Roosevelt

by Brett Harper

  The advantages of a canal had been obvious for years, but an earlier French attempt to build one had been defeated by disease and the sheer difficulty of the job. At the turn of the century, two routes seemed possible, one across Nicaragua and the other through the Isthmus of Panama, which was then a province of Colombia. Early in 1903, Roosevelt’s secretary of state, John Hay, negotiated a treaty with Colombia giving the United States a perpetual lease on a canal zone across Panama. But when the Colombian senate refused to ratify the agreement, Roosevelt switched tactics to support Panamanian rebels who wanted to secede from Colombia. U.S. warships blocked Colombian troops on their way to suppress the rebellion, and Washington promptly recognized Panama as an independent nation. In turn, the government of Panama signed the treaty Colombia had rejected, giving the United States the Canal Zone for $10 million and annual lease payments of $250,000 for ninety-nine years.

  The deal was dubious at best, often called a classic example of U.S. gunboat diplomacy in Latin America, and Colombia wouldn’t recognize Panama until Washington paid Bogota another $10 million in 1921. Construction of the canal began in 1904 and would go on for a decade through dense jungle, unstable mountain terrain, the perils of malaria and yellow fever, and the carping of critics.

  Roosevelt had other problems at home. In 1903, when the Northern Securities antitrust case was grinding through the courts toward a Supreme Court test of constitutionality, Roosevelt had two chances to improve the odds of a victory. Two seats on the court opened up, and he quickly filled one with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes – the liberal chief justice of Massachusetts known for decisions favoring labor. For the second seat, the president tried twice to persuade William Howard Taft to give up his job as governor general of the Philippines and return to Washington, but Taft, despite his desire for a seat on the high court, maintained he was needed to preside over the islands’ transition from a Spanish colony to an independent nation. Roosevelt reluctantly yielded and named William R. Day, a former colleague of Taft’s on the Ohio bench.

  But Roosevelt insisted Taft leave the Philippines when his most trusted cabinet officer, Secretary of War Elihu Root, announced plans to leave in the fall of 1903. Taft became Roosevelt’s trusted man-of-all-work, handling every job the president gave him with aplomb. As one early assignment, he organized the Panama Canal Commission to run the Canal Zone and supervise the giant construction project. Later, Taft was widely regarded as “acting president” when Roosevelt was away. Ultimately, Roosevelt would choose Taft as his successor.

  When the Supreme Court finally ruled on the Northern Securities case on March 14, 1904, it was a triumph for the president. Justice John Marshall Harlan’s majority opinion said “no scheme or device” could suppress competition more effectively than the massive railroad trust, and Harlan invoked the specter of a “universal merger” that could bring the nation’s transportation system under a single man’s control. Roosevelt’s ability to regulate business was confirmed, and his image as a trust-buster would endure – though he stressed that the government would not “run amuck” and go after any company just because it was large.

  There was a problem: Although Roosevelt’s appointee William R. Day had voted with the five-justice majority, Oliver Wendell Holmes filed a stinging dissent, arguing that the Sherman Act didn’t cover such cases. Roosevelt was as furious as he was surprised. “I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that,” he stormed.

  As early as 1903, Roosevelt was well into planning for the election of 1904, which he counted on to legitimize his presidency. “I’d rather be elected to that office than have anything tangible of which I know,” he wrote. But he knew that the Republican bosses – “Hanna and that crowd” – were determined to deny him the nomination. It wasn’t just his antitrust policy or his intervention in the coal strike that rankled conservatives in his party. Some called him a traitor to his class for empathizing with working men and the poor; others disliked his ebullient personality, imperious streak, and constant need for action. In the South, Roosevelt’s efforts to include blacks in party affairs triggered resentment, and he had never been forgiven for inviting black educator Booker T. Washington to dine in the White House. As South Carolina Senator Benjamin “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman fulminated, “The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place.” Hanna was likely to control delegations from the South at the GOP convention.

  In the early days of the twentieth century, it was considered unseemly for presidents to campaign for themselves. But a president could legitimately tour the country to stay in touch with the voters. Soon after the triumph of passing his antitrust bill early in 1903, Roosevelt set out on the longest journey ever taken by a president. In a luxurious train furnished by the Pullman Company, he spent nine weeks covering 14,000 miles across twenty-four states and territories.

  He was in full campaign mode, with spacious quarters for guests, stenographers, and the press, and a platform at the rear of his private car from which he could speak to crowds at stations along the way. Vast numbers turned out to see him, listening to his speeches and presenting him dozens of odd gifts: a gold inlaid saddle, an infant badger, a horned toad, a foot-high silver loving cup that could hold sixteen pints of beer (“Great heavens and earth!” he said). Roosevelt was tireless, giving speech after speech lining out his policies, navigating through jostling crowds to banquets and bandstands, and popping out to his platform to wave to groups gathered along the tracks. He was having lunch one day when the train passed a small schoolhouse where the teacher had brought her students outside to wave to the president. Clutching his napkin, he ran to the platform to wave back. Returning to the table, he explained: “Those children wanted to see the President of the United States, and I could not disappoint them. They may never have another chance.”

  The crowds cheered what the press called “Roosevelt gems,” pithy aphorisms of common-sense wisdom. Among them: “No law can make a fool wise or a weakling strong or a coward brave.” “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” “When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” “I do not like hardness of heart, but neither do I like softness of head.” He began talking about “the square deal,” which would be the slogan for his domestic program as a whole, calling for “a square deal for every man, great or small, rich or poor.” He proposed a square deal for Native-American and black soldiers who had fought with him in Cuba and for wage earners and capitalists alike.

  Naturalist John Burroughs traveled with the presidential party, and the farther west Roosevelt went, the more he talked about his passion for conservation. In a victory, he considered as important as his antitrust achievements, he had pushed the Reclamation Act through Congress in 1902, which made the first federal funds available to build dams, reservoirs, and irrigation systems in the West. America’s land, Roosevelt told the crowds, must “be distributed among many men, each of whom intends to make him a home on the land.” To make that possible and prevent land speculators from taking advantage of the projects, the law banned federal money for irrigation of plots larger than 160 acres.

  At Yellowstone, Roosevelt left the press behind to spend two weeks in the woods with Burroughs, watching birds and observing game rather than hunting it. He also camped at Yosemite with John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club; marveled at the Grand Canyon, which he resolved to preserve as a national park; and got his first glimpse of California’s giant sequoias, which he said should not be desecrated by turning them into lumber. “There is nothing more practical, in the end,” he said, “than the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that appeals to the higher emotions in mankind.” But he argued that conservation had a practical goal: to stop the degradation of the forests and guarantee “a steady and continuous supply of timber, grass, and abo
ve all, water.” During his presidency, he would create five national parks, four national game preserves, eighteen national monuments, fifty-one bird sanctuaries, and 150 national forests.

  After the trip, Roosevelt returned to Washington eleven pounds heavier than when he left and opted for healthier pursuits during a vacation at Oyster Bay. “It was as lovely a summer as we have ever passed,” he wrote. The family was united except for nineteen-year-old Alice, who was spending her summer at Newport, Rhode Island. Roosevelt worried about her, telling a friend that he understood how a young girl might be attracted to such people, “but I do not think anyone can permanently lead his or her life amid such surroundings and with such objects, save at the cost of degeneration in character.” Ted, Jr., fifteen, and Kermit, thirteen, were home from Groton School; Ethel, eleven, kept a close eye on her younger brothers, Archie and Quentin, eight and five. For all of them, and for Edith, Sagamore Hill was the “great good place” for picnics, sailing, hiking, and adventures in the woods.

  As soon as he returned to Washington, Roosevelt plunged into the battle for the 1904 election, just thirteen months away. His popularity had never been greater, but that fact provided no assurance. His first hurdle was the nomination. There were few direct primaries, and the convention delegations would be in the hands of Republican bosses and the big industries that provided their money. The national party was controlled by its chairman, Mark Hanna, and Hanna was the man who had cemented its alliance with the corporate tycoons. “I know there is bitter opposition to me from many sources,” Roosevelt wrote. “Whether I shall have enough support to overcome this opposition, I cannot tell.”

  What might save the president was the wave of reform sweeping the country. McClure’s provided a monthly ration of exposés. In addition to Ida Tarbell’s continuing Standard Oil series, Lincoln Steffens wrote of political corruption in St. Louis, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Then Steffens began writing about the states, beginning with Missouri and Wisconsin. As the stories spread, wrote William Allen White, voters began choosing reformers, and “little Roosevelts were appearing in city halls, county courthouses, statehouses and occasionally were bobbing up in Congress.” Steffens’ articles on St. Louis and Missouri were credited with electing Joseph Folk, a crusading young district attorney, as governor of the state. In Wisconsin, Steffens helped Governor Robert Marion “Fighting Bob” LaFollette elect enough allies in the legislature to beat the bosses and curb the railroads that had ruled the state.

  By now, Hanna was nursing his own ambition to be president. But first he had to win re-election as senator from Ohio. When a resolution endorsing Roosevelt for president in 1904 was introduced at the Ohio state convention in 1903, it caught Hanna off guard, and he told Roosevelt he felt obliged to oppose the endorsement, arguing it was premature and that the state convention had no business telling the national convention what to do. The president’s reply was brusque, pointing out that those who didn’t favor him were welcome to say so. Hanna backed down: “I shall not oppose the endorsement of your administration and candidacy.”

  Roosevelt tried to soften the blow to Hanna’s pride with a personal letter, saying he hoped the two could have a long chat at the wedding of Hanna’s daughter. But hostilities had been opened. When Hanna succeeded in rallying Ohio’s Republicans to the landslide election of his hand-picked slate of candidates, he assured his own re-election and reaffirmed his status as boss of the Republican Party. Next, a group of corporate leaders financed a campaign to discredit the president. E. H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad sent hundreds of letters saying that Roosevelt had “lost his popularity in the far west” and thus would be doomed as a candidate. The tycoons’ campaign portrayed the president as erratic, irresponsible, impulsive, and immature. They spread word that Roosevelt was quizzing White House lunch guests about Hanna’s chances of capturing delegates in their states – which made him look weak and apprehensive.

  Then, much to Roosevelt’s relief, Steffens chose Ohio for his next investigative target, and he made no pretense of journalistic objectivity. He was “hoping to get Hanna,” he wrote his father, and thus to help win the presidency for Roosevelt. He turned out what was surely the most scathing article of his career. Hanna, he wrote, was a businessman who had gone into politics to win special favors for his street railway company. He had corrupted the legislature and had won election as a senator by kidnapping lawmakers, plying them with drink, bribing them, and even threatening some with revolvers. The system Hanna foisted on Ohio, Steffens concluded, was “government of the people by politicians hired to represent the privileged class . . . the most dangerous form of our corruption.”

  When Hanna came down with typhoid fever early in 1904, the editors of McClure’s decided not to publish Steffens’ story. Roosevelt visited Hanna on his sickbed, and they exchanged affectionate notes. Hanna died in mid-February. Without his leadership, GOP opposition to Roosevelt withered away.

  Still, the party was anything but happy to have him. The convention in Chicago was described as “a lifeless gathering,” with the bosses indulging in “a great deal of sullen grumbling” and the delegates going through the mechanical motions of dutiful enthusiasm. It was a “puppet show,” wrote William Allen White, but it reflected a new, profound, beneficial truth: The people wanted Roosevelt, and the bosses had no alternative but to yield to the forces of reform and nominate him.

  Roosevelt couldn’t get the delegates to approve a campaign plank pledging tariff reform, but he did succeed in naming his own man to replace Hanna as chairman of the party: George Cortelyou, a onetime newspaperman who had been his private secretary and had done the same job for Grover Cleveland and William McKinley. More recently, Roosevelt had named Cortelyou to head up the new Bureau of Corporations. He represented another setback to the bosses, and they resented that, too, but Roosevelt was implacable. “People may as well understand that if I am to run for president then Cortelyou is to be chairman,” he said. “I will not have it any other way.”

  At the Democratic convention two weeks later, populist William Jennings Bryan lost his grip on the party. After two losing races for the White House, he was beaten for the nomination by a conservative gold-standard advocate, Judge Alton B. Parker of New York.

  The campaign focused on issues of labor and business, with the Democrats blaming the Republican tariff for the rising cost of living, and disregarding facts, attacking both Roosevelt and his party as captives of corporations. Roosevelt was fighting a similar backfire in the conservative wing of his own party, which berated him for being too generous to labor in the coal strike, assailed him for having invited labor leaders to the White House, and complained about his honorary membership in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen.

  The Democrats managed to ignore that record, insinuating class warfare with attacks on the president as “a man who never needed to do a day’s work.” They contrasted their own “party of liberty and equality” with the aristocratic GOP and painted the president as an autocrat and tyrant who would never willingly give up power; he would surely seek election yet again, they warned, if the voters lost their senses and voted him back into the White House.

  Roosevelt chafed at the genteel custom keeping him off the campaign trail. “I could cut [Parker] into ribbons if I could get at him in the open,” he complained to Kermit. He had to rely instead on his Cabinet members as surrogates, and none of them was better at it than Taft, whose speeches drew cheers and editorial praise wherever he went. His personal tributes to Roosevelt undercut the Democratic caricature, underscoring the president’s vigor and ability but also stressing his open-mindedness and sense of justice. “I never have met a man in authority with less pride of opinion,” Taft said. “I have never met a man who was so amenable to reason, so anxious to reach a just conclusion, and so willing to sacrifice a previously formed opinion.”

  Roosevelt grew increasingly nervous that some unexpected turn could swing the election to Pa
rker – and the Democrats came up with an October surprise. First they found evidence of massive corporate contributions to the Republican Party. When it was revealed that businesses were also giving generously to Democratic candidates, the Democrats charged that the GOP funds had been extorted by blackmail.

  As Parker and other candidates told it, the logic was plausible. George Cortelyou had used his power at the Bureau of Corporations, the Democrats said, to prowl through the corporate books and find targets for regulation or punishment; then, as party chairman, he had threatened to use that knowledge unless the companies made large contributions. Five days before the election, Parker called Cortelyou’s campaign fund “blood money” and accused him of exploiting his Cabinet position to blackmail the trusts. With flashing eyes and waving fists, Parker said the issue was “whether it is possible for interests in this country to control the elections with money,” and pledged: “This country shall not pass into the hands of the trusts.”

  Roosevelt, who knew there was no evidence of blackmail, abandoned his dignified silence and issued a fiery denial, calling the whole accusation “a wicked falsehood” and challenging Parker to come up with proof. Parker waffled, saying he hadn’t criticized the president but merely called attention to “a notorious and offensive situation.” The headlines – PARKER FAILS TO FURNISH PROOFS – delighted Roosevelt, who boasted to Kermit: “I came out of the encounter with flying colors.”

  Roosevelt won in a landslide, with record majorities in both the popular and electoral votes. Even in those days of slow returns from remote precincts, the victory was so sweeping that Parker conceded before 9:00 on election night. “I am stunned,” the president said. “I had no concept that such a thing was possible.” Even better, he was vindicated, overwhelmingly elected to his own term in office. It was “the greatest triumph I ever had had or ever could have,” he wrote, “and I was very proud and happy.”