Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

Big 0 50

  Smaller 110 144

  From this it will be seen that TR’s Big Stick was more psychological than actual. Its efficacy derived from the speed and power with which he threatened to use it.

  71 Whether it was Dana G. Munro quotes TR as complaining about Germany’s “impossible stand” as late as 9 Feb. Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, 1900–1921 (Princeton, N.J., 1964), 73. But J. Fred Rippy shows that acquiescence began around 4 Feb.—i.e., the day after von Sternburg’s urgent telegram. Caribbean Danger Zone, 191.

  Historical Note: This brief resurgence of the Venezuela crisis provoked a purge of former von Holleben aides at the German Embassy. Albert von Quadt was recalled in mid-Feb., the chargé Baron von Ritter given just “forty-eight hours” to follow him a week later, and two other staffers reassigned. Jules Jusserand reported that they were all clearly being punished for the Kaiser’s loss of “face.” To Théophile Delcassé, 20 Mar. 1903 (JJ).

  72 “I am not for” Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 7 and 11 Feb. 1903 (JJ).

  73 Relaxing in the TR to James Connolly, 29 Sept. 1902 (TRP); TR, Letters to Kermit from Theodore Roosevelt, 1902–1908 (New York, 1946), 27; Cassini, Never a Dull Moment, 180; Alice Roosevelt Longworth interview, 22 June 1975.

  74 The Ambassador’s own Jusserand, What Me Befell, 217; Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 11 Feb. 1903 (JJ).

  75 Beaming like a TR to Pierre W. Coubertin, 6 Oct. 1902 (TRP); TR, Letters to Kermit, 27; Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 11 Feb. 1903 (JJ). Lloyd Griscom recorded another description of TR’s flooding conversational energy at this time. “He started to volley questions at me about Persia [over breakfast], but before I could answer, he launched into a monologue of the Great Empire from the rise of Genghiz Khan. He paused long enough for me to begin an account of ibex shooting, but interrupted to send for the rifle with which he had hunted in the West; he wanted to show us the marks of a cougar’s fangs on its butt. Then suddenly he switched to Japan.…” Griscom, Diplomatically Speaking, 221–22.

  76 Already, almost Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 531; Strouse, Morgan, 452–53. The Expedition Act (which TR signed into law on 11 Feb. 1903) effectively fathered the Justice Department’s modern, all-powerful Antitrust Division.

  77 Congressman Charles TR to Gilson Gardner, unidentified news clip, 7 Feb. 1903, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 548.

  Chronological Note: When Representative Littlefield’s antitrust bill first ran into trouble in the House in mid-January, Roosevelt had called a leadership conference to advance his own program (Review of Reviews, Feb. 1903; Johnson, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporations”). He thereupon sought out the operational center between “fools” like Speaker Henderson, who opposed all business regulation, and “equally obnoxious fools” like Littlefield, who fought too hard for too much (TR, Letters, vol. 3, 406), and coaxed both houses and both parties into acquiescence. Henderson was promised help from George Perkins in setting up a New York law practice when he retired at the end of the session. Perkins was promised an advisory role in setting up the new Bureau of Corporations. The House Judiciary and Rules Committees at once became more hospitable to White House proposals. William C. Beer to George W. Perkins, 11 Jan. 1903 (GWP); Review of Reviews, Feb. 1903.

  78 Just behind came TR, Letters, vol. 3, 410, and vol. 5, 334–35; Merrill, Republican Command, 141–42. The bill’s extended title was added in order to win the support of congressmen from labor-intensive districts.

  79 Thus, Roosevelt George Cortelyou to Philander Knox, 2 Jan. 1903 (PCK), makes plain TR’s mistrust of the ICC as an agency too independent for his liking. Conservatives in Congress had the same feelings about TR.

  80 In view of James Garfield diary, 5 Feb. 1903 (JRG); Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 341. See also Campaign Contributions: Testimony Before a Subcommittee of the [Senate] Committee of Privileges and Elections. 62 Cong., 2 sess., 1913, vol. 1, 18 (hereafter Campaign Contributions).

  81 J. D. ROCKEFELLER Chicago Tribune, New York Herald, and The New York Times, 8 Feb. 1903.

  82 Both impressions Rockefeller had just given seven million dollars for tuberculosis research. Review of Reviews, Mar. 1903.

  83 By publicizing these TR, Autobiography, 445; L. White Busbey, Uncle Joe Cannon: The Story of a Pioneer American (New York, 1927), 222. Other news stories implicated three more lawmakers. Senators Aldrich, Allison, Hale, Hanna, Lodge, Teller, Quay, Platt (N.Y.), and Platt (Conn.) all denied having received Standard Oil telegrams, whereupon the New York American (12 Feb. 1903) published a facsimile of one addressed to Quay. Signed by John D. Archbold, the company’s vice president, it protested “vexatious attacks” against big business.

  Chronological Note: TR’s not-to-be-attributed release of this story to the Associated Press on Saturday evening, 7 Feb., demonstrated his instinct for weekend news. Readers of Sunday-morning spreads had plenty of time to mark, learn, and inwardly digest, before firing off letters to their congressmen. Sunday-afternoon announcements were pretty sure to end up as front-page stories, because Monday morning was usually newsless.

  At the time, it was assumed that TR acted on 7 Feb. after being shown one of the Rockefeller telegrams by Henry Cabot Lodge. Actually, he had been aware of Standard Oil’s lobbying effort for at least three days (James Garfield diary, 5 Feb. 1903 [JRG]). He delayed his dramatic move until the day the Littlefield Bill passed the House, thus “burying” it beneath his own Sunday headlines.

  84 Subsequent articles New York American, 12 Feb. 1903; Johnson, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporations.”

  85 The old tycoon New York World, 12 Feb. 1903. Early on 10 Feb. Rep. Charles Littlefield had begged TR for help with his own bill, as promised. He received a cold message saying that the President now found it “unconstitutional and entirely too drastic.” Enraged, Littlefield became the only House Republican to vote against the Commerce and Labor Bill. A mere nine Democrats joined him. Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 548.

  86 ON 8 FEBRUARY Princeton Alumni Weekly, 14 Feb. 1903.

  87 “JUST AT PRESENT,” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 423.

  88 Elihu Root’s long The Army Bill became law on 14 Feb. 1903. Internal bureaucratic conflicts kept the General Staff Corps from becoming fully effective in 1910. A quarter of a century later, Newton D. Baker described it as “the outstanding contribution made by any Secretary of War since the beginning of [U.S.] history.” Leopold, Elihu Root, 43. See also Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 260ff.

  89 By agreement with Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 113.

  Historical Note: With a fine disregard for the adjective impartial, TR chose three aggressive expansionists to be his representatives at the Alaskan Boundary Tribunal in London: Secretary of War Elihu Root and Senators Henry Cabot Lodge (R., Mass.) and George Turner (D., Wash.). The appointments were seen as deliberately provocative. Root had sent United States troops north in 1902 to secure the very frontier he would now be adjudicating. Lodge’s personal shoulder-chip, in matters to do with Great Britain and its empire, amounted to a battering ram: “I do not like to be crowded, and I especially dislike being pushed by our British brother.” Turner came from a community that had always regretted President Polk’s failure to extend the Northwestern Territory as far as “Fifty-four Forty.”

  The Anglo-Canadian claim, in TR’s opinion, was “an outrage pure and simple.” His own big globe of the world (beside which he posed, in a photograph intended for immediate release) had been “made in London by mapmakers for the Admiralty,” and showed the Alaskan boundary to be precisely where the United States said it was. Since 1825, Great Britain had understood by treaty that the line ran inland from the forty-first parallel to the Portland Channel, at a distance averaging thirty miles from the coast. This seaward strip encompassed all major inlets; when Russia sold Alaska to the United States in 1867, Canada had raised no topographical objections. Only when gold was discovered in the Klondike in 1896 had she
begun to regret the ceded inlets. Canada was now suggesting—demanding—that the Alaskan boundary should be measured not from the coast, but from the extremities of islands lying far out to sea. If so, Juneau, Skagway, Dyea, the much-prized Lynn Canal, and all of Glacier Bay would be Canadian.

  Roosevelt was willing to grant Canada a limited amount of inlet water, according to charts drawn up by John Hay. Strategist that he was, he suspected that the Dominion’s British rulers knew their case was hopeless, and merely wanted a judicial confirmation, to quell angry local feelings. He therefore made clear to his representatives that they were not to negotiate “untenable” territorial claims, only to decide whether a boundary sanctioned by sixty years of understanding among Russia, Great Britain, and the United States was “right in its entirety or wrong in its entirety.” This caused great resentment at the Alaska Boundary Tribunal. Shortly after negotiations began on 15 Sept. 1903, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., visited London and sent TR private word that the British Government took an “exceedingly grave” view of his inflexible attitude. Six months later, Joseph Chamberlain was still fuming. “Our cordial neutrality and sympathy in the Spanish War followed—by what? By all that happened in regard to the Alaska Arbitration, the secret history of which is not altogether pleasant reading.”

  See Tyler Dennett, John Hay: From Poetry to Politics (New York, 1933), 357–59; Henry Cabot Lodge to Elihu Root, 27 June 1903 (ER); John Hay to Joseph H. Choate, ca. 20 Feb. 1903 (JH); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 287; New York Tribune supplement, 29 Mar. 1903, p. 1; map in Review of Reviews, Mar. 1903; Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 145; TR to Elihu Root et al., 25 Mar. 1903 (ER); Holmes to TR, 11 Oct. 1903 (TRP); Chamberlain to Poultney Bigelow, 30 Apr. 1904 (PB). For more extensive discussion, see John A. Munro, ed., The Alaska Boundary Dispute (Toronto, 1970); Marks, Velvet on Iron, 105–11; and Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt, 36–48.

  90 Favorable action Miner, Fight for the Panama Route, 197–98. Senatorial patience with the seventy-eight-year-old Morgan was wearing thin. “Impersonating the treaty,” Mark Hanna wrote John Hay, ca. Feb. 1903, “am I not justified in killing him?” (JH).

  91 Roosevelt did not TR, Letters, vol. 3, 427–28.

  92 On Saturday Review of Reviews, Mar. 1903; Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform, 46. By midsummer, the Department of Commerce and Labor had a Washington staff of more than 1,300 and a budget of ten million dollars. George Cortelyou speech memorandum, ca. 12 Aug. 1903 (TRP).

  Chronological Note: On this weekend, TR’s houseguest, John Singer Sargent, was painting an oil portrait of the President pausing halfway down the White House stairway with his hand on a newel. The noticeable sadness in TR’s eyes may reflect the fact that his wife, even as he posed, was suffering her second miscarriage in two years. TR, Letters, vol. 3, 428; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 265.

  93 As a final The agreement protocol was signed in Washington on 13 Feb. 1903. For a brief account of the negotiations, see Gelber, Rise of Anglo-American Friendship, 113–25.

  94 THE NEXT MORNING’S Los Angeles Times, 14 Feb. 1903; New York Press, 15 Feb. 1903.

  95 “It always pays” TR qu. in Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 44; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 450–51. See Marks, Velvet on Iron, 13–15, for a discussion of TR’s “gentlemanly” scruples in foreign policy.

  96 It was a Johnson, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Bureau of Corporations”; superscript on George Cortelyou memo for the President, 14 Feb. 1903 (GBC).

  97 “Say what has” TR memo, 15 Feb. 1903, and press-release draft for New York Herald, 16 Feb. 1903 (PCK).

  98 The result was Literary Digest, 21 Feb. 1903.

  99 Nevertheless, Roosevelt Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 555–60; clip ca. Feb. 1903 in John Hay scrapbook (JH).

  100 Whether this Nearly a century later, it has so redounded. “The year 1903 is one of the most important in the annals of antitrust. In that year, the nation became conscious for the first time of a President’s taking a personal interest in the application of the law.… [His actions] unmistakably demonstrate the practicability and potentialities of large-scale and purposeful enforcement effort” (Thorelli, Federal Antitrust Policy, 560). 1903 would see only eighteen new trusts formed, as opposed to sixty-three in 1902, and forty-six in 1901.

  101 GEORGE BRUCE CORTELYOU Washington Capitol, 21 Apr. 1900, biography file (GBC); National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. 14; Lowry, Washington Close-Ups, 104, 127–28; Review of Reviews, Mar. 1903; George Cortelyou to R. A. Maxwell, 16 Feb. 1903 (GBC). For a later assessment, see Benjamin Temple Ford, “A Duty to Serve: The Governmental Career of George Bruce Cortelyou” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1963).

  102 the elite company See, e.g., James Garfield diary, 13 Feb. 1903 (JRG).

  103 Cortelyou, despite To TR, Garfield was “Jim,” while Cortelyou was always “Mr. Cortelyou.”

  104 ON 18 FEBRUARY TR, Letters to Kermit, 30. This ride is misdated as 13 Feb. in Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 426. “Wie gut ist es doch” the Kaiser commented, “that His Majesty’s German representative goes riding mit dem Präsidenten!” Die Grosse Politik, vol. 17, 292.

  105 Now that Germany’s Rippy, Caribbean Danger Zone, 198; Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 145.

  106 The President’s words Marks, Velvet on Iron, 52–54.

  107 When Admiral Dewey Dewey qu. in New York Herald, 27 Mar. 1903; Mrs. Dewey diary, 31 Mar. 1903 (GD); Frederick Palmer, With My Own Eyes (Indianapolis, 1932), 128–29; Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 1, 239; Spector, Admiral of the New Empire, 145–46. According to Mrs. Dewey, TR received the Admiral privately, took his hand in both of his, and said, “My best beloved” (a habitual endearment) then, sotto voce, “Damn the Dutch!” According to Palmer, TR tapped Dewey on the wrist and said, grinning, “Admiral, consider yourself reprimanded.”

  108 THE FIFTY-SEVENTH Walter Wellman in Chicago Record-Herald, 28 Feb.–3 Mar. 1903; Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich, 210–11; Simkins, Pitchfork Ben Tillman, 364–65.

  109 Roosevelt’s “tyrannical” Senoia, Georgia, Enterprise-Gazette, 26 Feb. 1903, Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Fleming, Around the Capitol, 49; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 231–32. Dr. Crum assumed his appointment on 30 Mar. 1903.

  110 “To the Secretary” TR to Elihu Root, 21 Feb. 1903 (ER).

  111 Treaties were TR, Letters, vol. 3, 433; Walter Wellman in Chicago Record-Herald, 3 Mar. 1903; proclamation, 2 Mar. 1903, Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

  112 He had hardly Chicago Record-Herald, 3–4 Mar. 1903; Literary Digest, 7 Mar. 1903.

  113 A House-Senate The phrase ugly with anger is Walter Wellman’s in the Chicago Record-Herald, 4 Mar. 1903. See also Washington Evening Star, same date.

  114 At 2:00 A.M. The adjective dilatory is Quay’s own. Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3005–6; The Washington Post, 4 Mar. 1903.

  115 Outside, the moon Washington Evening Star, 4 Mar. 1903; Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 8–9; Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3058.

  116 Joseph Gurney Cannon Thompson, Party Leaders, 181; Public Opinion, 13 Feb. 1903.

  117 Yet in this Cannon began to speak at 3:30 A.M. He had been confirmed as Henderson’s successor in January. Washington Evening Star, 4 and 5 Mar. 1903; Merrill, Republican Command, 137.

  118 Long years of Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 8–9; Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich, 213–14.

  119 “I am in earnest” Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3058.

  120 When Cannon Busbey, Uncle Joe Cannon, xvi; James E. Watson, As I Knew Them: Memoirs (Indianapolis, 1936), 92, 99–100; Thompson, Party Leaders, 177–79.

  121 “I am getting” Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3058.

  122 Applause roared Washington Evening Star, 3–4 Mar. 1903; Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3008.

  123 THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S Washington Evening Star, 4 Mar. 1903. The author is grateful to Brad Smith for enabling him to sit in t
he President’s Room and revisit this moment.

  124 The naval-construction TR, Letters, vol. 3, 438; Booker T. Washington Papers, vol. 7, 106; Gatewood, Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy, 112, 115. TR kept Crum in office as a recess appointee until the Senate finally confirmed him in Jan. 1905.

  125 As the hands Congressional Record, 57 Cong., sess. 2, 1903, vol. 36, pt. 3, 3070; New York Sun, 5 Mar. 1903.

  126 Far away, at Washington Evening Star, 4 Mar. 1903; Thompson, Party Leaders, 174–76; photographs in LC. For an analysis of the political forces Cannon harnessed in his leap to power, see Stephenson, Nelson W. Aldrich, 213–14.

  CHAPTER 15: THE BLACK CRYSTAL

  1 We’re a gr-reat Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley in Peace and War (Boston, 1905), 5.

  2 “Will you take” Pittsburgh Gazette, 2 Apr. 1903.

  3 The fireman stared Pittsburgh Gazette and New York Sun, 2 Apr. 1903.

  Note: The principal source for this chapter is TR’s own scrapbook, “Comment on West Coast Trip, 1903,” 3 vols. (TRP). Because the scrapbook proceeds chronologically, with an abundance of overlapping information, it will be cited as a single source. The author has also relied in particular on the eyewitness daily reports of Lindsay Denison in the New York Sun, and TR’s own narrative in Letters, vol. 3, 547–63. This classic, often very funny document, written at the request of John Hay, has been published separately in Elting E. Morison, ed., Cowboys and Kings: Three Great Letters by Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), 1–23. See p. 241.

  4 Free at last

  Chronological Note: TR’s official itinerary gives an idea of the rigors of presidential touring in the age before air travel and the loudspeaker. (“Whistle-stops” omitted.) APRIL 1: Leave Washington, D.C. 2: Chicago, Evanston, Ill. 3: Madison, Waukesha, Milwaukee, Wisc. 4: La Crosse, Wisc.; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn. 5: Sioux Falls, S.D. 6: Yankton, Mitchell, Aberdeen, S.D.; Edgeley, Fargo, N.D. 7: Jamestown, Bismarck, Mandan, Medora, N.D. 8: Livingston, Cinnabar, Mont. (Yellowstone National Park, Wyo., through 24 Apr.) 25: Billings, Mont., Alliance, Nebr. 26: Grand Island, Nebr. 27: Hastings, Lincoln, Fremont, Omaha, Nebr. 28: Shenandoah, Clarinda, Van Wert, Osceola, Des Moines, Ottumwa, Iowa. 29: Keokuk, Iowa; Quincy, Ill.; Hannibal, Clarksville, St. Louis, Mo. 30: St. Louis. MAY 1: Kansas City, Mo.; Kansas City, Lawrence, Topeka, Kans. 2: Manhattan, Junction City, Abilene, Salina, Ellsworth, Russell, Hays, Wakeeny, Sharon Springs, Kans. 3: Sharon Springs. 4: Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Trinidad, Colo. 5: Santa Fe, Albuquerque, N.M. Terr. 6: Grand Canyon, Ariz. Terr. 7: Barstow, Redlands, San Bernardino, Riverside, Calif. 8: Claremont, Pasadena, Los Angeles, Calif. 9: Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Calif. 10: Monterey, Calif. 11: Pajaro, Santa Cruz, San Jose, Calif. 12: Palo Alto, Burlingame, San Francisco, Calif. 13–14: San Francisco. 15: Raymond, Calif. (Yosemite National Park through 18 May). 19: Carson City, Reno, Nev.; Sacramento, Calif. 20: Redding, Sisson, Calif.; Ashland, Ore. 21: Salem, Portland, Ore. 22: Chehalis, Centralia, Olympia, Tacoma, Wash. 23: Bremerton, Everett, Seattle, Wash. (by boat). 24: Seattle. 25: Ellensburg, North Yakima, Pasco, Wallula, Walla Walla, Wash. 26: Wallace, Harrison, Idaho; Tekoa, Spokane, Wash. 27: Helena, Butte, Mont. 28: Pocatello, Shoshone, Mountain Home, Nampa, Boise, Idaho. 29: Salt Lake City, Ogden, Utah; Evanston, Wyo. 30: Laramie, Cheyenne, Wyo. (on horseback). 31: Cheyenne. JUNE 1: North Platte, Nebr. 2: Denison, Fort Dodge, Cedar Falls, Waterloo, Dubuque, Iowa. 3: Freeport, Rockford, Rochelle, Aurora, Joliet, Dwight, Pontiac, Lexington, Bloomington, Ill. 4: Lincoln, Springfield, Decatur, Ill.; Indianapolis, Ind. 5: Return Washington, D.C. “Tour of the President to the Pacific Coast,” booklet in GBC.