The puppet comparison worked best. At six foot four, Fairbanks moved and spoke as if he had no life of his own. His voice seemed to emanate from some inner Edison cylinder, and his gestures were correct but mechanical, as if jerked by hidden wires. At exhortatory moments, his fist would clench, always in the same upheld position. Whenever he delivered a warning, a lank forefinger would shoot up, and he would rock back on his heels. From time to time, both hands would snap open like fans, and remain open until he shook them shut.
This awkwardness was oddly compelling on the hustings. But what made Fairbanks so effective was what had made him a millionaire at forty, a quiet power in the Senate, and a presidential possibility for 1908: he simply could not be stopped. The voice droned on relentlessly, the arms kept pumping, and the long legs kept striding, wherever Nathan B. Scott sent him, from White River Junction, Vermont, to Spokane, Washington. Hundreds were amused; thousands bored; hundreds of thousands convinced. If Roosevelt demonstrated the power of personality in American politics, Charles Fairbanks showed the benefit of persistence.
The first tests of their combined appeal came on 6 and 13 September, when voters in Vermont and Maine went to the polls to elect governors. August Belmont, who seemed to be managing Parker’s campaign over the head of the Democratic National Committee, did not conceal his anxiety. Both states were Republican strongholds, but if the GOP margin was significantly reduced in either, Democrats could take heart for November. In Vermont, however, the Democratic candidate was defeated by a margin greater than even Cortelyou hoped for, and another Republican surge was registered in Maine.
“Unless we throw it away, we have the victory,” a satisfied President declared.
Nothing was heard from the gray house at Esopus but Parker’s usual booming silence. The judge—now retired from the Court of Appeals—remained as inscrutable as if he were still wearing silk. Joseph Pulitzer, the strident owner of the New York World, began to have second thoughts about him. “The people need a judicial Chief Magistrate, but not too judicial a candidate.”
THE PRESIDENT CHOSE this moment to issue his long-awaited acceptance letter, a twelve-thousand-word enlargement upon his acceptance speech, covering every aspect of Republican policy. At least twelve close advisers—including Root, Cortelyou, Spooner, and a cross-section of lawyers and journalists—had added their own contributions, but the letter’s clarity and comprehensiveness were pure Roosevelt, as were its ideological blows at Parker. Coinciding as it did with the GOP triumph in Maine, it had the dizzying effect of a follow-up punch.
Its basic theme was the self-contradiction of the St. Louis platform, which failed to reconcile Cleveland’s urban conservatism with Bryan’s agrarian radicalism. “Our opponents …” Roosevelt wrote, “seem at a loss, both as to what it is that they really believe, and as to how firmly they shall assert their belief in anything.” After eight years of screaming for free silver, they now called for gold—but only because Judge Parker told them to. They solemnly endorsed the civil-service law, “the repeal of which they demanded in 1900 and 1896.” As for the issue of Philippine independence, “they have occupied three entirely different positions within fifty days.”
He proclaimed his own consistency, emphasizing that if elected he would proceed “on exactly the same lines” in national defense, insular administration, tariff policy, and management-labor relations. Without even a pass at modesty, he listed his eighteen proudest executive achievements, including the coal-strike settlement, arbitration of the Venezuela crisis, establishment of the Department of Commerce and Labor, dispatch of the Kishinev petition, and “decisive actions” in Panama, Tangier, and Smyrna. “There is not a policy, foreign or domestic, which we are now carrying out, which it would not be disastrous to reverse or abandon.”
Sonorously he concluded: “We have striven both for civic righteousness and for national greatness; and we have faith to believe that our hands will be upheld by all who feel love of country and trust in the uplifting of mankind.”
The President’s letter was greeted rapturously by Republicans and ruefully by Democrats. Even Harper’s Weekly, usually his bitter critic, praised it as “a masterful and extraordinarily able document.” John Hay wrote to say that Judge Parker must regret ever quitting the state bench.
“WELL, MY PART is pretty nearly ended,” Roosevelt had to acknowledge, as the Republican National Committee took full charge of his campaign in mid-September. After three years of bossing George Cortelyou, he faced eight weeks of being bossed in return—a novel sensation for any President.
Cortelyou’s first priority was fund-raising, now that Wall Streeters were returning to New York from their country places. So for a while the chairman ceded initiatives to the treasurer. Silver-whiskered, avuncular, discreet, Cornelius Bliss went calling on old friends downtown. In office after paneled office, he was welcomed as a money man among money men, someone who knew the dollar’s political worth as well as its purchasing power. Speaking the language of money, he had little difficulty in getting financiers to admit that Roosevelt had not harmed the workings of laissez-faire. The Northern Securities suit looked, in retrospect, like a necessary check on illegal combination—“salutary from every point of view,” as The Wall Street Journal conceded.
Most of Bliss’s visits ended with the scratch of a pen writing many zeros on a slip of paper, or with the even more satisfying sound of banknotes being counted out. Few donors demanded favors in return. When one did, asking to be appointed Ambassador to Belgium, Cortelyou returned his check. Bliss was not quite so fastidious, provided understandings were kept vague.
“Now, Mr. Bliss, we want to make this contribution,” said John D. Archbold of the Standard Oil Company, handing over $100,000. “But”—he chose his words carefully—“we do not want to do it without its being known and thoroughly approved of by the powers that be.”
Bliss smiled. “You need have no apprehension about it whatever,” he said.
AT 10:00 A.M. ON 22 SEPTEMBER, Judge Parker drove unrecognized through the streets of lower Manhattan. He entered the Hoffman House by a side door and was at once closeted with Democratic campaign planners. As they urgently and gloomily conferred, a bedlam of steam whistles signaled the passage down the East River of an important vessel. It was the USS Sylph, the smaller of Roosevelt’s two official yachts, cruising white and silver between crowds lining either bank. The President strolled on deck accompanied by a bulldog pup and waving a black slouch hat. He was on his way back to Washington.
The bedlam continued as the Sylph rounded Battery Point. Admiral Barker, back from the Mediterranean on the Kearsarge, saluted the Commander-in-Chief with twenty-one thunderous guns. (Meanwhile, Parker was trying to have a working lunch with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.) Roosevelt, enjoying himself, ordered the Sylph to proceed up the West Side. The steam whistles followed him north as far as Grant’s Tomb, before he doubled back and crossed to the railroad dock at Jersey City. Cheers of two thousand welcomers rolled across the Hudson. Finally, at 1:27 P.M., his six-car special got under way, carrying the presidential party, Mr. and Mrs. William Loeb, Jr., six Secret Service men, a governess, the entire summer White House complement of secretaries, stenographers, clerks, and messengers, plus a stallion, a bay mare, a calico pony, Josiah the badger, the bulldog pup, and other pets.
Parker’s next interlocutor was Representative William Cowherd, who informed him that the Democratic congressional campaign was critically short of funds. He would of course need a majority in the House if he expected to prevail as President.
The judge spent another day and night in Manhattan, and by the time he left town on 24 September he was so depressed he would not talk to reporters even about the weather. As soon as he got back to Esopus, he ordered his horse, and rode off alone. For the rest of the afternoon he cantered aimlessly through the countryside.
WHEN ROOSEVELT GOT back to Washington, the little flags on his wall map of the Russo-Japanese War needed reposit
ioning. There now had to be a cluster so close as almost to hide Port Arthur, where the Russian garrison was still under siege. Nearly two hundred miles inland, the Battle of Liao-yang was inconclusively over, with more than forty thousand dead. General Kuropatkin’s army was in retreat on the plains south of Mukden. Marshal Oyama’s forces were extended along the mountain slopes opposite.
This new pattern of flags pleased the President more than it did John Hay, who saw nothing but blood and snow for the rest of the winter, and, trampled underfoot, his cherished Open Door policy for China. “War grows more frightful to me as I grow older,” he confessed. Roosevelt, younger and less sentimental, saw the possibility of a favorable balance of power developing in the East. He was prepared to let the Island Empire colonize Korea—but not Manchuria.
“I would like to see the war ending with Russia and Japan locked in a clinch, counterweighing one another, and both kept weak by the effort,” he told Jules Jusserand. This would safeguard the security of Hawaii and the Philippines. He noticed signs of Japanese exhaustion, as evinced by General Nogi’s failure to take Port Arthur: “Look how long they’ve been predicting its surrender!”
Jusserand, whose own government was allied with the Tsar’s, reported “un notable changement” in Roosevelt’s views to the Quai d’Orsay.
ACCORDING TO ALL THE laws of political navigation, the Democratic campaign vessel, split along ideological lines and commanded by a man who would not steer, should by now have sunk. Amazingly, however, she began to ride higher in the last week of September, and on the first day of October gave off a blast of live steam.
Joseph Pulitzer complained, in an open letter spread across two pages of the New York World, “You have not kept the faith, Mr. President, in your promise of publicity as to the affairs of the corporations.… Why?” Roosevelt’s much-vaunted Bureau of Corporations had been in existence for eighteen months, but Americans still knew nothing of how trust lords such as E. H. Harriman and J. P. Morgan operated. Both men, Pulitzer reported, were giving huge sums to the Republicans. (He did not mention that August Belmont and James J. Hill were doing the same for the Democrats.) “When they give something to Mr. Cortelyou for your campaign … they regard your acceptance of their tribute as an implied promise of protection.” Pulitzer proceeded to ask ten bold-face questions.
How much has the beef trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the paper trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the coal trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the sugar trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the oil trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the tobacco trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the steel trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much have the national banks contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the insurance trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much have the six great railroads contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
The aggregate answer—which Cortelyou declined to give—was: less than half of what Hanna and McKinley had collected from such sources in 1900. Corporate contributions were actually tapering off, since the President seemed such a cinch for election.
Cortelyou’s friends knew him to be a man of almost ludicrous probity. He had spent the last fourteen years paying off debts of honor at maximum interest, despite the forgiveness of his creditors. But these were private matters. Pulitzer’s “Ten Questions” (shrewdly aimed at him, rather than at the well-respected Bliss) amounted to ten very public slurs on Cortelyou’s reputation. Soon Democratic campaign speakers were shouting his name over and over again, along with How much? How much? How much?, until the chorus resounded throughout New York State. Judge Parker alone maintained an austere silence.
All Cortelyou said in response was that the next Administration was going to be “unhampered by a single promise of any kind.” Roosevelt chafed with frustration. He was beginning to have doubts about his choice for chairman. The fighter in him longed to push Cortelyou aside and lead “the most savage counterattack possible.” Bliss wrote urging him to have faith. “Mr. Cortelyou is proving to be all we anticipated, and more: his grasp of the details of the business in hand is remarkable.”
Roosevelt was not soothed. One needed to be more than a detail man to see that winning the White House was not enough: it had to be won in such a way that state houses were won, too—at least those vital to one’s future executive effectiveness. Cortelyou did not seem to “grasp” the necessity of a Republican victory in New York’s gubernatorial contest.
After Elihu Root’s refusal to run, the state GOP had compromised by nominating Lieutenant Governor Frank W. Higgins. Unfortunately, Higgins was a listless candidate whose first reaction to being dubbed “Odell’s stooge” had been to stop campaigning and sulk. The Democratic National Committee, sensing weakness, had begun to lavish money on its own local ticket. If Cortelyou—or someone more forceful—did not immediately kick some fight into Higgins, the second Roosevelt Administration might have to deal with a broken Odell machine and a Tammany Hall governor.
An even worse scenario, not inconceivable in the event of a foreign emergency or major scandal, was that Roosevelt’s current popularity could decline nationwide, to the point that defeat in New York might cost him his Presidency. “Pray get out and put yourself into the canvass at the earliest possible moment,” Roosevelt wrote Higgins. “You and I are in the same boat. We shall sink or swim together.”
Higgins continued to sulk. By the second week of October, gloom over his candidacy was so great that contributions to both the presidential and gubernatorial campaigns dwindled further. “The drift here seems to be against us,” William Dudley Foulke wrote Roosevelt.
At 1 Madison Avenue, the telephone rang for Cortelyou. He was out. Staff rushed in search of Bliss: it was the President calling. But the treasurer was out, too. Senator Scott came on the line.
ROOSEVELT Who is this?
SCOTT Mr. Scott.
ROOSEVELT What is this I hear about Higgins? I hear there is some danger of his being defeated.
SCOTT Well, if the election was now, I fear he would be defeated.
ROOSEVELT What is the trouble?
SCOTT The [state] committee claim that they have no funds.…
ROOSEVELT Well, can’t Mr. Bliss settle that … can’t the state committee raise the funds?
Scott explained that Bliss and Cortelyou had budgeted a quarter of a million dollars for the gubernatorial campaign. Now, just when Odell needed to bolster Higgins’s sagging ratings, the campaign was in default. The President exploded.
ROOSEVELT I would rather lose the election in the country than be defeated in my own state.
SCOTT There is no danger, Mr. President, … no danger whatever of your not carrying the state. If the funds were furnished … I have no doubt we can elect Mr. Higgins.
ROOSEVELT I will send for Mr. Harriman.
E. H. Harriman was a heavy investor in the New York State Republican organization, and therefore wanted to avoid a Higgins defeat. He was also, according to rumor, keen to see his good friend Benjamin B. Odell in the United States Senate. Roosevelt needed to harness the energies of all three men: financier, candidate, and boss.
“In view of the trouble over the State ticket in New York, I should much like to have a few words with you,” he wrote Harriman on 10 October. “Do you think you can get down here within a few days and take either lunch or dinner with me?” Harriman accepted the invitation, but found that his schedule would not allow him to come south in less than a week.
The President detected a whiff of coquettishness, and turned coy himself. “Now, my dear sir, you and I are practical men,” he wrote again. “If you think there is any danger of your visit to me causing trouble, or if you think there is nothing special I should be informed about … why of course give up the visit for the time being.”
Harriman wa
s thus put in the awkward position of having to push for a meeting he had postponed. Roosevelt casually added that there were “certain government matters not connected with the campaign” he had hoped to discuss. The implication was clear. If elected, he would be embarking on a program of railroad rate reform, such as a wise tycoon might want to know about in advance.
When Harriman called for an appointment, he was politely asked what he wanted to see the President about. In the event, he did not get down to Washington until the twentieth, by which time the “October scare” was moderating. Twelve thousand New Yorkers rah-rahing for Roosevelt at Madison Square Garden indicated that the President was still strong in the Empire State, even if Higgins was not.
Roosevelt received Harriman—small, curt, dark, quick—late in the afternoon, alone except for William Loeb, who was soon excused. That evening, the financier returned to the White House for dinner. There were no other guests. Roosevelt spent most of the time talking about New York politics. Whatever else was said, Harriman went back north committed to raising $260,000 on behalf of New York GOP candidates. He had a pleased sense of usefulness and high importance. “They are all in a hole,” he boasted to an aide, “and the President wants me to help them out.”
HARRIMAN PROVED AS good as his word, personally contributing fifty thousand dollars and leaning on several of his Wall Street colleagues. J. P. Morgan, who had once said that Roosevelt would be lucky to raise more than a four-figure sum in the whole financial district, gave one hundred thousand dollars, following up with fifty thousand more. Millionaires virtually stood in line as realization spread that the President was likely to be elected by a historic majority. Chauncey Depew doffed his Senatorial hat, put on that of chairman of the New York Central Railroad, and gave $100,000. Henry Clay Frick gave $50,000, saying that he would be amenable to further requests. George Perkins wrote three separate checks totaling $450,000, with the good wishes of himself, the House of Morgan, and the New York Life Insurance Company. George J. Gould, of Western Union and the Great Northern Railway, gave fully half a million dollars. Other donations came in from executives of Standard Oil, National City Life, General Electric, American Can, and International Harvester.
Theodore Rex Page 47