65 Unwilling as TR, Letters, vol. 5, 242.
66 “If the conference” TR to Wilhelm II, 2 Mar. 1906 (TRP).
67 “paltry and unworthy” Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 383. The Kaiser’s more thoughtful aides agreed with TR and Root. Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke later described the Algeciras Conference as an affair Germans had to “slink out of … with our tail between our legs.” Isolated at the end, Germany decided never again to trust its fortunes to international conferences. Fischer, Germany’s Aims in the First World War, 22.
68 “Communicate to” Qu. in Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 384–85. TR was amused by the elaborate flatteries he and Wilhelm II exchanged during the conference. “How could anyone with even a glimmer of humor swallow such stuff?” he said to his English friend Arthur Lee. “We might as well have been addressing each other from behind ancient Greek masks. But Speck tells me the Kaiser was delighted with it all” (Lee, Good Innings, vol. 1, 335). For TR’s own account of the Moroccan affair, see TR, Letters, vol. 5, 230–51.
69 THE ARTICLE IN Phillips, Treason, chap. 2; LaFollette’s Autobiography, 179; British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 20.
70 One of the weakest The following account is taken from LaFollette’s Autobiography, 174–75.
71 A small group Elihu Root interview, 30 Sept. 1930 (PCJ); Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 160–61; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 233–34.
72 The President was Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 161; Simkins, Pitchfork Ben Tillman, 416–17; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 233–34; TR, Works (National Edition), vol. 13, 153.
73 Somebody suggested It was Henry Beach Needham, one of TR’s tame reporters. Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 250–53. See also TR, Letters, vol. 5, 273–75.
74 Tillman knew Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 254–55; William E. Chandler to William Loeb, 11 Apr. 1906 (TRP).
75 BUNYAN’S NOISOME Baker, American Chronicle, 201; see 202–3 for Baker’s attempt to head off TR’s repetition of the speech.
76 He noted TR, Works, vol. 18, 576–77.
77 “It is important” Ibid., 578.
78 If conservatives The Philadelphia Press termed TR’s inheritance-tax call “the most radical proposition ever made by a President.” Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
79 Those who had Victor Murdock interview, 31 Mar. 1940 (HKB); Stephen E. Lucas, “Theodore Roosevelt’s ‘The Man with the Muckrake’: A Reinterpretation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 59.4 (1973); Sir Mortimer Durand in British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 28. For TR’s own review of the speech, see TR, Letters, vol. 5, 217–19.
80 Men with muckrakes Mowry and Grenier in Phillips, Treason, 40; Semonche, “Roosevelt’s ‘Muck-Rake Speech’ ”; Baker, American Chronicle, 204. For an extensive study of TR’s relationship with Progressive journalists, see Thaddeus Seymour, Jr., “A Progressive Partnership: Theodore Roosevelt and the Reform Press—Riis, Steffens, Baker, and White” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1985).
81 SENATORS TILLMAN AND Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 256–57.
82 A disillusioned Nathaniel Stephenson, Nelson Aldrich, 314.
83 Even Senator Elkins Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 274.
84 “I love a” The Washington Post, 12 May 1906. But see Blum, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Hepburn Act,” 1570–71.
85 ROOSEVELT TRANQUILLY H. G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography (London, 1934), 648.
86 “He is the” H. G. Wells, The Future in America: A Search after Realities (New York, 1906), 246–53. For more on this interview, see Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, 646–49.
87 Having read Wells, Future in America, 246–47, 250.
88 the progressive impulse TR had apparently expressed to Wells his concern about “the growth of monopolistic combinations” and the need for “very vigorous antitrust legislation” to combat it. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, 647.
89 Tillman railed See Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 264–71, for an account of the recriminations (vigorously joined in by TR) that followed news of the secret White House/Chandler/Tillman operation.
90 had started something Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 164, points out that although the amended bill’s language on court review read vaguely enough to satisfy Senate conservatives, it enabled the Supreme Court to come down sharply, four years later, on the side of an empowered ICC.
91 Railroad rate regulation Lambert, Stephen Benton Elkins, 275–79; Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 272–73.
92 supplied extra details See Young, “Pig That Fell.” TR’s original “first-class man” investigating the meat industry had materialized in the form of two commissioners, Charles P. Neill and James B. Reynolds. See Conditions in the Chicago Stockyards: Message of the President of the United States, 59 Cong., sess. 1, 1906, H. doc. 873.
93 Apprehensive that British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 43. See James Harvey Young, Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 (Princeton, N.J., 1989).
94 James W. Wadsworth TR, Letters, vol. 5, 296; Young, “Pig That Fell.”
95 Again, Roosevelt TR, Letters, vol. 5, 296.
96 A pleasedly firm Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, 459; Review of Reviews, Aug. 1906. The territories of Arizona and New Mexico were also offered statehood, but declined.
97 That afternoon Washington Evening Star, 30 June 1906.
98 Still, it had TR, Letters, vol. 5, 329.
99 “Society cannot” Qu. in Ray Stannard Baker, “The Railroad Rate: A Study in Commercial Autocracy,” McClure’s, Nov. 1905.
CHAPTER 27: BLOOD THROUGH MARBLE
1 I’m not so Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy, 217.
2 EDITH KERMIT ROOSEVELT New York Tribune, 2 July 1906.
3 The President emerged Ibid. Except where otherwise indicated, the following portrait of EKR in midlife is adapted from Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt.
4 To children other Alsop, unpublished autobiography, 4–5 (TRC).
5 (Archie and Quentin) Looker, White House Gang, 43–44.
6 New England reserve EKR was descended from Puritans and French Huguenots. See EKR, American Backlogs: The Story of Gertrude Tyler and Her Family, 1660–1860 (New York, 1928).
7 “If they had” Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 559.
8 Edith was well-read Butt, Letters, 127. Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 583; Baker, notebook no. 28, Jan. 1905 (RSB); Jules Jusserand to Ministère des Affaires Étrangers 9 Mar. 1909 (JJ).
9 Whereas his For EKR’s role as patroness of White House “musicales,” see Elise K. Kirk, Music at the White House: A History of the American Spirit (Urbana, 1986), 169–88.
10 largest and worst Nicholas Roosevelt, Front Row Seat, 25.
11 His attitude toward Alsop, unpublished autobiography, 4 (TRC); Alice Roosevelt Longworth interview, Nov. 1954 (TRB); William Allen White, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, ca. 1936 (HKB); Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 168–69.
12 Her attitude toward Landor, “Death,” qu. in Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 500: I warmed both hands at the fire of life, / It sinks, and I am ready to depart. Rixey, Bamie, 231.
13 HE DID NOT LOOK EKR to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, 4 June 1906 (TRC).
14 “damned little Jew” Maurice Low, Washington correspondent of the London Morning Post, had reported that TR acknowledged the congratulations only of Wilhelm II after the Portsmouth peace treaty. “He spoke savagely—as he ought not have spoken to me about an Englishman” (Sir Mortimer Durand diary, 8 May 1906 [HMD]). On another occasion, TR called Low a “circumcised skunk.” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 918.
15 William E. Chandler Leon B. Richardson, William E. Chandler (New York, 1940), 666–67; Watson, As I Knew Them, 83; J. Van Vechten Olcott, interviewed by J. F. French, 1922 (TRB). Another Roosevelt explosion is described in Mrs. Dewey’s diary, 11 May 1906 (GD).
16 And Norman Hapgood TR to Hapgood, 29 June 1906 (TRP). “The usages which obtain among gentlemen leave no option in such a case; and your [refusal to name
sources] both fixes your status and leads inevitably to the conclusion that you made the statement knowing it to be false.”
17 But Roosevelt had TR, Letters to Kermit, 130; TR to Ethel Roosevelt, 17 June 1906 (TRP); Gifford Pinchot to Irving Fisher, 22 Aug. 1905 (GP). TR had been aware for at least four years that he had an eating problem. “I am rather an early Goth and eat too much and drink too much, and then trust in hard work to do away with the effects,” he wrote Pierre de Coubertin, a French friend, on 21 Nov. 1902 (TRP). By “drink” he meant such liquids as milk and coffee. Apart from his bibulous evening on the night of the Cannon birthday party (which he cited years later as an aberration), TR’s alcohol intake verged on that of teetotalism. See Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 92–97.
18 “It is clear” Fisher to Pinchot, 2 Sept. 1905 (GP).
19 Edith sweetly New York Tribune, 5 July 1906; Oyster Bay Pilot, 27 July 1906; The Washington Post, 11 July 1907. Alice teased her father that he seemed to hay “with a view to his political future.” TR to Alice Longworth, 29 June 1908 (TRP).
20 “J’ESSAIE DE” Samuel H. Church to William Loeb, 9 Aug. 1906 (TRP).
Biographical Note: An earlier letter (2 Aug.) from Church to Loeb states that Rodin, who was intending to visit the United States in 1907, had told Church of his “strong desire” to execute a bust or statue of TR. He felt the resulting work would convey the President’s “tremendous energy and vitality,” and very likely be his masterpiece. Church informed TR, through Loeb, that the Carnegie Institute would pay for the statue and subsequently exhibit it in Pittsburgh. TR agreed to pose for Rodin. For undisclosed reasons, the proposal came to nothing.
21 (“Theodore,” Edith) Hagedorn, Roosevelt Family, 38.
22 “It is now” The Washington Post, 18 Aug. 1906.
23 “At a few minutes” Summary Discharge or Mustering Out of Regiments or Companies: Message of the President of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1908), 20–21 (hereafter Summary Discharge).
24 Roosevelt ordered Ibid., 20, 32. Ann J. Lane, The Brownsville Affair: National Crisis and Black Reaction (Port Washington, N.Y., 1971), 5–17; John D. Weaver, The Brownsville Raid (College Station, 1992), 29–30. The garrison’s previous occupants had been white. Protests against its occupation by “nigger” troops were forwarded to Secretary Taft as early as the beginning of June.
25 As a result Weaver, Brownsville Raid, 30; Summary Discharge, 31–32.
26 Only one Summary Discharge, 24.
27 Some damaging Ibid., 31; Lane, Brownsville Affair, 18, 20.
28 Roosevelt waited Summary Discharge, 34. TR had also received urgent appeals from both Texas Senators to move the troops, in view of inflamed local feelings. Ibid., 29.
29 He ordered Ibid., 34.
30 Roosevelt then sent TR, Letters, vol. 5, 384–85; Lane, Brownsville Affair, 19–20.
31 It came on The complete text of Blocksom’s report appears in Summary Discharge, 60–65.
32 “be discharged” Ibid., 64.
33 Blocksom added Ibid., 65.
34 Over the last See Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 237–38.
Biographical Note: For a definitive statement of TR’s attitude toward blacks in April 1906, see TR, Letters, vol. 5, 226–28. It was made in response to the patrician racism propounded by his friend Owen Wister in Lady Baltimore (New York, 1906). TR accepted “entirely” Wister’s theory that blacks were “altogether inferior to the whites,” and wrote that he saw no reason why “ninety-five percent of the Negroes” in the South should be allowed to vote. He reserved his scorn for the hypocrisy of Southern whites who talked discrimination yet retained black mistresses, and, worse still, stole the votes of disfranchised blacks in order to “elect” racist members of Congress. He disagreed with Wister that Southern blacks had “become worse” since the Civil War, citing Booker T. Washington as an example of the race’s power to improve itself. “I may add that I do not know a white man of the South who is as good a man as Booker Washington.” See TR, Letters, vol. 5, 221–30.
35 His one outburst See p. 425.
36 More ominously Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 238.
37 THE PRESIDENT’S SANGUIS HARPER’S WEEKLY, 8 Sept. 1906; Cheney, Personal Memoirs, 83.
38 It was the greatest Harper’s Weekly, 8 Sept. 1906; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 123. This battleship became the Delaware, displacing twenty thousand tons, and mounting ten twelve-inch guns. Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet, 195–97, 201.
39 “the dirt fly” TR’s first use of this phrase appears to have been at the Gridiron Club on 27 Jan. 1906. “As long as I am President the dirt will fly in the Canal Zone.”
40 Having fought Ralph E. Minger, “William H. Taft and the United States Intervention in Cuba in 1906,” Hispanic America Historical Review 41 (1961).
41 Roosevelt authorized Whitney T. Perkins, Constraint of Empire: The United States and Caribbean Interventions (Westport, Conn., 1981), 14. See also Scott, Robert Bacon, 113–19.
42 “Just at the” TR to Henry White, 13 Sept. 1906 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 5, 401.
43 It was particularly John Barrett, “Elihu Root’s Trip in South America,” ms. in JB; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 1, 481. This grand tour was the first ever made by an American Secretary of State in office. For a detailed account, see Janice Hepworth, “A Policy of Practical Altruism,” Journal of Inter-American Studies 3.3 (1961).
44 a paradox of Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 13. President Estrada Palma often threatened to resign, but his clear purpose in doing so was to force the United States to intervene and prop up his regime. See TR, Letters, vol. 5, 428.
45 “You had no” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 409. See also Christopher A. Abel, “Controlling the Big Stick: Theodore Roosevelt and the Cuban Crisis of 1906,” Naval War College Review 40.3 (1987).
46 His latest Secretary Bonaparte had joined the Cabinet on 1 July 1905. For an excellent short portrait, see Eric F. Goldman, “Charles J. Bonaparte, Patrician Reformer: His Earlier Career,” in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, series 61, no. 2. See also Walker Rumble, “Rectitude and Reform: Charles Joseph Bonaparte and the Politics of Gentility” (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1971).
47 It was agreed Perkins, Constraint of Empire, 14–15.
48 slaughtered six hundred Hagedorn, Leonard Wood, vol. 2, 65.
49 For much of Heffron, “Mr. Justice Moody.” Moody expressed a desire to leave the Administration on 27 August, in what may have been a ploy to get TR to make up his mind. See TR, Letters, vol. 5, 390, 396.
50 He was much Lee, Good Innings, vol. 1, 324–26.
51 “I would walk” Oscar K. Davis, Released for Publication: Some Inside Political History of Theodore Roosevelt and His Times, 1898–1918 (Boston, 1925), 54. See also Dunn, From Harrison to Harding, vol. 2, 38.
52 Taft was warm According to George Harris, a photographer assigned to the Roosevelt White House, TR decided against Root when he noticed the Secretary at a social reception, pacing alone with his hands behind his back. Elsewhere in the room, Taft jovially entertained a circle of guests. Harris in The Washington Post, n.d. 1952 (HKB).
53 Roosevelt was not “You, Mr. Speaker, will be the next President of the United States,” TR told Joseph Cannon at a Sagamore Hill ceremony on 17 August. “Uncle Joe” had begun to fancy himself as the party’s nominee in 1906, after hearing a few compliments too many during his recent seventieth-birthday celebrations. The Washington Post, 18 Aug. 1906; Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 10.
54 The Washington Post 28 June 1906, qu. by Durand in British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 49.
55 JOSEPH B. FORAKER Foraker to TR, 26 Sept. 1906 (TRP).
56 Roosevelt could not Taft himself, en route to Cuba, had queried TR’s willingness to act unilaterally, only to be told that the President “would not dream of asking the position of Congress” in such an emergency. Nothing but “a long wrangle” would result, while the
emergency worsened. A strong President must “accept responsibility to establish precedents which successors may follow even if they are unwilling to take the initiative themselves.” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 414–15.
57 “I am sure” Ibid., 430–31.
58 The Senator had Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 264–65; Weaver, Brownsville Raid, 24; John D. Weaver, The Senator and the Sharecropper’s Son: Exoneration of the Brownsville Soldiers (College Station, 1997), 91. TR told Charles Dawes in Jan. 1904 that he regarded Foraker as “insincere.” Dawes, Journal of the McKinley Years, 363.
59 “He is a” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 428–29.
60 “I can only” Ibid., 409. The allusion is to the court scene in The Pickwick Papers, wherein Sam Weller informs the judge that he spells his surname with a v. A confirmatory shout comes from the gallery: “Quite right too, Samivel.… Put it down a ‘we,’ my Lord, put it down a ‘we.’ ”
61 “Simplified Spelling” Except where otherwise indicated, this section is based on Mark Sullivan’s unsurpassed short history of spelling reform in Our Times, vol. 3, 162ff. See also Clyde H. Dornbusch, “American Spelling Simplified by Presidential Edict,” American Speech 36 (1961), and John H. Vivian, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Spelling Reform Initiative: The Newspaper Response,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, summer 1978.
62 diarrhea Sullivan himself spells this word with the Greek vowel œ. Our Times, vol. 3, 164.
63 u in honor TR was himself an excellent speller, as his autograph manuscripts attest. He nevertheless had a few quaint foibles, such as writing Wednsday for Wednesday, atall for at all, and inserting, for reasons best known to himself, an extra apostrophe in did’n’t.
64 It seemed to TR, Letters, vol. 5, 390–91.
65 addresst blusht Office of the Public Printer, Simplified Spelling: For the Use of Government Documents (Washington, D.C., 1906), 15–23.
66 Soon, the nation’s Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 1906; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 389.
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