Theodore Rex (34 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
AT NOON THE FOLLOWING
day, Saturday, 23 August, Theodore Roosevelt stood on a high platform in front of Providence’s City Hall. Twenty thousand people filled the square below, and another thousand sat behind him. Wherever he looked, miniature flags flashed red, white, and blue.
Squinting against
the scintillations of brass-band instruments and binocular lenses, he began his speech.
We are passing through a period of great commercial prosperity, and such a period is as sure as adversity itself to bring mutterings of discontent. At a time when most men prosper somewhat some men always prosper greatly; and it is as true now as when the tower of Siloam fell upon all alike, that good fortune does not come solely to the just, nor bad fortune solely to the unjust. When the weather is good for crops it is also good for weeds.
(Applause)
It was a classic Rooseveltian opening in its complementary positives and negatives, its appeal to every social order, its biblical reference and earthy proverb. Honest industrialists, the churchgoing middle class, the rural poor—all were reassured that the President had their particular interests at heart.
Human law, he went on, encouraged moneymaking, but natural law prevented equal gain. If wealthy men abused their good fortune, or the needy sought to penalize them, both groups would be buried “in the crash of the common disaster.” General progress depended on benevolence at every level of society, and “above all things stability, fixity of economic policy.”
Roosevelt noticed that the square was becoming too crowded in front of him, and cautioned against the danger of crushing. Then he swung gracefully into his main theme:
Where men are gathered together in great masses it inevitably results that they must work far more largely through combinations than where they live scattered and remote from one another.… Under present-day conditions it is as necessary to have corporations in the business world as it is to have organizations, unions, among wage workers.
E. H. Harriman could scarcely find fault with these measured phrases—nor, for that matter, could Rhode Island’s most prominent exemplar of corporate wealth, Senator Aldrich, sitting erect twelve feet away.
“Every man of power,” the President said carefully, “by the very fact of that power, is capable of doing damage to his neighbors; but we cannot afford to discourage the development of such men merely because it is possible they may use their power for wrong ends.… Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own hearts.”
His audience began to show signs of restlessness. “There is other harm,” he quickly added. It was time for him to shout the words Harriman had objected to. He did so with passion:
The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is in duty bound to control them wherever need of such control is shown.…
(Applause)
The immediate necessity in dealing with trusts is to place them under the real, not the nominal, control of some sovereign to which, as its creatures, the trusts shall owe allegiance, and in whose courts the sovereign’s orders may be enforced.
(Applause)
In my opinion, this sovereign must be the National Government.
By now, he was punching his left palm so hard the blows echoed like ricochets. Once, he surprised the people behind him by spinning on his heel and pointing directly at them. Nobody laughed; the President’s face was hard and stern. Time and again, his imperious hand rejected applause. A reporter sensed his “almost desperate determination” to be understood.
Yet Roosevelt’s equal compulsion to follow every strong statement with a qualifier caused the speech to degenerate into a series of contradictions on the pros and cons of regulatory law. By the time he sat down, much of his audience had wandered off.
THERE WAS SOME EXASPERATED
comment in the press on the President’s equivocations. “He spent more time in trying to pacify those who criticize the trusts than in pointing out a remedy,” William Jennings Bryan wrote in
The Commoner
. Even normally supportive Republican editorials were unenthusiastic. These, however, were but inner-page qualms. Front pages everywhere bore the headlines Roosevelt wanted:
PRESIDENT WOULD REGULATE TRUSTS
In Speech at Providence Says Government Should Control Capital
MIGHT AMEND CONSTITUTION
If Step Were Necessary to Give Controlling Power
Evidently, the use of rhetoric was to make positive points that would cause typesetters to reach for their display faces. Negative dissemblings rated body copy (which he could always cite, when necessary, in self-defense). A few thousand myopic scrutineers of the body text mattered little, if millions of larger vision registered the banner words above.
THE PRESIDENTIAL SPECIAL
, a train of rare beauty, puffed north along the Atlantic seaboard. Its press complement, originally set at six, swelled to fifty as reporters realized that Roosevelt was out to make news. Navy Secretary
William H. Moody came aboard at Boston to keep him company. Every stop brought a crescendo of church bells, band music, and calls for “Teddy.” On 26 August alone he addressed a quarter of a million people, leaning over the back rail of his Pullman and rasping out little homilies about “the simple life.”
At Bangor, Maine, an old loyalty reawakened. “If anyone sees or knows where Bill Sewall of Island Falls, Aroostook, is,” Roosevelt yelled from the balcony of Bangor House, “I wish he would tell him that I want him to come in and lunch with me right now.” The bewhiskered woodsman who had toughened him as a teenager pressed dazedly through the crowd, and went inside to roars of applause.
As the tour entered its second week, publicity surrounding it grew. So did a general admiration of Roosevelt’s courage in making trust control a campaign issue. “
Not since the nation hearkened to the words of the Great Emancipator,” declared the New York
Press
, “has a Chief Magistrate of the United States delivered to the American people a message of greater present concern.”
Even citizens of other countries seemed to be aware of its importance.
All Europe,
Literary Digest
reported, was “ringing with Roosevelt,” to the extent that Germans had begun to find him more fascinating than their own Emperor.
THE TRAIN SWUNG
south again, then west. Old World place-names were checked steadily off the printed schedule. Portland. Portsmouth. Epping. Manchester. Newbury. Every stop a speech, or two or three. Every bypass a balm for the tired throat, a respite for reading.
To Roosevelt, as to all marathon campaigners, the trip became an accelerating blur, a mélange of whistle-stops, poking hands, curious eyes, and bands, bands, bands, raucously thumping. In between each, a few pages of English medieval poetry. A valley, a gleaming river. Vermont. Evening reception in Burlington. Night cruise on Champlain. Sleep. Lazy lakeside Sunday. Rest for raw throat. Sleep. Monday. September now; the lake chill-blue. Almost a year ago, on an island lying green in that water, a garden party, a shrill summons to the telephone. Czolgosz. McKinley. “Little ground for hope.” Dread anniversary approaching. What effect might it have on mad minds?
Big Bill extra watchful.
Brattleboro. Girls in white strewing petals. Northfield, Massachusetts. Solemn divinity students.
Ahem!
“Men of righteous living … robust, virile qualities.” Fitchburg. Roses showering out of a bell of bunting.
Harrumph!
“We must get power … use that power fearlessly.” Dalton. Japanese lanterns dappling upturned faces. “The government is us … you and me!”
“THE GOVERNMENT IS US … YOU AND ME!”
Roosevelt during his New England tour, 1902
(photo credit 9.1)
Wednesday. Last day of tour. 3 September 1902. A glorious morning. Bright, crisp. Too nice to stay on train. Ride in open carriage to Pittsfield. Four elegant grays. Light, well-sprung barouche. Co-passenger: Governor Winthrop Murray Crane of Massachusetts. Opposite: Cortelyou. Up front: Big Bill Craig. Mounted escort. Berkshire hills. Bugles, cheers. Arrive Pitts-field.
Two hundred schoolchildren. Songs in the sunlit air. “Friends and fellow citizens …” Ten minutes quite enough. Next stop: Pittsfield Country Club.
A smooth, downhill road, grooved in the center with a trolley track. This section of line closed off, presumably. Horses keep to right, just in case. But ahead, track cuts sideways across their path. 10:15
A.M.
Behind, over the clatter of hooves, a rumbling. Horses now on curve of track. Louder rumbling behind; Craig half-turning, one great arm outstretched.
“
Oh my God!”
A mad crescendo; bells, screams; a sudden, shivering crash. Craig engulfed in a blur of speed and noise. President, Governor, and secretary hurled in different directions, like fragments of a bomb.
ROOSEVELT LANDED ON
his face at the side of the road. He lay still for a moment, as the interspliced carriage and trolley car skidded to a halt nearby. Then, tremblingly, he searched for and found his spectacles unbroken in the grass. The air was full of dust and shouts. Captain Lung came running. “Are you hurt, Mr. President?”