Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  Three traveling aides—George Cortelyou, Assistant Secretary Benjamin F. Barnes, and Captain George A. Lung of the Navy Medical Corps—left the President alone, as did a pool of five reporters, four typists, and two telephonists. But his ubiquitous bodyguard hovered.

  Roosevelt had grown fond of William Craig. Time was when Big Bill, an immigrant from Britain, had protected Queen Victoria. Now forty-eight years old, he stood six foot three and was still quick and muscular as a bull. Perhaps his best friend in the world was four-year-old Quentin Roosevelt. They liked to read comics together.

  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 … y
ou 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?”

  “No, I guess not,” Roosevelt grunted through bleeding lips. He stood up and peered about him. Governor Crane was unhurt. Cortelyou looked concussed. The coachman lay unconscious, blood oozing from his ears. Craig was nowhere to be seen. Roosevelt staggered over to the wreckage (the barouche overturned and stove in, the horses kicking feebly in harness). Beneath the trolley car was a mass of blood and bone. All eight steel wheels had passed over his bodyguard.

  He saw a man in engineer’s uniform staring stupidly, and bunched his fists in his face. “Did you lose control of the car?” The man was too frightened to reply. “If you did,” said Roosevelt, voice shaking, “that was one thing. If you didn’t, it was a God-damned outrage!”

  As his heir apparent mused later, it might also have been a national tragedy. John Hay calculated that Roosevelt had escaped death by just two inches. “Had the trolley car struck the rear hub instead of grazing it and crashing into the front wheel … Crane and the President would have been tossed to the left and under the car just as poor Craig was.”

  At the time, all Roosevelt could think of was vengeance. The engineer became truculent. “You don’t suppose I tried to do it, do you?” For a moment he and the President were at the point of blows. Then Roosevelt remembered his dignity and turned back to the wreckage. “Well, I had the right of way anyway,” the engineer shouted, as deputies led him off.

  Roosevelt did not seem to hear. He knelt beside the reddened wheels. “Too bad, too bad,” he murmured. “Poor Craig. How my children will feel.”

  QUENTIN WAS INDEED a bereft little boy when Roosevelt got back to Sagamore Hill that evening. But the President, whose face was blue-black and grotesquely swollen, attracted more immediate sympathy. He was also limping slightly from a bruise on his left shin.

  In the days that followed, varying explanations of the accident came from Pittsfield. Charges of manslaughter were filed against Euclid Madden, the engineer. One story was that passengers on the trolley car had bribed him to pursue the President; another claimed he had been coming down the slope on schedule, and could not brake fast enough when the barouche got in his way. Madden pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to a heavy fine, plus six months in jail for failing to control his car.

  Memories of “poor Craig” faded slowly, like the leaves around Sagamore Hill. The anniversary of William McKinley’s death came and went without incident. Next day, 15 September, Roosevelt hosted a garden reception to celebrate his first year in office. Several thousand Nassau County neighbors came to shake the President’s hand and sip raspberry shrub from specially engraved glasses. Long Island Sound shimmered through the trees; the air was sweet with the smell of popcorn and banana fritters. Although Roosevelt was still bruised about the face, he seemed healthy and vigorous as he welcomed his guests. “Dee-lighted!” He shook fifty-two hands a minute for three hours.

  “It takes more than a trolley accident to knock me out,” he boasted, “and more than a crowd to tire me.”

  Only Edith knew that beneath the neatly pressed flannel trousers, the pain in his shin was beginning to bother him.

  CHAPTER 10

  The Catastrophe Now Impending

  It was different when I was a young man,

  Hinnissy. In thim days, Capital an’ Labor

  were friendly, or Labor was.

  THE PRESIDENTIAL EAGLE fluttered bravely at masthead, its golden wings beating the drizzle. Roosevelt and his aides huddled below in raincoats and wraps, waiting for Manhattan to show across the East River. Fall was still three days off, but for party politicians the summer had already ended. A “grave and delicate” question demanded Roosevelt’s attention out west, where he was headed on another campaign trip.

  The question was one of basic Republican policy. Some ambitious insurgents in Iowa, led by Governor Albert B. Cummins, had forced a revolutionary idea into the state platform for 1902:

  We favor such amendments of the Interstate Commerce Act as will more fully carry out its prohibition of discrimination in ratemaking, and [such] modification of the tariff schedules [as] may be required to prevent their affording a shelter to monopoly.

  In other words, monopolistic corporations should be controlled by special, punitive taxation. Price-fixing would give way to an equitable redistribution of Wall Street’s wealth. Railroad rate regulation would control the tendency of agricultural prices to decline in inverse proportion to manufacturing costs. And fair-trade agreements would reopen overseas markets shut by the impossible cost of doing business with the United States.

  This “Iowa Idea” made little sense to Roosevelt (what, for instance, about trusts whose products were already on the free list?), but he could see its appeal to ignorant voters. Before leaving Oyster Bay, he had summoned six Republican leaders to advise him on what to say about the tariff while on tour. The meeting had been so divided as to confirm his suspicions that the Iowa Idea was a party-splitter. Senators Allison and Spooner and Postmaster General Payne, all Midwesterners, thought he should recommend some discreet modification of rates, to relieve radical pressures beyond the Mississippi. Senators Aldrich, Hanna, and Lodge had objected to any tinkering with a system that worked on behalf of their Eastern industrial constituencies. “As long as I remain in the Senate and can raise a hand to stop you,” said Hanna, flushed of face, “you shall never touch a schedule of the tariff act.”

  Roosevelt inclined to the Western point of view. But Governor Cummins’s suggestion that the tariff was “the mother of trusts” was irresponsible. No wonder Hanna, an arch-protectionist, was so disturbed. Already, the Iowa Idea was on the lips of other prairie insurgents: Governors Robert M. LaFollette of Wisconsin and Samuel Van Sant of Minnesota were barking it with the fervor of patent-medicine salesmen. Protection must give way to Reciprocity—had not William McKinley said as much, the day before he was shot?

  McKinley’s successor remembered being a free-trade man himself once, in hot youth. But he had found it wise to recant that heresy upon entering Republican politics. His failure eighteen years later to win even a minor bill of reciprocity for Cuba proved that protectionism was still the holiest tenet of party faith. Indeed, Speaker David B. Henderson, an Iowan, had announced he would not run for re-election, rather than submit to tariff blasphemies on the stump.

  Roosevelt, thinking ahead to 1904, hesitated between risk-taking and caution. He had always been willing to embrace a worthy cause—civil-service reform, for example—if it could be proved legal and representative of vox populi. Tariff reform was beginning to loo
k like just such a mass movement. But the mass, as yet, was still a minority. He did not want to alienate a key constituency—those millions of small businessmen and farmers who traded exclusively within the United States, and relied on tariffs as a bulwark against foreign competition. To them, protection was a right honored by twelve successive Republican administrations, and the Iowa Idea was both an insult and a threat.

  During the next eighteen days, Roosevelt intended to drum into Midwestern and Western skulls the basic incompatibility of trust control and tariff reform. He planned major addresses on each issue, at Cincinnati and Indianapolis, before taking his message of strenuous moderation across the heartland of insurgency, from Milwaukee and St. Paul to Sioux Falls and Des Moines. He was setting out, he acknowledged, on an expedition fraught with risk. Every step must be measured carefully, and not just because of the nagging pain in his left shin. “There are a good many worse things than the possibility of trolley-car accidents in these trips!”

  DISEMBARKING ON THE East Side, the presidential party proceeded across Manhattan by cavalcade. Secret Service men rode one hundred feet ahead, making sure, this time, that all local traffic was stationary. A Hudson River ferry took Roosevelt on to Jersey City. At 2:14 P.M., his special pulled out of the depot and chugged west through the rain.

  When the train crossed the Pennsylvania border, a small, saturnine, droop-eyed man got on. Matthew S. Quay was accustomed to free rides, as senior Senator from the Keystone State, on both public and private transport. Alone with Roosevelt for the next twenty-five miles, he reported on the coal strike. Happily, the miners were about to capitulate. They had abandoned their demand for union recognition. The determination of operators had defeated John Mitchell; management was not mocked.