Theodore Rex (137 page)

148
They were prepared
Edward C. Kirkland,
Dream and Thought in the Business Community, 1860–1900
(Madison,
1956), 121;
Gabriel Kolko,
The Triumph of Conservatism: A Reinterpretation of American History, 1900–1916
(New York, 1963), 58–59.

149
He tended toward
Mowry,
Era of Theodore Roosevelt
, 45.

150
Years of sweaty
See TR’s review of Kidd’s
Social Evolution
(1894) in TR,
Works
, vol. 14, 107–28. This volume also contains other literary essays revelatory of TR’s late-nineteenth-century thought: “National Life and Character” and “The Law of Civilization and Decay.” For intellectual analyses of the prepresidential TR, see John M. Blum, “TR: The Years of Decision,” in TR,
Letters
, vol. 2, 1484–94; Morris,
Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
, 462–71; and Edmund Morris, “Theodore Roosevelt, President,”
American Heritage
32.4 (June–July 1981). The best overall analysis remains chap. 2, “The World of Thought,” in Wagenknecht,
Seven Worlds
, 31–84.

151
In a fundamental
TR, qu. in Blum, “TR: The Years of Decision” in TR,
Letters
, vol. 2, 1487; TR,
Works
, vol. 15, 109–10.

152
The United States
Terence Powderley, U.S. commissioner of immigration, in
Collier’s
, 14 Dec. 1901. For a selection of relevant social and economic statistics, see Gould,
Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
, 30–39.

153
Somehow he must
TR,
Letters
, vol. 2, 1487; vol. 3, 105.

154
“a bully pulpit”
TR, qu. by Lyman Abbott in “A Review of President Roosevelt’s Administration: IV,”
Outlook
, 27 Feb. 1909.

155
The fine white
Edward W. Bok, in
The Americanization of Edward Bok
(New York, 1922), describes in detail his relationship with TR. See also Salme H. Steinberg,
Reformer in the Marketplace: Edward W. Bok and
The Ladies’ Home Journal (Bloomington, Ind., 1980), and Frank Luther Mott,
A History of American Magazines
(Cambridge, Mass., 1957), vol. 4, 539, 547, for Bok as editor, and Wagenknecht,
Seven Worlds
, 69–72, 75–76, for TR’s views on the social usefulness of literature.

156
Girls softly pelted
Chicago Tribune
, 17 Sept. 1901.

157
Thickening crowds
New York
World
, New York
Herald
, and
Buffalo Express
, 17 Sept. 1901.

158
Governor William Stone
Review of Reviews
, Sept. 1901;
Atlantic Monthly
, Oct. 1901; J. Hampton Moore,
Roosevelt and the Old Guard
(Philadelphia,
1925), 195;
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 136.

159
A messenger ran
Kohlsaat,
From McKinley
, 105; New York
Evening Post
and New York
Evening World, 1
6 Sept. 1901;
Commercial & Financial Chronicle
, 21 Sept. 1901. Frederick Holls met TR the next day, and wrote Albert Shaw: “He is highly gratified at the Wall Street boom and Kohlsaat has persuaded him
[sic]
to agree and keep Gage on till 1905.
That is fixed”
(17 [AS]).

160
Roosevelt was relieved
Kohlsaat,
From McKinley
, 105.

161
The tolling of
Harrisburg
Patriot
and
Chicago Tribune
, 17 Sept. 1901; Kohlsaat,
From McKinley
, 102–4.

162
Ahead, in the
New York
Evening World
, 17 Sept. 1901.

163
THE SUN WAS
Buffalo Express
, and Clarke in New York
Herald
, 17 Sept. 1901.

164
Though such families
Mowry,
Era of Theodore Roosevelt
, 12, 18–19;
Review of Reviews
, Sept. 1901; Fred A. Shannon, “The Status of the Midwestern Farmer in 1900,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
37.3 (Dec. 1950).

165
Technological progress
Shannon, “Status.”

166
Roosevelt could see
Chicago Tribune
, 17 Sept. 1901; Walter Wellman in
McClure’s
, Sept. 1901; Shannon, “Status”; Mowry,
Era of Theodore Roosevelt
, 13. Peter J. Hill, “Relative Skill and Income Levels of Native and Foreign-Born Workers in the U.S.,”
Explorations in Economic History
12.1 (1975), shows that the general impression in 1901 of the inferiority of immigrant labor was fallacious.

167
Not surprisingly
John Higham,
Strangers in the Land
(New Brunswick, N.J., 1955), 137–40; White editorial, qu. in Kenneth S. Davis, “The Sage of Emporia,”
American Heritage
30.6 (Oct.–Nov. 1979).

168
Roosevelt was not
See Blum, “TR: The Years of Decision,” in TR,
Letters
, vol. 2, 1488, and TR, “True Americanism,”
Works
, vol. 15, 15–31. Thomas G. Dyer,
Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race
(Baton Rouge, 1980), is the latest attempt to interpret TR’s racial thought in the light of modern sensibilities, mentioning Booker T. Washington only twice.

169
One of his favorite
Nancy Schoenberg, “Officer Otto Raphael: A Jewish Friend of Theodore Roosevelt,”
American Jewish Archives
39.1 (1987); TR, “Ethnology of the Police,”
Munsey’s
, June 1897; TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 86; Higham,
Strangers
, 105–12, 149. The League was the pet project of TR’s best friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. See Barbara Miller Solomon, “The Intellectual Background of the Immigration Restriction Movement in New England,”
New England Quarterly
25 (1952).

170
Several thousand
Chicago Tribune
and New York
World
, 17 Sept. 1901.

171
THE CONSISTENT FEATURES
The image of the fault line is borrowed from Mowry,
Era of Theodore Roosevelt
. See ibid., 1–105, for an overall survey of the American landscape (material, intellectual, political, social, and ideological) at the turn of the century.

172
“The extremes of”
Qu. in Sullivan,
Our Times
, vol. 2, 243.

173
Roosevelt thought he
TR,
Works
, vol. 15, 314. For a survey of at least some of Everyman’s feelings at the time of TR’s accession, see Louis Galambos,
The Public Image of Big Business in America, 1890–1940
(Baltimore, 1975), chap. 4.

174
“Bob”
and
“Tom”
These two candidates were Robert M. LaFollette and Tom L. Johnson.

175
Far-flung and lonely
TR, aside from being precociously sensitive to American public opinion, had read Henry George, Edward Bellamy, and Henry Demarest Lloyd, all premature voices of Progressive protest. Faulkner,
Decline of Laissez-Faire
, 369.

176
ROOSEVELT’S REVERIE
Chicago Tribune
, 17 Sept. 1901; Kohlsaat,
From McKinley
, 104;
Statistical History of the United States
(New York, 1976). For an analysis of the political, social, and economic differences between Northern and Southern blacks in 1901, see W.E.B. Du Bois,
The Black North in 1901: A Social Study
(New York, 1902; repr. 1969).

177
Census statistics such as
Southern blacks contributed one third of the total convention ballot.
The Washington Post
, 12 Mar. 1902.

178
The South was
Herbert Croly,
Marcus Alonzo Hanna
(New York,
1912), 298;
Richard B. Sherman,
The Republican Party and Black America: From McKinley to Hoover, 1896–1933
(Charlottesville,
1973), 19–20;
Horace and Marion Merrill,
The Republican Command, 1897–1913
(Lexington, Ky.,
1971), 74–75;
The Booker T. Washington Papers
, ed. Louis R. Harlan (Urbana, 1972–1989, vol. 6, 336 (hereafter
Booker T. Washington Papers)
.

179
“burly, coarse-fibered”
TR to William Allen White, 27 Aug. 1901 (WAW). The compound adjective is incorrectly transcribed as “unterrified” in TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 135.

180
To consolidate his
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 149. TR reportedly talked at length about his Southern strategy on the train. H. H. Kohlsaat to editor,
The Atlanta Constitution
, 7 June 1903.

181
“Theodore”
Rhodes,
McKinley and Roosevelt
, 218. Rhodes got this quotation from Hanna, who was his brother-in-law. By 1905, TR was denying that the train meeting took place. But Kohlsaat,
From McKinley
, 102–3, and Joseph L. Bristow interview, 6 Dec. 1938 (HKB), confirm it, as does Lincoln Steffens in
McClure’s
, July 1905. TR’s reply to Steffens suggests that he was denying the substance of the conversation, not its occurrence. TR,
Letters
, vol. 4, 1254.

182
at twenty past
Buffalo Express
, 17 Sept. 1901.

183
There was neither
Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post
, and New York
Sun
, 17 Sept. 1901.

184
As usual in moments
The Washington Post
, 17 Sept. 1901; John Hay,
Letters and Extracts from His Diary
, ed. Henry Adams (privately printed, 1908), vol. 3, 232.

185
“Divide off”
The Washington Post
, 17 Sept. 1901.

186
“Something should be”
Ibid.

187
For a moment
New York
Sun, Chicago Tribune
, and
The Washington Post
, 17 Sept. 1901. EKR recorded TR’s arrival at the Cowles house that evening “looking very grave and older, but not at all nervous. All the country seems behind him” (Diary, 16 Sept. 1901).

  
1
I see that
“Mr. Dooley” [Finley Peter Dunne], 28 Sept. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP). See also
Mr. Dooley on Ivrything and Ivrybody
, ed. Robert Hutchinson (New York,
1963), 169–70
.

  
2
on the morning
Waldon Fawcett, “President Roosevelt at Work,”
Leslie’s Weekly
, n.d. Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Washington
Evening Star
, 20 Sept. 1901.

  
3
As the President
New York
Journal
, 24 Sept. 1901.

  
4
A pall of
EKR, speech to children at TRB, 26 Oct. 1933 (TRB); Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 222–23;
The New York Times Magazine
, 12 Jan. 1919.

  
5
At eleven o’clock
Unidentified Cabinet officer in Boston
Transcript
, ca. 21 Sept. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); James Wilson to W. B. Allison, 21 Sept. 1901 (HKB).

  
6
“I need your advice”
Harry Thurston Peck,
Twenty Years of the Republic, 1885–1905
(New York, 1906), 667.

  
7
He interrupted
Boston
Transcript
, ca. 21 Sept. 1901, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); James Wilson to W. B. Allison, 21 Sept. 1901 (HKB).

  
8
The President’s hunger
TR,
Letters
, vol. 4, 1346; New York
Herald
, 21 Sept. 1901.

  
9
“This being my”
David S. Barry,
Forty Years in Washington
(Boston, 1924), 267.

10
A certain code
Ibid., 267–68.

11
Boynton and Barry
Ibid., 268–69.

12
MUCH LATER THAT EVENING
TR’s sister lived at 1733 N Street. Her home—soon known as “the Little White House”—was to become a social hideaway for the President and his family over the next seven years. See Lilian Rixey,
Bamie: Theodore Roosevelt’s Remarkable Sister
(New York, 1963).