The administrations of Mr. Roosevelt cannot be characterized by a general phrase, although they will doubtless be regarded by historians as marking an epoch in the political history of the United States. If we search for great and significant social and economic legislation during that period, we shall hardly find it, nor can we discover in his numerous and voluminous messages much that is concrete in spite of their immense suggestiveness. The adoption of the income tax amendment, the passage of the amendment for popular election of Senators, the establishment of parcel post and postal savings banks, and the successful prosecution of trusts and combinations,—all these achievements belong in time to the administration of Mr. Taft, although it will be claimed by some that they were but a fruition of plans laid or policies advocated by Mr. Roosevelt.
One who attempts to estimate and evaluate those eight years of multifarious activity will find it difficult to separate the transient and spectacular from the permanent and fundamental. In the foreground stand the interference in the coal strike, the acquisition of the Panama Canal strip, voluminous messages discussing every aspect of our complex social and political life, vigorous and spirited interference with state elections, as in the case of Mr. Hearst's campaign in New York, and in city politics, as in the case of Mr. Burton's contest in Cleveland, Ohio, the pressing of the idea of conserving natural resources upon the public mind, acrimonious disputes with private citizens like Mr. Harriman, and, finally, the closing days of bitter hostilities with Congress over the Tennessee Coal and Iron affair and appropriations for special detectives to be at executive disposal.
Mr. Roosevelt's Doctrines
During those years the country was much torn with the scandals arising from investigations, such as the life insurance inquest in New York, which revealed grave lapses from the paths of rectitude on the part of men high in public esteem, and gross and vulgar use of money in campaigns. No little of the discredit connected with these affairs fell upon the Republican party, not because its methods were shown to be worse in general than those of the Democrats, but because it happened to be in power. The great task of counteracting this discontent fell upon Mr. Roosevelt, who smote with many a message the money changers in the temple of his own party, and convinced a large portion of the country that he had not only driven them out but had refused all association with them.
Mr. Roosevelt was thus quick to catch the prevailing public temper. "It makes not a particle of difference," he said in 1907, "whether these crimes are committed by a capitalist or by a laborer, by a leading banker or manufacturer or railroad man, or by a leading representative of a labor union. Swindling in stocks, corrupting legislatures, making fortunes by the inflation of securities, by wrecking railroads, by destroying competitors through rebates,—these forms of wrongdoing in the capitalist are far more infamous than any ordinary form of embezzlement or forgery.... The business man who condones such conduct stands on a level with the labor man who deliberately supports a corrupt demagogue and agitator."
Any one who takes the trouble to examine with care Mr. Roosevelt's messages and other public utterances during the period of his administration will discover the elements of many of his policies which later took more precise form.
In his first message to Congress, on December 3, 1901, Mr. Roosevelt gave considerable attention to trusts and collateral economic problems. He refused to concede the oft-repeated claim that great fortunes were the product of special legal privileges. "The creation of these great corporate fortunes," he said, "has not been due to the tariff nor to any other governmental action, but to natural causes in the business world, operating in other countries as they operate in our own. The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which is wholly without warrant. It is not true that as the rich have grown richer, the poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before has the average man, the wage worker, the farmer, the small trader, been so well off as in this country at the present time. There have been abuses connected with the accumulation of wealth; yet it remains true that a fortune accumulated in legitimate business can be accumulated by the person specially benefitted only on condition of conferring immense incidental benefits upon others."
While thus contending that large fortunes in the main were the product of "natural economic forces," Mr. Roosevelt admitted that some grave evils had arisen in connection with combinations and trusts, and foreshadowed in his proposed remedial legislation the policy of regulation and new nationalism. "When the Constitution was adopted, at the end of the eighteenth century, no human wisdom could foretell the sweeping changes, alike in industrial and political conditions, which were to take place by the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time it was accepted as a matter of course that the several states were the proper authorities to regulate ... the comparatively insignificant and strictly localized corporate bodies of the day. The conditions are now wholly different, and a wholly different action is called for." The remedy he proposed was publicity for corporate affairs, the regulation, not the prohibition, of great combinations, the elimination of specific abuses such as overcapitalization, and government supervision. If the powers of Congress, under the Constitution, were inadequate, then a constitutional amendment should be submitted conferring the proper power. The Interstate Commerce Act should likewise be amended. "The railway is a public servant. Its rates should be just to and open to all shippers alike. The Government should see to it that within its jurisdiction this is so." Conservation of natural resources, irrigation plans, the creation of a department of Commerce and Labor, army and navy reform, and the construction of the Panama Canal were also recommended at the same time (1901).
In this message, nearly all of Mr. Roosevelt's later policies as President are presaged, and in it also are marked the spirit and phraseology which have done so much to make him the idol of the American middle class, and particularly of the social reformer. There are, for instance, many little aphorisms which appeal to the moral sentiments. "When all is said and done," he says, "the rule of brotherhood remains as the indispensable prerequisite to success in the kind of national life for which we are to strive. Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works no outside help can avail him; but each man must remember also that he is indeed his brother's keeper, and that, while no man who refuses to walk can be carried with advantage to himself or any one else, yet each at times stumbles or halts, each at times needs to have the helping hand outstretched to him." The "reckless agitator" and anarchist are dealt with in a summary fashion, and emphasis is laid on the primitive virtues of honesty, sobriety, industry, and self-restraint. The new phrases of the social reformer also appear side by side with the exclamations of virtuous indignation: "social betterment," "sociological law," "rule of brotherhood," "high aims," "foolish visionary," "equity between man and man"—in fact the whole range of the terminology of social "uplift."