TO SIDNEY E. MEZES PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
Washington, December 23, 1912
MY DEAR SID,—I have your letter enclosing a telegram from Miller. I received a note from him acknowledging the telegram. He was evidently extremely delighted at being remembered. The sturdy, strong old Dutchman has a whole lot of sentiment in him; and he makes few friends, has drawn pretty much to himself, I think, and falls back upon those whom he has known in earlier days. I sent a note to Mr. House regarding him. He would be a splendid man to have here in some capacity connected with the Government, now that we are to deal with currency matters. I told Mr. House that he could find out all about Miller from you.
I saw House a couple of times in New York. He certainly is an adroit and masterful diplomat. The fact is I do not know that I have seen a man who is altogether so capable of handling a delicate situation. By some look of the eye or appreciative smile at the right moment he gives you to understand his sympathy with and full comprehension of what you are saying to him. They tell me in New York that he is really the man closest to Wilson, and he tells me that Wilson is a delightful man to deal with because he has got a mind that is firm as a rock. …
I send my Christmas greetings to you both. We have a sick little girl on our hands, but she is coming along all right now. As always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To John H. Wigmore
Washington, January 8,1913
MY DEAR JOHN,—… You may not know it, but I suggested your name
to Mr. House, an intimate of President-elect Wilson, for Attorney
General. … He told me that he gave the letter to Governor
Wilson. …
Like so many of the Southerners, I fear that Wilson's idea is that he can declare a general policy and be indifferent as to the men who carry it out. There is a certain lack of effectiveness running through the South which makes for sloppiness and a lack of precision. I have found that generalizations do not get anywhere. The strength of any proposition lies in its application. The railroads and the trusts and the packers, and all the others who are violating the statutes, are indifferent as to how big the law is and upon what sound principles it is based, provided they have a lot of speechmakers to enforce the law. They don't care what the law is; their only concern is as to its enforcement. I am going to give the Democratic Party four years of honest trial, and then if it has not more precision, definiteness, and clearness of aim, am going to call myself a Progressive, or a Republican, or something else.
Wilson is strong, capable of keeping his own counsel, and capable of making up his own mind. In these three respects he differs materially from our present President whose last flop on the arbitration of the Panama Canal proposition is characteristic. …
Now, old man, let me say to you that you must take the very best of care of yourself, for we need you more than anybody else in this country, right at this time. As always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To John H. Wigmore Washington, January 20, 1913
MY DEAR JOHN,—I have received both of your letters, and I am very glad that you made that mistake regarding my address for it brought me two letters instead of one. I received your Continental Legal History months ago and thought that I had acknowledged it with all kinds of appreciation, but perhaps I only thought the things. … I turned the book over to Minister Loudon of the Netherlands who knew the Dutch professor who had written one of the articles, and the rascal has not returned the book, but I shall get it from him one of these days. … Washington is now greatly stirred because Wilson has frowned upon the Inaugural Ball—a very proper frown, to my way of thinking—but inasmuch as all of the merchants who advance money for the inaugural ceremonies recoup themselves from the receipts from the Inaugural Ball, there is much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and Wilson will enter Washington, in my judgment, a very unpopular president, locally. The fact is, I think, he is apt to prove one of the most tremendously disliked men in Washington that ever has been here.
He has a great disrespect for individuals, and so far as I can discover a very large respect for the mass. His code is a little new to us; and I feel justified in proceeding upon the theory that every man should help him, and that it is within his (Wilson's) proper function to throw Mr. Everyman down whenever public good requires it, and that his silence never estops him from interfering at any time. Perhaps you cannot make out just what this means. I am dictating, sitting in my room at home with a very bad cold, and perhaps I do not know precisely what I mean myself; but I am trying to say that under all circumstances Wilson regards himself as a free man, and that he is bound by no ties whatever to do anything or to follow any course; that he recognizes no such thing as consistency, or logic, or gratitude, as in the slightest embarrassing him. …
I do hope that the President will get some capable effective administration officers who will take the burden of patronage off his shoulders and give him a chance to think on the money question, which is his big problem. I like his Chicago speech, I like his New York speech, but I do not find many people who understand him, because he is really a sort of philosopher. He teaches the psychology of new thought, the influence and effect of thought upon government.
I have written an article for the World's Work which is to appear in March, entitled What I Am Trying To Do, but it is really sort of an answer to one or two articles that they have had upon the railroad side of the question of regulation—a demonstration of the chaotic condition of things that existed prior to the establishment of the Commission; and that the effect of regulation has been to increase railroad earnings and put things upon a stable and more satisfactory basis. … I find that I have a copy of the proofs in the office and I am going to send it to you and ask you to criticise it. …
With my love to your good wife, believe me, as always,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Joseph N. Teal
Washington, January 20, 1913
MY DEAR JOE,—… You know we practically have the power now to make a physical appraisement. … We should not ourselves attempt to arrive at cost. That is a very hard thing for the railroads to furnish. They have taken good care to destroy most of the books and papers that would show cost.
Politically, I hear of no news. Wilson is able to keep his own counsel more perfectly than anybody I have ever known, and nobody comes back from Trenton knowing anything more than when he went. … The money question is going to be the big one, and it looks to me as though certain gentlemen were preparing to intimidate him with a panic, which they won't do because he will appeal to the country. He has got splendid nerve, and while Washington won't like him a little, little bit, the country, I think, will put him down as a very great President. As always,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Edward M. House
Washington, January 22, 1913
DEAR MR. HOUSE,—You ask me what is the precise political situation on the Pacific Coast as to various candidates for the Cabinet.
As I have told you, I am to be eliminated from consideration. California has but one candidate, one who was in Governor Wilson's primary campaign and who made the fight for him in that state, in the person of James D. Phelan whom you have met. … Recognition given to Phelan will be given to the foremost man in the progressive fight in California. … He is a brilliant speaker and a man of excellent business judgment. … He has fine social quality and sufficient money to maintain such a position in proper dignity. Not to recognize him in some first-class manner would be a triumph for his enemies—and his enemies are the crooks of the state.
Joseph N. Teal who is spoken of from Oregon as a possible Secretary of the Interior, is a good lawyer and a most public- spirited man who has been identified with every sane movement for progress in that state. He is a man of means and is deeply interested in questions of conservation and the improvement of our waterways. …
… As a matter of party politics I do not think that any Pacific Coast state can be made Democratic by the appointment of a member of the Cabinet from it; as a matter of national politics, it seems to be necessary that that part of the country should have a voice in the council of the President.
Now, I want to say a word or two on a more important matter. You realize, I presume (and Governor Wilson evidently does) that there is talk of a probable panic in the air. He dealt with this matter masterfully in his New York speech. Worse things than panic can befall a nation. We must preserve our self-respect as a self- governing people. But what is the cause of this loose talk? Apprehension. The business interests of the country do not know what they are to expect. As a party we are too much given to generalization; we have too little precision of thought. You will notice how the New York papers of yesterday speak of Governor Wilson's bill regarding the regulation of trusts. This is something definite, and does not frighten because it is known. The problems we have to deal with—the tariff, currency, and trusts— should all be dealt with in this same manner. The Administration should have a definite program on each one of these questions; and I mean by that, bills framed in conference between the leaders which should be presented as party measures at the very first possible moment. I have information that the banks are already saying that they will stop loans until these questions are dealt with. This is the way by which panic can be produced. The country is too prosperous to allow a widespread industrial panic if the measures favored by the Government commend themselves to the people as sane and necessary. Why can't we, as the boys on the street say, "beat them to it"? If Congress is called by the middle of March, and the tariff is quickly put out of the way, and a currency bill promptly follows, we can restore the mind of the country to its normal state by midsummer. You know that this problem of government is largely one of psychology. The doctor must speak with definiteness and certainty to quiet the patient's nerves, and the doctor is the party as represented in the President and Congress.
With warm regards to Mrs. House, believe me, as always, cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
To Mitchell Innes
Washington, February 26, 1913
MY DEAR MR. INNES,—I received your pamphlet and have read it through with the deepest interest. These young men [Footnote: A group of young men organized for social and political betterment, who sought advice.] are deserving of the strongest encouragement. I have no criticism whatever to make of their prospectus—for that word, I presume, without slight, can be properly used.
My conviction is that we can find no solution for the problems of social, political, economic, or spiritual unrest. "The man's the man" philosophy has taken hold of the world. We have lost all traditional moorings. We have no religion. We have no philosophy. Our age is greater than any other that the world has seen. We have been lifted clear off our feet and taken up into a high place where we have been shown the universe. The result has been a tremendous and exaggerated growth of the ego, and we have regarded ourselves as masters of everything, and subject to nothing. Agnosticism led to sensualism, and sensualism had its foundation in hopelessness. We are materialists because we have no faith. This thing, however, is being changed. We are coming to recognize spiritual forces, and I put my hope for the future, not in a reduction in the high cost of living, nor in any scheme of government, but in a recognition by the people that after all there is a God in the world. Mind you, I have no religion, I attend no church, and I deal all day long with hard questions of economics, so that I am nothing of a preacher; but I know that there never will come anything like peace or serenity by a mere redistribution of wealth, although that redistribution is necessary and must come.
If I were these young men and wished to concentrate upon some economic question, I should put my time in on the cost of distribution. … That is the economic problem of the next century—how to get the goods from the farm to the people with the lowest possible expenditure of effort; how to get the manufactured product from the factory to the house with the least possible expense. I have an idea that we have too many stores, too many middlemen, too much waste motion. So that I have only two thoughts to suggest: The first is that the ultimate problem is to substitute some adequate philosophy or religion for that which we have lost; and the second is to concentrate on the simple economic problem. Have we the cheapest system of distribution possible? … Sincerely yours,