Baker’s research for these two articles on J. P. Morgan provided clear perspective on the machinations behind the formation of Northern Securities. The merger, Baker explained, stemmed from a costly quarrel the previous spring: two rival railroads that controlled the overwhelming majority of railroad lines in their respective regions had fought for control of a third railroad. In the aftermath, under the leadership of J. P. Morgan, “the contestants gathered themselves together, counted their losses, smoothed over their difficulties,” and forged a gargantuan new holding company. On November 13, 1901, Northern Securities became “the second largest corporation in the world,” behind only U.S. Steel. With tens of thousands of miles of track spanning the continent and hundreds of ships, Baker declared it “absolute dictator in its own territory, with monarchical powers in all matters relating to transportation.”
“None outside the golden coterie know all the details,” Baker observed, presciently adding, “the future will find one of its great problems in deciding how big a business enterprise must become before the public is entitled to know the full details of its management.” It appeared certain that “the same dozen or more men” would own “nearly all the great railroads of America and the greatest industries besides.” Indeed, with this new combination in place, a person might journey “from England to China on regular lines of steamships and railroads without once passing from the protecting hollow of Mr. Morgan’s hand.” Would the day come, Baker mused, “when an imperial M will repose within the wreath of power?” The implication that these few men were “more powerful than the people, more powerful than Congress, more powerful than the government,” observed Mark Sullivan, “presented to Roosevelt a challenge such as his nature would never ignore.”
Roosevelt asked his attorney general, Philander C. Knox, if an anti-trust suit against Northern Securities could be sustained. A brilliant lawyer who had enjoyed a successful career in Pittsburgh, Knox calculated the odds for several weeks before reporting to Roosevelt that he believed an anti-trust suit based on the Sherman Anti-Trust Law could be won. Roosevelt kept his decision to proceed from everyone else in his cabinet, including Elihu Root, his closest adviser. Root did not share “the view that Taft and I take about corporations,” he later explained to a journalist friend. The unexpected announcement that the government was in the process of preparing a bill “to test the validity of the merger” appeared “like a thunderbolt from a clear sky.” Many commentators feared the outbreak of “a wholesale war on industrial trusts.”
“Not since the assassination of President McKinley has the securities market been compelled to face news for which it was wholly unprepared,” declared the New York Herald, under headlines announcing a precipitous fall in stock prices. Financiers could not fathom how Roosevelt lacked the courtesy to provide advance notice. He was, after all, one of them: a Harvard man, a member of their clubs. “If we have done anything wrong,” J. P. Morgan complained in a hastily arranged meeting with the president three days later, “send your man to my man and they can fix it up.” An agreeable resolution was impossible, Roosevelt countered. “We don’t want to fix it up,” Knox confirmed, “we want to stop it.” Turning to Roosevelt, Morgan inquired if U.S. Steel was in jeopardy. “Certainly not,” Roosevelt replied, “unless we find out that in any case they have done something that we regard as wrong.” Roosevelt remarked to Knox after Morgan’s departure: “That is a most illuminating illustration of the Wall Street point of view. Mr. Morgan could not help regarding me as a big rival operator.”
Morgan’s partners were appalled at the lack of recognition for their substantial contribution to American progress. “It really seems hard,” James Hill complained, “that we should be compelled to fight for our lives against the political adventurers who have never done anything but pose and draw a salary.” Members of New York’s legal community were scathing in their opinion of Knox, calling him “an unknown country lawyer from Pennsylvania.” When these words reached the president, his response was curt: “They will know this country lawyer before this suit is ended.”
For a quarter of a century, Roosevelt later observed, “the power of the mighty industrial overlords of the country had increased with giant strides, while the methods of controlling them, or checking abuses by them on the part of the people, through the Government, remained archaic and therefore practically impotent.” The anti-trust suit “served notice on everybody that it was going to be the Government, and not the Harrimans, who governed these United States.” At the same time, Roosevelt’s actions clearly demonstrated to powerful Republican leaders “that he was President in fact as well as in name.”
Roosevelt next turned his attention to the beef trust. Allegations had surfaced in the press that the big beef packers, led by Armour & Co. and Swift & Co., had agreed to parcel out territories and fix prices, resulting in a sharp cost increase for families purchasing meat. The advent of refrigerated freight cars had diminished the advantage once held by local butchers, facilitating consolidation among the big national firms. Labeling the beef trust “an atrocious conspiracy of greed against need,” one New York newspaper challenged anyone to deny “that such absolute control by a few men over the food supply of a nation is in the highest degree hostile to the public welfare.” After the Justice Department investigated the matter, Roosevelt directed Knox to bring suit against the beef trust. “This is the right course,” the World editorialized, “and the president has proved himself, as he did in directing the similar suit against Northern Securities Co., to be wiser and more resolute than leaders of his party in Congress, who sit supinely in the path of a rising storm of popular indignation and refuse to do anything to ‘disturb the business’ of protecting monopolies by law!”
For all the accolades that attended his confrontations with these massive combinations, Roosevelt considered the Sherman Act a blunt instrument that might prove “more dangerous to the patient than the disease.” In the hands of zealots, unable or unwilling to distinguish good trusts that yielded efficient operations, lower prices, and better service, from bad trusts that used predatory tactics to gain monopoly, artificially depress production, and extort unreasonable prices, the Sherman Act might destroy the very prosperity it was intended to foster. Roosevelt far preferred the approach recommended in his annual address—new legislation enabling the national government to examine corporate records and determine what remedies, if any, were needed. Nevertheless, “with the path to effective regulation blocked by a stubborn, conservative Congress,” the historian George Mowry observes, “the only way for Roosevelt to bring the arrogant capitalists to heel was through the judicious use of the anti-trust laws.”
FOR NELLIE AND WILL TAFT, the winter of Roosevelt’s skirmishes with the trusts marked “a period of bereavement and protracted illnesses.” During the long sea voyage from Manila to San Francisco, doctors discovered that Taft’s incision was not healing properly. It was “opened and drained,” but months of bed rest the previous fall had weakened his knees and ankles, making it painful for him to stand for any protracted time. To compound matters, Nellie was suffering from what was later diagnosed as malaria. In San Francisco, they were informed that their cross-country trip on the Union Pacific would be interrupted by a severe snowstorm in the Midwest. Having received word that her mother was seriously ill, Nellie insisted on moving forward nonetheless. In Utah, a catastrophic blizzard froze water pipes and broke the train’s heating system. Wrapped in blankets, they pressed eastward. Even after enduring these hardships, they were too late: in Omaha, Nellie received a telegram bearing the news that her mother had died the previous day.
Taft remained with Nellie and the children in Cincinnati until he had to leave for Washington to testify before the Senate Committee on the Philippines. From the moment he arrived in the capital, Taft was surrounded by affectionate support. War Secretary Elihu Root and his wife insisted that he board with them during his stay, which eventually stretched to thirty days. No sooner had Taft reached
their home on Rhode Island Avenue than the president called with plans to join them that evening. Taft was pleased to find Roosevelt “just the same as ever,” writing to Nellie that it was hard “to realize that he is the President. He greatly enjoys being President and shows not the slightest sign of worry or hard work in his looks or manner.” Scarcely a night passed for Taft without an invitation to dine with the Roosevelts, the Lodges, the Hays, or the Hannas.
Despite his warm reception in Washington, Taft worried about the hearings. Called by Massachusetts senator George Hoar, an eloquent anti-imperialist who insisted on exposing the truth of events in the Philippines, the proceedings would likely be exhausting and unproductive. “If General Chafee is right,” Hoar proclaimed, referring to the Civil War veteran who served as the military governor of the Philippines, “there is not a man in those islands who is not conspiring against the government and eager for liberty.” The day before the hearings convened, Taft wrote to his brother Horace, playfully requesting “compassion and merciful judgment, when you shall read of the condemnation to which I shall probably be subjected by anti-imperialists and our democratic brethren. Please do not deny the fact that you are still my brother, though a mortified one.”
Yet throughout a long week of testimony Taft acquitted himself exceedingly well, drawing a sharp line between the military’s negative estimates of the Filipino people and his own more hopeful perspective. “I have much more confidence in the Filipino and his loyalty than have a good many of the military officers,” he assured them. Asked by Democratic senator Joseph Rawlins if the country was not “flying in the face” of Asiatic culture and tradition by imposing a republican form of government, he expressed his conviction that such difficulties could be successfully negotiated. In the course of his governorship, Taft said, he had developed “somewhat intimate relations” with the Filipino people and was certain that the overwhelming majority wanted peace and a stable government.
Taft told the committee, as he had told McKinley, that he had not supported the idea of occupying the Philippines, “but we are there.” America’s primary responsibility, he maintained, must be to help the Filipinos achieve self-rule, slowly inducting them into the political process. Eventually a determination would be possible regarding the future of the Philippines—whether they should apply for statehood, declare full independence, or perhaps develop a commonwealth connection to the United States similar to that of Canada or Australia to Great Britain. He called on Congress to reduce the tariff on Philippine imports and to establish a popularly elected assembly to constitute a lower branch of the government while the Philippine Commission continued to comprise the upper branch. Taft understood that some senators considered this policy “too progressive and too radical,” but he believed it would provide “a great educational school” in the art of democracy.
When pressed about instances of military brutality against the Philippine insurgents, he admitted “that cruelties have been inflicted; that people have been shot when they ought not to have been,” and that soldiers had employed water torture to extract information from insurgents. Courts-martial had been ordered to address these abuses. He insisted, however, that the military had largely exercised uncommon “compassion” and “restraint.”
“Following his appearance,” one reporter noted, “not a speaker on either side but paused a moment to pay at least some small tribute to the man.” By speaking freely and openly, Taft “had taken his fellow-citizens into his confidence on the dangers and the doubtful points of our ‘experiment’ as well as on its rosier aspects.” In return, he had earned their confidence “in his sincerity and his ability to meet the task in hand.” Extremely pleased, Elihu Root assured Taft that if he continued his great service to the Philippines for another year or more, “there was not anything in the gift of the President” that would be withheld.
The pleasure of Taft’s stay in Washington was cut short when doctors determined that yet another operation was required to remove a deep abscess that had developed in the aftermath of his previous surgery. The news that he would be confined to his bed for three weeks left him feeling downcast: “I have been hacked and cut and curetted and etherized so much and have lain so long in bed that a continuance of all this for the better part of a month I do not welcome and should deeply regret if it delayed my return.” Nonetheless, he submitted gamely to a third operation in six months, and this time happily recorded that “the cure seems to be complete.”
Contemplating his return to the Philippines, Taft decided to stop first in Rome, where he hoped personally to negotiate some solution to the perplexing problem of the Spanish friars, a situation that had plagued him from his first days in the islands. To the Filipino people, Taft understood, the friars represented “the crown of Spain, and every oppression by the Spanish government was traced by them to the men whose political power had far outgrown that exercised by them as priests.” Over the years, these clerics had come to operate as political bosses, acquiring 400,000 acres of the best agricultural lands and assuming despotic power over the police, the civil government, and the schools. Once the revolution began, he wrote, they “had to flee for their lives. Fifty of them were killed and three hundred of them were imprisoned.” If they should return and attempt to reclaim title to the land, he feared violence would break out. Roosevelt and Root deputized Taft to inform the Holy See that the United States would purchase the lands for a fair price so long as the hated friars never returned to the archipelago. The land would then be redistributed among the poor Filipino farmers.
“What a splendid thing it will be to go to Rome,” Nellie exclaimed when she learned of her husband’s strategic mission. In the weeks before the planned trip, her own health had improved. Blood tests revealed a reduction in her malarial infection and her spleen had returned to normal. But just before they were scheduled to sail, Robert contracted scarlet fever, making departure impossible for Nellie and the children. “What a disarrangement of our plans!” Taft lamented. “And more than this what a trial for Robert and you.”
Louise Taft was in Millbury, Massachusetts, when Will called to explain her grandson’s illness and to bid her goodbye. Realizing that Nellie could not travel, Louise offered to accompany her son. Nellie, despite her own disappointment, was relieved that Will would have the comfort and assistance of his mother during the trip. “Within twenty-four hours,” Nellie recalled, “the intrepid old lady of seventy-four packed her trunks and was in New York ready to sail.” In the years since Alphonso’s death, Louise had astonished her family with her unflagging activity. “She went wherever she liked,” Nellie noted with admiration, “and it never seemed to occur to her that it was unusual for a woman of her age to travel everywhere with so much self-reliance.” Until Nellie arrived in Rome with the children more than a month later, Louise managed affairs with “an energy and an enterprise” that overwhelmed her son with “pleasure and pride.”
Several factors complicated Taft’s mission. He had to take care throughout the process that his dealings with the Pope never implied diplomatic recognition, which would violate America’s separation of church and state and incur the hostility of Protestants. At the same time, he sought to defuse Catholics’ fears that he was antagonistic to the Church. His initial meeting with the Pope, still “lively as a cricket” and “bubbling with humor” at eighty-two, went better than he could have hoped. Most significantly, Taft noted, he secured the pontiff’s promise to meet all questions “in a broad spirit of conciliation,” though the details were left to a group of cardinals who proved far less accommodating. Weeks went by before the cardinals finally issued a statement on June 21, 1902. The Church would consent to sell its property in the Philippines, but would not withdraw the friars currently in residence. With this unsatisfactory conclusion, negotiations were suspended.
When Taft at last prepared to sail for the Philippines, word arrived that a cholera epidemic had struck Manila. He decided Nellie and the children should remain in Europe for
an additional month, hoping that by then the outbreak “would have run its course.” Writing to Nellie from the steamer, he confessed feeling apprehensive about his reception in Manila. “I don’t know how the people will take the result of my visit to Rome. Then they are not in very good humor about the strict cholera regulations . . . I may land with a few handshakings and a dull thud.” He regretted her absence but trusted she would soon join him and her indispensable support would help him surmount all difficulties. “I can not tell you what a comfort it is to me to think of you as my wife and helpmeet,” he declared. “I measure every woman I meet with you and they are all found wanting. Your character, your independence, your straight mode of thinking, your quiet planning, your loyalty, your sympathy when I call for it (as I do too readily) your affection and love (for I know I have it) all these Darling make me happy only to think about them.”
To his amazement, Taft’s arrival triggered what was said to be the grandest demonstration of popular support ever recorded in the history of the Philippines. Thirty thousand Filipinos had come from the hills and neighboring provinces to welcome Taft home. Whistles sounded and bells rang as soon as his vessel was spied. From the harbor to the palace, his carriage was met by cheering crowds. Triumphal arches and flags decorated the streets. Children tossed flowers and released doves into the air as Taft went by.
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Page 44