Did those words of Roosevelt spring from his sense of
humor--humor which recognizes the topsy-turvy of life and its
swift changes, and still laughs--or from the instinct which knows
that even in the sweetest of all experiences there must be a drop
of bitterness? Whatever their cause, they proved to be a true
foreboding. He had not been home twenty four hours before he
perceived, on talking with his friends, that the Republican Party
during his absence had drifted far from the course he had
charted. "His policies" had vanished with his control, and the
men who now managed the Administration and the party regarded
him, not merely with suspicion, but with aversion.
To tell the story of this conflict is the disagreeable duty of
the historian of. that period, especially if he have friends and
acquaintances on both sides of the feud. There are some facts not
yet known; there are others which must be touched upon very
delicately if at all; and, in the main, so much of the episode
grew out of personal likes and dislikes that it is hard to base
one's account of it on documents. In trying to get at the truth,
I have been puzzled by the point-blank contradictions of
antagonistic witnesses, whose veracity has not been questioned.
Equally perplexing are the lapses of memory in cases where I
happen to have seen letters or documents written at the time and
giving real facts. The country would assuredly have been alarmed
if it had suspected that, during the years from 1909 to 1912, the
statesmen who had charge of it, were as liable to attacks of
amnesia as they proved to be later.
The head and front of the quarrel which wrecked the Republican
Party must be sought in Roosevelt's thoroughly patriotic desire
to have a successor who should carry on the principles which he
had fought for and had embodied in national laws during the
nearly eight years of his Presidency. He felt more passionately
than anybody else the need of continuing the work he had begun,
not because it was his work, but because on it alone, as he
thought, the reconciliation between Capital and Labor in the
United States could be brought about, and the impending war of
classes could be prevented. So he chose Judge Taft as the person
who, he believed, would follow his lead in this undertaking. But
the experience of a hundred and ten years, since Washington was
succeeded by John Adams, might have taught him that no President
can quite reproduce the qualities of his predecessor and that the
establishment of a Presidential dynasty is not congenial to the
spirit of the American people. Jefferson did, indeed, hand on his
mantle to Madison, and the experiment partially succeeded. But
Madison was much nearer Jefferson in ability and influence than
Judge Taft was near Roosevelt.
During the campaign of 1908, and immediately after the election,
we can imagine that Mr. Taft was sincerely open to Roosevelt's
suggestions, and that he quite naturally gave Roosevelt the
impression that he intended to follow them, not because they were
Roosevelt's, but because they were his own also. As soon as he
began to realize that he was President, and that a President has
a right to speak and act on his own motion, Mr. Taft saw other
views rising within him, other preferences, other resolves. From
the bosom of his family he may have heard the exhortation, "Be
your own President; don't be any body's man or rubber stamp." No
doubt intimate friends strengthened this advice. The desire to be
free and independent, which lies at the bottom of every normal
heart, took possession of him also; further, was it not the
strict duty of a President to give the country the benefit of his
best judgment instead of following the rules laid down by
another, or to parrot another's doctrines?
Whatever may have been the process by which the change came, it
had come before Taft's inauguration. He chose a new Cabinet,
although Roosevelt supposed that several of the members of his
Cabinet would be retained. Before the Colonel started for Africa
he felt that a change had come, but he went away with the hope
that things would turn out better than he feared. His long
absence under the Equator would relieve any anxiety Taft might
have as to Roosevelt's intention to dictate or interfere.
Very little political news reached the Colonel while he was
hunting. On reaching Italy, on his return journey, he met Mr.
Gifford Pinchot, who had come post-haste from New York, and
conveyed to him the latest account of the political situation at
home. It was clear that the Republican Party had split into two
factions-the Regulars, who regarded President Taft as their
standard-bearer, and the Insurgents, who rallied round Roosevelt,
and longed desperately for his return. To the enemies of the
Administration, it seemed that Mr. Taft had turned away from the
Rooseveltian policies. In his appointments he had replaced
Roosevelt men by Regulars. His Secretary of the Interior, Mr.
Ballinger, came into conflict with Mr. Pinchot over conservation,
and the public assumed that the President was not only
unconcerned to uphold conservation, but was willing that the
natural resources of the Nation should fall again into the hands
of greedy private corporations. This assumption proved to be
false, and Secretary Ballinger was exonerated by a public
investigation; but for two years, at least, the cloud hung over
Mr. Taft's reputation, and, as always happens, the correction
being far less nimble than the accusation, took a much longer
time in remedying the harm that it had done.
When, therefore, Roosevelt landed at the Battery on June 18,
1910, the day of his apotheosis, he knew that a factional fight
was raging in the Republican Party. His trusty followers, and
every one who bore a grudge against the Administration, urged him
to unfurl his flag and check any further disintegration; but
prudence controlled him and he announced that he should not speak
on political matters for at least two months. He was sincere; but
a few days later at the Harvard Commencement exercises he met
Governor Hughes, of New York State, who was waging a fierce
struggle against the Machine to put through a bill on primary
elections. The Governor begged the Colonel as a patriotic
boss-hating citizen, to help him, and Roosevelt hastily wrote and
dispatched to Albany a telegram urging Republicans to support
Hughes. In the result, his advice was not heeded, a straw which
indicated that the Machine no longer feared to disregard him.
For several weeks Roosevelt waited and watched, and found out by
personal investigation how the Republican Party stood. It took
little inspection to show him that the Taft Administration was
not carrying out his policies, and that the elements against
which he had striven for eight years were creeping back. Indeed,
they had crept back. It would be unjust to Mr. Taft to assert
that he had not continued the war on Trusts. Under his able
Attorney-General, Mr. George W. Wickersham, many prosecutions
were going forward, and in some cases the legislation begun by
Roosevelt was extended and made more effective. I speak now as to
the general course of Mr. Taft's Administration and not specially
of the events of 1910. In spite of this continuation of the
battle with the Octopus--as the Big Interests, Wall Street, and
Trusts were indiscriminately nicknamed--the public did not
believe that Mr. Taft and his assistants pushed the fight with
their whole heart. Perhaps they were misjudged. Mr. Taft being in
no sense a spectacular person, whatever he did would lack the
spectacular quality which radiated from all Roosevelt's actions.
Then, too, the pioneer has deservedly a unique reward. Just as
none of the navigators who followed Columbus on the voyage to the
Western Continent could win credit like his, so the prestige
which Roosevelt gained from being the first to grapple with the
great monopolies could not be shared by any successor of his, who
simply carried on the work of "trust-busting," as it was called,
which had be come commonplace.
Nevertheless, although nobody doubted Mr. Wickersham's legal
ability, the country felt that during the Taft Administration
zeal had gone out of the campaign of the Administration against
the Interests. Roosevelt had plunged into the fray with the
enthusiasm of a Crusader. Taft followed him from afar, but
without feeling the Crusader's consecration or his terrible
sincerity. And during the first six months of his Administration,
President Taft had unwittingly given the country the measure of
himself.
The Republican platform adopted at Chicago declared
"unequivocally for a revision of the tariff by a special session
of Congress, immediately following the inauguration of the next
President .... In all tariff legislation the true principle of
protection is best maintained by the imposition of such duties as
will equal the difference between the cost of production at home
and abroad, together with a reasonable profit to American
industries. We favor the establishment of maximum and minimum
rates to be administered by the President under limitations fixed
in the law, the maximum to be available to meet discriminations
by foreign countries against American goods entering their
markets, and the minimum to represent the normal measure of
protection at home." The American public, regardless of party,
assumed that the "revision" referred to in this plank of the
Republican platform meant a revision downward; and it supposed,
from sayings and opinions of Mr. Taft, that he put the same
construction upon it. He at once called a special session of
Congress, and a new tariff bill was framed under the direction of
Sereno E. Payne, a Stand-Pat Republican member of Congress,
Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, and Nelson W.
Aldrich, Senator from Rhode Island, and guardian angel and
factotum for the Big Interests. For several months these
gentlemen conducted the preparation of the new bill. Payne had
already had experience in putting through the McKinley Tariff in
1890, and the Dingley Tariff in 1897. Again the committee-room
was packed by greedy protectionists who, for a consideration, got
from the Government whatever profit they paid for. Neither Payne
nor Aldrich had the slightest idea that to fix tariff rates to
enrich special individuals and firms was a most corrupt practice.
When a Republican Senator, who honestly supposed that the
revision would be downward, privately remonstrated, the reply he
heard was, "Where shall we get our campaign funds?" Finally,
after some discussion between the House and the Senate--a
discussion which did not lessen the enormities of the
measure--the Payne-Aldrich Bill was passed by Congress and signed
by President Taft, and it enjoyed the bad eminence of being worse
than the McKinley and the Dingley tariffs which had preceded it.
The public, which had seen more clearly than on former occasions,
how such charters to legalize industrial piracy were devised, was
somewhat dashed--by President Taft's approval. Perhaps it still
hoped that the creation of a non-partisan Tariff Commission of
experts would put an end to this indecent purchase and sale of
privileges and would establish rates after the scientific
investigation of each case. Soon, however, these hopes were swept
away; for on September 17, 1909, the President delivered at
Winona, Minnesota, a laudatory speech on the new tariff. He
admitted that some points in Schedule K--that comprising wool and
woolen goods--were too high. But, he said solemnly that this was
"the best tariff law the Republicans ever made, and, therefore,
the best the country ever had." In that Winona speech, Mr. Taft
hung a millstone round his own neck. His critics and his friends
alike had thrust upon them this dilemma: either he knew that the
Payne-Aldrich Tariff had been arrived at by corrupt ways and was
not a revision downward--in spite of which he pronounced it the
"best ever"; or he did not know its nature and the means used in
framing it. In the latter case, he could not be considered a
person sufficiently informed on great financial questions, or on
the practices of some of the politicians who made laws for him to
sign, to be qualified to sit in the President's chair. If, on the
other hand, knowing the measure to be bad he declared it the
"best ever," he was neither sincere nor honest, and in this case
also he was not a President whom the country could respect.
I would not imply that the American public went through this
process of reasoning at once, or arrived at such clear-cut
conclusions; Demos seldom indulges in the luxury of logic; but
the shock caused by the Winona speech vibrated through the
country and never after that did the public fully trust Mr. Taft.
It knew that the Interests had crawled back and dictated the
Payne-Aldrich Tariff, and it surmised that, although he
prosecuted the Trusts diligently, they did not feel greatly
terrified. But nobody whispered or suspected that he was not
honest.
While President Taft slowly lost his hold on the American people,
he gained proportionately with the Republican Machine. That
Machine was composed of the Regulars of the party, or the
Conservatives, as they preferred to be called, and it was losing
its hold on the country. There comes a time in every sect, party,
or institution when it stops growing, its arteries harden, its
young men see no visions, its old men dream no dreams; it lives
in the past and desperately tries to perpetuate the past. In
politics when this process of petrifaction is reached, we call it
Bourbonism, and the sure sign of the Bourbon is that, being
unconscious that he is the victim of sclerosis, he sees no reason
for seeking a cure. Unable to adjust himself to change and new
conditions he falls back into the past, as an old man drops into
his worn-out armchair.
Now Roosevelt had been, of course, the negation of Bourbonism. He
had led the Republican Party into new fields and set it to do new
work, and far off, shining clearly, its goal beckoned it on. His
followers were mostly young men; they saw that the world had
changed, and would change still further, and they went forward
valiantly to meet it and, if possible, to shape its changes. For
ten years past, these Radicals, as the Regulars named them some
what reproachfully, and who were better defined as "Insurgents,"
had played an increasingly important part in Congress. They would
not submit to the Bosses and the Machine, but voted
independently, and, although they were not all of them avowed
Rooseveltians, they all were going in his direction. In the
second year of Mr. Taft's Administration, they rebelled against
the rigid dictatorship of Joseph G. Cannon, the Speaker of the
House. "Uncle Joe," as the public nicknamed him, dated from
before the Civil War, and entered Congress in 1863, forty-seven
years before 1910. It was as if a rigid Bourbon, who had served
under Louis XV in France in 1763, had been chief law-maker under
Napoleon I in 1810. Mr. Cannon, however, had never learned that
the Civil War was over, whereas every Frenchman who survived the
Revolution knew that it had taken place. So the Insurgents rose
up against him, in his old age, deprived him of his dictatorial
power, and, at the next election, Democrats and Republicans
combined to sweep him out of office altogether.
The Jews who ridiculed Noah when he began to build the Ark were,
it proved, Bourbons, but they had some excuse, for when Noah was
working there was no portent of a flood and not even a black
cloud with a shower wrapped up in it hung on the horizon. But the
Republican Regulars, under Mr. Taft, could not complain that no
sign had been vouchsafed to them. The amazing rise in power and
popularity of Roosevelt during the decade, the surging unrest of
Labor throughout the world, the obviously altered conditions
which immense fortunes and the amassing of wealth by a few
corporations had produced, and such special symptoms as the
chafing at the Payne Aldrich Tariff, the defeat of Speaker
Cannon, and the election of a Democratic House of Representatives
ought to have warned even the dullest Republican. For good, or
for ill, a social and industrial revolution was under way, and,
instead of trimming their sails to meet it, they had not even
taken ship. Roosevelt and the Insurgents had long understood the
revolution of which they were a part, and had taken measures to
control it. Roosevelt's first achievement, as we have seen, was
to bring the Big Interests under the power of the law. The hawks
and vultures whose wings he clipped naturally did not like it or
him, but the laws had force behind them, and they submitted. The
leaders of the popular movement, however, declared that this was
not enough. They preached the right of the people to rule. The
people, they urged, must have a real share in electing the men
who were to make the laws and to administer and interpret them.
Every one knew that the system of party government resulted in a
Machine, consisting of a few men who controlled the preliminary
steps which led to the nomination of candidates and then decided
the election, so far as their control of the regular party
members could do this. It would be idle, said the advocates of
these popular rights, to make the best of laws in behalf of the
people and allow them to be enforced by representatives and
judges chosen, under whatever disguise, by the great capitalists.
And so these Progressives, bent on trusting implicitly the
intelligence, the unselfishness, and the honesty of the People,
proposed three novel political instruments for obtaining the pure
Democracy they dreamed of. First, the Initiative, by which a
certain number of voters could suggest new laws; second, the
Referendum, by which a vote should be taken to decide whether the
People approved or not of a law that was in operation; and third,
the judicial Recall, by which a majority of the voters could
nullify a decision handed down by a judge. This last was often
misnamed and misconstrued, the "Recall of Judges," but so far as
I know very few of the Progressive leaders, certainly not Colonel
Roosevelt, proposed to put the tenure of office of a judge at the
mercy of a sudden popular vote.
When Roosevelt returned from Africa, he found that the
Progressive movement had developed rapidly, and the more he
thought over its principles, the more they appealed to him. To
arrive at Social Justice was his life-long endeavor. In a speech
delivered on August 31, 1910, at Ossawatomie, Kansas, he
discoursed on the "New Nationalism." As if to push back hostile
criticism at the start, he quoted Abraham Lincoln: "Labor is
prior to, and independent of capital; capital is only the fruit
of labor and could never have existed but for labor. Labor is the
superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.
Capital has its rights which are as worthy of protection as any
other rights .... Nor should this lead to a war upon the owners
of property. Property is the fruit of labor; property is
desirable; it is a positive good in the world. Let not him who is
houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work
diligently and build one for him self, thus, by example, showing
that his own shall be safe from violence when built."
Not all those who cry "Plato! Plato!" are Platonists. So, not all
those who now appeal to Lincoln's mighty name for sanction of
their own petty caprices and crazy creeds, have learned the first
letter of the alphabet which Lincoln used; but Roosevelt, I
believe, knew Lincoln better, knew the spirit of Lincoln better,
than any other President has known it. And Lincoln would have
approved of most, if not of all, of the measures which, in that
Ossawatomie speech, Roosevelt declared must be adopted. Whenever
he spoke or wrote after that, he repeated his arguments in
defense of the "New Nationalism," and they sank deep into the
public conscience. He took no active part in politics, as he
thought, but the country knew better than he did that, wherever
he was, politics was active. Every one consulted him; his
occasional speeches roused a storm of criticism; a dozen would-be
candidates in each party sat on the anxious seat and waited for
his decision. So he watched the year 1910 draw to its close and
1911 wheel by, without his giving the final word. Although he was
very really the centre of attention, he nevertheless felt lonely,
and a friend tells me of going to Oyster Bay, late in the autumn,
and finding Roosevelt in fact alone, as his family were away, and
depressed by the thought that he was cut off, probably forever,
from throwing himself into work which would be of public benefit.
But Roosevelt was a fighter, not a sulker, and he was too healthy
in spirit to give way to disappointment.
That he resented the purpose, as he supposed, of the Taft
Administration to throw over his policies, I do not doubt,
although there are letters in existence which indicate that he
still had courteous if not friendly relations with President
Taft. But what ate into him more than any personal resentment was
his chagrin at seeing the Great Cause, for which he had spent his
life, neglected and denied by the Republican Party. Progressivism
seemed to be slowly in process of suffocation by the Big
Interests which it had come into being to protest against, to
curb, and to control.
There were other leaders in this Cause, the most prominent being
Senator La Follette, of Wisconsin. He had caught up very early
some of Bryan's demagogic doctrines, which he had softened a good
deal and made palatable to the Republicans of his State. Then he
had stood out as a Liberal in Congress, and from Liberal he
became Insurgent, and now that the Insurgents were being defined
as Progressives, he led the Progressives in Congress. The same
spirit was permeating the Democrats; only the hide-bound Regular
Republicans appeared not to notice that a new day had dawned.
"Uncle Joe" Cannon, their Speaker of the House, reveled in his
Bourbonism, made it as obnoxious as he could, and then was swept
away by the enraged Liberals.
By the summer of 1911 the discussion of possible candidates grew
more heated. Roosevelt still kept silent, but he told his
intimates that he would not run. He did not wish to be President
again, especially at the cost of an internecine struggle. I
believe that he was sincere; so is the consummate actor or the
prima donna, whom the world applauds, sincere in bidding farewell
to the stage forever. Nevertheless, which of them is conscious of
the strength of the passion, which long habit, and supremacy, and
the intoxication of success have evoked, dwells in them? Given
the moment and the lure, they forget their promise of farewell.
By this time the politicians began to foresee that the dissension
in the Republican Party would make it difficult to choose a
candidate who could win. Every President desires to be reelected
if he can be, not necessarily because he is greedy of power, but
because reelection is equivalent to public approval of his first
term. Mr. Taft, therefore, stood out as the logical candidate of
the Conservatives. The great majority of the Progressives desired
Roosevelt, but, since he would say neither yes nor no, they
naturally turned to Senator La Follette. And La Follette launched
a vigorous campaign for the nomination and was undoubtedly
gaining ground except in the East, where some of his views had
been regarded as too extreme even for the Liberals. To his great
misfortune, in a speech at Philadelphia on February 2, 1912, he
showed signs of a temporary mental collapse and, although his
friends protested that this mishap was not serious, much less
permanent, he never got back into the running.
Meanwhile, Roosevelt's nearest zealots not only urged upon him
the duty of coming out squarely as the Progressive aspirant, but
they set up throughout the country their propaganda for him. He
received letters by the bushel and every letter appealed to his
patriotism and to his sense of duty. The Progressives were in
dead earnest. They believed that the country, if not
civilization, had reached a crisis on the outcome of which would
depend the future health and peace of Society. They had a
crusade, not a mere political campaign, ahead of them, and they
could not believe that Roosevelt, their peerless champion, would
fail them.
The average person, who calmly sits back in his easy-chair and
passes his verdict on the acts of great men, does not always
allow for the play of emotions which may have influenced them.
What sort of reaction must appeals like these have stimulated?
How can the unimaginative man, who has never been urged by his
fellow townspeople to be even Trustee of the Town library or
graveyard, put himself in the place of a Leader, who is told by
millions of persons, possibly fanatics but not flatterers, that
the destiny of the Nation depends upon his listening to their
entreaties?
Everything conspired to win Roosevelt over: La Follette being
eliminated, there was no other Progressive whom the majority
would agree upon. The party spoke with only one voice, and
uttered only one name. And, presently, the Governors of seven
States--Bass of New Hampshire, Hadley of Missouri, Osborn of
Michigan, Glasscock of West Virginia, Carey of Wyoming, Aldrich
of Nebraska, and Stubbs of Kansas--issued an appeal to him which
seemed to give an official stamp to the popular entreaties.
Roosevelt's enemies insinuated that the seven Governors had been
moved to act at his own instigation, and they tried to belittle
the entire movement as a "frame-up," in the common phrase of the
day. No doubt he was consulted in the general direction of the
campaign; no doubt, being a very alert student of political
effects, he suggested many things; but the rush of enthusiasts to
him was genuine and spontaneous.
I happened to spend the evening of February 25, 1912, with him at
the house of Judge Robert Grant in Boston. Judge Grant and I were
not politicians, and I, at least, had never voted for a
Republican Presidential candidate. But both of us were very old
personal friends of the Colonel, and for five hours we three
talked with the utmost frankness. He knew that he could trust us,
and, I think, he planned to get the views of non-partisan friends
before announcing his final decision. Three days earlier, at
Columbus, Ohio, he gave a great speech, in which he proclaimed a
new charter for Democracy and vigorously advocated the
Initiative, Referendum, and Recall. We discussed these from every
side; he got the Outlook in which his speech was printed and read
to us passages which he thought corrected popular
misunderstanding of it. When I objected to the platform in
general, because it would tend to destroy representative
government and substitute therefor the whims of the populace at
the moment, he replied that we had no representative government.
"I can name forty-six Senators," he said, "who secured their
seats and hold them by the favor of a Wall Street magnate and his
associates, in all parts of the country. Do you call that
popular, representative government?" he asked.
The evening wore on, and in similar fashion he parried all our
criticism. We urged him not to be a candidate, because, we said,
we thought that the public ought to be reined in and disciplined,
instead of being encouraged to be more lawless and self-willed. I
defended our judiciary system and said that the American people
needed most of all to be taught respect for the Courts. He
explained that his Recall of Judicial Decisions did not mean, as
the Opposition alleged, the Recall of Judges. Then we urged him,
for the sake of his own future, not to engage in a factional
strife which might end his usefulness to the country, but he
brushed aside every argument based on his selfish advantage. "I
wish," he said to me, "to draw into one dominant stream all the
intelligent and patriotic elements, in order to prepare against
the social upheaval which will other wise overwhelm us." "A great
Central Party, such as Cavour founded for the liberation of
Italy?" said I. "Exactly," said he.
The thing which mainly struck me at the time, and which I still
vividly remember, was the Colonel's composure throughout all this
debate. Vehement he was--because he could not describe even a
butterfly without vividness which easily passed into vehemence-
-but he was in no sense mentally overwrought; nor did he
continually return to one subject like a man with an obsession.
His humor flashed out, even at his own expense, but he had
throughout the underlying gravity of one who knows that he is
about to make a very important decision. I mention these facts
because at the time, and afterward, Roosevelt's enemies
circulated the assertion that his mind was unbalanced, and that
this fact accounted for his break with the regular Republicans. I
have in my hand a printed circular, issued by a Chicago lawyer,
offering five thousand dollars apiece to each of several
hospitals and other charitable institutions, if Roosevelt would
allow himself to be examined by competent alienists and they did
not pronounce him to be a "madman"! No! he was not mad, but he
had the fervor, the courage, the impatience of a Crusader about
to undergo ordeal by battle.
>From notes of the conversation Judge Grant made at the time I
quote the following. Judge Grant asked:
"Will any of the party leaders support you?"
"No," he said, "none of them; not even Lodge, I think. I don't
see how he can. My support will come from the people, officered
by a few lieutenants--young men principally like Governor Bass,
of New Hampshire." He said that he realized that the
probabilities were all against his nomination; that a President
in office had all the machinery on his side; but that of course
it wouldn't do to admit outside that he expected to lose; that if
he could reach the popular vote through direct primaries, he
could hope to win. It was manifest that he believed that it was
indispensable for the future good of the Republican Party that he
should make the breach. When he said as much, I asked, "But the
situation is complex, I suppose? You would like to be President?"
"You are right," he replied. "It is complex. I like power; but I
care nothing to be President as President. I am interested in
these ideas of mine and I want to carry them through, and feel
that I am the one to carry them through." He said that he
believed the most important questions today were the humanitarian
and economic problems, and intimated that the will of the people
had been thwarted in these ways, especially by the courts on
constitutional grounds, and that reforms were urgent.
As I went out into the midnight, I felt sad, as one might after
bidding farewell to a friend who has volunteered to lead a
forlorn hope. I did not realize then the moral depth from which
Roosevelt's resolve came, or that he would rather die for that
cause than be victorious in any other.
The next day, Monday, February 26th, he announced to the country
that he was a candidate for the Republican nomination.