Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

  55 “No, I guess not,” Lung, “Roosevelt’s Narrow Escape”; New York Sun, 4 Sept. 1902; Lovering in Boston Journal, same date.

  56 He saw a man New York Sun, 4 Sept. 1902.

  57 “God-damned outrage” Lovering, “Eyewitness.” Many newspapers moderated this language, extremely unusual for TR. But at least two contemporary reporters quoted it verbatim (New York World and Lovering), and TR himself admitted it in an impromptu interview with Lovering later that afternoon. Finley Peter Dunne recounted the incident in his next “Mr. Dooley” column. “I can’t tell ye [what Roosevelt said] till I get mad. But I’ll tell ye this much, a barn-boss that was standin’ by and heerd it, said he niver before regretted his father hadn’t sint him to Harvard.” Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 223–25.

  58 As his heir John Hay to Alvey A. Adee, 4 Sept. 1902 (JH).

  59 At the time W. Murray Crane to Henry Cabot Lodge, 4 Sept. 1902 (HCL) (“His fighting spirit was up and he wanted to punish someone”); New York Sun, 4 Sept. 1902.

  60 Roosevelt did not New York Sun, 4 Sept. 1902.

  61 QUENTIN WAS INDEED The New York Times, 4 Sept. 1902. An illustration in Lorant, Life and Times, 380, shows TR speaking in Lenox, Mass., just after the accident, despite the massive disfigurement of his face. He insisted on appearing also at other scheduled stops in Connecticut before returning home on the Sylph.

  62 He was sentenced Judgment qu. in Pittsfield Sun, 22 Jan. 1903.

  63 Memories of “poor” New York Tribune, 16 Sept. 1902; Harper’s Weekly, n.d., in Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

  64 “It takes more” New York Tribune, 16 Sept. 1902. Mark Hanna endorsed at least the first part of TR’s statement. “You may be hung,” he wrote him, “but you will certainly not be killed by a ‘Trolley car,’ ” 4 Sept. 1902 (TRP).

  Chronological Note: TR remained only one night in Oyster Bay, before proceeding south on the second of his campaign swings, a five-day trip through West Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. His speeches largely echoed those of his New England trip.

  65 Only Edith knew For a medical article arguing that the Pittsfield trauma was, at least in part, ultimately the cause of TR’s death, see Robert C. Kimberley, “The Health of Theodore Roosvelt,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal 5.3 (summer 1979).

  CHAPTER 10: THE CATASTROPHE NOW IMPENDING

  1 It was different Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 49–50.

  2 THE PRESIDENTIAL EAGLE New York Herald, 20 Sept. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 326. 144 The question was Sage, William Boyd Allison, 225–27.

  3 “We favor such” Qu. in Literary Digest, 16 Aug. 1902.

  4 In other words TR to J. G. Schurman, 11 Aug. 1902 (TRP); Robert LaFollette autobiographical manuscript “B,” 247 (RLF).

  5 This “Iowa Idea” TR to J. G. Schurman, 11 Aug. 1902, and TR to Mark Hanna et al., 1 Sept. 1902 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 327, 313. For a discussion of the wildly popular Iowa Idea and Western insurgency, see Fowler, John Coit Spooner, chap. 10.

  6 Senators Allison Fowler, John Coit Spooner, chap. 10; Merrill, Republican Command, 117; Washington Evening Star, 16 Sept. 1902.

  7 But Governor Cummins’s Bolles, Tyrant from Illinois, 37–38; David P. Thelen, Robert M. LaFollette and the Insurgent Spirit (Boston, 1976), 49; “Though commercial competitors we are, commercial enemies we must not be.… The period of exclusiveness is past.” Qu. in Alexander K. McClure and Charles Morris, William McKinley (New York, 1901), 309.

  8 McKinley’s successor Sereno E. Payne to TR, 15 Aug. 1902 (TRP). Carleton Putnam sagely remarks that TR was not equipped to understand tariff policy because there was no clear right or wrong to it (Theodore Roosevelt, 500–501). “Political economists are pretty generally agreed,” TR wrote in Thomas Hart Benton (1887), “that protectionism is vicious in theory and harmful in practice.” Yet by 1902 he saw “no reason” why Americans should not have it, if most of them wanted it. See TR, Letters, vol. 3, 312–13, and for a detailed study, James A. Rosmond, “Nelson Aldrich, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Tariff: A Study to 1905,” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1974).

  9 His failure eighteen Literary Digest, 27 Sept. 1902. The word reciprocity does not even appear in the index to the 1902 Republican Campaign Textbook.

  10 Tariff reform Literary Digest, 16 Aug. 1902; TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 192–94; Merrill, Republican Command, 116–20.

  11 During the next TR, Letters, vol. 3, 313, 326–27; Merrill, Republican Command, 122–23.

  12 DISEMBARKING ON Chicago Tribune, 20 Sept. 1902.

  13 When the train Pittsburgh Dispatch, 20 Sept. 1902. Quay and his colleague Boies Penrose had met with George Baer on 3 Sept. in a vain attempt to persuade him to arbitrate (Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 132). On the same day, TR, concerned at mounting violence in the anthracite country and criticisms of his own aloofness, released a report on the situation by Carroll D. Wright. This evenhanded document admitted a climate of “no confidence” and “distrust” on either side, but held that both had “reasonable and just” grievances that needed to be publicly adjudicated. Ibid., 109; The Independent, 18 Sept. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 327.

  14 No sooner had New York Sun and Pittsburgh Dispatch, 20 Sept. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 327. Sargent is wrongly identified as Carroll D. Wright in the last-named source. For the story of Quay and Penrose’s attempt to influence strike negotiations, see Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 132–40.

  15 Roosevelt sent a TR, Letters, vol. 3, 327.

  16 HIS LEFT LEG Medical bulletin in Washington Evening Star, 24 Sept. 1902. The complete text of TR’s speech, his finest trust policy statement as President, is in Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 169–83.

  17 It was the first TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 175–76, 178.

  18 Speaking lucidly Ibid., 178.

  19 By choosing two Ibid., 183–84.

  20 At last the audience Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, The Cincinnati Enquirer, and Detroit Today, 21 Sept. 1902.

  21 A REPORTER COVERING Detroit Today, 22 Sept. 1902.

  22 Actually, the main Ibid.

  23 Early the next morning Detroit Evening News, 22 Sept. 1902; Detroit Tribune, 23 Sept. 1902; Presidential scrapbook (TRP).

  24 Speculation that Indianapolis Journal, 24 Sept. 1902; TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 187–95.

  25 The tariff, for TR, Presidential Addresses and State Papers, vol. 1, 191, 193.

  26 Standing awkwardly Ibid., 194; The Washington Post, 24 Sept. 1902. Spooner wrote dryly to Senator Allison: “Some of it you undoubtedly recognize as familiar.” Merrill, Republican Command, 123.

  27 WITH FURTHER ROARS Washington Evening Star, 24 Sept. 1902. Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of the events of 23 Sept. 1902 is based on “President Roosevelt’s Injury,” Indiana Medical Journal, Oct. 1902; Indianapolis Evening News, 23 Sept. 1902; and The Washington Post, 24 Sept. 1902.

  28 From Logansport station The Washington Post and Indianapolis Evening News, 24 Sept. 1902.

  29 “The President has” The Washington Post, 24 Sept. 1902.

  30 “Elihu … if” Memorandum, ca. 25 Sept. 1902 (GBC).

  31 Root paced up Ibid.

  32 The President moved Ibid.; “President Roosevelt’s Injury”; New York World, 26 Oct. 1902.

  33 Dr. George H. Medical bulletins in The Washington Post, 24 and 29 Sept. 1902; Dr. Lung qu. in Brooklyn Eagle, 9 Jan. 1919.

  34 At five o’clock Douglas, Many-Sided Roosevelt, 96; The Washington Post, 24 Sept. 1902; Indianapolis Evening News, 23 Sept. 1902.

  35 Successive bulletins Alvey A. Adee to John Hay, 24 Sept. 1902 (JH); The Washington Post, 29 Sept. 1902; Indianapolis Sentinel, 24 Sept. 1902.

  36 PAINTERS AND PLASTERERS EKR Diary, 24 Sept. 1902 (TRC); The Washington Post, 25 Sept. 1902.

  37 She established him Presidential scrapbook (TRP); Philander Knox to The Washington Post, 25 Sept. 1902; Chicago Tri
bune, 25 Sept. 1902.

  38 He regretted that TR, Letters, vol. 3, 328; The Washington Post, 30 Sept. 1902; Merrill, Republican Command, 127; Willis Van Devanter to F. E. Warren, 13 May 1903 (WVD).

  39 That did not TR, Letters, vol. 3, 335; New York World, 28 Sept. 1902; Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna, 417ff.

  40 Right now, he TR, Letters, vol. 3, 335.

  41 ON SUNDAY, 28 Washington Evening Star, 29 Sept. 1902.

  Note: Dr. Rixey was the father of Lilian Rixey, author of Bamie.

  42 The President’s EKR to Kermit Roosevelt, 28 Sept. 1902 (TRC); Dr. Rixey testimony in Roosevelt vs. Newett: A Transcript of the Testimony Taken and Depositions Read at Marquette, Michigan, May 6–31, 1913 (privately printed, 1914; copy in TRB), 66, 306–7; “President Roosevelt’s Injury”; EKR to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., ca. 29 Sept. 1902 (TRJR); Washington Evening Star, 29 Sept. 1902.

  43 CHILL WEATHER George H. Gordon to John Mitchell, 27 Sept. 1902 (JM); Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 174; Low to TR, 2 Oct. 1902 (TRP). According to Wiebe, “Anthracite Coal Strike,” 244, the panic was unnecessary. If the operators had allowed their trains to haul bituminous coal (which was in plentiful supply, and which Mitchell had not embargoed), “all market demands could have been met.” In any case, fairly adequate supplies of bituminous coal got through somehow. There never was, as TR believed, “a coal famine.” For another account, see Arthur M. Schaefer, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Contribution to the Concept of Presidential Intervention in Labor Disputes: Antecedents and the 1902 Coal Strike,” in Naylor et al., Theodore Roosevelt, 201–20.

  44 Henry Cabot Lodge Henry Cabot Lodge to TR, 22 and 27 Sept. 1902 (TRP).

  45 “Literally nothing,” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 331. Heman W. Chaplin argues in The Coal Mines and the Public: A Popular Statement of the Legal Aspects of the Coal Problem, and the Rights of Consumers as the Situation Exists (New York, 1902) that TR actually was entitled to intervene under the Sherman Act (55).

  46 He suspected that TR, Letters, vol. 3, 331–32.

  47 “Unfortunately the strength” Ibid.

  48 Two days later Washington Evening Star, 30 Sept. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 359–60; Henry Lawrence, Memories of a Happy Life (Boston, 1926), 156; TR to John J. Leary, Leary Notebooks (TRC).

  49 Crane suggested Carolyn W. Johnson, Winthrop Murray Crane: A Study in Republican Leadership, 1892–1920 (Northampton, Mass., 1967), 27–30; Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 176; TR to John J. Leary, Leary Notebooks (TRC).

  50 Roosevelt was not TR to Hanna, 27 Sept. 1902 (TRP); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 360.

  51 In the cool Qu. in Jacob A. Riis, Theodore Roosevelt the Citizen (Washington, D.C., 1904), 376. Crane is generally given credit for persuading TR to hold a strike conference, but the initial idea appears to have come from John Mitchell, who wrote Mark Hanna on 8 Sept. 1902, “The strike might be brought to a close if you could have the President write the railroad presidents and our officers to meet with him and you to try to adjust our differences” (MIT).

  52 He showed them TR, Letters, vol. 3, 360; Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 470.

  53 He got his The following text is from the original “Memo to the President dictated by P. C. Knox as representing his views and those of Mr. Crane, Mr. Moody, and Mr. Payne,” 30 Sept. 1902 (PCK).

  54 Roosevelt struck out Ibid.; Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 182, misdates this memorandum as 3 Oct. 1902. TR deleted the phrase no precedent in other strikes will be created when he made his own public statement later.

  55 THE COAL STRIKE Horace N. Fisher to Knox, 1 Oct. 1902, and Edwin E. Hoyt to Harry Hoyt, 6 Oct. 1902 (PCK); Pottsville Miners Journal, 24 Sept. 1902; Literary Digest, 4 Oct. 1902. Press accounts tended to exaggerate the violence, just as secretive Slavs downplayed it. John Mitchell admitted to six deaths, then seven. Stewart Culin, who spent six weeks touring the anthracite country, reported that not a day went by without “one or more” funeral procession. In the end, only three murders could be officially documented. John Mitchell to T. J. Sauerford, 1 Oct. 1902 (JM); Culin, Trooper’s Narrative, 38–40; Anthracite Coal Commission, Report to the President, 73.

  56 Mark Hanna wrote Hanna to TR, 29 Sept. 1902 (TRP).

  57 “The present miner” Press statement, 29 Sept. 1902 (JM).

  58 Sentimentalities of this Even as TR prepared to make his “impartial” intervention in the strike, a consignment of nonunion anthracite arrived in Washington “for the exclusive use of the Executive Mansion” (Washington Evening Star, 22 Oct. 1902). Plenty of reserve anthracite was secretly shipped out of eastern Pennsylvania to elite customers. Culin, Trooper’s Narrative, 28, mentions “the low roar of distant trains, moving coal under the protection of darkness.”

  59 “socialistic action” This was no neurosis. For an example of the sort of radical activism already centering around John Mitchell, see the “Program of Reforms” drawn up by his friend Henry Demarest Lloyd, a leading socialist intellectual. The document calls for sweeping nationalizations of industry, punitive taxes on wealth, profit restrictions on private investment, and “immediate registration of all citizens.” Chester Destler, Henry Demarest Lloyd and the Empire of Reform (Philadelphia, 1963), 472.

  60 I SHOULD GREATLY TR, Letters, vol. 3, 334.

  61 Duplicate telegrams A. J. Cassatt to TR, 2 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 179.

  62 “Doesn’t that just” New York World, 3 Oct. 1902. The idea that anthracite miners, by exclusively striking an exclusive resource, were a “trust” in restraint of trade was not new. Knox had received several Sherman Act petitions to that effect, including one from Willcox himself. But he rejected them on the same grounds that he disallowed antitrust prosecution of the operators. “The miners’ activities are clearly restricted to production, a field in which the State [of Pennsylvania]’s power is necessarily exclusive.” P. C. Knox to TR, 7 June 1902, and “Memorandum on Mr. Ross’s letter,” 7 Oct. 1902, both in PCK.

  CHAPTER 11: A VERY BIG AND ENTIRELY NEW THING

  1 It’ll be a hard New York Journal, 17 Oct. 1902.

  2 CURIOUS ONLOOKERS Except where otherwise indicated, descriptive and atmospheric details of the coal-strike conference are based on reports in the Washington Evening Star, 3 Oct. 1902, and The New York Times and The Washington Post, 4 Oct. 1902.

  3 Actually, he had George Cortelyou interviewed by N. W. Stephenson, Aug. 1927 (NWA).

  4 For almost an Washington Evening Star, 3 Oct. 1902; visual description of Mitchell based on photographs and studio portraits in JM. Other details from “Mitchell, Leader of Men,” profile in World’s Work, 25 Oct. 1902, and Frank J. Warne, “John Mitchell: The Labor Leader and the Man,” Review of Reviews, Nov. 1902.

  5 While George Cortelyou Walter Wellman, “The Inside History of the Great Coal Strike,” Collier’s Weekly, 18 Oct. 1902 (illustrated).

  6 Eben B. Thomas Ibid. For Markle’s cruelty to employees, see Miller and Sharpless, Kingdom of Coal, 259, 272.

  7 “Gentlemen,” said New York World, 4 Oct. 1902.

  8 “Dee-lighted,” The following account of the coal-strike conference is based on Report of the Conference Between the President and Representatives of the Anthracite Coal Companies and Representatives of the United Mine Workers of America, October 3, 1902 (Washington, D.C., 1903). TR’s own account appears in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 359–66. Because TR himself notes that the transcript does not include “all of the invectives of the operators,” the author has also relied on a few obvious “news leaks” from participants. Cortelyou, for example, is clearly Walter Wellman’s source for “Inside History.” Other sources are New York Sun and New York World, 4 Oct. 1902. The latter features on-the-spot drawings.

  9 He began to John Mitchell interviewed by J. J. Curran, The Survey, 18 Jan. 1919.

  10 A yard or two George Cortelyou interviewed by N. W. Stephenson, Aug. 1927 (NWA).

  11 Laying down his Report of the Conference, 4; New York World, 4 Oct. 1902.

  12 “Mr. President, I” Report of the
Conference, 4; New York Tribune, 4 Oct. 1902. 158 “Before considering” Report of the Conference, 4.

  13 THE OPERATORS RETURNED John Markle, in Robert J. Spence, John Markle, Representative American (New York, 1929), 110–12, recalled being surprised and angered by the abrupt termination of the morning session. He erred, however, in saying that he protested this treatment at once. The transcript indicates he did so later.

  14 Roosevelt had See TR to Seth Low, 3 Oct. 1902: “I read to the operators and miners this morning the paper which you have probably seen in this afternoon’s press.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 337.

  15 A BOWL OF WHITE New York World, 4 Oct. 1902.

  16 “Do we understand” The New York Times, 4 Oct. 1902. The following dialogue is reconstructed from accounts in ibid.; New York World, 4 Oct. 1902; Wellman, “Inside History”; George Cortelyou interviewed by N. W. Stephenson, Aug. 1927 (NWA).

  17 Roosevelt, perhaps Carroll Wright, the most unbiased man in the room, felt that the operators had some good reasons to be angry. Edward Hoyt to Harry Hoyt, 6 Oct. 1902 (PCK).

  18 Roosevelt stared New York World, 4 Oct. 1902.

  19 For five months Report of the Conference, 6.

  20 By now Baer’s Ibid., 6.

  21 The phrase free TR’s face was reportedly “a study” as Baer instructed him on his “duty.” Wellman, “Inside History.”

  22 Baer concluded Report of the Conference, 6. Mitchell was gracious enough to acknowledge Baer’s offer in the days immediately following. Baer then went further, saying that the operators would accept adjudication by any court the President cared to specify. Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, 200.

  23 Obliquely, Baer Carroll D. Wright, “Memo for the President: Reasons for the Appointment of the Anthracite Coal Commission,” 19 Nov. 1903 (TRP); Wiebe, “Anthracite Coal Strike,” 243; Baer, “Statement”; Stuyvesant Fish to TR, 3 Oct. 1902 (TRP). The latter document, urging the President not to force a settlement, lest it prevent the “legitimate extension” of the soft-coal business, afforded TR much sardonic amusement. See Henry Cabot Lodge, Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884–1918 (New York, 1925), vol. 1, 541.