The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt

by Edmund Morris

  His clear voice sounded “peculiarly pleasant” as it broke the bureaucratic stillness. Yet it had an incisive edge to it that made the clerk jump to his feet.16

  Within minutes Roosevelt had taken the oath, and moved into the largest and sunniest of the three Commissioners’ offices.17 Although his gray-haired colleagues, Charles Lyman (Republican) and ex-Governor Hugh S. Thompson of South Carolina (Democrat), were nominally senior to him, he seems to have been accepted, de ipse, as leader from the start.18 Lyman’s subsequent election as president of the Commission in no way affected this arrangement. Roosevelt liked both of them, as he did everyone at first, then lost patience with them, as he did with most people sooner or later. Lyman turned out to be “the most intolerably slow of all men who ever adored red tape,”19 while Thompson was “a nice old boy,” but not much else.20 However Roosevelt managed to keep these opinions private, and the professional harmony among the three was such that some members of Harrison’s Cabinet began to worry about it. The last thing they needed, as they began to hand out appointments for services rendered, was an active Civil Service Commission.

  IT IS DIFFICULT for Americans living in the first quarter of the twenty-first century to understand the emotions which Civil Service Reform aroused in the last quarter of the nineteenth. The movement’s literature has about it all the faded ludicrousness of Moral Rearmament. How could intellectuals, politicians, socialites, churchmen, and editors campaign so fervently on behalf of customs clerks, Indian school superintendents, and Fourth-Class postmasters? How could they wax so lyrical about quotas, certifications, political assessments, and lists of eligibles? How, indeed, could one reformer entitle his memoirs The Romance of the Merit System?21

  The fact remains that thousands, even millions, lined up behind the banner, and they were as evangelical (and as strenuously resisted) as any crusaders in history. To them Civil Service Reform was “a dream at first, and then a passionate cause which the ethical would not let sleep.”22 Men and women of the highest quality devoted whole careers to it, and died triumphant in the knowledge that, due to their personal efforts, the classified departmental service had been extended by so many dozen places in Buffalo, or that algebraic equations had been deleted from the examination papers of cattle inspectors in Arizona.

  For all its dated aspects, Civil Service Reform was an honorable cause, and of real social consequence. It sought to restore to government three fundamental principles of American democracy: first, that opportunity be made equal to all citizens; second, that the meritorious only be appointed; third, that no public servants should suffer for their political beliefs. The movement’s power base—admittedly a rickety one—was the Pendleton Act of 1883, which guaranteed that at least a quarter of all federal jobs were available to the best qualified applicant, irrespective of party, and that those jobs would remain secure, irrespective of changes in Administration.23

  Few converts believed in the above principles more sincerely than Theodore Roosevelt. He had become fascinated with Civil Service Reform shortly after leaving college, and, as an Assemblyman, had helped bring about the first state Civil Service law in the country, closely based on the Pendleton Act. He had joined Civil Service Reform clubs, subscribed to Civil Service Reform journals, and preached the doctrine of Civil Service Reform to numerous audiences. His acceptance of the Commissionership, therefore, seemed natural and inevitable to his colleagues in the movement, although many believed he had sacrificed his political future by doing so.24 There would be times, during the next six years, when he was tempted to agree with them.

  ON THE MORNING after taking his oath of office, Roosevelt went to pay his respects to the President. He was prepared not to like him, for the little general was famously repellent in manner. With his fat cheeks, weak stoop, and small, suspicious eyes, Benjamin Harrison reminded one visitor of “a pig blinking in a cold wind.”25 It was hard to believe that this sour, silent Hoosier possessed the finest legal mind in the history of the White House, or that he was capable of reducing large audiences to tears with the beauty of his oratory.26 It was even harder to believe the old friend who assured the press, “When he’s on a fishing trip, Ben takes his drink of whiskey in the morning, just like anyone else … spits on his worm for luck, and cusses when the fish get away.”27

  But during Roosevelt’s visit, Harrison made a less dyspeptic impression than usual. He had just returned from a cruise down the Potomac, and looked ruddy and clear-eyed.28 The President must have given his new Commissioner assurances of support, for Roosevelt was ebullient when he burst out of the Executive Office. He nearly collided with the only other member of the Administration whose personal impetus matched his own: big, bustling, baby-faced John Wanamaker, the Philadelphia retail millionaire and new Postmaster General. Roosevelt recognized him, and the two men exchanged hearty greetings.

  Other Cabinet officers were arriving to meet with the President, and Wanamaker introduced Roosevelt all around. There were jokes about the young man’s presumed authority over federal jobs. “You haven’t any power over my place, anyway,” said the Secretary of the Navy, in mock relief. “If I had to pass a civil-service examination for mine,” Roosevelt answered, “I would never have been appointed.” “I’m glad you realize that,” growled the Secretary of Agriculture.29

  Laughing loudly, the Cabinet filed into Harrison’s office, leaving Roosevelt alone with his thoughts. He was aware (as was an unobtrusive reporter) that much cold hostility lurked behind the warm handshakes he had received. John Wanamaker, undoubtedly, would be his major opponent in the fight to enforce Civil Service rules. Wanamaker was a man of charm, pious habits, and magnificent administrative ability; he was also a Republican of the old school, and a staunch defender of the spoils system.30 The President had rewarded him for his lavish campaign contributions, and Wanamaker believed that all loyal Republicans, great or humble, who had given time and money to the party were entitled to similar recognition. As such he had emerged as the leading “spoilsman” in the Cabinet and a benign foe of all “Snivel Service Reformers.”

  Roosevelt was already too late to prevent the wholesale looting of Postal Service jobs which had taken place in the first six weeks of the new Republican Administration. (Some said that Harrison had purposely delayed his appointment to allow the Postmaster General a free hand.) The scramble for office was, according to one horrified reformer, “universal and almost unbelievable.”31 Wanamaker’s assistant, James S. Clarkson, had been replacing Democratic Fourth-Class postmasters at the rate of one every five minutes. Thousands of newspaper editors who had supported Harrison were put on the government payroll. Even ex-jailbirds whose services had been of the “dirty tricks” variety were rewarded with minor positions. Other Cabinet officers, caught up in the fever, also dispensed largesse. Attorney General William H. Miller was reported to have announced that any aspirant to a federal job must be “first a good man, second a good Republican.”32

  An extension of the Civil Service Law on 1 May—ordered by Cleveland and executed by Harrison—had slowed the pace of looting, but only in the classified quarter of the service. Over the other three-quarters, comprising some 112,000 jobs, Roosevelt had no power whatsoever. His Commission’s mandate extended to a mere 28,000 subordinate positions in the departmental, customs, postal, railway mail, and Indian services.33 Its powers, moreover, were slight. A Commissioner might personally investigate cases of examination fraud in Kansas, or political blackmail in Maine (providing he could find enough money in the budget to get there), but even if the evidence uncovered was flagrant, he could do little more than recommend prosecution to the Cabinet officer responsible. And if that officer were a Wanamaker or a Miller, he might as well save his breath.

  Such, at least, had been the attitude of Roosevelt’s eight predecessors, who had all been sedentary bureaucrats, content to supervise the marking of countless examination papers. The Civil Service Commission was a pleasant place to drowse, with its large, quiet offices and views of
lawns and trees; there was an excellent fried-oyster restaurant across Louisiana Avenue; and if one did not offend any political bigwigs, one was invited to some decent receptions.34

  Roosevelt would have none of this laissez-faire policy. From the moment he returned from the White House on 14 May, he became a blur of high-speed activity. He mastered the Commission’s complex operations within days, throwing off a wealth of new ideas, devouring documents at the rate of a page a glance, dictating hundreds of letters with such hissing emphasis that the stenographer did not need to ask for punctuation marks. Staff and visitors alike were dazed by his energy, exuberance, and ruthless outmaneuvering. “He is a wonderful man,” said one caller. “When I went to see him, he got up, shook hands with me, and said, ‘So glad to see you. Delighted. Good day, sir, good day.’ Then he ushered me to the door. I wonder what I wanted to see him about.”35

  The new Commissioner was not interested in audiences of one. Experience had taught him that he had in abundance the power of mass publicity,36 that it could be as effective, if not more so, than regular political clout. He intended so to dramatize the good gray cause of Civil Service Reform that the electorate would be forced to take notice of it—and if of himself as well, why, so much the better.

  As a preliminary attention-getting exercise, Roosevelt went on 20 May to New York, where the press knew him, to check some recent examinations in the Custom House. He found that various questions had been leaked to favored candidates, at $50 a head, and issued a fiery report accusing the local examinations board of “great laxity and negligence,” “positive fraud,” and mismanagement for “personal, political, or pecuniary” reasons. The report called for the dismissal of three officials and the criminal prosecution of at least one of them. “This report astonished the spoilsmen,” wrote one prominent reformer. “It was the first emphatic notice that the Civil Service Act was a real law and was to be enforced.”37

  Roosevelt returned to the capital and pondered his next move. The Eastern press was watching him now; it was time to get Western newspapers to do the same. On 17 June, therefore, he set off on an investigatory tour of some Great Lakes post offices with Commissioners Lyman and Thompson. Their first scheduled stop, he innocently announced, would be Indianapolis, where there were rumors of incompetence and partisanship involving the local postmaster, William Wallace. It did not take reporters long to realize that Wallace was the close personal friend, and Indianapolis the home city, of the President of the United States.38

  LUCIUS BURRIE SWIFT, Indianapolis editor of the Civil Service Chronicle, was walking downtown on the morning of 18 June when “I saw Theodore Roosevelt coming towards me, his smile of recognition visible half a block away.”39 The two men knew each other well: it had been Swift who originally asked the Civil Service Commission to investigate Postmaster Wallace. While Roosevelt completed his postbreakfast “constitutional,” Swift went over the main facts of the case again. Three venal ex-employees of the Post Office, fired some years before by Wallace’s Democratic predecessor, had been given their jobs back simply because they were Republicans. One was rumored to be the operator of an illegal gambling den—clearly not the sort of civil servant the Commission should favor.40

  The investigation, held that afternoon in the Indianapolis Post Office, confirmed the truth of Swift’s allegations. “These men must be removed today,” Roosevelt exclaimed. Wallace strenuously objected, but Commissioners Lyman and Thompson backed their young colleague up. The postmaster had no choice but to capitulate. He agreed to dismiss the offending employees, and promised that in future he would scrupulously observe the Civil Service law.41

  Later, when Roosevelt was celebrating at Swift’s house, Wallace visited Lyman and Thompson at their hotel. He asked if he might produce “new evidence” exonerating himself before they wrote their final report. The Commissioners agreed, much to Roosevelt’s irritation, for he considered Wallace “a well-meaning, weak old fellow,” and suspected that he was merely stalling.42 The evidence, in any case, proved to be worthless. Postmaster Wallace’s humiliation was duly headlined in the Indianapolis and Washington newspapers. “We stirred things up well,” Roosevelt boasted to Lodge. As for President Harrison, “we have administered a galvanic shock that will reinforce his virtue for the future.”43 Whether Harrison would relish this shock remained to be seen.

  TWO DAYS LATER the Commissioners were in Milwaukee, where the evidence of Post Office corruption was so overwhelming as to make Indianapolis seem trivial. Roosevelt got off the train convinced, on the basis of advance information, that Postmaster George H. Paul was “guilty beyond all reasonable doubt,”44 and as soon as he laid eyes on the man his suspicions were confirmed. “About as thorough-paced a scoundrel as I ever saw,” Roosevelt declared. “An oily-Gammon, churchgoing specimen.”45

  The principal testimony against Paul was supplied that afternoon by Hamilton Shidy, a Post Office superintendent and secretary of the Milwaukee Civil Service Board. Before taking the stand, Shidy said he was a poor man, entirely dependent on his job for support. He asked for a promise of protection, which Roosevelt promptly—and rashly—gave.46 Shidy then went on to describe how Paul had for years “appointed whomsoever he chose” to lucrative Post Office positions. After every such appointment, Shidy was told to “torture” the lists of eligibles so as to make it seem that Paul’s men had won their jobs in open examination. On one occasion the postmaster had actually stood looking over his shoulder while Shidy re-marked an examination paper downward. To substantiate his charges, Shidy handed over a sheaf of illegal orders in Paul’s own handwriting.47

  Next morning Roosevelt confronted the fat little postmaster with Shidy’s evidence. “Mr. Paul, these are very grave charges, and we should like to hear any explanation you have to make.” As he handed them over, item by item, Paul (examining each one disdainfully through his glasses, at arm’s length) protested he did not know, or could not remember. “Shidy was the man who was doing all that—you will have to see Shidy.” “We are not talking of Shidy,” said Roosevelt, “but of what you did. Why did you make this appointment? Why did you make that appointment?” “You must ask Shidy,” was the nonchalant reply.48

  The Commissioners did not bother to question Paul at length, for they had more than enough hard evidence to prove his guilt. It would give President Harrison no alternative but to fire him upon their recommendation. A dramatic, high-level dismissal, followed if possible by criminal prosecution, was just the sort of publicity coup Roosevelt wanted in the Midwest. But then Paul blandly announced that his letter of appointment, signed by President Cleveland four years before, had expired. “My term is out. I am simply waiting for my successor to qualify.”49

  At this there was nothing for the Commissioners to do but leave town on the next train. On the way back to Washington they drafted an impotent report. Not until after they had returned, and sent it in, did they discover that Postmaster Paul was a liar. His term of office still had several months to run. A supplemental report was accordingly rushed to the White House—and to the Associated Press.50 Although the document bore three signatures, its language was unmistakably Rooseveltian.

  For Mr. Paul to plead innocent is equivalent to his pleading imbecility … Mr. Paul alone benefitted from the crookedness of the certifications, for he alone had the appointing power … He has grossly and habitually violated the law, and has done it in a peculiarly revolting and underhanded manner. His conduct merits the severest punishment … and we recommend his immediate removal.51

  “I HAVE MADE this Commission a living force,” Roosevelt rejoiced on 23 June.52 He was in tremendous spirits, as always after battling the ungodly. There was, as yet, no official reaction to his “slam among the post offices.” Some rumblings of displeasure over the Indianapolis affair had been heard down Pennsylvania Avenue, but he doubted the President was really upset. “It is to Harrison’s credit, all we are doing in enforcing the law. I am part of the Administration; if I do good work it redounds to the
credit of the Administration.”53

  This cheerful optimism was not shared by his Republican friends, nor by Postmaster General Wanamaker, who was reported “enraged” by the press coverage enjoyed by Roosevelt on tour.54 To investigate discreetly was one thing; to cross-examine senior Post Office executives in public, and express his contempt for them afterward, at dictating speed, was another. Even the loyal Cabot Lodge warned him to keep out of the headlines until he was more settled in his job. “I cry peccavi,” Roosevelt replied, “and will assume a statesmanlike reserve of manner whenever reporters come near me.”55

  Reserved or not, he could not quell his bubbling good humor. Things were going particularly well for that other Roosevelt, the man of letters. Volumes One and Two of The Winning of the West had been published during his absence, to panegyrical newspaper reviews. “No book published for many years,” remarked the Tribune, “has shown a closer grasp of its subject, a more thorough fitness in the writer, or more honest and careful methods of treatment. Nor must the literary ability and skill displayed throughout be overlooked. Many episodes … are written with remarkable dramatic and narrative power. The Winning of the West is, in short, an admirable and deeply interesting book, and will take its place with the most valuable and indispensable works in the library of American history.”56

  He would have to wait for several months for more learned opinions, but in the meantime he could cherish a complimentary letter from the great Parkman himself. “I am much pleased you like the book,” Roosevelt wrote in acknowledgment. “I have always intended to devote myself to essentially American work; and literature must be my mistress perforce, for although I enjoy politics I appreciate perfectly the exceedingly short nature of my tenure.”57