act of the mayor's since he entered on the fight has been performed with an energy and promptness that have left the be wildered ring wondering if some doppelganger or changeling has not got into the shoes of the protesting but pliant Weaver they used to know and despise. Weaver does not resemble in any detail whatever the man the ring thought it knew so well. The mail who has done this thing is a short, 390 OUT IN THE FIELD ruddy Englishman, with a chunky face. He has one of the biggest chins that ever com pleted a human visage. He is so short that he is called " The little Mayor," but his figure is so square and chubby that he does not really look little, even to the medium-sized men who tower over him and to whom he has to raise his eyes when he talks. Down his jaw there runs a long and very deep gash, made in his youth by a man who was aiming a blow at some one else and caught the innocent by stander. English-born, Weaver started at the bottom when he came to America as a boy. He was an errand-boy, but he saved up enough to go to a business college and thus became a clerk. Then, as a clerk, he saved up enough to go to a law school and become a lawyer. But he was an unknown lawyer, a respect able but anonymous nobody, when the ring took him up. Once he had joined an inde pendent movement to beat a ring councilman for reelection, which had failed, but this aberration had been atoned for by a monot onous regularity thereafter. The situation was serious for the ring in 1901. Rothermel, the able and uncompro mising district attorney, had prosecuted the ring's criminals in a way that gave great OUT IN THE FIELD 391 scandal to the organization and deep thankful ness to honest Philadelphians. He had even prosecuted Quay, and had astounded the ring by making a persevering effort to adorn that statesman with a suit of stripes. Salter, the fugitive ballot-box stuffer, was in Mexico with his ear to the ground, waiting to be told when he could come back and be tried. It was painfully evident that Salter must remain an exile until Rothermel had been got out of office. Rothermel was renominated by a town meeting. The ring did not dare nominate one of its heelers, and yet must have a man who would do its bidding. Francis Shunk Brown recommended Weaver. Nobody knew who he was, and there was no danger of any one saying anything against him. Durham had never seen him, never heard of him. " Who is Weaver ? " he asked Brown, and then nomi nated him. " Who is Weaver ? " became the rallying cry of the independents. There is no doubt whatever that Rothermel was elected that year and counted out. The number of fictitious ballots cast by the ring at every election, which had to be overcome before the reform majority can begin to be counted, is variously estimated at from 50,000 to 70,000. Weaver's alleged majority was 44,000. 392 OUT IN THE FIELD Durham did not make many demands on Weaver, and the few he did make were granted. When Weaver was nominated for mayor in 1903 the ring did not expect any trouble with him. But the demands made on the mayor were different from those made on the district attorney. The man with the Square jaw found himself a puppet, not one act of whose official life was dictated by him self. He grew restive almost immediately, and as time went on his chains grew unen durable to him. There was an audible clank and rattle of them every time he signed his name by Durham's orders to an official paper. Now he has beaten Durham down to his knees. He has done it not alone by revolt ing, but by revolting at precisely the right time and striking just the blows that go to the solar plexus. The ring hates him as bitterly as ever, but it does not despise him now. The man whose power has been so shattered is far from being a detestable character as bosses go. The human side of Durham, be neath his brutality as a boss, makes him a more engaging figure than Croker wras, for in stance. There is about him a good deal of the charm which bound men to Tweed. He was practically the creator of the organ ization which has just been crushed, and JOHN WEAVER. A short, ruddy Englishman with a chunky face." OUT IN THE FIELD 393 which was quite a new thing. In days not long gone by the town was ruled by the Hog Combine, of which State Senator David Martin was the head, a ring which was infantile com pared with Durham's. The Hog Combine never dreamed of the far-reaching grip which Durham fastened on every department of human life in Philadelphia. Under the Hog Combine a ward leader led his ward. Durham's organization nullified the ward leader and concentrated all power in the boss's hands. Under the Hog Combine the ward leader was consulted in the plans of the organization, and his voice was potent. Under Durham nothing of the kind was known. In the days of the Hog Combine council- men were allowed to speak on the floor. Un der Durham, if a councilman wished to speak, he must first go to Seger, if he were a select councilman, or to Hammond, if he were a common councilman, and obtain permission. Segef and Hammond were designated by Durham for this purpose, and were styled " the Whips of councils." Durham's machine subsisted chiefly on the funds raised by office-holders. All of such holders belonged to the ring, and a specified part of the salary of each was set apart for the 394 OUT IN THE FIELD organization. Durham decided the distribu tion of this immense fund. No one would have dared to question his distribution or even ask what had been done with the money. Durham's will was law. The whole government of Philadelphia, prior to Weaver's revolt, was located on the eleventh floor of the Betz Building, where Durham had his office. He went there every day and issued orders for the government of the city. Contractors went there to ask that city contracts be given them, officials to have their duty in the day's work decided for them, politicians to ask for decisions on patronage. It was all done perfectly openly and above- board. They were waiting for Durham on the street, and he was held up and buttonholed before he could enter the building. He would stand there with immovable patience, decid ing each case in a few words, until he had dis missed them all, and then go up to his office, where he would find another crowd awaiting him, and where he would enter upon his duties as governor of the city and plan out the day's work. His decision in each case was irrevocable and could not be appealed. Durham never lied. That and his patience were strong OUT IN THE FIELD 395 factors in his personal popularity. In answer to a request for a position he would say, in his calm and passionless manner, " No, I can't give you that," and that ended it. There was no protest, for Durham never de cided from whim and could not be moved from a decision. After an energetic search for a single in stance in which the boss ever told an un truth, the following was brought to light as the only case on record. A reporter, meeting Durham in a railroad ticket office, asked him how a certain appointment had been decided. " Blank will get the position," replied Dur ham, passing on to his train. The reporter dashed off" to telephone the news to his office. While he was in the act Durham appeared. " I told you an untruth," said Durham. "Blank will not get the job." He had missed his train to save the reporter from suffering the consequences of the false hood he had told. Durham's audiences were not limited to politicians, contractors and officials. In all walks of life men went to the omnipotent boss to get him to dispense blessings. A priest went to the Betz Building one day and said that in his parish was a woman who was a morphine victim. She had three children, 396 OUT IN THE FIELD and the church was caring for them, but the priest wanted Durham to send the mother to a hospital which had made a reputation for curing such cases. " Why don't you see the hospital authori ties ? " said Durham. " The woman hasn't the money," replied the priest, " and the hospital authorities wouldn't take her without it." " Oh, that's different," said the boss. " 111 see that they take her," and he did. Some time ago a case which attracted a good deal of attention was that of a very young girl who was left an orphan with five still smaller brothers and sisters, whom she was trying desperately to support. Durham, who was at Lake Placid, heard about it and tele graphed to Captain Erb, his secretary : " Give that girl $200 for me and make everybody who comes in my office to-day give up, too." That day was a sad one for Durham's call ers. Erb obeyed orders with literal exactness. A church member learned that a saloon was to be established next door to his house. He could not afford to move, and was in despair. One of his neighbors was a ring official, to whom he told his predicament. "I'll see Durham about it," said the official. OUT IN THE FIELD 397 " He wouldn't help me," replied the man with the endangered home. " I always voted against you people." The official came back two days later and said, " Durham has ordered those people to move two blocks up the street, where the peo ple really need a saloon." So, during the anthracite coal strike Dur ham's chief lieutenant, McNichol, got a small quantity of coal and ordered his henchmen to deliver it to poor and worthy persons in the ward. When they came in to report McNichol asked if a certain widow had received any of the coal. " No, and she won't," replied one of the heelers. " She has two sons who are against the organization." " Are you going to put me to the trouble of taking that coal over there myself? " asked McNichol. The coal was delivered. The complete downfall of Durham and the shattering of his great, organization have fol lowed upon Weaver's remarkable revolt. By taking the directorship of Public Safety away from the ring Weaver detached the police force from the organization, and without the police a fraudulent election could not be held. At the election of 1905 the gang was broken to pieces. Now it has taken its place in history 398 OUT IN THE FIELD as one of the most extraordinary governments that ever ruled an American city. There is and has been no machine anywhere quite like it. Ill GOVEENOE HIGGINS— NEW YOEK'S NEW LEADEE? Not often in New York politics, where bosses reign tranquilly from year to year, has there been seen such a transformation scene of bossism as that of 1904 to 1906. Piatt, the boss of nearly twenty years, was dethroned at the beginning of 1904, and rooted out of the situation at the Saratoga convention of that year. There succeeded him Odell, who reigned undisputed until after the election of 1905. The battle after that between Odell and a new force in New York politics was very short and equally decisive. Odell's can didate for the assembly speakership received only fourteen votes in the Republican caucus on January 2, 1906. The issue, of course, is not yet decided. Odell serves notice that it is like a card game, where the defeated player takes a new hand. But the handwriting on the wall shows plainly that the new boss is in control. Odell must unseat him if he is to win. 399 400 OUT IN THE FIELD Who is the new boss ? To the eye it is Frank Wayland Higgins, the governor. Higgins himself assumes full responsibility. In Washington they gladly give it to him. The spectre of " Federal in terference in state politics " has had potency, ever since Folger's time, to frighten presidents. But there is not a man of sense who has had anything to do with the political situation since the election of 1905 who doubts in the least that the new bosses — or, in the case of such distinguished men, it would be better to say the new leaders — are Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root. Higgins is not a strong man. He had no power to unhorse Odell. The sudden rush to Higgins would have been impossible if he had stood alone. All the politicians in Wash ington, throughout the fight, were talking of it as President Roosevelt's. From the begin ning the president and Mr. Root ruled every development of it. The men who used to go to the Fifth Avenue Hotel for instructions came now to the White House. Timothy L. Woodruff, boss of Brooklyn ; ex-state chair man George W. Dunn, the governor himself, the men who aspired to the state chairman ship, William Barnes, J. Sloat Fassett, and the rest came to Washington as once they sat FRANK WAYLAND HIGGINS. ' A little man, plump as a partridge." OUT IN THE FIELD 401 in Piatt's " Sunday-school class," and as after wards they sat in Odell's hotel corner. In the more important consultations Secre tary Root was called in. When Governor Higgins came to Washington that was done, and Postmaster-General Cortelyou, also a New Yorker, was included in the conference. Mr. Higgins went away the president's agent in the fight. Every action of his from that time to the election of Speaker Wadsworth had the president's approval. The president is the undisputed head of the Republican party in New York, with Odell fighting to drag him down. The Republican party of that state has had three chieftains in two years. But still, Higgins is the nominal leader and will remain so. He goes through the motions of leading. Indeed, he does lead to a large extent, having been placed by the president in a position where he is able to do so. For some years to come, doubtless, Higgins will be the storm centre of New York politics. He can never be regarded as a boss ; for a boss wrests his high place by virtue of brute force. Piatt did that, Odell did it, others have done it. It is the history of bossism. When Rich ard Croker gave up the game, he designated Lewis Nixon to be his successor, apparently 402 OUT IN THE FIELD not recognizing that no man can be a boss by designation. He must take it with his bare hands. But though not regarded as a boss, Higgins will be and is recognized as the titular leader of the Republican party in New York. Even though in that capacity he is only the lieu tenant of a greater man, one behind the scenes, Higgins is interesting ; for the captain of the Republican army in the greatest state of the Union cannot be anything less. Higgins was picked out for governor after much hesitation by Odell, because that mis guided boss believed he would be docile. In the campaign you did not hear much of Hig gins. He went to New York and stayed there for several days, but without exciting the customary commotion that goes with the visits of candidates. He went his unobtrusive way there, unremarked and unregarded — curiously in contrast with the beehive court that simul taneously attended the progress through the city of Odell, not the Republican candidate for governor. It was a queer reversal of the theory of such things ; Odell might have been the candidate and Higgins the retiring gov ernor, so far as appearances went. He ran behind his ticket, but he was elected, and remained in close harmony with Odell OUT IN THE FIELD 403 until the break between the boss and the pres ident. Then he became leader himself. As a leader he is entirely different from both Odell and Piatt, or at least so it seems from his proceedings at the beginning of his leader ship — all we have to judge him by as yet. His dictation to the assembly as to who should be its speaker is much more in Odell's vein than Piatt's ; for Piatt said of himself truly that he was an " Easy Boss," and the stuffed- club method was not in his line. Yet it is impossible to conceive of Higgins in the r61e played by Odell, for Odell was a brutal boss, the slugger in politics, and Higgins could not be that. He is an agreeable man to meet. There is an unaffected simplicity about him that puts visitors instantly at ease and arm's-length con versation out of the question ; and yet he is amply dignified as a governor should be. He is a little man, and he is as plump as a partridge, but without the Junoesque propor tions of Sereno Payne or the globularity of Lucius Littauer. He could not be called roly- poly ; in shape he somewhat resembles an egg. He has the Odell complexion and looks like a mild and toned-down version of his former chief. In place of the impression which Odell gives of forcefulness and reserved strength the 404 OUT IN THE FIELD governor gives an impression of affability and agreeableness. Aside from the complexion and the eyes the two men are as unlike as a grizzly bear and a kitten. It would be difficult for any one to meet Mr. Higgins casually and go away with an un kindly thought of him. He is simple and direct in his manner and there is not a shadow of pretense nor a suspicion of the " big head " about him. Candidates frequently conceal cranial en largement, but it is a rare candidate who does not give the impression that his demeanor as candidate is different from his anti-convention demeanor. The geniality of candidates strikes the experienced observer as a husk, and one finds himself wondering if even the hand shake is an exact duplicate of the unofficial or domestic handshake. As a candidate there was no forced geniality about Higgins ; his de meanor was neither effusive nor haughty, and his handshake was of the common or garden kind. Since he became governor he has been more reserved, but still without exciting any suspicion of the " big head." He was a business man, a typical one for the region he hails from. His grocery store was a big establishment and not a country store. His business interests were large, and OUT IN THE FIELD 405 he impressed it upon all inquirers that he had nothing to do with the grocery business ex cept to have his name upon the door. In fact, Mr. Higgins was touchy upon this point. The word " groceries " had attained such a peculiar significance in New York Republican politics, and various evil-minded humorists had mani fested throughout the campaign such a dispo sition to refer to the grocery firm of Odell & Higgins, that the junior member shrank from the word. Mr. Higgins's career is that of a bright busi ness man, a safe and respectable citizen, a country merchant of the kind that is looked up to in the community and spoken of in the same "paragraph with the leading lawyer and the pastor of the Presbyterian church. There is nothing in his life that suggests the old and orthodox biography of a candidate. No pine knots guided his youthful search for knowl edge, no axe of his hewed timber for the fire to cook the frugal meal, and the towpath knew him not. He has done his duty in the world and earned a place in the esteem of his neigh bors, and that is his record. But there is nothing slow nor stupid about him. As a boy he was not especially studious and won no especial school honors, which is a mark of originality in a public man which 406 OUT IN THE FIELD deserves special mention. He was a natural boy, fonder of fun than fractions. It was in a district school that he demon strated this habit of mind, to the regret of teachers and the profound satisfaction of students of campaign biographies. Like Tom Sawyer, his youthful mind was divided be tween the advantages of being a soldier and being a pirate. At fourteen he decided to be come a general, because the uniform appealed to him more than the top boots and the cut lass. He informed his father that he wanted to wear a uniform, and to that end desired to go to a military school. He had already left the district school for Pike Seminary. The pa ternal Higgins chuckled and said : " Select your school and I'll send you there." The embryo warrior picked out the military academy at Poughkeepsie. " If you go there," said the paternal Hig gins, aware of the evanescent charms of mili tary glamour, " you'll have to stay there till you finish." The warrior promised, and he stayed there long after the delights of a uniform had faded away and he had been thoroughly cured of his desire to lead embattled hosts on gory fields. OUT IN THE FIELD 407 Then he worked in his father's store for a while, and might have stayed there for good but for the advent of a Chicago girl on a visit. Higgins was only a boy — literally. The girl was very young ; but when she went back to Chicago Higgins decided that he wanted to branch out in life and carve out a career for himself. Chicago struck him as just the place where a career could be carved. It speaks well for the youngster's energy, address and power to convince others of his business ability that, although he was only nineteen, he secured the Western agency of the Binghamton Refining Company, which was one of three concerns that were un dertaking to make lubricating oil out of pe troleum. He established his headquarters in Chicago, where he could attend both to lubri cating oil and love-making ; and at twenty- one he married the Chicago girl. Higgins stayed out West for a few years, go ing to Denver for a while and then going into business for himself in Stanton, Michigan. Then his roving days were over for life, and at twenty-three he went back to Olean and started to grow into the solid business man of that section. The long-sighted' paternal Higgins, who had 408 OUT IN THE FIELD given him full swing in his military am bitions and in his Western career-carving, saw that the young man was now ready for prac tical business. Young as Higgins was, he was promptly appointed general manager of the concern, and it is the one of which he is now the head. All this time he was dabbling in politics. His first political work was done when he was only sixteen, in the campaign of 1872, and here he declared war on the indulgent paternal Higgins and struck out for himself. The pa ternal Higgins was a war Democrat who had been voting the Republican ticket. " But," says the filial Higgins, when he tells the story, " he hadn't got so far away from the war that he wasn't ready to go back to the party." So when Greeley was nominated the paternal Higgins went back to the Democratic party. The filial Higgins bolted the paternal ticket and worked with all the ardor of his sixteen years for Grant. He took to politics like a duck to water. " Don't know how I happened to go into it," says he ; " it was born in me, I guess." But he never held any office, not even a local one, until he was elected to the State Senate, though he served as a delegate to the Repub lican National Convention of 1888 and helped, OUT IN THE FIELD 409 under Piatt's guidance, to nominate Har rison. On July 4, 1893, he was sitting in his office when three Republican politicians came in and invited him to be a candidate for the Senate. Higgins told them it was out of the question ; he couldn't and wouldn't take it. They accepted his ultimatum with polite re gret and withdrew. " Then," says Higgins, in telling about it, " began the operation of a system which I didn't know anything about then, though I have since come to understand it very well." He began to receive letters and visits from citizens who wanted him to run for the Sen ate. Convinced that there was a popular de mand for his nomination he entered the race, and the three politely regretful Republican politicians were vindicated. He was nomi nated unanimously, and takes pride in the fact that he has been nominated the same way in every convention since, where he has been a candidate for anything. His acquaintance with Odell and Piatt has been a political one, not a personal one. Out side of politics he could not be called a per sonal friend of either. He trained with Piatt as long as the senator was the boss of the machine. When Piatt began to totter, Hig- 410 OUT IN THE FIELD gins switched over to Odell just at the right moment, when his change of front would be of use to the incoming boss. Then he supported Odell until it became evident that the new boss's reign was in dan ger. Just at the right moment Higgins went to Washington, learned the president's wishes, and returned to Albany an anti-Odell man. This talent for changing flags at exactly the right moment has been of use to Higgins and may carry him far. But you will hurt Higgins if you intimate to him that he has always been a machine man. There is nothing about which he is more sensitive. A reference to his machinism brings out instantly the fact that he cut loose from the organization when Louis F. Payn was nominated for insurance commissioner, and voted against that patriot's confirmation. There is nothing in his career in which Hig gins takes more pride, except his support of Governor Roosevelt's nomination of Francis Hendricks for Payn's place. Take him by and large, he is a good type of the up-State New York business man, and a gentleman in politics. There is nothing great about him, but his talent for sizing up political situations is greater than either that of Piatt or that of Odell, and if he can keep OUT IN THE FIELD 411 on turning political somersaults at the right time and landing on his feet he may get very much further than abler men have done. IV WOODEUFP, BOSS OF BEOOKLYN When Governor Odell drove Senator Piatt from the New York leadership he forced all of Piatt's old lieutenants to surrender or fall, and to this there was only one important ex ception. It was Timothy L. Woodruff, the captain of the Kings County Republicans, and the only real captain they have ever had. The two years of Odell's reign, seemingly terminated now or at least abridged by the Roosevelt-Root-Higgins alliance, made up a reign of terror. They were two years of car nage. For the old regime of the Easy Boss was substituted a despotism whose motto was " Surrender or die." The men who did not surrender were driven out of power in their respective communities. Higgins was one of the first to desert Piatt. Others held out longer, but surrendered at last. There was only one important place on the political map which stood out unconquered to the end, and that was the great county of Kings. When the Roosevelt-Root-Higgins re organization began, they did not have to make 412 OUT IN THE FIELD 413 any fight for Brooklyn ; they found it ready for their hands, kept for them during those two unpromising years by the cool, resource ful, indomitable politician at its head. When the governor made his initial vigor ous onslaught upon Piatt's strongholds, many of them succumbed at the first fire. Local bosses who held out were bull-dozed into camp, for Odell's tactics as boss were those of the bludgeon and the sledge-hammer. When Woodruff would not come into camp, the governor undertook to treat him the same way. It was confidently announced by the governor's friends that at a certain forthcom ing meeting of the Kings County Executive Committee the Brooklyn boss would be over thrown and trodden under foot. Woodruff" smiled and said nothing. The momentous night arrived, and the committee endorsed Woodruff by a unanimous vote. The governor was startled. He called off his war on Woodruff and, for once, tried gen tler methods. They failed, and it seemed for awhile to be open war. Then Odell found he could gain nothing by that, and raised his only flag of truce. Armed neutrality con tinued to exist until the break came in 1905. Michael J. Dady, one of Woodruff's lieuten ants, thought he saw his chance to win Wood- 414 OUT IN THE FIELD ruff's baton. He went over to Odell, and for these two years has been endeavoring to un dermine his former chief. With Odell in the saddle, it could have been done in any other county than Kings. It could have been done there easier than in any other county in a similar state of affairs at any time prior to the advent of Woodruff as the Brooklyn boss. Woodruff is one of the ablest politicians in New York State. He is a man not of bludg eons and sledge-hammers, but of the glad hand and the whispered confidence ; yet, when occasion arises, and battle is on, he is a foe to be dreaded and avoided. Even to this day there are unobservant persons in different parts of the country to whose vision Woodruff is a man of " pink weskits " and verdant in nocence. That pleasant dream has never for a moment lasted with any politician who crossed swords with the Brooklyn boss. In all his career he has never known defeat, and yet the problems before him have often seemed insurmountable. He is a boss of the quiet, persistent, indefat igable kind. Personalty he is so affable, kindly and open in his ways that strangers are deceived and think he wears his heart on his sleeve. It is a mistake ; he is as subterranean as a mole, as quick as lightning and as sure- OUT IN THE FIELD 415 footed amid the difficult paths of politics as a mountain goat. Prior to the advent of Woodruff Kings County had never been united on anything. It was a by-word in the politics of the State. In state convention, national convention, state committee and primary, and even on election day, Kings County was torn in fac tions, and this was the case year in and year out, as far as the memory of the oldest in habitant runneth. Kings had a machine, like other counties ; but in other counties the machines were well- oiled and ran the politics of the locality. The Kings machine was merely a momentarily predominant faction : it might be called a rump machine. Whichever faction might be on top for the moment nominated its men, generally to have them slashed at the polls, and then was knocked out by the other faction. Never was there a time when the machine rep resented the whole Republican party. Bosses went and came with lightning rapidity. Ernst Nathan, "Jake" Worth, "Al" Daggett, Theodore B. Willis and the rest of the kaleidoscopic procession of bosses reigned for their brief hour and led their dis cordant band of Kilkenny cats to state con vention after state convention. No matter 416 OUT IN THE FIELD what the issue or who the boss, Kings was sure to split up on the instant. In 1896 Woodruff became park commis sioner of Brooklyn, under Wurster, the town's last mayor. Wurster represented the momen tary triumph of the Willis faction over the Worth faction, but the lines were so evenly drawn that the day after Wurster was nomi nated Worth captured the county convention and nominated a straight Worth county ticket. Suave, smiling, everybody's friend, Wood ruff took office under a Willis administration and set about a task that seemed absurd — to please the Worth faction without displeasing the Willis faction, to become so popular with both that Kings County would be united on his personality while squabbling like cats and dogs on everything else, and to demand and get a state office for himself on the sole ground of Kings' unity. He did it. When the Saratoga Convention met the oldest politician there was amazed at the unprecedented sight of a united, harmoni ous delegation from Kings, demanding Wood ruff's nomination for lieutenant-governor. He got the nomination, and was elected. In 1897 Woodruff still had on his mask of the amiable, harmless, inoffensive dilettante in politics. That year the Willis faction OUT IN THE FIELD 417 shrunk into a mere remnant of its former self, and Worth controlled the town. Willis, seeking to retain some shadow of his support, snatched at a straw and declared for Seth Low for mayor. Worth, not to be outdone, promptly seconded the nomination. When the time came for the nomination Senator Piatt was opposed to Low and deter mined to run a third ticket, Low having been nominated by the Citizens' Union. Worth stood out for Low, and the state boss had before him the task of conquering Brook lyn. It was Woodruff's opportunity. His am bition was not only to make himself boss, but to put an end to the discords of Kings and make it a power in the state. Piatt, a shrewd old judge of men, was not deceived by the smiling Woodruff mask, and, seeking for the ablest politician he could find, he placed his interests in Woodruff's hands, took his own hands off, and gave the lieutenant-governor carte blanche. Woodruff promptly took into camp the dis credited Willis, with Michael J. Dady and Walter B. Atterbury. All had belonged to the silk stocking wing except Dady. Wood ruff sat in the background and let it appear that Willis was the real leader and was seek- 41 S OUT IN THE FIELD ing the overthrow of Worth, though Willis, as a matter of fact, did not control a single ward but his own. Worth laughed at the mere idea of such a newcomer in politics as Woodruff wresting the reins from him. All over town everybody was on a broad grin. Worth was really amused, and he called Woodruff a " whipper- snapper " and thought to brush him aside as easily as a fly. The broad grin continued till the night of the county convention, when Woodruff swept Worth out of existence as a boss by a tremen dous majority and nominated his own ticket, with Atterbury at the head. " Congratulations ! The whippersnapper has got there," wired Senator Piatt, and the telegram arrived at Woodruff 's chair as the convention was adjourning. He smiled dep- recatingly, and told everybody that it was Willis, Atterbury and Dady who had done it ; he had merely been a private in the ranks. He sent a Woodruff delegation to the city convention and voted it for Tracy for mayor. Worth was out of politics for good and all, and not content with that, Woodruff drove out every one of the old chief 's lieutenants, many of them veterans. None of them has ever got back into office. OUT IN THE FIELD 419 Woodruff was now absolute boss of Brook lyn, and he had that warring, wrangling county in perfect order within two months. It went to the state and national conventions like a regiment on parade. It spoke and voted as one man. The primary fights were a thing of the past. A task that had defied all the politicians for thirty years was accom plished by Woodruff in sixty days. It is his policy to stay in the background unless he has to fight, and then to hit like a prize-fighter. He kept up the fiction that Willis, Atterbury and Dady were the real leaders, and stuck to it with a face as unsmil ing as a Roman augur. In a year Willis was down and out, and has never been able to get back in politics to this day. Atterbury, a man given to taking himself seriously, be lieved that all Woodruff said about him was true. He controlled the biggest ward and as sembly district in the city. Becoming swollen, he raised the standard of revolt against Wood ruff and sought to become boss himself. Hitherto Atterbury had been absolute boss in his own district, and had with ease defeated every effort to take it away from him. Wood ruff was upon him like a thunderbolt, and it was only a matter of weeks before Atterbury was shorn of power and reduced to nothing- 420 OUT IN THE FIELD ness. Woodruff tore his stronghold from him like a man taking a toy from a child. Finally came Dady's revolt, backed by Odell, and now Woodruff is alone. Three times, in his quiet, unassuming way, Woodruff determined that he should be elected lieutenant-governor, and he always was. That was a violation of all custom in New York. In 1900 he wanted to be nomi nated for vice-president. He came here and saw Mark Hanna, who laughed at the idea. The " pink weskit " story had prejudiced him, and besides, he said, Woodruff was too young. As a matter of fact, he is older than President Roosevelt, but he has a round, boyish, inno cent face and looks about twenty-eight. The " pink weskit " story has done him un told harm. Of course he never wore one, nor a waistcoat of any color but black or white. It was the invention of an Albany correspond ent, a friend of Worth's. Later a New York paper, seeking a " feature " for a Sunday issue of the freak variety, told its Brooklyn repre sentative to get a signed statement from Wood ruff on "pink weskits." " Oh, write anything you like and I'll sign it," said Woodruff, who was up to his ears in work. The newspaper man wrote a serious defense of "pink weskits," and Woodruff OUT IN THE FIELD 421 signed it without seeing it. The man who wrote it, who is now dead, intended no harm and was too short-sighted and tactless to see that it would injure " Tim " ; and " Tim," on his side, relied on the newspaper man, who was his friend. It did, however, operate pow erfully to Woodruff's harm, and all its bad ef fects have not yet been dissipated. Woodruff displayed his courage in the cam paign of 1898, his second for the lieutenant- governorship. The public was much wrought up over the issue of the state canals. There was clamorous demand for investigation, and Augustus Van Wyck, the Democratic candi date, was posing as a new Tilden. Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican candidate for gov ernor, made speeches promising that if there was anything wrong with the canals he would get after the crooks. Woodruff boldly took the opposite extreme from Van Wyck and de clared that the clamor had no cause and that neither Van Wyck nor any one else, if elected governor, would find anybody to punish. The speeches of Woodruff and Roosevelt, made on the same platform, did not " gee," and it was freely predicted that Woodruff's daring and unpopular course would cost him the lieutenant-governorship, whoever became governor. As things came out, the misfit 422 OUT IN THE FIELD Tilden was beaten ; Roosevelt and Woodruff were elected, and sure enough, nobody was found to be punished. His courage had done Woodruff no harm and he had the satisfaction of being vindicated by events. The United States Senate is Woodruff's am bition. He is a man of education and wealth, who plays politics because he loves the game. Dady was a political boss long before Wood ruff was heard of, and despite the object les sons Woodruff had given in the cases of Willis, Worth and Atterbury there were the usual false prophets to predict a victory for Dady when he stood backed by Odell with the lat- ter's power as unquestioned boss. Probably he would have succeeded in the case of any one but Woodruff. The cool, slick, smiling chieftain is the only great political general Kings County has ever produced, and Dady went the way of the rest. '¦/'•