THE USA IN TEDDY ROOSEVELT'S TIME
1901-1909
by Mike Donovan
Lunatic in the White House – War Lover – Asthma - Imperialist – Pugilist – Progressive – Author – Liar - Trust-buster – “Four-Eyes” - The National Parks – NYC - The youngest President at 42 - VP Chuck Fairbanks – He wrote 40 books - Lost a son in World War One - River of Doubt – “Please put out that light.” – Close Friend of Mike Donovan - Teddy Bear – Medora SD - Speak loudly and carry a small stick.
“A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.”
-TR
Teddy Roosevelt assumed office 9.14.01 upon the death of President William McKinley. Assassin Leon Colzoltz changed the course of history when he shot Big Mac in Buffalo and put “that damn cowboy” in the White House.
When TR ran for president on his own name in 1904 he won over Democrat Alton B Parker and Socialist Eugene Debs by an overwhelming 20% in the popular vote. It is rare for any candidate to win 60% of the total vote, but Teddy did it in 1904. The Electoral College score was 336-140.
Popular vote 1904 --------------------Roosevelt R) 7,623,000
Parker D) 5,077,000
Debs S)---402,000
What kind of guy was TR? A story tells the story.
One day while TR was President, an old friend from the Navy came to speak to him about a sensitive matter. The man’s son was going to be dishonorably discharged from the Navy for misbehavior, and could the President intervene to prevent this. The man couldn’t ask a man of TR’s stern morals for a vanilla Presidential pardon without any chastisement for the lad. So he suggested that he bring his son to meet the President in the White House. “You’re an accomplished boxer and my son likes to box. So why don’t you set him up for a friendly spar and then teach him a lesson before he knows what’s happening.” This would justify the behind the scenes favor morally for both men.
Roosevelt was delighted to help out his old pal. The young man was invited to the White House for an exiting private meeting with the famous President. TR offered a pair of boxing gloves and the two of them started up a playful match in a room at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Roosevelt turned on his skills and began roughing the guy up while lecturing him about how he should behave in the future and how lucky he was that his father knew someone who could get him off the hook. The young guy staggered out of the White House bruised and bandaged but still in the Navy. This was America's 26th president.
Late in his term Roosevelt boxed a young artillery officer in the White House. TR met his match with this dude. He hit the Prez in the left eye with Mike Tyson stinger. Roosevelt’s vision in that eye was permanently damaged and he lived the last years of his life barely able to see out of his left eye.
There are extant recordings of Roosevelt speeches. His voice is surprisingly high-pitched and squeaky. It’s the last thing one would expect to hear from such a burly and macho man. Perhaps it is a key to his personality.
Roosevelt’s cabinet
Secretary of State -----John Hay----1901-5
Elihu Root---1905-9
Bobby Bacon 1909
Secretary of War-------------Elihu Root---1901-1904
William H. Taft-1904-1908
Luke E. Wright-1908-1909
Sec of Treasury ---------------- Lyman J. Gage ---1901-1902
Leslie M. Shaw –1902-1907
George B. Cortelyou-1907-1909
Att General-------------------Philander Knox----1901-1904
William H Moody—1904-1907
Charles J Bonaparte-1907-1909
Charlie Bonaparte is the founder of the FBI, although it didn’t take that name until 1935. Bonaparte began this investigative unit within the Justice department.
Teddy Roosevelt involved the United States in the complex problems of world politics and many diplomatic dilemmas. The problem is, this wasn’t necessary. It just happened to be his personal area of fascination, so his hobby changed the course of US history, for better or worse.
“You must always remember, that the President is about six.”
Cecil Rice 1904
The phrase the “bully pulpit” is associated with TR's time. He could not overwhelm the power of the other two branches of government, and didn't try to. But, unlike all the other presidents before him, with the probable exception of Andrew Jackson, Roosevelt felt that he could do anything he wanted as long as the Constitution didn't expressly forbid it. He undeniable expanded the powers of the Presidency, but not by trying to challenge any Congressional of Supreme Court structure. He did it by personal exhortation and lively leadership. He went over the heads of Congress and the Court and told the people through the press and by personal speeches how he felt about things. This in turn pressured the Congress and the Court to start to turn in his direction. It was all perfectly legal because he was always speaking as a person rather than as a president. No one could accuse TR of Bonapartism because he was only speaking his personal mind. Unlike most president who walk on eggshells with every public statement, TR gave out his opinion just like any other person standing in line for groceries. Just because he was president, didn't mean he couldn't let everyone know how he felt about the issues. Most presidents forget that they are citizens too. Not Theodore Roosevelt. You could argue that he accomplished more as a citizen who only happened to be president than he did in his official capacity as president. He used the power of his personal influence to foment great changes, all the while doing the end-around of the system and changing it from without whenever he couldn't from within. There was nothing in his contract that said he couldn't criticize a Supreme Court decision and say which way he hoped they would see a controversial case. There was nothing illegal about that and it often worked. If he had tried to officially influence an upcoming Supreme Court decision or challenge the wisdom of a past one, he would be bordering on impeachable offenses. But he cleverly just happened to have his personal opinions on things off the record talking to newspapermen who happened to run his opinions on page one the next day.
This is what history means by the term “bully pulpit.” It's only from his pulpit on Sunday, his day off. It's not an official policy decision or request.
I like this part of his story.
I don't like this guy at all from everything I've read about him. But I have spells where I start to change my mind. It's the same for Bill Clinton. Just when I'm finding him a nauseating character, I'll read something new that makes me reconsider. So the jury's in, but on short notice it sometimes goes out again.
The main reason I dislike him is that he loved war. He makes no bones about it. War is great and it's good for any nation. That's why I say “Lunatic in the White House.”
BIO
Teddy Roosevelt was born in New York City at #20 East 20th Street on October 27, 1858. He was a sickly boy suffering from asthma and bad eyesight.
One day at about 13 years of age Teddy was riding in a stagecoach with two older boys who ridiculed and bullied him for the entire trip. When they got out at the end of the ride, Roosevelt bravely told them to put up their dukes. He'd fight them one at a time. The boys boxed him with such dominance that they didn’t even bother to hurt Theodore. They just kept him in an absurd defensive posture while mocking him and laughing at him.
Roosevelt was so humiliated that he spent the rest of his life boxing and weightlifting, shooting guns, and believing in violence as therapeutic medicine for all ills. These two pinheads caused ruin to the United States of America. They created an insecure macho madman that later had to seize the Philippines and keep them for no good reason, thus dragging America into World War II 40 years later.
Theodore's father built a gymnasium for the boy on the second floor of his New York home.
TR entered Harvard University in 1876. He wasn’t the most popular student at the school. He was on the Harvard boxing team, but had a bad reputation for roughing up his opponent beyond the traditions of civility. Roosevelt did not enjoy the study of law, which means he wasn't getting good grades so he said that, and dropped out.
In 1878 he met Alice Lee and knew he had found Mrs. (always) Right. They were married shortly after he graduated, on October 27, 1880.
In 1883 Teddy moved west, buying two ranches in North Dakota. For the next two years he lived the outdoor life of rustling steer, and hunting everything on four legs, while moonlighting as deputy sheriff. At night he worked on his history book about the old West.
No matter who he mingled with, TR had to take a lot of teasing about his glasses. This was eons before chic contact lenses and fancy fashion glasses. If you wore glasses, you were a Poindexter. The other cowboys teased him often about his glasses. In fact, throughout his life people taunted and teased him about the specs. The bullies called “four-eyes” all the time. Ted kept quiet for years, hoping the teasing would stop. This silence was mistaken for weakness until one night, Theodore had had enough.
TR studiously tried to avoid avoided the saloons all his life but sometimes they simply couldn't be avoided. A hotel couldn't survive without also being a saloon. Often the dining room, registration desk, and saloon were all the same room as on on this occasion. One night while chasing down lost horses in the region of the Little Missouri River, Theodore had little choice but to check into a run-down scary looking hotel/saloon.
Outside the door Ted heard actually heard gunshots. It was the ultimate hell gig, but he walked in anyway. It was simply too cold and too late to go anywhere else. Once in the door he saw a roughneck guy with a wide cowboy hat walking up and down the bar swearing at everyone and intimidating them with raspy verbal threats. He was obviously drunk but had enough on the ball to hold the room in terror. His hands were brandishing two cocked pistols to back up his attitude. The clock on the wall had three fresh bullet holes in it. As soon as the troublemaker saw Teddy Roosevelt enter the room he announced that no one would have to pay for drinks tonight because “Four eyes here is going to treat!”
Roosevelt kept cool and laughed along with the joke as he sat down at the bar to order a meal. But the poison was not pacified. The thug sauntered up right behind Roosevelt and continued to profanely insist that four eyes was going to pay for everything, including the damages to the clock. TR noticed that the man’s feet were very close together and planned his action. Roosevelt began to stand up looking past the outlaw as if surrendering passively while he reached into his pockets for some gold while announcing timidly that, “Well if I have to pay I have to pay!”
At that moment the criminal dropped his guard and Roosevelt launched three straight punches to the mans right, left, and right jaw in that order. The bully went down while banging his head against the corner of the bar. The outlaw landed on his back but he still held his hands on his drawn guns so Roosevelt stood over him like a bearcat, planning to drop on him with his knees and cave in his rib cage. But the guy was out cold. Everyone else at the bar began condemning the unconscious man and complimenting the stranger. 17 years later he would be their President and they could thank him at the polls if they desired.
Roosevelt enrolled at Columbia to study law but did not enjoy it (history, not business or law, is “the fun stuff”) and soon got out. He was interested in so many different things that he had trouble focusing on one. At least that’s the excuse he gave for not finishing his law studies. He did however write a solid history book called The Naval War of 1812.
Against the advice of most of his associates Teddy decided to enter politics. The more they told him that the political game was rough, brutal and unforgiving, the more he wanted to give it a try. He told them that, “I intend to be a member of the ruling class.”
“Four Eyes” co-campaigned for New York State’s lower legislature with a popular New York City politician named Hess and the two of them were elected on the same day. Theodore was only 23 when he won this spot on the NY State Assembly. But he was a rich and sophisticated 23. City slicker Roosevelt was nicknamed “Dude” at the Albany Capitol.
TR made a name for himself under the tutelage of Governor Grover Cleveland, got re-elected two more times, and was named speaker of the NY Republican party.
With an eye on bigger prizes, TR declined to be nominated for another term in the New York state legislature. He wanted was to be a delegate at large to the Republican Convention of 1884. He got what he wanted. Roosevelt was for Edmunds of Vermont for President. He disliked the powerful Jimmy Blaine from Maine, and even tried to stop Blaine’s nomination.
When Blaine won the nomination, Roosevelt made it clear that while he officially supported JB, he would not actively campaign for him either (in spite of a slick claim in his autobiography that he did ‘the best he could’ to campaign for Jim).
Then came the terrible February. The Roosevelts had their first child on February 12, 1884. Two days later, on Valentine’s Day 84, Teddy’s mother died in their New York City home. Then just a few hours later on the same day in the same place, his wife Alice died! She succumbed to Bright’s disease. Alice was only 22 years old. Teddy was never the same after this horrible day and said that the ‘light had gone out of his life.’ Incidentally the sitting president, Chester Arthur, was also suffering from Bright’s disease at the time of this tragedy. What a stupid name for a grim disease.
Roosevelt never spoke of his first wife for the rest of his life, (as opposed to many divorced men who never speak to their first wife for the rest of their life.) Reading his autobiography one would never know that Boston Alice had ever existed. Her name is not mentioned, nor even the fact of his first marriage. His unwillingness to acknowledge Alice was a later cause of friction between Teddy and his daughter Alice who naturally did not appreciate the suppression of the memory of her mother.
Theodore left his infant with an aunt and went back to the ranch in South Dakota for two years. The child needs parental love at that age as much as at any other time. What was he thinking?
In 1886 Theodore ran for Mayor of New York City. It was a three-way contest between Republican Teddy, a Democrat named Donnie Abraham Hewitt, and the famous writer Henry George (Progress and Poverty) who was running as an Independent.
Don Hewitt won. Henry George finished second and went back to his writing. It was bad enough to lose to a Democrat but to finish third was not easy for the boxing cowboy to take.
I have no idea what Roosevelt was up to in 1887.
Roosevelt married again in 1888, tying the knot with a childhood friend named Edith Carow. They were married in London and they honeymooned in Poland.
Republican Ben Harrison won the Presidency in 1888. Ben gave the spoils to the loyal Teddy, who became head of the Civil Service Commission in 89. Teddy felt that “the graybeard in the White House” treated him coldly, even in giving him a good job.
But TR was happy at last to live and work in Washington. He performed his duties well enough that President Cleveland (D) re-appointed him to the CSC in 1893. Roosevelt enjoyed a new level of prestige on the job, and always spoke of both President Harrison and President Cleveland with gratitude and respect (in public at least.)
In 1895 Mr. Roosevelt left Washington to become police commissioner of New York City (head of a board of four). Roosevelt used to go out late at night and play Undercover Boss, spying on the police in a long trench coat for disguise. He tried, with limited success, to serpico the department (Frank Serpico cleaned out corruption in the NYPD in the early 1970’s but was ostracized by his fellow officers for doing it – I have made it a verb.) One night he spotted a uniformed cop walking out of a saloon at 3 am with a mug of beer. The cop spotted the serpico and hurled the mug through the pane glass window and then ran off, with TR in hot pursuit like McGarrett from Five-Oh. Three blocks later, TR tackled the guy from behind, and then dragged him by the collar down to the station to face charges and a suspension.
The City (the only city that can call itself the city with a capitol 'c') was in the middle of a brief spell of non-Tammany Hall rule. The Fusion Republicans had taken over and sent the Tammany (D) Boss off to Ireland ostensibly on vacation, but in reality playing it safe to avoid corruption prosecutions from the Fusion reformists.
Roosevelt made too many political enemies as the head of the Police Department. Even his own party was unhappy with his reformist zeal. After all, everyone had a piece of the pie as long as they went along with the baker, no mater which party manufactured the oven. What was most disappointing and disillusioning for TR was that the masses didn't thank him for trying to curb the abuses of big city machine. It never dawned on TR that the street people were part and parcel of the corruption and they might end up wanting him out of town just as much as the old Tammany bosses did. The average immigrant in a slum didn't care much about lofty reformist muckrakers and their intellectual books and theories. They did care that when they lost their job or couldn't afford a turkey on Thanksgiving, the machine intervened and helped them out on a one on one basis, something a grand reformer like TR wouldn't think to do. So the poor tended to hang themselves in the big picture by allowing themselves to be bedazzled in the little picture, like the millionaire athlete or movie star who shows up at the homeless shelter for a photo-op on Christmas and everyone thinks they're in their corner, yet they donated less in cash than the grocer across the street who gave a hundred bucks he couldn't afford.
The point being that TR was hoping to use his reformist impulses to advance himself in the Republican Party and instead found himself hated by all the top politicians in New York and most of them below that level as well. Take for example the Raines Law, which demanded that the blue laws closing saloons on Sunday actually be enforced. TR's went out personally raiding saloons on Sunday like Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, thinking this would make him a hero to the people. You might be able to guess that the poor hard working people wanted to go to saloons on Sunday just as much of not more than on Tuesday. The low-life alkies of Manhattan talked of TR as if he were ten times worse than any corrupt Party Boss.
TR couldn't wait to get out of that job and couldn't wait to rip the Bosses of both parties in the press as soon as he got out. He was going to tear Republican Boss Platt to pieces and wrote friends to that effect.
One of his closest friends was Massachusetts politician and diplomat Henry Cabot Lodge the man who is discredited with ruining the chances for the United States joining the League of Nations after World War One. That is down the road, of course, but Lodge was already an important figure in American politics, was currently ambassador to England, and believed that TR had a good chance to be President of the United States someday if he played his cards right. When Lodge read TR's letter about how he was going to “throw Platt splat onto a steel pike the day after I leave office” he cabled TR frantically to keep cool, fool. Lodge shrewdly told him that if he bashes the Republicans who gave him his job in the first place it would ruin him forever within the party. He could never cross over to the Democrats and no Independent had a chance in the power politics game. Lodge warned Roosevelt that if he went after Platt “You would be playing Platt's game. He wants you out of the Republican Party. Stay on board, and keep your temper. That's how to splat the Platt.” That letter from Lodge changed history. TR could never have won his pater appointments within the Party that led to the presidency if he had attacked the party when he left the NYC Police job.
Roosevelt campaigned hard for McKinley in 1896, even though he wanted the exiting intellectual whirlwind Tom Reed from Maine, and wasn't particularly enamored with the relatively dull McKinley. Big Mac rewarded Roosevelt with the prestigious office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy. But McKinley had one condition. TR had to get the approval of none other than Thomas Platt from the New York R machine before McKinley could ok it. TR had to go hat in hand to Platt. It was awkward, but he got Platt's perfunctory endorsement. If TR had muckraked his own party there would have been no San Juan Hill, no VP in 1900 and no famous President Teddy Roosevelt.
The outgoing President Cleveland told McKinley that 'you have a war on your hands.' Cuba was boiling to a froth. With trouble brewing with Spain Roosevelt could not control his exited pleasure, writing to a friend,
“No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.
The diplomat is the servant, not the master, of the soldier.”
By this logic if Teddy Roosevelt were given the power of decision in 1951 it would have been MacArthur firing Truman in the Korean War crisis. Teedie saw the civilian as an arm of the military, a dangerous reversal of the proper equation in the USA as it was conceived.
In May of 1898 with the delightful clouds of war rolling in TR resigned this important job as Navy Secretary to get his first taste of real live combat, with live ammo and explosions. What could be more fun than that? Teddy raised a cavalry regiment made up of western cowboys and rich Long Island guys called “The Roughriders.” This unit charged up San Juan Hill in a ground attack in Cuba to the northeast of Santiago and Teddy Roosevelt had his dream fulfilled.
There is no doubt that Roosevelt showed courage under fire, but this was against a relatively weak foe on a fluid battlefield. Would he have shown the same courage in a suicidal charge against a superior entrenched position?
Shortly after the end of the hostilities McKinley promoted Roosevelt to the rank of Colonel. The war-lover was also nominated for a promotion to the rank of Brevet Brigadier-General but this action was never finalized. A friend named Sam Sumner submitted Roosevelt’s name for the Congressional Medal of Honor, noting that the promotion to General was of no reward, as Mr. Roosevelt was out of the service. Sumner had been an eyewitness to Roosevelt’s bravery on July 1 1898 when TR exposed himself to needless danger in order to prove to himself that he had the courage to do so.
One of his courageous acts was when a black regiment was charging up a hill and one of their own fell behind wounded. The black soldiers abandoned the charge and retreated to help their fallen brother. Roosevelt hit the roof and drew his pistol and threatened the black troops to get back to their duty or else.
Roosevelt wrote later that he absolutely should have been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Dream on, four eyes. Granted, he did charge up a hill in the face of enemy fire, but if that's all it took then 200,000 Medals of Honor would have been given out in 1944 Europe just for starters.
After the Spanish-American War New York Senator Platt promoted the idea of Roosevelt for Governor. The Platt TR relationship had come full circle. TR the war hero ran and won.
Two years later Platt had changed his mind and wanted TR out of the governor’s seat. So Platt promoted the idea of Theodore Roosevelt for Vice President on the 1900 ticket with McKinley. VP Hobart had died in office.
Roosevelt did not like the Veep idea partly because he had been thinking about challenging McKinley directly for the top spot and also because he had a John Adams view of the Vice President’s office. On the other hand the Republican leaders favored the Platt suggestion and Roosevelt knew that with Platt back in opposition, re-election to the governorship in NY state would be doubtful anyway. Roosevelt took the veep nomination and won, heading off to Washington in 1901 with McKinley. Platt would make a big name for himself with an amendment bearing his name that allowed the US to intervene in Cuban foreign affairs whenever it saw fit.
Mark Hannah the President-maker never liked Roosevelt and tried to warn his party in 1900 that if they put TR on the VP it would be dangerous to have “only one body between that damn cowboy and the White House.” Platt convinced Hannah that putting TR on the VP spot would at least get him out of New York politics. He reminded Hannah that McKinley was relatively young and fit, and was “unlikely to pull a Hobart on us.”
EVENTS
DEATH OF MCKINLEY
PHILIPPINE INSURRECTION
PANAMA CANAL BUILT
VENEZUELAN DEBT
DICK DRAGO DOCTRINE
PLATT AMENDMENT
RISE OF AUTOMOBILE
TROLLEY CRASH IN PITTSFIELD 9-02
ANTHRACITE COAL MINER’S STRIKE 1902
NEWLANDS ACT
FIRST FLIGHT AT KITTY HAWK
DICK ACT
PERDICARIS FEVER
ELECTION OF 1904
MOROCCAN CRISIS 1905-06
INSURANCE SCANDALS OF 1905
TREATY OF PORTSMOUTH
HEPBURN ACT 1906
SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE 1906
TROUBLES WITH IRELAND
BROWNSVILLE SHOOT-OUT
NEW SPELLING 1906
BOB TILLMAN ACT OF 1907
PANIC OF 1907
DEATH OF MCKINLEY
In May of 1901 Theodore Roosevelt helped to kick off the opening of the Pan-American Exposition at beautiful Buffalo New York. Little did he know that the Expo would inadvertently kick off the opening of his own presidency.
On September 6, 1901 President McKinley attended the same Expo. Friendly Billy Mac was shaking hands with a group of well-wishers when one of them didn't live up to the name. He met the President's extended hand with a concealed pistol and shot McKinley. The bullet was fatal but not right away. No one was certain whether the president would survive the wound (although McKinley never doubted that he was a dead a man, proving the axiom that the patient is the most expert doctor.)
With the President's life in the balance, word was sent to the Vice President to come to Buffalo at once. Theodore got the bulletin while on the Isle of La Motte in the middle of Lake Champlain where was having a picnic with the Vermont Fish and Game League. TR hopped the ferry to Burlington Vermont where a special express train was reserved for the long haul across the length of New York state to Buffalo.
Tr was in Buffalo on September 9 when McKinley's doctors naively announced to the world that the President was making a remarkable recovery. This was all Roosevelt needed to hear. He got right back on the train and went back east once again across the long length of New York State. Ted told some reporters that he was going to go mountain climbing as a signal to the nation that all was well, and not to worry about McKinley. A few people felt that Teddy leaving the bedside of the stricken president to go mountain climbing was simply selfish and irresponsible. Teddy reminded critics that he had left his location with his friend Ansley Wilcox, at whose Buffalo home he had stayed.
But locating Teddy if Mac went downhill fast would not be so simple. Teddy was going mountain climbing in the remotest region of the remote Adirondack Mountains. Ted was going to climb Mount Tahawus, or as it is known today, Mount Marcy. There aren't any telephones at the top of Mount Tahawus, nor any railroads leading up to it or anywhere close. Of course McKinley took a steep turn for the worse just as Teddy was hiking up near the top of Tahawas.
Telegrams went out to Long Lake, about 52 miles from the base of Mount Tahawus and scouts were sent to hike up the mountain to try and locate the conceited insecure selfish lunatic. Teddy was halfway back down when he met the frantic breathless messengers climbing up.
Four eyes finally opened his two eyes. He knew he had made a mistake. Teddy jumped on a horse-drawn wagon and the animals pulled the animal as fast as nature could allow them to go, straight down treacherous steep roads. This legendary road race was 50 miles of stress all through the darkest of nights. The mood was darker than the forest. The path down Mount Tahawus to Long Lake is today named after Teddy Roosevelt, or rather, named after his rough ride trying to get to the train station. One can only imagine his sense of frustration and helplessness.
As Roosevelt rode through the night, somewhere along the way he became the unsworn 25th President. Mr. McKinley had died in the early dark mourning hours of September 14, 1901, long before Roosevelt had even reached the Long Lake train station.
TR worked his way back to train station and the conductor 'floored it' for Buffalo. When he arrived at McKinley’s bedside at 1:30 in the afternoon, President McKinley was already colder than Mount Tahawus in January.
At 3:03 PM on September 14 1901, Roosevelt was sworn in as President at the home Ansley Wilcox.
On Monday the 16th of September Roosevelt took a train from Buffalo to Washington to take over at 1600 PA. Riding shotgun on the train were most of his inherited cabinet members plus the body of William McKinley.
THE PHILIPPINES
The first thing to worry about as chief executive was the Philippines, and trying to remember that it is spelled with one l. The USA had conquered the Philippines. The Senate had already voted to keep it. But the Philippine people were not interested in being kept by anybody. They wanted independence.
There is a great impractical irony here in comparing US policy towards Cuba and the Philippines. Here was Cuba, 90 miles from Florida, and of major importance to United States security and trade. Control of Cuba would insure the safety of the Panama Canal. On the other hand here were the Philippine Islands, a world away and of no vital interest to American security or economy. And yet the United States in the end decided to let Cuba become independent and took over the Philippines. By keeping the Philippines America got tangled up in Asian problems for a century.
The Philippines resisted US Occupation in a bloody insurrection that cost the US over 4,000 lives in combat, far more than had been KIA in the Spanish-American War.
The debate to keep or not to keep the Philippines started in McKinley's time and continued well into the Roosevelt Presidency. There was an Anti- Imperialist League leading the charge in the US.
Regardless of one’s political convictions, there is no doubt that US occupation brought many benefits to the Philippine people. America was the protector and occupier of these 7,000 islands until 1945.
The Spanish occupiers had relished Philippine illiteracy as a tool of oppression. Like Southern white slave-owners, they did not wish to see a Philippine insurrectionist movement headed by literate leaders in front of literate mobs. The multiple dialects spoken in the various islands was considered a security asset for the invaders, so they were careful not to even let the Philippinos learn Spanish.
The US may have been hated too as occupiers, but there is a clear historical consensus that the Philippine people hated the Americans less than they had hated the Spanish. The United States had some profit motive in taking over the Philippines, but the altruistic impulses were not phony. Much work was done in literacy, education, sanitation, road construction, dietary improvements and the instruction in and the introduction of personal political freedom. No sooner did the US help to set up Philippine newspapers than these were full of attacks against US policies. And these newspapers were not suppressed.
America helped in education. The literacy rate was about 5% under Spanish rule. The rate in 1904 was well over 40%. School systems at all levels were set up and constructed by the ugly American.
One of the chief ironies of US occupation was cultural. The Philippines cashed in on the new freedom under Americanism and finally adopted Spanish, not English, as a second language! The Spaniards had forbade the learning of the master's tongue. When they left, a rush was on to learn this forbidden and mysterious gem called Spanish, a lovely language that I flunked twice. Soon the Philippine Parliament was conducting it’s affairs in Spanish, not English. Spanish was the language of Philippine literature and high society.
Gradually English supplanted Spanish as the language of choice (along with native Tagalog) but in the early years it was Spanish culture that was embraced and celebrated. The Philippines had not hated the Spanish culture, only Spanish rule.
There was still sporadic fighting going on in the Philippines when TR took office. On July 4, 1902, like W in 2004 on the deck of the aircraft carrier, he declared hostilities to be over and the war won. But since this was a guerilla war, it was hard to really pick one date and say that was the day that insurrection ended. Fighting continued for months. But the Philippine Insurrection had no real momentum or chance of succeeding by the time Roosevelt made that proclamation, so it wasn't completely inaccurate.
TROLLEY HITS BULL MOOSE – PITTSFIELD MASS - 9 3 1902
In August 1902, President Roosevelt began a tour of the six states of New England. It was all productive and smooth until the last leg when Teddy almost lost his in a trolley crash. The President almost died and injured his leg.
Teddy spent the night of September 2, 1902 at the home of Governor Crane of Massachusetts in Dalton (where US greenback paper is exclusively manufactured today.) Dalton is at the extreme western end of Massachusetts.
TR had one last trip planned, from Dalton to Lenox via the city of Pittsfield. His trip was a matter of high publicity and everywhere he went the crowds gathered to stare and hear his speeches or shake his vigorous manly hand.
Roosevelts party travelled by a top quality horse-drawn wagon (called a “barouche,” but if I had casually dropped the term barouche on you you wouldn't have known what the hell I was talking about.) There were five men in the wagon as it approached the busy little city of Pittsfield, the oasis in hillbilly western Mass. The five were TR, Governor Crane, Roosevelt's personal secretary Cortleyou, the driver Thomas Lane, and Billy Craig a member of the secret service.
Several trolley lines criss-crossed Pittsfield. These were powerful little steam powered trains, not to be taken lightly by pedestrians, or horse drawn carriages. On this day, all trolleys were packed to the hilt with people who were hoping to be on the right train at the right time when the charismatic Prez passed through Pittsfield. The trolley operators were running at top speeds looking for the President's carriage so that their lucky riders would catch a glimpse of the big star. The trolleys were thus accidentally on purpose overcrowded and going too fast fast, and almost killed their fearless leader.
TR's carriage was crossing one of the tracks when it was broadsided at about 35 miles per hour by one of the rubbernecking trolleys. The driver was seriously injured. Teddy Roosevelt, Cortleyou and Governor Crane flew through the air, crashing to the the city street with much violence. All three men were covered with cuts and bruises. They laid on the street moaning. In a brief moment of shock no pedestrian even moved to help them. There was more focus on the poor secret serviceman Billy Craig. He was the one man who had not been thrown from the vehicle. Billy was crushed between the two machines, one of wood the other of steel. Billy Craig was a dead man, the first secret serviceman killed in the line of duty in American history.
Of the three big shots, Roosevelt was the most seriously hurt, but he put up such a macho front that he managed to deny it, even to himself. He knew that his leg hurt, but he was sure it wasn't broken so that was enough for manly man. TR went on with the trip to Lenox claiming that, “the Spanish couldn't hurt me and neither can the Trolleys of Pittsfield.”
Idiot.
Billy Craig's body was still warm back in Pittsfield when TR that night was grinning and shaking hands with sycophants in Lenox. No one cared that he was limping. They wanted to touch greatness. They didn't know it, but they were shaking hands with stupidity.
What Roosevelt didn't realize was that the pain in his leg was building up to a condition of blood poisoning. Roosevelt kept traveling about the nation giving speeches and visiting politicians. On September 24 at Indianapolis Ted was dizzy with pain and finally surrendered, rushing back to Washington for repairs. DC doctors had to operate to the bone and clean out an obvious abscess. Roosevelt could have lost a leg and could have died. We could have lost the President to a premature death because he was immature. Theodore had survived the initial accident only to almost die from his wooly mammoth ego.
If TR had died in Pittsfield (as I once did at a show there at the Ramada Inn ballroom in 1985) the USA would have lost two sitting president to the grave within a span of a single year!
The moral of the story is clear. When you can't walk, go see the damn doctor And whatever you do, don't ever, ever, try to emulate Teddy Roosevelt.
COAL STRIKE OF 1902
A common expression going around in TR's time was “Roosevelt's luck.” A common person could use it to describe positive turns of personal fortunes. TR had lucked out into the Presidency, survived the shooting on San Juan Hill, survived the trolley crash in Pittsfield, and had been born rich and lucky to begin with.
“Roosevelt's luck” would hold out once more during the national anguish that was the coal miners strike of 1902. It was a close call, and could have hurt him, but in the end, Roosevelt emerged more popular than before.
The miners of Pennsylvania hadn't had a raise since Abe Lincoln was in his crib. Working conditions were dangerous and cruel. Employees had to buy at the company store because they were paid in company scrip rather than US cash. The company store didn't give its employees a discount. They charged them more than they would have to pay at a public store. The operators were giving their miners the shaft.
The workers were paid by the ton they produced. So the owners decided that a miners ton was 2,500 pounds, not 2,000 as is taught in the schoolbooks. The average miner made $501 a year in 1901, or one dollar more than I made at my last show. The job was deadly dangerous. About 600 miners died a year in accidents, not to mention the long term damage to their lungs. Miners who wanted to sue would lose all their gains to lawyers fees, so there was no point in trying.
In this corner, weighing 200 million tons of coal and millions of bucks was a man named George F. Baer, head of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal Co. Baer had a heart as black as his coal. Any miner who even complained was declared a socialist agitator and fired without a hearing. Miners who talked about joining a union had better sleep with one eye open.
In the other corner, weighing 200 million pounds of American miners was the head of the largely unrecognized UMW, the United Mineworkers Union, John Mitchell.
The owners and the workers had slugged it out during a short strike in 1900. The government played mediator, and the compromise settlement led to unhappiness on both sides. The laborers felt they had been shortchanged by light concessions, while the owners were enraged that they had allowed government arbitration of any kind. They had sacrificed the sacred principle of lassaiz faire in order to keep their books in the black, and some had second thoughts about it when it was too late. Next time, they privately grumbled, they would eat their losses if thats what it took to show those no-good dirty workers. They got their chance to put their profits where their principled mouths were in 1902.
On March 18, 1902 the coal miners called for a strike. They appealed to the owners to avoid this drastic measure but Max Baer said “let them eat coal.” The strike began in ernest on May 12. 150,000 men and two women walked of the job. Strike headquarters was Hazelton PA, but soon the whole state and beyond was a non coaling region. The nation wasn't digging this at all. The USA could survive the strike for the summer but what was going to happen if the thing lingered on and the cold weather came on? People could freeze to death and schools could close.
The national sentiment was generally but not yet overwhelmingly on the side of the miners. Religious leaders wrote to Baer asking him to see this thing through reasonably, and compromise.
Baer wrote one of them back a heartfelt letter in which he made his philosophy quite plain. That letter turned out to be a big mistake. The Baer letter was arrogant and over the top in its disdain for the feelings of the working man. The country had come a long way towards the center since the right-wing hysteria that followed the Haymarket Riot back in the late 1880's. Baer's penmanship was so insensitive that when it was first printed, many questioned its authenticity. The man who received the the letter had to have it photocopied and reproduced in its original form. When the Baer letter was proven true and pasted on page two of a hundred major newspapers, the nation came down firmly against the coal barons, although this is not say that it ended the trouble.
Here is what Baer, the owner of Reading Coal wrote,
“I see that you are a religious man.
But you are evidently biased in favor of the right of the working man to
control a business in which he has no other interest than to secure
fair wages for the work he does.
I beg of you not to be discouraged. The rights and interests of the
laboring man will be protected and cared for – not by labor agitators,
but by the Christian men to whom God in his infinite wisdom has
given control of the property interests of this country.”
The country turned on that letter.
In June, TR asked Secretary Knox if the United States couldn't sure the coal interests for restraint of trade under the Sherman Anti-trust Act. In the meantime the coal owners were asking if they could prosecute the labor leaders under the terms of the Sherman Anti-trust Act. All of which proved that the Sherman Anti-trust Act was a weak law. It would be many more years before the Act found direction and authority achieve anything monumental.
President Teddy Bear had to get this thing settled before the fall elections and the winter cold. He wanted to enlist the support of other sectors of big business. If other rich greedy businessmen could convince the coal bosses that what was bad for the American economy was bad for big business, maybe the logjam could be broken. Certainly the coal strike, if it went on long enough, would set off a negative chain reaction that would hurt all big businessmen in the pocketbook. Today, the rising price of gasoline is driving up the price of food and other important commodities and is having a bad ripple effect on the entire economy. The price of heating fuel is of course rising today too. It was a similar situation in 1902 when coal, not oil, drove the railroad trains and heated the buildings. Coal was the life blood of the American economic machine.
TR was saddled by his famous reputation as a trust-buster. How could he ask big business to assist him now when he had been doing them harm for a year and half? They didn't owe him the steam off their furnaces. His only hope was that through personal intervention he could appeal to their patriotism (lots o' luck) and their selfishness (now you're talkin').
The first to cross the big businessmen picket line was J.P. Morgan. This millionaire was willing to treat with Teddy the trust-buster because he knew that his own fortune would suffer if the coal-pigs refused to compromise. Mark Hannah, the powerful Republican leader, and a potential candidate for President in 1904 told TR the good news that Morgan was willing pitch in to work for a compromise settlement. The bad news, to both Hannah and Morgan's surprise, Max Baer could care less. Coal was against compromise per se. The coal-pigs (Emma Goldman called them that) were still mad that they had even accepted compromise in 1900 and now actually wanted to get back their losses from that one. The bosses not only would not grant concessions, they wanted to take back the concessions of 1900! They went beyond not being willing to compromise.
TR knew that he had no technical authority to force a compromise. It was a free country. This wasn't Tsar Nicholas's Russia. This was the USA with its three famous national colors of green, gold and silver. But there was nothing to prevent TR from trying to work for a settlement in his capacity as a private citizen who just happened to be the President.
Roosevelt managed to arrange a meeting at D.C.'s Lafayette Place (the White House was closed for renovations) for October 3, 1902 between the angry parties. The meeting was a matter if high publicity, with throngs of reporters watching the celebrities pulling up to the temporary White House like movie stars on Oscar night.
The meeting lasted all day. The reporters and the public mob with them only had one moment of excitement when a man in a wheelchair (TR was still injured from the Pittsfield trolley crash) went whizzing by a window showing spectacles and a lot of teeth. Everyone cheered. It was the one and only in the flesh!
They might not have cheered so loudly if they knew how badly the big meeting was going.
There are no official records of the meeting, but a few things are clear. John Mitchell of the UMW behaved like a perfect gentleman for the entire meeting. Max Baer did not.
The UMW was more than ready and willing to compromise. Baer was not only unwilling to compromise in the tiniest bit, he also behaved like a perfect boor the entire time towards everyone. Baer repeatedly accused the UMW of revolutionary socialist violence that had never happened at a single location. The Coal King repeatedly insulted John Mitchell in a needlessly personal manner. Baer said, for example, that he resented being called to Washington to meet with a criminal, no matter how important the person who wrote the invitation. Baer not only didn't show any deference to the President, he insulted Roosevelt in a personal manner more than once. Big mistake.
Teddy was not an man that took to insults well. By once account (I'm not joking) the President picked up a chair and hurled it at George Baer! Not close enough to hit him but enough to create a hush in the room as the chair rocked and rolled to a rest. Baer didn't flinch and sat there with his arms folded in defiance.
TR later wrote that he wished he wasn't in a wheelchair at the time because he “might have picked Baer up by the scruff of the neck and hurled him through the window to the street below.” Note the word “through” as opposed to “out.” I would have paid good money to see that. Teddy also told a reporter that, “Only one of the three principals at the meeting behaved like a gentleman and it was not I.”
TR later insisted that he “didn't mind so much that Baer in at least two cases assumed a manner towards me which was once of insolence. This was not important,” he lied. “But it was important that they should absolutely decline to consider matters from the standpoint of the public in any way.”
Here he spoke the truth. By the time of this meeting, several schools in New York City had already closed down for lack of heating coal.
When this meeting became national news the public and the politicians turned against Baer and his jerky friends. Senator Lodge of Massachusetts, normally a friend of big business said that if he met a coal baron in public he would walk away without speaking to him.
The strike dragged on.
The President proposed another idea to Mitchell. If John Mitchell would get the men to go back to work, TR would then appoint a commission to work out a compromise settlement once the coal began to flow. Mitchell had to say no. The UMW leader said that if the settlement favored the owners, then Baer would agree to it, but if the settlement favored the workers, Baer would simply not honor it.
Mitchell had a point. The workers were up against the Tony Spilatro system. (Tony was a Vegas mobster who made bets and refused to pay when he lost. Since he killed people for a living, he got to decide which team he had actually bet on after each game ended.)
The government was intervening in small increments. By now there were 10,000 militiamen in the coalfields of Pennsylvania. But could TR ask them to actually start digging for coal, or where they limited to protecting the sites from violence? The strike lasted through the summer and well into the fall. The price of coal leaped from 5 to 30 dollars a ton.
Elihu Root said that TR could invoke the old common law that if you're freezing to death, it was legal to cut wood from your neighbors forest. It bothered neither man that no such common law ever existed in the US nor in old England. TR jumped at the idea anyway. The President informed Baer that the US government would soon take over the mines and produce the coal that the nation needed to survive. He told Baer about the old common law about the neighbor's wood. President Roosevelt believed that he was the law in an emergency.
Baer now began to listen more when TR proposed arbitration. Baer however, demanded that he, not the President (and certainly not the miners) would determine the make-up of the arbitration panel. It would have to be a five-man panel consisting of, 1 – An Army engineer – 2 – A mining engineer, 3-A Federal Judge from Pennsylvania – 4- A Coal mining businessman, and 5 - “An eminent sociologist.”
Baer wanted a loaded panel in the favor of the owners. Ted said no can and it was stuck in the mud all over again. TR made a counterproposal. He would make it a seven man panel. Baer could name the first four. The fifth would be former president Grover Cleveland, and he, Roosevelt, would pick the last two.
“No!”
Then TR had a brainstorm. He calculated that it was really all about Baer's pride. The President would name the persons he wanted, but under Baer's pleasing titles they all really weren't entitled to. TR would get the panel he wanted, and Baer would look as if he had made TR do his bidding.
A priest and a leader of the conductor's union were named to the panel under false titles. Another labor leader was named as the “eminent sociologist.”
To almost everyone's shock, Baer agreed to this panel of arbitration. TR was the only one not shocked. It took one to know one. A big ego knew how to manipulate another one.
The arbitration panel did its work over the next four months and made its official finding on 3-22-1903. The miners would get a 10% raise and some other concession on dangerous work conditions. But the United Mine Workers union would not get recognition. It was a three-year deal.
The settlement came just in time and helped the Republicans immensely in the Congressional elections of 1902. The coal settlement seriously enhanced TR's chances for 1904. Now T was not only a trust-buster, he was a friend of labor as well.
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON VISITS THE VERY WHITE HOUSE 10-02
Roosevelt had been Prez only six weeks when he invited one of the finest men who ever lived, Mr. Booker T. Washington to the White House.
The event was inspired by the recent appointment of Tom Jones to the post of district judge in the state of Alabama. Thomas Goode Jones was a Democrat and that was a gesture of conciliation both towards the South and the Democratic party on the part of Roosevelt. What was even more important, it had been Booker T. Washington, a black man, that had recommended the appointment to the President. It was a bold gesture in 1901 for a white leader to listen to the advice of a black man. For a White House whitey to allow a black man to choose an important judgeship was progressivism incarnate. Now TR was going to follow up the gesture with a dinner invitation to 1600 Pennsylvania.
What could possibly go wrong?
On October 16, 1901 Booker T. Washington and Theodore Roosevelt dined at the White House and discussed the current condition and future hope for the South among other things. Booker booked a train back to New York City that night.
The next day the newspapers of the South unleashed a broadside of racist takes on the harmless dinner. The New Orleans Honky wrote that, “When Mr Roosevelt sat down to dinner with a Negro, he is saying that the Negro is the social equal of the white man.”
The Memphis Scimitar (the real name of the paper this time) wrote without a hint of shame that “It is a damned outrage that President Roosevelt invited a nigger to dine with him at the White House.”
If you cringe to read this, imagine how I felt having to type it up. I think this quote in a mainstream Southern newspaper says all we need to know about how racist was the South in 1901. This was the peak of the Jim Crow lynch-mob era. And historians still bash the Republican Party of the TR era for “waving the bloody shirt,” as thought the time for reconciliation was long overdue towards the martyred South.
What did Booker T Washington ever do to deserve getting called the N word in a major Southern newspaper for dining with the president? Booker worked hard, encouraged great values by his example, educated himself, promoted education, dedicated his life to noble and eminently constructive causes, and demonstrated nothing but charity and forgiveness towards all. For this he is called the N word, and the entire South is almost ready to secede again. Now imagine how the average black person must have been treated in the South at this time! Don't even imagine how the extreme poor or those falsely accused of a crime must have been treated.
As Hilarie Wenzel once wrote, “It's not the color of your skin, it's the color of your character.” - By this definition the South in 1901 was ten times blacker than Booker T Washington could ever dream of being.
President Roosevelt responded to the storm of post-dinner criticism by declaring that he would invite Booker T Washington to the White House as many times as he wanted to. But he never did again, and he never intended to even when he released the statement. The visit had caused too much political damage. Roosevelt was trying to court the South away from its Democratic loyalty and Washington's Washington dinner washed that hope down the drain. Ted couldn't afford to repeat that mistake even if his heart wanted to.
NEWLANDS ACT OF 1902
On June 17, 1902 Congress approved the Newlands Act. The Bill would create new lands for farming in 16 western states. This was a bill to help irrigate the parched American west in order to stimulate agriculture, create more livable American land, and put some money in the government coffers along the way. Francis K Newlands sponsored the idea. It was a fine idea and a major success story.
Take much of the semi arid federal lands in the west and sell it. Take the profits and put it into irrigation projects, creating farmland where there was only dry dirt before. This creates a new land bank to sell which creates still more irrigation projects for yet more irrigation projects.
The project grew and expanded until it became a federal force all its own, the National Reclamation Service, a division of the Department of the Interior.
As a direct or indirect result of the Newlands Act most of the rivers were dammed. TR supported the Newlands Act all the way. It was right up his alley. It's operating system was not unlike the Northwest territory days when virgin lands were sold to pay for federal exploration and exploitation of still more virgin lands.
THE DICK ACT OF 1903
The new Secretary of War was Ellie Root, a man who had served in the Ohio National Guard, also still known as the “militia.” The militia had performed well enough in the Spanish-American War but not great. Just well enough. Organizational difficulties prevented effective employment of this age-old home guard. Each state had different rules and different organizational schemes for its militia and this led to weak war performance when the entire force tried to operate together.
Every Tom, Dick, and Harry has a good idea, and one Alabama Senator had a good one in 1903. In the post-war air of 1903, Senator Tom Dick proposed a bill to federalize the militia. It passed. The Dick Act put a national standard on all NG units in all states. US Army officers would visit Guard units and conduct inspections. There would be regulation. But there would also be money. Congress coughed up some serious millions to improve and organize the Guard. Political opposition to the federalizing of the guard was squashed by the cash. By World War I, the Guard would be ready, and all thanks to the Dick Act (also sometimes referred to as the Militia Act of 1903.)
The Dick Act finished off yet another old states-rights pillar. The militia was the pride of the individual state. South Carolina was going to call out it's militia in 1832 to defy Andy Jackson after his threat to send federal troops there. Now all militia were on the same team.
ENTER THE MOVIES – 1903 – SOME THOUGHTS ON MOVIES
America runs on the movies. Everything in our culture in centered on the movies. It's way out of control. Nothing catches on unless it's portrayed in a movie by famous actors. Every time everyone is chanting something at a ballpark or a playing with some weird expression at a party I'm confused. What is going on? Then someone says, “you never saw that movie?” - No. I didn't.
This debasing of the national brain began in 1903. That year, for the first time, a real movie with a real story line was made and people had to go pay to see it. It was the beginning of “The movies” as we know it today.
Film till now was a developing experiment in invention technology, not a medium to make money, and make people stupid, as it is today. Producer Eddie Porter, a Tom Edison cameraman, established that a film could be a legitimate form of theater and a self-contained money-maker.
The first movie was The Great Train Robbery. Typical. It was a simple story about crime and violence and guns and killing people. Take the book which is written for an adult, and switch to film mode and lower the plot lines to junior high or below. And everyone thinks its a good thing.
First of all the idea that films have to have a story line full of conflict and simplistic drama was established from this point on. The idea that film could simply be a collection of positive enjoyable and edifying images rolled together for your viewing pleasure, well that idea never got a hearing. There has to be a story line, there has to be conflict, and with conflict there is necessarily some violence. Films are a story-line collection of stressors on the viewer rather than relaxers.
The Great Train Robbery set the standard.
In recent years some airlines have tried to address the fear of flying by having pleasant movies play on the little screens while the plane is preparing to roll out of take-off. There is no story line. Its just beautiful relaxing images of nature and other stuff, with nice lovely music behind it. It's designed with a profit motive, of course, they want people to find the flight less terrifying so they will fly more often in the future. But why did we have to wait 100 years for anyone to get around to making a movie that was supposed to be pleasant to the senses, rather than stressful conflict story lines with a resolution of some sort at the end? Why not have someone make movies like the airplane movies, except add some education over it too? A pleasant movie with positive energy, no story line, plus overdubs or graphic overlays of educational things that are also interesting to learn, not boring technical stuff. or even make some educational movies with the boring stuff made more tolerable by having it overlap the pleasant images. Four minutes of the greatest waterfalls in the world with Beethoven lightly in the background and someone verbally instructing you in a few basic Arabic expressions. You could watch that over and over from your hospital bed. You'd recover faster and when you took your discharge you'd be smarter and make friends easier whenever you met an Arab person.
Anyway, that's my dream and I'd gladly work on that 15 hours a day for a year is someone funded me. That's a promise. OK, I'll make it 12 hours a day, but that I would stick to.
1903 should have been a moment when human-kind found a great new medium to advance its spiritual and intellectual condition with. Instead it setback those conditions. Every movie is someone holding a gun to someone's head plus four minute fight scenes. Then there's killing, more killing and more killing.
Every amateur film-maker's first idea for a story line involves murder. Twice, a stand-up comedian has told me about an idea they had for a movie. Ten years apart and on two different coastlines. Two different people. One in California, one in Massachusetts. The two never met each other. Both times it was about a disgruntled open-miker who began murdering headliners. Twice. I think that is typical. If you know a car mechanic/ aspiring screenwriter, he's certain to bend your ear about an idea he has for a movie based on a murder at the garage.
I've seen at least 700 tied to a chair and beaten to death. All in a movie of course. I've never seen that in real life. I've seen about 130 brutal rapes. I've never seen one in real life. I've seen 400,000 people killed by guns, 800,000 people punched in the face, I've seen New York City destroyed 38 times, 3,232 cars blown up with people inside them, and at least 2,000 people run down the street screaming who are very much on fire. I wonder what it all has done to me. I can't imagine how I'd feel to know that I helped make or produce those movies. I feel regret just knowing that I took all these images into my brain and that I wasted that much time doing it. And the tradition started with The Great Brain Robbery of 1903.
Edwin Porter's silent film was only 12 minutes long, but it told a story line and had gunfights and a train conductor was rather badly beaten up. The movies grew from there. By 1928 95 million Americans a week went to the movies. More than half of all Americans. I watch four movies a week at home.
Americans shouldn't wonder why the cab driver that takes you to the doctor is from Cleveland, but the doctor is from India. The doc has no idea who stars in the latest blockbuster but he can hopefully fix your physical brain injury. He can't fix the mental brain injury from making consuming junk for 10,000 hours.
Tonight I watched an oldie, Triple Cross with Christopher Plummer. I think it's his best film. Now I know where the Jersey Islands are. It's too late for me. I'm still hooked on movies. I've tried to quit many times, but I always go back.
THE BIRTH OF THE AEROPLANE
On December 17 1903 the Wright Brothers made the first successful airplane flight at Kitty Hawk North Carolina. It was an incredible achievement. Literally. The country’s newspaper editors simply didn’t believe the reports and chose to either ignore the information, or they scoffed at the story in print as a hoax by pranksters. The only newspaper that printed the story at face value was in Dayton Ohio, and that was a short perfunctory blurb on page nine and that was printed only because both Wrights were from Dayton Ohio. If you search the microfilms for headlines about the first flight, you'll get nothing!
The Wrights made more flights in 1904. People in the area were all exited and thrilled. But again by the time the story reached big city newspapers, the crusty old editors dismissed them as false tales. Two guys from a bike shop had not invented a heavier than air craft made of wood and metal that can fly two guys in circles at will for two hours and land them safely with the plane undamaged. Not no way, not no how.
But they had.
The Wrights wanted to get the U. S. government interested in buying the plane, but Sam wasn’t interested.
The Wrights made more planes and flew them in many places. They dazzled the crowds. But the media wasn’t organized like it is today on a connected vast plain and no momentum could be garnered to get their invention taken seriously by anyone except immediate observers with pitchforks and chewing tobacco. So the Wright Brothers gave up. Between October 1905 to May 1908 the Wright Brothers didn’t even bother to fly anymore!
The French were not so naïve. When one of the Wrights shipped a plane over to France and then went over there with it for a test drive the results were different. Wright flew his plane for French observers and the event ignited the entire French nation. The headlines all over the country screamed the glorious news of the magnificent Wrights and their flying machine.
All of a sudden the US government became quite interested in the flying game. Everyone was taking it seriously and more people were building their own version of the air-plane. In late 08 the US Army bought its first plane from a competitor to the Wrights for six large, and the Wrights soon came under contract to the government as well.
In 1910 ex-President Roosevelt went on a plane ride in St Louis with lots of photographers on hand. Teddy's friend Mickey Hoxley owned the machine. To show how far the aeroplane still had to go in its development, TR's ride lasted exactly three minutes and 34 seconds and never got more than 120 feet above the ground. If the plane had crashed and severed his arm, TR would have put the arm in his satchel and pretended nothing bad had happened. He was like that, you know.
THE BIG FOUR
They are listed in some reference books today as the “Big Four.” Sometimes they were called the “Senate Four.” These were the four powerful influential Republican Senators in the Congress in TR's time. And they were all conservative Republicans. TR had his hand's full dealing with them on the job, even though he was on personal good terms with all four.
The four were Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, Allison of Togo, Oliver Platt of Connecticut, and Spooner. One New York Times writer in 1905 called it the “Big Five” including Senator Eugene Hale of Maine.
William Allison of Iowa was a Senator for 35 years. From 1873-1908 his goofy beard and booming voice was a common sight in the Senate chamber. Allison died on August 4 1908 and was still on duty. He died a Senator.
Aldrich, a businessman from Providence turned politician, was considered by some people to be one of the top three influential persons in the country after TR and Speaker Cannon.
John C Spooner was from Wisconsin and opposed Progressives for a living. LaFollette hated Spooner and called him a pawn of the rich, and a “silver spooner.”
TEDDY VERSUS BIG BUSINESS
When Roosevelt found himself up against the opposition it often wasn't the Democrats. Here's the party of big business trying to keep the reins on the wild cowboy who wants to play progressive trust buster. The big four weren't always in Ted's corner. Roosevelt had his hands full in wanting to reform and control big business when big business controlled the Senate. Big Boss Man owned some senators and were in cahoots with most of the rest.
Roosevelt was always an anomaly, a Republican battling the evils of big business. But in his era how could any president have acted any other way? The abuses of the big businesses had grown so bold and outrageous that only a Hitler could have occupied the White House and smiled with approval. Roosevelt had a will of his own and even though he deplored the lower class mobs of lefties like any good aristocrat should, he still was taking stands which ten years earlier would have been considered radical left. But in the changed playing field of his time they were actually moderate center. The clamor for reform of big business was a national rage. TR's moderate trust busting (sold as rad) was not radical at all. It was actually a compromise between the angry left and the corrupt millionaires. In taking this middle ground TR made nothing but enemies among political leaders, while winning the approval of the common folk.
The left leaders saw right through his lightweight version of radical reform. The rich right hated him thoroughly for daring to wear a Republican cloth coat and decimate the privileges of big business..
Teddy made it clear that he did not oppose big business per se. He would never trust bust because of the size the the interlocking directorates. He only, and we stress only, fought with big business because of the countless specific abuses and unpatriotic deeds. He always thought that big business in and of itself was good for the nation.
Theodore didn't have a lefty bone in his body, yet big business had become so arrogant, so much a powerful bully, that even a right-wing war-loving cowboy Harvard Republican like Roosevelt had nothing else in mind but grabbing big business by the collar and hurling it to the ground for a good boot kicking. And big business had no one to blame but itself. Max Baer wasn't some odd ball. He was typical of the breed. Joseph Daniels estimates that four fifths of all Americans in 1905 were radically Progressive. That's probably an exaggeration, but it sounds like it was certainly a majority. Radical Progressive was really code for “We're mad at hell at big business, and we're not going to take it anymore!” (And Network cited that phrase, it didn't invent it.)
Once Progressivism had run its course and the WWI got in the way, the nation relaxed a bit with the Progressive anger. But that was mostly because the abuses had been curbed by federal laws passed in the years of TR, Taft and Wilson.
MUCKRAKERS
The reformist writers of the age were nicknamed the ‘muckrakers’ by Teddy Roosevelt. The word came from a character in Pilgrim’s Progress who used a rake to gather in the mud. TR was not being complimentary. But the troublemaking writers adopted “muckraker” and wore it as a badge of pride.
Frank Norris wrote a muckraking novel called The Octopus, set in the new west, which severely questioned the integrity of the big railroads. He referred to them as “giant parasites” and “vulturous squids.”
Magazines like McClure’s and Colliers gave funding to its mucky investigative journalists who exposed corruption and insensitivity in many big businesses.
The most successful big muck attack was a series of pieces by Ida Tarbell, attacking the Standard Oil Company. These viscerally hard-hitting magazines were combined into a best selling book, The History of the Standard Oil Company. Ida set the standard for tearing down the biggest evil giant's castle. Her work led directly in time to the break-up of Standard Oil. Rockefeller hated Tarbell and she hated him. Old Rocky mocked her with insulting names, and she got the last laugh.
Oakland born Jack London was another muckster. London wrote more than 40 novels in his time. Call of the Wild, published in 1903, is still famous. Wild is the story of a pack of Alaskan sled dogs and their tough life in the snow of the Arctic. They made me read this in high school and I still don’t know why. A Short History of the Middle East would have better prepared me for the real world. Call of the Wild became a popular movie, starring Lassie as Kitka (they used a lot of make-up,) and Lawrence Harvey as the sled-master.
London was a leading personality in the US Socialist movement so we can presume that Teddy Roosevelt was not his biggest fan, and probably did not read Call of the Wild. When it came to socialists, Teddy preferred the call of the posse.
The bad living conditions in the American city and a moralist condemnation of them is the book The Shame of the Cities, by Lincoln Steffens, c) 1904.
One attempt to solve the congestion of city traffic was the underground subway. Boston and New York took the lead in developing the subterranean trains. The first operational system began in Boston at the turn of the century. Park Street Station opened 108 years ago had had two stops total at the time. It is still in use and I ride it all the time and the original stop, the one between Boylston Street and Park Street is the one that will tear you eardrum apart on the screeching wide turn every time. There must be a secret contract with the Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary to generate business. It's never been oiled in 110 years. Subways probably brought out the grouchy side of people even then.
The relief of traffic above ground was instant. City planners were already overwhelmed with horse and wagon traffic and the automobile was beginning its explosive expansion, so it was obvious something had to be done with an eye on the future. The subway arrived just in time.
PLATT AMENDMENT PASSED 1903
In the last chapter we recall the Teller Amendment. This put a rider on the Spanish-American War that stipulated that the United States was not going to take possession of Cuba if/when the United States won the war. The USA won, and thanks to Teller, could not keep Cuba.
Then in 1901 Connecticut Senator Ollie Platt proposed an amendment that would effectively place Cuba under American control, and make a bit of a mockery out of the Teller Amendment. Cuba would still be technically independent but with serious conditions. Cuba would no longer be able to even negotiate with a foreign power, let alone allow one to take over the island. In the event of domestic disturbances, the United States could intervene militarily in order to restore order. The United States would be given a naval base on the Island. Imagine if the British had granted American Independence in 1783, but kept a Royal naval base at Newport News Virginia permanently. The base turned out to be Guantanamo. The United States still has a naval base there and a controversial political prison. It is the Northern Ireland of the Western Hemisphere.
This was a new extreme for the Monroe Doctrine.
The Platt Amendment cancelled the heart out of the Teller Amendment.
It has been described as “replacing” the Teller Amendment but emasculating might be more accurate. It was as if the imperialists were scratching their chins trying to think of a way to evade the terms of Teller. “I got it!,” cried one, “We can't own Cuba outright, but we can pass a law forbidding anyone else to go near it or else. We can add laws to the amendment forbidding them to breathe without our permission. We'll monopolize trade with them under the guise of protective friendship, and we will never let them have any say in their own foreign policy. We'll always have Cuba in our sphere of influence. And we'll make them give up a temporary coaling station, for say a thousand years at Guantanamo. That's all we really need out of them anyway isn't it. In the meantime, nobody's violating Teller. We still don't own Cuba. That makes it even better. We can control it and use it and not having the responsibility of feeding it and maintaining roads and sanitation.” The other imperialists looked at each other and broke out into a round of applause. Thats what happened.
Platt was a shameful Amendment. The Cuban people were angry, and deeply hurt. The Cubans hated Platt and his dastardly betrayal that he called an amendment. We had pretended to be their friend, Teller made us stick to our noble image, then Platt came along and changed the picture completely. Cuban newspapers printed cartoons in which the United States was crucifying Cuba the way the Romans did Christ. General Wood, with TR's permission, had the editor arrested. But the guy was released the next day, thank God.
FDR got rid of the Platt Amendment in 1945. But it left a lot of deep ill will towards the United States in the Cuban people. If the Platt amendment had been defeated, Cuba might have developed a much healthier long-term relationship with the United States, and perhaps a friendship, and the right and left wing dictatorships of later times might never have happened. If the Platt Amendment was ever truly repudiated, Guantanamo would be returned to Cuba. FDR wanted the naval base and so does Obama. Liberalism stops as the foreign policy water's edge of Lake Expedience.
TROUBLES WITH CASTRO 1902-03
During the time TR was VP and President, the ruler of Venezuela was a dictator named Cipriano Castro. CC ruled V from 1899 to 1908. By all accounts 'Cip' was a bad man, a drunken hedonist of the lowest order. Cip would fit right in in West Hollywood today, that's how low this guy was. Long before Stalin, Hitler or Sadaam Hussien, Castro instituted the “cult of the personality.” It was shortly after he won the Battle of Caracas with a privately financed army.
Posters and statues of Castro were everywhere. Venezuelan history was rewritten to glorify Castro as the “Moses of South America.” People had to greet each other with “Hail Castro.” Critics were arrested and tortured. People who made jokes about Castro disappeared forever. Freedom was a dead issue under this despot's regime. To this day, he is recognized as the most totalitarian ruler in the history of Venezuela, and that's saying a lot.
All of this didn't concern the United States too much until Venezuela began to pile up huge debts to European investors and then defaulted on payments worse than I did with Firestone in 1985.
France, England Germany and Italy began to threaten Castro with the use of force if Venezuela didn't make a legitimate attempt to pay its debts. Castro told them to “bring it on.” This was a mistake.
Germany and England began to mobilize naval forces for a punitive expedition to Venezuela. At this point Teddy Roosevelt became alarmed and got involved.
There are two version of what happened over the next few weeks. One is the version given by Teddy Roosevelt in 1915. He gave this account to a man who was writing a diplomatic history of recent times. There was a lot of hatred for Germany going around the USA at this time. The Lusitania had just gone down. And TR was a blowhard. So in the fog of time, the fever of WWI, and the ego of TR, the ingredients were all there for a version of the truth that was close to a big fat lie.
The TR version is this; Germany was about to go into Venezuela and collect its money at 12-inch naval gun gunpoint. Teddy warned Germany to back off, that this was a clear violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Germany, Teddy insisted, must agree to international arbitration.
The Germans didn't take Roosevelt's warning seriously and began to plan on using force in Venezuela. Roosevelt then ordered Admiral Dewey to mobilize the great white US Naval fleet that had recently won the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt sent the fleet to the waters off of Venezuela to wait for the German fleet to arrive and get a taste of Manila Bay. When Germany heard of this it backed down and agreed to arbitration. After an arbitration panel made it findings, the Venezuelans began making payments on their debts
There is a lot of shameful exaggeration or downright dishonesty in TR's version of his leadership in the Venezuelan debt crisis.
First of all, TR had long made it plain that the Monroe Doctrine applied only to territorial acquisitions by European powers in the American hemisphere. The MD had never applied to settling monetary disputes.
When the Venezuelan debt crisis first emerged, Cip Castro actually thought he could use the United States and its famous Monroe Doctrine for protection. When the European creditor nations began to demand their dough, Castro took a relaxed, perhaps even an arrogant attitude towards them. “They won't dare use force on this hemisphere, not with the Monroe Doctrine,” he thought.
But TR didn't like Castro, a famously bad person and a very bad dictator. Who could like him except for his mother? Roosevelt let it leak to Europe that he actually wouldn't mind too much if force were used on Venezuela, provided there were no plans by any Euros to acquire new territory in this hemisphere permanently. Germany hinted to the US that it might want to occupy a port and collect customs duties for a short while, but definitely not permanently. This satisfied Roosevelt.
In fact, as VP and in his first message to the Congress as President, Roosevelt specifically gave the OK to Europe for collecting debts by force. He spelled it out under the phrase “give debtors a proper spanking.”
So there was no reason to believe that Germany or England would feel afraid of the United States while they prepared to “spank” Castro and Venezuela in 1902. Both England and Germany did bombard Venezuelan port locations as punishment for being behind on the bills, and this was long before Dewey's fleet sailed to the waters off the coast of Venezuela. The German navy boarded some small ships of the Venezuelan navy and kept them as compensatory prizes.
At this point Venezuela, the UK, and Germany agreed to bring the matter before an international jury for arbitration. It was only after this agreement to arbitrate that Roosevelt sent Dewey's fleet to the waters off the coast of Venezuela. And these were waters where the US fleet often conducted maneuvers anyway. So there was no way that TR intimidated Germany into agreeing to arbitration in the Venezuela debt disputes, as he later boldly claimed.
The American public condemned the Europeans for their aggressive behavior towards the deadbeat Venezuelans. The public felt that Europe was defying the Monroe Doctrine was, unaware that the Prez and the State Department had given the bill collectors the wink.
Germany was the only nation among the collectors that Roosevelt did not trust and after a time, the US began a bit of an about face. The State Department warned Germany not to go too far, after it had given Germany expressed permission to go as far as it had. The German government complained that the US was hypocritical. Uncle Sam was interfering in the Far Eastern Hemisphere while forbidding any similar designs by others in the American hemisphere.
DICK DRAGO DOCTRINE
The Venezuelan debts crisis produced the Drago Doctrine.
Luis Richard Drago, the foreign minister of Argentina proposed that the international community should agree to not use physical force in the future to collect debts, provided the country in financial distress agrees to arbitration. It was the Kellogg-Briand Pact of international debt collecting, a solemn pledge than could be broken anytime. (Kellogg-Briand outlawed war and Mussolini signed it.)
In 1907 the Drago Doctrine was accepted on both sides of the Atlantic as a commitment for future action, or lack of action. As long as the debtor state agreed to arbitration, it would be safe from naval bombardment or worse. All bets were off, however, if the debtor refused to abide by the decision of the arbitrators.
ALASKA BOUNDARY DISPUTE
Gold created a map war. When miners discovered gold in the Yukon, the greed fever put the United States and Canada on high tension over the lower Alaskan boundary.
Today's Alaskan panhandle clearly shows some miles of territory inside the continent. When gold was discovered in the Yukon, the Canadian decided that their maps were in error. It seemed that by their new calculations, the routes to the Yukon gold fields were actually in British Columbia and that the Alaskan panhandle was actually just a tiny strip of land along the coast along with a few islands.
As a member of the British Commonwealth, the Canadians brought the US and the Island Kingdom into direct controversy. England backed the claims of the British Columbians.
President Ted became belligerent. He wasn't fond of Englishmen in general. Roosevelt ordered two US Army divisions to the Alaska-B.C. border area. He spoke with intimates as though it wasn't even a bluff! TR took a rather casual attitude towards starting a full-scale ground war with Canada in the Alaskan northwest over the Yukon gold fields.
A few voices protested. One Berkeley CA newspaper headlined its editorial, “No Blood for Gold!”
The war-lover reluctantly allowed the matter to be taken to international arbitration. Each side was to name three venerable neutral jurists to the arbitration commission. Fortunately for the United States, the British had a weak case. Both sides could only find maps that supported the boundary claims of the United States, the status quo.
TR named three right-wing jingo extremists to represent the USA in the arbitration team. It was a low thing to do. The British named three staid old jurists as they were supposed to do. Two of the British jurists sided with the British Columbian claims.
The third British judge sided with the United States. This guy Abernathy is one of the true heroes of world history. He got raked over the coals in the UK for siding against his own country, but he stuck to his story. “You guys asked me to study the issue and come to an objective decision. You want a fighter for your side, call a general. You called me. I delivered as promised. Too bad about all of ya.” Those weren't his exact words but that's what he said. If Abernathy hadn't shown his profile in courage, the commission would have broken up in a deadlock and US relations with the British Commonwealth might have taken a severe turn for the worse.
PERDICARIS FEVER
In late May 1904 President Roosevelt received word of an insult to the flag from Islamic terrorists in the Middle East. It seemed that a well-to-do American citizen by the name of Ion Perdicaris was sipping expensive tea on his patio in Algiers when he and his family were attacked by Berber rebels. The Berber Rebs were trying to overthrow the government of Morocco. The intruders roughed up the aristocratic house guests and made off with two hostages, Ion Perdicaris and his nephew Clarence.
The leader of the attack was a Berber man named Raisuli. He didn't have anything against Perdicaris personally, nor against the USA. But he wanted to blackmail the rulers of Morocco into granting his political demands by holding a prominent westerner hostage. The idea was that the Moroccan President would need to avoid trouble with the western powers and would prefer political concessions to Moroccan rebels to diplomatic entanglements with disgruntled superpowers.
The plan in the end essentially worked. The American was released only when the Moroccan government agreed to Raisuli's demands. But a lot happened in between the beginning and end of the Perdicaris story.
Teddy Roosevelt didn't miss his chance to play big man. He issued angry statements to the Raisuli rebels and to the Moroccan government (at one point Teddy threatened to swim the Atlantic, continue past the Straits of Gibraltar, climb the beach at Algiers, battle his way to the Berber hideout and “sock Raisuli in the chin.” The press laughed when he said this but TR looked sore and said, “I wasn't trying to be funny.”
In mid-June the press discovered that Ion Perdicaris was only pretending to be an American citizen. He had lived for some time in New Jersey, but at kidnap time, Perdicaris was a Greek citizen, and was in Morocco on a Greek passport.
Roosevelt and his Secretary of State Hay decided that this was essentially irrelevant since Raisuli thought that Ion was an American when he kidnapped him. Hay was sometimes almost as truculent as his boss, if you can possibly believe that. Hat and Tr agreed that what mattered was that the entire world thought that IP was an American citizen, and the story had already swept the globe that way. Jack Hay and TR decided not to let the public know that the man named Perdicaris was not Greek. American honor was still on the line, even if an individual American life was factually not. Perception is fact.
The President dispatched seven battleships to Morocco to make it clear that the USA wasn't going to take any guff from these scruffs. At one point ten US Marines went ashore to guard the American Embassy, but this was reported in some quarters as “an assault by US troops.”
But the Americans were sending mixed signals. Along with the warships, went the ransom payment. It was the cash, not the threats, that secured his release along with that of his bewildered nephew.
What was more embarrassing to the Roosevelt threat posture was that Perdicaris had grown quite fond of his captors and was releasing statements to the press defending his kidnappers! It was “Stockholm syndrome” about 65 years before that term was coined. The kidnapped becomes sympathetic to the cause for which they had been kidnapped. Perdicaris described Raisuli as “a swell guy.” TR threw the newspaper at the wall when he read that one.
There was a first run (but nor first rate) movie made that was based on the kidnapping of Perdicaris. Its called The Wind and the Lion and it stars Sean Connery as Raisuli.
When we say a movie is “based on” a true story, its the same as saying its loaded with damnable lies in the name of dramatic embellishment. I've had a little fun embellishing a story here and there, but I've done nothing one tenth as misleading as what Hollywood does with every story it claims is based on a true story. In Wind and Lion, Raisuli kidnaps a beautiful rich American woman who hates him at first and then they fall in love. US Marines land in brigade force on the beaches in Morocco and engage in full-scale battle with both German and Moroccan troops. People are dying all over the screen, yet nothing of the sort ever happened. I embellish a quote or detail now and then. They invent outrageous stories that never happened in which the honor of the United States in impugned and remind us in the promos that its based on a true story.
I have read that this movie is popular in the Arab world. What a surprise! The Arab guy is made into an angel of God played by the dashing superstar, and Roosevelt is played by sluggish old Brian Keith. The Windbag and the Lion makes the USA look like a nation of foolish aggressors. I can live with the aggressors part, but not the foolish.
ELECTION OF 1904
TR defeated Alton Parker for the Presidency in 1904.
One of the great myths of American history is that Republican Senator Mark Hanna was the front-runner for the nomination in 1904 and that he was actively seeking the nomination. The textbooks often the story of how when Mark Hannah died in February of 1904 it cleared the way for Roosevelt to win election in his own right.
The truth is that while Mark Hannah and TR had been opponents in 1900, a lot between them had changed for the better over the years. Courtesy and cooperation had led to a decent relationship by the time the 1904 election appeared on the horizon.
In late 1903 some supporters of Hannah for president made it appear that he was running for the job, and TR made an angry speech in Seattle where he seemed to be snapping back at Hannah without mentioning him by name.
It wasn't necessary. Hannah did not intend to run.
In June the Republican National Convention met in Chicago. The Perdicaris situation was as yet unresolved and was continuous headline news. Roosevelt issued a statement to be read on the 22nd of June,
“We want either Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!”
And he told the guy reading it to make sure that he understood that this sentence ends in an exclamation mark.
The Perdicaris issue was just what the Republicans needed to inject some life into a dull contest. Support for TR was only luke-warm. Big business was mad at Teddy and big business was the backbone of the Republican Party. 'Big business thought, 'Why should we support this guy that has been calling us villains in public for four years?'
At least one historian calls 1904 the worst election in American history because there were no controversial issues and the challenger was a bore. Indeed it was only the Perdicaris affair that kept 2,678 delegates from passing out from boredom. When chairman Joe Larsen shouted, “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!” the hall of delegates and hangers-on erupted in a four minute bloodthirsty infantile unthinking jingo cheer.
Like “54-40 or fight,” “Keep the ball rollin,” “A chicken in every pot, two cars in every garage,” and “the Duke makes me puke,” “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead,' became a campaign rally slogan for several weeks. It became an important part of American campaign folklore, and schoolchildren knew of it two generations later, although it is largely forgotten today, mostly because it's so hard to spell or pronounce the guy's name without looking it up over and over.
Some historians go as far as to say that without the Perdicaris injection of energy, the election of 1904 might have been quite close. I wouldn't say that, but I've read it.
The Democrats didn't put up much of a battle. It probably didn’t help challenger Alton Parker that his vice presidential running mate Henry Davis was 82 years old. Their slogan could have been “Parker alive or Davis dead!”
Henry Davis had been chosen largely because he was rich and the party figured he would make a huge cash contribution to the campaign fund. It backfired when declined to cough up his own cash in what was clearly going to be a losing cause. HD was was one the most useless VP choices in US history.
But even a dynamic duo like Randy Hearst and Bill Bryan would have probably lost to the very popular Theodore Roosevelt.
Shortly after the Perdicaris war dance, Teddy Roosevelt took the nomination unanimously. Then the convention approved his VP choice by acclamation, Senator Charles Warren Fairbanks of Indiana. The nation had been without a vice-President since TR was sworn in at the Wilcox home on 9.14.01.
Chuck Fairbanks has been described as “colorless” by at least two colorless historians. His great grand-son coached the New England Patriots football team in the early 1970's.
To repeat, The Republican Party was, and is, the party of big business, yet Roosevelt was a crusader against the abuses of big business. The Big Business wing of the Republican Party thought it had neutralized him in 1900 when they had nominated TR for VP. They didn’t want Roosevelt to be governor of New York State where they thought he could do more damage to them. They had not counted on Leon Colgoltz and his magic pistol.
Big Business Republicans preferred behind the scenes powerhouse Mark Hannah for president in 1904. This was a time when it was still in bounds for a party to decline to nominate its sitting president, something unthinkable today. But Hannah didn't go in that direction.
Big Biz was stuck with a president who favored lower tariffs, conservation, the busting up of big business conglomerates like Northern Securities, and other unfriendly policies. But Roosevelt’s acceptance speech made it clear that he was still overall a friend of big business. He only wanted to bust corrupt big business. They bought it. Soon after the convention closed, two million dollars poured into the Republican campaign treasury. Months later, many rich men felt betrayed by. Millionaire tycoon Hank Frick said, “We bought the son of a bitch, and he didn't stay bought.” TR heard about the remark and wrote to him a two-sentence letter.
St Louis hosted the 1904 Democratic Convention. The Democrats thought they could finally win the support of big business in this campaign. The unruly TR was riding them rather rough, so maybe a Democrat Wall Street sort of guy might be the right call.
But this was a betrayal of the liberal progressive heart and soul of the Party and it's big wheel William Jennings Bryan. Picking a conservative was playing with a book of matches called a party split. Even if the Bryan wing did not bolt the party, if it chose to only give the conservative candidate passive support, that alone could do irreparable harm to the Democrat candidate's chances. Both major parties seemed to be switching roles. TR the Rep was the rebel progressive with pizazz. Parker the Dem represented Wall Street values and demeanor. Bryan referred to Parker as a “right reactionary” and detested the idea of a Parker nomination for his beloved Democratic Party.
Two-time President Grover Cleveland could have had the nomination in 04 if he had sought it. At times the nomination sought him. Grover finally had to make a firm public statement that he would not be a candidate. Back in 1896 the D-Party renounced him, as punishment for the Panic of 1893 and his stubborn individuality. In 1893 they nominated another Democrat. By now all was forgiven on both sides and the Dems wanted Grover the Good back in the saddle. Cleveland could have been the first three term president, notwithstanding the fact that his terms (1885-1889 then 1893-1897) were not consecutive. But instead Cleveland gave it the LBJ I-won't-try, and the rest of history.
Alton Brooks Parker is probably the most obscure of the men who lost the battle for President of the United States. How obscure is Alton Parker? He is the only also-ran to not have had a single biography written about him. Maybe someone should write a tiny one to rectify that injustice.
Parker was born and raised in Cortland New York. By all accounts he was a likable man with absolute integrity. Alton was also fond of pigs. Parker kept pigs in his house as pets and trained them. He believed them to be the smartest animals on earth and refused to eat them. One of them he named TR and trained it to squeal and stand on his hind legs when he showed it a picture of the President.
AP was chief justice of the New York State Court of Appeals at the time that he ran for President.
The Democratic Convention knighted him on July 6 in St. Louis. He faced a strong opponent for the nomination in William Jennings Bryan. The Cross of Gold guy was battling hard for yet another nomination for president. Bryan was still campaigning against gold while gold was gaining popularity with the rest of the country. Billy out-of-step Bryan was crucifying his chances for the nomination on his cross of gold.
Willaim Randolph Hearst was also in the hunt. The millionaire Democrat had the easiest time distributing his campaign literature, since he owned several of the biggest newspapers in the country. But Hearst wasn't popular enough in the northeast. He was running as a New York Congressman, but everyone knew that he was really a newspaper tyrant from California. He had support in the west and spouted some progressive ideas. Hearst wasn't running on just rhetoric, but he never really had a chance. Hearst's failed bid for the presidency is lampooned viciously in the excellent but nevertheless overrated movie Citizen Kane. The greatest movie of all time? Please.
Parker won the Democratic nomination by a landslide over WJB and WRH.
The Democrats had initially wanted to pick a popular northern liberal Congressman or governor to head the ticket. But there was one little problem. There pretty much weren't any. The Republican Party was so much in ascendancy at this time that the Democrats had to look to the judiciary for candidates if they wanted to run a Northerner. There was now a “solid north” to match the notorious “solid south.” After Hearst was ruled out there wasn't much for the Democrats to pick from.
After he was nominated, Parker made it clear that if he were elected he would support the gold standard and if this policy was not acceptable then he would like his name removed from nomination.
TR won big.
Roosevelt was happy to finally be ‘President in my own right.”
During the campaign the Democrats charged that TR intended to not count his inherited years as a term, and was all but planning to violate the two-term tradition in 1908 if elected in 1904 (but it was ok if Cleveland did it.) Teddy was non-committal on the subject. But as soon as he was confirmed President on November 8, he stated for the record that he would absolutely not run for a third term in 1908.
Teddy ran again in 1912.
Contemporaries and historians alike have raked him over the coals for going back on this pompous pledge. Theodore probably got all caught up in the drama and emotion of winning in 1904 and made this grandiose pledge as a slave to the moment.
Alton Parker went back to private law practice after losing to Teddy Roosevelt on American Idol. The experience of running for the presidency had a negative effect on the remaining years of Parker’s life.
After Parker got toasted in 1904 the Dems in 1908 went back to the genuine liberal Will Bryan – they lost that one to Taft but at least they went down with sincerity.
INAUGURAL IN HIS OWN RIGHT
March 4 1904 provided excellent weather for Teddy's big day.
The star of the show shared the spotlight with his “Rough Riders.” These wild cowboys were the talk of the town as they went about Washington for the first days of March, getting drunk and yahooing up a storm.
The Rough Riders were big on roping. The nights of March 2nd and 3rd they would playfully throw their rope around any black man they saw walking innocently down the street. They'd pull him down and ride him on the dust for a few feet while they all howled with delight. Then they let him go. These were nice white men, these friends of Ted. They didn't have any plans for lynching blacks or depriving them of their voting rights. They just wanted to have a little fun.
On March 4, the Rough Riders were the star of the Inaugural Parade. When they stopped in front of the Presidential reviewing stand they lassoed a common man standing at the front of the viewing line. Again they howled and yii-haaaaed as the innocent guy was dragged through the dusty sidewalk. TR laughed too. At least they proved that their boorish behavior wasn't based on race alone. This pedestrian was white.
INSURANCE SCANDALS
Two famous men are connected intricately with the insurance scandals of 1905. One was famous already and the scandals ended his fame forever. The other was an unknown who became famous for prosecuting the Insurance companies involved.
The already famous guy was named James Hazen Hyde. For the average American in 1905, “Hazey” was as famous as a big movie star is today. Hazen was the son of Henry Hyde, the founder of the mammoth Equitable Life Insurance Company. When HH died in 1899 he left it all, a half a billion dollars worth, to his 23 year old son Jimmy Haze.
Hazen Hyde was a flamboyant lover of all thing French, spent his money liberally, but was never accused of playing the game dishonestly. But outside bankers and other investors convinced him to part with much of his Equitable funds.
The older stockholders in Equitable thought that these new investments were inequitable. They felt that the sound financial policies of the founding father, Henry Hyde were being drained by younger Hyde's foolish dealings with these Wall Street sharks.
In mid 1905 the board of directors had what would be called today an “intervention” with Hazen Hyde. They told him (at some risk for he technically could have fired most of them) that they were unanimous in the belief that Hyde was destroying the company with his new circle of false friends. These outside investments were not only shady, they were against the basic principles of the late Henry Hyde.
Haze was hurt. He knew that he never deliberately did anything wrong. But he had to respect the unanimous verdict, and soon agreed to sell his interest in his father's company for 2.5 million dollars. Hyde took his cash and went off to Paris where he lived out the rest of his life as a American-Franco dandy.
But the outside investors that had been working with Haze still had their claws in much of Equitable business. Can't ship them off to Paris in retirement. These knaves would fight Equitable for every penny on the deals they had already made with the company when it belonged to the silly son.
The New York World newspaper of Joe Pulitzer got a hold of the infighting and began plastering the private squabble on its front pages for all the world to see. The more the World put the flashlight on the insurance battles, the worse it became for the insurance industry in general. These big companies were supposed to have a heart. That's what they were in business for, to help the little guy when there was a disaster or a death in the family. Now it turned out that they were a bunch of well-dressed thugs who wanted to make money by any means fair or foul. Many of the insurance companies had shady investments that had nothing to do with life insurance.
With each passing week the corruption appeared to be more serious. The state of New York decided to prosecute all the insurance snakes to the fullest. They needed a capable and talented prosecutor who was not old enough to have been corrupted along the way.
The man chosen for the job was Charles Evans Hughes, an obscure attorney with a fine reputation both on and off the job.
Hughes made himself quite famous for his work on the insurance cases. He became something of a national hero in this time when, in TR's words, “corruption in business and politics has produced an unhealthy condition of excitement and irritation in the public mind.” Those who led the fight against the giants replaced the giants as heroes. JP Morgan and his kind went from hero to villain in these years, and the Ida Trabells and Charles Hughes of the world became the new heroes. It was a good time to be a powerful muckraker.
Hughes would ride the fame-wagon from the Equitable case all the way to the Democratic nomination for President in 1908.
During the trials it was revealed that stooges were set up to accept fake loans and bonuses in order to funnel funds illegally elsewhere. A “colored messenger” at New York Life was on the books as receiving a loan of 1.4 million dollars! Its safe to say he never saw the dough.
The Republican Party took a big hit in the insurance scandals. Most of the cases of bribery of politicians in exchange for favorable legislation
involved the GOP. The Republican Party accepted large illegal contributions from Prudential, The Mutual, New York Life, and Equitable. In 1904 alone, the total grease money for the Reps was close to 200,000 dollars (and remember, this was back when a dollar could buy a fleet of clipper ships.) Democratic corruption existed too, but the party of choice for slimy “invisible government” was the Republican. Four out of five millionaires preferred the Party of Lincoln just as much in 1904 as they do today.
So New York Life doctored its books with false expenditures to cover up insider payola. Their famous advertisement slogan is “New York Life, The company you keep.” More like “The company you keep your eye on.”
PANAMA CANAL
In the case of Panama we get what amounts to a virtual free space on the playing board for the Blame America First group. Few history books even dare to suggest today the the United States was not completely the big bully bad guy in the acquisition of the Panama Canal. Sean Hannity would be hard pressed to defend the flag on this one.
Basically the USA robbed Columbia of it's legitimate ownership of the Panama Canal by instigating a revolution in the Columbian province of Panama and making it a new nation. That new nation was a US creation so naturally puppet Panama cut Teddy a sweetheart deal which robbed Columbia blind. Columbia got a taste of raw Teddy Roosevelt turn-of-the-century jingoism.
There is some validity to this version. The United States did give Columbia a lousy offer for the Canal, but that was not the same as stealing it from them. TR and the USA did not actually incite the Panamanian revolution either.
America was the imperialist, but when all the complexities are explained, its guilt is not so boldfaced and dirty, but more the product of expedience and the unique set of circumstances.
TR USED THE D WORD
Now before we go any further there is something I have to tell you about Teddy Roosevelt, because the liberal historians are going to save it up as the big dirt and they're going to toss it in from the sidelines just at the moment when you're wondering who is the bad guy. I'm going to tell you the fact up front and center just so they can't sneak it up on you with a decisive blow when you're standing shaky after reading some other bad stuff about America.
Here it is.
In a private letter to a friend, a letter not meant for publication in an era before e-mails, and when people still had a reasonable expectation of privacy, TR did a very bad thing. He was in the middle of some negotiations with Venezuela over something and he wrote to his friend that he “would teach those Dagos some manners.”
There you have it. The President used the 'D' word in a private letter. Dago was a racial epithet commonly used by Caucasians in his time. D is considered by this current generation to be one of the worst words of the world. I never used this word except when the Red Sox baseball team had a pitcher named Dick Drago and I made the older kids laugh by accidentally asking them, “Who pitched today, was it Dick Dago?” I was trying to catch them by surprise and practice for a career in stand-up comedy, but it wasn't said out of white supremacy. As a bitter racial slur I never used Dago in my life. In the last five minutes I've used it at this typewriter more than I had ever used it collectively in my 56 years on the planet.
But in any case, it is a bad word in the world of now, and the statute of limitations never expires on presentism. So Teddy Roosevelt is proven to be a very bad man because a letter was found several years after he died in 1919 in which he used that word when he was exasperated from his dealings with the Venezuelans.
The liberal historians never fail to bring that up, that he did this terrible thing, used that word. But they never tell you up front. They save it up for the right moment when they throw it in, as though this proves that America is bad. President Roosevelt robbed Columbia because he was a racist!
It doesn't matter that the Hispanics South of the border called US whites 'gringoes' or that Chinese people considered all foreigners to be racially inferior, or that the Japanese called the Chinese and Koreans “chinks” and coined the word. What matters is that Teddy said it.
HE TOOK PANAMA
“I took Panama.” That was the brag of the big mouth TR a few years after it all settled down. He was speaking at an after dinner engagement. His boast helped the claim of Columbia that it had been robbed of Panama. With the help of his loose lips, the USA soon paid Columbia $25 million dollars to settle their claims. “I took Panama” was something of an admission that the USA had been in the wrong.
For many reasons the victory in the Spanish-American War created an imperative for imperialism. The United States was now a two-ocean power and to maintain its international empire, the long anticipated 'canal across a continent' absolutely had to be built and built soon. The US was now both a Pacific and a Caribbean power. Cuba was almost an American protectorate. The Philippines was a far Pacific possession. Coaling stations had to be secured and set up for global naval operations. The possibility of war in Europe could open up endless troublesome possibilities for the United States, considering that most major European countries had their own possessions in the far Pacific.
During the Spanish American War the long voyage of the battleship Oregon brought home to the public the need for a canal. The great ship left Puget Sound to join the conflict off of Southern Cuba. But it had to travel all the way around the lower tip of South America. It took the Oregon 98 days to reach Cuba and by then it was too late to help out. The newspapers gave a lot of ink to the embarrassing net result of the slow boat to China that was the Oregon.
By 1901 the Central American canal was more than just a progressive dream, it was a matter of national security.
The whole world wanted a canal across the isthmus of Central America. The Suez Canal had opened for commerce and travel in 1869. More than 30 years later there was still no canal across the Americas.
There was an unfinished failed attempt to build a canal. A French company had put millions into building a canal across Panama. But the project ran out of money and hundreds of workers died of malaria. There was no political support to rescue the mission. The canal was sitting, only about one-third finished, in the middle of the overgrowing Panamanian jungle, hard to even see in part from all the neglect.
The private concern that tried to build the canal was the 1st edition of the PCC, the Panama Canal Company. The owners of PCC stock will have a key role in the story of the creation of the Republic of Panama and the American seizure of the Canal Zone.
The French had dropped out of the canal sweepstakes, leaving the field to Britain and America. Britain and the US had long ago signed the Clayton Bulwar Treaty which gave each nation a guarantee that neither side would try to build it or own it alone.
In the meantime the PCC out of France still owned the rights to build the canal in Panama. The PCC owned the lease from Columbia which was the nation that ruled the province of Panama. A Parisian named Phillip Bunau-Varilla had organized a company to take over the bankrupt PCC and reincorporate a second PCC. This second PCC had no realistic hope of building the canal in Panama. The PCC II instead hoped to sell the concession rights to the United States.
An American lawyer named Nellie Cromwell helped represent the PCC's case in the United States. He bagged $800,000 to promote it.
Dr. Phillip Bunau-Varilla had been to Ohio in 1901 where he met with Mark Hanna, then meeting in DC with President McKinley. Bunau-Varilla gave President McKinley a pamphlet that promoted the virtues of a Panamanian Canal. By the time he steamed back to Paris, “Vanilla” had Hannah and McKinley in his pocket.
When TR was VP the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty was drafted, which would replace Clayton-B. By the new and improved terms, HP would grant the United States the right to build the canal and own it outright too. The US would have to agree to keep the canal open to all nations and to not charge different toll prices according to who was friends or foe. The rest of the civilized world didn't want to let the United States run its canal the way it ran its railroads.
But the US Senate kept adding reservations and conditions to the HPT until it became unworkable and could not pass the legislatures of either country. The key issues were whether the new canal would be fortified and whether it would be open to all nation in times of both peace and war. A completely new edition of the treaty was drawn up for consideration and was close to fruition at the time TR took office. This time the USA would be allowed to fortify its new canal if it could build it.
The US and the UK agreed to the second version of the HPT on November 18, 1901. It was better to the US than the first treaty, but better to the UK than the amended version of the first one resubmitted by the Senate. It still required ratification. The Boer War helped out.
In 1901 England was caught up in its Boer War in South Africa and needed all the international support it could get. For a little US good will, Britain was willing to let go of Clayton-Bulwer. Besides, if the US could do the digging, seafaring England could benefit immensely. Its a lot easier to visit someone else's swimming pool than to maintain your own.
Mark Hannah urged all Republicans to vote for the new treaty. He told them to “stop Pauncefooting around.” The Congress ratified Hay-Pauncefote on Dec 4.
Hay-Pauncefote was a boon to the British navy and British foreign policy. Britain was now free to pull its warships from the Caribbean and send them on imperialism protection missions elsewhere. Let the USA do most of its work for it in the Canal area and on the high West Indian seas. It was a reversal of the way the US navy had been exploiting the British Navy since the conclusion of the War of 1812.
The Brits needed the naval assistance. They were not only bogged down in the Transvaal, they knew that a big showdown was coming with Germany at some point in the not too distant future. The King and the Parliament wanted to begin some contraction of its globally spread resources for the ‘big one’ coming soon.
The Boer War also helped the United States out in Alaska too. England had wanted territorial concession in the British Columbia/Alaska border region in exchange for letting go of Clayton-Bulwer. But that pesky Boer War albatross convinced them to drop this condition. England was hoping to court the US as an ally in Asia and didn’t want any sparks among friends over Alaska, any more than over the canal. The USA can thank the Boers for the Alaskan panhandle.
With Hay-Pauncefote ratified it was time for the “battle of the routes.” Influential lobbies favored Nicaragua as a superior route, especially with two large lakes helping out along the trail. Others favored Panama. The PCC desperately favored Panama. If the US built in Nicaragua, the PCC would be left holding the bag on a bad investment. The PCC had failed to find any funding in France for continuing the big dig.
In December of 1901 a commission, originally appointed by McKinley, came to a conclusion. This “Isthmian Canal Commission” chose Nicaragua. By the end of 1902, the US Senate had by an official vote endorsed Nicaragua as the site of a new canal. Senator J.T. Morgan of Alabama scorned the Panama route. “Panama made the French sick to their stomachs, almost as much as they make me sick to mine,” he cracked. Morgan also didn't trust the PCC. He said that Nelson Cromwell, a lawyer for the PCC, had lied to him about how the PCC had thousands of workers going full-tilt on the project as they spoke when they had first tried to “pawn off the concession” in 1899. There was, of course, no work going on at all at the time.
But TR wanted to keep his options open. He addressed the Congress in December 1902 about the hope for an “isthmian canal.” But he didn't mention Nic by name. Privately he called Senator Morgan “a yahoo.” Later it was revealed that Cromwell had bribed the Republican Party with a large contribution of $60,000, a bribe to change the wording in the Roosevelt Message to Congress of December 1902. Nelson Cromwell billed the PCC for his bribe.
The problem for America was the price the PCC set for the rights to the Panamanian route. PCC decided that $109 million was a fair price for the rights to build in Panama. US engineers estimated that it would cost $190 million to build the canal in Nicaragua, but that a route through Panama would be a bit less expensive, perhaps $145 million. The savings of building in Panama would be negated by the extra $109 million the US would have to pay the PCC. At 109 plus 145, the Panama route would be decidedly more expensive than the 190 it would cost to build in Nicaragua. The ICC estimated that the rights to the Panamanian concession was worth $40 million at the most.
Bunau-Varilla went in haste to the see Marcus Bo, the President of the PCC. he said, “Bo, you've got to think fast. $40 million makes the Panama route a little cheaper for the US to build in Panama by $5 million. Do the math. If we ask for any more than $40 the US will just say no and we'll be stuck with a concession that no one wants anymore. As soon as they start digging in Nicaragua, we are toast.”
The famous “we are toast” line convinced the PCC to lower their price from 109 to 40 million. But the USA was undecided. There was still a lot of D.C. lobbying activity for the Nic route. Bo, Cromwell, and the Vanilla-man worked hard for the PCC, but they had competitors in the field.
Phillip Bauna-Varilla stepped in with his “volcano plan.” And it worked. Philip had stressed throughout 1901 that the Nicaraguan route was dangerous. There were many active volcanoes in Nicaragua, he warned. He pointed out that the Nicaraguan government had drawings of volcanoes on its postage stamps. It was like modern sports teams that name themselves after disasters (The Chicago Fire and the Worcester Tornadoes to name two.) The Nicaraguan government had embraced the volcano problem as a badge of honor.
Then mother nature intervened on behalf of the PCC. On May 6, 1902 Mount Pelee erupted on an island in the Caribbean. The city of St. Pierre was destroyed.
There were 28,000 people living in St Pierre and two ships docked in the harbor. Only one man on land or water survived the eruption. He was a prisoner in solitary confinement in a cell two stories underground. Rescuers found him three days later and he became a circus freak at the Barnum and Bailey for the next two decades. (There was one other survivor, a farmer on the outskirts of the city that ran away just in time, but I don't count him.)
One week later came the finishing blow for the Nic route. Mount Momotombo also erupted. And this time it wasn't a volcano on a Caribbean island. MM was the most famous volcano in, you guessed it, Nicaragua.
Serendipity!
Phillip Bunau-Varilla quickly went to every poindexter stamp collector in Washington and was able to dig up no less than ninety Nicaraguan postage stamps that included a drawing on Mount Monotumbo on them. He mailed one stamp to each United States senator with the appropriate note warning of the dangers to an American canal project in Nicaragua.
On June 5, 1902 Senator Dollar Mark Hannah made a crucial speech in the Capitol in favor of a Panamanian canal route.
This led to the passage of the Spooner Act of June 25, 1902. By this act the US government officially changed its mind and endorsed a canal route through Panama. 'The Spoon' appropriated $40 million for the Panama payoff and authorized Roosevelt to negotiate with Columbia directly for a new concession. Spooner also allowed the US the right to change its mind back to Nicaragua if arrangements could not be satisfactorily worked out in Panama within a reasonable time frame.
Over the rest of 1902, Bunau-Varilla continued to work hard for the Panama location. TR was flexible enough to scare BV into trying to scare the leaders of Columbia. Philippie wrote to President Marroqin of Columbia that Roosevelt was becoming impatient and may switch to Panama. “I'm not saying that the USA is offering you a great deal,” he quilled. “They are not. But it's the only one they're going to offer. Otherwise they will probably build in Nicaragua and your country will not have gained a peso. “
Enter JB Moore. Professor John Bassett Moore of Columbia wrote an interesting letter to Theodore Roosevelt. Moore had examined the treaty that the US had made with Columbia back in 1846. Back then Columbia was known as New Grenada.
According to Moore's interpretation of international law and the wording of the 1846 treaty, the United States had a perfect legal right to march right into Panama and start building, with or without Columbian permission, and with or without payments to Columbia.
That sounded like a pretty good deal as far as Teddy was concerned.
With Moore's advice for justification, TR made his decision. He was going to take Panama by sending in the engineers and laborers and equipment with the protection of the US Army and Navy. He wasn't planning on declaring war on Columbia, and he wasn't plotting for a Panamanian revolution. He was planning on marching to the Isthmus of Panama and starting to build. Columbia would not dare intervene in force. They didn't have the muscle.
So later on, when a Panamanian Revolution did take place, Roosevelt was actually a bit disappointed. He was planing on showing some real leadership and defiance in this manner. A coup plot instead handed the Canal Zone over to him. This is getting ahead of the story, but it is important because there is the leftist myth of American history that TR was behind the Panamanian revolution and part of an lowlife American plot, a CIA black-op before these terms existed.
Historians generally scoff at Moore's loose interpretation of the words in the treaty of 1846 that supposedly justified a planned mass Seabee intervention on the Isthmus. You decide. The Treaty of 1846 stipulated that,
“The right of way across the Isthmus of Panama shall be
free and open to the Government and citizens of the United
States.”
This was article 35 of the Treaty, and it applied,
“to any modes of communication that now exist, or
that may be hereafter constructed.”
The Professor from Columbia knew how to handle Columbia. TR invited Moore to his Oyster Bay L.I. summer white house for large and small talk. Moore persuaded one or two of Roosevelts closer advisors, and failed to convince one or two others. Since TR was a majority of one at all times, Moore's plan was adopted.
HAY-HERRAN
The US Senate ratified the infamous “Hay-Herran” Treaty on January 22, 1903. But the name says a lot. It should have been titled the Hay-Concha Treaty.
The Columbian foreign minister in Washington was not a man named Herran, but a man named Concha. Jose Concha was trying to negotiate the deal for Columbia late in 1902. But Concha refused to even consider signing the new treaty as the representative of Columbia. There were too many offensive new clauses in the treaty violating the sovereignty of his nation. The HH treaty specifically forbade Columbia to hit the PCC up for any of its $40 million buyout from the United States for route rights. Also, the new treaty included extra-legal status for Americans in the canal zone. This meant that an American who committed a murder in the canal zone against a Columbian citizen would be tried on Columbian soil, but in American courts.
Concha penned a few angry notes to Secretary John Hay, then picked up his soccer ball and went home. Jose requested that Bogata relieve him of his duties and call him home. This was granted and it was Concha's deputy, Harry Herran, who signed the treaty for Columbia on January 22. Even Herran was miserable about it, but Hay was sending notes to President Marroqin indicating that if he did not make this deal, the US would immediately start digging up the dirt in Nicaragua. Herran felt that he had no choice but to sign. Marroqin felt he had no choice but to tell his acting foreign minister Concha to “si, sign senor.”
The US would pay Columbia $10 million for a six-mile wide strip of land from the Caribbean to the Pacific. The USA would pay an additional $250,000 annually to the Columbian treasury.
But the treaty would not go into effect until both nations ratified it. The Columbian Senate unanimously rejected the Hay-Herran Treaty on August 12, 1903. This was a mistake.
The Columbians most of all wanted a major slice of the $40 million that the USA was paying to the PCC. The Columbos felt they were entitled to some of it. Maybe they had a good argument. But that was the deal TR had made with the PCC and all is not always fair in love and business negotiations. It was what it was, fair or unfair. By late 1903 it was too late for Columbia to get in on the PCC 40. If Columbia had been more wide-awake about the $40 million and their entitlement to a cut of it from a much earlier date, TR might have negotiated with the PCC with a Columbian slice involved. But once he cut his deal with the PCC he would brook no after-the-contract adjustments. To him this was of contract and dishonorable. To later historians it meant American treachery and robbery. To TR is was “blackmail.” He had his point too. The deal was already cut.
Roosevelt considered this to be extortion and a swindling of the PCC out of its rightful business profits. He wrote angrily to Hay that “They are mad to get hold of the $40,000,000 of the Frenchmen.” He called them a lot of names including one which never existed before or since. “I've had it with those cat-rabbits!” No one could find such a term in any dictionary, but no one dared to tell him, or else they might get called a rat-squirrel.
Columbia also hoped by voting down the HH treaty to filibuster the eventual settlement treaty. They knew that the PCC concession would expire in late 1904 and reasoned they would then be entitled to the entire 40 million. It didn't really sink in for them that rejecting the treaty could turn the project back to Nicaragua, or that a Panamanian revolution was in the works and that Columbia would get net zero.
Historians are quick to demean the stockholders of the PCC who were getting the $40 million from the United States for their concession. There is even some mystery as to who actually got the money. J.P. Morgan ended up handling the transaction and distributed the funds to the PCC. Some historians say that the US should have taken half of their money and given it to Columbia. Those stockholders were no good swindlers. After all, the concession was originally negotiated with Columbia by the first PCC.
If somehow the PCC was made up of 20 million laborers from Europe and America who each had a single share of $2, then historians to this day would be saying that Roosevelt was right in sticking to his guns. Columbia had no right to sign a deal and then say “wait a minute, we want some of that $40 million PCC concession. That would mean that Columbia was robbing from the poor after a deal was made. Bit since the PCC was made up of a lot of untoward rich speculators then the Columbians had every right to reject the treaty on the grounds of wanting a fair slice of the PCC 40. To hell with the rich. Damn their investment and the agreed terms of the payoff. Give some of the $40 million to Columbia.
But the historian doesn't have his word of honor on the line as an individual while sitting in judgement a hundred years later. Theodore Roosevelt did have his on the line at that moment, in an era where word of honor was everything and business deals were rough news as a matter of course. Theodore had negotiated American government money with private businessmen and he didn't feel that the $40 million being paid to the PCC was up for renegotiating. Roosevelt felt that the Columbians reneged on an honest deal. He was right on personal principles. But in terms of international law, Columbia was well within bounds. It had the right to reject the treaty. But it should have known whom it was dealing with and how he would feel about them changing their minds.
President Marroqin was in a bad spot. He could either support a treaty that his entire legislative branch was dead set against, or he could reject it and get blamed for losing the canal revenue entirely.
In the middle of the dilemma the Panamanian revolution erupted and settled the problem,
TR did not foment the Panama rebellion. The United States didn't even start it. Uncle Sam didn't even finance it! But once it started TR and USA jumped in and made sure it succeeded.
Phil Bunau-Varilla was the real instigator here. It was his money, his American lawyer free-booter Norm Cromwell, and a Panamanian independence movement that was already in place that busted Panama free.
There had been rebel groups trying to get Panama to secede from Columbia for some time. Now it became expedient for the USA to help them. The United States didn't foment the rebellion. It already there.
This Cromwell fellow had been to see TR during the summer of 1903. They had personal talks in Washington. What it was about was never recorded by either man, but TR later claimed that the possibility of a revolution in Panama, assisted and supported by the United States was never discussed. He wrote with carefully chosen words later on that “I do not remember his speaking to me about the revolution until after it occurred.” Plausible denial and legal-speak worthy of Bill Clinton. In fact, TR said he didn't recall if he had even met with Cromwell in the summer of 1903. “I'm not saying I didn't, I'm just saying I don't recall. If I did, I don't know if we even discussed events in Panama.”
Sounds like the guy's lying.
Two American military officers in civilian clothes, Murphy and Humphrey were drifting around Colon and Panama City in mid 1903 assessing the logistics of the region in case a military operation became necessary. They also analyzed the political climate, reporting back that the Columbian Army in Panama was hungry and behind on pay. Columbian troops had poor morale and could easily be bribed into looking the other way or even helping out actively in a Panama revolt. The Humphrey-Murphy team offered to help lead a revolution in Panama for $100,000 each plus a military position. TR told them to “get over yourselves” but thanked them for their report.
In September 1903 Bunau-Varilla arrived in New York from Paris and set up Panama Revolution headquarters in room 1162 of the Waldorf Astoria. From here he would plan, hatch, and launch the Panamanian revolution. A local Panamanian visionary who wanted to lead the revolt joined Phillip in 1162. Dr. Manny Amdor Guererro could serve as the puppet ruler.
Bunau-Varilla would supply the money on the condition that he be made the first Panamanian Ambassador to the United States. “But you're not even Panamanian,” protested Guererro, “Don't you think that could be a problem?”
“Hey Guererro,” snapped Bunau-Varilla, “You want the money or not?”
The point was taken. Panama had to include a big job appointment for Phil. When Guererro left 1162, Bunau-V was so happy he actually went home to his wife and had her design and stitch a new flag that very night for the new nation as yet unborn. He was mad when later on Panama picked a new design from some native artisan.
All these plans were made as the first World Series was being played between the Pirates and Red Sox in October 1903. The other games were being staged at the Waldorf. They were set to be played on November 3, 1903 which just happened to be Election Day in the United States. The country would be distracted while the big news came from Panama.
The Panamanian revolution began on November 3, 1903. By March 1904 all of the Latin American states had recognized Panamanian independence; all, of course, except for Columbia.
While the USA did not create the Panamanian revolt, it encouraged it and protected it. US warships prevented Columbia from suppressing the revolt, which it would have undoubtedly been capable of doing.
The United States recognized the new Panama Republic in a New York minute and then, what a surprise, Panama granted the US new terms for the Canal that were even more generous than what Columbia had been prepared to offer. The money would be the same, and Panama did not want a cut of the 40 million of the PCC. This time the strip of land owned and operated by the USA would be ten, not six miles wide.
Digging began soon and the Canal opened for traffic in August of 1914, just in time for the First World War.
The leftorians usually forget to mention that Panama had displayed signs of rumbling rebellion for years before 1903. Panama had the potential to break away and become a new nation even if the Panama Canal had never been contemplated.
Columbia troops sent to suppress the rebellion were not only blocked by American forces, they were bribed. Entire units were paid $50 per man in gold coin to look the other way and whistle as the revolution succeeded. The very fact that entire units of soldiers could be bribed is proof that the Columbian hold on Panama was tenuous to begin with. No nation with a modicum of military élan would suffer such an embarrassment, not if the colony of Panama meant anything to the heart of the average Columbian. An individual could always be bribed, but entire units of 50 to 100 men betraying their own flag would indicate that the cause was not just, just as when GI's killed their sergeants in Vietnam, proving it a no good war. When one guy kills his own sergeant, it is murder. When an entire platoon kills the sarge, its a political measuring stick. The same with Panama. If the US was a evil as the historians say, it is hard to imagine entire units of Columbian troops so easily bribed.
The US payment of $25 million more to Columbia under President Harding was an admission of guilt. But TR would have built the Canal without giving Columbia a nickel if Panama revolution had no changed his plans. He didn't incite the revolution.
How culpable was the USA in all of this? Plenty. But the $40 million dollar ruse by the Columbians is what cost them their colony and their canal tolls.
The Blame America First crowd always chalks up the Panama Canal as a clear example of the bad Sam. Jimmy Carter returned the Canal to the Panama government early in his administration. It was a national liberal apology. The Canal was a hot button issue in the election campaign of 1976 and even hotter in 1980 when Reagan constantly hammered away at Carter for “giving away the Panama Canal.”
If Columbia had simply ratified the Hay-Herran treaty of 1903 they could have kept the Canal Zone, kept the state of Panama, and would have made $12,500,000 over the coarse of the first ten years of Canal operations. Columbia could have renegotiated the treaty and made even more money down the road. But by being greedy, they provoked a gang of diabolical stockholders in Europe, their fearless leader Phillip Bunau-Varilla, the Panamanian rebels, and the pugnacious US president, Theodore Roosevelt.
Roosevelt probably understood that Columbia had a right to reject the treaty. Some historians seem to imply that he wasn't even aware of the legal right of Columbia to reject the treaty.
TR also probably understood that part of the American justice system included the sanctity of private contract, a sanctity that was established long ago in the famous Supreme Court Dartmouth case. The PCC $40 million deal was both a public and a private contract. It was a public contract by the United States government made with a private concern, the New Panama Canal Company. TR was enraged because his private contract had been embarrassed.
The real problem was the math between the PCC the Nicaraguan construction costs and the Panama construction cost. The margin of error was so precise that if Columbia asked the US for more money, as it did, suggesting in mid-1903 its preferred figures of $15 million up front - $600,000 a year in rent instead of the proffered 250, the net cost of Nicaragua would then seem like the preferable route all over again.
THE ROOSEVELT COROLLARY 1904
In the aftermath of the Venezuelan debts crisis, Roosevelt proposed a sort of amendment to the Monroe Doctrine to prevent a repeat of any further such troubles.
With the Panama Canal the United States had become, for the first time in its history, a Caribbean power. The US wanted to make sure that European powers did not threaten the lines of communication to the canal by taking over strategic islands or other spots in the area.
Now even collection of debts could not be settled by foreign force. The message to Congress of 1902 in which TR specifically authorized European powers to collect debts by force was officially revoked and replaced with a more bully policy on December 6, 1904 in a firm message to Congress. In a case of bad debts in need of solution south of the border, it would be the United States alone that would take on the role of the international police.
This came to be known as the ‘Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.’ It was big stick diplomacy, my way or the highway. If anyone were going to be an imperialist in this hemisphere, it would be the USA and only the USA. While working for a balance of power in the Far East, America was working against it close to home. The United States would rule the Philippines, taking over 15,000 islands 15,000 miles away from another conquerer, but no one else could bring a gunboat into America's private hemisphere.
TR applied the TR Corollary in short order to The Dominican Republic which was heavily in debt to the great Euros and unable to satisfactorily pay up. Under threat of force the Dominican government ‘invited’ the US in to help out. In late 1904 the Dominican debt went to arbitration, and the US ended up taking over collections of customs duties at Puerto Plata where I once had a fine vacation. American bankers took over the customs houses and began allotting payments to European nations, while negotiating the bill down to a degree that made Dominican financial solvency at least a visible dream.
The US gave 45 percent of the Dominican customs duties to the Dominican government and the rest went towards the Dominican IOU of $22 million to France, Germany, Belgium, and Spain.
The big stick clubbed the Caribbean elsewhere. Political turmoil in 1906 Cuba inspired Roosevelt to send in troops to restore order. They stayed until 1909.
RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR/TREATY OF PORTSMOUTH 1905
Japan and Russia went to war in the Far East in 1904. I had a knock down drag out argument with a Russian cab driver in Boston one day who insisted that the Russo-Japanese War had started in 1903, and that I was “an ignoramus” for insisting that it started in 1904.
The object of the Russo-Japanese War war was Korea.
The contest from 1894 to 1910 between Japan, China and the European powers over the Korean and Manchurian regions is as complex as it is fascinating (to me, anyway.) At the center of it all was the mountainous peninsula of Korea, situated like a dagger in the heart of the crossroads of the northern Far East. Korea is in fact, so mountainous that if it were flattened out, it would cover three fourths of the land area of earth. Why the United States stuck its nosy head into the middle of this awful quagmire is an interesting question. Were American vital interests really at stake? There was no significant trade money coming out of there, no allies, and the road there traversed precipitous lines of communications.
No, the United States did not.
US involvement in this period from 1894 to 1914 led directly to needless participation in three Asian wars, World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Each journey begins with a single step and each minor commitment today leads to major commitments tomorrow. TR, in the Philippines, and in his mediation in the Russo-Japanese War, personally made the US a Pacific power and dragged his country into three wars.
China had nominal suzerainty (always a tricky word to spell and pronounce) over Korea, but no one respected it. It was a fiction. China was so weak in spite of its large size that its main purpose in life was to sit like a paralyzed elephant while 70 jackals took bites out of its sides all the day and night. The emperor of China in 1904 was Henry Pu Yi. He was four years old. A cute kid but not much of a ruler. That should say about all you need to know about China's weakness. A baby ruled it.
Russia had already occupied part of Chinese Manchuria. Japan had defeated China in the Sino-Japanese War, taking its own slice of Korea. The British had occupied ports on the central Chinese east coast following two unjust wars of aggression. The French had taken China's southern border area and Indochina, replacing China as overlords of the Vietnamese. Germany was eager for its slice of the cake and was playing diplomatic games to play off its enemies and open up a beachhead. Portugal occupied the island of Macao. Even Ecuador took control of two Chinese ports. All right, I made that one up, but things were almost that pathetic for China.
Japan meanwhile was the hot team on the rise. After centuries of foolish isolationism, Japan had finally decided to join in the 2,000 year old game of conquer thy enemy for no reason at all. Conquest is good. What were we thinking before?
But the Europeans had too much experience and too much to lose to passively permit upstart Japan to join the big leagues. After Japan whipped China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894, the Europeans got together and forced Japan to give back most of the territorial conquests. This caused great resentment in Japan towards the Europeans and gave the islanders incentive to launch another war as soon as an opportunity presented itself. The wounded pride after a victory (a rare combo) also increased Japan’s military desires to dangerous proportions.
As the 20th century kicked in, both Russia and Japan wanted to either occupy or control the Korean peninsula. Korea was still nominally under Chinese overlordship, a play to amuse the international community.
Push came to shove in February of 1904. With war clouds on the horizon the Japanese launched a sneak attack, without a declaration of war, on the Russian Fleet at Port Arthur. Japanese torpedo boats slipped into the harbor just before dawn and sank several Russian battleships at their moorings. In two hours the balance of power in the Korean nexus changed in favor of Japan. The significance of the Port Arthur attack in the context of the later Pearl Harbor is obvious. (blame gamer 20-20 hindsight critics of FDR claim that US military intelligence should have learned their lesson from Port Arthur and anticipated the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor)
For the next two years Russia and Japan slugged it out on Chinese territory to see which predator would control Korea. The Japanese army invested the key city of Mukden for months. When Mukden fell, the war was pretty much over.
Russia had one last throw of the dice when it sent its great European battle fleet around the world to join the fracas. The world's newspapers followed the progress of the Russian fleet as is circled the globe to meet its destiny.
When the Russian fleet entered the straights of Tsushima the Japanese fleet was waiting and ready. In the naval gunfight the Tsar's fleet was completely destroyed by the Japanese navy. The Battle of Tsushima Straights was the most one-sided naval battle of all time. Every Russian ship was sunk and the Japanese weren’t hit with a single Russian round of fire.
For the Tsar's boys it was time to sue for peace. The Germans offered to mediate but the Japanese were not much interested in German involvement since Germany was one of the predatory European powers competing with Japan for exploitation and conquest of China. So when Teddy Roosevelt offered to help mediate the peace, both sides agreed.
The plenipotentiaries from both sides met with Mr. Roosevelt at a hotel in Portsmouth New Hampshire. I played there last summer. It had been closed and boarded up for years, but has undergone a slick rebirth.
Japan had won the war but agreed at Portsmouth to take a modest bag of territorial rewards considering the scope of its victory.
For his noble efforts Teddy Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. A warmonger won a peace prize named after the inventor of dynamite.
The USA gained nothing for its meditative efforts, unless you count the long-term enmity of the Japanese people. The USA lost two potential allies because both sides had reason to be mad. TR had more or less taken the side of the Japanese in the war and so the Russians already resented the US for that. Now the Japanese were mad at Sam for denying them the spoils of a glorious war. The only winner in the entire Treaty of Portsmouth was the ego of Teddy Roosevelt, and that was already big enough that it didn’t need any help, and insatiable enough that the prize didn’t make a darned bit of difference. He would only be happy when he became officially proclaimed King of the World, with a banner behind his throne that says “What I say goes.” I think we all know a few people like that.
Now I'm going to tell you a dynamite story about the Nobel Peace Prize.
This one's gonna blow you away.
The Nobel Peace Prize is named after the inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel. It's something like the Ribbentrop Diplomacy Prize.
Millionaire munitions manufacturer Alfred Nobel was aghast one day to pick up the paper and read that he had died! The false rumor had reached print. The false reported was bad enough, but what really hurt Al's feelings was that his obituaries were not that flattering. They wrote only of the man who had invented dynamite, and the rest wasn’t particularly kind either.
So Al used his new lease on life to fix his legacy. Nobel set aside millions to establish a prize in his name for the person who did the most to promote peace.
PORTSMOUTH BACKLASH OF JAPANESE ENMITY
The dominant foreign policy obsession of the TR administration during 1907 was fear of war with Japan. The settlement of Portsmouth had backfired on Teddy's Nobel Peace Prize. Soon it seemed he would be staring at his peace prize on the mantle while a war between Japan and the United States was going full tilt. He had ended one war by instigating the beginning of another.
The Japanese government knew a little more than the Japanese people about the situation in the Far East when the United States was mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese conflict. It was true that Japan had won a complete naval victory at Tsushima over the Russian fleet. It was true that Japan had also won the war on Manchurian land, for now. But in the long run, most experts understood that Russia could pour a great deal of manpower into the Manchurian theatre, and could easily regain the offensive there. It was also true that Japan was busted financially from the war and if Tokyo ordered a new military offensive, the money might not be there.
So Japan was able to pretend at Portsmouth that it was in the driver's seat when it really wasn't. The Japanese people believed in a victor's peace. But TR mediated a peace of compromise. The Japanese leaders were perfectly willing to agree to a compromise peace that they actually desperately needed, while at the same time allowing the Japanese people to think they were being ripped off by the round eyes.
There were riots in Japan against United States property in Japan. A legation was attacked and some Americans were beat up. All because TR had brokered a peace settlement. No good deed goes unpunished.
There was the California problem making things much worse. Racists in California were passing laws discriminating against Japanese immigrants. They had to get out of public California schools and go to special “Oriental” schools where they could be instructed, along with Chinese and Koreans.
In 1906 trouble in the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea spiked the tensions between the two countries. The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom had already been through plenty of hot water over these cold waters and the seals that swam there. Pelagic seal hunting was outlawed by treaty in the late 1800's. Now, in 1906, Japanese fisherpersons were killing seals once again in the Pribilofs. Angry notes were exchanged between TR and Japan. Theodore ordered the US navy to full alert. The fleet was outfitted for a trip to the far east. Students at Berkeley staged a protest rally against Roosevelts threatening moves towards a possible war. They were chanting “No blood for seals.”
Germany throughout 1907 began to spread stories about Japanese plans for war against the United States. A confidential letter from the Kaiser to TR spelled it out explicitly. Willy told Teddy that his agents in Mexico were observing thousands of sleeper agent Japanese laborers. They were obviously up to no good and his agents could see their brass buttons barely hidden under their laborer ponchos. Germany was estimating at least 10,000 Japanese soldiers in Mexico preparing to attack the United States when the order arrived.
German diplomats in various embassies around the world kept spreading these stories and more. Japan was going to attack the Panama Canal from both sides. Japan was going to seize Hawaii and the Philippines. TR took these stories seriously. Why shouldn't he? They weren't coming from some radical writer in a Bavaria college newspaper. They were part of letters in the Kaiser's own handwriting. Not easy to blow this one off.
Even many English observers were predicting an attack by Japan against the United States and the feeling was prevalent that Japan would probably win.
A second hand report by US General Bell came from St Petersburg. Apparently a Japanese envoy had became a little drunk on sake and had let his innermost feelings slip out. The sake laden Japanese diplomat had said, “San Francisco will see the day when she will wish that she had perished bodily in that earthquake. I tell you we will make a Japanese colony of California and of the Pacific Coast, Alaska included.”
Roosevelt decided on a show of naval force to let the Japanese know that “I am not afraid of them.” He organized a fleet around four of the newest battleships and sent it on a pleasure trip around the world, just for the exercise and experience. Oh by the way, make sure you stop off at Japan and say hello to them in the tradition of Matt Perry in 1854.
Roosevelt was wising up to the Achilles heel of the Philippines. TR began asking about if were not possible to give the Philippines their complete independence soon. The international community could collectively guarantee Phillipine territorial integrity and the United States would be freed from this trip-wire that could bring on a war with Japan. The United States could still maintain its typical clause that it could return whenever necessary to preserve order. So the USA could get out with an option to get back in and another option to stay out, whichever is expedient. Nothing came of it, but the Roosevelt letters on the Philippines proves that the decision to keep them is what led to World War II in the Pacific in 1941. Keep the Philippines in 1901-2 created new security commitments in the Far East that the USA had never known before and it did lead to Guadalcanal and Nagasaki, no doubt about it. Now America needed a string of island coaling stations to keep the lines of communication open to the little far easter empire, and the Philippines were smack dab in the middle of the Japanese lake. Japan wanted the US out of their water-world and this quagmire led directly to Pearl Harbor.
The US battle fleet visited Tokyo in October 1908. The Japanese were most cordial towards their American visitors. In fact the tone of the Japanese officials towards US naval officers convinced the TR administration that the rumors of an impending attack against the United States were unfounded. The Japanese war scare of 1907 was history.
PROGRESSIVISM GOES WITH THE FLO 1905
A Progressive reporter/writer named Florence Kelly wrote an influential book describing the awful condition of children in the workplace. The first abuse was that the children were in the workplace in the first place. Child labor was routine in TR's time. Millions of children across the USA were in dangerous, demanding, low paying, dead-end jobs. By 1900 almost one in five children under fourteen in America was employed, most of them full time in horrible factories that no adult would work in today for a week without successfully suing the company. 1.7 million little angels were on the job in 1901.
Kelly's book was called Some Ethical Gains Through Legislation c) 1905. It gave the reader a recap of the issues, the evidence, and the progress being made so far. SEGTL made it clear that far more still had to be done.
Thousands of child workers were as young as six and seven. Is it any wonder that the socialists had political momentum? The conservatives that ran corporate America were so greedy and insensitive that all it took was a flashlight to instigate legislative action to try and correct the abuses. The muckrakers had the flashlights.
Flo singled out the town of Alton Illinois for scrutiny. This was the town that had murdered editor Elijah Lovejoy in 1837 because he defended black people. In TR's time Alton was famous for its glassmaking factories. Flo Kelly toured the factories and was heartbroken to see the dirty tired scared little children carrying trays of hot bottles from one corner to the other. Many had bandages from burns. The pay was oppressively low, even more insulting than the salary I received for being a radio talk show host in Boston for two months.
The Alton factories were unventilated and dangerous to one's person and long-term health. The situation in Alton was a representation of America, not a scandalous aberration of industrial standards. Flo’s book did not create the reform movement against child labor, but it was a landmark in the march of progress. Over the course of the Progressive years, the employment of children under 14 was discouraged and eventually prohibited with the help of new laws and a new moral consensus that created them.
GARY INDIANA – CITY IN THE WILDERNESS
Gary Indiana today is a thriving metropolis of poor people that you drive through rather quickly heading east from Chicago. I've been through it once or twice and had never thought of it as an unusual place.
But Gary Indiana was unique in that it was totally planned in 1906 by the United States Steel Corporation as a new home for its factories and workers. There was nothing natural in its growth into the large city Gary is today. There was no harbor or river, nor was there even useful soil. Most of the area was sand where you couldn't even grow weed. It was an isolated wasteland that USS simply decided to build a city upon because it could. It was the Jonestown Guyana of 1906. It existed only because planners waned it to.
It did have an area that fronted lake Michigan and an artificial mini-canal was dug to the interior to set up trade.
Good soil was imported into the Gary construction site to create the image of good land where there was none, but eventually crops were actually grown on it
There's a lame song in the musical The Music Man about Gary. Other than that it hasn't made much of a famous name for itself except in the concept that gave Gary it's kiss of life.
SAN FRANCISCO EARTHQUAKE APRIL 1906
At 5:18 in the morning an earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay area. It destroyed many roads, buildings and railroad tracks but the fire that the quake triggered caused far more damage. It burned down half the downtown city and took three days to extinguish.
Some of the dynamite teams used to stop the fire actually caused it to spread further. Mayor Nagan blamed FEMA for starting the fire.
BROWNSVILLE RAID 1906
The all black 25th Infantry regiment of US Army troops were deployed to Brownsville Texas in 1906. The local whites didn't like the idea of these uppity negroes carrying guns and patrolling the neighborhoods.
One night there was a whole lotta shooting heard around town. Then ext morning a white bartender was found dead, and another white guy wounded in the arm.
The black soldiers were expelled from the army as punishment, even though it was never proven that they did it.
PURE FOOD AND DRUG ACT/MEAT PACKING ACT 1906
Prior to 1906 you could grind a dead monkey into hamburger, put it in a fancy can, and sell it under the label ‘filet mignon.’ With the enactment of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, all labels on food had to be accurate under penalty of law.
Much of the initiative towards reform in the meat department came from muckraker Upston Sinclair and his expose of it in his fine book, The Jungle.
TR read it and so did much of the country. The meat packing industry was clearly insulting the American public by selling it “something that passes for food, but is cut with pieces of rope, and rat turd, and having the labeling it as pure meat.
At first the meat moguls simply denied the charges, and said that “Uppity Upton Sinclair is a self-seeking publicity hound who has clearly exaggerated conditions to sell books.” But even if the charges were only one fourth as true as Upton made it seem, it was time for reform, and immediately.
President Roosevelt released to the press a part of a follow-up Congressional investigative report which corroborated the charges of the literary man. Still the meat cleavers denied it, one big packer exec claiming that his meat factories “are as clean as my kitchen table.”
“I'm certainly not accepting any dinner invitations from this dude,” cracked Roosevelt when he read that one. “I will release the rest of the report next week and we'll see how smug these men are then.”
The big meat money had contributed mightily to the Republican party over the years, which explains why they expected TR to go easy on them in practice if not in words. When the packers heard that TR was going to completely expose their sickening (literally and figuratively) meat plants, they backed down.
Congress passes the Food Inspection Act on July 1, 1906 just in time for the holiday picnic season. These laws are still enforced today, except for Spam. They can put anything they want in Spam and I'll still eat it on toasted bread with a lot of mustard.
PURE FOOD AND DRUG ACT
Medicine too was protected from false labeling. No longer could medicines be watered down or misrepresented in terms of their capabilities. Packaging was a dangerous game back then, but on the other hand people didn’t have to carry a putty knife around back then because every product was sealed up with a wimpy safety plastic seal, as everything is today.
HEPBURN ACT 1906
By coincidence, the same year that actress Catherine Hepburn was conceived, the Hepburn Act, a key piece of Progressive legislation, was passed, much to the chagrin of the evil railroads. Hepburn was promoted by Teddy Roosevelt and passed by Congress in 1906. It was aimed specifically at the abuses of the railroads. Hepburn increased the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission. From now on the burden of proof in cases of abuses by railroads would be on the defendants, not the complainants. Hepburn would expand the ICC regulations to include control over those those owning and operating bridges, tunnels and ferries. Most important, the ICC could set maximum rates. Railroads could no longer charge simply what the market would bear. Now they also had to be fair. They could also no longer give free passes to their favorite rich persons. Even J.P. Morgan would have to produce a paid ticket when the conductor came by.
BRAIN STORM OF 1906
On June 25 1906 a prisoner on the dock, well-to-do patron of the arts named Harry Kendall gave American slang a new term, 'brain-storm.'
Thaw committed a murder that had the nation gripped in gossip for months and even years. Historian Mark Sullivan calls the trial of Harry Thaw the “most sensational in the history of the country.”
The case was spectacular for three main reason. The murdered man was a rich celebrity. The crime took place in a posh downtown NYC theatre in the middle of a sold-out performance by name actors. The perpetrator was declared not guilty by reason of insanity and created a major national debate over that defense in a capital crime.
The high priced lawyer defending Thaw told the jury that his client was under the influence of a “brain-storm” when he committed the deed. The term made headlines and caught on with the public. By now it has evolved into a more positive meaning as in a creative inspirational storm, a winning idea that saves the day. But in 1906 'brain-storm' meant a storm of dark thunder clouds inside an off-balanced murderous brain.
In the current era one can buy a ticket to see the New York Knicks get murdered at Madison Square Garden by a hot visiting team. But if you were attending a show at the original Madison Square Garden on June 25 1906 you might have witnessed the murder of a famous millionaire architect named Harry Stanford White. The man had designed the building. He had in built his own coffin.
Madison Square Garden today is a bastardization of the concept. In 1906 it was a building of entertainment that was covered in real gardens. Newspaper paintings of the murder sequence show all kinds of fancy plants and water décor.
The killer and the victim were both celebrities. That's part of why it was the OJ Simpson trial of its time. The mass readers love to see how the mighty have fallen, and how imperfect they are. In the Thaw-White slaying of 6.06 we have one of the richest men in the USA shooting one of the other richest men in the United States. It was as if Steve Jobs saw Bill Gates at a crap table in AC in 2006 and shot him dead, ruining a lovely felt green table with blood.
The shooter was named Harry Thaw. He was in love with a woman named Alice Nesbitt. But famous architect Harry White had also known her biblically years earlier, when she was very young and a looked like Joan Collins. Miss Nesbitt wasn't married at the time that Mr. White seduced her, or vice-verse. In 1906 this as rather a big deal. There was a big age difference between Harry White and Young Nesbitt. It wasn't quite as big as the average age difference in a movie between an aged male Hollywood big-draw and his girl-friend, but it was big. White was a swinging bachelor. He made a red velvet swing for his conquests to pose while he drew them. Allegedly, the goofy flirt joke, “Come upstairs and see my etchings,” originated with Harry White and his studio with the red velvet swing.
So Thaw married Nesbitt and didn't like the stories she told him about the good times she had way back when with Harry White. Or he was so paranoid that he nearly beat out of her false admissions, or small matters that he blew up in his brain.
Thaw went to Madison Square Garden to see a vaudeville comedy show The American Mistress on the night of June 25. Once an hour White walked past White's table and gave him a dirty look. White was well aware that Thaw hated him.
Students of history know that John Wilkes Booth waited for the big punch line in My American Cousin before he pulled the trigger. Thaw must have been a student of the Lincoln assassination. He timed it.
The baggy-pants clown said “I have a mistress up in Maine. I go up to Bangor every week!” Thaw waited for the big laugh, then appeared suddenly before White, drew a pistol and shot White three times in the face. That's not even easy to do.
The audience laughed and thought the shooting was actually part of the show! But when two people close by saw White's face they screamed like a woman in a Vincent Price film and the audience bolted for the exits. Thaw surrendered to the nearest cop.
Thaw had the money for expensive talented lawyers. He got his Johnny Cochran and Robert Shapiro to go to work to spin an angle. Harry White had defiled the womanhood of this man's wife. So what if it happened years before they were married, he had still done it. “Mr Thaw had a brainstorm!” yelled the lawyer. “In avenging the ruination of his wife's good name, he was protecting his home and was defending the womanhood of the nation!” It was is if Monica Lewinski's dad had shot Bill Clinton at a fund-raiser and then said he did it for America's values. The trial lasted some times and it's not hard to understand that it had the nation following it like a cult. In the network crime dramas rich people do 90% of the murders, but in real life its rare. There's not a lot to be mad about when you're rich. Maybe that's why the jury declared insanity. What sane rich person wants to kill anyone? Having murder in your heart is the specialty of the hungry.
Thaw was acquitted by reason of insanity. He spent less than 8 years in a looney bin and then went on to lead a long life. He still had dough. Nesbitt went into vaudeville as a novelty act, The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing. Thaws lawyer had invented a new word, “brainstorm.”
TROBLES WITH IRELAND 12 - 1906
Theodore Roosevelt was faced with a national controversy when he was accused of improperly using his influence as President to get a personal favorite American Bishop named a Cardinal in Rome. The trouble with Bishop Ireland became a national scandal in December of 1906. But the events leading up to it go all the way back to 1899 when TR was not even yet Vice President.
The story was big stuff at the end of 1906, although it has not come down to the present day as a famous tale. All the more reason to tell it. The more famous stories don't need rehashing. The Bishop Ireland affair was on the tongues of Americans in December of 1906. People took to calling it the “Dear Maria” affair. The expression became popular in common speak as meaning an inappropriate correspondence between political intriguers.
Here are the cast of characters.
TR- Bishop Ireland of St Paul- Bellamy Storer- His wife Maria Storer – The Pope – Bishop Farley – Senator Foraker – The editor of the Boston Herald – Cardinal Merry del Val
Bellamy Storer was a two-term Congressman in the early 1890's when TR was in DC as Civil Service Commissioner. The two men became friends and their wives Maria and Edith became friends too. Soon the four of them were dining regularly at each other's homes. When any of them were far away, they wrote each other numerous letters about all sorts of intimate personal and public matters.
Mrs. Storer's nephew married TR's daughter Alice. It didn't hurt that the Storers were from Ohio and were personal friends of President McKinley. They asked McKinley to name their friend Roosevelt to the post of Assistant Secretary of the Navy. This was done and now TR was forever in their debt, a fact he would come to regret.
A rising figure in the American conscience in the 1890's was Bishop Ireland of the diocese of St. Paul, a talented Progressive clergyman with Republican leanings. The Storers were devout Catholics and devout Republicans. They were dismayed that most American Catholics were devout Democrats.
Mrs Storer was certain that Ireland must be made a Cardinal in Rome. By the end of the 1890's it was pretty obvious to a lot of people that Bishop Ireland had a fair chance at this without her help, perhaps some day soon. Maria got it in her head that she should lead the crusade, and use her friendship with TR to help win it.
In March 1899 Mrs. Maria called in the favor. She asked her dear friend Theodore to plead with McKinley to promote Bishop Ireland for the post of cardinal. She certainly overestimated the ability of American governor to influence decisions at the Vatican, but TR did her bidding anyway. He wrote McKinley a letter stressing what a great thing it would be for America if Bishop Ireland was made the next cardinal in Rome.
The Spanish-American War complicated the play. Spanish Catholic influence was considerable within the Vatican state. Both of the warring states were Catholics, making the literal term a paradox. There was rivalry in Rome where all in the church were supposed to be brothers.
The Catholic Friars of Spain were still in place in the Philippines. Did our military and political victory extend to the work of the Lord? Would we throw them out of the temple and replace them forcibly with American Catholic missionaries?
We did.
On the other hand many of the lands owned by the Spanish church were compensated for financially. Nevertheless, the influential Spanish cardinals in Rome were now angry with the United States for beating their country in a war and taking over their missionary work too.
The Mark Hannah of the Vatican was Cardinal Merry del Val. He was vatican Secretary and he was not very merry when it cam to the USA. Merry del Val alone could have stopped Mrs. Storer or anyone else, from playing Cardinal-maker with Bishop Ireland. While many church leaders in America had condemned the war and the occupation of the Philippines, Ireland had consistently supported McKinley's actions and decisions. Merry del Val would have as soon nominated Beelzebub O'Brien to be the next cardinal as he would Bishop Ireland. Merry was still a Spaniard. You can take the man out of the nation but you can't take the nation out of the man.
In June 1899 Roosevelt again wrote to President McKinley asking about pushing Ireland for cardinal. This time McKinley snapped a little at TR. “Look, I can't go around trying to interfere in the internal affairs of any church, let alone the Catholic Church..”
TR backed down with a sense of relief. “I know. You're right. I felt funny writing to you about it in the first place. But it's this woman, Maria Bellamy, she an in-law and she won't leave me alone about it.” Mrs Bellamy wrote Teddy again in 1900 and TR wrote back with a firm message that he can't do anything more for her Bishop Ireland for Cardinal campaign.
Just when TR was being considered for VP two mysterious envoys came to visit him. They claimed to be friends of McKinley. They said they had just arrived from Rome and they didn't like the rumors that were floating around there about Teddy. The rumors were that he was trying to push Bishop Ireland for cardinal in Rome.
“This isn't good for the party, nor for your personal ambitions.”
“I'm trying to control this ditz,!” he snapped. “But nothing I do slows her down.”
TR wrote to Maria again and begged her to “please knock it off.”
Eight days after Roosevelt took over from the deceased McKinley, Mrs. Storer wrote to him and insisted that her husband Bellamy should at once be named either Secretary of War or Secretary of the Navy.
Roosevelt held his temper when writing her back. “Root is an invaluable member of my cabinet in his post at War, and Secretary Long at Navy is universally admired. He has no intention of resigning.”
TR sensed that this woman was going to be a lot of trouble. He wrote and asked her if any copies of his letters to her exist in any other locations, like at the Vatican, for example.
Mrs B told him to not worry, which made him do that all the more. “I give you my word.” she wrote, “That's what I'm worried about,” he thought.
Roosevelt consulted with the powerful republican Senator Foraker about getting a cabinet post for Bellamy.” Foraker thought that Bellamy Storer was a “useless mediocrity” and made it clear that he would lead a voting block Maria Storer's field goal attempts. It should be added that Storer had a good reputation as a capable Congressman of integrity, but no one would say he was a dynamo either. The cross of gold digger wife of Bellamy was doing him more harm than good.
Roosevelt passed the bad news on to Maria, who wrote back in an instant that she would settle for a foreign ambassadorship, preferably either at Paris or London.
By 1902 Roosevelt had decided to get the Storers off his back and out of the country. He settled on naming Bellamy ambassador to Austria-Hungary at Vienna. Ted went to Foraker and asked him if he would agree to a foreign ambassadorship for Bellamy.
“Absolutely,” said Foraker, “The foreigner the better.”
So off to Vienna went the Storers, hopefully to cause no foreigner troubles.
In May of 1903 forgiving and forgetting, the Storers visited President Roosevelt at his summer home at Oyster Bay, New York. The Storers were home on a short vacation from his post in Europe. During their chatting time, Roosevelt agreed all over again that Bishop Ireland would make a great cardinal.
Bellamy Storer went back to Europe and drafted a prepared memo that he claimed represented the words and instructions of President Roosevelt regarding the Bishop Ireland matter. Storer went to Rome, had an audience with the Pope and told Pius X that Roosevelt very much wanted Bishop Ireland to be named Cardinal as soon as possible.
Now Roosevelt finally blew his stack. He wrote Storer angrily that this was all out of line. He had never authorized Storer to speak to the Pope. If he liked Ireland for Cardinal, that was of no more significance than if he also liked another guy from Milwaukee for Methodist Prelate. Storer must stop promoting Ireland for Cardinal at once.
Incredibly, Storer did not back down and wrote back and argued with Roosevelt's letter, saying that he knew he was doing the right thing and who was Roosevelt kidding. You want Ireland to be cardinal just as much as I do. Now come to your senses teddy and lets fight this thing out. Maria sent out more letters to all kinds of religious and political personages, begging to name Bishop Ireland a cardinal.
Such insubordination was the last straw. Roosevelt wrote Storer a rough letter in which he demanded a full retraction and a new attitude of proper diplomatic subservience or he would ask Storer to resign immediately.
Storer was hurt and angry. he didn't respond to the letter. TR wrote him again three weeks later with three words, “What's the story?”
Again Storer did not write back. TR then sent a formal note on State department stationary informing Storer that he was being relieved of his duties as American Ambassador to Vienna. This was March 1906.
In December 1906 Storer gathered up all the Dear Maria letters that TR had written to his wife and sent copies of them to several important Senators. His motive allegedly was to clear up his good name with his fellow Congressman and to “tell my side of the Storer story.”
The editor of the Boston Herald got wind of these dicey letters and cornered a couple of Senators to let him read them. “No dice,” said one noble guy. But Senator McCullom had a plan to save his conscience. “I can't give you those letters. Those are private. But if I let them on this desk and left the room, and I didn't notice that they were gone when I returned, well that might work.”
And that's how on December 8, 1906 the Boston Herald and the Chicago Bull broke the blockbuster story of TR's Dear Maria letters.
Roosevelt had to call his own press conference in which he called Bellamy Storer a liar. He denied authorizing Storer to go see the Pope about Ireland and told the world about “that woman” and how “her meddling and pushiness has caused me headaches for a full decade.”
Roosevelt's good name survived the Dear Maria letters. His side of the story more than off-set the allegations of Bellamygate regarding allegations of Presidential interference in papal affairs. Most of the material was fun gossip. Theodore was corresponding with his tie loose and his hair down. The President was basically being seen off-guard and a few passages were embarrassing. He was able to laugh at it all once in a while. “I just bought a book about diplomatic scandals,” he told Root. “But it was boring compared to my own lurid tales in Dear Maria.” The country could handle seeing TR humanized from his private letters.
This was an era in which a woman with political ambitions had a better chance of achieving them through her husband than through her own person. There were no female Congresspersons in Washington and few states allowed women to vote in even local elections. So we can try to forgive her attitude with regards to her husband and his career.
Mrs. Storer wanted only the best for her husband, meaning for herself.
Theodore Roosevelt wasn't much of a progressive when it came to women.
He said point-blank, that any married woman who chose to not have several children “was a traitor to her race.” He half-heartedly supported female suffrage, but stated to a reporter that “this, however, is not a terribly important issue.”
Back in 1880, when he was engaged to Alice Lee, he wrote a dissertation at Harvard in which he seemed to be as liberal and progressive as one could be in the era. He even wrote that the woman should not have to assume the man's name in marriage. Obviously he was just kissing up to the moment, like my male friends who claim to like “chick-flick” TV shows, when its obvious their wife does and they go along to be social, and then actually delude themselves that they really do like them.
PANIC OF 1907
The year 07 opened with the nation’s finances looking as good as gold. But soon there was a contraction of money due to the work of the usual suspects; watered stock, railroad over-speculation and foreign events over which the USA had little or no control. The Panic of 1907 was under way.
The economy was not in as much danger as the public believed, but public confidence is a determinant in the economy, not just a reflection of it.
As in 1929, the Panic of 1907 exploded in the month of October. The Knickerbocker Bank was sound enough, but rumors spread that it was not. Lines of people formed for blocks. They wanted to get all their money out of there, “immediately, if not sooner.” The bank kept telling everyone in line that the bank was solvent, but the line just stayed big. All the checks were good, and the Knicks didn't write any bad ones, but the bank ran out of money after two days of this and closed it's doors, thus confirming the rumor true. But it hadn't been true until the public acted as though it was, and made it come true. The same thing happened to the National Colonial Bank of Yonkers three days later. By October 18 the President should have declared a national emergency, as 60 banks had lines for withdrawals from nine to five.
But the President was busy in the Louisiana cane breaks hunting wild bear throughout the peak of the Panic of 1907. The crisis and it's solution was handled by Secretary of the Treasury Cortleyu, while the President was off hunting bear. Some short textbooks gives TR the credit for the deal made by Cortleyu on his own.
The deal was with millionaire JP Morgan.
JP was in Virginia when he got one panicked telegram after another about the bank runs. He hopped a train to New York and got loud happy drunk along the way. One historian infers that Morgan hit the sauce because he was upset about the banking crisis. Maybe he just liked to drink.
Morgan and four other famous millionaires met with Cortleyu at a New York City hotel like they were planning a big underworld takeover of somebody's beer delivery business. Morgan took the lead and Cortleyu listened. They all agreed to help each other and save the economy. For now it was time for the government to stop snapping the whip at the business lions. Big business was going to pitch in. For a price, of course.
J.P. Morgan raised the money to save the economy with the help of several other millionaires. The United States agreed to deposit 25 million on government funds into their banks. The rich then loaned bigger bucks to the government and would have to be paid back with interest. It worked. It’s sad to report that indeed the no good slime-bucket millionaires saved the country in 1907.
BOB TILLMAN ACT OF 1907
Senator Benjamin Robert Tillman sponsored a bill in 1907 that made it illegal for large corporations to make contributions to political elections. TR supported this reform measure, but the big money men found ways to skirt the laws.
The “Enormo-corps” (to quote Twain's favorite nickname for them) executives could now give big bonuses to individuals of their own company with instructions to donate the money a few days later to their preferred candidates. Then they could write off the money as a bonus paid out to employees. The Tillman act inspired nothing but a chance to make the problem of political payola even more sinister.
The Republican Party sends me requests for money every week. So far, after 32 years as an eligible voter I can say that I have never donated a nickel to a politician. I like the Republican Party, but not enough to give them my money.
BIRTH OF THE USAF
The Aeronautical Division of the US Army bought it’s first bird in late 1907. It was a dirigible, like the Zeppelins of Germany. The nation paid $6,755 for the craft, dubbed “Airship 1” and it came into active service in 1908.
The US was a leader in air power development and research but Europe was miles ahead in appreciation and support for the implantations of these fine inventions in government service. TR was gung-ho on the potential of air power, but had little support form a Congress that would not pay for air power. TR had to pay for airship 1 with a special fund that Congress had recently granted him to use at his personal discretion.
The United States Air Force did not officially come into being until 1947 but for practical purposes the history of the USAF is the same history as that of the Army Air Force which lasted from 1908 to 1947.
CARS - MODEL T 1908
It started as a novelty for the rich late in the 19th century, but the automobile by 1908 had emerged as a legitimate form of common transportation. Henry Ford in 1908 introduced the first mass produced and affordable car, the Model T. The T was still too expensive for the poor but the middle class was now at last in the driving game. Henry’s Ford plant introduced the assembly line concept into heavy industry. Each worker had to learn only one simple task and the product rolled down the assembly line with each worker adding his or her experienced touch. At the end of the line the product emerged. It was a bore for the worker but it eliminated the need for each employee to be trained in each stage of the creation. The world admired the Ford technique, his anti-Semitism notwithstanding. More on that later, but the automobile changed our culture and economy forever.
A ROUGH RIDE OF AN ENDING
The lame duck months of TR were not his best as President. He went out on a scathing note with his Message to Congress of January 31, 1909.
It was a speech loaded with blunderbuss attacks on Congress that most of them considered completely inappropriate for the occasion. He more or less said that the Congress was in the pockets of big business bribery. TR also went after the Supreme Court pretty good for turning the Constitution into an inflexible defender of the status quo for all eternity, and for defending big business to a fault.
Congress passed a rebuke of the Presidents Message by an overwhelming vote.
Roosevelt lost some personal friendships over this speech. He had an e-mail fight with Nicholas Murray Butler that makes some lively reading even now. Butler kept writing to TR that it wasn't what you said it was how you said it. Butler stressed that even Roosevelt's most loyal friends were appalled at his lack of decorum. TR in turn, was hurt that Butler didn't get that blunt was what was called for in order to get anything done around here.
I meant to say snail mail fight, of course.
SUPREME COURT
TR appointed three men to the Supreme Court in his time as president. On all three occasions he offered the job to his good friend William Howard Taft.
Taft was torn on all three occasions, primarily because he was a judge and a lawyer by trade, not a professional politician. Will's dream was always to be on the Supreme Court and here it was being offered on a silver platter three times by the president, his pal with confirmation certain. taft was everybody's pal.
Taft declined each time for the same two reasons. One, he was in charge of the Philippines and was doing a fine job there. Taft had grown to love his assignment there and felt that there was a bond of love between his “little Brown Brothers” and his big tubby self. Its hard to not agree with him. The troubles in the Philippines had quieted down remarkably since this benevolent man took over over there, and much of the credit has to go to his personality and sincere charm. Taft wrote to TR that he felt he would be betraying the Philippine if he took the job at the Supreme Court.
The other reason Taft declined was his wife and brother. Both were gold diggers, not so much of money but of power and its 'reflected glory.'
Mrs. Taft wanted very much for her husband to become President of the United States, and she has been subtly condemned for this by most historians. They never come out and say they don't like her for it, but it is very easy to read the tone and the material between the lines. Mrs. T is demonized by American history for pushing Taft into the White House. I just wish one historian would come out and say it plainly instead of always jabbing her with a tone and a style.
WHT's older brother Erasmus was always pestering Taft with the opinion that the White House was the only job suitable for such a fine family member. Erasmus tried to erase the Supreme Court from his brother's brain.
The third time TR offered Taft the Supreme Court and was turned down, he countered with a cabinet post offer. Would Taft be willing to come back to DC as Secretary of War?
This time Taft accepted on the grounds that at War he could still be in charge of the Philippines, albeit in a different role. As Secretary of War he wouldn't feel so much that he was betraying his friends on Luzon and Mindanao. Also, the War post would still keep the road to the White House open and keep his wife and brother off his giant back.
The three men who made the Supreme Court when Taft just said no no no were Holmes, Day, and Moody.
Oliver Wendell Holmes was confirmed by the Senate in December of 1902. He is one of the most famous names in the history of the Court and even in American history in general. Holmes was born in Boston, was Harvard educated and wrote a legal masterpiece of a book called “Common Law.”
OWH was a Republican, yet broke with TR more than once, once he got in. He would not kiss Teddy's chaps, much to Teddy's dismay. “Holmsie” gave the nation 29 years of active service on the high court.
William Rufus Day was confirmed by the Senate on February 23, 1903. Day had served briefly as United States Secretary of State during the Cuban crisis.
Justice William Henry Moody was always difficult to deal with. But he did a good job on the Supreme Court in spite of his unpredictable temperament. TR nominated WHM on December 3, 1906. Moody made the court with confirmation nine days later, but became instantly depressed when he heard the news. Moody was a Mass man from Beverly and a former US secretary of the navy.
CONSERVATION
The one area where all the historians are unanimous is that TR did much good work for the nation in the field of conservation. A life-long outdoorsman, Roosevelt recognized long before it became popular, that the big business interest had no interest in protecting or preserving our natural resources. They were only interested in exploiting the national treasure for profits.
Roosevelt set aside more than 200 million acres of government land as protected areas no longer available for purchase or development. 85 million of these acres were located in Alaska.
The two other who deserve at least as much credit on this issue are Frank Gifford Pinochet, and Senator Frances Newlands of Nevada. Naturally, TR later took all the credit for the work that all three did.
LIAR
100 historians over and over gently suggest that Roosevelt “may not be fully honest” when he gives his account of this incident or that decision. The relentless euphemistic message is that TR's description of what happened is not at all what happened, but we can laugh it off because it's just his typical bluster. Well I say a liar is a liar and Teddy Roosevelt was a liar. He was not a vicious cutthroat liar whose lies really hurt people badly. He was an out of control ego liar who rewrote everything that happened in order to praise himself every time he sat down with a pen or a typewriter. So out of the many types of liars he is not the worst type, but there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that it is high time someone came out and called it plainly. Teddy Roosevelt was a Commander McBrag liar. Historians shouldn't laugh that off. That is a really bad thing. What's even more disgusting is that he seems to have developed his lies for so many years that by the end of his days he was convinced that his tall tales were actually true. TR was such a liar that he convinced himself of his own lies. Most of us have met and known people like this and they are insufferable. We avoid them like the plague. This guy was President of the United States and he lied about how great he was like an insecure obnoxious factory worker. I can understand little people lying to feel big and fill a void in their self-esteem. I feel sorry for those people while avoiding them. But to have a guy who has already made President act this way is truly pathetic.
AFTER OFFICE
Roosevelt always believed that he could have won the nomination easily if he wanted it for the Republican Party in 1908. But he also believed he would lose the general election to whatever Democratic opponent. His fights with Congress, his earlier pledge to not run, his handling of the Brownsville situation, and the anger of big business, would all gang up on him and he'd lose. That was the main reason he didn't seek a third term.
Teddy Roosevelt helped elect Taft to the White House in his stead. The two were close friends. Teddy went on a hunting trip to Africa. People who hated him were toasting him around Washington with this one,
“Here's to the lions!”
Roosevelt supported Taft for a year or so, but when Taft did things on his own that Roosevelt didn't agree with, the criticisms in the newspapers began to fly.
The two old friends became bitter enemies in an opera for all the world to witness. In the spring of 1911 Roosevelt told a Cleveland reporter that, “my hat is in the ring.” Roosevelt began saying that the Republican Party was now “The party of dishonesty.” The reporters told Taft what TR had said and Taft said that TR “would have thought the Party completely honest if they agreed with all his viewpoints.” TR said that Taft “should have another doughnut.” Taft said TR “should look in the mirror with all four eyes.” The rank fight went on for months. It was all public and Taft, being the gentle one, was seen to break down and cry one day, exclaiming, “He was once my best friend!” People who were friends of both men were caught in the middle as each bad mouthed the other whenever the other wasn't around. It almost as childish as a Disney Channel sit-com.
Roosevelt went to the Republican Convention in 1912 after beating taft in most of the primaries. But the primaries in 1912 did not decide the nomination. They were a supplemental measuring stick for the Party, but not remotely the last word. Taft, for all his supposed weaknesses, was a professional lawyer and politician on considerable ability. Just because he replaced an all-star, didn't mean he was anybody's chump. He knew how to exploit an advantage, and from the power of the incumbency, Taft had the Party and its conservative power base, in his back pocket. Roosevelt never had a chance.
But Roosevelt was being coy. He wanted to form his own candidacy under a different party. Not all historians take this position, but the fact is that 343 of Roosevelts delegates abstained from the ballot that gave Taft the nomination with his 565 votes. Roosevelt had 107 votes, but should have had
more like 420 or so. If Roosevelt had finished a close second, it would have looked so much more for him to bold the Convention and form a third party, which is what he did. That's why he instructed most of his supporters to abstain.
Ted walked out and formed the Progressive party. He told reporters “I'm ready to rumble and I'm feeling fit as a bull moose.” The nickname was applied by the press and thus the TR candidacy of 1912 became the year of the Bull Moose party.
TR split the Republican vote and put the Democrat Wilson in the White House. Taft took only 8 Electoral votes.
Roosevelt went with several men to South America on an intrepid exploratory mission deep into the Amazon jungle. The guys charted an unexplored river, the River of Doubt. Today it is named the Teddy Roosevelt River.
Roosevelt injured his leg rather badly trying to rescue a stuck canoe. He couldn't walk. TR told his son, “Tell the others I can't go on. I have become a burden to you all. Go on without me.” This is so absurd that a writer for a big TV show and I love to laugh about it every time we bump into each other and I wish I was a writer for a big TV show. He's a history buff, and we laugh at the egoist absurdity of posturing like that. Ss if anyone would leave even a co-worker they didn't even like behind like that. And this guy was the former President of the United States! And it was his own son he was acting out the middle school theatre class hero scene with. I think that story tells us all we need to know about the real Teddy Roosevelt.
Over the teen years of the Twentieth Century, TR developed a hatred for Woodrow Wilson that was, according to Henry Pringle, “psychopathic.” That's is a powerful one-word indictment from an important historian.
Wilson and TR went to an Army-Navy football game together back when they were both governors. After the game (a 0-0 tie) Roosevelt went to Wilson's home for an afternoon lunch. They rode to the train station together and had a delightful parting.
But when Wilson won the election of 1912, TR began to hate him. Then Wilson began implementing all of the reforms of Progressivism that TR had been advocating in 1912. Now the hatred became fused with more frustrated jealousy.
When World War One broke out in Europe, TR initially supported strict US neutrality. But by the middle of 1916 TR wanted America to intervene in Europe and began to hate Wilson still more because Wilson was working hard for neutrality. After the sinking of the Lusitania, TR made a hawk look like a Dutch Lop rabbit. He wanted war so bad he was tossing and turning at night in his sleep, and waking up in a cold sweat from nightmares that an armistice had stopped the whole thing.
After office, Roosevelt sued someone for libel and someone sued him for libel. He finished 2-0.
In 1914 Roosevelt sued the editor of a small magazine for an article in which the guy accused TR of always being drunk. A trial was held in 1915 and TR produced an army of witnesses who said he drank very little when he did drink at all. TR won the suit and asked the court to assess his tormentor a figure of six cents for emotional damage and libel. The irony is that on reading the article, it seems that the writer had inflicted one of the most articulate and devastating indictments of Roosevelt's worst faults ever penned, a merciless masterpiece. By tacking on this embellishment based on some foolish hearsay, he disabled an artillery shell that was dead on target.
Roosevelt could have made a run for the Republican nomination in 1916, but he sincerely was tired of it all, and not just mentally. TR was physically not very healthy. He was Jack Black fat for starters. A severe jungle fever from his trip to the Brazilian jungle remained dormant, and a series of illnesses took turns beating the old boxer up. He clearly told the New York World in April 1912 that “The Progressive party has to look elsewhere. My hat is on a shelf in my closet.” The Progressive party wanted him so bad that they held a convention and nominated him anyway! Roosevelt still said no and that was the end of the Bull Moose.
Roosevelt supported Charles Evans Hughes, the Republican from New York, who had recently stepped down from the US Supreme Court.
Four of Roosevelts sons served on the front lines in World War One. Quentin Roosevelt died in battle.
Roosevelt was blind in one eye for the last three years of his life from a boxing blow. No 56 year old man should be boxing, unless it's for a lot of money and the proceeds go to the starving people in India.
President Roosevelt died on January 6 1919 at his home on the north shore of Long Island. He was 61, and still working. He wrote an editorial for the Kansas City Star which was highly critical of President Wilson and his League of Nations idea. So it's safe to say that if he had been elected in 1920, there still wouldn't have been a League of Nations. On the other hand TR was impulsive and impetuous and could turn on a dime if it suited his purpose. Maybe he could have connected with the European leaders in such a way as to change his mind.
Just after 11 p. m. on January 5, TR put down his glasses and told his servant to put out the light. Then he died in his sleep at around four a.m.
CONCLUSION
What bothers me about my dislike of Roosevelt is that I'm confident that if I met him via time machine I would come away with an entirely favorable opinion of him. Acquaintance softens prejudice, said an ancient philosopher. He had the Reaganesque ability to charm anyone he met. “Dazzle” would be more like it. TR was a great man and he knew it and it exuded from every pore in his body. But the confidence led to conceit which leads to arrogance and overconfidence, and worst of all, selfishness.
Roosevelt was the first President to go Hollywood. He used the press like a man 100 years ahead of his time. TR went out of his way to make his most important proclamations on Sunday. He knew that weekends were slow news days and that his Sunday proclamations would get far more ink on Monday morning editions than on Thursday.
I’ve always wanted to like Roosevelt. The country loved him. He made people proud to be an American. He campaigned for a strong America. He kept the Philippines and took the Panama Canal.
But Teddy Roosevelt was a war lover. It's one thing to know when it is necessary to go to war, and it is another thing entirely to enjoy it. Roosevelt had an unhealthy obsession with martial values and the test of manhood by violence. And for him this philosophy applied to nations as well as men.
Granted, Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace prize for his efforts in ending the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. He didn't do this country any favors here, only himself.
So Teddy got his Christ medal (the Nobel Prize) for peace on the Korean peninsula. On the other hand he recognized Japan's right to rule Korea, and made visitors to the White House box a few rounds with him, and as a middle-aged man and acting Secretary of the Navy he pulled strings so he could enlist for front-line combat duty in a one-sided war against Spain in Cuba. His glorious “charge up San Juan Hill” is as disturbing as it is commendable. This is a man who in 1915 was furious with Woodrow Wilson because Wilson would not take the United States into World War One. Then, when World War One reached America, Roosevelt was furious with President Wilson when he would not grant him an Army commission to enter the front line fighting in France.
I'm judging yesterday by the standards of today, but I still think he was loony. He was coo-coo for combat.
On the other hand there is no denying the TR achievements in the fields of conservation and trust-busting. He moved the Progressive ball forward when he intervened in the Coal Strike of 1902, making big business the clear bad guy in the public mind, a big step in the right direction.
TR was a progressive, but rode the wave of progressivism, rather than creating it. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could have held the presidency during the years 1901 to 1909 without promoting some progressive legislation. In one way TR was the Lyndon Johnson of his time, a conservative man put in a position where, as President, has no choice but to fall in with the tide of history and approve liberal legislation. And that's as far as we will go in comparing TR with LBJ.
Here is TR describing the dumb rhinoceros,
Rhinoceros are truculent, blustering beasts, much
the most stupid of all the dangerous game I know.
Generally their attitude is one of mere stupidity
and bluff. But on occasions they do charge
wickedly, both when wounded and when entirely
unprovoked.
He could not have described himself any better. TR stands for ‘Truculent Rhinoceros.’
SOURCES
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey– c) 1961 D.C. Heath
Stanford man Bailey has written many superb books. Right now I am also reading his book on the undeclared naval war between the USA and Germany from 1939-1941 titled Hitler vs. Roosevelt.
The American Presidents, by Grolier c) 1994
A Diplomatic History of the United States, by Samuel Flagg Bemis, c) 1936
Yale Professor Bemis has insights galore. His liberal slant on US imperialism probably reflects the mood of the country between the world-wars more than asserts any radical departure form conventional thinking. Bemis is a cynic in keeping with the times but he is no rebel. Bemis is giant in the profession. He won his first Pulitzer in 1927 and died in 1973. He was born in 1779.
The Growth of the American Republic, by Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager – c)1940 – Oxford University Press
These two snooty boors from Harvard and Columbia ride rough on Teddy overall. But it doesn't really come from any objective analysis of the facts. It comes from their visceral prejudice against the Republican Party.
History of a Free People, by Henry W. Bragdon (Phillips Exeter) and Samuel P. McCutchen (NYU) – c) 1954 MacMillan 680 pg (I've read 499 as of today)
Well written text, but the student is asked to write a book (literally) if they answered all the questions and completed all the essay and extra research assignments. It's fairly redneck overall.
High school students were answering these quiz questions when I was in diapers. I was born in 55. (I turned 56, 59 minutes ago in Atlantic City.)
A History of Presidential Elections, by Eugene Roseboom -c) 1957
A History of United States Foreign Policy, by Julius Pratt.
Pratt is the best, and hundreds of historians cite him, although I have caught him being quite wrong on a couple of things.
The Life of Theodore Roosevelt, by W. M. Draper Lewis, c) 1919. This bio published just after his death includes an introduction by William Howard Taft.
The March of Democracy: Vol II From Civil War to World Power, by James Truslow Adams – c) 1933 Scribner
This book is a survivor. Scribner made a sturdy two-volume American history hardcover for general readers. I still see this book around everywhere in 2010. There's a copy of in my condo library and I didn't put it there.
JTA is a total racist. He loves the Klan. He really does!
The National Experience - Part Two A History of the United States Since 1865 by John M. Blum (Yale), Edmund S. Morgan (Yale), Willie Lee Rose (The Johns Hopkins University), Arthur M. Schlesinger (CUNY), Kenneth M. Stampp (UC Berkeley), and C. Vann Woodward (Yale) – c)1981 HBJ NY
I wish I owned volume one. It's very good, as it should be with this crew at the typewriter.
Our Times, by Mark Hannah, - c) 1939 This five-volume set is great. An American classic. It covers American history and culture from 1900 to 1916 from the vantage point of 1929.
Out of Many, A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale); Mary Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke); and Susan Armitage (Washington State), c)1994 – They don’t really turn up the lefty heat until the later 20th century.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
Sam alternates between angry racism from the right and angry liberalism from the left, depending on the subject and who is President. In any case he always seems mad about something and if he ever had a lighthearted moment in his life, he certainly didn't deign to include it in any of his writing, and I've read many of his books.
Like most historians, SEM has an outrageous bias in favor of the Democratic Party.
Morison the psychoanalyst thinks that one reason that TR was so hell bent for war all the time was that his father did not fight in the Civil War.
He closes his TR chapter with a good one,
“In one respect, Roosevelt failed as a leader. He inspired loyalty to himself rather than to progressive policies.”
Perhaps a valid criticism of Ronald Reagan too.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty – c) 1977 (Fourth revised and abridged) Harper & Row
That the redneck Garraty goes liberal against TR was predictable. Large editorial essay over the last six pages on Teddy's time. The Columbia professor obviously had given these opinions a lot of thought.
Theodore Roosevelt, by Lord Charnwood, c) 1923 – Adoring short biography by a British aristocrat. Considering how short it is, it is surprising how often the Charnwood book is cited as a primary source.
Theodore Roosevelt, A Biography, by Henry F. Pringle, c) 1931 – Pringle
admires Roosevelt a great deal but not as much as I admire Pringle. This is a great political book more than it is a great biography. Pringle doesn't make a fool of himself loving Teddy, and has a lot of excellent historical detail on important events, like the Panama Canal and the events with the US Congress. Pringle personally knew Roosevelt very well. He boxed him once. That alone gives the book a priceless quality even if it was poorly written, which it is not. Pringle is a treat.
A lot of history textbooks recommend Pringle for further reading.
Theodore Roosevelt – An Autobiography, by Theodore Roosevelt c) 1913 – The primary source – Like Bill Clinton his ego makes his autobiography far too detailed than any general reader can enjoyably absorb. The chapter on his life as a cowboy in South Dakota is the most boring read of all time. ‘In Cowboy Land’ should be a chapter re-titled, ‘In Reader’s Hell’. Cattle rustling is a painful bore to think about let alone read about, a bore when it’s a small treatment in a general history book. But when Teddy takes it to the detail of 36 self-indulgent pages it’s more than this reader can bear,
At three in the morning or thereabouts, at a yell from
the cook, all hands would hurriedly turn out. Dressing
was a simple affair. Then each man rolled and corded
his bedding – if he did not, the cook would leave it
behind and he would go without any for the rest of the
trip – and came to the fire, where he picked out a tin
cup, tin plate, and knife and fork, helped himself to
coffee and whatever food there was, and ate it standing
or squatting as best suited him. Dawn was breaking by
this time.
There are six pages on how each man tied his shoes. It’s brutal. Even a chapter in a novel is more useful than this! Of course, America in 1913 was more in tune to this culture of the west, but still... A biography by such an important political figure should find more space for the events of his presidency than of his life as a cattle rustler.
Roosevelt hates pacifists more than the devil herself,
“Love of peace is common among the weak, short-sighted,
timid, and lazy persons; and on the other hand courage is
found among many men of evil temper and bad character.”
Better to have a punk in a foxhole with ya than a folk guitarist, eh Teddy?
The United States: The History of a Republic by Richard Hofstadter of Columbia, William Miller co-author of The Age of Enterprise, and Daniel Aaron of Smith - c) 1957 Prentice-Hall
They say that except for Panama, TR's policies “were more moderate than his predecessors.”
The Wars of America, Volume II, by Robert Leckie – Excellent chapter on the Philippine Insurrection.
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