The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

by Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Hanna’s condition unexpectedly worsened in the days that followed. His temperature shot up to 104 degrees. He developed a congestive chill and the doctors administered strychnine to stimulate his heart. More than fifty correspondents and dozens of congressmen and senators crowded the lobby of the hotel, awaiting news. Steffens also waited, Hanna’s precarious condition having left the fate of his article hanging. “The illness of Hanna leaves me in the air,” he reported to his father. For a short time, the old senator seemed to rally, asking if the barber could come in to give him a shave. “Today he is better,” Steffens wrote on February 14. Although the crisis seemed to have passed, the fever had not yet crested. “Tomorrow,” Steffens predicted, “should decide his fate.” Indeed, the following day Hanna’s pulse rate dropped precipitously, and that evening, after “a brave struggle,” he died at the age of sixty-six.

  Without Mark Hanna, pundits agreed, “all talk of any real opposition to the nomination of President Roosevelt seems to have ended.” Lacking the voice of a potent conservative leader to challenge the incumbent, open resistance to Roosevelt within the party crumbled.

  “Of course, Hanna’s death knocks out Steffens’ article entirely,” the managing editor Albert Boyden told Ray Baker. “It’s tough luck!” After six months passed, however, Steffens found a way to revive the story. While his material on Hanna would provide the sordid backdrop of Ohio’s boss rule, his focus shifted to the fierce contest in the state between a new generation of reformers and the Old Guard. Calling his piece “A Tale of Two Cities,” he dramatically juxtaposed two municipal governments: Cleveland was led by Tom Johnson, the street railway tycoon turned radical reformer; and Cincinnati remained in thrall to George Cox, a corrupt party boss and longtime ally of Mark Hanna. Cleveland, he concluded, was “the best-governed city in the United States, Cincinnati, the worst.”

  Steffens’s lengthy analysis appeared in the midst of Tom Johnson’s uphill campaign for a third term as mayor. The well-documented and admiring portrait of Johnson’s tenure, one observer noted, “appeared just in the nick of time to turn the tide.” The reform mayor won reelection by the largest margin he ever achieved and attributed much of his success to Steffens. “My feeling for you, my dear old fellow,” Johnson wrote the reporter, “is stronger than that of blood.”

  That same year, machine politicians were defeated in a number of cities. “The day of the American boss is past,” proclaimed the Baltimore Herald. “Few men in the country,” declared another publication, “have done more to bring to pass last Tuesday’s defeat of municipal bosses than S. S. McClure and Lincoln Steffens.” Letters of praise flooded the McClure’s office. “To you, more than any one individual,” one writer told McClure, “belongs much of the credit for this week’s rout of the grafters. You were one of the first to grasp the real significance of the evil and to inaugurate its comprehensive exposure.” It was a rapturous moment for Sam McClure, who had a protective passion for his magazine “very much like what the lioness has for her cubs.”

  “The story is the thing,” McClure responded, when asked to account for the achievement of his publication. “When Mr. Steffens, Mr. Baker, Miss Tarbell write they must never be conscious of anything else while writing other than telling an absorbing story.” As his authors began their research, he explained, they knew they had months—or even years—to complete the investigation and “mold it into a story palpitating with interest.” The magazine’s reputation as an instrument of reform, he insisted, was “due solely to its effective method of telling the truth, of giving stories vital interest.” Had his writers begun with preconceived notions, they could not have so persuasively carried readers through their own process of discovery nor produced such visceral reactions to the unfolding narratives. “We were ourselves personally astonished, personally ashamed, personally indignant at what we found,” Baker recalled, “and we wrote earnestly, even hotly.” The more the public learned, the more engaged people grew by every facet of the complicated struggle for reform. “Month after month,” Baker remarked, “they would swallow dissertations of ten or twelve thousand words without even blinking—and ask for more.”

  If corrupt businessmen, politicians, or labor leaders took offense to the detailed scrutiny of their motives and means, the Minneapolis Tribune noted, their hostility should be considered both “a medal of honor” and “an inspiration,” irrefutable evidence “that something is being accomplished.” Many decades hence, The Independent predicted, “when the historian of American literature writes of the opening years of the century, he will give one of his most interesting chapters to the literature of exposure, and he will pronounce it a true intellectual force.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Thank Heaven You Are to Be with Me!”

  President Roosevelt with members of his cabinet; Secretary of War Taft is seated at the far left.

  AS MCCLURE’S WRITERS LABORED TO expose corruption and monopoly, William Howard Taft was too immersed in the knot of difficulties he faced in the Philippines to keep abreast of this transformative time in his own country. Letters from his brother Horace suggest Taft’s isolation in the islands but also make clear McClure’s essential role in keeping the public informed of key political developments at home. “You have been out of the country, and unless you have read the articles in the New York Times and in McClure’s,” Horace Taft cautioned his brother, “you will not appreciate how much of a stirring there is in the big cities where the worst corruption is. The progress in Chicago is remarkable and most gratifying.” Reformers had “absolutely cut off” the spoils system, he explained, ending all manner of illegal privileges for the trolley companies and the railroads.

  No one felt Taft’s absence more during this period of profound change than Theodore Roosevelt. With the Northern Securities case moving slowly toward the Supreme Court, Roosevelt wanted Taft to be a member of the Court when the time for decision came. He believed that “it would be impossible to overestimate the importance” of the suit. If Northern Securities was allowed to stand, the national government would be rendered impotent to control the big corporations. Monopolies would continue to grow, stifling competition and crushing small businessmen. Failure would diminish the presidency, confirming the Morgans and the Harrimans as the true rulers of the country.

  Roosevelt’s appointments to the Supreme Court would therefore prove critical. Indeed, he told a friend, he would hold himself “guilty of an irreparable wrong to the nation” if he failed to nominate men who shared his understanding of the great questions raised by the industrial age. To fill the first vacancy that arose, he had appointed Oliver Wendell Holmes, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, whose sympathies with the labor movement were well known. “The labor decisions which have been criticized by some of the big railroad men and other members of large corporations,” Roosevelt remarked at the time, “constitute to my mind a strong point in Judge Holmes’ favor.” When the appointment was announced, it garnered “the hearty approval of the laboring people of the country,” as well as “no small amount of praise from the Republican organs.”

  A second spot on the Supreme Court opened when Judge George Shiras announced that he would retire on January 1, 1903. Roosevelt considered it “of utmost importance” to replace the conservative Shiras with the right man. He could not afford to make a mistake. Under these circumstances, the president immediately settled on his old friend Taft. He not only admired Taft above any other figure in public life, but he knew that Taft’s views on economic matters paralleled his own. Like Roosevelt, Taft was dismayed by what he termed “the blindness and greed of the so-called captains of industry.” He had little patience with “the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth and financial success,” yet he recognized the necessity of guiding “the feeling against trusts and the abuses of accumulated capital, in such a way as to remedy its evils without a destruction of the principles of private property and freedom of contract.” Moreover, Taft’s reasoning in t
he Addyston Pipe decision had encouraged reformers hoping to revitalize the Sherman Act.

  Three months before Shiras’s retirement, Roosevelt informed Taft of his intention to nominate him for the Supreme Court: “I hesitated long, for Root felt you should not under any circumstances leave the islands, and I was painfully aware that no one could take your place; but I do think it of the very highest consequence to get you on the Supreme Court. I am not at all satisfied with its condition—let us speak this only with bated breath and between you and me. I think we need you there greatly.”

  The telegram disconcerted Taft. “All his life,” Nellie recalled, “his first ambition had been to attain the Supreme Bench. To him it meant the crown of the highest career that a man can seek, and he wanted it as strongly as a man can ever want anything. But now that the opportunity had come acceptance was not to be thought of.” From Taft’s perspective, the timing of Roosevelt’s request could not have been worse. “Great honor deeply appreciated but must decline,” he telegraphed. “Situation here most critical . . . Cholera, rinderpest, religious excitement, ladrones, monetary crisis, all render most unwise change of Governor. . . . Nothing would satisfy individual taste more than acceptance. Look forward to the time when I can accept such an offer, but even if it is certain that it never can be repeated I must now decline.”

  “I am disappointed of course,” the president returned, “that the situation is such as to make you feel it unwise for you to leave, because exactly as no man can quite do your work in the islands, so no one can quite take your place as the new member of the Court. But, if possible, your refusal on the ground you give makes me admire you and believe in you more than ever. I am quite at a loss whom to appoint to the bench in the place I meant for you. Everything else must give way to putting in the right man.”

  Before five weeks had passed, however, Roosevelt sent an emphatic letter reopening the question, pushing Taft to accept the Court appointment with what Nellie termed “unanswerable” finality. “I am awfully sorry, old man,” Roosevelt explained, “but after faithful effort for a month to try to arrange matters on the basis you wanted I find that I shall have to bring you home and put you on the Supreme Court. I am very sorry. I have the greatest confidence in your judgment; but after all, old fellow, if you will permit me to say so, I am President and see the whole field. The responsibility for any error must ultimately come upon me, and therefore I cannot shirk this responsibility or in the last resort yield to anyone else’s decision if my judgment is against it.” In closing, Roosevelt informed his friend that he would promote Commissioner Luke Wright to the position of governor general once Taft was appointed to the Supreme Court.

  While this second request was en route to the Philippines, the president had a long talk with Taft’s brother Harry. The two had become good friends when Roosevelt served in New York as police commissioner and governor. He now called on Harry to persuade his brother to return to Washington. “He is extremely anxious that you accept the appointment,” Harry wrote to Taft, laying out Roosevelt’s reasoning at length. “He does not belittle the importance of the problems which you have to contend with, but he feels that there are questions pending here which have to be solved by him which are of even greater importance and perhaps of almost equal difficulty. . . . He evidently thinks he has secured the right man in Holmes and now seeks you, because, as he remarked to me, you will approach all the industrial questions without fear of the affect [sic] upon yourself of the influence of either J. P. Morgan or of the labor leaders.” Harry also reported an interesting talk on the matter with Elihu Root. Root considered Taft “the surest candidate as Roosevelt’s successor, at the end of his second term,” and therefore “could not be enthusiastic about your going on the Bench.”

  Despite Roosevelt’s design in urging his letter, Harry admitted that he agreed with Root. “Of course, we all know how you have cherished the ambition to receive this appointment,” he acknowledged, “but when it is within your grasp, it is natural to reflect as to whether you want to make that choice, particularly when your career in the Philippines and the reputation you have made there has opened up before you so many alluring possibilities.” He added that there was “some diversity of view” within the family: Charley favored acceptance, knowing his brother had long coveted the post, while their mother, Aunt Delia, and Horace remained opposed. “I shall be satisfied with your decision,” he assured his brother in closing.

  To Taft, as to Nellie, the president’s letter seemed unanswerable. The request “really leaves me no option, so far as I can see, but to give up here and go to Washington,” he told Charley. The Washington Times reported that “within a few months” Taft would resign as governor of the Philippines to take a place on the Court. Nellie “heaved a sigh of resignation” and began making plans for their departure. Still, she recalled, her husband “could not resist the temptation to hazard one more protest.”

  “Recognize soldiers duty to obey orders,” he telegraphed Roosevelt on January 8, 1903. “Before orders irrevocable by action, however, I presume on our personal friendship even in the face of your letter to make one more appeal.” Taft proceeded to lay out his argument one final time: “No man is indispensable,” he reasoned. “My death would little interfere with progress, but my withdrawal more serious. Circumstances last three years have convinced these people controlled largely by personal feeling, that I am their sincere friend and stand for a policy of confidence in them and belief in their future and for extension of self-government as they show themselves worthy. Visit to Rome and proposals urged there assure them of my sympathy, in regard to Friars, in respect of whose far-reaching influence they are morbidly suspicious. Announcement of withdrawal . . . will, I fear, give impression that change of policy is intended, because other reasons for action will not be understood. My successor’s task thus made much heavier.” Nevertheless, Taft concluded, “if your judgment is unshaken, I bow to it.”

  With little confidence that his request would be considered, Taft sadly informed his colleagues of his impending departure. The announcement spurred an overwhelming response and precipitated one of the “proudest and happiest” moments William Taft had experienced. As January 10 dawned, he and Nellie awakened to the din of band music, as 8,000 Filipinos gathered in front of the Malacañan Palace, urging the governor to stay. Stretched out for blocks, with “flags flying,” the ranks of people carried handmade signs and placards printed in “all sizes and all colours,” some in English, some in Spanish, still others in Tagalog, but all bearing the same message: WE WANT TAFT.

  Taft listened in glad surprise as one speaker after another hailed his virtues and accomplishments. “This is a spontaneous demonstration of affection for our Governor,” the first speaker announced. The orator who followed, a former insurrectionist, declared that all the hardships facing the islanders ranked “as nothing compared with the evil effect caused by [Taft’s] impending departure. . . . The Filipino people trust that the home government will not tear from their arms their beloved governor upon whom depends the happy solution of all Philippine questions.” When the speeches concluded, journalists reported, “the thousands of people who filled the grounds of the palace broke into a cheer for the governor.”

  News of the popular demonstration soon reached Washington, along with hundreds of cables from Taft’s colleagues, citizen committees, the Filipino Bar Association, and individuals throughout the archipelago, all urging Roosevelt to reconsider. Three days later, a welcome cable arrived in Manila: “All right stay where you are. I shall appoint some one else to the Court. ROOSEVELT.” A more personal letter followed a few days later. Roosevelt admitted he was still “very sorry” Taft would not be joining the Court but assured his friend that all would be well. “In view of the protests from the Philippine people,” he conceded, “I do not see how I could take you away.”

  AFTER HIS STRUGGLE TO PERSUADE Roosevelt that he must remain in the Philippines, William Taft resumed work “with renewed vigour
and strengthened confidence.” A host of challenges remained, but he was optimistic that the connections he had forged among the Filipino people would allow them to make progress. Absorbed in his daily tasks, Taft found immense gratification in “working for other people and attempting to win their confidence and finally in a measure succeeding.” His genuinely cordial temperament was infectious, enabling him to create an effective, collegial team. “I was not a month with Judge Taft until I was shaking hands with everyone I met and greeting them with a laugh,” remarked one staff member, noting with admiration that he “never saw anyone who could so thoroughly dominate everybody about him and saturate them, as it were, with his own geniality.”

  Roosevelt himself continued to laud the many gifts that his friend brought to the difficult task of governing the Philippines. “There is not in this Nation,” Roosevelt told an audience, “a higher or finer type of public servant than Governor Taft.” Secretary of War Elihu Root, who collaborated with Taft on all issues relating to the Philippines, concurred. He assured Henry Taft that his brother possessed “a personality which made [him] nothing but friends” and that “no man in the country had recently exhibited such unusual ability, both administrative and legislative.” When good-natured telegrams between Taft and Root subsequently appeared in newspapers, their obvious camaraderie delighted readers. Taft had cabled Root a description of a long trip to a beautiful resort in the Benguet mountains. “Stood trip well. Rode horseback twenty-five miles to five thousand feet elevation.” Root, knowing Taft’s weight exceeded 300 pounds, cabled back: “How is the horse?” With typical good humor, Taft released Root’s cable to the press, along with his praise for the horse—“a magnificent animal,” he told Root, “gentle and intelligent and of great power. He stood the trip without difficulty.”