The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political

by Franklin K. Lane

TO ROBERT LANSING

Bethel, Maine, November 10, [1920]

MY DEAR LANSING,—It is good to see that letter-head, but aren't you afraid to enter into competition with Mr. Tumulty, who has now, I see, bought the old Shepard mansion and will settle in Washington. How do they do it with the high cost of living what it is? … The transmutation of brass into gold is becoming a commonplace.

To-night's paper speaks of Knox as probable Secretary of State. … Tell me where the opposition is to come from—who are to lead us? … All possible leaders have been submerged, squelched, drowned out, in the past eight years. I wish the whole country had gone unanimously for Harding. Then we might have started on a fresh, clean footing to create two parties that represent liberal and conservative thought. As it is, I think you will see Hearst and Johnson and La Follette try to capture the radicals of both parties and make a new party of their own. Then I shall be with all the rascals I have been fighting since boyhood—the Wall Street rascals—as against the other group. But maybe the Lord cares a bit for us after all.

I mend very slowly, but I delight in your recovery and wonder at it. … I do beg you will give me all the gossip of Washington that you can, for I am here in a wilderness, beautiful but not exciting. As always,

F. K. L.

To Carl Snyder

Bethel, November 13, [1920]

Dear Carl,—This is extremely disagreeable business, this of repairs and restoration. I suppose I am doing fairly well considering that I have been more than half a century getting my gearings askew and awry. But I am taking orders now and say "Thank you," when I get them. Just when I shall be well enough to take hold again is not yet discoverable.

Strange how little news there is when you are above the clouds. One must be local to be interested in ninety percent of what the papers print. Make me a hermit for a year and I could see things in the large I believe, and ignore the trifles which obscure real vision. But a monk must be checked by a butcher. The ideal must be translated into the possible. "Man cannot live on bread alone"— nor on manna.

Outside it is snowing beautifully, across an insistent sun, the fire is crackling and I do not know that I am ill but for the staring bottles before me.

Give me a line when you have a free minute—and take to your
Beautiful Lady my warm regards.

F. K. L.

To William R. Wheeler

Bethel, 17 [November], 1920

My dear Bill,—…I am mighty sorry to hear about the Lady Alice Isabel. Funny that these women are like some damn fools, like myself, and do things too strenuously, and then go bang. Damn that Irish temperament, anyway! O God, that I had been made a stolid, phlegmatic, non-nervous, self-satisfied Britisher, instead of a wild cross between a crazy Irishman, with dreams, desires, fancies, and a dour Scot, with his conscience and his logical bitterness against himself,—and his eternal drive!

I can't tell you anything new about myself. I hope it is not a delusion that I am growing slowly better. I cultivate that idea anyway. …

It was a slaughter, the election, and properly did it come to us. Now be wise and you can have this land for many years. But foolish conceit will put you out in four. …I wish you Republicans had carried all the South. I am glad for Lenroot—very! … But Phelan's defeat has about broken my heart and for Henderson and Chamberlain and Thomas I am especially grieved. Well, it will be a changed world in Washington, and I'm sorry I can't be in it and of it.

Anne has gone to Washington to see Nancy who has not been well, so I am alone but not for long. I get on all right. God bless you, my dear old chap, and do rest awhile beneath your own fig tree. My love to Alice. Affectionately as always,

F. K. L.

To George Otis Smith

Bethel, [November] 18, [1920]

Dear George Otis,—I love this Maine of yours. It is beautiful, and its people are good stuff—strong, wholesome, intelligent young men. I like them greatly. I'd be content to sit right down here and wait for whatever is to come. It is a place of serenity. There is no rush, yet people live and the necessary things get done. It doesn't have any Ford factories, but I rather fancy it makes the men who go West and make the factories.

The autumn has been one long procession of gay banners on the hillsides, and now that the snow has come the pines are blue and the mountains purple; and mountains five thousand feet high are just as good, more companionable, than mountains fifteen thousand feet high. What is more lovely, stately and of finer color than a line of these receding hills which walk away from you, as if they continued clear across the continent?

I must get out against my wish, to have a lot more testing done— for this doctor differs with the others—and I rather think he is right. But I hope to get back here and enjoy this air. No wonder this stock was for prohibition, the air itself is an intoxicant, especially when the snow is on the ground and it comes to you gently; it is as bracing as a cocktail, not a sensuous wine like the Santa Barbara air—tell Vogelsang this—but I presume more like the High Sierras, where the fishing is good.

I shall read your speeches with the deepest interest. Keep up the publicity. It affects Congress and it justifies the good doctrine we have preached. Cordially,

F. K. Lane

Have read the speeches and they are everything they should be. Right theory, clear statement, conclusive facts. A few too many figures perhaps, you should keep your prime figures in the air longer so they can be visualized. This may be called juggling figures in the right sense.

Lane

To George W. Wickersham

Bethel, Maine, 18 [November, 1920]

My dear G. W.,—I have your good letter. By 'good' I mean many things—well done as a bit of sketchy composition, a welcome letter, kindly also in spirit, cheering, timely, telling of things that interest the receiver, one, too, having the flavor of the household whence it comes, altogether a good letter. I had one also from Her; which I brutally answered with a preachment—in pencil, too, for I can't write with comfort at a desk and, after all, what have white paper and ink in common with these woods? I am for harmony—a reconciler, like Harding. …

Root, as you say, would give a good smack to the meal. The country would at once say Harding knows how to set a good table. But tell me—will he be a Taft? a McKinley? a Hayes? or a Grant? Pshaw! why should I ask such a question? Who knows what a man will turn out to be! Events may make him greater than any, or less. A war, a bullet, a timely word of warning to a foreign power, a fierce fight with some unliked home group, the right sort of a deal on postal rates with newspapers and magazines—any one of these might lift him into a national hero; while a sneaking act revealed, a little too much caution, a period of business depression, would send him tumbling out of the skies.

These be indeed no days for prophesying—Wilson gone, Clemenceau gone, Venizelos gone,—Lloyd George alone left! The wise boy had his election at the right moment, didn't he? Surely statesmanship is four-fifths politics. Harding's danger, as I see it, will lie in his timidity. He fears; and fear is the poison gas which comes from the Devil's factory. Courage is oxygen, and Fear is carbon monoxide. One comes from Heaven—so you find Wells says,—and the other would turn the universe back into primeval chaos. Wilson, be it said to his eternal glory, did not fear. They send word to me from the inside that he believed in Cox's election up to the last minute, although the whole Cabinet told him defeat was sure. He "was right, and right would prevail"—surely such faith, even in oneself, is almost genius!

I am glad you put Lincoln first in your list of great Americans. I decided that question for myself when I came to hang some pictures in my library. Washington or Lincoln on top? And Lincoln got it. I have recently read all his speeches and papers, and the man is true from the first day to the last. The same philosophy and the same reasoning were good in 1861 as in 1841. He was large enough for a great day—could any more be said of any one?

Lincoln made Seward and Chase and Stanton and Blair his mates. He did not fear them. He wished to walk with the greatest, not with trucklers and fawners, court satellites and panderers. His great soul was not warm enough to fuse them—they were rebellious ore— but his simplicities were not to be mastered by their elaborate cogencies.

McKinley was simple in his nature, at bottom a dear boy of kind heart, who put his hand into the big fist of Mark Hanna and was led to glory.

Is Harding great and masterful in his simplicity, or trustful and yielding? and if the latter where is the Hanna? Well, I don't want to die in these next few months, anyway, till some questions are answered. This would be a part of my Cabinet if I were Harding:— Root, State; Hoover, Treasury; Warren of Michigan, Attorney- General; Wood, War; Willard (of Baltimore)

You enviously write of my opportunity to read and contemplate. I have done some of both. But that's a monk's life, and even a monk has a cell of his own, and a bit of garden to play with; and he can think upon a God that is his very own, an Israelitish Providence; and, in his egotism, be content. Yes, with a cell and a book and a garden and an intimate God, one should be satisfied to forego even health. But I hold with old Cicero that the "whole glory of virtue is in activity," and therefore I call my discontent divine.

You speak of great Americans, and have named all four from political life. I concur in your selection. Now what writers would you say were most distinctly American in thought and most influential upon our thought, men who a hundred years hence will be regarded not great as literary men but as American social, spiritual, and economic philosophers? It occurs to me that this singular trio might be selected—Emerson, Henry George, and William James. What say you?

Say "Hello" to the young Colonel for me.

F. K. L.

Lincoln haunted Lane's imagination, the humor, friendliness, loneliness, and greatness of the man. This—written for no formal occasion but to express part of his feeling—has found its way to others who, too, reverence the great American.

Lincoln's Eyes

I never pass through Chicago without visiting the statue of Lincoln by St. Gaudens and standing before it for a moment uncovered. It is to me all that America is, physically and spiritually. I look at those long arms and long legs, large hands and feet, and I think that they represent the physical strength of this country, its power and its youthful awkwardness. Then I look up at the head and see qualities which have made the American—the strong chin, the noble brow, those sober and steadfast eyes. They were the eyes of one who saw with sympathy and interpreted with common sense. They were the eyes of earnest idealism limited and checked by the possible and the practicable. They were the eyes of a truly humble spirit, whose ambition was not a love for power but a desire to be supremely useful. They were eyes of compassion and mercy and a deep understanding. They saw far more than they looked at. They believed in far more than they saw. They loved men not for what they were but for what they might become. They were patient eyes, eyes that could wait and wait and live on in the faith that right would win. They were eyes which challenged the nobler things in men and brought out the hidden largeness. They were humorous eyes that saw things in their true proportions and in their real relationships. They looked through cant and pretense and the great and little vanities of great and little men. They were the eyes of an unflinching courage and an unfaltering faith rising out of a sincere dependence upon the Master of the Universe. To believe in Lincoln is to learn to look through Lincoln's eyes.

To Benjamin Ide Wheeler

Bethel, 18 [November, 1920]

MY DEAR B. I.,—From both ends of this continent we talk to each other. We have both retired from active things and can with some degree of removal, and from some altitude, look upon the affairs of men. Frankly, it challenges all my transcendental philosophy to convince me that "deep love lieth under these pictures of time." And yet I must so believe or die. It is a disheartening time— Wilson, a wreck and beaten. Clemenceau, beaten and out. And now Venizelos gone. Only Lloyd George, the crafty, quick-turning, sometimes-lying, never-wholly-frank politician left, because he called his election when spirits had not fallen.

And little men take their places, while Bolshevism drives Wrangel into the sea, possesses all Russia and Siberia, and is a success politically and militarily, tho' a failure economically and socially. We have passed the danger of red anarchy in America, I think, tho' no one should prophesy as to any event of to-morrow. Communism, and socialism with it, have been made to pause. Yet nothing constructive is opened by the world for men to think upon, as a means of bettering their lot and answering the questions flung to them by Russia, Germany, England, and our own home conditions.

I can see no evidence of constructive statesmanship on this side the water, excepting in Hoover. The best man in Congress is Lenroot, and he writes me that unless the Republicans do something more than fail to make mistakes that the Democrats will take the power from them in another four years. But I am nothing for parties. I cannot wait for an opposition to come in. I would like to see the Republicans now address themselves to the problems of the world at large and of this land. If Knox is to be Secretary of State, as the rumor is, we will have Steel Trust Diplomacy,—which will give us safety abroad, which is more than we have had for some years—but it will be without vision, without love for mankind. Root would give the Republicans great assurance and confidence. He would make them smack their lips and feel that Harding was not afraid of the best near him. Hoover may or may not have a Cabinet place, but his brain is the best thing working in America to-day, on our questions. If Penrose and Co. beat him they will regret it,

If I were Harding I'd put Root, Lowden, Wood, Hoover, and Johnson if he wanted it, into my Cabinet and I'd gather all the men of mind in the country and put them at work on specific questions as advisors to me, under Cabinet officers. One group on Taxes and Finance, one on Labor and Capital, one on Internal Improvements, one on Education and Health. And have a program agreeable to Congress, which is sterile because it is a messenger-boy force for constituents.

The Democrats could do this if they had the men,—but look over the nation and see how short we are of talent of any kind. It may be an opposition party but it has no force, no will, no self- confidence. It hopes for a miracle, vainly hopes. It cannot gather twenty first-rate minds in the nation to make a program for the party. I tried it the other day—men interested in political affairs, outside Congress—try it yourself. Get twenty big enough to draft a national program of legislation for the party. I sent the suggestion to George White, chairman of the National Committee, and gave him a list, and at the head I put you and President Eliot, classing you both as Democrats, which probably neither of you call yourselves now, tho' both voted for Cox. …

If I get to California I must see you. But I shall play my string out here before trying the Western land. My best regards to the Lady. Yours always, LANE

To Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Bethel, Maine, [November, 1920]

To THE DEAR ROOSEVELTS,—… You realized what was coming, but I fear Cox did not; could not believe that his star would not pull through. I wish Georgia and Alabama had gone, too. The American born did not like Wilson because he was not frank, was too selfish and opinionated. The foreign born did not like his foreign settlements. So they voted "no confidence" in his party. What we will do in this land of mixed peoples is a problem. Our policies now are to be determined by Fiume and Ireland—not by real home concerns. This is dangerous in the extreme. Demagogues can win to power by playing to the prejudices of those not yet fully American. … As always,

F. K. L.

To Lathrop Brown

Bethel, [November] 20, [1920]

MY DEAR LATHROP,—You are wrong, dead wrong, viciously, wilfully wrong. I do like this exact science business. I worked at it and in it on the railroad problems for seven years. There is only one thing that beats it, puts it on the blink, and that is inexact human nature which does wicked things to figures and facts and theories and plans and hopes. Prove, if you will, that there is no margin at all over wages, and a nominal return on capital, and you do not kill the desire of someone to run the shop. … Talking of business men, what about the Shipping Board? O, my boy, they have something to explain—these Hurleys and Schwabs! … How does this sound to you? They let their own tanks lie idle, commandeered those of Doheny and rented them to the Standard Oil—so that they could bid when Doheny couldn't—eh, what? …

F. K. L.

To Timothy Spellacy

Bethel, [November] 22, [1920]

MY DEAR TIM,—I hear from Mike that you are not in New York, and so I am writing you out of "love and affection," as I hope to see Mike but won't see you when I go to New York for Thanksgiving. It was my hope that we three could have a good talk over Mike's Colombia plans, but do not trouble yourself with these business concerns. Get well—that's the job for both you and me. We have been too extravagant of ourselves, and especially you, you big- hearted, energetic, unselfish son of Erin! Eighteen years I have known you and never a word or an act have I heard of or seen that did not make me feel that the campaign for Governor was worth while, because it gave me your acquaintance, friendship, affection. And Ned and George love you as I do. When I get mad, as I do sometimes, over something that the Irish do, I always am tempted to a hard generalization that I am compelled to modify, because of you and Mike and Dan O'Neill, in San Francisco—and a few more of the Great Irish—. …

Well, my dear fellow, drop me a line when you feel like it and be sustained in your weakness by the unfaltering affection of thousands who know you, among them—

FRANKLIN K. LANE

To Frank I, Cobb New York World

New York, December 6, [1920]

DEAR FRANK,—You are right, but too far ahead. We must come to Cabinet responsibility, and I am with you as an agitator. Twenty years may see it.

This morning you chide the Republicans for not having a program. Good God, man, why so partisan? What program have we? Will we just oppose; vote "Nay," to all they propose? That way insures twenty years as "outs"—and we won't deserve to be in. What we lack is just plain brains. We have a slushy, sentimental Democracy, but don't have men who can concrete-ize feeling into policy, if you know what that means. A program—a practicable, constructive program—quietly drawn, agreeable to the leaders in both Houses, pushed for, advocated loudly! That's our one hope—Agree? Yours cordially,

FRANKLIN K. LANE

To John G. Gehring

New York, December 9, [1920]

Well, my dear Doctor, here I am at another cross-roads. … I leave … in a day or two with a new dietary and some good advice. The latter in tabloid form being:—"Drop business for a time, go into it again slowly, and gradually creep into your job." All of which is wise, and commends itself greatly to my erstwhile mind, but is much like saying, "Jump off the Brooklyn bridge, "slowly." … I am not resigned, of course. Because I cannot see the end. Definiteness is so imperative to some natures. However, I think that I have done all that an exacting Deity would demand, and cannot be accused of suicide, if things go badly.

Our plan is to go to Washington to see some old friends thence south and so to California, for a couple of months. Delightful program if one had health, but in exchange I would gladly take a sentence to three months in a chain-gang on the roads.

One of my friends has suggestively sent me Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. To offset it I went out at once and bought a new suit of bright homespun clothes and a red overcoat—pretty red. In addition I have a New Thought doctor giving me absent treatment. I am experimenting with Hindu deep breathing, rhythmical breathing, in which the lady who runs this hospital is an adept. And what with an osteopath and a regular and a nurse and predigested food, I am not shirking. If melancholy gets the better of me now— Kismet!

Tell your dear Lady that it was infinitely good of her to write, (and she has, I may say, quite as brilliant a pen-style as speech.) And one day I shall write her when the world looks better. My best reading has been William James' Letters; and that which amused me most a new novel, entitled Potterism, by Rose Macauley, which cuts into the cant and humbug of the world right cruelly. I see your beautiful serene landscape and envy you. And I envy those who hear your hearty chuckle each morning in the Inn. As always,

F. K. L.

To John W. Hallowell

New York, December 9, [1920]

DEAR JACK,—I have tried out New York again and find it lacking as before. No help! They do not know. … So I am going to Californi…A. I wish I were to be near you—you really have a special old corner in all that is left of my heart. And one of these days well indulge ourselves in a good time—a long pull together again.

I have been reading William James' Letters—and real literature they are—far better than all your novels. What a great Man—a mind, plus a man. Not to have known James in the last generation is to have missed its greatest intellect; Roosevelt and James and Henry George were the three greatest forces of the last thirty years. Sometime when you come across a good photo or engraving or wood-cut, or something, of James, will you buy it and send it to me? I want a human one—not a professional one. I guess he couldn't be the pedantic kind anyway.

Billy Phillips has a new baby-boy born Monday.

My plan is to leave here in a week, go to Washington and see Nancy, and get a glimpse of some of my old people in the Department, thence to South Carolina and then probably California for two or three months. Ah me—most people would think this luxury—I think it hell! But it may be for my great spiritual good. Certainly if I could have you to walk with for these months, and more of William James to read, I could take a step or two forward.

Have also been reading a bit of Buddhism lately. It is too negative—that is almost its chief if not its only defect, as an attitude toward life. It won't make things move but it will make souls content. And I can't get away from the thought that we are here as conquerors, not as pacifists. I can't be the latter, save in the desire.

Peabody dropped in yesterday from Chicago. (I have forgotten whether you knew him well or not.) Able chap, fond of me, as I of him. My boy works for him. He sent me a gorgeous edition of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy which I have always wanted, largely because it is one of the curiosities of the world. …

Write me as often as your Quaker spirit moves you to utterance. Your dinner got quite a send-off in these papers, which is something, for New York to recognize Boston! Terribly tough job though. Poor babies! Hard to believe in a good God and a kind God, isn't it?

I hear talk of shoving Hoover outside the breastworks. Fools! Fools! Best for him but worse for the country. Whole question of Republican success turns on the largeness of Harding. I don't ask a Lincoln—much less will do. If he is only a smooth-footed politician he will fail. So far he has been the gentleman. …

My love to your whole circle, from Grandmother down.
Affectionately,

F. K. L.

To John G. Gehring

Rochester, Minnesota, December 31, [1920]

MY DEAR PADRE,—It is the last night of an unhappy year. Never do I wish for such another. No joy—defeat, dreary waiting. These words describe not merely my personal history and attitude but fairly picture those of the world. It took guts to live through such an unillumined, non-productive, soul-depressing year. Did any good come out of it? Yes, to me just one thing good—I came to know you, your Lady and the beauteousness of Bethel. And after all a man does not do any better in any year than make a friend. No man makes seventy friends in a life-time, does he? So I must not repine nor let the year go out in bitterness. On the credit side of my account book I have something that can be carried over into 1921, whereas most people can only carry over Hope.

I hope there is something significant and more than suggestive in my turning up here on the last day of the year for examination— "Getting a ready on" for a New Year—that's what you would optimistically shout if you were here, I know. And that is my Goodbye word to 1920—"You haven't beaten me, and I have lived to take your brush."

I am being ground and wound and twisted and fed into and out of the Mayo mill, and a great mill it is. Of course they are giving me a private view, so to speak. Distinguished consideration is a modest word for the way in which I am treated—not because of my worth but because of my friends—. Those men are greater as organizers, I believe, than as workmen, which is saying much indeed, for they are the surgeons supreme. … Two to three hundred people, new people, a day pass through [their shop]. Sixty to seventy thousand a year received, examined, diagnosed, treated perhaps, operated on (fifty per cent), and cared for. The machinery for this is colossal and superbly arranged.

Dr. Mayo told me to come over at two o'clock and register. … I stood in line and was duly registered, telling name, and other such facts, non-medical. Then a special guide took me to Dr. Mayo, who had already heard my story at the hotel but who, wished it in writing. Accordingly, I was presented to a group of the staff and one man assigned as my escort. I answered him a thousand questions, touching my physical life for fifty-six years. Then to the tonsil man, who saw a distinct "focus," now there, a focus in the tonsils! Nose and ears without focus or focii or focuses. Down an elevator, through a labyrinth of halls, down an inclined plane, up a flight of steps, two turns to the left and then a group of the grumpiest girls I ever saw or heard or felt. They were good looking, too, but they didn't care to win favor with mere males. They had a higher purpose, no doubt. They openly sneered at my doctor escort. They lifted their eyebrows at my good-looking young son, and they told me precisely where to sit down. I was not spoken to further. My ear was punched and blood was taken in tubes and on slides by young ladies who did not care how much of my blood they spilled or extracted. They were so business-like, so mechanical, so dehumanized, these young ladies with microscopes! One said cryptically "57," another said "53." I was full of curiosity but I did not ask a question. They tapped me as if I were a spring—a fountain filled with blood—and gave me neither information, gaiety or entertainment in exchange. Each one I am convinced has by this life of near-crime, which she pursues for a living, become capable of actual murder.

Thus has my first day gone. It is cold here—slushy underfoot, snow dirty, sky dark. How different from a place we know!

There are one hundred and fifty physicians and surgeons in the clinic, and Heaven knows how many hundred employees. No hospitals are owned and run by the Mayos; all these are private, outside affairs. The side tracks are filled with private cars of the wealthy. Scores of residences, large, small, fine, and shabby are little hospitals. The town has grown 5,000 in five years, all on account of the Mayos, these two sons of a great country doctor who without a college education have gathered the world's talent to them.

I am tomorrow to be medically examined further, to the revealing of my terrible past, my perturbed present, and pacific future. The result of which necromancy I shall duly report. I am afraid that they will not find that an operation will do good, if so I shall truly despair. And if they decide for the knife, I shall go to the guillotine like the gayest Marquis of the ancient regime. Yes, I should do better for I have my chance, and he, poor chap, had none.

I received your Christmas present in the spirit that sent it. I can't say "No! No!"—for I preach mixing pleasure with business. Things are all wrong when we don't. I will never repay you. If I could, or did, you would receive none of the blessings that come from giving gifts. The truth is, we knew each other years ago, perhaps centuries ago, and you have done a good turn to an old friend for which the old friend is glad, because it makes the tie more binding.

I told you I would send Wells' history to you, and to it I have added one of the greatest of human documents, William James' Letters. I hope you love the largeness of the man, to be large and playful and useful, I say, man, can you beat that combination? I believe I know another beside James who meets the specifications. And strangely enough he, too, evolved from physician to psychologist, to philosopher.

Well, here's hoping that he and his High-Souled Partner meet with many joys and few sorrows in 1921.

F. K. L.