Theodore Roosevelt: An Intimate Biography

by William Roscoe Thayer

The public, which had seen more clearly than on former occasions, how such charters to legalize industrial piracy were devised, was somewhat dashed—by President Taft's approval. Perhaps it still hoped that the creation of a non-partisan Tariff Commission of experts would put an end to this indecent purchase and sale of privileges and would establish rates after the scientific investigation of each case. Soon, however, these hopes were swept away; for on September 17, 1909, the President delivered at Winona, Minnesota, a laudatory speech on the new tariff. He admitted that some points in Schedule K—that comprising wool and woolen goods—were too high. But, he said solemnly that this was "the best tariff law the Republicans ever made, and, therefore, the best the country ever had." In that Winona speech, Mr. Taft hung a millstone round his own neck. His critics and his friends alike had thrust upon them this dilemma: either he knew that the Payne-Aldrich Tariff had been arrived at by corrupt ways and was not a revision downward—in spite of which he pronounced it the "best ever"; or he did not know its nature and the means used in framing it. In the latter case, he could not be considered a person sufficiently informed on great financial questions, or on the practices of some of the politicians who made laws for him to sign, to be qualified to sit in the President's chair. If, on the other hand, knowing the measure to be bad he declared it the "best ever," he was neither sincere nor honest, and in this case also he was not a President whom the country could respect.

I would not imply that the American public went through this process of reasoning at once, or arrived at such clear-cut conclusions; Demos seldom indulges in the luxury of logic; but the shock caused by the Winona speech vibrated through the country and never after that did the public fully trust Mr. Taft. It knew that the Interests had crawled back and dictated the Payne-Aldrich Tariff, and it surmised that, although he prosecuted the Trusts diligently, they did not feel greatly terrified. But nobody whispered or suspected that he was not honest.

While President Taft slowly lost his hold on the American people, he gained proportionately with the Republican Machine. That Machine was composed of the Regulars of the party, or the Conservatives, as they preferred to be called, and it was losing its hold on the country. There comes a time in every sect, party, or institution when it stops growing, its arteries harden, its young men see no visions, its old men dream no dreams; it lives in the past and desperately tries to perpetuate the past. In politics when this process of petrifaction is reached, we call it Bourbonism, and the sure sign of the Bourbon is that, being unconscious that he is the victim of sclerosis, he sees no reason for seeking a cure. Unable to adjust himself to change and new conditions he falls back into the past, as an old man drops into his worn-out armchair.

Now Roosevelt had been, of course, the negation of Bourbonism. He had led the Republican Party into new fields and set it to do new work, and far off, shining clearly, its goal beckoned it on. His followers were mostly young men; they saw that the world had changed, and would change still further, and they went forward valiantly to meet it and, if possible, to shape its changes. For ten years past, these Radicals, as the Regulars named them some what reproachfully, and who were better defined as "Insurgents," had played an increasingly important part in Congress. They would not submit to the Bosses and the Machine, but voted independently, and, although they were not all of them avowed Rooseveltians, they all were going in his direction. In the second year of Mr. Taft's Administration, they rebelled against the rigid dictatorship of Joseph G. Cannon, the Speaker of the House. "Uncle Joe," as the public nicknamed him, dated from before the Civil War, and entered Congress in 1863, forty-seven years before 1910. It was as if a rigid Bourbon, who had served under Louis XV in France in 1763, had been chief law-maker under Napoleon I in 1810. Mr. Cannon, however, had never learned that the Civil War was over, whereas every Frenchman who survived the Revolution knew that it had taken place. So the Insurgents rose up against him, in his old age, deprived him of his dictatorial power, and, at the next election, Democrats and Republicans combined to sweep him out of office altogether.

The Jews who ridiculed Noah when he began to build the Ark were, it proved, Bourbons, but they had some excuse, for when Noah was working there was no portent of a flood and not even a black cloud with a shower wrapped up in it hung on the horizon. But the Republican Regulars, under Mr. Taft, could not complain that no sign had been vouchsafed to them. The amazing rise in power and popularity of Roosevelt during the decade, the surging unrest of Labor throughout the world, the obviously altered conditions which immense fortunes and the amassing of wealth by a few corporations had produced, and such special symptoms as the chafing at the Payne Aldrich Tariff, the defeat of Speaker Cannon, and the election of a Democratic House of Representatives ought to have warned even the dullest Republican. For good, or for ill, a social and industrial revolution was under way, and, instead of trimming their sails to meet it, they had not even taken ship. Roosevelt and the Insurgents had long understood the revolution of which they were a part, and had taken measures to control it. Roosevelt's first achievement, as we have seen, was to bring the Big Interests under the power of the law. The hawks and vultures whose wings he clipped naturally did not like it or him, but the laws had force behind them, and they submitted. The leaders of the popular movement, however, declared that this was not enough. They preached the right of the people to rule. The people, they urged, must have a real share in electing the men who were to make the laws and to administer and interpret them.

Every one knew that the system of party government resulted in a Machine, consisting of a few men who controlled the preliminary steps which led to the nomination of candidates and then decided the election, so far as their control of the regular party members could do this. It would be idle, said the advocates of these popular rights, to make the best of laws in behalf of the people and allow them to be enforced by representatives and judges chosen, under whatever disguise, by the great capitalists. And so these Progressives, bent on trusting implicitly the intelligence, the unselfishness, and the honesty of the People, proposed three novel political instruments for obtaining the pure Democracy they dreamed of. First, the Initiative, by which a certain number of voters could suggest new laws; second, the Referendum, by which a vote should be taken to decide whether the People approved or not of a law that was in operation; and third, the judicial Recall, by which a majority of the voters could nullify a decision handed down by a judge. This last was often misnamed and misconstrued, the "Recall of Judges," but so far as I know very few of the Progressive leaders, certainly not Colonel Roosevelt, proposed to put the tenure of office of a judge at the mercy of a sudden popular vote.

When Roosevelt returned from Africa, he found that the Progressive movement had developed rapidly, and the more he thought over its principles, the more they appealed to him. To arrive at Social Justice was his life-long endeavor. In a speech delivered on August 31, 1910, at Ossawatomie, Kansas, he discoursed on the "New Nationalism." As if to push back hostile criticism at the start, he quoted Abraham Lincoln: "Labor is prior to, and independent of capital; capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed but for labor. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights which are as worthy of protection as any other rights …. Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners of property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good in the world. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one for him self, thus, by example, showing that his own shall be safe from violence when built."

Not all those who cry "Plato! Plato!" are Platonists. So, not all those who now appeal to Lincoln's mighty name for sanction of their own petty caprices and crazy creeds, have learned the first letter of the alphabet which Lincoln used; but Roosevelt, I believe, knew Lincoln better, knew the spirit of Lincoln better, than any other President has known it. And Lincoln would have approved of most, if not of all, of the measures which, in that Ossawatomie speech, Roosevelt declared must be adopted. Whenever he spoke or wrote after that, he repeated his arguments in defense of the "New Nationalism," and they sank deep into the public conscience. He took no active part in politics, as he thought, but the country knew better than he did that, wherever he was, politics was active. Every one consulted him; his occasional speeches roused a storm of criticism; a dozen would-be candidates in each party sat on the anxious seat and waited for his decision. So he watched the year 1910 draw to its close and 1911 wheel by, without his giving the final word. Although he was very really the centre of attention, he nevertheless felt lonely, and a friend tells me of going to Oyster Bay, late in the autumn, and finding Roosevelt in fact alone, as his family were away, and depressed by the thought that he was cut off, probably forever, from throwing himself into work which would be of public benefit. But Roosevelt was a fighter, not a sulker, and he was too healthy in spirit to give way to disappointment.

That he resented the purpose, as he supposed, of the Taft Administration to throw over his policies, I do not doubt, although there are letters in existence which indicate that he still had courteous if not friendly relations with President Taft. But what ate into him more than any personal resentment was his chagrin at seeing the Great Cause, for which he had spent his life, neglected and denied by the Republican Party. Progressivism seemed to be slowly in process of suffocation by the Big Interests which it had come into being to protest against, to curb, and to control.

There were other leaders in this Cause, the most prominent being Senator La Follette, of Wisconsin. He had caught up very early some of Bryan's demagogic doctrines, which he had softened a good deal and made palatable to the Republicans of his State. Then he had stood out as a Liberal in Congress, and from Liberal he became Insurgent, and now that the Insurgents were being defined as Progressives, he led the Progressives in Congress. The same spirit was permeating the Democrats; only the hide-bound Regular Republicans appeared not to notice that a new day had dawned. "Uncle Joe" Cannon, their Speaker of the House, reveled in his Bourbonism, made it as obnoxious as he could, and then was swept away by the enraged Liberals.