My Brother, Theodore Roosevelt

by Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

He had had no intention of running for the presidential nomination in 1912, and, indeed, in the autumn of 1911 told many of his most faithful supporters that he was very much averse to doing so; but already a swelling tide of disapproval of the Taft administration had increased in volume to such an extent that it swept over a large part of the country. The Insurgents pleaded for a definite leadership, and to them, and to many who did not call themselves by that name, there was but one leader whom they were willing to follow, and that was Theodore Roosevelt.

The force of this great wave culminated in the letter of the seven governors in January, 1912, a letter in which those same seven governors begged him to take, openly, the leadership of Progressive Republicanism, and to allow his name to be used as a presidential nominee in the June convention of 1912. Just before that letter was published, he writes in his usual sweet way in connection with a visit which he and Mrs. Roosevelt had intended to pay me in New York (they were at Sagamore Hill). After speaking of an illness which prevented Mrs. Roosevelt from coming to me, he said, knowing that I had made certain engagements for them: “Do you wish to have me come alone? Do exactly what you think best. I will be in for Tuesday night in any case, and will be at your house as agreed. I don’t know when I have ever enjoyed anything more than my lunch at Fannie’s [our dear friend Mrs. James Russell Parsons],—it was a real feast of Lucullus,—only far better.” This letter is very boyish and content with friends and family, and most unlike a man absorbed in schemes of sinister usurpation, schemes of which he was so soon to be accused.

In the library at my own house in New York City, a fateful meeting took place shortly after this last letter came. I confess to having had serious doubts as to what his answer should be to that request of the seven governors. Personally, I felt the sacrifice asked of him was almost too great. I realized perfectly the great struggle before him and all that it probably would mean, and it seemed to me that he had already given all that was required of just such service to his beloved country. But, just as he felt in 1898 that, having preached war upon Spain, he must take active part in that war, so in 1912 he came to feel strongly that, having inaugurated certain policies as President which had not been carried out by his successor—having preached the necessity for industrial legislation which had not been backed by those in public authority—it was his duty to bare his breast to the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” and accept the position of leader of Progressive Republicanism in order to try to translate into practical reality the ideals which he had upheld before his countrymen. His answer to the seven governors pledged himself to such leadership, and the great upheaval of 1912 took place.

Never before in his varied career had Theodore Roosevelt felt such a sense of loneliness, for many of his nearest and dearest friends were not in sympathy with some of his beliefs in 1912. I shall never forget the great meeting at Carnegie Hall, when he proclaimed “the faith that was in him.” He was like an inspired crusader that night when he cast away the notes from which he had occasionally been reading and made the magnificent peroration in which he proclaimed the fact that his doctrine was “Spend and Be Spent,” and that no man worthy the name of man would not be willing to be an instrument for the success of his ideals—a broken instrument if need be. He returned after that thrilling speech to my house, and we sat a long while talking over the serious step he had taken and the possibilities the future held for him, and I felt that there was a sense of dedication about him such as I believe the martyrs of old must have felt.

In spite of the storm that broke around him after this declaration, in spite of the manifold activities into which he immediately cast himself, he takes the time to write to me, March 5, 1912, when my infant grandchild, born the month before, had died of whooping-cough: “My darling Sister: You have indeed been through the waters of bitterness. The little baby! I love little babies so, and I think of my own little granddaughter, and I mourn with you and Douglas. Now, I think only with a pang of our lovely day last Sunday. [We had spent that Sunday with him at Oyster Bay.] If I could have come up to Albany I would have done so. Ever your devoted brother.”

The great convention of 1912 took place, and through the ruling of the chairman certain delegates pledged to Theodore Roosevelt were deprived of their seats, a ruling which meant his defeat as Republican candidate. I was ill at the time and could not be present on that epoch-making occasion. I only know that its result after the above ruling was considered by my brother absolutely inevitable, and that he never regarded that result, as did so many people, as the most unfortunate circumstance of his life. Writing a year and a half later for the Century Magazine, in October, 1913, he says: “Fundamentally the reason for the existence of the Progressive Party was found in two facts: first, the absence of real distinctions between the old parties which correspond to those parties; and, second, the determined refusal of the men in control of both parties to use the party organizations and their control of the Government, for the purpose of dealing with the problems really vital to our people.... A party which alternately nominated Mr. Bryan and Mr. Parker for President, and a party wherein Messrs. Penrose, LaFollette, and Smoot, stand as the three brothers of leadership, can by no possibility supply the need of this country for efficient and coherent governmental action as regards the really vital questions of the day.” In the same article he proceeds to analyze the reasons for the formation of the Progressive Party, and continues:

“The problems connected with the trusts, the problems connected with child labor, and all similar matters can be solved only by affirmative national action. No party is progressive which does not set the authority of the National Government as supreme in these matters. No party is progressive which does not give to the people the right to determine for themselves, after due opportunity for deliberation, but without endless difficulty and delay, what the standards of social and industrial justice shall be; and, furthermore, the right to insist upon the servants of the people, legislative and judicial alike, paying heed to the wishes of the people as to what the law of the land shall be. The Progressive party believes with Thomas Jefferson, with Andrew Jackson, with Abraham Lincoln, that this is a government of the people, to be used for the people, so as to better the condition of the average man and average woman of the nation in the intimate and homely concerns of their daily lives; and thus to use the government means that it must be used after the manner of Hamilton and Lincoln to serve the purposes of Jefferson and Lincoln.

“We are for the people’s rights. Where these rights can best be obtained by exercise of the powers of the State, there we are for States’ rights. Where they can best be obtained by the exercise of the powers of the National Government, there we are for National rights. We are not interested in this as an abstract doctrine; we are interested in it concretely.... We believe in the principle of a living wage. We hold that it is ruinous for all our people, if some of our people are forced to subsist on a wage such that body and soul alike are stunted.”

Referring to the Industrial and Social Justice plank of the platform of the Progressive party, he continues:

“The propositions are definite and concrete. They represent for the first time in our political history the specific and reasoned purpose of a great party to use the resources of the government in sane fashion for industrial betterment....