TO EDWARD B. WHITNEY
San Francisco, November 13,1905
MY DEAR WHITNEY,—I have just returned from a two months' trip through Mexico, from the Rio Grande to Guatemala, and from the Gulf to the Pacific, and know nothing whatever concerning the Interstate Commerce Commissionership, save what I have seen in the papers since my return. … I have not put myself in the position of soliciting, either directly or indirectly, this appointment; I have never even stimulated to a slight degree the activity … of my friends on my behalf. There is some misgiving in my own mind as to whether acceptance of the position would be of benefit to me either politically, or otherwise. I have no doubt the nomination for Governor can be mine next year without effort, and what the outcome of an election would be in 1906, even in a Republican State, is not now to be prophesied, in view of the somersaults in Ohio and Pennsylvania of a week ago. Of course, … it is a great opportunity to prove or disprove the capacity of this government to control effectively the corporations which seem determined to be its master.
It does look to me as if the problem of our generation is to be the discovery of some effective method by which the artificial persons whom we have created by law can be taught that they are not the creators, the owners, and the rightful managers of the government. The real greatness of the President's policy, to my notion, is that he has determined to prove to the railroads that they have not the whole works, and the policy that they have followed is as short-sighted as it can be. It will lead, if pursued as it has been begun, to the wildest kind of a craze for government ownership of everything. Just as you people in New York City were forced, by the delinquency and corruption of the gas combine, to undertake the organization of a municipal ownership movement, so it may be that the same qualities in the railroads will create precisely the same spirit throughout the country.
I appreciate thoroughly your position in New York. … [Hearst] knows public sentiment and how to develop it very well, and will be a danger in the United States, I am afraid, for many years to come. He has great capacity for disorganization of any movement that is not his own, and an equal capacity for organization of any movement that is his personal property. He feels with the people, but he has no conscience. … He is willing to do whatever for the minute the people may want done and give them what they cry for, unrestrained by sense of justice, or of ultimate effect. He is the great American Pander.
Reverting again to the Interstate Commerce Commissionership, I think the railroads here are determined that no Pacific Coast man shall be appointed. That has been the policy of the Southern Pacific since the creation of the Commission. …
One of the amusing reports that has come to me is that the railroad feels friendly toward me. I think probably the extent of their friendliness is in acknowledging that I am not a blackmailer. They know that I would not hold them up, just as well as they know that I could not be held up. In the various campaigns that I have made, it has never been suggested that the railroads had any more influence with me than they ought to have, or that anybody else had, and in my fight for the Governorship they did not contribute so much as a single postcard, nor did an individual railroad man contribute a dollar to the campaign fund. I say this because I heard yesterday that word had gone to the President that I was something of a railroad man, which is about the most amusing thing that I have heard for sometime. The charge never was made in any of my five campaigns, and certainly is made only for foreign consumption, end not for home consumption.
Do not in any way put yourself out regarding this matter. I am satisfied that the President will do just what he wants to do and just what he thinks right, without much respect to what anybody says to him, and I don't want to bring pressure to bear upon him; but, of course, I want him to know that I have friends who think well of me. I am very appreciative of your offer and efforts, and hope that, whether I am given this position or not, I shall before very long have the opportunity of seeing you in New York. Very sincerely,