Rockefeller’s defenders argued that by focusing her dramatic analysis on one personage, Tarbell ignored the conditions that made consolidation inevitable in scores of industries, including meatpacking, grain elevators, and railroads. Similarly, she failed to acknowledge that rebating was not confined to Standard Oil; it was, on the contrary, “an almost universal practice.” Although her work might be “excellent journalism and very good drama,” Gilbert Montague wrote in the Boston Evening Transcript, “Miss Tarbell does not seem to have guessed the larger bearings of the movement she describes. . . . She prefers to attribute the course of events to a single pervasive, mysterious personality.”
It was the “mysterious” Rockefeller, however, who made the series so wildly popular; the story of his life and the creation of his company provided a narrative spine, on which Tarbell could flesh out a more complex and vivid subject. In her portrait of Rockefeller, Tarbell stressed the duality of his nature, presenting “a quiet, modest church-going gentleman, devoted to Sunday school picnics, golf, and wheeling,” yet simultaneously “willing to strain every nerve to obtain special and illegal privileges from the railroads which were bound to ruin every man in the oil business not sharing them with him.” When she began her series, one newspaper observed, “Rockefeller was known only as a shrewd businessman who had built up an immense business, with a great name for generosity to educational institutions. Now there are very few sane men who would take Rockefeller’s millions if his tarnished reputation must go along with them.”
As her narrative progresses, Tarbell’s indignation at Rockefeller seems to grow, and her language sometimes slips into the same metaphors for soulless mechanical power that cheapened White’s portrait of Boss Platt. She describes his eyes “as expressionless as a wall,” notes the “downward” droop of “his mouth,” his “cruelest” and “most pathetic” feature, and the repellent puffiness of his cheeks. More than a touch of personal vindictiveness colors her representation of Rockefeller as she describes how his pursuit of money renders him no longer “a human man” but rather “a machine—a money machine—stripped by his overwhelming passion of greed of every quality which makes a man worthy of citizenship.”
Far more telling insight lies in her argument that “were Mr. Rockefeller the only one of his kind he would be curious, interesting, unpleasant, but in no way vital. . . . But Mr. Rockefeller is not the only one of his kind. He is simply the type preeminent in the public mind of the militant business man of the day.” In the end, she insists, there could be “no cure” for the problem of the trusts without “an increasing scorn of unfair play—an increasing sense that a thing won by breaking the rules of the game is not worth the winning. When the businessman who fights to secure special privileges, to crowd his competitor off the track by other than fair competitive methods, receives the same summary disdainful ostracism by his fellows that the doctor or lawyer who is ‘unprofessional,’ the athlete who abuses the rules, receives, we shall have gone a long way toward making commerce a fit pursuit for our young men.”
Though Rockefeller never directly responded to Tarbell’s attacks, his friends and associates vented their displeasure by denying McClure membership to the Ardsley Country Club, perched above the Hudson River twenty miles north of Manhattan. Although no protests had been lodged against McClure before the publication of Tarbell’s series, he suddenly found himself blackballed through the collusion of board members “closely allied to the Standard Oil interests,” including John D. Archbold, William Rockefeller, and Charles Schwab. Such persecution did nothing to subdue McClure’s enthusiasm for Tarbell’s writing. “Your monumental work on the Standard Oil will never be forgotten,” he assured her. In a special editorial, he touted her series as “one of the most remarkable pieces of work ever published in a magazine.” Since he fervently believed that it was “up to magazines to rouse public opinion,” he was inordinately proud of the fact that her series had mobilized popular sentiment against the trusts as no other writing had done before.
McClure once claimed “that the two things of which he is proudest are, first, that he was the founder of McClure’s Magazine; second, that he was the discoverer of Miss Tarbell.” Certainly, the peculiar and intimate partnership that they developed was vital to both. McClure may have been more visionary, more in tune with the public’s shifting interests, but Tarbell possessed a far sturdier temperament, a relentless work ethic, and the ability to mediate conflict. “You cannot imagine how we all love and reverence you,” McClure told her shortly after the launch of the Standard Oil series. “What you have been to me no words can tell.” For her part, Tarbell repeatedly proclaimed McClure’s manic bursts of energy “the most genuinely creative moments of our magazine life.” Nor did she ever forget that he was instrumental in every phase of her journey from obscure expatriate writer to foremost journalist in the nation.
AS MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE and Senate assembled in the winter of 1903, a newspaper in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, predicted that Ida Tarbell’s sensational exposure of Standard Oil had finally generated enough pressure to compel congressional action against monopolies. The Republican Party, another western paper editorialized, “must stand by the people or yield to the demands of the corporations.” While big business had been “a tower of strength” to the majority party for years, growing indignation demanded that some anti-trust action be taken—the “only question being as to how long the shrewd and cunning agents of the trust can manage to delay this outcome.” Indeed, the stalling commenced as soon as Congress convened.
Republican leaders in the Senate spread the word that there would be “no time for anti-trust legislation at this session.” The subject, they argued, was too complex for the short session that would end in early March: ill-considered legislation might lead to financial panic; much wiser to wait until the longer session the following year. On the other side of the aisle, Democrats called for radical proposals that stood little chance of passing constitutional muster.
“I pass my days in a state of exasperation,” Roosevelt told his son Kermit, “first, with the fools who do not want any of the things that ought to be done, and, second, with the equally obnoxious fools who insist upon so much that they cannot get anything.” Emboldened by public support, Roosevelt was determined to prevent the 1903 Congress from playing “the ancient and honorable bunko game” of letting legislation “fall between the two stools” of the House and Senate, with no time left in conference committee to harmonize their differences. “The party had promised antitrust legislation,” he maintained, “and it was the party’s duty to do something towards fulfilling its obligations.” Summoning the leaders of both branches together, he threatened to exercise the president’s constitutional power to call an extra session “on extraordinary occasions” unless his anti-trust proposals were brought to the floor before adjournment. “While I could not force anyone to vote for these bills,” he explained to a friend, “I felt I had a right to demand that there should be a vote upon them.”
The administration’s anti-trust program in 1903 was comprised of three elements: a measure to strengthen existing laws against discriminatory railroad rebates; a bill to expedite legal proceedings against suspected trusts; and of particular interest to the president, a revived proposal to create a cabinet-level Department of Commerce with regulatory powers over the large corporations.
The first measure, sponsored by Congressman Stephen Elkins of West Virginia, rode the crest of popular fury against what had become known as “Rockefeller’s rebates.” That single word, “rebate,” one editorial observed, dominated Tarbell’s chronicle of Standard Oil; every successful step Rockefeller took to “corner the oil interests of the country” could be traced to the secret freight rates he obtained from the railroads. For years, farmers and small businessmen had argued that current laws failed to protect them against discriminatory rebating practices. The Elkins bill was designed to remedy weaknesses in the existing regulations, such as the provision that made only ra
ilroad agents actually granting the rebates liable to prosecution: under the new bill, corporations would be held responsible for the acts of any of their officers or agents, and failure to follow published rates would subject both railroads and shippers to heavy fines. The courts would be granted increased powers to secure transaction records, demand testimony, and provide summary judgment.
Although secret opposition to the Elkins bill remained, the impact of Tarbell’s investigation, Roosevelt told a friend, meant that “no respectable railroad or respectable shipping business can openly object to the rebate bill.” By 1903, the railroads themselves actually favored ending cash rebates, which cost them millions of dollars each year in lost revenue. Furthermore, the most powerful corporations offered no objection; as The Washington Post noted, they had already “grown beyond any effects the enforcement of the legislation might have.” Even with the ban on secret rebates, there remained myriad ways the trusts could exact special concessions from the railroads. The Elkins bill swiftly passed both Houses, promising, in Roosevelt’s words, to throw “the highways of commerce open on equal terms to all who use them.” The legislation represented small but pragmatic advancement in pursuit of “equal rights for all; special privileges to none.”
Growing public sentiment against monopolies also fueled a bill to expedite prosecutions under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Initially, this proposed bill to grant anti-trust suits precedence on court calendars had met with what Roosevelt termed “violent opposition”; now, in the face of public rancor, it was “rather sullenly acquiesced in.” When the bill passed both Houses with little debate, William Allen White triumphantly declared that “the subconscious moral sense of the people has come to a distinct realization of the fact that crimes are as possible in what we call high finance as they are in lower quarters.”
While the trusts reluctantly yielded on the expedition bill, they brought the full force of their influence against the president’s proposed Department of Commerce and Labor. The idea of consolidating the various bureaus and offices overseeing immigration, lighthouses, shipping, fisheries, and the census provoked no outcry. When Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota introduced an amendment crafted by the administration to establish a Bureau of Corporations within the department, however, fierce opposition erupted. Invested with substantial powers to investigate the internal operations of corporations engaged in interstate commerce, the prospective bureau embodied Roosevelt’s conviction that publicity was “the first essential” to determine whether individual trusts were guilty of “unfair competition,” “unscrupulous promotion,” or “overcapitalization.” The amendment would provide the bureau with authority to compel testimony, and to subpoena books, papers, and reports. At his discretion, the president could use these findings to determine whether anti-trust laws were being violated and to induce Congress to pass additional regulatory measures to remedy the abuses uncovered.
Long accustomed to operating without effective oversight or federal regulation, corporate interests regarded the prospective Bureau of Corporations as the harbinger of a stifling socialism. “The Standard Oil Company has always regarded anti-trust laws, anti-rebate laws, and such things, as harmless, though, at times annoying,” the Wall Street Journal explained, “but publicity hurts. And the company will always, at all times, and in all ways, fight publicity.” Determined to kill the new bureau, officials of the trusts descended on Washington for private meetings with their loyal allies on Capitol Hill.
Roosevelt’s failure the previous year had taught him to carefully monitor every stage of the bill’s movement through Congress. Night after night, he convened meetings with leaders of the Senate and the House, impressing on the Speaker, the ranking committee members, and the majority leader that the Nelson amendment was essential to redeem the party’s pledge to take action on the trusts. These sessions required all the president’s finesse, the press reported, for there was “a disposition in some quarters” to resent his meddling in legislative affairs.
Realizing that he would benefit from the broadest possible consensus, Roosevelt sought to cultivate warm connections with a number of Democrats. Attending the wedding of Missouri’s Democratic senator Francis Cockrell’s daughter, the president “joked with the girls, shook hands with the matrons and exchanged ‘jollying’ remarks with the young and old men.” At the celebratory breakfast, he announced with sly wit that he could never reside in Missouri, however splendid that state might be: “I think so much of Sen. Cockrell and admire him so greatly that I don’t see how I could keep from voting for him, and as he is a Democrat you know that would never, never, do.”
“I have been worked until I could hardly stand,” the notoriously tireless Roosevelt grumbled to Kermit, “some days twelve hours and over absolutely without intermission.” But in fact, his days were not without respite—almost every afternoon he managed the diversion of some mode of exercise. Singlestick, a form of swordplay in which competitors wield wooden sticks, had become his latest obsession. General Leonard Wood, Roosevelt’s favorite opponent, bested the president on various occasions, leaving him with a swollen arm, a bruised forehead, and once, a deep cut on his right wrist that required him to shake left-handed at the next White House reception. A comic diagram in the Minneapolis Journal pinpointed the numerous injuries Roosevelt had sustained during sundry activities, humorously labeling him “The Most Wounded President in the Nation’s History.”
When multiplying bruises precluded more singlestick jousts, he rode a horse along snowy streets or split wood for exercise. If his exertions as a woods-man did “not suffice,” the Boston Traveler quipped, “he might try his hand at lopping off a few of the trust privileges.” And indeed, that formidable energy was funneled into a single objective—persuading Congress to pass his pet anti-trust bill.
Saturday, February 7, 1903, would prove critical in the struggle for the Bureau of Corporations. Roosevelt’s demeanor, as he discussed literature and international events with the French ambassador Jules Jusserand, revealed nothing of the ruse under way for that evening. As darkness descended, he called together members of the three press associations. Insisting that the source of the information must remain confidential, Roosevelt confided that he had secured proof that John D. Rockefeller was personally orchestrating an underhanded campaign to sabotage the Nelson amendment. A half-dozen senators, he claimed, had received telegrams bearing John D. Rockefeller’s signature, with “peremptory” instruction indicating that the corporation was “unalterably opposed” to the bill, and it “must be stopped.” The message, one paper reported, was clear: “We own the Republican party and it must do our bidding.”
The offending telegrams, Roosevelt assured the assembled journalists—without giving them the exact wording or showing the actual telegrams—had only redoubled his determination to establish the Bureau of Corporations. Unless Congress enacted a satisfactory bill by the March 4 adjournment, he would surely insist on the extra session previously threatened. As anticipated, word of Rockefeller’s imperious telegrams inspired headlines and editorials across the country and produced “a decided sensation” on Capitol Hill. One senator after another hastily denied receiving a Rockefeller telegram, “for fear,” one Wisconsin paper suggested, that “somebody might think they had intimate relations with the great octopus.”
Rockefeller’s purported tactic should have occasioned “no surprise,” one newspaper sardonically noted: “It is pretty much his senate, anyway. Most of the members of the once august body were elected on a pro-trust understanding, and Deacon John is simply insisting upon fulfillment of the bargain mutually entered into.” For years, he and his fellow industrialists had filled Mark Hanna’s coffers, the editorial concluded, and Rockefeller was now simply “claiming the privileges he paid for, nothing more.”
To combat the pending legislation, Standard Oil sent three of its top lawyers to the Arlington Hotel in Washington. There, they would combine with congressional allies to prepare an emasculating amendment i
f the bill could not be killed outright. “This is no more than is done every day by managers and attorneys of great business enterprises,” the Los Angeles Times acknowledged. Companies routinely sent representatives to the nation’s capital in an effort to shield themselves from unfavorable legislation. The appearance of the Standard attorneys amid the outrage sparked by Ida Tarbell’s exposé and the Rockefeller telegram scandal, however, seemed certain to “inflame the agitator element” in Congress and possibly spur even more radical legislation. “Grasping the whole situation at a glance,” Senator Aldrich “wheeled the trio of counsel promptly to right-about,” sending them back to New York the next morning.
JUBILANT, ROOSEVELT BOASTED THAT “FROM the standpoint of constructive states-manship,” he considered the Department of Commerce and Labor, with its Bureau of Corporations, “a much greater feat than any tariff law.” Well aware of the importance of sharing credit for the victory, he wrote a warm note to Speaker David Henderson, who had finally conceded that Republicans must take action against the trusts. “Taken as a whole,” Roosevelt told him, “no other Congress of recent years has to its credit a record of more substantial achievement for the public good than this over the lower house of which you presided. I congratulate you and it.” To head the new department, he chose his private secretary and trusted friend, George Cortelyou, and selected James Garfield, the son of the former president, for Commissioner of Corporations.
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism Page 50