Theodore Rex (62 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
Nicholas II’s rejection of the petition cable the next day thus came as neither a disappointment nor a surprise. Roosevelt authorized the B’nai B’rith leaders to publicize the rejection as they chose, and accepted congratulations from John Hay. “You have done the right thing in the right way, and Jewry seems really grateful,” the Secretary wrote.
An exuberant Roosevelt was less inclined to call the matter quits. “
If only we were sure that neither France nor Germany would join in, I should not in the least mind going to ‘extremes’ with Russia!”
THE CRESCENT SELF-CONFIDENCE
Edith Roosevelt had noticed after her husband’s return from the West continued to energize him. He seemed to delight in juggling as many political and diplomatic balls as possible. To the annoyance of his children, carriages full of ponderous adults kept creaking through the chestnut trees.
One such vehicle on 15 July discharged Treasury Secretary Leslie Shaw, Herman Kohlsaat of the Chicago
Record-Herald
, Charles J. Bonaparte, special counsel for the Justice Department in the Post Office investigation, and Ray Stannard Baker, reporter at large for
McClure’s
. Baker’s briefcase was especially bulky with notes, maps, and memoranda. The President had asked him to substantiate charges of corruption in the Salt River Valley, Arizona, reclamation project.
A servant showed the visitors into the library. Roosevelt was nowhere to be seen. They sat for a while under the varnished gaze of Theodore Senior, absorbing an aura of well-handled books, oak, and mahogany. On the desk, radiant with sun slanting in through gauze curtains, there lay a gold-miner’s pan, a silver dagger, and an inkwell ornamented with a little bust of Abraham Lincoln. Bearskins snarled silently on the floor. Somewhere a clock was ticking: it was well past noon.
Like a sudden explosion, the President blew in through the door. He looked ruddy and healthy in knickerbockers, worn gray shirt, and scuffed hiking shoes, and was bursting with mirth. In his hand he carried a note and newspaper clipping.
“I want to read you something I have just got,” he said, “in connection with conditions in the South.”
He shot a gleeful glance at Bonaparte, who owned a Maryland plantation. The note was from Booker T. Washington. “
My dear Mr. President, the enclosed is a true story.” Roosevelt turned to the clipping, from the Baltimore
Herald:
An old Florida colonel met Booker T. Washington and in a bibulous burst of confidence said to the Negro educator: “Suh, I am glad to meet you. Always wanted to shake your hand, suh. I think, suh, you’re the greatest man in America.”
“Oh no,” said Mr. Washington.
“You are, suh,” said the colonel, and then, pugnaciously, “who’s greater?”
“Well,” said the founder of Tuskegee, “there’s President Roosevelt.”
“No, suh,” roared the colonel. “Not by a jugful; I used to think so, but since he invited you to dinner I think he’s a [—] scoundrel.”
The library rang with presidential laughter. A gong sounded, and Roosevelt led the way into the dining room. Baker left a bemused account of the subsequent proceedings:
It was a very simple lunch, served by a maid. At first the President talked postal affairs with Mr. Bonaparte, asserting over and over again that he wanted the investigation to be thorough.
“I don’t care who it hits!” he said. “We must get to the bottom of these scandals.” He then turned abruptly to me and said, “Baker, who is the chief devil down there in the Salt River Valley?”
Since I had never considered the situation in terms of devils, I hesitated a moment—and the President burst into a vigorous, picturesque, and somewhat vitriolic description of the situation, implying
that if he could catch the rascals who were causing the trouble he would execute them on the spot. Several of the statements he made seemed to me to be inaccurate, or at least exaggerated, but when I tried to break into the conversation—boiling inside with my undelivered articles and memoranda (one of which indeed I tried to draw from my pocket)—the President put one fist on the table beside him, looked at me earnestly, and said: “Baker, you and I will have to get together on these subjects.”
He instantly turned aside, leaving me—I think—with my mouth open, and began telling in a loud voice and with great unction of his lunch [with] a committee of prominent Jews interested in the Kishinev petition. He even imitated Oscar Straus by a hitch of the shoulders and laughed heartily when somebody asked if he had provided boiled ham for his guests. Once he said:
“Do not all these things interest you? Isn’t it a fine thing to be alive when so many great things are happening?” …
As the time drew near for leaving, I began to wonder when the President would ask me for the information upon which I had spent so much time and hard work. I had my heavy briefcase in hand when I went up to say goodbye—and my grand plans for enlightening the Government of the United States vanished in a handshake.
Mr. Bonaparte, Mr. Kohlsaat, and I walked down together, some three miles, to Oyster Bay. I carried my heavy case, filled with my memoranda, and papers, and maps and pictures—and the sun was hot.
Behind his jocularity on Southern race relations, the President was giving serious thought to an “utterance” on lynching. He admitted that long-term justice for the Negro concerned him more than any other issue. One of his least-noticed guests that July was Rollo Ogden, sometime Presbyterian missionary, editor of the New York
Evening Post
, and a crusader against mob justice. They met amid reports that anti-Negro vigilantes were menacing a jail in Evansville, Indiana. Governor Winfield T. Durbin had sent in state troops, who killed six rioters; even so, hundreds of terrified blacks were quitting town. The parallels to both the Wilmington lynching and the Kishinev pogrom were obvious. (A cartoon in
Literary Digest
showed Nicholas II tearfully rejecting the B’nai B’rith petition: “Excuse me, I’m too busy weeping over this Delaware affair.”) Roosevelt promised Ogden that he would say something soon.
For political reasons, he could not do so immediately. A Democratic primary campaign of extreme virulence was approaching its climax in Mississippi, with two racists, Hernando Money and James K. Vardaman, respectively fighting two Administration-backed moderates for the senatorial
and gubernatorial nominations. Since there was no effective Republican opposition in that state, selection was as good as election. Much invective was being lavished on the “nigger-loving gang in Washington,” particularly Roosevelt for his support of Minnie Cox. Governor Andrew H. Longino, running for re-election, was blamed for involving the President in Mississippi politics during his 1902 visit to the Little Sunflower. Any move now by the detested “Teddy” against lynching, which Longino had himself condemned, would ensure the Governor’s defeat.
SO ROOSEVELT REMAINED SILENT
, as midsummer heat mounted across the nation. The sun shone strong on western corn, ripening what looked, to James Wilson’s expert eye, like bumper crops. A good harvest was gold in Republican coffers, the Secretary of Agriculture wrote from South Dakota: “
This people is very prosperous and so enthusiastic for you that they will contribute just as freely to next year’s campaign as to build a church.”
Temperatures—and tempers—rose less encouragingly at labor conventions in many cities.
So far in 1903, there had been a record three and a half thousand strikes nationwide, and not only Wall Street held Roosevelt responsible. In a severe blow to his popular image, the National Association of Letter Carriers endorsed William Randolph Hearst for President as “a true friend of the plain people.” Union after union berated Roosevelt for the low pay increase awarded the anthracite miners, and for his more recent, precedent-setting enforcement of
an open shop in the Government Printing Office.
James S. Clarkson, his chief patronage lieutenant outside Washington, grew nervous. He bombarded Sagamore Hill with statistics showing “the alarming growth of the Socialist vote in this country.” Hearst, he wrote, was a real threat, with enough funds and newspapers (three hundred at last count) to alienate every trade union from the Republican Party. He begged Roosevelt to avoid any further gestures toward free labor.
This was not the right thing to say to a President who prided himself on being fair. “
Of course I will not for one moment submit to dictation by the labor unions any more than by the trusts,” Roosevelt shot back, “and that no matter what the effect on the presidential election may be.” Three times in one sentence, he reminded Clarkson that he stood for “a square deal.”
The sun beat down ever more fiercely, turning Southern plantations white, Western farms gold, Northern fields yellow and silver. It bleached the pale Percherons working Roosevelt’s own forty-seven acres. Farmers everywhere looked forward to an autumn bounty. But in the shadowed enclave of Wall Street, bears prowled.
On 22 July, Jefferson Seligman, a banker friend, came out to see the President, warning of an imminent financial “panic.”
Roosevelt had never understood the ebb and flow of money, through his own hands or anyone else’s. “
Every morning Edie puts twenty dollars in my
pocket, and to save my life I can never tell her afterward what I did with it.” So he listened with more patience than comprehension as Seligman expounded the need for currency-reform legislation.
The problem, apparently, was an “inelastic currency,” combined with a seasonal need for cash to move America’s crops to market.
Toward the end of summer, demand greater than supply caused cash to flow from Wall Street banks to the rural heartland, leaving behind depleted vaults and falling stock prices. Late in the fall, the money began to flow back. But promoters, stockjobbers, and other speculators trembled while it was gone, lest banks call their loans. This summer, the risk looked greater than usual. Continued combination and overcapitalization—not to mention worry over the Northern Securities Company’s appeal to the Supreme Court—had created a vast surplus of vulnerable stocks. “Undigested securities,” J. P. Morgan called them.
Roosevelt referred Seligman to Leslie Shaw, who had an emergency plan to transfer government gold into the national reserves. Then he braced for the strong views his next guest was bound to have on any such corrective measure. Joseph G. Cannon famously knew more about finance than anybody else in Congress, even Senator Aldrich. A profound conservative, of the Midwestern, small-town variety, Cannon was unlikely to be disturbed by the current situation. Eastern trust lords had been too grandiose in their capitalizations: they needed a short, sharp slump (affecting millionaires primarily) to teach them fiscal responsibility.
“
Uncle Joe wants no legislation,” Roosevelt dictated to a secretary, while waiting for Cannon to arrive. “It seems to me we ought to have some.”
When the Speaker climbed out of his carriage, it was clear he was playing the defiant hayseed. He wore a seersucker jacket with tails that floated on the breeze, and salt-and-pepper trousers ballooned round his bony legs. The accepted uniform for waiting on the President was a dark frock coat, irrespective of season. But Cannon declined to apologize for his appearance. It was too “damn hot,” he said.