 Chapter 15 Part 2 of Twenty Years of the Republic, 1885-1905 by Harry Thurston Peck. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. President Roosevelt Part 2 All these acts were not only contrary to public policy, but they were in violation of two statutes which have already been described. The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Chapter 11, Page 684 Until the present time, however, these laws had to all intents and purposes remained a dead letter. The Interstate Commerce Commission had been practically deprived of any effective power to curb the railways, owing to the fact that its decisions were subject to review by the federal courts, which were jealous of any assumption of judicial authority by the Commission. Small shippers who appealed to the Commission against the railways were compelled to follow up a long and tedious course of litigation in which, after many years, no substantial results were reached, and of which the loss involved in the delay was sufficient to beggar men of ordinary means. The railways had at their disposal the ablest legal talent in the country, and against this a private person, however great his injuries, was absolutely helpless. The Sherman Antitrust Act was also difficult of enforcement, partly because its phraseology was so sweeping as apparently to condemn both lawful and unlawful business enterprises, and also because the trusts were protein in their character. Chartered by individual states, when attacked by federal law, they pretended to be only local corporations. When prosecuted by the state officials, they claimed exemption from such prosecution on the ground that they were engaged in commerce between the states. It was plain enough that these powerful and lawless combinations could not be effectively assailed either by individuals or by the states, but that only the strong hand of the national government could take them by the throat and force them from their attitude of insolent defiance. The willful violations of law from which all sections of the country were suffering aroused the indignation of the President, while the difficulty of suppressing them against the opposition of United Capital appealed to his fighting spirit. By his direction, therefore, the Attorney General moved against the most obnoxious of the trusts. This officer was Mr. Philander C. Knox of Pennsylvania, who had been appointed late in President McKinley's administration to succeed Mr. J. W. Griggs. Mr. Knox was a lawyer of very great ability. He had for years been counsel for several large corporations, among them the Carnegie Steel Company. He knew their methods well and could search out all the crevices in their armor. Until this time, however, he had remained inactive. The press had urged him to prosecute the trust, and because he had not done so, he had received the popular nickname of Sleepy Phil. He was, however, merely waiting for instructions, and no sooner did the President speak the word than Mr. Knox revealed himself to be a highly trained and powerful prosecutor whose client was the nation. He secured an injunction against the beef trust, restraining it from raising and lowering prices in collusion and from other practices which had become notorious. Again, at the direction of the President, he attacked the Northern Securities merger, asking for an injunction to prevent this railway combination from controlling the companies involved in it. The motion was made before the United States District Court in Minnesota under the Antitrust Law of 1890. Vigorous measures such as this stirred all the corporate interests to anger. They and their journalistic mouthpieces began to speak of the President in terms of mingled hatred and contempt. After the easy-going tolerance of Mr. McKinley, the energetic purpose of President Roosevelt gave them an unpleasant shock. They had come to regard themselves as almost divinely commissioned to disregard the laws which were made for other citizens and to look upon themselves as above and beyond restraint from any source. Their feelings were not assuaged by some very pointed utterances of the President made during a journey through New England in the summer of 1902 and in a visit to the Middle West in September of the same year. These utterances expressed only the most elemental principles of justice and right reason. Yet the lawless financiers and the editors whose living depended on financial favors viewed many sentences which Mr. Roosevelt spoke as being revolutionary if not anarchical. Thus in Providence, note 12, page 687, the President said, The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the state and the state not only has the right to control them but it is in duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown. It is idle to say that there is no need for such supervision. There is, and a sufficient warrant for it is to be found in any one of the admitted evos appertaining to them. The immediate necessity in dealing with trust is to place them under the real and not the nominal control of some sovereign to which, as its creatures, the trust shall owe allegiance and in whose course the sovereign's orders may be enforced. Again at Boston, note 13, page 687, the President declared, So far as the antitrust laws go they will be enforced. No suit will be undertaken for the sake of seeming to undertake it. Every suit that is undertaken will be begun because the great lawyer and upright man whom we are fortunate enough to have as Attorney General, Mr. Knox, believes that there is a violation of the law which we can get at and when the suit is undertaken it will not be compromised except upon the basis that the government wins. And at Cincinnati he said, Note 14, page 687, In dealing with the big corporations which we call trusts we must resolutely purpose to proceed by evolution and not revolution. The evos attendant upon overcapitalization alone are in my judgment sufficient to warrant a far closer supervision and control than now exists over the great corporations. We do not wish to destroy corporations, but we do wish to make them subserve the public good. All individuals rich or poor, private or corporate, must be subject to the law of the land and the government will hold them to a rigid obedience. The biggest corporation, like the humblest private citizen, must be held to strict compliance with the will of the people as expressed in the fundamental law. The rich man who does not see that this is in his interest is indeed short-sighted. When we make him obey the law we ensure for him the absolute protection of the law. Note 15, page 688, The strong, frank, manly sentences struck a responsive court throughout the nation. They seemed to clear the air which had become clogged and gross with the miasma of materialism. But they were read with resentment by the men who for years had thought of the law of the land merely as something which their hired lawyers could artfully circumvent. Mr. Roosevelt's popularity and a certain fear which he had already inspired prevented open attacks upon him by members of his own party. But from this moment there was instituted in the venal press and through the myriad agencies which Lawless Wealth controlled an underhanded campaign to discredit him and to prevent if possible his nomination for a second term of office. Meanwhile, however, the country was receiving a vivid object lesson as to the evils of monopoly. Until now it was the people of the West who had suffered most and whose complaints have been both loud and bitter. But in 1902 the people of the East in their turn were made to know that corporate greed could strike unerringly and unpityingly at the welfare of every section. It has already been explained in the course of this narrative. Page 689 How the coal-carrying railways of Pennsylvania had in violation of their charters and of the fundamental law secured procession of practically all the anthracite coal mines of that district which indeed furnished the hard coal supply of the entire country. Early in 1902 a dispute arose between the mine owners that is to say the officials of the railways and the miners and their employee. The latter had formed an organization known as the United Mine Workers of America at the head of which was Mr. John Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell was a man who had once worked in the coal mines but who had educated himself by close study in his spare hours and who had found time to read law and to investigate economic questions and labor conditions in the United States. He was a man of great intelligence, of superior organizing ability and of inflexible integrity. He had gained the confidence of the miners and his heart had been wrung by the hardships which they had experienced in which he himself at one time had shared. The mine owners compelled the men and their employee to purchase their supplies at the company's stores to employ the company's doctors and to live in the houses which the company furnished them all at the company's own price. Note 17, page 689. These and other grievances led the miners to ask for an increase of wages and for a recognition of the union. On February 14th Mr. Mitchell addressed a letter to the railway president's requesting a joint conference. This request was curtly refused. Again on May 8th it was proposed to Mr. George F. Behr president of the Reading Coal and Iron Company to submit the miners' claims to arbitration. Mr. Behr replied contemptuously that anthracite mining is a business and not a religious, sentimental or academic proposition. Therefore on May 12 a strike was ordered and 150,000 miners at once ceased to work. Throughout the summer the strike continued, the mine owners endeavouring with no success to replace the men who had gone out. There was, as is always the case, some violence on the part of individual strikers and these sporadic acts the corporation ridden portions of the press exaggerated so as to make them seem indicative of a reign of terror. On the whole however the strikers were orderly and showed far more respect for law than did the railway president's whose very ownership of the coal mines was prohibited by the constitution of the state. As the months dragged on the country's available coal supply began to be depleted and a coal famine was obviously impending with the advent of the winter. In early September the retail price of hard coal which was normally about five dollars per ton advanced to twelve dollars and within a few days to fourteen. The poor who purchased it by the pailful were obliged to pay something like one cent a pound. By September 24 no coal yard in the city of New York had on hand more than two hundred tons of coal whereas a year before the average stock had been at least two thousand tons. Many dealers began to refuse all but their regular customers and to these they doled out only a small supply of fuel at prices which kept increasing every day. Gas stoves and coke and kerosene were substituted for coal in many families but the price of gas advanced the coke supply was quite inadequate and kerosene was manifestly unsuited for heating purposes when the weather should become extremely cold. On September 26 several schools in New York were closed and the pupils were sent home in order that the fuel on hand might be saved for the winter months. Note 18, page 691 Kindlingwood was practically unattainable. On September 30 hard coal brought twenty dollars a ton and by October 1 twenty eight and thirty dollars was demanded. The widespread distress caused by the coal famine led to innumerable appeals to the governor of Pennsylvania and at last to the president of the United States. Apart from the merits of the strike it was plain to everyone that a few selfish men having secured a complete monopoly of one of the necessities of life were abusing their power with a stolid indifference both to public opinion and to the health and comfort of the people. It was noted with indignation that long lines of cars laden with coal blocked the lines of the coal-carrying railways in New Jersey at a time when even so much as a bucket full could with difficulty be procured to warm the dwellings of the poor. The mine owners had thousands upon thousands of tons with an easy reach of the market yet they refused to sell hoping that the general suffering would react against the miners and that either state or national troops would be employed to break the strike but their schemes produced a very different result. Detestation of them became well-nigh universal and a general sympathy was given to the miners who had struck. It was proposed in many quarters that the United States government should take forcible possession of the coal mines and work them under the right of eminent domain. Even the least radical suggestion looked to some exercise of the president's power to save the country from the horrors of the famine. In the city of New York a coal riot was dreaded. The mayor, Mr. Seth Low telegraphed to the president The welfare of a large section of the country imperatively demands the immediate resumption of anthracite coal mining. In the name of the city of New York I desire to protest through you against the continuance of the existing situation which if prolonged involves at the very least the certainty of great suffering and heavy loss to the inhabitants of this city in common with many others. The governor of Massachusetts hurried to Washington to beg the president in some manner to find a way out of the existing crisis which was becoming more acute each week. On the other hand the representatives of Capitol assumed a threatening attitude and evidently meant to end the president's political career if he should dare to intervene. Oddly enough the people of the West felt little interest in the outcome of the strike. They used soft coal instead of anthracite and though the price of this had also steadily advanced they experienced no such pinch as did the eastern cities. When the political leaders of that section advised the president not to interfere of course in his official capacity he had no power to act. The coal strike though national in its consequences was local in its origin and progress. If he moved at all it must be as a private citizen though whatever action he might take would be made significant by the dignity of the great office which he held. It was a position of extreme embarrassment. The secretary of the Navy afterwards described just how a decision was ultimately reached. He said I remember the president sitting with his injured leg in a chair while the doctors dressed it. Note 19, page 693 It hurt and now and then he would wince a bit while he discussed the strike and the appeals for help that grew more urgent with every passing hour. The outlook was grave it seemed as if the cost of interference might be political death. I saw how it tugged at him just when he saw chances of serving his country which he had longed for all the years to meet. This. It was human nature to halt. He halted long enough to hear it all out. The story of the suffering in the big coast cities of schools closing, hospitals without fuel of the poor shivering in their homes then he said his face grimly and said Yes, I will do it I suppose that ends me but it is right and I will do it. Note 20, page 693 Note 20, page 693 Note 20, page 693 Having come to this decision the President telegraphed to the Railway Presidents to the Presidents of the Anthrocyte District Unions and to Mr. John Mitchell asking them to meet him in Washington on October 3rd. On the day appointed these persons accordingly assembled the Mine Owners were headed by Mr. George F. Thayer and the Labor Representatives by Mr. Mitchell There were present also the Attorney General of the United States the Commissioner of Labor and the President's Private Secretary The meeting began with an embarrassing silence. The opposing delegates sat eyeing each other with looks of evident hostility then the President read to them a statement in which he said that he spoke neither for the Mine Owners nor for the Miners but for the American people. I disclaim any right or duty to intervene in this way upon legal grounds or upon any official relation that I bear to the situation but the urgency and the terrible nature of the catastrophe impending a portion of our people in the shape of a winter fuel famine impel me after much anxious thought to believe that my duty requires me to use whatever influence I personally can bring to end a situation which has become literally intolerable. In my judgment the situation imperatively requires that you meet upon the common plane of the necessities of the public. With all the earnestness there is in me I ask that there be an immediate resumption of operations in the coal mines without a day's unnecessary delay meet the crying needs of the people. I do not invite a discussion of your respective claims and positions. I appeal to your patriotism to the spirit that sinks personal considerations and makes individual sacrifices for the general good. Note 21, page 694. No sooner had the President finished reading this carefully prepared address than Mr. Mitchell leaped to his feet and said in a loud, clear voice I am much pleased, Mr. President, with what you say. We are willing that you shall name a tribunal which shall determine the issues that have resulted in the strike. And if the gentleman representing the operators will accept the award or decision of such a tribunal the miners will willingly accept it even if it be against our claims. Mr. Baer's face flushed red and he and his associates were obviously disconcerted. But after a moment's pause they emphatically rejected Mr. Mitchell's proposal. Mr. Baer offered on his side to submit any special grievance to the decision of the Court of Common Pleas in the districts where the mines were situated. This offer was declined by Mr. Mitchell. The President then asked his visitors to retire for consultation and to return in the afternoon. At this second meeting the operators read one after another long statements which had evidently been prepared for them by their legal advisors. Their tone throughout was one of studied insolence toward the President himself and of hatred toward the striking miners. They intimated that Mr. Roosevelt had failed in his duty that he should long since have broken the strike by the employment of the regular army and that the responsibility for the existing situation rested largely upon him. They called the government a contemptible failure if it can secure the lives and property and comfort of the people only by compromising with the violators of law and the instigators of violence and crime. The Council for the Delaware and Hudson Bay Company David B. Wilcox addressed the President in a most arbitrary fashion and demanded of him that he do his duty. The operators evidently intended to rouse the President to an outburst of anger and thereby to put him in the wrong but he kept his temper perfectly. Note 22, page 695 as did also the Labour leaders and the conference presently adjourned having as it seemed accomplished no result. Note 23, page 695 Such, however, was not the case. The indignation of the whole country was aroused by the refusal of the operators to accept the arbitration of the President of the United States. Mr. Baer was widely quoted as having in a letter to a friend spoken of himself and his associates as those Christian men to whom God in his infinite wisdom has entrusted the property interests of his country. That Mr. Baer ever wrote these words was denied and there is no good reason for ascribing them to him. Yet at the time they were accepted as authentic and they served to suffuse the public anger with a deep disgust. Mr. Roosevelt had now the entire nation behind him and whatever he might do was certain to receive the approval of his countrymen. There was in New York at that time a financier whose name was known throughout the civilized world for which he exercised over other capitalists and especially over the railway owners. In 1900 an earlier call strike had begun. It was near the time of the presidential election and a labor outbreak then would have jeopardized the success of the Republican candidates. This gentleman at that period had by his own personal influence forced the mine owners to make concessions to the miners whereby the strike was for a while averted. In yielding to him the operators we concede this now but you must promise never again to ask it of us. And he had promised. There is an interesting story which seems to rest upon good authority and which may be repeated here though with due reserve. It tells how this gentleman was in a private yacht than lying in the North River. To him it is said that in the evening there came from Washington the Secretary of War Mr. Elihu Root, a personal acquaintance and one of the ablest lawyers in the United States. In the sumptuous cabin of the yacht Mr. Root went over the whole situation and urged with all his eloquence that the great financier should once more use his influence to end the strike. To the request made many times and in many ways the called refusal was returned. Then the Secretary changed his tone. I have given you a chance to do this of your own free will but you have refused. I am now instructed to inform you to appoint a commission to inquire very strictly into the legality of the connection between the railways and the mines and that this commission will publish the exact truth so that the whole country may know it. At the head of this commission the President will place a gentleman not of his own party but one in whose word and in whose courage the people will place implicit confidence. The financier shot a keen look from his steely eyes. Who is this person? He asked with an accent partly of defiance and partly of curiosity. His name, said Secretary Root, is Grover Cleveland and I may add that as the result of such a report the persons who shall be found to have violated the law and who are thereby responsible for the existing distress will be criminally indicted by a federal grand jury. Note 24, page 697. The interview terminated late that night and on October 13th the operators made a formal offer to the President to submit all matters and dispute to a commission. Note 25, page 697 of five men to be appointed by the President. The offer was accepted by Mr. Mitchell on behalf of the miners and on October 23rd work was resumed and the great coal strike was broken. It had continued for five months and it was estimated to have entailed a loss of more than $100 million. Because of what the President had done he received the unstinted praise of a great majority of Americans. While in Europe his name was spoken with sincere respect as of one who had done a very big thing and an entirely new thing. Note 26, page 698. Only the representatives of predatory capital were incensed but for the time they took refuge in a silent silence. Among themselves however they had marked the President down for political destruction. The succeeding year passed quietly enough save for a few slight ripples on the surface of international relations. In January much feeling was excited among the American people by a joint naval expedition sent by Great Britain, Italy and Germany into Venezuelan waters for the purpose of enforcing search and pecuniary claims and of redressing grievances. The German ships shelled several Venezuelan forts and sank a few insignificant Venezuelan ships besides blockading the most important harbors. The United States was not directly interested for the three foreign powers had disclaimed any desire for territorial acquisitions in Venezuela. Nevertheless perhaps because Germany was involved there existed some uneasiness. The President studiously declined to interfere. He was invited to act as arbitrator but wisely refused to do so. He sent a fleet into West Indian waters and used his influence to secure a settlement of the affair. This was arranged at Washington and three European powers made easy terms with Venezuela. On the surface the affair was but a momentary incident yet it afforded a new proof of American influence in world politics. Foreign comment was decidedly significant. The Elgemani Zeitung of Vienna declared resentfully that the United States had gained the hegemony of the whole western hemisphere. Continuing its comment it said Europe has displayed a nervous anxiety to appease American diplomacy. The interested powers looked on enviously. Europe was united on one point only. The desire not to rouse the antipathy of the American people. Even the allies wished to shake each other off. The close of the Venezuelan dispute is equivalent to a victory of America over Europe. Note 27, page 699. Subsequently the German Kaiser seeing the futility of a policy of irritation made Frank overtures a friendship toward the United States and of personal goodwill to the American president. He ordered a yacht to be built for himself at an American shipyard and requested the president's daughter, Miss Alice Roosevelt, to christen it at the launching. Not to do things by half he also dispatched his brother Prince Henry of Prussia as his personal representative to visit the United States on the occasion of the launching. Prince Henry came, accompanied by a retinue of keen observers who were instructed to make minutely careful notes of everything they saw. During the few weeks of their stay in the United States they visited the largest cities as far west of St. Louis inspecting libraries, universities, manufactories, navy arts and battlefields and being overwhelmed with an excessive hospitality. Prince Henry by his easy democratic manners did much to obliterate the memory of his tactlessness of Hong Kong in 1898 and Americans had an opportunity to know how far they had acquired the art of entertaining royal guests. It cannot be said that their achievements in this respect were very creditable. The ultra-rich displayed an effusive snobbishness which was fatuous and fulsome. The rabble, on the other hand, showed little of the decorum which marks the multitude in European countries on ceremonious occasions. Prince Henry, while in New York, was greeted through a megaphone with the words, on another occasion when the Prince's Pullman coach was side-tracked at a little country station for the night, a band of yokels surrounded it and beating on its sides with sticks cried out, Wake up, Anne! Wake up, Anne! for half an hour at a time. But the Prince took all these things with a good grace and they doubtless gave a piquant flavor to the report which he carried back to his imperial brother in Berlin. End of Chapter 15 Part 2 Chapter 15 Part 3 of 20 Years of the Republic 1885 to 1905 by Harry Thurston Peck. This Liberwock's recording is in the public domain. President Roosevelt, Part 3 Foreign observers had said that the United States now possessed the hegemony of the entire Western Hemisphere. In 1903 a series of events occurred which emphasized the truth of this assertion. For half a century the project of getting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by a ship canal across the Central American Isthmus had received the attention of Great Britain, France and the United States. Such a canal would decrease the distance by sea from New York to San Francisco by some 8,500 miles and from New York to Australia by nearly 4,000 miles. The so-called Clayton-Bullward Treaty between the United States and Great Britain signed in 1850 had contemplated the opening from time to time the subject had been revived and in 1870 two expeditions had reported upon the subject. In 1881 a French company had been organized to cut the Isthmus of Panama and the carrying out of the plan was entrusted to Monsieur Ferdinand de Les Eps who had successfully united the Red Sea with the Mediterranean. The attempt, however, resulted in an engineering failure in a great financial scandal France subscribed only about 90 million France were actually expended upon the engineering works, the rest having been squandered in bribery or loss through speculation. In the United States the best scientific opinion had favored a canal through Nicaragua and this route was examined by a commission appointed in 1897. Meanwhile the French project had collapsed 1889 and the French company had offered to sell its rights to the United States. Various commissions had been laid surveys and reports. But finally on January 20, 1902 President Roosevelt sent to Congress a message recommending the construction of a canal at Panama and the purchase of the French rights for 40 million dollars. Congress responded by appropriating 170 million dollars for the realization of the plan and in case it were not possible to secure the consent of the United States of Columbia directed the President to have the canal constructed at the cost not to exceed 180 million dollars. The treaty was then negotiated between Secretary Hay and the Colombian Minister Senor Aran by which Columbia was to grant the desired privilege in return for the sum of 10 million dollars to be paid outright and an annual rental of 250,000 dollars. This treaty was ratified by the United States Senate in extra session March 17, 1903 and then went to the Senate of Columbia. Finally enough, rejected the treaty by a unanimous vote, August 17th. The government of Columbia let it be known a little later that a new treaty would be ratified if the United States would pay the sum of 25 million dollars instead of the 10 million dollars provided for in the Hay-Aran agreement. It was obvious that Columbia was holding up the North American Republic and that the whole question turned upon the payment of money. At this juncture, the state of Panama incensed by the sacrifice of its commercial interests, seceded from Columbia and established a provisional government of its own, appealing to the United States for recognition. President Roosevelt within three days acknowledged the independence of the Republic of Panama. Physical conditions prevented Columbia from sending troops to Panama by land to coerce the seceding state and American vessels of war at once appeared in Central American waters and began to cruise up and down the coast. Marines were landed on the Isthmus and the Colombian government was informed that the United States would permit no fighting there. France and England almost at once gave their recognition to the new Republic. Columbia then, when it was too late, offered every possible concession but the offer was rejected. Monsieur Buneau-Varila, a Franco-Spanish engineer, was by cable accredited as Panama's representative at Washington and on November 18th, he signed a treaty by which the Republic of Panama granted to the United States the privilege of constructing a canal in return for $10 million and a guarantee of Panama's independence. To the United States was also given control of a belt of land 10 miles wide through which the canal was to be cut. The provisional government of Panama ratified this treaty on December 2nd and it was approved by the United States Senate. Note 28, page 702 On February 23rd, 1904, only 14 votes being cast against it. Public opinion favored the action of the government though with some reservations. In the presence of a fait accompli, there was no possibility of retreat. Moreover, the mercenary conduct of the Columbians had deprived them of much of the sympathy which might otherwise have been given to them. It was proved also that the United States had in no way instigated the revolt of Panama, a state which had revolted before and which had for years been hostile to the central government. Finally, the gain to the whole world from the construction of a canal across the Ismus was obvious to all. Nevertheless, the transaction was not one of which Americans could be proud. It violated the principles of international comedy and morality. The alleged baseness of the Columbian Senate did not justify the spoliation of Columbia by the indecent haste with which Panama's independence had been recognized was repugnant to many Americans. When the President received the new Panamanian minister, he very unwisely compared his own recognition of Panama to President Monroe's recognition of the South American states after their revolt from Spain. Yet he must have known that President Monroe took that step only after waiting more years than President Roosevelt had waited days. It was plain too that the President had acted toward a feeble state like Columbia as he would not have dared to act toward a great and war-like power. His conduct in this affair therefore savored too strongly of bullying to be admirable. Morally, the acquisition of the canal zone was as reprehensible as the partition of Poland and it was affected with every possible circumstance that could give offense. The New York Evening Post expressed though rather infelicitously a widespread feeling when it remarked at age 704. The same result could have been reached with some regard for appearances. The booty could have been bagged just the same, yet the burglar could have looked to the casual eye more like a church member. The wrong involved in this affair was destined to bring in part its own revenge. President Roosevelt in his sanguine offhand way declared that the canal must be commenced at once, that he would begin immediately to make the dirt fly. He could not then foresee the long delays, the shocking waste, the crass incompetence and the noisome scandals that were to dog and defer the work upon which he had entered was so light a heart. Here as often times before in his career he displayed the hopeful inexperience of an amateur and that which he lightly fancied the achievement of a few years dragged weirdly along until even the most optimistic of Americans perceived that it was destined to remain the despair of distant decades. 30, page 704 The president however was satisfied with the result of his action and proceeded to display his self complacency in a piece of phrase making which became famous. His notion of a foreign policy he said was, to speak softly but to carry a big stick. What really gave him serious anxiety at this time was the question of his election in 1904 or rather the question as to whether his own party would nominate him for presidency. There were good reasons for his doubt. On April 9, 1903 the suit of Attorney General Knox for the dissolution of the Northern Securities merger had been decided in favor of the government and against the railway magnates. Note 31, page 705 A decree ordering the dissolution of the merger was filed in accordance with this decision. The independent press of the country rejoiced at so effective a check thus the Portland, Oregonian declared, it is a blow at anarchy. Disregard and violation of law come to the same thing whether held at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets in private palace cars and along Fifth Avenue or by the ragged beggars stealing a loaf from a baker's wagon. The Cincinnati Times star remarked, Wall Street with a short sighted standpoint of the cuniery gain in the immediate future may regard the Northern Securities decision as a great evil. Those Americans who are more deeply and unselfishly interested in the industrial and political future of their country however can scarcely fail to take a diametrically opposite position and regard the decision as fraught with much of practical benefit and promise for the future of the Republic. But of course the decision of the court enraged the representatives of Capitol as much as it alarmed them. It renewed their purpose to prevent the nomination of Mr. Roosevelt. Beginning with the early autumn of 1903 all their insidious agencies were set to work to discredit him and to make his nomination seem impossible. The country beheld a wonderful exhibition of the power of this third estate. Its newspapers were filled with studied sneers with slanderous hints and with expressions of veiled contempt. Chief among the condottieri of this veiled opposition was the New York Sun which since the death of Mr. Dana in 1897 had suffered various vicissitudes but which was now believed to be controlled by Mr. Pierpont Morgan. The Sun displayed an ingenuity and a malice worthy of the great editor who was gone. It quoted with relish an offensive phrase which described the friends of Mr. Roosevelt as, Bugs on the White House Dormat. It ridiculed his military record and with solemn irony strove to sap the foundations of his popularity. Note 32, page 706 At first the real drift of all this criticism was not apparent but the secret was let out in an editorial which the Sun published on December 14, 1903 in commenting on the election in Ohio which had resulted in a great Republican majority. Quote the Sun. We see the honorable Marcus A. Hanna crowned with the laurels of that mighty November majority. Victorious as he is, the Bugs on the White House Dormat is a phrase worthy of that low and practical view of politics that obtains among the Bugs eyes are biting him sharply. On the other hand, the mighty majority is crowding in on him seeking to force him away from the stake to which he has bound himself a monument of self-denial. There is every indication that at the present time Senator Hanna is holding himself in restraint but only showing the stoicism of a martyr at the stake. His patience is remarkable, yet the air around him is charged with electricity. The Pi Counter Brigade or Sankofants for office and the Bugs on the White House Dormat as the members of Roosevelt's immediate circle at Washington are known have been assiduously at work nibbling and gnawing at his ankles. Never a day goes by but he must suppress anger that would cause most men to break loose and hurled defiance at the Headsmen. This situation must be distressing for the martyr himself as to one deeply interested soul, the object of this drama of abnegation. Between the Bugs and the majority will the stake hold? From this moment Mr. Hanna was everywhere regarded as a rival of Mr. Roosevelt for the Republican nomination. The movement in his favor was carried on all over the country with infinite skill and through all the channels of the business world. Bankers told their customers that if they sought an office would lead to hard times and would compel a curtailment of discounts. Manufacturers and great business houses let it be known to their employees that their prosperity in the future was imperiled by the unsafe man in the White House. This feeling spread from man to man until in January 1904 it really seemed as though the conspiracy would be successful. A knowledge of these facts seriously disturbed the president. He frankly sought a nomination and was not ashamed to say so. He had enjoyed the experiences of his office with a keen relish. Often writing to his friends and dictating his letters to a sonographer he would speak of the burdens of the presidency. Yet before the letter was sent he sometimes scrawled with his own hand at the bottom of the page the words but I like it. He was tired of having it said that he was only an accidental president. He wished such an endorsement of his policies and of himself as an election by the people would imply. His anxiety was very obvious. Mr. Hanna's popularity gave him many perplexing hours. Mr. Hanna himself once remarked laughingly, whenever I call at the White House the president thinks it's necessary to swear me in again. Whether the senator was seriously hoping for his own election it is difficult to say. It is certain however that he began to seek the favor of the labor element which had long been hostile to him. He helped organize the National Civic Federation and became its president. He also set his business affairs in order withdrawing from various enterprises in which he had been interested thereby making it possible to assume any new duty which might be imposed upon him. For the moment the party was divided and the president seemed to be daily losing ground. A sudden change in the aspect of affairs was caused by Mr. Hanna's death in February 1904. Without him the opposition within the party had no head. Dislike of Mr. Roosevelt among the capitalists had not decreased yet there was no one available to oppose him. Then ensued a period of uncertainty. As was said by a Republican adversary of the president everybody is for Roosevelt but nobody wants him. Yet this remark was utterly untrue. The country was decidedly for Mr. Roosevelt and it also wanted him. Now that Mr. Hanna was removed there came a great surge of favor which in a month or two gave to the president the absolute mastery of his party. When the Republican Convention met at Chicago on June 21 it met as a mere machine to register the presidential wishes. Every speech had been submitted to him and had been revised by him. The platform was practically of his own composition. The great hall of the Coliseum which covered five acres of ground contained a body of delegates who felt that there could be no interest in a gathering where no initiative was allowed. Enthusiasm was lacking and one cynical delegate remarked the only live thing about the convention today was the picture of the dead Hanna. On the second day the platform was red and adopted. It contained in essence little more than formal endorsement of the administration. On the third day Mr. Roosevelt was formally nominated by ex-governor Frank S. Black of New York who succeeded in rousing the convention for the first time to something like enthusiasm. His speech was in fact a superb piece of rhetoric of which at least one passage may be quoted here. There is no regret so keen in man or country as that which follows an opportunity unembraced. Fortune soars with high and rapid wing and whosoever brings it down must shoot with accuracy and speed. Only the man with steady eye and nerve and the courage to pull the trigger brings the largest opportunities to the ground. He does not always listen while all the sages speak but every nightfall beholds some record which if not complete has been at least pursued with conscience and intrepid resolution. The fate of nations is still decided by their wars. You may talk of orderly tribunals and learned referees you may sing in your schools the gentle praises of the quiet life you may strike from your books the last note of every martial anthem and yet out in the smoke and thunder will always be the tramp of horses and the silent rigid upturned face. Men may prophesy and women pray but peace will come here to abide forever on this earth only when the dreams of childhood are the accepted charts to guide the destinies of men. Note 33, page 709 Mr. Roosevelt was nominated by acclamation and Mr. Charles W. Fairbanks of Indiana was made his associate as a candidate for the vice presidency. Mr. Fairbanks was a gentleman of conservative views whose rather cold and formal manners presently gained for him the popular nickname of ice banks. The convention adjourned with as little enthusiasm as had marked its gathering yet in spite of this unprecedented absence of emotion or perhaps because of it there was something grimly suggestive and impressive about the whole affair. One seemed to see here no shouting mob of volunteers but rather an army highly organized and disciplined trained to obey implicitly the orders of a single chief and with the prestige of past victory upon its banners. The soldiers in the ranks might have their private hesitancies and dislikes but these were not to count when in the presence of the enemy nor to alter however slightly the marching determination to win the coming battle. Much keener interest was felt in the action of the Democratic convention which had been called for July 6 in St. Louis. The democracy was in a mood to revert to its earlier conservatism rather than to experience once more with the policies of Mr. Bryan. This conservatism was the more clearly indicated because radicalism had now been approved by the Republicans and was embodied in the personality of their chief. Hence the name most often heard as that of the possible Democratic candidate was the name of Alton B. Parker chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals. Judge Parker had been bred to the profession of the law and his first thought in public life was of rule and precedent. He had all the jurists dread of innovation and while his courage was undoubted it was always manifested in a quiet fashion. He recalled the American public men of other days, the Adamses the Jays and the Marshals statesmen and jurists who gave form and definite cohesion to the federal government in its early years. Personally he had the human qualities in abundant measure, the kindness and courtesy of one who is always genuine and sincere with just a touch of that elusive rusticity which carries a wholesome suggestion of a purely natural environment. As the weeks passed on Judge Parker seemed more and more likely to receive the Democratic nomination. His chief rival was Mr. William Randolph Hearst of New York. Mr. Hearst was a young man the son of Senator Hearst of California and he had inherited from his father a large fortune with which he had established newspapers of a sensational character in New York in Boston, in Chicago, in San Francisco and in Los Angeles. Mr. Hearst was more radical even than Mr. Bryan. He was a state socialist who had formally advocated free silver and in his newspapers had never wearied of denouncing the abuses of capitalism. He was seriously regarded in many portions of the country as a great tribune of the people who would, if he had the power, destroy the lawless corporations, give over the railways and the telegraphs to the government and in general bring about a sort of socialistic millennium. This belief and an abundant use of money in his preliminary canvas with perhaps the secret support of Mr. Bryan secured for Mr. Hearst not only delegations from several called silver states, but those of such great commonwealths as Illinois, Iowa and California. When the convention met it was obviously dominated by the conservative element. Mr. Cleveland's name was received with thunders of applause and it was said that now at last the democracy would show itself to be both safe and sane. The first day was devoted to speechmaking but on the second day the convention displayed its temper in a test vote as to the seating of certain Illinois delegates. Mr. Bryan advocated their admission but by a vote of 647 to 299 his proposal was defeated and he left the hall in a state of evident dejection. Nevertheless in committee he was able by the force of his personality to exclude from the platform any reference to the money question. On the evening of July 8th the candidates were put in nomination and Judge Parker received eight ballots as against the 204 that were cast for Mr. Hearst. Men wondered however in what light the judge would view a nomination given him after the adoption of a platform so negative in character. They had not long to wait. On the next day a telegram was received and read of which the text was as follows. I regard the gold standard as firmly and irrevocably established and shall act accordingly if the action of the convention today shall be ratified by the people. As the platform is silent on the subject my views should be made known to the convention and if they prove to be unsatisfactory to the majority I request you to decline the nomination for me at once so that another may be nominated before adjournment. Halton B. Parker to this telegram after a hasty consultation among the leaders a reply was sent in these words. The platform adopted by this convention is silent on the question of the monetary standard because it is not regarded by us as a possible issue in this campaign and only campaign issues were mentioned in the platform. Therefore there is nothing in the views expressed by you in the telegram just received which would preclude a man entertaining them from accepting a nomination on said platform. The terms of this reply were bitterly assailed by Mr. Bryan who rose from a sick bed pale and shaking with fever to utter a last plea for the cause with which his name was linked. His passionate eloquence never was more splendid than in this hour of momentary defeat. He thrilled all who heard him yet he failed to shake the set purpose of the majority. The convention then adjourned after nominating for the vice presidency Mr. Henry G. Davis of West Virginia a wealthy octogenarian. The most conservative Democrats all over the country lauded the courage of their chief candidate. The supporters of Mr. Bryan however and the friends of Mr. Hurst were thoroughly discontented and throughout the campaign which followed the exhibited not only apathy but unfriendliness. Mr. Bryan himself though deeply disappointed displayed unshaken loyalty to his party's choice. At first it seemed as though the conservative elements of the country might be rallied to judge Parker's support. Mr. Cleveland emerged from his seclusion to speak in behalf of his party's candidate. The moneyed interests hesitated for a few weeks. But in the end they accepted Mr. Roosevelt in the belief that he was certain to be elected and that while they might not be able to control his policies they could at least succeed in blocking them or in accomplishing their defeat. Moreover, some of the men who were most conspicuous in their advocacy of Judge Parker's election failed to inspire general confidence. Again, Judge Parker's utterances were too sedate and too conservative for people which had grown accustomed to more stirring words. Moreover Mr. Roosevelt was fortunate in having Mr. John Hay as his chief cabinet advisor. Many conservative Republicans were want to remark well after all, a vote for Roosevelt is really a vote for Hay. As the summer advanced the tide set in with increasing force in favor of the president and the Democrats were obviously losing ground. One thing alone gave a shock to the moral sense of the country. At the head of the Republican National Committee was placed Mr. George B. Cortelieu who had resigned to seat in the cabinet to act as campaign manager. It was intimated that in case the president should be elected Mr. Cortelieu would be made postmaster general. There was a certain impropriety in all this. Mr. Cortelieu had been secretary of commerce and labor and in that office he had learned the secrets of the great corporations. His demands upon them for pecuniary contributions would therefore be especially effective. While the chance of his being the future head of the post office department made every postmaster in the country a political agent through dread of possible removal. Judge Parker called attention to these circumstances in a speech to which the president wrote a reply couched in hot words of anger and ending with the following notable passage. The statements made by Mr. Parker are unqualifiedly and atrociously false. As Mr. Cortelieu has said to me more than once during this campaign I shall go into the presidency unhampered by any pledge, promise or understanding of any kind, sort or description save my promise made openly to the American people that so far as in my power lies I shall see to it that every man has a square deal no less and no more. This for the moment silence public criticism. Of course no one had supposed that Mr. Roosevelt was personally aware of any bargaining. Indeed it was not necessary to assume that any open or explicit bargaining had been made. But in the following year it became known that large sums had been improperly if not dishonestly paid into the Republican campaign fund by the great insurance companies of New York and that in one instance the company's books have been falsified to conceal the evidence of this illegal use of a trust fund. It was plain that such contributions would hardly have been made without a confident expectation of receiving valuable favors in return. Judge Parker's charges were therefore in essence justified. At the election however Mr. Roosevelt was so overwhelmingly successful as to make the results certain within two hours after the polls had closed. In the popular vote he had a majority of nearly two million while in the electoral college he had 336 votes as against 140 given to Judge Parker. Yet when analyzed it was apparent that his great success was due largely to the defection at the polls of the Hearst and Bryan voters. The total number of ballots cast in the country was less by nearly half a million than those which had been cast in 1900 in spite of the growth in population. It was not then so much an increase in the Republican vote as a decrease in the Democratic that brought about a result which on the face of it seemed cataclysmic. No sooner had the news of his success been carried to the president than he gave out a written statement from the Congress to the effect that under no circumstances would he be a candidate for another nomination. Note 34, page 715 President Roosevelt entered upon his second term in March 1905 under happy auspices and with a great majority of his own party in control of Congress. What he might actually do thereafter was uncertain. How far his efforts in behalf of honesty and equal justice might be effectual in the face of sinister and reactionary processes none could say. But he at least by speech and act committed the powerful organization of which he was the head to a new and truer policy and one consistent with the ideals of its founders. A policy from which thereafter it would be not only difficult but base to swerve. End of chapter 15 Chapter 16 part 1 of 20 years of the Republic 1885 to 1905 by Harry Thurston Peck. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Transformed Republic Part 1 In the 20 years which followed the first inauguration of President Cleveland, the philosophic observer finds a multiplicity of tendencies and of achieved results among the maze of which it is often difficult to disentangle those that possess supreme significance. No period in the whole history of the Republic had been so fraught with the consummation of changes long pending. It was a period of precipitation. In it a score of influences which for many years had been almost imperceptibly at work, now with a rapid rush wrought out results so swiftly and so surely, has to-days the per blind and confound the calculations of conservative students of political and social history. The central fact which dominates these 20 years of evolution is the fact that in them the United States at last attained a genuine national sovereignty. Whatever orators and political theorists may have said and written during the preceding century, no dispassionate analyst of American conditions could blink the truth that the Federal Republic throughout that century had been not one nation but several nations, held together so to speak mechanically, rather than blended chemically in a complete identity of sentiment and interest. The fact might well seem odd to those who took a purely superficial view and constructed a theoretical argument. Here are the people mainly of English stock occupying a continuous territory, speaking the same language and possessing the same racial governmental and social traditions. In the war of independence the colonies had resisted a common enemy in defense of a common principle and had won a victory of which the glory was a common heritage. They had voluntarily accepted the rule of a central government in which the rights of each constituent part were carefully safeguarded. In all this there was to be detected the presence of influences making for a more perfect unification. How came it then that actual unity was not attained until more than a century had elapsed? What was the cause which kept the centrifugal and the centripetal forces so nearly balanced as to make it often doubtful which would finally prevail? The anomaly was the more interesting because from the very outset the drift toward a true nationalization of the Republic had been clearly indicated. Although the revolution itself was succeeded by an ebbing of national energy this merely evidence the lassitude of a reaction. It was swiftly followed by a vigorous impulse which came from the south and from the west and which was personified in the two great leaders Calhoun and Clay. While Federalist New England was sulking in sterile criticism or impotently muttering treason these two ardent souls were urging a boldly aggressive policy the adoption of which would inevitably bind them together. They spurned the timid temporizing of their elders and flung the gauntlet of defiance in the face of Britain. Calhoun's early statesmanship urged the construction of great permanent roads for defense connecting more closely the interests of various sections of this great country. Clay personified the spirit of the west its impatience of traditional restraints its thirst for expansion even at the cost of conquest and its conviction that the permanent at Washington should give the vivifying impulse which the individual states withheld. In the early years of the 19th century it really seemed as though the barriers between one section and another were soon to be demolished. Canals were cut and other waterways were opened. Steamboats began to apply between the growing cities. Great roads were built across the mountains. Meanwhile the constructive jurist Chief Justice Marshall a native of Virginia was strengthening the integrity of the central government by holding the Supreme Court to his broad views of constitutional interpretation. It appeared at that time as though within a few decades facility of intercourse, commercial interests and a growing pride in material and moral progress would link the states so closely and so surely as to give the natural ties of race and language their full effect. It was of course the blight of slavery which deferred this consummation not because of any moral taint institution but because of the economic clash which it made inevitable. It not merely kept the South a purely agricultural community without the varied industries which flourished in the North but it erected the breeding of slaves into a highly profitable occupation. Note 1, page 719 This special interest caused in the South a reaction against the centralizing unifying tendency which had earlier been noticeable. It paralyzed the large patriotism of Calhoun and his able followers and forced them into a narrow particularism and the exaltation of the state above the nation. Their political genius was then devoted to the undoing of what they had before accomplished and to the stifling of a sentiment which was beginning to prevail. For many years thereafter, the narrowness of the New England abolitionist was matched by the narrowness of the Southern slave owner and the bitter strife between the two set back the birth of the new nationalism for three quarters of a century. The period of the Civil War when the vigorous West threw its sword into the scale and determined the issue of the contest settled the question of slavery forever. Yet the United States could not at once become a real political entity. The bitterness of the war itself would soon have passed away, but the horrors of reconstruction sank deeper into the soul of the South than even the memory of devastated countries. It is painful now to dwell upon the folly and fanaticism which made that period the darkest in all American history. The wise and conciliatory plans of Lincoln were forgotten by the Northern radicals. To disenfranchise the best and ablest citizens of the South was bad enough. The incredible scheme of granting immediate suffrage to the half-brutish blacks and of thrusting them into the supreme control of civilized communities was the high watermark of civil insanity. Unprincipled white men from other sections of the country flocked into the Southern States and exploited the ignorance of the Negroes. There was seen the spectacle of governors of states carrying with them to low orgies bundles of state bonds of which they filled in the amounts according as they needed the money for debauchery. Legislative halls which had been honored by the presence of learned jurists and distinguished lawyers were filled with a rabble of plantation hands like so many apes while drunken wenches sprawled upon the dais before the speaker's rostrum. Public debts of every sort were piled up mountain high and whole communities already impoverished by war were crushed under new and even more appalling burdens. Note 2, page 721. But the Reconstruction period and Negro domination passed away after the inauguration of President Hayes in 1877. Slowly but surely the South began to get upon its feet once more. Yet so long as it was excluded from any leading share in the federal government a sentiment of nationality could not in the nature of things be fostered in the Southern States. So long as Northern orators and statesmen filled their speeches with allusions to rebel brigadiers and pointed to the solid South as a menace to the nation's welfare for just so long the South responded by a show of sullen anger and defiance. In a word, so long as the Democratic Party was kept out of power for the sole reason that one wing of it was composed of Southern voters the Republic still remained fundamentally divided. It was this fact which gave to the election of Mr. Cleveland in 1884 so profound a significance. Whatever one may think of his two administrations they certainly demonstrated not merely that the bugbear of the solid South was nothing but a bugbear but also that the nation could ill afford to reject the services of the able men whom the South bred up and of whom Lamar and Herbert and Carlisle and Francis were conspicuous examples. Political recognition in the executive departments of the government did much to soften the harshness of Southern feeling. Meanwhile the South was recovering with astonishing solidarity the material wealth which it had lost. Manufacturers were established very successfully at many points and notably in Georgia and Alabama. Mines began to be worked. Capital was attracted from the North and from Europe. Between 1895 and 1905 the economic development of the Southern states was one of the most remarkable in the whole history of the modern industrial world. Note 3, page 722 The distribution of wealth, the new activities and the wider outlook which resulted from them meant more than a shifting of the industrial center of gravity at the South. It meant a transformation in the political relations of the South with reference to the nation as a whole. As one expressed it at the time the Southern people were too busily engaged in providing for a prosperous future to waste valuable time in brooding over a melancholy past. Hence after 1890 we find a new South. Hopeful, vigorous and alert, forming each year new ties to hold it fast as an integral part of the Great Republic whose foundations had been laid by the genius and patriotism of Southern men. The one thing necessary to make this clearly evident was the impulse given by the war with Spain. It was then that the South itself learned how far it had emerged from its old seclusion. Its volunteers flocked with enthusiasm to the recruiting offices and they fought shoulder to shoulder with their fellow countrymen of the North and West for the same flag and the same country. This was the first act when President McKinley gave commissions in the Army to Fitzhule and Joseph Wheeler, two ex-Confederate commanders. This single act intensified the warmth of patriotic feeling which the South displayed throughout that war and afterwards. President Roosevelt himself of Southern ancestry on his mother's side succeeded in increasing this good feeling in spite of the temporary excitement aroused by the Booker Washington Affair. Note 4. Page 723 His secretary of war, Mr. Elihu Root, in an address delivered before the Union League Club in New York City frankly confessed that the Republican party had been guilty of a grave error after the Civil War in bestowing the unrestricted franchise upon the Negroes. These things and others like them made Mr. Roosevelt so popular in the Southern States that at the time of the election of 1904 an eminent Southern Democrat answering a question put to him in private conversation said in the South we are going to vote for Parker but we are all praying hard for Roosevelt. As a matter of fact this election actually broke the ranks of the long solid South for the states of West Virginia and Missouri then cast their electoral votes for a Republican president. With the consummation of true national unity it came about that the political and social phenomena which the United States exhibited after 1895 were no longer sectional. The problems which they involved confronted the people of the entire country. These phenomena and these problems when analyzed philosophically related first to the astonishing growth of material prosperity and the distribution of wealth and second and partly consequent upon the first to a strong and rapid drift towards something like state socialism. All the other important questions that arose during the period under consideration will be found to have sprung from one or the other of these two causes. Sufficient has been already said in the course of this narrative concerning the exploitation of the country's natural resources and the diffusion of wealth. The economic history of the United States had on the whole been the history of material success broken only now and then by financial crises which at times retarded but could not long prevent the accelerated enrichment of the nation. From 1846 to 1860 industrial activity of every sort was very marked. The Civil War for a moment brought panic and financial depression but it soon proved a stimulus not merely to speculation but to legitimate enterprise as well. From that time the record varied until at the beginning of the McKinley administration the country reached a pitch of material well-being such as had never before been known. It was not however so much the growth of wealth as the distribution which now became significant not the riches of the nation but the riches of individuals. Until 1860 to 65 the national wealth had been widely diffused. After 1865 it began to be gathered into great fortunes. The first and for a long while the only American millionaire had been George Washington who achieved wealth by the judicious purchase of western lands. For many years after his time there were in the words of James Brice, no great fortunes in America, few large fortunes and no poverty. The same careful observer contrasted this condition with that which prevailed about 1890. He then wrote, Now there is some poverty, many large fortunes and a greater number of gigantic fortunes than in any other country of the world. Note 5, page 725 The much lauded era of consolidation exhibited the truth of this assertion and revealed a growing tendency to increase still more the concentration of wealth in the hands of a comparatively few. No statement on this subject professing to be exact can be accepted literally yet the results of some careful investigations represent at least an approximate truth. Thus it was computed in 1896 that one-eighth of the families in the United States possessed at least seven-eighths of all the country's wealth. Note 6, page 725 The assertion was also made in 1903 that the 24 men who then composed the directorate of the United States Steel Corporation controlled at least one-twelfth of the total wealth of the United States. A New York lawyer, one of J. Gould's counsel, Mr. Thomas G. Sherman had said 11 years earlier that the United States was practically owned by less than 250,000 persons and that within 30 years from that time it would be controlled by fewer than 50,000 persons. Note 7, page 725 Merely as an interesting fact therefore it would be worth recording that the rapidity with which wealth had grown was balanced by the startling inequality of its distribution. To a very large extent this inequality represented a natural inequality in the brain power which exists among individuals. It was a tribute in part to efficiency of organization and to that superior ability to finance is comparable to a likeability in the sphere of military affairs. The military analogy is indeed a very apt one. Translate the strategic maxims of Napoleon into the language of finance and there is formulated a system quite as axiomatic as was his because it expresses fundamental truths. Napoleon's battles were won by a tenacious adherence to a few simple principles. Always have your forces so distributed, said the emperor as to make it possible for you to direct all of them at once upon the weak point in the enemy's position. This implies singleness of command, clearness of design and concentration of power. When therefore, immensity of forces directed by supreme ability centered in one dominant mind, there is affected a combination which is practically irresistible and the same thing is true with regard to money. When millions are united and masked and when their concentrated power is wielded by one far-seeing brain, they will draw to themselves swiftly and surely other millions and will justify the proverb which declares that wealth breeds wealth. An anecdote current in 1902 elucidates one of the causes of American success in financial management. Not long ago, the head of an American corporation walked into the London offices of a great concern which represented similar interests in England. The American came unknown and announced. After waiting for half an hour in an anti-room he was admitted to the presence of the manager and came at once to business with an unconcern of manner in striking contrast to English ways. Now see here, he began without any preliminary talk. I've looked into your concern and know all about it and just what it's worth and I've come here to buy you out. The Englishman gasped and stared at what appeared to him the extreme assurance and even insolence of his visitor. Yes, continued the American swinging his leg easily over the arm of the chair. I know all about your business. It isn't worth a million pounds but I'm prepared to offer you that if you'll close the thing right here. And when would you be ready to pay over the million pounds? asked the Englishman with what he regarded as elaborate irony. The American looked at his watch. Well, he said, it's rather late today if you'll have the papers drawn, I'll turn the million over to you tomorrow afternoon. No date, page 727. When men by temper and training come to possess the ability to do large things in this direct and simple way, they have an immense advantage over those who can act only in committees or boars or companies and they will inevitably dominate them and use them quite at will. Hence it was that the concentration of wealth in the United States between 1885 and 1905 being directed in a swift effective and overwhelming fashion seemed to promise the commercial and financial conquest of the world. It was this which dazzled for a while the imagination of the American people. They had begun to make other nations pay tribute to the Republic. They confidently looked forward to a time when as a certain senator somewhat extravagantly phrased it both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans would commercially become American lakes, traversed by American islands and washing no shores that were not tributary to the United States. In many respects the possession of great fortunes by individuals was the direct advantage to the nation as a whole. The new millionaires differed greatly from their predecessors of the period immediately following the Civil War. That war had created the American millionaire. From 1865 to 1875 the most striking figure in American life was that of the Nouveau Riche. He was to instructed minds a most pathetic sight. So grossly conscious of his wealth so anxious to spend it in an impressive way to do something princely something really big while still so hopelessly ignorant of how to do it. He purchased urban dwellings with brown stone fronts and plate glass windows. He procured horses and carriages and stocked his sellers with champagne. In the country he built for himself enormous wooden mansions in many colors surmounted by wooden cupolas and towers and battlements and adorned with a maze of wooden pillars representing what someone cleverly styled the jigsaw renaissance while his lawn was dotted with cast iron statuary painted to resemble bronze. Many of these war-made millionaires ultimately lost their money as quickly as they made it. Some of them left it to be squandered by their sons. The wealth of those days was seldom perpetuated and this fact was crystallized as a proverb to the effect that there are only three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves. The representatives of the still newer wealth bore slight resemblance to the shoddy millionaire. They lived in the age that had discovered Europe where they had traveled and observed and learned for at this time Europe became a mighty educator of the American people. It led them to the appreciation and encouragement of art and architecture and landscape gardening and to a knowledge of new refinements of civilized existence. There began to be laid in the United States the basis for something which resembled an aristocracy founded in the first instance upon wealth but in its higher forms deserving a better name than that of mere plutocracy. An aristocracy must always ultimately rest upon either power or service and more often upon a combination of these two. In bygone centuries power in its last analysis meant physical force and hence the founders of the older aristocracies of Europe had been warriors often soldiers of fortune who by the edge of the sword carved out for themselves a permanent place in the kingdoms of the old world. In the 19th century the greatest source of power was wealth and therefore upon it and upon that service to the people which it was unable to perform a new aristocracy rapidly arose in the United States. It was easy to sneer at the source as being vulgar yet power when it is so great as this is never vulgar even though the wielders of it are. In the United States at the beginning of the 20th century only the early stages of this evolution could be seen. Its frequent cruelties and inanities everyone could detect and mock at for there had so far been reached only the period of imitation and display yet already the possession of great wealth had exercised a sobering influence and had begun to create a sense of civic responsibility in many of its possessors. Foreign observers had been want to say that in America public office was held only by the representatives of the ignorant and that men of light and leading held themselves aloof from politics. This criticism lost its point in the years from 1890 to 1905. More and more did it become usual for young men of cultivation and intelligence to enter public life. At the time of the Spanish war such men were eager to receive building that to fight even in the ranks. The nobility of service was beginning to be understood. President Roosevelt himself was an admirable example of this new tendency to sacrifice the delights of cultivated ease to the welfare of the nation. The indirect value to the country at large of the concentration of wealth was also undeniable. Many of the latter day millionaires in fact an ever increasing number of them even in the pursuit of their own pleasures and justification of their own tastes conferred a benefit upon the entire people. Following sometimes unintelligently but as time went on with a truer comprehension the English models they set a fashion that in many things was admirable. The open-air life, the love of country homes and the practice of outdoor amusements of riding and hunting and of healthful sports all tended to improve the physical and moral tone of Americans. The greatest states of the wealthy resulted country houses on Long Island in the Berkshires in Maine and in other picturesque localities. The country clubs, the golf links no less than the sumptuous hospitality offered by the rich to their friends all set a standard of living which little by little added to the refinement of American life and did much to smooth away the crudities which had marked an earlier stage of American civilization. Still more important was the generosity which gave with lavish hand to educational endowments and to create and maintain libraries, picture galleries and museums. American purchasers brought to their native land masterpieces of art from the choicest collections of Europe and they patronized often with great discrimination the artists and architects of their own country. In this sphere the new wealth and the growth of an aristocracy primarily founded upon wealth were beginning to make the cities of the United States with the great merchant princes of North and Italy had made their cities at the time the Renaissance. There were many who deplored the inevitable growth of social distinctions which resulted from the state of things that had just been described. Yet these critics ignored the fact that social distinctions had always existed in the Republic and that they sprang not from external circumstances but from the inborn social habits of the race. That the multimillionaire should think of himself as in a class apart from the man of moderate means was no more absurd should look down upon the petty tradesman that the clerk should feel himself to be above the mechanic or that the shop girl should exclude from her society the domestic servant. The Anglo-Saxon cherishes an intolerance of social equality as intense and as ineradicable as his championship of equality before the law. That the rapid growth of wealth and its unequal distribution were known in many cases to be the result of inequality before the law explains the discontent which drove among the American people during the years with which this narrative has to do. Americans are singularly free from envy. That some men should grow rich while others remained poor was not in itself a cause of dissatisfaction. Great fortunes honestly acquired were rightly held to be an honor to their possessors because they were the concrete evidence of ability, economy and perseverance. But on the other hand, the fortunes that had been gained through illicit favor in defiance of the law and by the debauchery of those who had been chosen to make end to administer the law, they aroused a widespread and steadily deepening resentment. Note 9, page 732 Conspicuous instances of this lawless wealth have already in these pages been sufficiently pointed out in discussing the growth of trusts and the discrimination by railways in the making of their rates and in the stifling of competition by other means in flagrant violation of both the statutes and the common law of the land. For twenty years the courts had been practically impotent to check and to destroy the power of monopoly. Americans began to feel that the orderly processes of the law were unavailing. Petty criminals, underlings and agents were sometimes punished, yet no great criminal of the wealthy class had ever been sent to prison, but was at most permitted to escape on the payment of a fine which was to him of no more consequence than the copper coin which one tosses to an urchin in the streets. State after state adopted legislation intended to be remedial or punitive, yet this practically accomplished nothing. And some of these very states, notably New Jersey, most inconsistently framed their corporation laws in such a way as actually to encourage the increase of oppressive combinations. The feeling of helpless rage which spread through the West in 1892 had permeated the entire country in 1905 and had prepared the minds of the people for measures far more drastic than any which had hitherto been known in the Republic. It is thus that one may account for the rapid development of state socialism in the United States. The germs of this movement were perhaps sown by the German immigrants who came to America at the time of the political disorders of 1848 and who were imbued with the doctrines of Karl Marx. For a long while the organizations which these men formed remained apart from the current of American political life. The name socialist was little understood by the people at large and was vaguely held to be synonymous with communist and anarchist. In time, however, the social unrest which was aroused by the growing inequality of conditions began to stir the native section of the people. The various labor organizations which have elsewhere been mentioned note 10, page 733 early showed the drift towards socialism and looked to the central government for the rectification of what they held to be deep-seated social wrongs. An epic in the history of this movement was marked by the publication in 1880 of a work entitled Progress and Poverty written by Mr. Henry George. Henry George was a native of Philadelphia. He was born to poverty so that at the age of 14 he was obliged to leave school in order to earn a living for himself. Shipping as a deck hand on a merchant vessel bound for Australia he ultimately found his way to California 1858 where he learned the printer's trade. For years he suffered great privations drifting from one employment to another improving unsuccessful in them all. With some of his fellow printers he established a small newspaper and this also failed. Yet the venture influenced his subsequent career since it led him to try writing for the press. His earliest productions show that he had already begun to study political and social questions and to urge his fellows to check the tendency of society to resolve itself into classes that have either too much or too little. Presently he became chief of staff on the San Francisco Times and thence forward he devoted himself to a propaganda directed against the inequalities of society as it existed. As early as 1866 he exposed the illegal practices of the Western Railways and in 1877 after long reflection he began to write the book which ultimately made him famous. The first edition was a small one the author himself setting a part of the type and for a while it attracted slight attention. Within a few years however it was taken up in England and widely reviewed as being a remarkable contribution to the literature of sociology. With the exception of Uncle Tom's cabin no American book had ever been so widely read. It was translated into all the languages of Europe. Sheep editions were published in England and the United States and it is estimated that between 1880 and 1905 no less than 2 million copies of it were sold and circulated. Note 11 page 734 Mr. George's thesis was that the entire burden of taxation should be levied upon land irrespective of all improvements upon it thus confiscating the economic rent freeing industry from taxation and affording equal opportunity to all men by destroying the unfair advantage which the possession of land gives to monopoly. Closely allied to his theory of the single tax as it was called was his doctrine that the laborer is really paid not out of capital but out of value which he himself creates. In 1886 Henry George was a candidate for the mayorality of New York City receiving 68,000 votes. He failed of election yet the ballots cast for him exceeded the number of those cast for Mr. Roosevelt as his Republican competitor. Note 12 page 735 This display of popular strength gave an enormous impulse to state socialism. Of great importance also was the publication in 1888 of a widely read socialistic novel by Edward Bellamy entitled Looking Backward. This book attracted the attention of many who had never before given any thought to social problems. Bellamy clubs as they were called fashionable. The study of sociology spread and men and women belonging to the highly educated classes now joined hands with the representatives of labor. As was written at the time, Bellamy's book brought socialism up from the workshops and the beer gardens into the libraries and the drawing rooms. A third writer whose influence cannot be ignored was Mr. Henry Demeris Lloyd, a lecturer on political economy who later became a practicing lawyer. After a long investigation carried on with scientific thoroughness, he published his memorable volume, Wealth Against Common Wealth. Note 13 page 735 In it he exposed with a mass of documentary evidence the methods of the Standard Oil Company and incidentally those of other trusts the drift of his conclusions being in favor of the public ownership or control of natural monopolies such as water, coal, oil and natural gas. From this time the doctrine of the municipal ownership of public utilities rapidly won favor with the people. It seemed to embody a practical means of restraining some at least of the aggressions of capital. It involved no rash experiment since it had been already tried with great success in several of the cities of Great Britain and the continent and it presented no formidable difficulties in the way of its realization. The coal strike of 1902 had brought out very glaringly the dangers of the private ownership of one of the necessities of life and in the autumn of that year the platform of the Democratic State Convention in New York advocated the acquisition of the coal fields by the national government. The argument in favor of municipal and national ownership was extremely plausible. The government already owned and operated with efficiency the post office. Why not also the railways the telegraphs the telephones and the express companies some American cities already supplied their citizens with water why should they not also supply them with gas why should they not manage the local means of transportation the ferries the street railways and the elevated roads it was answered that private companies could do this with greater economy than could either state or city but the reply was instantly made that such economies as private control affected went into the pockets of the individuals and in no wise benefited the public moreover bitter experience that taught the American people that for the abuses of private ownership there was practically no penalty while a like abuse of public ownership could be punished at the polls overcrowded unventilated and ill-heated cars excessive fares and general discomfort usually went with private ownership and against these things complaints were unavailing while the law afforded no redress a legislative investigation in 1905 showed that the gas companies in the city of New York made enormous profits through a regulation of the flow of gas whereby it will they could manipulate the meters and increase the consumers bills to whatever sum they wished moreover private ownership selfishly refused to employ inventions and improvements because at the outset these would entail an additional expense for their installation note 14 page 736 a remarkable invention long-distance telephoning was purchased by a corporation not for the purpose of putting it into use but in order to suppress it for 20 years the New York Central and Hudson River Railway refused to employ electricity as a motor power in the long tunnel leading out of New York City although the use of steam had twice caused shocking accidents in which many lives were lost and in which men and women were frightfully scalded and maimed for life governmental ownership it was argued that it could possibly be worse than this it must almost inevitably be more conducive to the public welfare note 15 page 737 it is not surprising then that the question of governmental regulation of railway rates and the municipal ownership of public utilities became a very vital one in the minds of the American people in 1905 it marked an end of the old individualism and a triumph of what was still called socialism but what in Mr Bellamy's phrase was more truly to be described as nationalism for many decades Americans had held that corporations were possessed of the same natural rights as persons that belief was now shattered and it was clearly seen that corporations had no natural rights whatever but only such privileges as the people might choose to grant them that they were the creatures of the state and that their activities might be restricted or even if necessary destroyed when they should cease to serve the public interests by the end of 1905 more than half the cities and towns of the United States had acquired the ownership of their waterworks many were successfully operating their own gas plants Chicago had elected a mayor who was pledged to secure to that city the ownership of its street railway system in New York Mr. W. R. Hearst the candidate of the party of municipal ownership pulled 225,000 votes by the election by the narrowest of margins more important than all President Roosevelt was urging upon the Congress the passage of a bill giving the United States government power to regulate the rates imposed by railways upon shippers and thus to prevent the unjust discriminations which had made possible the beef trust the sugar trust and the standard oil company both the great political parties had in fact without really knowing it become permeated with the fundamental principles of state socialism the Republican party had been essentially socialistic from the outset since it had looked to the national government to destroy slavery even though slavery was protected by the Constitution later when in control of the government that party had used the federal power through tariff legislation to foster special interests and to enrich particular classes of individuals later still it had given bounties to sugar growers and had proposed a subsidizing of the merchant marine the Democratic party on the other hand which in the early 19th century was very jealous of federal authority desiring to limit it as much as possible had in 1892 under the leadership of Mr. Bryan become frankly socialistic advocating federal action to help men pay their debts and to diffuse prosperity among the agricultural population the general recognition of these facts marked a new era in American political history henceforth most Americans looked to the nation and not to the several states for the writing of all wrongs and for the encouragement of favorable conditions not only commercial and industrial but likewise social this meant a severing of all traditions the establishment of new theories of government and in consequence the transformation of the American Republic centralization of power however took on a more definite form than any vague enlargement of federal authority in the various departments of the government it tended specifically to make the president a supreme arbiter with prerogatives transcending those of the legislative and judicial branches just as congress was a more efficient conspicuous and responsible body than the legislatures of the separate states so the president was a more efficient conspicuous and responsible agent than congress Americans were eager for results and results could apparently be achieved with less delay if their accomplishment were entrusted to an individual as in finance so in politics the one man power was acclaimed there lurked somewhere perhaps in the national consciousness a love of the monarchical principle provided only that it were blended with a democratic element the Tory democracy of England in the early 80s found its analog in the imperialistic republicanism of the united states in the late 90s the whole history of the nation had been indeed a history of the gradual strengthening of the presidential power Jefferson's unauthorized purchase of the Louisiana territory Jackson's struggle with congress over the bank pokes practical declaration of war against Mexico in assuming that a state of war existed Lincoln's use of the war power his trials by military commission and his edict of emancipation Johnson's refusal to enforce the reconstruction acts grants military government in the southern states and Cleveland's rejection of the demand which congress made upon him to surrender the documents relating to suspensions from office were all indicative of the tendency that has here been mentioned it is by a process of easy transition therefore that one finds president McKinley invested with absolute discretion in expending the money voted by congress to prepare for war with Spain and after that war there was little protest when the same president ruled without any legislative check upon his authority the conquered Philippines and Cuba and Puerto Rico End of chapter 16 part 1