 It's now my pleasure to introduce my friend Simon Cordery. I don't know if you know this, but we are attempting to endow a chair of Roosevelt studies here at Dickinson State University, and the National Endowment for the Humanities gave us a challenge grant, which is wonderful, and we're raising money for that. And we are not there yet. We don't have enough in the endowment to begin to make it a permanent year-round, essentially tenured position at Dickinson State University, but we were so fortunate last spring to have Dr. Stacey Cordery amongst us. You probably know Stacey's work. She has a couple of TR books, but also her splendid biography of Alice Roosevelt Longworth. She's here today, but when she came out to spend the spring semester with us last year, this year, this calendar year, she of course brought her family with her, Simon Cordery, you're about to hear. And their wonderful, extraordinary son, Gareth, who is really an amazing young man, and he came out here to the Wild West and thrived in Dickinson, and so we're so hoping that the conditions will be right, that we can bring Stacey and all of the Corderies back on a more permanent basis to Dickinson State University, and in doing so, of course, we had the chance to get to know Simon. Then he came to an event I hosted a few weeks ago in Bismarck, North Dakota on the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, and I asked him to come as a, not as an official representative of the British government, but as a British scholar, intellectual citizen who might be able to tell us a little bit about how the war on terror and 9-11 have played in the decade since in Great Britain, and the talk that he gave was just breathtakingly clear and lucid, and we all just came away thinking the United States should pay a little more attention to our British friends. So you can see his biography in your conference book, but let me just mention two books. British Friendly Society, 1750 to 1914, was published in 2003. More recently, he has published Mother Jones, Raising Cane and Consciousness. That was 2010. While he was here, he took endless photographs of our railroad infrastructure in North Dakota. He's writing a book on the railroads of Illinois, just accepted for publication, and while he was here because he had so little to do, he wrote a novel, which will soon be published. So please welcome Simon Cordery. Hello, everyone. It's wonderful to be back in Dickinson, North Dakota, and I must say that I hope what I'm going to try and share with you today is not a work of fiction. Theodore Roosevelt's efforts to tame the railroads were a bit like a man trying to break a feral pony. The animal does not wish to be tamed, and the man is ill-equipped to do so, but he tries anyway. His attitude toward the animal is ambivalent. He knows that this creature needs to be trained, but to what end and how completely? Occasionally, the beast is becalmed, but only for a moment, and, as man and pony struggle, forces they but dimly perceive are slowly fencing them in and perhaps making the pony irrelevant. The railroads are the unwilling creature in this scenario, President Theodore Roosevelt, the brave soul trying to control them. Not alone for sure, because, as you know, he had an immense amount of public support in his efforts to regulate the railroads. But Roosevelt confronted some of the most powerful men in the United States, men who could exert a tremendous influence over the American economy and over the American political system, just as importantly. The railroads were the nation's biggest business in 1900. Railroad mileage was mushrooming out of control. In 1840 there were about 2,800 miles of track in the United States. By 1900 there were over 193,000 miles of track. Much of it, especially in the West, as we heard yesterday evening, fueled by land grants from the federal government. The mileage continued to expand during Roosevelt's administration. By 1905 there were about 217,000 miles of track. So even as he tried to regulate the railroads, the actual physical plant itself continued to grow. Roosevelt and the railroad corporations grappled with each other, and they were but dimly aware of the growing power of the automobile and the truck, as these new technologies slowly chipped away at the monopoly on long and medium distance transportation that the railroads had. That's to jump ahead. Let me begin by giving you a flavor of this rich interesting story, and let me begin essentially anecdotally. Theodore Roosevelt, it was often said, was unfailingly polite to railroad workers. The engineer of a train that he took from New York City to Albany recorded that TR would always quote, stop at my cab to shake hands and chat at the end of each trip. As far as I know, Theodore Roosevelt was the only president ever to be the honorary member of a railroad labor union. He was a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, one of the two principal railroad unions for the crews. At least one authority tells us that TR knew how to drive a steam engine. Now, I've never seen that anywhere else, and if someone had can verify that for me, I'd be very grateful. I've only ever seen it in one source, and it was alas undocumented. It is, however, clear that TR loved riding in the cab of a railroad locomotive. In 1903, as he was embarking on a two-month tour of the west, Roosevelt took a trip around this wonderful piece of engineering, the Horseshoe Curve in Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania. A contemporary report records that President Roosevelt viewed the scenery around the famous Horseshoe Curve from a seat in the cab of the locomotive attached to his special train, and after a ride of about 50 miles, expressed himself delighted with the experience. Two locomotives were coupled to the train at Altoona, ready to pull the heavy cars over the Alleghenys, and the president shook hands with the crew of each. He then climbed into the cab of the rear locomotive. Climbing into the cab with him were Secretary Loeb, Special Engineer Robert McLaren, and the regular engineer and fireman. As he took his seat, the president remarked, quote, being a member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, I think I ought to take my turn at the feeding of the furnace. But he did not actually shovel coal. Perhaps they stopped him from doing it. Everyone wanted to see and hear President Theodore Roosevelt. Some went to extremes to avoid disappointment, like the people of the town of Temple, Texas. Learning that a train carrying President Roosevelt would go through their town without stopping, the city fathers passed an emergency ordinance requiring all presidential trains to stop, for at least five minutes. And so, on the 6th of April 1905, the president's train dutifully did so, arrested momentarily by the city marshal and the county sheriff as it journeyed from Austin to Waco. It was soon surrounded by a large crowd, and TR gave an impromptu talk to a platform of his train. These, and many similar anecdotes, remind us of the central place of the railroad in American life before and during Roosevelt's administration. TR, like almost all Americans of his time, could not escape the railroad. He took the train to college, to work, on vacation, and of course to Florida for the short sea voyage to Cuba in 1898. Indeed, in the second half of the 19th century, if you wanted to go any distance at all, you had to take the train. Victorians believed as the 20th century advertising slogan puts it, let the train take the strain. Taking the train for TR was a quotidian routine means of travel, an everyday way of getting from point A to point B. But that everyday quotidian sense will change when he becomes president. Some of TR's many railroad journeys were, in retrospect, more significant than others. The case in point is his trip in September 1883, the trip that we've been hearing so much about already today and last night, his trip here to and through Dickinson to the Badlands. Those Badlands exhibited, he wrote, a curious, fantastic beauty of its own, as indeed it still does today. On September 4th, 1883, he boarded a train in New York City, changed in Chicago for a service to St. Paul, Minnesota, changed again in St. Paul, and travelled west on the Northern Pacific. It's unclear whether he travelled directly to Madura, or whether he changed, sorry to Little Missouri, as it was then called, or whether he changed in Bismarck. In 1883, the Northern Pacific had just inaugurated the Pacific Express, a four-day run, a direct run from St. Paul, all the way to Portland, Oregon. That was a luxury train that was supposed to arrive in Little Missouri at 4.01 a.m., and the records suggest that Roosevelt arrived in Little Missouri at about 3 o'clock in the morning. Now, either that train was an hour early, or his train was about 20 hours late, because the two other trains that were supposed to stop in Little Missouri were supposed to stop at about 5 o'clock in the morning and 7 o'clock in the morning. So it's unclear which train he actually took, but get here he did. It was about a four-day journey, and it involved multiple changes, as virtually every train trip did in the United States of any distance in the 19th century. In all, he rode the train for those probably quite uncomfortable days, and he was here, as we know, to kill a bison, and kill a bison he certainly did. As we heard this morning, this was not his first trip to the Dakota Territory. He and his brother, Elliot, had gone bird shooting in Fargo in September 1880 in the Fargo area, and TR would, of course, frequently return to North Dakota. But this trip brought him to Medora for the first time, this trip that brought him to a region in which he would soon return after the dual blow of the deaths of his wife and his mother. The region to which he would return to come to grips with that terrible, awful experience, and the region in which he would find himself. And if that doesn't qualify as a significant train trip, I'm not quite sure what does. Another significant train trip occurred in 1899. In June of 1899, TR traveled to the southwest, to Texas, to New Mexico for the reunions of the Rough Riders. He rode in a private car given to him by the Acheson, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, and it was given to him at no charge. It was attached to the rear of their regularly scheduled trains. This private car was extremely luxurious, and historian Kathleen Dalton speculates that this was one of those moments at which he came to realize that, A, he had a national reputation, and that, B, being president might not be such a bad thing after all. And in fact, she suggests that it contributed to what she calls his sense of restlessness when he returned to Albany to resume his duties as governor of New York. And even as governor of New York, he must have been feeling that that was still a somewhat parochial post for someone of his growing reputation. When the time came to run for national office, it was the railroads that took TR on a four-car campaign special. President McKinley, of course, famously stayed at home in Canton, Ohio, conducting the front porch campaign while TR hit the road. He let out what he called the arduous work of campaigning in doubtful states. One of the many trips he took that year brought him west for a 32-day 3,000-mile campaign swing. And on this campaign swing, he averaged nine speeches a day. Now, he did come through North Dakota. North Dakota was a safe Republican seat. The North Dakota politicians wanted TR to visit their state in order to help sew up their statewide offices. Beginning in Wupperton on Friday, the 14th of September, 1900, he traveled across the state in three days to Medora. At first, coming up from South Dakota, he traveled on the Milwaukee Road from Wupperton to Fargo, and his train made stops in Fairmont, Christine and Abercrombie, at each of which locals turned out, we are told, with great enthusiasm to listen to him. He arrived in Fargo two hours late, and there was a massive rainstorm when he got to Fargo at about 8 p.m., but that didn't dampen his enthusiasm, and it couldn't because special trains had brought people in from Grand Forks, Croxton, Detroit Lakes, and Barnsville to hear him. He gave speeches in the Grand Opera, and he spoke to about 4,000 people. He would have spoken to more had they been able to hold the speeches outdoors, but that wasn't possible because of the rain. He returned exhausted to his train and to his private rail car at about midnight. The next morning, the train left on the main line of the Northern Pacific at 7 o'clock, stopping briefly at Castleton, Wheatland, Buffalo, and Tower City before arriving at Valley City at 10 o'clock. Alas, the rainstorm followed them, and TR was forced to address the crowd indoors at the Valley City Academy of Music. 700 people shoehorned their way in, and several hundred were left outside in the rain, and one can imagine they dispersed pretty quickly. After Valley City came Jamestown, a smaller than anticipated audience hearing TR in the Opera House, again the rainstorm was still a factor, and that no doubt kept people away. His spirit's undampened, TR persisted. He stopped at Dawson and Steel before reaching Bismarck. At Bismarck, his train was enthusiastically welcomed by the firing of cannons, by a band, and by loud firecrackers. A crowd followed him to a judge's house where he was to stay, and from there to the Athenaeum where he was to speak. Addressing an adoring crowd of some 1,500 people, TR told them he wanted to, quote, talk as neighbor to neighbor. He did so, and it wasn't until 6 o'clock the next morning that his train left Bismarck, halting briefly in Mandan, New Salem, and Hebron before coming here to Dickinson where it laid over for about an hour for him to greet friends and shake the hands of all of his well-wishers. The last part of the trip began early in that afternoon on his way to Medora. Here for a short while, on the afternoon of September 16th, he made a brief stop before continuing into Montana to speak at Miles City. What TR did here in North Dakota, he repeated in 23 other states during the course of the 1900 campaign. All told, his gruelling campaign schedule covered 21,209 miles, almost all of it, by rail. He gave a total of 673 speeches during the course of that campaign. The brutal pace prompted an aide who accompanied him to complain, quote, they do not give him time to eat or sleep. TR wrote to his sister Corinne in the middle of the western swing with uncharacteristic understatement, I have had a very hard time. Some compensation came in the form of half a dozen first-class horseback rides, but he wrote, otherwise I do nothing but fester in the car and elbow to and from stagings where I address my audiences. He was so tired when he wrote the letter that he inadvertently addressed it to his elder sister, Bami, and it arrived and no doubt caused Corinne some amusement when it got there. But the festering paid off, McKinley won, and TR rode into the vice presidency, but not for long. The Roosevelt family was in the Adirondacks on vacation, TR himself visiting marble quarries in Vermont when the president was shot. He hurried to Buffalo, New York, but rejoined his family when doctors told him McKinley would recover. As we know, McKinley did not recover. Recalled from a hike on Mount Marcy, Roosevelt waited for further news. At midnight, on the 14th of September, 1901, exactly a year after his campaign swing through North Dakota, he took a waiting train from North Creek to Buffalo where he would be sworn in as president. TR's first ride as chief executive began two days later, and it carried him along with McKinley's casket from Buffalo to Canton, Ohio through the nation's capital. On the morning of Monday, the 16th of September, 1901, the six-car funeral train left Buffalo, arriving in Washington, DC, 12 hours later. TR and the cabinet traveled in the Pullman sleeping car, Hungary, consisting of seven sleeping compartments and two drawing rooms, in one of which he met with the cabinet en route. McKinley's casket remained overnight in the White House before being taken to the capital building for a service. At 8 o'clock that evening, the evening of Tuesday, the 17th of September, the first of the funeral train's three sections, each of them running ten minutes apart so they had great faith that the one in front wouldn't break down, each running ten minutes apart left Washington for Canton. In the first train were eight carloads of politicians and journalists. Please, I'm trying to to suppress the obvious joke about if anyone had to crash that would be the one. The second of them carried McKinley's casket along with TR and the entire cabinet, and of course we don't do that sort of thing today, riding in a private Pullman car, and a third section bore army and navy officers, and the three trains arrived in Canton on Wednesday, the 18th of September for the final service and for the burial. Well, TR is now president, and becoming president changes everything, including his attitude toward the railroads. As a private citizens, as a private citizen, trains were a means of transportation, and of course some trips were happier than others, some would be a little bit more inconvenient than others, but he could look around the railroad primarily as a mode of travel, as well as something to admire, these huge massive beasts that were chugging along America's steel rails. However, as chief executive of the nation, he had to regard the railroads in a different light, as an industry. His duty now was to the American people. His role was to ensure the railroad industry lived up to its responsibilities to its customers, and of course in the 19th century the customers of the railroads and well into the 20th century, the customers of the railroads were virtually all Americans everywhere in the United States and its territories. Roosevelt's ambivalence about the railroads may have been deepened by some of the trips he took, and I'm going to talk about one in particular, his 1903 trip out to the west. It looked on the face of it luxurious enough. He's traveling in a Pullman car. The Pennsylvania Railroad put on a six car Pacific Coast special for his extensive trip. He rode in a private car called the Elysian and it was aptly named. There was a parlor, an observation area, luxurious sleeping rooms, a dining room, ordinary sleeping sections and a private kitchen presided over by a Pennsylvania Railroad chef, one would imagine it was the best chef the Pennsylvania Railroad could drum as well as a rear platform for appearances during whistle stops. Other cars on the train held a barbershop and there was a restaurant car renowned for its champagne. The New York Times called it one of the finest trains ever run out of Washington. And frankly Roosevelt needed that luxury. He was away from the nation's capital for nine weeks. He traveled on this trip 14,000 miles and several hundred miles in stagecoaches and carriages. He gave a total of 265 speeches in 25 states and territories including in the middle of the trip a 16-day stay probably to recover in Yellowstone. TR himself dreaded the prospect of this long journey. He wrote to William Howard Taft in April that the tour will be as exacting a work as a human being can imagine how I shall be glad when the end of June comes and I am able to go to Oyster Bay. To John Hay he was more direct regretting quote to heaven the lengthy absence from his family and recording that while he really enjoyed his fortnight in Yellowstone to the next six weeks I look forward with blank horror. Writing to his eldest daughter Alice near the end of May he called the trip quote a useful one but complained that he was feeling quote pretty well tired and it's no surprise he was tired each day saw multiple stops for example in covering the 350 miles from Topeka to Sharon Springs, Kansas his train made nine stops of 10 to 15 minutes each for citizen towns ranging from 6,000 to 400 people in population and at each stop of course he was expected to be on to be smiling to be happy to give an appropriate address at Junction City a town of about 5,000 people a crowd of 12,000 gathered around the train when it arrived he could not escape from the publicity he could not escape from the desire of the crowds to see and hear their president the trip brought him through North Dakota and this trip had stops just in Medora, Bismarck, Jamestown and Fargo and this North Dakota leg of the trip was completed in one day at Medora he spoke early on the 7th of April telling the assembled crowd most of whom he knew quote it is a very pleasant thing for me to see you I shall not try to make you more than a very short talk because I want to have the chance to shake hands with you most all of you are old friends I have stopped at your houses shared your hospitality with some of the men I have ridden guard around the cattle at night worked with them in the round up hunted with them so that I know them pretty well it is the greatest possible pleasure to me to come back and see how you are getting along to see the progress made by the state to see the progress made up at this end in the place that I know so well and it does me good to come here and see you the rest of the day was a whirlwind because by nightfall it was in Aberdeen South Dakota upon return to Washington DC on the 3rd of June 1903 a battalion of high school cadets marched alongside his carriage from Union Station to the White House fire engines rang their bells in his honor and the marine band played a concert at the rear of the executive mansion the president looked according to a contemporary report he looked the picture of health the assembled crowd he felt at home wherever he went because of and this is a wonderful word because of the substantialness of the American people as he had told listeners at Glen's ferry in Idaho on his trip one thing that has particularly pleased me in making this trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific right across the continent has been the fundamental unity of our people a good American is a good American in whatever part of the country you find him such was the speed needed to find all those good Americans and so extensive was the ground covered that the times at the end of the trip felt moved to applaud the fact that the health of the president and his party was remarkable not one member of the party was seriously ill and few calls were made on the physician on the train the president's safety as you could imagine so soon after the assassination of president McKinley was a high priority but the Times reported that everywhere he went he encountered orderly and friendly crowds and that there was no cause for concern for the secret service agents assigned to him in retrospect the trip had been worth it reflecting two months later in a long chatty letter to John Hay TR extolled the people he met on his western swing he wrote wherever I stopped at a small city or country town I was greeted by the usual shy self-conscious awkward body of local committee men and spoke to the usual audiences of thoroughly good American citizens he praised especially the rough-coated hard-headed gaunt sinewy farmers and hired hands who had driven in with their wives and daughters from 10 or 20 or even 30 miles about TR identified with them despite the social cultural and economic gulfs dividing his life from theirs for as he wrote these men and I think a good deal alike or at least we have the same ideals in North Dakota where he enjoyed a particularly tasty barbecue in Bismarck he told Hay he had encountered the usual audiences of grizzled bearded elderly men of smooth-faced shy hulking young men of older women either faded and dragged or exceedingly brisk and capable and of robust healthy high-spirited young girls the entire town of Dickinson quote turned out with wild and not entirely sober enthusiasm some things never change old acquaintances and that's a compliment old acquaintances pushing to the front of the crowd to remind him of their special claim on his memory and making it impossible for him to make much of a speech at Medora which he called formally my home station everyone who lived in the badlands came to welcome him and he said he knew most of them by sight he also knew that their attitude towards them, towards him had changed he wrote to Hay they all felt I was their man, their old friend and even if they had been hostile to me in the old days they now firmly believe they had always been my staunch friends and admirers it's good to be president later segments of the trip he admitted to finding quote very hard and rather monotonous crowds and towns melted into one another indistinguishably with interminable streams of whistle stops he did enjoy the variety of presents people gave him he wrote that he received two bears a lizard, a horned toad a horse and a badger named Josiah the badger of course became a family favourite in the White House at the end of the day and at the end of the letter he noted that his train arrived in Washington DC quote on the minute which I think speaks well for the railroads well let's be honest T.R. did not always speak well of the railroads in his attitude toward the industry we see his ambivalence about railroads literally personified he had nothing but admiration and respect for the employees of the railroad corporations but he demonized the robber barons who owned some of them he understood that railroads were vital to the economic health of the nation but he felt they posed a hazard to that health they were so powerful and their assets loomed so large in the value of the country that they could cause economic downturns and create panics on Wall Street the financiers and businessmen who owned them controlled vast sways of the economy to the detriment T.R. and many others thought of their customers Roosevelt sided with the small business owners and the ordinary people who needed the railroads to carry their goods to market or carry themselves on visits his attitude toward the railroad corporations and the capitalists who owned them was always driven by a moral critique always driven by moral considerations and always there is a language of justice and fairness that didn't stop him in fact it drove him to his first large trust busting case and it was the northern securities case T.R. at the time called the northern securities case quote one of the great achievements of my administration because we emphasized in signal fashion the fact that the most powerful men in this country were held to accountability before the law the case originated in 1902 and it originated when the republican governor of Minnesota was worried enough about the power of the northern pacific and the great northern railroads to convene a meeting of the governors of the states through whose states those two enormous railroads went these railroads had recently been combined into a trust a trust called the northern securities company and the northern securities company was controlled by a railroad builder the so-called empire builder James J. Hill and by America's best known financier it's best known banker J.P. Morgan northern securities also came to control the Chicago Burlington and Quincy railroad whose main line ran from Chicago to Denver with connections to the Pacific in Montana this regional railroad and the other two main transcontinentals in the northern tier under the control of one corporation suggested to the governors in the northern states that this corporation was large enough to charge whatever it wanted to do whatever it wanted and to hurt the average customer and of course attacking powerful corporations was good politics in Minnesota and its neighboring states including North Dakota but jurisdictional problems specifically the question of could a single state sue an interstate corporation resulted in the Supreme Court throwing out Minnesota's brief then the federal government stepped in in February of 1902 President Roosevelt ordered his Attorney General Filander Knox to file a lawsuit breaking up the northern securities trust a lawsuit that would decisively alter the relationship between business and government TR spoke frequently about the northern securities case during his tour of the west in 1903 in Milwaukee he told an audience that quote the merger alarmed the people of the states concerned lest they be subjected to what they deemed a monopoly of interstate transportation and the suppression of competition he recalled for his listeners how when the governors of the states most deeply affected held a meeting to consider preventing the merger becoming effective and passing resolutions upon the national government to enforce the anti-trust laws that case was thrown out he recounted his own role in initiating the lawsuit and he did this after consultations with Attorney General Knox who told him quote in his opinion the northern securities company and its control of the railroads mentioned the combination in restraint of trade and was attempting a monopoly in violation of the national anti-trust law that's to say the Sherman anti-trust law in Jamestown North Dakota in April of 1903 Roosevelt said that he hated the phrase anti-trust laws because the laws were not designed to hurt any corporation they are simply designed for such regulations and control as will prevent the doing of ill Roosevelt aimed to favor neither railroad corporation nor railroad customer but he wanted what he called a fair deal for each so that each man shall have the chance to which he is entitled that is not a bill aimed at the railroads it is only aimed at any railroad that does anything wrong it is meant to do square justice to each man big or little and to ensure as far as by legislation we can secure that he will do fair justice in return in Spokane in May of 1903 he elaborated on this notion of fair play or square justice he said those railroads the men and the corporations that built them have rendered a very great service to the community every man who has made wealth or used it in developing legitimate business enterprises has been of benefit not harm to the country at large but the need for public oversight could not be ignored the railroads operated in the public interest as common carriers and they should, according to Roosevelt be regulated by the federal government to protect that interest the case made its way through the lower courts and landed on the supreme court docket the justices heard the northern securities case in December of 1903 and they ruled five to four in a ruling which surprised most of the country the supreme court ruled five to four in favor of the administration in March of 1904 the court ordered the northern securities company dismantled it has to be said that this order was carried out and was largely ineffectual neither James J. Hill nor J. P. Morgan divested themselves of any of their stocks in the railroads concerned and the railroads continued to operate basically as if nothing had happened however according to historian Albro Martin this was by far the most significant application of the restraint of trade concept in preventing the centripetal forces of high finance placing the entire American transportation system under an oligarchy of three or four powerful men the ruling cast a cloud over the continued expansion of the American railroad system and it caused investors to think twice before purchasing railroad bonds similarly large combinations would not appear until about 1970 in 1970 a new railroad appeared on the horizon a railroad that many of you of course know about the Burlington northern railroad which was a merger of guess what the northern Pacific the great northern and the Chicago Burlington and Quincy so it was essentially northern securities all over again the northern securities act was only one piece of legislation aimed at regulating the railroads that were passed during Roosevelt's presidency but northern securities is significant because it had a bigger effect on other industries it was the first of the large trusts to be busted and I want to go into the details of the other railroad legislation suffice to say that the two most important were the Elkins Act of 1903 the Elkins Act made rebates illegal a railroad company couldn't make a rebate to a customer because that was perceived as favoring the large corporations who used the railroads to ship they're good like the standard oil company and the Hepburn Act the Hepburn Act of 1906 the Hepburn Act of 1906 gave the interstate commerce commission the power to set rates that the railroads could charge for carrying freight and passengers and that was as you might imagine both extremely controversial but also a lot less powerful than it might have been both were disliked by the railroads and both helped to keep the costs of using the railroads down in an age when they held a monopoly on transportation if railroad executives hated Theodore Roosevelt their employees loved him that respect was mutual Roosevelt liked railroad workers as much as he disliked the robber barons because he saw railroad employment as a training ground for masculine virtues what he called the manlier virtues railroaders he said practice a profession which beyond any other necessitates the exercise of hardyhood daring self-reliance and physical strength and endurance so as to train a man's moral mental and physical qualities TR understood railway labor especially the labor of driving the trains as hard physical work the engineers and the firemen grappled with enormous steel machines and they risked their lives daily working all hours and in every type of weather his respect for them as individuals and his appreciation for them as a group was born perhaps of a nostalgic yearning for a time when all labor had a physical element and was therefore good for the health of the individual and the health of the nation both personal and collective for that golden age before the desk dominated the landscape of labor in Idaho in 1903 he lamented that America needs courage hardyhood the qualities that every railroad man every man on the engine or firing has got to show the qualities that we speak of when we say of a man that he is not only a good man but a man railroad work has exemplified a new type of vigorous virtuous citizenship Roosevelt spoke to the brotherhood of locomotive firemen at their 1902 convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee and he told them I have always admired greatly the railroad men of the country and I do not see how anyone who believes in what I regard as the fundamental virtues of citizenship can fail to do so he praised them saying your profession is one of those which I am inclined to feel play in modern life a greater part from the standpoint of character than we entirely realize there is in modern life with the growth of civilization and luxury a certain tendency to the softening of the national fiber railroaders evoked this ideal of the strenuous life for he felt there is a certain tendency to forget in consequence of their disuse the rugged virtues which lie at the back of manhood and I feel that professions like yours the profession of the railroad men of the country have a tonic effect upon the whole body politic when TR was recruiting from the rough riders he told them he discovered that there was no group of our citizens from whom better men could be drawn to do a soldier's work in a tight place and at all times than the railroad men for TR the railroaders represented what one historian has called a new American nationalism and a reinvigorated white masculinity but TR remained fundamentally ambivalent about the railroads and one of the causes of this ambivalence another cause of the ambivalence was who paid the cost of railroad travel this gave TR a political headache because until 1906 it was the railroad companies themselves that paid for presidential travel this arrangement became a political liability in the wake of his 1903 trip the New York sun condemned the free train that TR used on his recently concluded western trip he was concerned enough about the Fuhrer he was concerned that it might damage his election chances that he wrote of course I know that I have done exactly what President McKinley did as he saw the matter but he also competed eagerly for the privilege of taking the president on these trips I followed the customs set by my three predecessors and if I had not followed that custom I should have had to give up any idea of taking these trips at all in other words he couldn't afford it costly they were by 1905 railroad trips had cost a total of almost $200,000 during Roosevelt's administration $200,000 in cost railroad companies themselves had to pay and lots of them charged them to their advertising budget which if you think about it makes a lot of sense they got a lot of free advertising out of these presidential trips but the railroad companies made similar favors to other political figures as well favors in the form of railroad passes that gave you free travel on a specific line or over a specific company's tracks in 1906 Hepburn Act the act that gave the ICC the power to regulate rates also eliminated the system of free passes for most groups of people including politicians henceforth that meant the president would have to pay his own way in June of 1906 the House of Representatives debated a $25,000 appropriation for presidential travel Democrats opposed this appropriation ostensibly on the ground that there's no constitutional requirement for the president to travel by train outside the capital and therefore there's no constitutional justification for such a fund they also pointed to article 2 section 1 clause 7 of the Constitution that's the clause that forbids the payment of any emolument above and beyond the president's salary Republicans replied by pointing out that Congress had already appropriated money for TR to travel by horse and carriage within the capital the Democrats replied ok but it might be ok to pass this appropriation to pass the $25,000 presidential travel fund but not for the current incumbent however the bill received some unexpected support from democrat William Burke Cochran Burke Cochran argued that presidential travel was beneficial to the country it aided in the circulation of ideas and it helped to shape public opinion and of course for Roosevelt himself presidential travel was crucial if he was to continue to employ and benefit from the bully pulpit the bill did pass the house and it went to the senate but senate republicans made a strategic error they attached to their version of the bill a clause allowing the president to take quote invited guests with him on his trips now that sounds innocuous enough but of course the democrats read invited guest as meaning journalists who promised to give me positive coverage when we get back to their home towns the democrats feared essentially that this appropriation would be used for campaigning especially vocal in his opposition was North Dakota republican senator Porter McComber Porter McComber was a conservative he had a deep dislike for Roosevelt personally and for the progressive wing of the republican party generally McComber argued that the president already had too much power that president Roosevelt was defeating the balance of powers by giving the presidency a great deal of influence over the congress McComber realized that travel would enable the president to mobilize public opinion in his favor and further force congress to do his bidding in McComber's ideal world the president at least president Roosevelt should remain in Washington and communicate with congress through written messages he feared passage of this bill because it was one more example of the president becoming a monarch his critique was the republican critique of tyranny and monarchy other republicans replied that president traveling was in the best interests of the nation and in fact it was the best guard against tyranny a president who stayed in Washington DC would be out of touch with the people he'd have no idea what was going on and that would allow him to be swayed by his advisors paying for presidential travel would also guard against the position becoming the preserve only of the wealthy this bill would enable the president the people to see their president to see his people the democrats continued to object that the president had no need to travel as part of his official duties so the people had no obligation to pay for it but eventually the senate did pass the version of the bill which had gone through the house and so the clause about invited guests was dropped the bill was enacted in the 13th of June 1906 but as scholars of the Taft and Wilson administrations will tell you it remained controversial well TR himself remained a subject of controversy among railroad executives some of whom quite honestly loathed him in 1906 shortly after passage of the Hepburn Act Charles Perkins vented his spleen in a private letter an influential former president of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy railroad Perkins wrote to a friend that Roosevelt had been quote fooling the people completely he was quote dealing in false coin Perkins hoped that quote before the next national campaign the country may get more or less over its present attack of hysteria and elect a sane man for president but in 1907 TR appeared to moderate his tone and apparently gained the trust of railroad executives in a speech in Indianapolis at the memorial day celebrations of 1907 he sounded a conciliatory tone he offered an assessment of the current economic situation telling his listeners that quote great social and industrial problems confront us and their solution demands on our part unfaltering courage and yet a wise good-natured self-restraint he urged against what he called showing either rashness or vindictiveness in the face of problems that though large he promised the American people were not insurmountable railroad regulation was one key ingredient in maintaining economic prosperity regulation that he argued quote is not merely in the interest of the public but most emphatically in the interest of every honest railway manager and investor he later in his speech repeated the theme about honesty saying quote we desire to favor the honest railroad manager but we should seek to discourage the activities of the man whose only concern with railroads is to manipulate their stocks he wanted people to understand that every honestly managed railway will gain and not lose by this policy the men more anxious to manipulate stocks than to make the management of their roads efficient and honest are the only ones who have cause to oppose it Roosevelt himself argued for imposing positive restraint upon railway corporations the railroads he said should be required to meet positive obligations in the interest of the general public this for TR was not merely a matter of business but also a matter of morals the success of our whole system of government depends upon our discriminating between men not with reference to whether they are rich or poor whether they follow one occupation or another but with reference solely to whether they act as honest and upright citizens should act soon after the address Grenville Dodge who is best known as the civil engineer who helped to complete the union pacific railroad he wrote to an Iowa Republican leader saying the president's address at Indianapolis is very well received by most of the railroads they seem to look upon it as a defense rather than a criticism of the railroads it must be said that Roosevelt's ambivalence had not vanished by 1907 but then his ambivalence and his critique had always been tempered by his ability to distinguish between the real robber barons and what would later be called the captains of industry the captains of industry whose corporations paid attention to the public interest and after six years of trying to explain the distinction between the moral capitalists and their immoral counterparts perhaps they were finally hearing him well let me return to the metaphor with which I began my talk the beast, the feral pony would never be completely broken the railroads did not want to be regulated though the Elkins northern securities and Hepburn acts certainly made giant strides towards reminding the financiers behind the railroad industry of their duty to the American people TR's ambivalence about the railroad industry is evident in his respect for the railroad workers his love for the giant locomotives the massive cars they pulled and the sheer scale and scope of the industry and even perhaps a sneaking admiration for some of the capitalists behind it all yet the industry the beast had too much power TR was like a man trying to break a wild pony who sees something majestic and beautiful about the pony but knows the pony cannot be useful until it can be controlled yet the pony was to have a near death experience in the not too distant future what Roosevelt and his adversaries and friends in the railroad industry could only dimly perceive in the first decade of the 20th century was the growing power and potential of the gasoline powered road vehicle cars and trucks began chipping away at the railroads near the railway station and the railroads were finally on transportation during that first decade of the 20th century historians continue to debate the effects of regulation on the railroad corporation's ability to respond to that challenge but this is not the place for me to enter that debate suffice it to say that Theodore Roosevelt's ambivalent attitude towards the railroads was shared by a great many Americans with their corporations and companies and farms and for his championing their cause they remained eternally grateful. Thank you Just time for just a couple questions Simon Go back to your metaphor The horse could hardly be ridden I'm still trying to figure out what his final achievement was by you said the parts that were used at the end which were reminding corporations that's a very carefully chosen work because there's a symbolic element there that shows intent by the government to be willing to challenge capitalism on the other hand you said it was largely ineffectual in actual practical terms just assess this a little bit more Let me start off by saying that TR was always very careful to say that he had no intention at all for the federal government to own the railroad industry except in special cases in cases where railroads were clearly bankrupt and needed to be temporarily controlled by the government so he wasn't interested in federal ownership of the railroads of course because he's constantly battling against socialists who keep saying yes you should own the railroads but how effective was the regulation well in fact it was very effective it was so effective that the railroads were unable to raise the capital that they needed to continue to improve their plant and despite those data I began with about the track mileage expanding the railroads themselves wanted to grow a lot faster than they were able to and they were unable to attract as much capital as they wanted to in part because of the Northern Securities Act and because of the Hepburn Act because they couldn't charge the rates they thought they ought to be able to charge in order to attract business and that didn't just mean high rates the railroads wanted to be able to benefit the very large customers like Standard Oil is the most famous case the very large customers who supplied a regular customer basis a regular supply of traffic oh yes quickly the effect of the Panama Canal the Panama Canal had a very detrimental effect on railroads the Milwaukee Road is probably the best case of that the Milwaukee Road built an extension to Seattle that was completed in 1909 and of course in 1914 when the Panama Canal opened the Milwaukee Road's expectation they'd be carrying loads of traffic from the Pacific across to Milwaukee and Chicago and points east fell flat and the Milwaukee Road had to declare bankruptcy shortly after World War I so yes it had the Panama Canal did have a detrimental effect on the railroads but of course for TR the canal was as much strategic as it was economic any other quick questions am I missing anyone yes go ahead yes there are the lavish cars still around you can go to Las Vegas, Nevada and you can go into I think it's called the Grand Station Casino you can go into the Pullman car that TR rode on his 1903 trip it's part of the casino in Las Vegas say the casino again I believe it's called the Grand Station or something like that well not lots of them there's lots of private varnish on the road still today, lots of private cars all of them extremely luxurious I have not been able to discover whether any others of the cars that TR rode in were actually preserved I suspect they were sure last chance yes comparison of our railroad travel to that in Africa I haven't actually done any research into the safari but there's that famous picture of him riding on the cow catcher and that suggests that TR was a lot slower in Africa than it was in the United States and not too many safety regulations either last question go ahead would you speak to the annual rate of railway worker injuries and fatalities how that helps to initiate federal legislation on workers compensation worker injuries yeah absolutely TR was desperately aware of the fact that the railroad industry along with the mining industry had the highest accident and fatality rate of any industry in the United States and he of course did initiate workers compensation legislation so he was aware of it he fought to try and require the railroads to live up to what he saw as their responsibility to their employees so yes very much so before we let you go just tell us quickly about the book you're writing about Illinois well I'm writing a history of Illinois railroads and I'm writing it because I taught a course at Monmouth College on the railroads and I wanted to assign a book about Illinois railroads because the state of Illinois the city of Chicago but also the state is so instrumental in for example the land grants in the legislative regulation of railroads and so instead of throwing up my hands in frustration saying there is no book I'm writing it and that will be published in a couple of years Simon Corderay thank you