 Chapter 14 Part 2 of Twenty Years of the Republic, 1885-1905 by Harry Thurston Peck. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Last Years of McKinley, Part 2 Even more unfortunate was a bitter controversy between the friends of Rear Admiral Slabson and those of Rear Admiral Schley in which it may be said, to the honor of both these officers that neither took any active part. Chapter 134, Page 6, 23 At the beginning of the war the former had been promoted to the chief command of the fleet in Cuban waters, although previously he had been of rank inferior to Schley. This promotion was in accordance with the prevailing sentiment of naval experts. Admiral Slabson represented the type of naval officer who is above all else strictly and most commendably professional. Cold in temperament, clear-headed, dispassionate and self-controlled, he had many of the traits that were to be found in Maltica and that contributed so largely to that soldier's phenomenal success. His one thought was to perform with absolute efficiency the tasks assigned him and in so doing to spare no pains and to leave no details unnoticed or unprovided for. He had a high degree of scientific knowledge and he represented what was best in the traditions of the Old Navy and in the aspirations of the new. He cared nothing for popular applause and never suffered any thought of it to influence his actions. Those who did not know him well criticized him as too reserved, too austere and in fact as too professional, his tactlessness indeed was at times almost repellent. When upon his tardy arrival at the Battle of Santiago, Commodore Schley signaled him a message of enthusiastic congratulation, Slabson made the coldly curt reply, report your casualties. But in the Navy he was regarded with profound respect and his promotion was marvelously justified by the event. The smashing of Cervera's fleet was just as much his work as though his own hand had fired every gun upon that memorable day of victory. Rear Admiral Schley was a very different type of man. He was, first of all, a man of impulse, a veager action, in fact more typically French than Anglo-Saxon. He was far more easygoing than Admiral Slabson, less intellectual, less steady, less sure of himself and he set an emergency as was shown by his hesitating and illatory course when ordered to blockade Cervera in Santiago. Admiral Schley kept an eye upon the public and he loved the approval of the public. The applause was very sweet to him and he knew something of the ways and arts of the politician. His impulsiveness, his urbanity, and his lack of reserve made him liked by many whose standards of judgment were personal and not professional. To these he seemed delightfully human, while Admiral Slabson was possibly regarded as a naval martinet. After the war his friends very unwisely ascribed to him the chief honors of the victory at Santiago, declaring that he was actually in command, while Admiral Slabson had arrived only at the conclusion of the fight. This netled the latter's friends and they retorted by pointing to Schley's disobedience of orders, by criticizing his maneuvers in the battle, and at last by accusing him in naval phrase, of being gun-shy. Accusation was met with counter-accusation, until at last Admiral Slai very properly demanded a naval court of inquiry, which was granted. The court was composed of Admiral's Dewey, Ramsey, and Benham, and after a patient consideration of all the facts it rendered a report to the effect that Admiral Slabson had been really in command of the fleet at the battle of Santiago, and at the same time that there was no ground for any aspersions on the courage and coolness of Admiral Slai while under fire. The court declined to consider Admiral Slai's alleged disobedience of orders prior to the blockade of Santiago, holding that whatever his conduct may have been at that time, it had been condoned by the Navy Department in failing to relieve him of his command, and by Congress in advancing him to the rank of rear Admiral. The findings of the court were approved by President McKinley, and the unpleasant controversy gradually came to an end even in the press. A striking tribute was paid to Admiral Slabson by his fellow officers on his retiring from command. The scene has been described by a well-known man of letters in these words. When the time arrived for Admiral Slabson to surrender the command of the fleet he had brought back to Hampton Roads, he came on deck to meet there only those officers whose prescribed duty required them to take part in the farewell ceremonies as set forth in the regulations. But when he went over the side of the flagship he found that the boat which was to bear him ashore was manned by the rest of the officers, ready to row him themselves and eager to render this last personal service. And then from every other ship of the fleet there put out a boat also manned by officers, to escort for the last time the commander whom they loved and honored. Note 35, page 626. Few of those who became conspicuous by their achievements in the war escaped some measure of detraction or neglect. General Shafter's name was soon forgotten. Other generals of the regular army who, in spite of the blunders of the department fought so brilliantly in Cuba and the Philippines, received only a gredging recognition from the nation as a whole. Lieutenant Hobson, whose gallant exploits on the Merrimack made him for the moment a popular idol, became afterwards the target of almost universal ridicule. Some foolish girl among a throng of those who welcomed him on his return threw her arms around him and kissed him, and other women still more foolish tried from time to time to follow her example until the comic papers turned the whole thing into a cheap joke in calling the verb, to Hobsonize, that is, to kiss a man against his will. One exception to the list of those who were neglected or even vilified was found in the person of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt of New York. Mr. Roosevelt, at the opening of the war, was Assistant Secretary of the Navy. His active, forceful, and impulsive nature, coupled with an intense enthusiasm, had done much to stimulate the activities of the department in which he served. When war was formally declared, Mr. Roosevelt raised the regiment known as the Rough Riders, the first volunteer United States cavalry, and went to Cuba as its Lieutenant Colonel, the Colonel being Dr. Leonard Wood, until that time an army surgeon. Colonel Roosevelt's personality was such as readily attracted the attention of newspaper writers in search of the picturesque. His spectacular performances at the Battle of San Juan gained for him a vast amount of public notice, so that to the popular mind he seemed to have won the day almost single-handed, like an old-time hero of romance. Note 36, page 627. Returning home he narrated his adventures in various magazine articles and public speeches, and no one was permitted to forget him. Not long after his regiment had been mustered out, Mr. Roosevelt became the Republican candidate for the governorship of New York, and was elected by a plurality of 18,000 votes, his success being very largely due to the prestige of his military service. When peace was finally declared, the nation leaped at once into an era of unprecedented prosperity. As is always the case, a brilliantly successful foreign war stimulated commercial activity in every quarter. The American people no longer suffered from that intangible ailment which during the Second Administration of Mr. Cleveland had been styled a general lack of confidence. Now they were, if anything, overconfident with the result that the year 1899 became an annus mirabilis in the records of American commerce and finance. Capital, which had long been locked up by its estimate owners now came forth and reaped abundant profits. All the staple products of the country were in keen demand and prices soared almost from day to day. For the first time in American economic history, the volume of foreign trade for the single year amounted to more than $2 billion. In the iron and steel trade, prices increased more than 100% during the year. The growth in textile manufacturers was almost equally remarkable. As agriculture shared in the general prosperity, mortgages being rapidly cleared off, savings banks deposits increasing, new and improved buildings and implements being used, while comforts and even luxuries hitherto unknown were now enjoyed. The price of raw cotton rose within the year 30% while the price of wool almost doubled in the same period. Note 37, page 628. On October 12, the stock of gold in the United States Treasury amounted to $258 million, the highest figure since the foundation of the government, while the gold in actual circulation reached the enormous sum of $703 million. Mr. James T. Woodward, president of the New York Clearinghouse Commission, wrote, All trade reports show that our factories are taxed to their utmost capacity in filling their orders. The railroads are unable to cope with the traffic that is offered, not having sufficient equipment to haul the raw materials to the factories and mills or to carry the finished product to the wholesaler and jobber. And on every hand, we hear of a record-breaking business and constantly increasing wages, the latter in many cases as much as 10 and 15%. Note 38, page 628. The winning of a foothold in Asia stimulated American trade throughout the East. Imports from Asia showed an increase in this one year of $40 million, as against a smaller increase in exports of about $6 million. With the West Indies there was an increase in imports of $14 million and an exports of some $15 million. In exports generally, the most noticeable circumstance was the volume of manufactured goods sent abroad. The United States began to compete successfully with British ironmasters, not only in distant parts of the world, such as India and Australia, but in Great Britain itself. On the whole, the year 1899 saw an almost furious commercial activity, a steady rise in the prices of staple goods and an unprecedented confidence in the immediate business future of the country. There were, of course, many causes for this revival of prosperity. In the first place, the people had pinched and saved for years and had therefore in a measure diminished the burden of their debts. Again, the surplus stock of manufactured goods had been gradually consumed, the more speedily because so many mills and factories had either been shut down or had been working on half-time. Still further, as has already been noted, there was the stimulus of the war and the lavish expenditures by the government for supplies of every sort and for transportation. But back of all these causes there was another even more important of which, however, only scientific economists recognized the profound significance. The demonetization of silver and the practical adoption of the gold standard in the preceding decade had limited the medium of exchange for commercial purposes and had tended to cause an increasing contraction in the money market. The enhanced value of the dollar as measured in gold would in consequence have sent prices lower and lower and would thus have steadily increased the burdens of the debtor class not only in the United States but throughout the entire world. As Mr. Charles Francis Adams expressed it in speaking of the adoption of the gold standard, thereafter in the great system of international exchanges silver ceased to be counted a part of that species reserve on which drafts were made. Thenceforth the drain as among the financial centers was to be on gold alone. In the whole history of man no precedent for such a step was to be found. So far as the United States was concerned the basis on which its complex and delicate financial fabric rested was weakened by one half and the cheaper and more accessible metal that to which the debtor would naturally have recourse and discharge of his obligations was made unavailable. It could further be demonstrated that without a complete readjustment of currencies and values the world's accumulated stock and annual production of gold could not as a monetary basis be made to suffice for its needs. A continually recurring contest for gold among the great financial centers was inevitable. A change which in the language of lekkie beyond all other effects most deeply and universally the material well-being of man had been unwittingly challenged. Note 39, page 630. This contradiction of the currency would naturally have been hastened with the increase of the world's population and with the growing demand for gold for use in the arts. The disastrous result of such conditions could have been averted in only one of two ways either by restoring silver to its former place as was proposed by Mr. Bryan or by an unforeseen and unexpected addition to the world's stock of gold. It was the second solution which was actually arrived at and this was due to the achievements of the explorer and the man of science. In August of 1896 a roving miner named Cormac found himself near the Klondike Creek in the remote Canadian territory of Yukon a region 1300 miles northwest of the city of Seattle and almost within the Arctic Circle. In this desolate and nearly unknown spot Cormac discovered indications of rich gold deposits. At that time even the rudest habitation had not yet been erected there. A year later some 15,000 fortune seekers had reared a ragged sort of city in this barren waste and were enduring the horrors of an Arctic winter for the sake of the precious metal which the frozen earth reluctantly gave up to them. Note 40, page 631. Still larger deposits were subsequently discovered in the Gnome District of Alaska while the beach sands and river gravels at the head of Cook's Inlet proved also to be richly oriferous. During the few years which immediately followed upon these discoveries the districts mentioned yielded not far from 140 million dollars worth of gold. Almost coincidentally the production of the South African gold mines increased so rapidly as to bring forth nearly 100 million dollars annually. The unexpected therefore actually happened. The end which Mr. Brian had had in view was accomplished in another way not by the appreciation of silver but rather by the depreciation of gold or at least by the operation of causes which prevented gold from becoming scarcer. This fact explains the comparatively slight friction attending the passage of a very important financial measure in the year 1900. The congressional elections of 1898 had somewhat reduced the size of the Republican majority in the house but it had also eliminated from the Senate a number of the silver advocates so that the upper chamber for the first time contained a working majority of senators favorable to the gold standard. What had hitherto been in practice the financial policy of the government was now embodied in formal legislation. A so-called currency bill was introduced into the house on December 4, 1899 and with some amendments became law on March 14, 1900. It declared the gold dollar to be the standard unit of value and all other forms of money in use to be redeemable in gold. It established a gold reserve of 150 million dollars and directed the secretary of the Treasury to sell bonds to replenish this reserve whenever it should fall below 100 million dollars. Note 41, page 632. The Currency Act carried out the pledges made in the Republican platform of 1896 and both at home and abroad it strengthened the financial credit of the United States. The buoyant feeling which was perceptible in the business world found instant expression in the centers of speculation. Hundreds of millions of dollars had been added to the market value of the shares listed on the New York Stock Exchange alone with the result that speculation assumed extraordinary proportions. New enterprises and new combinations of capital were almost daily announced to an interested and eager public. The business done in Wall Street during the first three months of 1899 was greater by nearly 15 million shares than during the first three months of 1898. There was a keen demand for the so-called industrial stocks and this demand was supplied and oversupplied by the flotation of new companies which were capitalized at sums ranging from 150 million down to 50 million dollars. Existing companies also greatly increased their capital or in popular language watered their stock in order to form combinations which in effect were trusts. Money was easy, profit making easier, the speculative disposition developed with rushes. The industrial fever was high. Promoters crowded into Wall Street and madly rolled out gigantic capitalizations. The era of consolidation was on all sides proclaimed as present and as full of blessings. Note 42, page 633. Even a sharp reaction which occurred late in the year was treated lightly and was optimistically called a prosperity panic. At this time there came conspicuously into public notice a number of bold financiers who, being already possessed of great fortunes, amazed the country and in fact the world by the magnitude of their operations. The promoter and the underwriter were continually forming new trusts or holding companies into each of which were merged a large number of smaller properties. Thus the Corporation Trust Company of New Jersey became the agent of 700 corporations with an aggregate capital of $1 billion. The New Jersey Corporation Guarantee and Trust Company represented 500 corporations with not less than $500 million capital. The combined capital of such combinations as were actually trusts amounted to more than $4 billion. A scientific economist has estimated that the addition to the capitalization of the country in the brief period which is now under consideration exceeded the total capitalization of all the manufacturing companies established in the United States during the 30 years between 1860 and 1890. Note 43, page 633. The underwriters and promoters who affected these combinations reaped huge profits. Thus Messers J.P. Morgan and Company who promoted the United States Steel Corporation and advanced at $25 million in cash received in return $106,800,000 in its preferred and common stock. For promoting the American Tin Plate Company Mr. W. H. Moore received $10 million in the common stock of that concern. The persons who promoted the Distilling Company of America were paid in stock amounting to $24 million. The disproportion between the capital of some of these companies and the market value of their securities was startling to conservative financiers. Thus the United States Leather Company was capitalized at $125 million while the market value of its stock was about $50 million. The United States Steel Corporation was over capitalized to the extent of about $830 million. Note 44, page 634. The bigness of these extraordinary figures and the rapidity with which such profits were made dazzled men's minds so that they became drunk with the passion of money-getting and blind to all other standards and ideals. They thought and spoke in millions. And the Napoleons of Wall Street became an essence heroes and demigods. Men and women and even children all over the country drank in thirstily every scrap of news that was printed in the press about these so-called captains of industry, their successful deals, the offhand way in which they converted slips of worthless paper into guarantees of more than princely wealth and all the details concerning their daily lives, their personal peculiarities, their virtues and their vices. To the imagination of millions of Americans, the financial centers of the country seemed to be spouting streams of gold into which anyone might dip at will and every Wall Street gutter figured as a new pactolus. The men who represented the achievements of this era were of varied types. Most conspicuous among them all was Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, whose bold conception successfully wrought out attracted the attention of both hemispheres. Mr. Morgan was a gentleman of cultivated taste who, as a young man, had inclined for a time toward the scholar's life. He pursued his studies at the Boston Latin School, where he read the classics leisurely and was grounded thoroughly in the old-fashioned education. Later in Germany he spent some time at the University of Göttingen, where he heard lectures in history and political economy and won such distinction by his mathematical work as to receive the offer of a professor's chair in that historic institution. He became in after years a connoisseur of the fine arts, a collector of rare books and manuscripts, and a patron of science and learning. But these were only the diversions, the peruraga of an extraordinary career. Wall Street and Lombard Street both spoke of him and of his achievements with bated breath. His schemes for multiplying ordinary fortunes into colossal accumulations of wealth made him appear to the small fry of finance, a modern Midas whose magic touch turned everything to gold. Haughty and often arrogant and bearing, he asserted an irresistible influence over all he met, and he justified their belief in him by the inviolability of his plighted word, no less than by the great success which seemed for a time to be inseparable from his enterprises. It was he who organized in 1901 the United States Steel Corporation capitalized at $1,404 million, a company which swallowed the plants, the bonds and the stocks of ten of the largest corporations of the world. Note 45, page 635. Of an entirely different type was Mr. Andrew Carnegie who came to the United States from Scotland when a mere child and at the age of 12 was set to work in a Pennsylvania cotton mill on a weekly salary of $1.20. Subsequently, he became a telegraph operator employed by the Pennsylvania Railroad and after some years the superintendent of an important division of that road. Mr. Carnegie was canny, even beyond the proverbial caniness of his countrymen and little by little through the judicious purchase of stocks, he secured an interest in oil producing concerns. Mr. Carnegie's investments presently netted him a comfortable fortune with which in 1865 he began the manufacture of iron. Protected by the high tariff, his ventures proved remarkably successful and he very shrewdly acquired valuable coal and ore beds. His relations with the railroads also gave him great and special advantages. When the United States Steel Corporation was formed, Mr. Carnegie's company had to be bought out and it is said that in the negotiations attending this sale the Scotchman outmaneuvered even Mr. Morgan. He did at any rate receive an exchange for bonds and stock valued at $217 million an allotment of 5% bonds in the steel trust of a par value of $304 million constituting a mortgage not only upon the former Carnegie works but upon all the other plants absorbed by the new corporation. Mr. Carnegie then retired from active business devoting himself to the building of libraries to fostering education by his munificence and to posing as an authority upon almost every subject of human interest from Homeric criticism to spelling reform and becoming rather famous for his dictum to the effect that to die rich is to die disgraced. Note 46, page 636. Mr. John D. Rockefeller and Mr. Philip D. Armour the respective organizers of the Standard Oil Company and the so-called Beef Trust were men who laid the foundations of their colossal fortunes first of all by the minutest attention to small savings. Mr. Rockefeller studied carefully every possible method of avoiding waste in the handling of oil while Mr. Armour contrived to convert every part of each slaughtered animal, horns, hoofs, hide, hair, bones and bristles into a marketable product. Yet their fortunes would never have exceeded moderate limits had they not been able to secure secret advantages as against their rivals from the railways. Other exponents of the new wealth were Mr. H. H. Rogers, the audacious and powerful manager of Mr. Rockefeller's company, Mr. J. W. Gates, who came out of the West at this time and who was a sublimation of the reckless, speculative type of financier, and Mr. August Belmont, Mr. Charles T. Yorkies and Mr. Thomas F. Ryan, who by ingenious management absorbed valuable franchises for street railways in New York and Chicago which paid their owners immense annual sums while yielding next to nothing to the cities which had improvidently granted them such favors. These and scores of other capitalists consolidated not only the related parts of particular industries and enterprises, but they massed together unrelated interests. Thus, Mr. Rockefeller in control of the Standard Oil Company absorbed also the amalgamated copper company and in time linked with these corporations two powerful chains of banks. Through the National City Bank of New York, the combination assumed practical control of more than 50 other banking institutions in various parts of the country and at least a dozen trust companies together with a mutual life insurance company. It was estimated that they could influence within New York City alone not less than $108 million of banking capital, $474 million of deposits and $323 million of loans. In like manner, Mr. Morgan was practically the master of another chain of banks and trust companies of the New York Life Insurance Company and of the Equitable Life Assurance Society commanding an equal aggregation of capital. Together, these two alliances have at their disposal nearly one half of the banking capital of New York City. Not only are they ready at a moment's notice to loan millions and to undertake any vast enterprise with a favorite trust, but by their preponderance in the money market, they are able to force the rivals of the trust to borrow at disadvantages rates. Note 47, page 638. It is not surprising that the same wave of materialism which was in full flow elsewhere should submerge every department of the national government. The era of consolidation which was declared to be a blessing was ascribed wholly to the Dingley-Tariff Law and to the dominance of the Republican Party. Mark Hanna was now the spokesman of the administration and already one of the leaders in the Senate. That body naturally conservative looked somewhat ascant at the prominence of one who had but just entered the senatorial order. Mr. Hanna, however, while not obtrusive, broke through the unwritten laws which repressed the activities of new senators. His hard-headed, indomitable business sense and his great force of character made it impossible to ignore him. Though not an orator, he could speak with force and point upon many questions. He was never abashed and he had a fund of tough, dry humor at his command. At first, one or two of the older senators attempted to teach this neophyte his proper place, but none of them cared to make the attempt a second time. Mr. Hanna met all thrusts with imperturbable serenity and never failed in his repost. Whenever he spoke, his colleagues and the galleries as well paid him the unusual compliment of an appreciative silence. Little by little, too, it came to be known that because of his practical good sense, his services were really valuable upon committees and in the everyday work of Congress of which the public knows and cares but little. Moreover, he was a man of his word, direct and upright in all personal relations and courteous to the many strangers with whom he came in contact. It was only because he embodied and typified all the forces of materialism that he was still assailed by a part of the press and by the opposition. The multiplication of trusts, the absorption of franchises by the favored few and the building up of special interests by special legislation, these things Mr. Hanna honestly believed to be in essence good. And therefore he favored subsidies for American shipping and every other form of bounty which would artificially make some classes of Americans more prosperous than others. His spirit was in truth the spirit of the day. The nation for the moment dazzled by the evidences of material prosperity accepted the new gospel and the voice of opposition was little heated. In 1899, the government of the United States had an opportunity to re-quite, though in a very small degree, the friendliness which Great Britain had displayed during the war with Spain. The Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State had challenged the British Empire to a contest in which the disparity of the contending forces seemed at first sight almost ludicrous. The bravery of the Boers, however, coupled with their skill in adapting their war-like operations to the physical conditions of the country led at first to severe reverses to the British arms. Those continental nations which had sympathized with Spain and which, but for Great Britain's attitude, might have attempted intervention on her behalf, now sneered and mocked at English Valor. In several chancellories, there were concocted sinister schemes which under some conditions might have been transmuted into action still more sinister. In the United States, there no doubt existed a certain sympathy with the Boers, springing from an admiration of their fighting qualities and from the natural goodwill which goes out to the weaker of two antagonists. But the American government had not forgotten what Lord Ponsfault had done for the American cause in Washington and what Captain Chichester had done in Manila Bay. Its neutrality in the Boer War was modeled on the neutrality of Great Britain in 1898. It was frankly benevolent to war the latter power. British agents were allowed to purchase in the United States great numbers of horses and mules for the use of the Queen's Army in South Africa and even to make enlistments in a quiet way. Later, when a number of Boer delegates came to Washington with an appeal for either mediation or actual intervention, President McKinley consented to receive them at the White House only as private individuals. Though he chatted with them pleasantly, he said no word about the war and when they approached the subject, he blandly called their attention to the beautiful view which could be seen from the windows of his drawing room. The enemies of England received neither aid nor comfort from the American government and presently the crisis passed. Another link, however, had been forged in the chain of interest and understanding which united the two English-speaking nations. In the early months of the year 1900, the impending presidential election began to arouse the interest of politicians. Yet even among politicians, this interest was but a languid one. That President McKinley would be renominated without opposition had long been a foregone conclusion, that he would be elected was regarded as almost equally inevitable. The country was so prosperous and the government had on the whole been so well-administered as to give the Democrats no popular issue, not even the issue of discontent. The four years which had elapsed since 1896 had done very little to unite the demoralized opposition. No new leader had come to the front. Mr. Bryan, in spite of the defeat which he had suffered in 1896, was still the dominant figure in his party and it was held that he might have the nomination if he chose to lead what was likely to be the forlornest of forlorn hopes. When the Republican convention assembled in Philadelphia on June 20th, the only topic of animated discussion was the question whether Governor Roosevelt of New York would accept a nomination for the vice presidency. Mr. Roosevelt's position was somewhat peculiar. As governor, he had alienated the sympathy of the great corporate interests by securing the passage of a much-needed law imposing attacks upon corporation franchises. He had also estranged the so-called machine politicians of his state, the chief of whom was Senator Thomas C. Platt. Governor Roosevelt strongly desired to serve a second term as governor in order to carry out the reforms which he had instituted. Mr. Platt was anxious to get Mr. Roosevelt out of the way. The vice presidency of the United States was popularly supposed to be an innocuous and purely ornamental office, the occupant of which passed through it to a species of political oblivion. Senator Platt, therefore, did all in his power to foster a sentiment in favor of Mr. Roosevelt's nomination at Philadelphia. In this, he found supporters who, unlike Mr. Platt himself, were enthusiastic friends of the New York governor. Mr. Roosevelt had lived long on the Western Plains. His ardent and unconventional manners endear him to the people of that section. Hence, the delegates from the far Western states came to Philadelphia, bent upon making him the candidate who was to divide the electoral honors with President McKinley. It is now well understood that President McKinley by no means shared this feeling, though he made no open signs of disapproval. Both he and Senator Hanna had a certain distrust of Mr. Roosevelt, whom they regarded as too impetuous of person to be wholly safe. Perhaps in President McKinley's heart of hearts there was a slight lack of cordiality based upon reasons that were purely personal. When Mr. Roosevelt was assistant secretary of the Navy, he had often fretted over what he held to be the extreme conservatism of the president, and in accordance with his natural impulsiveness, he had voiced his opinion to many persons in language that was by no means consistent with respect. McKinley has no more backbone than a chocolate eclair, which was a favorite saying of his at that time, and doubtless there were many tail-bearers to carry this and other-like expressions to the presidential ear. But the very fact that Mr. Hanna was opposed to Mr. Roosevelt brought to the governor friends with whom he would otherwise have had no natural affiliations. Senator Key detested Mr. Hanna, and therefore in order to displease him, he threw his influence in favor of Mr. Roosevelt's candidacy. Governor Roosevelt himself was quite sincere in his unwillingness to take the nomination. On June 18th, two days before the convention met, he read a statement to a large number of newspaper correspondence in which, after expressing his appreciation of the attitude of his many friends, he said, I feel most deeply that the field of my best usefulness to the public and the party is in New York State, and if the party should see fit to renominate me for governor, I can in that position help the national ticket as in no other way. I very earnestly ask that every friend of mine in the convention respect my wish and my judgment in this matter. Note 48, page 643. End of chapter 14, part two. Chapter 14, part three of 20 years of the Republic, 1885 to 1905 by Harry Thurston Peck. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The last years of McKinley, part three. Nevertheless, when the convention men on June 20th the talk was all for Roosevelt, the proceedings on the first day were purely formal with no evidence of excitement. The applause given to the speeches was decorous but not enthusiastic. On the following day the committee reported a platform which was speedily adopted. It praised the record of the administration and renewed the allegiance of the party to the gold standard and to the policy of protection and reciprocity. It advocated subsidies to the American merchant marine and a more effective restriction of pauper immigration. It commended the reform of the civil service and a liberal pension policy and put forth the usual number of popular generalities. In order to prevent the Democrats from making a distinct issue of the trust question, it denounced conspiracies and combinations to restrict business. On June 22nd, the third day of the convention, Senator Foraker presented Mr. McKinley's name for the nomination and was seconded by Mr. Roosevelt. When the roll was called it showed that every delegate had voted for Mr. McKinley who received 930 ballots. The applause following the announcement was hardy but not uproarious since there had been no contest as to her men's blood. Instead, the delegates indulged in various forms of horseplay while a mock elephant, the popular symbol of the party moved clumsily around the hall amid cheers and laughter. At one o'clock on the same day, Governor Roosevelt was put in nomination for the vice presidency by an Iowa delegate who was followed by other speakers. Among them, Mr. Depew of New York who spoke of William McKinley, a Western man with Eastern ideas and Theodore Roosevelt, an Eastern man with Western characteristics. The noise and clamor and shouting which had hitherto been lacking now broke forth in a tempest which was renewed and prolonged when the announcement was made that Mr. Roosevelt had received 925 votes. Every one in fact except his own and those of four delegates who were absent from the hall. Mr. Roosevelt signified his acceptance of the nomination yielding as he said to the will of his party. The Democratic National Convention met in Kansas City on July 4th in the midst of the noise and excitement attending the celebration of the national holiday. The convention was more disposed to join in that celebration than to proceed at once to business. It listened to the reading of the Declaration of Independence to patriotic orations and to vocal music. In the evening Governor Altgeld pronounced a eulogy on Mr. Bryan and Senator Tillman read out with tremendous emphasis the platform which had been adopted by the Committee on Resolutions. This document denounced the so-called colonial policy of the Republican administration declared its opposition to militarism, attacked the trust and all private monopolies and called the Dingley Tariff a trust breeding measure. The vital paragraph, however, was that which indicated the party's intention to make imperialism the supreme question to be discussed before the people. The burning issue of imperialism growing out of the Spanish war involves the very existence of the Republic and the destruction of our free institutions. We regard it as the paramount issue of the campaign. Another paragraph reaffirmed and endorsed the principles of the National Democratic Platform adopted by Chicago in 1896 and demanded once more the immediate restoration of the free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold at the present legal ratio of 16 to 1 without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation. The platform was received with tremendous cheering, many of the delegates seizing their state emblems and marching with them about the hall and banners were displayed bearing such partisan inscriptions as Lincoln Abolish Slavery McKinley has restored it. The climax of this temporary frenzy was reached when there was suddenly swung from the iron-girded roof a gigantic American flag more than 75 feet long which streamed over the heads of the mob bearing the words the flag of the Republic forever, of an empire never. Note 49, page 646. On the following day in the presence of 20,000 men and women, the Democratic Platform was adopted amid tumultuous shouting which continued for more than 20 minutes after which Mr. Bryan was nominated for the presidency not by roll call but by acclamation. His nomination was seconded by Mr. Hill of New York who could undoubtedly have been made the candidate for vice president had he been willing to accept the nomination. As he explicitly declined, the convention nominated Mr. Adelaide Stevenson of Illinois who had been vice president from 1893 to 1897. The convention then adjourned having made it clear that the three issues of the campaign were the trust, free silver and imperialism. As to the trusts, the Democratic Party could not hope to make a very strenuous fight. The Republicans had also denounced these monopolistic combinations and President McKinley in a recent message had devoted a paragraph to them somewhat vaguely worded but still was sufficient point to make his remarks available for campaign use. Moreover, the country still remembered how Democratic senators had surrendered to the sugar truss in 1894. The revival of the free silver question was creditable to Mr. Bryan's sincerity and consistency but it was exceedingly bad politics. The West was now prosperous. There was no longer an immense debtor class to whom the silver argument could appeal. Even Mr. Bryan's own following had lost interest in that cause and there was nothing to be gained by his further advocacy. Imperialism as an issue was a most amorphous non-descript. The word was one of those party cries which have the exasperating characteristic of meaning anything and everything or nothing for what was indicated by imperialism when the term was analyzed impartially. The Democratic Orators professed to think that the American Republic was in danger of being turned into an empire overnight. Yet in reality, no one had the slightest fear of any such catastrophe. To talk of imperialism in such a sense as this was so ludicrous a thing as to make it quite impossible for Americans to take it seriously. The Democratic platform also identified imperialism with militarism and in the campaign which followed Mr. Bryan talked in a most portentous way about the fortresses which in imagination he already saw towering above every city in the land bristling with cannon and filled with a licentious soldiery prepared at a moment's notice to make the gutters run with blood. His followers professed a horror of what they called the growth of the military spirit in the United States beginning so they said in the war with Spain. But as that war had been declared by the unanimous vote of all parties in Congress the war spirit was scarcely fraught with peril to American independence. Mr. Bryan should have known this because at the time he himself had felt the war spirit and it had caused him to volunteer and to get himself appointed colonel of a regiment. Did he and his regiment resemble a licentious soldiery? He would hardly have admitted it yet his command was typical of all American regiments and hence his vivid picture of frowning forts and blood bespattered streets failed lamentably in its appeal to the common sense of the American people. The campaign therefore opened with slight enthusiasm and though Mr. Bryan repeated his spectacular canvas of 1896 and though there was an immense amount of oratory indulged in by the hired speakers of both parties the issue was never doubtful. During the summer in fact attention was largely diverted from domestic politics to a series of dramatic incidents that were taking place in China. The Chinese had been greatly irritated by the aggressions made upon their territory by France and Germany and Russia. In May of 1900 rumors began to spread regarding a powerful secret organization in the province of Shantung. The organization was spoken of as the Boxers this being a very free translation of the native name. Its object was originally to defend the country against foreign intrigues. Finally however it fell under the direction of ignorant fanatics whose watchword was exterminate the foreigners. Sporadic acts of violence were followed by demonstrations so serious that the legations in Peking finally called upon their respective governments for military protection. Small bodies of Marines were sent by various nations in response to this request but presently the Boxers who were now joined by a portion of the Chinese army gained possession of Peking, cut off its communications with the outer world, murdered the German ambassador and besieged the foreigners who had gathered in the grounds of the British legation fortified with skill and defended with splendid courage against overwhelming numbers. But for a time the fate of the beleaguered band was utterly unknown and the most startling stories were accepted as being true. It was reported that the wife of the Russian ambassador had been boiled in oil, that the Christians in the legation had been butchered after being put to torture and that Peking had been the scene of indescribable outrageous. They were cabled to Europe and the United States specific and most alarming details of which the following are an example. In their final attempt to cut their way through, the legationers formed a square with the women and children in the center. When the Boxers realized that they were being attacked, they became like wild beasts and shot each other in the darkness. The foreigners went mad and killed all their women and children with revolvers. Heavy guns bombarded all night until the buildings were demolished and in flames. Many foreigners were roasted in the ruins. The Boxers rushed upon them and hacked and stabbed both dead and wounded, cutting off their heads and carrying these through the streets on their rifles shouting furiously. They then attacked the native Christian quarters massacring all who refused to join them, ill-treating the women and braining the children. Hundreds of mission buildings were burned. All China is now menaced. In the provinces of Hup and Hunan, thousands of native Christians have been mutilated and tortured. The women being first assaulted and then massacred. Note 50, page 649. Meanwhile, the United States and Europe were a stir. Ships of war were sent to Chinese waters and on June 10th, a body of some 2,000 Marines and sailors, British, American, Japanese, and French, attempted to march upon Peking under the command of Vice Admiral Seymour of the British Navy. This attempt would not have been made had not the American naval representative, Captain Mikala, declared at a council of war, the minister of my country is in danger and I have been ordered to rescue him. I shall march even if I have to do so with none but my own men. The attempt was unavailing, however, for the hostile Chinese swarmed by thousands. They were well-armed and had cannon of the latest models. On June 17th, the Allied ships bombarded the Chinese forts at Taku and then carried them by storm. The result was simply to infuriate the Chinese who massed an army at Tiansin. Upon this place, an attack was made by a force of Japanese, Russians, British, Americans, and French and after much fierce fighting it was taken. Then an Allied force of 18,000 troops pushed on to Peking. The march began on August 4th and after almost continuous fighting, Peking was reached, its walls were battered open by artillery and the legations were relieved. British soldiers had the honor of first entering the beleaguered compound but the American flag was the first foreign standard to be hoisted on the walls of the Chinese capital. Note 51, page 650. Throughout this period, diplomacy had been active. Of all the foreign offices, the American State Department was the only one which had thoroughly kept its head. Since Mr. McKinley's inauguration, several changes had taken place in this important cabinet place. Mr. John Sherman, who was greatly enfeebled when he became Secretary, had broken down completely under the strain of the Spanish War. He lost his memory and remained only nominally at his post until his resignation in 1898 when he was succeeded by Judge William R. Day of Ohio whom President McKinley characterized as having a genius for common sense. Judge Day held office for a few months only resigning in order to head the American peace envoys at the Congress of Paris. His successor was Mr. John Hay who soon proved himself to be one of the ablest statesmen of his time. As a very young man, he had been private secretary to President Lincoln and then for several years a member of the Diplomatic Service in Paris, in Vienna and in Madrid. Under President Hayes, he had been first Assistant Secretary of State and in 1897, President McKinley had made him ambassador to Great Britain. Mr. Haye was a gentleman of unusual breadth, intelligence and tact. His social gifts were very marked. He was an accomplished man of letters and his experience had given him a comprehensive knowledge of men and of great affairs. When the Chinese crisis became acute, Mr. Haye took and maintained a consistent attitude and by his skill and judgment won the assent to it of the great powers of Europe. He chose to regard the boxer outbreak as a rebellion against the Chinese Imperial government and he maintained the fiction that for its successes that government was not responsible. During the dark period of the march upon Peking, the American Secretary was almost alone in believing that the legations were still safe. In the meantime, he labored to avoid the dismemberment of China. Note 52, page 651. And he both asked and secured from other nations written pledges that the open door for trade should be maintained after the suppression of the boxers. In the negotiations of September and October of the same year, the United States through Mr. Haye did much to soften the harshness of the terms imposed by the allies upon China and he secured the preservation of what he called the administrative entity of that country. Note 53, page 651. The last few weeks before the presidential election were full of bustle, but only the most optimistic Democrats felt any real hope of Mr. Bryan's success. On Saturday, November 3rd, the great sound money parade of 1896 was duplicated in New York. More than 100,000 voters marched in the pouring rain. This demonstration is to be remembered chiefly because of the tactlessness of the Democratic managers who hung across the line of March banners bearing the legend. McKinley's badge is on my coat, but Bryan is near my heart. God bless him. This insult to the sincerity and courage of the Republican paraders gave so great offense as undoubtedly to lose thousands of votes to the cause which Mr. Bryan represented. Nothing, however, in that year could have been done to turn the tide away from President McKinley. In the popular vote, he received a majority over Mr. Bryan of some 850,000 ballots and in the Electoral College, he had 292 votes against Mr. Bryan's 155. Mr. Bryan, in fact, failed to carry his own state, his own city, and even his own polling precinct and he received the electoral votes of only Idaho, Colorado, Montana, and Nevada in addition to those of the Southern states. The neo-Republicanism was everywhere triumphant. President McKinley's second inauguration resembled his first, though it was still more imposing. His new administration began with the best omens. No perplexing problems existed to burden his mind or to stimulate a purely factional opposition. His personal popularity had become very great. In the early spring of 1901, he made in company with his wife, a journey westward to California, passing through the Southern states. Everywhere he was received with the utmost cordiality and respect. He spoke to the multitudes that greeted him, not as the president of a party, but as the chosen ruler of a united nation. These days recalled to students of history the second administration of President Monroe, which has become memorable as the era of good feeling. The president himself had really risen above the plane of partisanship. The wider field of interest, which the United States now occupied, had undoubtedly broadened and elevated President McKinley's statesmanship. He gave striking evidence of this in a remarkable speech which he delivered on September 5th in the city of Buffalo before gathering of 50,000 people. In that speech, he showed plainly that he was no longer fettered by the dogmas of a narrow protectionism. He spoke words which 10 years before would have seemed to him heretical, but they were words of genuine statesmanship and they should be remembered and inscribed in golden letters upon the temple of American economics. Comparison of ideas is always educational and as such it instructs the brain and hand of man. Friendly rivalry follows, which is the spur of industrial improvement, the inspiration to useful invention and to high endeavor in all departments of human activity. The quest for trade is an incentive to men of business to devise, invent, improve and economize in the course of production. Business life, whether among ourselves or with other people is ever a sharp struggle for success. It will be none the less so in the future, but though commercial competitors we are, commercial enemies we must not be. The wisdom and energy of all the nations are none too great for the world's work. The success of art, science, industry and invention is an international asset and a crown in glory. Isolation is no longer possible or desirable. God and man have linked the nations together. No nation can longer be indifferent to any other. Only a broad and enlightened policy will keep what we have. No other policy will get more. By the sensible trade arrangements which will not interrupt our home production, we shall extend the outlets for our increasing surplus. A system which provides a mutual exchange of commodities is manifestly essential to the continued and helpful growth of our export trade. We must not repose infanticide security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing. If such a thing were possible, it would not be best for us or for those with whom we have to deal. We should take from our customers such of their products as we can use without harm to our industries and labor. Reciprocity is the natural growth of our wonderful industrial development under the domestic policy now firmly established. What we produce beyond our domestic consumption must have event abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet and we should sell everywhere we can and buy wherever the buying will enlarge our sales and productions and thereby make a greater demand for home labor. The period of exclusiveness is passed. The expansion of our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. Commercial wars are unprofitable. A policy of goodwill and friendly trade relations will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times. Measures of retaliation are not. If perchance, some of our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue or to encourage and protect our industries at home, why should they not be employed to extend and promote our markets abroad? Gentlemen, let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not conflict, and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace and not in those of war. We hope that all who are represented here may be moved to higher and nobler effort for their own and the world's good and that out of this city may come not only greater commerce and trade for us all, but more essential than these, relations of mutual respect, confidence and friendship, which will deepen and endure. Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsave prosperity, happiness and peace to all our neighbors and like blessings to all the peoples and the powers of the earth. Note 54, page 655. President McKinley had visited Buffalo for the purpose of inspecting the so-called Pan American Exposition. On the day after his public speech, he held a reception in the temple of music giving a personal greeting to all who wish to meet him. Among these was a young man having the appearance of a respectable mechanic whose right hand was apparently covered with a bandage. As he approached the president, he rapidly uncovered a revolver and before he could be prevented, he had fired two bullets into the body of the president. There he had fired a third time he was seized and hurled to the ground. Mr. McKinley stood for a moment as though dazed and then swayed backward into the arms of his attendants. The first words that he spoke were to his private secretary. Cortell, you be careful. Tell Mrs. McKinley gently. Then observing the attempt of the maddened people to tear his assailant to pieces, the president said in a feeble voice, let no one hurt him. The assassin was rescued by the police. He proved to be a German Paul named Leon Franz Jolgos by occupation of Blacksmith in Detroit. He was an unintelligent, dull young man whose brain had been inflamed by listening to the oratory of foreign anarchists. Among them particularly, a woman named Emma Goldman who had long been conspicuous as an agitator. In 1893 she had spent 10 months in prison for inciting to riot and her views were revolutionary even beyond those of ordinary anarchists. Short in figure, hard-featured and frowsy in appearance, she hated women and spent her life chiefly among men. At one time she had been the mistress of Johann Most though later she had quarreled with him and had assaulted him at an anarchistic meeting. Note 55, page 656. It was from her more than any other that Jolgos received the impulse which led him to commit the crime for which presently he suffered death, October 29th. President McKinley lingered for a few days and the favorable reports which were given out by his physicians led the country to hope that he might recover. This hope proved to be baseless and he died on the morning of Saturday, September 14th. His remains lay in state in Buffalo and afterwards in the rotunda of the capital at Washington where they were received with impressive ceremonies. His body was interred in the cemetery at Canton. To President McKinley, there was accorded a spontaneous tribute of universal grief such as no one in our history since Washington had ever yet received. Americans sorrowed both for the ruler and for the man and their sorrow was the more poignant because of the false hope which had been given them by the premature and quite unjustifiable optimism of his physicians. In it all there was nothing official, nothing studied or insincere. Its most impressive feature was found in its quiet intensity, the intensity of a feeling too sacred and too profound for utterance and mere words. At the hour when the simple ceremonial in Canton was proceeding, a great hush came over every city and hamlet in the land. The streets were deserted. The activities of 70 millions of people ceased. Men and women of every type in class felt the shadow touch for a moment their own lives and they let their sorrow find supreme expression in the solemnity of a reverent silence. It was very human and it was very wonderful. As a man, Mr. McKinley belonged to the older school of American statesmen whom he recalled in his personal appearance, in his smooth shaven face, his customary garb of black and the suavity of his dress. He would have been at home in the society of Clay and Cass and Benton and he will undoubtedly stand as the last president of that particular type. He possessed also the personal dignity of the older days with the advantage of a change in public sentiment which allowed him to maintain that dignity without offense to the people. The time had gone by when Americans took delight in an assumption of roughness and rudeness in their chief magistrate. The orgy which disgraced Jackson's first inauguration would have been impossible in 1901 and Americans no longer expected their presidents to appear, so to speak, in their shirt sleeves. Mr. McKinley always managed to keep his purely personal affairs and his domestic life from being vulgarized by the peculiar sort of publicity which the newspapers gave to many of his predecessors. He maintained indeed outside of his public appearances the quiet dignity and reserve that befit a private gentleman and that are still more to be desired in the ruler of a mighty nation. It is remarkable indeed that Mr. McKinley should have been so thoroughly successful in this particular thing for his early environment was one of the most democratic simplicity. While before 1896 his political associates were by no means sticklers for niceties of form. Probably Mr. McKinley was fortunate in his advisors and at the same time quick to take a hint. At any rate the fact remains that with the single exception of Mr. Arthur no president since the Free Jacksonian days had made things go off so well as did President McKinley. And as Americans had begun to learn some needed lessons from older countries they heartily commended the refined simplicity which pervaded the White House from 1896 to 1901. This satisfaction was heightened by the knowledge that the president's private life and character were not only spotless but exceptionally beautiful. Intellectually Mr. McKinley is probably to be compared with Millard Fillmore to whom he bore some likeness. Not in any sense endowed with originality he possessed good judgment, shrewdness, tact and a willingness to listen to advice from any quarter. He was not a reader of books and the only quotation that one recalls as made by him in public was from some obscure newspaper poet of the West, a woman. He knew men however and he was a close student of political events. As a speaker he had a pleasant manner and at times could be sententious but he never made a speech that was at all remarkable for its eloquence. Mr. McKinley indeed in oratory as in his other gifts and attributes represented the Horatian Oria Mediocritas. He was neither bloodless and cold like Calhoun nor on the other hand did he possess the compelling magnetism which made Clay and Blaine so wonderful as political leaders. Yet if he could not rouse great masses of men to a frenzy of enthusiasm he could always win a hearing. If men would not die for him as they would for Clay they would at any rate vote for him which after all was much more to the point. He lacked magnetism but he possessed a rare benevolence a genuine kindness which made it utterly impossible for even a political enemy to be anything but a personal friend. And kindness such as this must have been absolutely genuine or the insincerity of it would have been sometimes felt whereas the popular belief in Mr. McKinley's good intentions grew firmer with every year. In the early days of his incumbency there were many who thought that they detected in his phraseology something which savored of Kant but they forgot that he was a member of a religious body which makes a free or use of certain semi-religious expressions than is common. And that Mr. McKinley's way of expressing himself was the way in which he had been taught to speak and was indeed a mere fastsonde de perlis. That he was no bigot, that he exercised a self-respecting independence of thought and action in such matters was seen in the fact that in spite of a bitter outcry from the most extreme of his core religionists he stood out firmly for the retention of the army canteen that he set wine upon his table at diplomatic dinners and that he was rather immoderately fond of very black and very strong cigars. All these things served to characterize the man, sincere, kind-hearted, firm and sensible, not brilliant to be sure but eminently safe, the sort of man who does in general go farther than any but the very greatest genius. As a statesman any discussion of Mr. McKinley must center around the assertion so often made to the effect that he always held his ear close to the ground. This was for a long while flung at him by his political opponents as a taunt, but in time it was taken up by his supporters and set forth as embodying the highest possible compliment to his sagacity. Yes, they said, Mr. McKinley always has his ear close to the ground so that he may catch the earliest echoes of popular opinion. This shows his statesmanship for in the American Republic the president is the servant of the people elected to do their bidding. And it is by holding his ear close to the ground that he learns just what it is that they desire. The best example of this sort of statesmanship they said is found in Lincoln who like Mr. McKinley also held his ear close to the ground. And this is why Lincoln always had the people with him rather than against him. There is much truth in this. Yet the comparison with Lincoln challenges inquiry and justifies dissent. It is undoubtedly true that a president is elected for the purpose of translating into action the political aspirations of the nation over which he rules. But a distinction must be made between a well-considered policy that has been discussed perhaps for years and the hasty impulse of the moment. When a sudden wave of excitement surges over the country and sweeps away all sober judgment is the chief executive to ask himself only whether this is what the people want? Or is he to consider whether it is what they will approve when the passions of the moment have died away? Is he to be a reed shaken by the wind or a rock standing four square to all the winds that blow defying obliquely and misrepresentation when his own brain and conscience tell him that the thing should not be done? Had Washington in 1793 simply held his ear close to the ground he would have found the nation eager for a second war with England. He would have meekly submitted to the insolence of Jeanette and the poor little fledgling of a republic would have perished in the train of France, then drunken and delirious with the madness of revolution. In 1861, when Captain Wilkes forcibly took the Confederate envoys Mason and Slidale from the British steamer Trent, had Lincoln merely held his ear to the ground he would have heard the people of the North demanding loudly that the envoys should be kept and that the nation should face a war with England. It was hard for Washington to ignore the clamor of the Jacobins. But he did so at the cost of vile aspersions on his character which made him say in the bitterness of his soul, I would rather be in my grave than in the presidency. It was hard for Lincoln to ignore the momentary passion of the North and to comply with the peremptory and arrogant demand of Lord John Russell. But he did so and was charged with having humiliated and dishonored his country. Both Washington and Lincoln knew, however, that the supreme mandate which had been given them was in the one case to build up and in the other to preserve the state and they both stood firm against the people's will in order that the people might be saved from its own madness. A true statesman holds his ear close to the ground but he does not do so for the purpose of catching every murmur that is audible but rather to detect that deeper note which tells him that the time is ripe for the consummation of far-reaching plans long cherished and long since decided upon. One may admit that the president is the people's servant but one should not admit that to use a rather vulgar phrase of Mr. Bryant's he is the people's hired man. He is no doubt an officer. He is not a lackey. President McKinley's response to every popular impulse explains the apparent inconsistencies of his political career. These inconsistencies lay in his action but not in his fundamental theory. He wished to serve the people and if the people chose to veer from one view to another then the people and not he was answerable for it all. This was a consistent theory but the fact that he held it takes him out of the category of high statesmanship. For a statesman of the first rank makes up his mind upon certain questions once for all and having done so he remains true to his convictions. He may tack and seem at times to take another course but one will always find him in the end still sweeping toward the goal. Thus President Garfield was by study and conviction a free trader and in 1880 he was for the time the leader of the party of protection. Yet he had not changed. He never once retracted his ringing assertion made years before in the House of Representatives. I am for the kind of protection which in the end leads to free trade. He believed in the ultimate triumph of free trade and he looked upon protection as at the most a mere expedient. But with Mr. McKinley the case was different. He was a high protectionist for many years because his constituents and his party favored high protection. In 1901 he advocated a limited free trade because the people had begun to veer around in that direction. The passages already quoted from his speech at Buffalo prove his readiness to adapt his opinions to the opinions of the great majority. It must be confessed that Mr. McKinley clung to his advocacy of silver for a remarkably long time. From 1890 to 1896 he probably did a great deal that indirectly helped to strengthen Mr. Bryan's cause. The main difference between the two men at this time was that Mr. Bryan came out boldly as an advocate of free silver while Mr. McKinley used the more discreet yet substantially identical phrase by metalism just as in the Buffalo speech he veiled his partial conversion to a species of free trade by giving it the tactful name of reciprocity. It is perfectly well known that even after Mr. McKinley had been nominated in 1896 he shrank from declaring that honest money was understood by him to mean gold monometallism. He hoped to fight the campaign of that year upon the single question of the tariff and it was only when the issue had been absolutely forced upon him that at last he gave up his bimetallism and took the stand which President Cleveland had taken long before. These facts by no means indicate that Mr. McKinley was weaker inconsistent. They simply mean that his fundamental position was one of compliance with whatever seemed to him to be the popular will. He changed his views whenever he became convinced that the opinion of the majority had changed for he regarded this as the duty of a statesman. It was not a very lofty view but it was at least an intelligible one and it explains his whole political career. It is strange that he was so often and so absurdly misunderstood. The failure to understand him was responsible for a singular incongruity in many of the estimates formed by otherwise intelligent men regarding his character. The opposition press for instance used to speak of him at one time as gelatinous and at another as unfeeling and implacable. In a single issue of an influential newspaper there once appeared a column devoted to ridicule of Mr. McKinley for being a mere puppet in the hands of his advisors and another column devoted to the denunciation of him as a sort of political ogre relentlessly crushing out the liberties of an innocent people in seas of blood. Now it is sufficiently obvious that he could not very well have been at once a puppet and a stern dictator and it is clear enough that he was really neither. He was not a weak man nor on the other hand was he a man of iron. He could be very firm in matters upon which his mind had been made up. Witness his manly independence in retaining an upright commissioner in the pension office. Note 56, page 663. Despite the venal clamoring of innumerable old soldiers. But in the main and in matters of high policy he conscientiously believed that he must shape his action in accordance with his party's needs and wishes and this in fact he did. For the rest his statesmanship was often far from brilliant. A more sagacious president for instance would not have allowed himself to say that it was our plain duty to give to Puerto Rico unrestricted privileges of trade with the United States or else having said so he should have made his Congress say so too. A stronger party leader would not have negotiated an important treaty. Note 57, page 664. Only to see it almost contemptuously rejected by a Senate of which his own party had entire control. Such then was President McKinley as a man and as a statesman. His place in history will be greater than that of greater men because it was his fortune to hold office at a time when the events occurred which made his presidency epic making. For the war with Spain, Mr. McKinley deserves neither praise nor blame. The conflict had been inevitable ever since the Cubans rose in 1868 against the tyranny of Spain and since Spanish soldiers shot down the crew of the Virginia's at Santiago. From that moment Spain and the United States were like two railway engines heading toward each other upon a single track. A collision between them could not be avoided. The moment of the crash was one to be determined by pure chance. But because that moment came when President McKinley was in power and because the consequences of it were so far reaching as to transform the whole genius of our government, the years of his administration must always be a subject of the deepest interest to the student of American history. He died at an hour that was friendly to his fame. A foreign war had ended in the triumph of the American arms. The Republic of the West had at last assumed its place among the great nations of the earth. Political bitterness had spent itself in the electoral contest of the preceding year and there had succeeded a lull which brought with it goodwill and tolerance. Extraordinary material prosperity had enriched the nation so that men might at some future day look back upon those years as to a golden age. And finally the tragic ending of a useful honorable life stirred all the cords of human sympathy and seemed to cast upon that life itself the pathos and the splendor of a consecration. End of chapter 14, chapter 15, part one of 20 years of the Republic, 1885 to 1905 by Harry Thurston Peck. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. President Roosevelt, part one. On the afternoon of September 13th Vice President Roosevelt was at Lake Colton near the summit of Mount Marsey in the Adirondacks beyond the reach of telegraphic or telephonic communication. He had left Buffalo upon the assurance of President McKinley's physicians that their patient was in no immediate danger. Mr. Roosevelt's own family were on Mount Marsey and the illness of his children had called him thither. He was in the heart of the unbroken forest and the company of several friends when a mountain guide making his way through the black tangle of the woods brought a message from Buffalo to the effect that the president was sinking fast. Two hours were consumed in returning to the house from which Mr. Roosevelt had started upon his long tramp. Another delay of four hours was necessary before any further messages could be carried up the mountain. When they arrived, they made it evident that President McKinley had but a short time to live. Just before midnight, a light mountain wagon drawn by two black horses was procured and amid inky darkness and in a misty rain, the long and perilous journey from the mountain peak to the nearest line of railway was begun. More than 30 miles of trail and broken road were covered before morning in this nightmare of a drive. Among huge boulders and massive stumps of trees, the horses plunging through the darkness where a single lurch might mean instant death at the bottom of a ravine. Note one, page 667. Toward daybreak, the driver drew rain at a little railway station where a special train was waiting with steam up. As Mr. Roosevelt leaped from the mud-splashed wagon and entered the railway carriage, a dispatch was put into his hands informing him that the President was dead. Arriving in Buffalo, he found the cabinet assembled in a private house where presently the Oath of Office was administered and Theodore Roosevelt became the 25th President of the United States. Having taken the oath, he said, in this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement, I wish to state that it shall be my intention and endeavor to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace and prosperity and honor of our beloved country. Soon after in Washington, he requested each member of the cabinet to remain in office saying, I need your advice and counsel. I tender you the office in the same manner that I would tender it if I were entering upon the discharge of my duties as the result of an election by the people with this distinction that I cannot accept a declination. These words of the new President did much to allay a feeling of apprehension which the news of President McKinley's death had aroused in many minds. In the campaign of the preceding autumn, many conservative persons had found their one objection to the Republican nominations in the fact that in case of President McKinley's death, his successor would be a man so young, so impulsive and so little sobered by the responsibilities of high office as Mr. Roosevelt appeared to be. His declared intention to follow out the politics of President McKinley and the serious and dignified manner in which he entered upon the presidency were distinctly reassuring. Senator Hanna voiced the general opinion when he said a few weeks later, Mr. Roosevelt is an entirely different man today from what he was a few weeks since. He has now acquired all that is needed to round out his character, equipoise and conservatism. The new and great responsibilities so suddenly thrust upon him have brought about this change. Note two, page 668. Mr. Roosevelt was in truth the youngest of the presidents. When he took the oath of office in Buffalo, he was in the 43rd year of his age. There can be no doubt that semi-prevention was justified, both from a knowledge of his temperament and from a recollection of his previous career. Mr. Hanna's remark, which has just been quoted, was on the whole an optimistic one. It represented an ultimate truth, but it was rather in the nature of prophecy than of existing fact. At that time, Mr. Roosevelt had not yet been tried out in the fire of supreme responsibility. He was even younger than his years. His character was still unformed. It may be said indeed that its defects, while far less numerous than its virtues, were perhaps more obvious and more likely to attract the notice of a superficial observer. Mr. Roosevelt was the descendant of a line of respected merchants of Dutch extraction. He had had advantages which few of the later presidents possessed. Educated at Harvard University, his early associations had been with men and women of cultivation and refinement. In his own family, it had been his misfortune to be regarded as something of a prodigy. Whatever he did or said or wrote was viewed with unstinted admiration. He was praised and flattered so habitually that a weaker nature would have been wholly spoiled. It was to Mr. Roosevelt's credit that he was not spoiled. Yet it is also true that there was developed in him a certain egoism which throughout his early career took the form of an extreme self-consciousness. This accounts for the circumstance that however fine might be the things which he accomplished, he never seemed to do them simply or without an eye to approbation. Whether he wrote a book or made a speech or felled a tree or broke a bronco or championed a measure of reform or charged a Spanish fort, he always did it more gallico with a certain instinct for theatrical effect while his appetite for praise was quite insatiable. He was fond of talking of himself and in talking of himself he almost invariably monopolized the conversation. He had the professional reformer's love of sermonizing and a restless desire to make any and every subject a text for a dogmatic harangue. Theodore, said ex-speaker Reed to him on one occasion, if there is one thing more than another for which I admire you, it is for your original discovery of the 10 Commandments. Note three, page 669. An eminent English historian after visiting the White House was asked by a compatriot what he thought of the new American president. Why? Said he after reflecting for a moment. He seems to be an interesting combination of St. Paul and St. Vitus. In writing one of his earlier books, he used the personal pronoun I so frequently that his publishers were compelled to order from a type foundry a fresh supply of that particular letter. Sufficiently robust to endure public criticism, he was as sensitive as a girl to any shadow of disparagement that came to him in private life. After he had read over one of his early messages as president to a group of three or four intimate friends, Secretary Hay, in answer to a request for criticism, suggested that the word big occurred somewhat too frequently. Mr. Roosevelt took instant umbrage. With a snap of his teeth, he answered, big is a good strong Saxon word. I like to use such words as that. A remark which revealed at once his thinness of skin and his utter misunderstanding of Mr. Hay's objection. During the presidential campaign of 1900, Mr. Roosevelt was in Chicago where he made several speeches. On entering his hotel one Sunday morning, a number of little black guard news boys jeered at him for having, as they said, shot a Spaniard in the back. This taunt from such a source to which most men would have given barely a moment's thought and wounded Mr. Roosevelt to the quick and it was some time before he recovered his composure. The president's self esteem sometimes led him to make light of the self-respect of others. He gave great offense in the early months of his administration by the manner in which he treated men much older than himself. Men who had grown gray in the public service and who were accustomed, if not to deference, at least to courtesy from others. Toward these men, Mr. Roosevelt bore himself as toward inferiors, slapping them on the back, calling them by nicknames and inspiring in them an uncomfortable sense of personal humiliation. Even Senator Hanna, bluff and unconventional, though he was, took umbra to this offhand treatment. Mr. Lincoln Stevens is responsible for a story which illustrates the assertion. Note four, page 671. It is repeated because contemporaneous anecdotes while often apocryphal do unquestionably represent contemporaneous opinions and impressions. During President McKinley's funeral ceremonies, Mr. Roosevelt and Senator Hanna was seated side by side. Mr. Hanna was moved by sincere grief at the loss of his lifelong friend. Tears ran down his cheeks and he made no effort to control his feelings. Mr. Roosevelt, on the other hand, with questionable taste, was at that very moment thinking of his own political future. Turning to the senator, he said, I hope, old man, that you will be to me all that you have been to him. Yes, returned Mr. Hanna still choking with emotion. I will, I will, only de-blank and it. Don't call me old man. The German ambassador, Baron Speck von Sternberg, was on terms of some intimacy with President Roosevelt, who nicknamed him Specky. This was all very well in their private intercourse, but the president was not always careful to use in public a more formal mode of address, so that great irritation was aroused in Germany over what was thought to be a personal indignity offered to the representative of the German Empire. The president was likewise reckless in his speech, often expressing his private opinion of his associates most freely and at times in the vocabulary of the cowboy. Such things as these were brooded about and quite unnecessarily did him harm in stirring up bad feeling and resentment. A very notable instance of the president's lack of consideration for others was found in his treatment of Sir Thomas Lipton, the Irish yachtsman who had visited the United States in order to raise his yacht for the America Cup. The president had entertained him at the White House and had shown him much civility. A little later, a yacht club gave a dinner in honor of Sir Thomas and asked the president also to be its guest. This, of course, was a breach of etiquette for which primarily the ignorance of the club's committee was responsible. The president of the United States cannot attend a dinner at which any other person is the chief guest of honor. What Mr. Roosevelt ought to have done was to decline the invitation on some conventional plea. Instead of that, he both declined it and let it be known that he would not attend any dinner to which Sir Thomas Lipton was especially invited. Now, Sir Thomas Lipton was not a person to be taken very seriously. Many thought his interest in yachting to be not that of a sportsman, but of an advertiser who was concerned in calling attention to the teas in which he dealt at home. Yet he was a stranger and he had been the president's guest so that the opener front then put upon him was deplorable both in its lack of feeling and in its breach of ordinary civility. Many persons laid the blame upon the president's private secretary, but his intimate friends denied that this was so and reported that Mr. Roosevelt was alone responsible and that he regarded the whole thing as a tremendous joke, forgetting that the president of the United States should be the last person in the land to forego the self-respecting courtesy which marks a high-bred gentleman. His self-consciousness appeared in many other ways. When he first became president, his friends bearing in mind the fate of President McKinley urged him not to go about the streets alone and unprotected. I am amply able to protect myself, remarked the president with a glance at his two fists, and the listening reporters telegraphed this characteristic speech from one end of the country to the other. Yet before many weeks had passed and in fact throughout his presidency, Mr. Roosevelt caused himself to be more closely guarded and made approach to him more difficult than had been the case with any of his predecessors. Secret servicemen swarmed about his person and once when he visited New York to attend the funeral of a relative, a thousand policemen were detailed to safeguard him as he passed along the streets. While visiting a fair in Syracuse, he was hemmed in on every side by cavalry. Now it was a courageous thing to declare that he could amply protect himself and it was a very sensible thing for him to guard against assassination. But to have declared that he could protect himself and then to seek or even to permit the sort of protection which a Tsar of Russia might require was not only inconsistent but somewhat ludicrous. The explanation of it is to be found in the workings of his ego. He doubtless came to believe that his own person was sacrosanct beyond that of any other president and so he passed from a state of recklessness to one which seemed to indicate timidity. When President Grant was most unpopular, when he was maintaining carpet-bag government at the South by federal bayonets and when thousands of newspapers were denouncing him as a tyrant and a military dictator, he used to stroll along the streets of Washington wholly unattended, pausing to gaze into the shop windows and moving about as freely as any private citizen. This was the highest type of courage, the courage which is quite unconscious of itself and which does not even think of danger. Mr. Roosevelt could scarcely have attained the same degree of impertability. His courage in fact was of the French rather than of the Anglo-Saxon type. It was allied with a certain nervousness which could perform the most daring deeds if they were deeds of action but which became restive and almost uncontrollable when patience and grim endurance were demanded. Mr. Roosevelt's physical courage was, however, beyond all question. As to his moral courage, opinions were divided and this division of opinion was justifiable. Bold in the utterance of his convictions and in asserting the fixity of his purposes, he nevertheless in the face of strong opposition was sometimes known to yield. His actions often failed to square with his spoken words. He was amenable to pressure. His mercurial nature led him frequently to take the line of least resistance rather than to fight doggedly against a stubborn opposition. In this respect, his conduct compared at times unfavorably with that of President McKinley, whom Mr. Roosevelt himself had spoken of as having no backbone. An illustration of this fact was early afforded. President McKinley had in 1897 appointed Mr. H.C. Evans of Tennessee to the office of pensions commissioner. Mr. Evans administered that difficult office with the strictest integrity, reforming abuses, exposing prods and thereby incurring the bitter enmity of pension lawyers and of the swarms of persons who presented dishonest claims. The office had seldom known so clean and upright an administration, but the Grand Army of the Republic sided against the commissioner and demanded of the president his removal from office. Enormous political pressure was brought to bear in order to secure this end, but President McKinley resisted it like a man. He could not be moved and he gave unflinching support to Mr. Evans despite the clamor of venal claimants and malinguers. The same pressure was applied to President Roosevelt. He withstood it for a time, but in the end he yielded. He feared to risk his popularity and incur the danger of losing what was called the soldier vote. Mr. Evans was ostensibly advanced to another and more lucrative office, but it was perfectly obvious that this was only an indirect fashion of getting him quietly out of the way. It is but fair to add, however, that the gentleman whom the president appointed in the place of Mr. Evans was no less honest and capable than his predecessor. A very characteristic glimpse of Mr. Roosevelt's mental processes was afforded by another incident. Not long after he had become president, he received at the White House, Mr. Booker T. Washington. Mr. Washington was a mulatto who had successfully established a school for the training of Negroes at Tuskegee in Alabama. By his sound sense and tact in teaching his people not to ask for social recognition from the Whites, he had won the Goodwill of Southerners and seemed to be in a fair way to solve the Negro problem of the South. After he had talked with the president for some time, the latter invited him to be his guest at luncheon and Mr. Washington accepted. Now, Mr. Roosevelt in his private capacity had undoubtedly the right to entertain at luncheon whomever he might please. The president of the nation also had the right to make anyone his guest, but in doing so it could be only with a full understanding that even the simplest action of the president of the United States can never be the action of a private individual or free from consequences. In this particular instance, the consequences were lamentable. The president had offered social recognition and Mr. Washington had accepted it. At once, all the good feeling which had existed in the South toward the experiment at Tuskegee vanished. And a great part of the excellent work which Mr. Washington had laboriously accomplished was undone in half an hour. The president has said subsequently to have given an account of the affair to a political friend in the following words. When luncheon time came around, my first thought was to invite him to stay and lunch with me. Immediately it flashed across my mind that this would make no end of trouble, but I asked myself, are you afraid to do it? And I answered, no. And so I invited him to come into luncheon. Now, at first sight this may seem rather fine, but when analyzed it shows a certain lack of moral courage. Although the president knew that his invitation defensible enough in itself would do serious harm to a really noble cause, he lacked the courage to refrain from giving it. In other words, he was afraid of being thought afraid. It was partly from this lack of firmness and of loyalty to his own ideals and partly from his love of approbation that the president often fell short of what men felt they had a right to expect of him. In generalities, no one was ever more energetic in denouncing the sinister influence of politicians who made public office a means of private gain. Yet in practice, when some of Mr. Roosevelt's own supporters and associates crossed the line which divides right from wrong, he dealt with them most tenderly and allowed his thunderbolts to sleep. A congressman named Littor, who was shown to have used his official influence to foist upon the War Department, the wares which he produced as a private manufacturer, was still made welcome at the president's table, though he had escaped indictment only by illegal technicality. When the notorious key died, President Roosevelt sent a telegram of effusive sympathy on the loss of his loyal friend. Many times he made it plain that he had one ethical standard for strangers and quite a different one for those who had, as it were, been sanctified by their intimacy with himself. Of more far-reaching importance was a widely-spread belief that President Roosevelt was unsafe. He was certainly impulsive in his mental processes, impatient of restraint and had little respect for ordinary conventionalities when these stood in the way of his desires. His recklessness of speech was thought to indicate an equal recklessness in action, and his youth was cited as affording still another reason for distressing him. On several occasions, indeed, his precipitancy led him into blunders as when he once sent a message to Congress urging the passage of a bill which in fact had become law several days before, and as when he nominated for a judgeship, a gentleman who was constitutionally ineligible for that office. His talk was often couched in hyperbole. He was fond of sonorous adjectives and he garnished his speeches with eulogies of war and of the war-like virtues. For these reasons, there were many who described the new president as having a lawless mind. One enumerates these defects in an interesting character, not because they were in themselves transcendently important, but because they explained the feeling of opposition which President Roosevelt often roused in the minds of the conservative. On the other hand, it is probably quite true that these same defects did much to make him popular. They were very largely defects which he shared with a vast number of his countrymen so that they proved him as it were to be a typical American. The self-consciousness, the touch of swagger, the love of applause and of publicity, the occasional lapses from official dignity, even the reckless speech, the unnecessary frankness and the disregard of form were traits that in a sense were national. That he stood by his friends even when his friends were not only wrong but reprehensible was counted as a virtue. On the whole then, Mr. Roosevelt's failings were held by most Americans to be quite as worthy of admiration as were his finer qualities. Of finer qualities there was assuredly no lack. All the natural impulses of the man were sound and right and true. His whole training and the influences to which he had been subjected from childhood tended to make him generous and high-minded. He had an instinctive scorn of whatever was cowardly and hypocritical. In the best sense of the word, he was democratic, respecting men not for their pretensions or for their station or for their wealth but for what they were as men. Popular opinion groping about for the most appropriate adjective asserted that the president was square and this homely description was absolutely true. However often personal prejudice or mistaken beliefs may have made him inconsistent with his own professions and ideals, he was fundamentally sound and his purposes were those which all good citizens could unreservedly commend. He was the first president who had been born to something like wealth and this fact had freed him throughout his career from the need of considering public office in the light of a financial necessity. His income, while modest enough according to the standards of the time, sufficed at any rate to make him personally independent. This was an enormous advantage to him since he was not obliged to curry favor with mercenary politicians. He was free to disregard them or to fight them as he chose. Hence, as an assemblyman in New York State, as civil service commissioner and as police commissioner, he was regarded less as a Republican than as an independent. He was theoretically at least a believer in free trade. He cooperated freely with Mr. Cleveland when the latter was governor of New York and he opposed the nomination of Mr. Blaine in 1884. Caricatures of that period represent him as a mugwump, grouping him with George William Curtis and Carl Schurz. Yet nonetheless, he was essentially a party man and after Mr. Blaine had received the party nomination, Mr. Roosevelt supported him. His own explanation of his attitude at that time was interesting and wholly logical. He said, I intend to vote the Republican presidential ticket. A man cannot act both without and within the party. He can do either, but he cannot possibly do both. It is impossible to combine the functions of a guerrilla chief with those of a colonel in the regular army. The one has greater independence of action, the other is able to make what action he does take vastly more effective. I am by inheritance and by education a Republican. Whatever good I have been able to accomplish in public has been accomplished through the Republican party. I have acted with it in the past and wish to act with it in the future. Note five, page 679. When he came to the presidency, Mr. Roosevelt kept the same argument clearly before his mind. He must often have reflected that the partial failure of President Cleveland's administration was due to the open breach between that statesman and the other leaders of his own party. Mr. Roosevelt's purpose was to work through his party for the modification of its policies. But from the very first he found it difficult to tolerate many things to which the Republican party was committed. Still more difficult was it for him to receive with real cordiality some of the men who in Congress figured as the party's chiefs. Unlike President McKinley, Mr. Roosevelt had never sat in Congress. He was not imbued with the traditions of the place. His ethical sense had not been dulled by long familiarity with the ways of Washington. He brought in as it were a stream of fresh, pure, bracing air from the mountains to clear the fetid atmosphere of the national capital. He did not, as most presidents have done, restrict his official and social intercourse to the company of politicians or of men who could be directly useful in the sphere of politics. Mr. Roosevelt had come in contact many sides of life and his range of interest was much broader than that of any president since Jefferson. His early years had been spent as a member of the wealthy and cultivated class. He had been a ranchman and knew well the people of the West. His service in the Spanish War opened to him still another field of new experience. In his life he had tried his hand at many undertakings. He had written books. He had advocated social and political reforms. He had heard at cattle on the great ranges of Dakota. He had directed the police of the American Metropolis. He had helped equip the Navy for the war with Spain. He had fought in the Cuban swamps. He had governed the most popular state of the Union. He had presided over the Senate of the United States. Acoustic English critic once said of Mr. Gladstone that statesmen believed him to be a scholar while scholars were under the mistaken belief that he was a statesman. Something of the same sort might have been said at this time with regard to Mr. Roosevelt. For in all his pursuits, he exhibited something of the naivete of the amateur. Yet with the incompleteness of technical knowledge which marks the amateur, he had also the amateur's enthusiasm and sincerity. Note six, page 681. His intellectual curiosity was a marked feature of his character. He wished to know all sides of life, to learn all shades of opinion and to keep himself informed of all that was going on in the world of thought and action. It was his custom to send notes from time to time to the Librarian of Congress saying, let me have a batch of the latest books on all kinds of subjects. And presently there would be delivered at the White House a miscellaneous assortment of volumes comprising works on psychology, engineering, chemistry, medicine, horticulture and sociology, besides novels, poems, essays, everything in fact which represented contemporary thought. These books Mr. Roosevelt would devour eagerly storing away the essential facts in his retentive memory. As with books, so it was with men. He gathered about his dinner table guests from every section of the country, scholars, lawyers, men of letters, men of business, manufacturers, ranchmen, Adirondack guides, journalists and members of his old rupwriter regiment. Whoever had done anything or said anything or written anything that was at all notable he eventually found his way to the White House at the president's invitation. To the talk of all these men he listened most attentively and thus he gained a firsthand knowledge of what the people as a whole were interested in of what were their prejudices and preferences and also of what were their complaints and grievances. He knew his countrymen and with his keen sense of justice and his wide range of sympathy he gradually became more and more in the true sense of the words the people's president. All this was by no means pleasing to the veteran politicians who sat in Congress and who were jealous of their own assumed prerogatives as keepers of the presidential conscience. Between them and Mr. Roosevelt there existed and there could exist but little sympathy. The sleek sly senators who dabbled in stocks on the basis of their official knowledge of coming legislation who took large fees from corporations in return for legal opinions which were never read or heeded by the persons who paid for them. The men who owed their senatorial seats to the favor of protected interests these had an instinct of distrust of a president who looked them squarely in the eye and knew their baseness. They disliked him from the outset and they spoke of him contemptuously among themselves as this young man using the term which his opponents applied to the younger pit and which Bismarck when dismissed from office growled out to characterize his emperor and they had good reason for their apprehension. From every quarter of the land there came to the president's knowledge facts convincingly substantiated that there existed many evils which could be corrected only by a strong hand and a fearless heart in Washington. In the early months of 1902 there was beginning to be felt a distinct reaction against that glorification of materialism which had been so widespread and for a time so thoroughly acceptable. The country was still as prosperous as ever yet it was impossible to close man's eyes to the fact that in the train of this prosperity had come great wrongs. The worship of wealth had bred corruption both social, municipal and national. The words of Horace, co-conque modorem had apparently been taken as a text by thousands of unscrupulous men who were practicing the myriad forms of navery now characterized by the collective name of graft, a word appropriately borrowed from the Argo of common thieves. The cities of the country great and small had been looted by franchise grabbers who in securing invaluable concessions without rendering an equivalent had found it necessary to corrupt the municipal officials and to maintain a swarm of hired lobbyists in the legislatures of the different states. Note seven, page 683. Some of the greatest fiduciary institutions of the country notably the life insurance companies had developed a complex system by which they misused the funds entrusted to them. Note eight, page 683. With these things however and others like them the national executive had not the constitutional power to deal. There were however two far reaching abuses from which the entire country suffered and against which the statutes of the United States had armed the federal government with a measure of power. These abuses were first the discriminations by railways against shippers and second the oppressive domination of the trusts. The two evils were closely related since many of the trust such as the standard oil company the sugar trust and the beef trust owed much of their supremacy to the secret and unlawful favors which they had extorted from the railroads. Early in 1902 the price of meat had so advanced as to direct general attention to the methods of the sixth grade packing houses which together constituted what was popularly called the beef trust. Note nine, page 683. Investigation showed that these meat packers had agreed not to compete against one another that they had divided the cattle country into districts in each of which only a single branch of the trust should buy and that the practice had been established of bidding up the price of cattle from time to time so as to induce large shipments and then of ceasing to bid when the shipments reached their destination. It was discovered also that the railways in the middle west had granted a certain purchases of grain rates which were lower than those charged to the smaller buyers so that in practice there was but one buyer in each system who was thus unable to destroy competition and to fix at will the price to the producer. Note 10, page 684. A liken justice was inflicted in the same way upon cotton growers in the south. Finally in 1901 the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railways by purchasing a third railway system had affected a merger of the three in what was known as the Northern Securities Company which thus became a combination able to monopolize the entire transportation facilities of the Northwest. End of chapter 15, part one.