Colonel Roosevelt (143 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
37
The family doctor
TR,
Letters
, 7.429–36; New York
Tribune
, 21 Oct. 1911; TR,
Works
, 18.262. TR’s speech, entitled “The Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood,” was an early formulation of his views on welfare and the judiciary, which became central elements of the Progressive Party platform in 1912. It appears in TR,
Works
, 18.244–75.
38
Germany being “compensated”
MacDonogh,
The Last Kaiser
, 325.
39
Meanwhile Taft
Mowry,
TR
, 184; La Follette,
Autobiography
, 532. According to Mowry, the receptions accorded WHT in the Midwest were so chilly, he was jokingly said to have added some Southern states to his itinerary, “so that he might thaw out.” For an account of the Progressive convention’s rather ambivalent feelings regarding La Follette, see Margulies, “La Follette.”
40
Roosevelt was stunned
TR,
Letters
, 7.430. The claim in Mowry,
TR
, 191, that “Roosevelt’s reaction was as instantaneous as it was violent” is not supported by TR’s behavior during the next two months, nor by the tone of his public references to the Taft administration. Mowry’s pioneer researches in the Roosevelt papers were sometimes hampered by his tendency to take TR’s political temperature and find it feverish. This misperception, shared by many historians, can be ascribed to TR’s own tendency (noticeable also in affectionate letters) to overexpress himself. For a corrective view, see Andrew C. Pavord, “The Gamble for Power: Theodore Roosevelt’s Decision to Run for the Presidency in 1912,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
, 26.3 (Summer 1996).
41
For two and a half
Margulies, “La Follette”; Mowry,
TR
, 183, 293–94.
42
As James Bryce noted
Bryce to Sir Edward Grey, 24 Oct. 1911, Bourne,
British Documents
, pt. 1, ser. C, 15.48; Moody quoted in German, “Roosevelt, Taft, and United States Steel.” The latter concludes that TR was indeed misled. He was falsely told, among other things, that Moore & Schley held a majority of TC&I stocks; TC&I’s potential wealth and competitive threat to U.S. Steel were underplayed; he did not know that TC&I was paying dividends, and investing heavily in itself, at the time of purchase. In 1920, however, the Supreme Court found the steel company innocent of antitrust activity.
43
I know you”
TR,
Letters
, 7.430–31.
44
He told two
Ibid., 7.417, 422. According to La Follette,
Autobiography
, 535–37, TR had by this time been informed by two roving correspondents, Gilson Gardner and John C. O’Laughlin, as to the impressive extent of progressive opposition to WHT across the country. But the senator’s suggestion that this information caused TR at once to lust for the nomination is contradicted by the repeated testimony of TR’s letters for the rest of 1911. Harbaugh,
TR
, 384, comments: “Whatever his subconscious desires, his rational self opposed a bid for the nomination.”
45
At Carnegie Hall
TR,
Letters
, 7.424, 421. This letter is a good example of TR’s need to imagine enemies. On 20 Oct. 1911,
The New York Times
, to cite just one newspaper generally critical of him, gave his Carnegie Hall speech long, respectful, and positive coverage, with copious quotations of the text. It reported that the hall was “crowded to the doors,” that he was greeted with a universal standing ovation, and that he expressed his “highest respect for the judiciary.” TR noticed only that the
Times
did not print his speech in full.
46
worked with extreme care
TR,
Letters
, 7.435. “Nobody knows how much time I put into my articles for
The Outlook,
” TR told Charles Washburn one day, pulling a manuscript out of his pocket. Washburn,
TR
, 151.
47
The article, headlined
TR,
Letters
, 7.454;
Boston Globe
, 17 Nov. 1911; Mowry,
TR
, 192. Although the issue of
The Outlook
containing TR’s editorial was date-lined 18 Nov., his words were effectively published two days earlier.
48
Roosevelt tersely reaffirmed
The following quotations are taken from
The Outlook
, 18 Nov. 1911.
49
Admitting that he
The Northern Securities Company was dissolved by order of the Supreme Court in Mar. 1904, Standard Oil and American Tobacco in the spring of 1911. Although TR authorized all three successful prosecutions, he was not satisfied with the last two, feeling that the essential dominance of either trust in its industry was unaffected by the Court’s vague application of a “rule of reason” to antitrust law. This dissatisfaction fueled his demand for “continuous and comprehensive government regulation” of combinations. TR,
Letters
, 7.277–78; Harbaugh,
TR
, 379–81.
50
as long as they did not monopolize
A contemporary historian waxes poetical in his sample listing of Progressive Era trusts: “Continental Cotton and U.S. Glue; National Biscuit and National Glass; American Bicycle and American Brass.” Michael McGerr,
A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920
(New York, 2003), 151.
51
But those who thought
Harbaugh,
TR
, 380, remarks on the irony that TR here echoed the very reservations about piecemeal prosecutions that had enraged him when Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes expressed them in dissenting from the
U.S. v. Northern Securities
decision of 1904.
52
it was regarded
Boston Globe
, 17 Nov.,
The New York Times
, 18 Nov.,
The Washington Post
, 17 Nov., New York
World
, 18 Nov. 1911. Andrew Carnegie, Grenville M. Dodge, and other industrial magnates also praised TR’s editorial.
“To some extent,” George E. Mowry comments, “the
Outlook
article regained for Roosevelt the support of the business interests he had lost at Osawatomie.” Mowry,
TR
, 192.
53
“He presents”
New York
World
, 18 Nov. 1911.
54
As so often
TR,
Letters
, 7.455; Harbaugh,
TR
, 381–83, analyzes the “inconsistencies” in TR’s basically moralistic economic thinking.
55
Or so he
TR,
Letters
, 7.441–42; Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.461–62.
56
“since Mr. Roosevelt”
Boston Globe
, 28 Nov. 1911.
57
La Follette was
Margulies, “La Follette”; Stoddard,
As I Knew Them
, 388;
Wall Street Journal
, 9 Nov. 1910.
58
On 11 December
Pavord, “The Gamble for Power”; Stoddard,
As I Knew Them
, 388ff. For political gossip emanating from the RNC meeting, see Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt
, 784ff.
59
A group of three
Stoddard,
As I Knew Them
, 390–91; TR,
Letters
, 7.261–62.
60
Colonel, I never knew
Stoddard,
As I Knew Them
, 391–92. See also TR,
Letters
, 7.469.
Historiographical Note:
A letter from John C. O’Laughlin to a fellow journalist, James Keeley (16 Dec. 1911 [OL]), contains the following indiscretion about a conversation he had just held with TR: “Probably the sensational aspect of our talk related to a proposition which was made to him by Taft through a mutual friend. He told me this in dead confidence, but I can repeat it to you because I know he would not object. The President said he would withdraw and support Mr. Roosevelt provided the latter would agree to appoint him on the Supreme bench. I cannot conceive of a President of the United States making such a proposal. Mr. Roosevelt, of course, refused to listen to anything of the kind. He will enter into no deal for the presidency.” The story is unsupported by other evidence. An expert on the partisan politics of this period points out WHT was in too strong a position to risk the disgrace of such a ploy being made public. WHT in any case had turned down an offer of an associate seat on the Supreme Court during TR’s presidency, saying that he was interested only in becoming chief justice. That office was unlikely to become vacant for some years, since Edward Douglass White had assumed it only recently. Lewis L. Gould to author, 3 Aug. 2009 (AC).
61
There was no arguing
Knox, however, was convinced that “if he [TR] is drafted for service by the people not the politicians he will not refuse.” La Follette got similar intimations from other attendants at the meeting. Pavord, “The Gamble for Power”; La Follette,
Autobiography
, 551–52.
62
“The Search for Truth”
The Outlook
, 2 Dec. 1911, reprinted in TR,
Works
, 14.418–38. All quotations below are from this source.
63
Arthur Balfour alone excepted
Although Balfour was a bona fide published philosopher and a politician at least as skilled and successful as TR, it could be argued that the latter’s empirical understanding of the world—the basis, rather than the goal, of philosophy—was larger and more sympathetic. Balfour remained to the end of his life an intellectual elitist comfortable only in his own aristocratic class, and even within that class he held himself aloof. See John David Root, “The Philosophy and Religious Thought of Arthur J. Balfour (1848–1930),”
Journal of British Studies
, 19.2 (Spring 1980).
64
Reyles’s dying swan
Originally
La Muerte del Cisne
. TR read this text in a French translation (Paris, 1911). Bibliographical details of all the books cited in his essay appear in TR,
Works
, 14.52–93.
65
“Subject to bursts”
Henry Osborn Taylor,
The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages
(1910), quoted in TR,
Works
, 14.420.
66
He took up
In the year preceding TR’s essay, the issue of
fides versus ratio
had become fraught in Roman Catholicism. Sparked by Pope Pius X’s reactionary encyclical
Pascendi Dominici Gregis
(1907), attacking the validity of intuition, scientism, and mystical aspirations as bases for belief as opposed to scriptural orthodoxy, it had burst into doctrinal flame in 1910, when the pontiff ordered all Catholic clerics to swear an oath repudiating modernism. The resultant ideological schism tormented the Church for the rest of the century, and was moderated only by John Paul II in his great encyclical
Fides et Ratio
(1998).
67
The year ended
TR,
Letters
, 7.450. “If I should run and be defeated,” TR told one of the “fool friends” urging him to commit himself, “I should be covered with obloquy.” He had had enough of that the winter before. Regis H. Post, “How Roosevelt Made the Government Efficient,”
World’s Work
, Apr. 1921.
68
Theodore Roosevelt had
See, e.g., TR,
Letters
, 7.451–52.
69
His best interest
Some biographers, e.g. Mowry,
TR
, 192ff., attempt to show that TR had become ambitious for the presidency in the fall of 1911, and that the steel suit was a jump-start to his campaign to defeat Taft. Their arguments, due to a common inability to conceive of TR as anything other than a politician, do not hold up in the light of his countless, and laboriously emphatic, denials of any such ambition. See the representative selection of apologia in TR,
Letters
, 7.446–69.
70
“Alice, when you”
Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt
, 776. Butt had been promoted to major. According to ibid., 811–12, several other TR associates in the administration received similar storm warnings.
8: H
AT IN THE
R
ING
1
Epigraph
Robinson, C
ollected Poems
, 21.
2
“They say that”
TR speech in Manhattan, 7 Nov. 1910, transcript in TRB.
3
“You can put it”
Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 371. Meanwhile Helen Taft was telling her own husband with equal accuracy, “I think you will be renominated, but I don’t see any chance for the election.” Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt
, 68.
4
His response to
TR,
Letters
, 7.466; Margulies, “La Follette”; Mowry,
TR
, 203.
5
“It now looks”
Link,
Papers of Woodrow Wilson
, 23.596.
6
the
hajj
that converged
Mark Sullivan uses the simile of “strewn iron filings mobilizing to the pull of a revitalized magnet.” (Our
Times
, 4.469–71.) See also Mowry,
TR
, 199–202; TR,
Letters
, 7.470–493, 8.1474.
7
In cabs and carriages
TR,
Letters
, 7.315.
8
Midwesterners loyal
La Follette,
Autobiography
, 581–82; Pringle,
TR
, 554; Mowry,
TR
, 200–202.
9
“He is not”
Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt
, 834–35. “What struck me as significant,” Butt wrote the next day, “was the fact that never once [in a visit lasting from three to four hours] did the Colonel mention the President.” Ibid., 833.
