19 Conservatives blamed TR, Letters, vol. 5, 746.
20 Roosevelt, who Ibid., 745–46.
21 “The present trouble” Ibid., 747.
22 “Please do not” Ibid., 763. Bonaparte consulted, on TR’s orders, with Herbert Knox Smith, who informed him that the Sherman Act was “an economic absurdity … impossible of general enforcement.” On 24 September, TR instructed Bonaparte to abandon his case against International Harvester. Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 218.
23 With that, he TR to George Otto Trevelyan, 23 Aug. 1907 (TRP). On Wall Street, feelings of foreboding persisted, mixed with recriminations against Roosevelt for his alleged fiscal irresponsibility.
24 ONE THING THE ROMANS Ferrero was much on TR’s mind at this time. See TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 6, 1374.
25 WJ McGee, the visionary Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 379, nicely describes McGee’s concept as “a scheme to restore the commons through water, rather than land.”
26 “a comprehensive plan” M. Nelson McGeary, Gifford Pinchot: Forester-Politician (Princeton, N.J., 1960), 94. See also Pinkett, Gifford Pinchot, 108ff., and Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 379–82.
27 By the time WJ McGee, ed., Proceedings of a Conference of Governors in the White House, May 13–15, 1908 (Washington, D.C., 1909), vi–vii (hereafter Governors’ Conference Proceedings). For TR’s own account of his Mississippi cruise, see TR, Letters to Kermit, 216ff.
28 A sense that TR to Archibald Roosevelt, 7 Oct. 1907 (fragment, TRB); Herbert Knox Smith, “Roosevelt’s Leadership,” address to Roosevelt Memorial Association, [n.d.] 1924, copy in TRB.
29 Roosevelt made his TR, Presidential Addresses, vol. 6, 1432–33.
30 “There is an” Ibid., 1431.
31 These implosions The Washington Post, 16 Oct. 1907.
32 “a simultaneous deficiency” British Documents on Foreign Affairs, 347.
33 “I can’t go on” Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 438.
34 “Do I look?” Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 165. In 1918, shortly before his death, TR admitted that his only real regret was his misjudgment of the panic of 1907. He had acted “without a clear knowledge of business affairs.” Jack Cooper interview, Oct. 1919 (TRB).
35 By now, most Strouse, Morgan, 578.
36 The President was Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 439. See also TR, Letters, vol. 5, 747–49.
37 ALTHOUGH A TOTAL Strouse, Morgan, 580–84.
38 Judge Gary said Watson, As I Knew Them, 69; Strouse, Morgan, 587–88; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 830–31. A congressional investigation in 1911 revealed that Gary and Frick may have taken advantage of TR’s fiscal naïveté when they protested their reluctance to acquire Moore & Schley (whose name they declined to reveal to him over breakfast). What they demonstrably got, along with an assurance of antitrust indemnity, was a bargain investment and a considerable enlargement of U.S. Steel’s presence in the South. Strouse, Morgan, 590.
39 Gary called Strouse, Morgan, 588.
40 ON 11 NOVEMBER TR, Letters, vol. 5, 838–39; Collier’s, 30 May 1908; press release file, 1908 (TRP).
41 WALL STREET’S currency Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 248–49. 501 “I am absolutely” TR, Letters to Kermit, 224.
42 “There may be” TR, Works, vol. 17, 482.
43 Mr. E. H. Harriman List copy, 25 Dec. 1907, in GBC.
44 “If there is one thing” Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower (New York, 1966), 124.
45 “I am Commander-in-Chief” Wimmel, Great White Fleet, 223.
46 “I have not” The New York Times, 12 Dec. 1907.
47 MONDAY, 16 DECEMBER The following account is based on newspaper accounts in Presidential scrapbook (TRP), and on the detailed report of the British Embassy naval attaché in British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 13, 6–7.
48 “By George!” Qu. in Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt, xv.
49 When the presidential Washington Evening Star, 16 Dec. 1907.
50 Less audibly Robley D. Evans, Admiral’s Log (New York, 1910), 413–14. TR later claimed to have warned Evans that the Japanese threat was serious. “Admiral, I am very fond of you, but if you or your ships are surprised in port or at sea, don’t come back to me.” Leary, Talks with TR, 11–13.
CHAPTER 30: MORAL OVERSTRAIN
1 He’s a gr’-reat “Mr. Dooley” in Chicago Record-Herald, 20 Oct. 1907.
2 “THE REACTION AGAINST” Adams, Letters, vol. 6, 94.
3 “I find I” Leary, Talks with TR, 206.
4 he was insane Current Literature, Mar. 1907.
5 At the annual British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 12, 246.
6 To Ambassador James Bryce James Bryce, “General Report on the United States for the Year 1907,” in ibid., 349. À outrance = to the knife.
7 “The oppression” Ibid.
8 Bryce left vague Ibid., 350.
9 He was definite Ibid.
10 The President’s initial TR, Letters, vol. 6, 103–4.
11 Moral Overstrain Written by George W. Alger (Boston, 1906).
12 Roosevelt had tried At the same time, it was noted that he had not yet given the Secretary of War a formal endorsement, so Taft remained chosen, but not blessed.
13 “Charles the Baptist” Sam McCune Lindsay, “Recollections” (manuscript memoir, 1955, in TRB). Finley Peter Dunne flatly states, “Nobody liked Hughes—nobody at all” in “Remembrances” (FPD).
14 a Special Message Davis, Released for Publication, 69–71, misdates Hughes’s speech as 30 Jan. 1908, but is otherwise a prime source for this typical Roosevelt publicity ploy.
15 much harsher language Frank B. Kellogg, one of TR’s more influential field advisers, wrote on 25 Jan. 1908 to warn him that the Special Message would be “a mistake,” in that his views were already well known and did not have to be so brutally repeated. Further, he believed that the Message would “tend to alienate … conservative businessmen and good Republicans” from TR’s candidate for the 1908 GOP presidential nomination, William H. Taft. Frank B. Kellogg Papers (LC).
16 As a result The New York Times, 1 Feb. 1908.
17 He demanded The complete text of TR’s Special Message is reprinted in TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1572–91.
Historical Note: George E. Mowry remarks that historians of the Progressive Era have frequently ascribed TR’s radicalization in 1910 and 1912 to the publication of Herbert Croly’s Promise of American Life in late 1909. “A glance at his messages and speeches of 1907 and 1908 would seem to argue that Roosevelt may have had as much influence on Croly as Croly had on him” (Era of Theodore Roosevelt, 222). Elting E. Morison further observes that these same two messages “proposed in some detail the basic national reforms achieved under Taft and Wilson.” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 922.
18 Roosevelt proudly Ibid., 1574–77.
19 Referring to himself Ibid., 1577–86.
20 “These new conditions” Ibid., 1588.
21 SUBSCRIBERS TO All the public comments on TR’s Special Message in the following paragraphs are taken from Current Literature, Mar. 1907.
22 “the President is” Mark De Wolfe Howe, James Ford Rhodes: An American Historian (New York, 1929), 195. See also Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 19 Sept. 1907, and TR to Lodge, 21 Sept. 1907 (TRP).
23 “Of all your” Nicholas Murray Butler to TR, 4 Feb. 1908 (TRP).
24 “You regret” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 925.
25 ON 7 FEBRUARY William James in The American Magazine, Nov. 1907; Samuel Carter III, The Incredible Great White Fleet (New York, 1971), 54–55.
26 For twenty-two Wimmel, Theodore Roosevelt and the Great White Fleet, 228; Carter, Incredible Great White Fleet, 51–52.
27 Throughout 1907 Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 27–29; “Memorandum Respecting Japanese Immigration into Canada and the United States,” British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 13, 160.
28 By 29 February Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 262; Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 30. In
May 1908, the Japanese monthly inflow was down to 900 from nearly 2,000 in May 1907. Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt, 279.
29 He also won Weaver, Senator, 131. Foraker observed that the five Democrats were prepared to find the soldiers guilty without even looking at the testimony.
30 The dissenting members Ibid.
31 So did the Ibid., 130.
32 Roosevelt’s other Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 263–66.
33 Sounding rather TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1017–18.
34 “But, Mr. President” Jusserand, What Me Befell, 332. The following section is adapted from 332–36.
35 “Washington and Rochambeau” The midriver island is now Theodore Roosevelt Island, a national memorial to TR. Deep in its forested interior stands a statue modeled on the illustration on p. 141. Nan Netherton, “Delicate Beauty and Burly Majesty: The Story of Theodore Roosevelt Island,” t.s. (1984), 11 (TRB).
36 “We might meet” For TR’s version of this story, see Butt, Letters, 228–29.
37 On 12 May Wister, Roosevelt, 147; table plan in “Executive Mansion Social Functions,” RG 42, vol. 11 (NA). This beautifully compiled scrapbook series is a monument to the social and entertainment activities of the Roosevelt White House, 1901–1909 (hereafter “Social Functions”).
38 The President sat Some physical descriptions taken from the famous group photograph of the Governors’ Conference, 13 May 1908.
39 (in a severe sulk) Uncle Joe’s pique is mentioned in Butt, Letters, 45.
40 Bryan’s presence “Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources at the White House, May 13–15, 1908,” memorandum account in “Social Functions.”
41 When wood and water Michael Lacey notes that the Governors’ Conference was not only the first but the last occasion in American history when representatives of all branches of government “gathered together to discuss a set of common issues” (“Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 111). Cleveland died on 24 June.
42 Roosevelt, wanting “Social Functions.”
43 The dinner seating Ibid.; Edith Kermit Roosevelt Catering Agreement, 12 May 1908, in “Letters Received” file, in ibid.
44 “I confess to you” Butt, Letters, 7.
45 “A wonderful man” Ibid., 91.
46 AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK Governors’ Conference Proceedings, xix–xxxi.
47 The “Syllabus” Ibid., xiii–xvi.
48 “The Lord thy God” Ibid., 1 (Deuteronomy 8:7–9).
49 Roosevelt delivered The following quotations from TR’s address are taken from ibid., 3–13.
50 Conservation as a Copy in AC. TR’s speech is reprinted in TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 7, 1738–53.
51 “the State as quasi sovereign” See Hudson County Water Co. v. McCarter, 209 U.S. 349 (1908).
52 HE STAYED WITH Governors’ Conference Proceedings, 14.
53 The conference broke The Washington Post, 16 May 1908; Governors’ Conference Proceedings, 192–94.
54 THUS EMPOWERED Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 391–92; TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1065ff.
55 Americans began to be The following survey of TR’s conservation accomplishments through May 1908 is based on John Allen Gable, comp., “President Theodore Roosevelt’s Record on Conservation,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal 10.3 (fall 1983). See also Cutright, Theodore Roosevelt, passim.
56 now that “Conservation” Michael J. Lacey flatly states, “The language and aims of Conservation were invented in the spring of 1908.” Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 440.
57 (“Is there any?”) Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 469.
58 And Roosevelt had By the time TR left office in 1909, his conservation record had indeed expanded to include 18 national monuments, 51 federal bird reservations and 4 national game preserves, and 150 national forests (increasing the total acreage he inherited by more than 400 percent). The last-mentioned area was equal to that of all the Atlantic states from Maine to Virginia combined, with the addition of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Gable, “President Theodore Roosevelt’s Record.”
59 “Any man who” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1041.
60 Two West Virginia Ibid., 1039, 1045; Henry Adams to Mrs. Frederick Tams, 3 Apr. 1908 (JH).
61 Adams had to Henry Adams to Mrs. Frederick Tams, 3 Apr. 1908 (JH). Lodge’s fabled froideur, and total lack of interest in what anybody thought of him, had finally alienated Adams. “If I told Cabot that he is personally and physically loathsome to me … he would not understand what I meant.” Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 693.
CHAPTER 31: THE RESIDUARY LEGATEE
1 I don’t know “Mr. Dooley” in Chicago Record-Herald, 20 Oct. 1907.
2 THE FIRST DAY TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1044–45.
3 “Q,” as schoolmates For a classic memoir of Quentin Roosevelt, and an endearing boy’s-eye view of his father, see Earle Looker, The White House Gang (New York, 1929).
4 (“The Republican”) Ibid., 44–45.
5 The property office The following account of the Battle of the Guidon is taken from ibid., 92–94. While writing his memoir, Looker interviewed all surviving members of the gang, save Quentin.
6 (obsessive clock-watcher) Q’s dollar pocket-watch is a leitmotiv in Looker’s descriptions of gang activities. For TR’s own time consciousness, see the pseudonymous article by “K” (probably Finley Peter Dunne), “The Powers of a Strenuous President,” The American Magazine, Apr. 1908: “No railroad engineer runs more sharply on schedule than he. His watch comes out of his pocket, he cuts off an interview, or signs a paper, and turns instantly, according to his timetable, to the next engagement. If there is an interval anywhere left over he chinks in the time by reading a paragraph of history.”
7 “Too late! Too late” Dialogue transcribed verbatim from Looker, White House Gang, 94–96.
8 Roosevelt’s surprise attack “If Hughes is going to play the game,” TR had said, grinning after hogging the headlines with his Special Message, “he must learn the tricks.” William Manners, TR and Will: A Friendship That Split the Republican Party (New York, 1969), 49.
9 With that, he For another presidential reprimand, involving the gang’s embellishment of White House portraits with spitballs, see ibid., 16, and TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1004.
10 as had Mark Beer, Hanna, 586.
11 The famous MacMillan Looker, White House Gang, 120–21. “Time and again, afterwards, I have thought of these enchanting models—realizing that it was a rare privilege given me, to see the genesis of Quentin’s interest in the air.”
12 “I have two” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1044.
13 For some time Ibid., vol. 5, 679; TR, Letters to Kermit, 238, 240; Carl Akeley, introduction to TR, Works, vol. 5, x–xi. The date of Akeley’s dinner (or lunch) with TR is uncertain, but it appears to have occurred between 25 Oct. and 7 Nov. 1907, after the President’s return from Louisiana. See also Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 224, and Kermit Roosevelt, Happy Hunting-Grounds, 11–14. From April 1908 on, the “note of Africa” is increasingly sounded in TR’s correspondence.
14 “I think I” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1060. Another person who got an advance indication of TR’s designs on African wildlife was John Burroughs, who joined him around this time for a weekend at Pine Knot. One night after dinner, while EKR knitted, TR gave the naturalist J. H. Patterson’s The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures (London, 1907) to read by lamplight, and himself read Cromer’s Modern Egypt (London, 1908) at a table in the big bare room. “Suddenly Roosevelt’s hand came down on the table with such a bang that it made us both jump, and Mrs. Roosevelt exclaimed in a slightly nettled tone, ‘Why, my dear, what is the matter?’ He had killed a mosquito with a blow that would have demolished an African lion.” Hearing this story years later, the essayist Gamaliel Bradford commented: “He killed mosquitoes as if they were lions, and lions as if they were mosquitoes.” John Burroughs, Under the Maples (New York, 1921), 106; Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds, 6. Note: Burroughs’s cha
pter on Pine Knot contains a spurious refutation of TR’s sighting of passenger pigeons there in 1907. See Lindsey, “Was Theodore Roosevelt?”
15 ROOSEVELT STAMPEDE Washington Evening Star, 3 June 1908.
16 (Charles P. Taft) was Taft’s mentor-like half-brother.
17 “If your friend” Cullom, Fifty Years, 303.
18 At latest count Pringle, William Howard Taft, vol. 1, 348; Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 284.
19 The giant airship A photograph of the zeppelin appears on p. 537 of Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 3, directly opposite a paragraph on p. 536 describing the nomination of Taft.
20 On Tuesday Pringle, William Howard Taft, vol. 1, 350–51; Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Presidential Nominations and Elections (New York, 1916), 72.
21 The proceedings in The New York Times, 18 June 1908; Pringle, William Howard Taft, vol. 1, 352; Alsop, “Autobiography,” 7.
22 “That man is” Official Report of the Proceedings of the Fourteenth Republican National Convention (Columbus, Ohio, 1908), 88.
23 Joseph Bucklin Bishop For Bishop’s anti-Semitism, see, e.g., his letter to TR of 21 Oct. 1903: “I have just had the exquisite pleasure of trampling upon the Jew [newspaper editor Moses Strauss] as he crawled at my feet” (TRP). In a follow-up letter, dated 24 Oct., he warned TR against a “Jew syndicate” attempting to control the New York press. Waspish, emotional, unctuous, and conniving, Bishop was also an antifeminist. “I never met a man who had so low an opinion of women as human beings” (Villard, Fighting Years, 129). These traits did not dissuade TR from choosing Bishop, years later, as his authorized biographer.
24 He saw no reason Bishop, Presidential Nominations, 72–73.
25 At 1:30 Ibid., 73; TR, Letters to Kermit, 250.
26 Bishop remained Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is taken from Bishop, Presidential Nominations, 74–76.
27 She was denied Pringle, William Howard Taft, vol. 1, 353.
28 But Lodge Ibid.; Bishop, Presidential Nominations, 76.
29 a 2:00 A.M. telegram Charles Evans Hughes, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, n.d. [ca. 1935] (HKB). The alleged bribe, apparently vouchsafed by one of Taft’s rich friends, was one hundred thousand dollars, and the intermediary was identified as one Elbert Baldwin.
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