Theodore Rex

Home > Other > Theodore Rex > Page 10
Theodore Rex Page 10

by Edmund Morris


  It was a big scoop, if not much of a story. Popular and Congressional sentiment had been in favor of a Nicaragua Canal for so long that the Commission’s decision was expected. Panama might possibly have been chosen, but that fetid little Colombian province was already a monument to the folly of French canal engineers. After twenty-two years of mismanagement, scandal, disease, and death, all that was left of Ferdinand de Lesseps’s grand canal du Panama was a gang of lethargic workers, some crumbling buildings and rusty machinery, and an immense, muddy scar reverting to jungle.

  Nicaragua, in contrast, offered a virgin landscape, a healthy climate, one hundred miles of navigable freshwater, and the lowest pass in the Cordilleras. Its leaders were unanimously eager to reach an agreement with the United States, whereas those of Colombia were divided by civil war, unable to treat with their own rebels, let alone representatives of a foreign power.

  And yet—this was Hearst’s real news—one sentence in the report implied that the Commission was not wholehearted about its recommendation:

  There are certain physical advantages, such as a shorter canal line, a more complete knowledge of the country through which it passes, and lower cost of maintenance and operation in favor of the Panama route, but the price fixed by the Panama Canal Company for the sale of its property and franchises is so unreasonable that its acceptance cannot be recommended by this Commission.

  Minus that extra compensation—$109 million—a Panama Canal would cost $156 million, as opposed to $200 million for a Nicaragua Canal. And it would be finished sooner, thanks to the French excavations. So mere economics had kept the commissioners from endorsing the private preference of the President of the United States.

  ROOSEVELT FINISHED READING his revised Message aloud to the Cabinet on 22 November. All twenty-five thousand words were his own work. Previous Presidents had done little more than to collate and introduce the reports of executive departments. But he was still a writer, with a writer’s reluctance to sign prose he had not composed, or at least edited. Feeling a sudden revulsion for the ink-stained typescript, he sent it off to be printed.

  Twelve days still intervened before the reassembly of Congress. He decided that he wanted to be alone with his family for a while, somewhere away from Washington. The executive yacht Sylph was rigged, and Navy Yard cannons primed for a twenty-one-gun salute. By 3:30 that afternoon, the Roosevelts were on their way up Pennsylvania Avenue. Passersby were touched to see the President kissing four-year-old Quentin, first on one chubby cheek, then the other.

  BACK IN MINNESOTA, James J. Hill saluted his own child, Mary, in his own fashion, with twenty dollars in gold. He had earned them during his first few days as president of the Northern Securities Company. “It is the hardest job I have ever undertaken,” he said, in the voice of a man whose ambitions were complete.

  WHILE THE SYLPH cruised the lower Potomac, through chill salt mists, Americans browsed a syndicated newspaper article entitled TEDDY’S HOROSCOPE. The astrologist-author noted that Theodore Roosevelt had become President under a remarkable coincidence of Capricorn and Aquarius. This meant that, beginning in 1902, his Administration would bring about many changes, particularly with respect to “laws” and “treaties.” He would increase the nation’s military power, and go on to handle “vast political problems, the like of which we do not dream of today.”

  Although Roosevelt was a man much influenced by Mars, he was likely to be peaceable in foreign affairs. His aggression would spill out on the domestic front. (But he would be asking for trouble if he tried to bully Congress.) There was likely to be “a remarkable recrudescence” of social violence soon. While some years of prosperity lay ahead, “a crash is surely coming, and securities will drop to rock bottom.”

  The President need not worry about ill health or assassination. But he was fated to suffer “the death of some intimate friend … or cabinet official, probably the latter.”

  JOHN HAY’S AVUNCULAR fondness for Theodore Roosevelt had became almost grandfatherly as he watched him struggle toward statesmanship. The President, he wrote a friend, was “a young fellow of infinite dash and originality.”

  Although Hay was sometimes embarrassed by Roosevelt’s gaucheries, he forgave them as folies de jeunesse. Youth, as the President kept saying, was “a curable disease.” How boyish of Theodore not to notice, that final freezing Friday before Congress assembled, that the Cabinet Room fire was unlit, and that some of his older officers were still in their overcoats! And how charmingly unpretentious—when he at last did notice—to light the logs himself, and coax them to flame!

  CHAPTER 4

  A Message from the President

  On th’ wan hand I wud stamp them undher fut; on th’ other hand, not so fast.

  SHORTLY BEFORE NOON on Tuesday, 3 December 1901, a committee of senators and representatives called upon the President. They announced that the Fifty-seventh Congress was in session, and “ready to receive any communication” he might want to make. The delegation bowed out, and returned to Capitol Hill by official carriage. After a polite interval, one of Roosevelt’s own monogrammed vehicles followed. It drew up outside the House of Representatives, and a White House secretary jumped out with an enormous manila envelope.

  Octavius L. Pruden had carried thirty presidential messages up the Capitol steps, but this was the heaviest yet. It consisted of two duplicate eighty-page volumes—one for the House, one for the Senate. Each was silk-lined, leather-bound, gold-stamped, and sealed with the presidential wafer. A Secret Service man, marching beside Pruden, kept guard over the precious cargo.

  Actually, the content of Roosevelt’s Message was the worst-kept secret since the Declaration of Independence. For at least six weeks, White House guests had been treated to stentorian readings of the author’s favorite passages. Newspaper presses across the country held every word in cold type, and in Britain and Europe the Message was already being published and commented on.

  Even so, Congress was tense with anticipation when Pruden appeared at the door of the House and announced, “A message from the President of the United States.” Speaker David B. Henderson took delivery of the first volume and broke its seal. He was surprised to see printed text, instead of the traditional formal copperplate. A reading clerk took it from him, and flicked through to the end. “Yes, sir, it is signed.” Henderson shrugged. The clerk in-toned Roosevelt’s opening sentence: “The Congress assembles this year in the shadow of a great calamity.”

  There was an immediate reaction. Presidential messages were supposed to begin blandly, with hackneyed phrases about the United States being at peace with mankind. But as the clerk continued to read, it was clear that Roosevelt was all business.

  William McKinley, he said, was the victim of a chillingly modern breed of assassin. Lincoln and Garfield had been martyrs for the kind of government they stood for; today’s political killer wanted to destroy government itself. Roosevelt began to eulogize his predecessor, but rage against Czolgosz diverted him into a magnificent six-minute tirade against anarchism, and those who abused the First Amendment by inciting it. The reading clerk could not help but perform histrionically: “The wind is sowed by the men who preach such doctrines, and they cannot escape their responsibility for the whirlwind that is reaped.… If ever anarchy is triumphant, its triumph will last for but one red moment, to be succeeded for ages by the gloomy night of despotism.”

  The House sat rapt as Roosevelt demanded federal jurisdiction over attacks on the presidential line of succession, and a ban on all politically violent immigrants. “They and those like them should be kept out of this country; and if found here they should be promptly deported to the country whence they came; and far-reaching provision should be made for the punishment of those who stay.… The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is kindled it burns like a consuming flame.”

  At this, the spell over the listening representatives broke. The sound of their applause rolled after Pruden as he hurried down the c
orridor to make his second delivery.

  THE SENATE, in contrast to the brilliantly lit House, was not yet illuminated for business. Dull winter sunshine seeped through the glass roof, too faint to reach the floor. Pruden hesitated in the doorway while senators settled like shadows into their chairs. A page relieved the messenger of his burden. Not until it was placed on the chief clerk’s lectern did somebody throw a switch; Roosevelt’s first words were heralded by a flood of incandescent light.

  For a quarter of an hour, the seated company listened silently. Paperbound offprints of the Message—another novelty—were distributed, and senators began following the text like dutiful pupils.

  “During the last five years business confidence has been restored, and the nation is to be congratulated because of its present abounding prosperity.”

  Mark Hanna sat nodding solemnly at his own revisions. Henry Cabot Lodge, the President’s best friend, lounged nearby, looking, as usual, as if he was about to go to sleep. But every now and again he unscrewed his fountain pen and endorsed a passage that appealed to him.

  “The captains of industry who have driven the railway systems across this continent, who have built up our commerce, who have developed our manufactures, have on the whole done great good to our people.”

  As Roosevelt swung into his much-edited subsection on trusts, Senator John Coit Spooner (R., Wisconsin) got up and walked across the room. Spectators in the press gallery watched the small, pigeon-toed figure, guessing that it would stop at one of three desks. These, and Spooner’s own, were the four corners of Republican power on Capitol Hill.

  SPOONER, AT FIFTY-EIGHT, had the fastest mind, best constitutional knowledge, and most lethal wit in Congress. No senator could match him in debate; he was a scholar of classical rhetoric, and when short of a riposte—which was seldom—he could quote from Cicero or John Wilkes. He was equally dangerous as a listener, specializing in gadfly questions that stung ponderous orators. His very appearance stamped him as unique. In a chamber luxuriant with beards and mustaches, Spooner’s clean, chiseled features glowed pale as stone. It was an arresting, almost shocking face, with an imperious twitch to the nostrils. Great waves of hair, polished pince-nez, and oversize cravats softened the cold sculpture. They suggested a frustrated actor. If so, the part Spooner most longed to play was that of President of the United States. But he had always been too spontaneous, and too impatient, for campaign teamwork. Solo improvisation suited him better.

  His perambulation ended at the desk of William Boyd Allison (R., Iowa). Stooping, he began to whisper in the old man’s ear. Rooseveltian rhetoric continued to echo over their heads:

  “Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great industrial combinations … known as ‘trusts,’ appeal especially to hatred and fear.… The whole history of the world shows that legislation will generally be both unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm enquiry and with sober self-restraint.”

  Here were cautious words to appeal to Senator Allison—if Spooner’s whispering allowed him to hear them. Throughout his political career, “the Old Fox” had counseled due process in lawmaking. His genius was the resolution of discord; his vanity was to affect humility. Not once in his seventy-two years had he expressed a public point of view. Colleagues joked that if the road from Des Moines to Washington was a piano keyboard, “Allison could run all the way without ever striking a note.”

  This legerdepied kept him from being beholden to anybody, while gratifying everybody. When legislation arose to favor the urban East, Senator Allison modified it so as not to alienate the rural West. If Southern Democrats forced bills upon him to benefit their poorer constituents, he attached innocent-looking amendments and profited Wall Street as well. But his moderating did not make him moderate. Like Spooner, Allison was a Hamiltonian fiscal conservative.

  Poised in his equilibrium, he was upset by any shock, and could lash out with the sudden bitchiness of old age. Friends forgave him these outbursts. They knew he was tormented by a swelling prostate. Allison’s weary shuffle, his dark-brown, nicotinous smell—the very breath of the antebellum—guaranteed deference in a chamber worshipful of seniority.

  “All this is true, and yet it is also true that there are real and grave evils.”

  In the front row of the chamber, beneath the reading clerk, sat a senator even hoarier than Allison. At seventy-four, Orville H. Platt (R., Connecticut) was the éminence grise of the Republican leadership. No relation to Thomas C. Platt of New York (Roosevelt’s ancient enemy, senescent now in a forgotten corner), he served as the Senate’s spiritual mentor, its legislative and ethical conscience.

  There was something Lincolnesque about Platt’s grooved, bearded face, and the awkwardness of his six-foot-four-inch frame. Scholarly, mild, logical, and reclusive, Platt was almost a caricature of New England bookishness; his idea of an amusing evening was to read Greek to his wife. But the mildness was deceptive. Few senators worked more aggressively on behalf of big business.

  “There is a widespread conviction,” the clerk declaimed, “ … that combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment this conviction is right.”

  Spooner returned to his seat. The outburst that none of Roosevelt’s advisers had been able to suppress was coming. “It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate form … they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations.… Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.”

  If Nelson W. Aldrich (R., Rhode Island) deduced that Roosevelt was sounding the keynote of his presidency, he showed no sign. The sixty-year-old “Manager of the United States” looked as he always did: big, handsome, placid, nonchalantly powerful. His brow was calm, his silvery mustache stiff, his black eyes steady on the page before him.

  “The first essential in determining how to deal with the great industrial corporations is knowledge of the facts—publicity.”

  Aldrich’s was a classic poker face. Indeed, he was champion of a private poker game at which he, Spooner, Allison, and Platt formulated policy. So elite was this little circle, so doubly dedicated to cards and politics, that its interests tended to fuse; the house would deal tariff schedules, pension bills, and aces of clubs interchangeably. Most evenings, Aldrich collected.

  His power derived in part from natural authority, in part from pure memory. Spooner was quicker, and the two senior members were perhaps wiser, but none could match Aldrich’s command of information. No matter how raw the data—ore piles of statistics, a rubble of currency regulations—he processed them with the silent efficiency of a kiln. Consequently, he was the Senate’s ranking expert on such subjects as paper-money circulation, railroad bonds, and free wool. His actions on these issues did not usually make headlines, but Aldrich never cared for publicity.

  Roosevelt, in contrast, seemed to equate it with democracy. “In the interest of the public, the government should have the right to inspect and examine the workings of the great corporations.”

  As far as Aldrich was concerned, news was noise, an intrusive bedlam that disturbed the quiet condominium of government and economy. The more attention public servants enjoyed, the more they would want to be seen to be doing, at the expense of free entrepreneurs.

  “The nation should, without interfering with the power of the States in the matter itself, also assume power of supervision and regulation over all corporations doing interstate business.”

  Aldrich believed that, on the contrary, the nation could do with a little “supervision and regulation” by businessmen. He was himself a successful railroad executive. “I would undertake to run this government for three hundred million a year less than it is now run for,” he said. Since this was not constit
utionally possible, he could at least control the United States Senate to a greater degree than it had ever known. With a majority of 55 to 31, and a supplementary majority of 187 to 151 in the House, he might even manage to control Theodore Roosevelt as well.

  “I believe that a law can be framed …”

  THE SENATE WAS popularly and inaccurately known as “The Millionaires’ Club.” Aldrich protested that he, for one, had begun life as a wholesale grocer. Ordinary Americans saw magazine pictures of his palatial house on Narragansett Bay, noted that his daughter had just married John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and doubted that the Senator would recognize a grocery now if he saw one.

  Aldrich was indeed extremely rich, but he told the truth about his origins. There were a few other self-made millionaires in the Senate; aristocratic millionaires, like Lodge, formed an even smaller minority. Only sixteen members could be described as wealthy or well-born. Orville Platt was not ashamed to admit that he had never seen more than a hundred spare dollars in his life. The remaining seventy-four senators were divided evenly between the middle and working classes. Far from representing an “alliance between business and politics”—another popular fallacy—fewer than one in four represented commerce or industry. Most were lawyers of ordinary accomplishment.

  What held them together was their collective dedication to politics as a profession. Conscience, not corruption, kept the average senator in office. He worked seven days a week, assisted by one secretary and one typist, for five thousand dollars a year—one tenth of what Roosevelt earned. Venality was a constant temptation, but only the most unscrupulous senators, men such as Matthew Quay and Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania, fattened at the public trough.

  Under Aldrich’s management, the Senate was disciplined and hierarchical in structure. Younger members rose by patience and labor. Not even such a brilliant upstart as Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana (ardent, golden-haired, Botticellian) could hope for early privilege. Committee seats were rewards for loyalty and efficiency, and Allison dispensed them with a fine eye for political balance. Positions of power were rotated by the Republican leadership. Aldrich chaired Finance, with Spooner, Allison, and Platt sitting to his left and right. The same quartet, but with Allison in the chair, controlled the Republican steering committee, which in turn controlled all legislative business. Aldrich dominated Interstate Commerce and Cuba Relations; Allison, Appropriations; Spooner and Platt, Judiciary. A few other GOP senators—Hanna, Lodge, George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts, Eugene Hale of Maine—helped swell the ranks of this conservative elite.

 

‹ Prev