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CHAPTER 10

THE PRESIDENCY; MAKING AN OLD PARTY PROGRESSIVE

On September 6, 1901, President McKinley was shot by an Anarchist in the
city of Buffalo. I went to Buffalo at once. The President's condition
seemed to be improving, and after a day or two we were told that he
was practically out of danger. I then joined my family, who were in the
Adirondacks, near the foot of Mount Tahawus. A day or two afterwards
we took a long tramp through the forest, and in the afternoon I climbed
Mount Tahawus. After reaching the top I had descended a few hundred feet
to a shelf of land where there was a little lake, when I saw a guide
coming out of the woods on our trail from below. I felt at once that he
had bad news, and, sure enough, he handed me a telegram saying that the
President's condition was much worse and that I must come to Buffalo
immediately. It was late in the afternoon, and darkness had fallen by
the time I reached the clubhouse where we were staying. It was some time
afterwards before I could get a wagon to drive me out to the nearest
railway station, North Creek, some forty or fifty miles distant. The
roads were the ordinary wilderness roads and the night was dark. But we
changed horses two or three times--when I say "we" I mean the driver
and I, as there was no one else with us--and reached the station just at
dawn, to learn from Mr. Loeb, who had a special train waiting, that the
President was dead. That evening I took the oath of office, in the house
of Ansley Wilcox, at Buffalo.

On three previous occasions the Vice-President had succeeded to the
Presidency on the death of the President. In each case there had been
a reversal of party policy, and a nearly immediate and nearly complete
change in the personnel of the higher offices, especially the Cabinet.
I had never felt that this was wise from any standpoint. If a man is fit
to be President, he will speedily so impress himself in the office that
the policies pursued will be his anyhow, and he will not have to bother
as to whether he is changing them or not; while as regards the offices
under him, the important thing for him is that his subordinates shall
make a success in handling their several departments. The subordinate is
sure to desire to make a success of his department for his own sake, and
if he is a fit man, whose views on public policy are sound, and whose
abilities entitle him to his position, he will do excellently under
almost any chief with the same purposes.

I at once announced that I would continue unchanged McKinley's policies
for the honor and prosperity of the country, and I asked all the members
of the Cabinet to stay. There were no changes made among them save as
changes were made among their successors whom I myself appointed. I
continued Mr. McKinley's policies, changing and developing them and
adding new policies only as the questions before the public changed and
as the needs of the public developed. Some of my friends shook their
heads over this, telling me that the men I retained would not be "loyal
to me," and that I would seem as if I were "a pale copy of McKinley."
I told them that I was not nervous on this score, and that if the men
I retained were loyal to their work they would be giving me the loyalty
for which I most cared; and that if they were not, I would change them
anyhow; and that as for being "a pale copy of McKinley," I was not
primarily concerned with either following or not following in his
footsteps, but in facing the new problems that arose; and that if I were
competent I would find ample opportunity to show my competence by my
deeds without worrying myself as to how to convince people of the fact.

For the reasons I have already given in my chapter on the Governorship
of New York, the Republican party, which in the days of Abraham Lincoln
was founded as the radical progressive party of the Nation, had been
obliged during the last decade of the nineteenth century to uphold
the interests of popular government against a foolish and illjudged
mock-radicalism. It remained the Nationalist as against the
particularist or State's rights party, and in so far it remained
absolutely sound; for little permanent good can be done by any party
which worships the State's rights fetish or which fails to regard the
State, like the county or the municipality, as merely a convenient unit
for local self-government, while in all National matters, of importance
to the whole people, the Nation is to be supreme over State, county, and
town alike. But the State's rights fetish, although still effectively
used at certain times by both courts and Congress to block needed
National legislation directed against the huge corporations or in the
interests of workingmen, was not a prime issue at the time of which I
speak. In 1896, 1898, and 1900 the campaigns were waged on two great
moral issues: (1) the imperative need of a sound and honest currency;
(2) the need, after 1898, of meeting in manful and straightforward
fashion the extraterritorial problems arising from the Spanish War. On
these great moral issues the Republican party was right, and the men who
were opposed to it, and who claimed to be the radicals, and their allies
among the sentimentalists, were utterly and hopelessly wrong. This had,
regrettably but perhaps inevitably, tended to throw the party into the
hands not merely of the conservatives but of the reactionaries; of men
who, sometimes for personal and improper reasons, but more often with
entire sincerity and uprightness of purpose, distrusted anything that
was progressive and dreaded radicalism. These men still from force of
habit applauded what Lincoln had done in the way of radical dealing
with the abuses of his day; but they did not apply the spirit in which
Lincoln worked to the abuses of their own day. Both houses of Congress
were controlled by these men. Their leaders in the Senate were Messrs.
Aldrich and Hale. The Speaker of the House when I became President
was Mr. Henderson, but in a little over a year he was succeeded by Mr.
Cannon, who, although widely differing from Senator Aldrich in matters
of detail, represented the same type of public sentiment. There were
many points on which I agreed with Mr. Cannon and Mr. Aldrich, and some
points on which I agreed with Mr. Hale. I made a resolute effort to get
on with all three and with their followers, and I have no question that
they made an equally resolute effort to get on with me. We succeeded in
working together, although with increasing friction, for some years, I
pushing forward and they hanging back. Gradually, however, I was forced
to abandon the effort to persuade them to come my way, and then I
achieved results only by appealing over the heads of the Senate and
House leaders to the people, who were the masters of both of us. I
continued in this way to get results until almost the close of my term;
and the Republican party became once more the progressive and indeed the
fairly radical progressive party of the Nation. When my successor was
chosen, however, the leaders of the House and Senate, or most of them,
felt that it was safe to come to a break with me, and the last or short
session of Congress, held between the election of my successor and his
inauguration four months later, saw a series of contests
between the majorities in the two houses of Congress and the
President,--myself,--quite as bitter as if they and I had belonged to
opposite political parties. However, I held my own. I was not able to
push through the legislation I desired during these four months, but
I was able to prevent them doing anything I did not desire, or undoing
anything that I had already succeeded in getting done.

There were, of course, many Senators and members of the lower house with
whom up to the very last I continued to work in hearty accord, and with
a growing understanding. I have not the space to enumerate, as I would
like to, these men. For many years Senator Lodge had been my close
personal and political friend, with whom I discussed all public
questions that arose, usually with agreement; and our intimately close
relations were of course unchanged by my entry into the White House. He
was of all our public men the man who had made the closest and wisest
study of our foreign relations, and more clearly than almost any
other man he understood the vital fact that the efficiency of our
navy conditioned our national efficiency in foreign affairs. Anything
relating to our international relations, from Panama and the navy to the
Alaskan boundary question, the Algeciras negotiations, or the peace of
Portsmouth, I was certain to discuss with Senator Lodge and also with
certain other members of Congress, such as Senator Turner of Washington
and Representative Hitt of Illinois. Anything relating to labor
legislation and to measures for controlling big business or efficiently
regulating the giant railway systems, I was certain to discuss with
Senator Dolliver or Congressman Hepburn or Congressman Cooper. With
men like Senator Beveridge, Congressman (afterwards Senator) Dixon,
and Congressman Murdock, I was apt to discuss pretty nearly everything
relating to either our internal or our external affairs. There were
many, many others. The present president of the Senate, Senator Clark,
of Arkansas, was as fearless and high-minded a representative of the
people of the United States as I ever dealt with. He was one of the men
who combined loyalty to his own State with an equally keen loyalty to
the people of all the United States. He was politically opposed to me;
but when the interests of the country were at stake, he was incapable of
considering party differences; and this was especially his attitude
in international matters--including certain treaties which most of
his party colleagues, with narrow lack of patriotism, and complete
subordination of National to factional interest, opposed. I have never
anywhere met finer, more faithful, more disinterested, and more
loyal public servants than Senator O. H. Platt, a Republican, from
Connecticut, and Senator Cockrell, a Democrat, from Missouri. They were
already old men when I came to the Presidency; and doubtless there
were points on which I seemed to them to be extreme and radical; but
eventually they found that our motives and beliefs were the same,
and they did all in their power to help any movement that was for the
interest of our people as a whole. I had met them when I was Civil
Service Commissioner and Assistant Secretary of the Navy. All I ever had
to do with either was to convince him that a given measure I championed
was right, and he then at once did all he could to have it put into
effect. If I could not convince them, why! that was my fault, or my
misfortune; but if I could convince them, I never had to think again as
to whether they would or would not support me. There were many other men
of mark in both houses with whom I could work on some points, whereas
on others we had to differ. There was one powerful leader--a burly,
forceful man, of admirable traits--who had, however, been trained in
the post-bellum school of business and politics, so that his attitude
towards life, quite unconsciously, reminded me a little of Artemus
Ward's view of the Tower of London--"If I like it, I'll buy it." There
was a big governmental job in which this leader was much interested,
and in reference to which he always wished me to consult a man whom
he trusted, whom I will call Pitt Rodney. One day I answered him, "The
trouble with Rodney is that he misestimates his relations to cosmos";
to which he responded, "Cosmos--Cosmos? Never heard of him. You stick
to Rodney. He's your man!" Outside of the public servants there were
multitudes of men, in newspaper offices, in magazine offices, in
business or the professions or on farms or in shops, who actively
supported the policies for which I stood and did work of genuine
leadership which was quite as effective as any work done by men in
public office. Without the active support of these men I would have
been powerless. In particular, the leading newspaper correspondents
at Washington were as a whole a singularly able, trustworthy, and
public-spirited body of men, and the most useful of all agents in the
fight for efficient and decent government.

As for the men under me in executive office, I could not overstate the
debt of gratitude I owe them. From the heads of the departments, the
Cabinet officers, down, the most striking feature of the Administration
was the devoted, zealous, and efficient work that was done as soon as it
became understood that the one bond of interest among all of us was the
desire to make the Government the most effective instrument in advancing
the interests of the people as a whole, the interests of the average men
and women of the United States and of their children. I do not think I
overstate the case when I say that most of the men who did the best work
under me felt that ours was a partnership, that we all stood on the same
level of purpose and service, and that it mattered not what position any
one of us held so long as in that position he gave the very best that
was in him. We worked very hard; but I made a point of getting a couple
of hours off each day for equally vigorous play. The men with whom I
then played, whom we laughingly grew to call the "Tennis Cabinet," have
been mentioned in a previous chapter of this book in connection with
the gift they gave me at the last breakfast which they took at the White
House. There were many others in the public service under me with whom I
happened not to play, but who did their share of our common work just as
effectively as it was done by us who did play. Of course nothing could
have been done in my Administration if it had not been for the zeal,
intelligence, masterful ability, and downright hard labor of these men
in countless positions under me. I was helpless to do anything except
as my thoughts and orders were translated into action by them; and,
moreover, each of them, as he grew specially fit for his job, used to
suggest to me the right thought to have, and the right order to give,
concerning that job. It is of course hard for me to speak with cold and
dispassionate partiality of these men, who were as close to me as were
the men of my regiment. But the outside observers best fitted to pass
judgment about them felt as I did. At the end of my Administration Mr.
Bryce, the British Ambassador, told me that in a long life, during which
he had studied intimately the government of many different countries, he
had never in any country seen a more eager, high-minded, and efficient
set of public servants, men more useful and more creditable to their
country, than the men then doing the work of the American Government in
Washington and in the field. I repeat this statement with the permission
of Mr. Bryce.

At about the same time, or a little before, in the spring of 1908, there
appeared in the English _Fortnightly Review_ an article, evidently by
a competent eye witness, setting forth more in detail the same views to
which the British Ambassador thus privately gave expression. It was in
part as follows:

"Mr. Roosevelt has gathered around him a body of public servants who
are nowhere surpassed, I question whether they are anywhere equaled, for
efficiency, self-sacrifice, and an absolute devotion to their country's
interests. Many of them are poor men, without private means, who have
voluntarily abandoned high professional ambitions and turned their backs
on the rewards of business to serve their country on salaries that are
not merely inadequate, but indecently so. There is not one of them
who is not constantly assailed by offers of positions in the world
of commerce, finance, and the law that would satisfy every material
ambition with which he began life. There is not one of them who could
not, if he chose, earn outside Washington from ten to twenty times the
income on which he economizes as a State official. But these men are
as indifferent to money and to the power that money brings as to the
allurements of Newport and New York, or to merely personal distinctions,
or to the commercialized ideals which the great bulk of their
fellow-countrymen accept without question. They are content, and more
than content, to sink themselves in the National service without a
thought of private advancement, and often at a heavy sacrifice of
worldly honors, and to toil on . . . sustained by their own native
impulse to make of patriotism an efficient instrument of public
betterment."

The American public rarely appreciate the high quality of the work
done by some of our diplomats--work, usually entirely unnoticed and
unrewarded, which redounds to the interest and the honor of all of
us. The most useful man in the entire diplomatic service, during my
presidency, and for many years before, was Henry White; and I say
this having in mind the high quality of work done by such admirable
ambassadors and ministers as Bacon, Meyer, Straus, O'Brien, Rockhill,
and Egan, to name only a few among many. When I left the presidency
White was Ambassador to France; shortly afterwards he was removed by Mr.
Taft, for reasons unconnected with the good of the service.

The most important factor in getting the right spirit in my
Administration, next to the insistence upon courage, honesty, and a
genuine democracy of desire to serve the plain people, was my insistence
upon the theory that the executive power was limited only by specific
restrictions and prohibitions appearing in the Constitution or imposed
by the Congress under its Constitutional powers. My view was that
every executive officer, and above all every executive officer in high
position, was a steward of the people bound actively and affirmatively
to do all he could for the people, and not to content himself with the
negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin. I declined
to adopt the view that what was imperatively necessary for the Nation
could not be done by the President unless he could find some specific
authorization to do it. My belief was that it was not only his right
but his duty to do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded unless
such action was forbidden by the Constitution or by the laws. Under
this interpretation of executive power I did and caused to be done
many things not previously done by the President and the heads of the
departments. I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of
executive power. In other words, I acted for the public welfare, I acted
for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever
manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional or
legislative prohibition. I did not care a rap for the mere form and
show of power; I cared immensely for the use that could be made of the
substance. The Senate at one time objected to my communicating with them
in printing, preferring the expensive, foolish, and laborious practice
of writing out the messages by hand. It was not possible to return to
the outworn archaism of hand writing; but we endeavored to have the
printing made as pretty as possible. Whether I communicated with the
Congress in writing or by word of mouth, and whether the writing was by
a machine, or a pen, were equally, and absolutely, unimportant matters.
The importance lay in what I said and in the heed paid to what I said.
So as to my meeting and consulting Senators, Congressmen, politicians,
financiers, and labor men. I consulted all who wished to see me; and if
I wished to see any one, I sent for him; and where the consultation took
place was a matter of supreme unimportance. I consulted every man
with the sincere hope that I could profit by and follow his advice; I
consulted every member of Congress who wished to be consulted, hoping to
be able to come to an agreement of action with him; and I always finally
acted as my conscience and common sense bade me act.

About appointments I was obliged by the Constitution to consult the
Senate; and the long-established custom of the Senate meant that in
practice this consultation was with individual Senators and even with
big politicians who stood behind the Senators. I was only one-half the
appointing power; I nominated; but the Senate confirmed. In practice,
by what was called "the courtesy of the Senate," the Senate normally
refused to confirm any appointment if the Senator from the State
objected to it. In exceptional cases, where I could arouse public
attention, I could force through the appointment in spite of the
opposition of the Senators; in all ordinary cases this was impossible.
On the other hand, the Senator could of course do nothing for any man
unless I chose to nominate him. In consequence the Constitution itself
forced the President and the Senators from each State to come to a
working agreement on the appointments in and from that State.

My course was to insist on absolute fitness, including honesty, as a
prerequisite to every appointment; and to remove only for good cause,
and, where there was such cause, to refuse even to discuss with the
Senator in interest the unfit servant's retention. Subject to these
considerations, I normally accepted each Senator's recommendations for
offices of a routine kind, such as most post-offices and the like, but
insisted on myself choosing the men for the more important positions.
I was willing to take any good man for postmaster; but in the case of
a Judge or District Attorney or Canal Commissioner or Ambassador, I
was apt to insist either on a given man or else on any man with a given
class of qualifications. If the Senator deceived me, I took care that he
had no opportunity to repeat the deception.

I can perhaps best illustrate my theory of action by two specific
examples. In New York Governor Odell and Senator Platt sometimes worked
in agreement and sometimes were at swords' points, and both wished to be
consulted. To a friendly Congressman, who was also their friend, I wrote
as follows on July 22, 1903:

"I want to work with Platt. I want to work with Odell. I want to support
both and take the advice of both. But of course ultimately I must be
the judge as to acting on the advice given. When, as in the case of the
judgeship, I am convinced that the advice of both is wrong, I shall act
as I did when I appointed Holt. When I can find a friend of Odell's
like Cooley, who is thoroughly fit for the position I desire to fill, it
gives me the greatest pleasure to appoint him. When Platt proposes to me
a man like Hamilton Fish, it is equally a pleasure to appoint him."

This was written in connection with events which led up to my refusing
to accept Senator Platt's or Governor Odell's suggestions as to a
Federal Judgeship and a Federal District Attorneyship, and insisting
on the appointment, first of Judge Hough and later of District Attorney
Stimson; because in each case I felt that the work to be done was of so
high an order that I could not take an ordinary man.

The other case was that of Senator Fulton, of Oregon. Through Francis
Heney I was prosecuting men who were implicated in a vast network of
conspiracy against the law in connection with the theft of public land
in Oregon. I had been acting on Senator Fulton's recommendations for
office, in the usual manner. Heney had been insisting that Fulton was
in league with the men we were prosecuting, and that he had recommended
unfit men. Fulton had been protesting against my following Heney's
advice, particularly as regards appointing Judge Wolverton as United
States Judge. Finally Heney laid before me a report which convinced me
of the truth of his statements. I then wrote to Fulton as follows, on
November 20, 1905: "My dear Senator Fulton: I inclose you herewith a
copy of the report made to me by Mr. Heney. I have seen the originals
of the letters from you and Senator Mitchell quoted therein. I do not
at this time desire to discuss the report itself, which of course I must
submit to the Attorney-General. But I have been obliged to reach the
painful conclusion that your own letters as therein quoted tend to show
that you recommended for the position of District Attorney B when you
had good reason to believe that he had himself been guilty of fraudulent
conduct; that you recommended C for the same position simply because it
was for B's interest that he should be so recommended, and, as there is
reason to believe, because he had agreed to divide the fees with B if he
were appointed; and that you finally recommended the reappointment of
H with the knowledge that if H were appointed he would abstain from
prosecuting B for criminal misconduct, this being why B advocated H's
claims for reappointment. If you care to make any statement in the
matter, I shall of course be glad to hear it. As the District Judge of
Oregon I shall appoint Judge Wolverton." In the letter I of course gave
in full the names indicated above by initials. Senator Fulton gave no
explanation. I therefore ceased to consult him about appointments under
the Department of Justice and the Interior, the two departments in which
the crookedness had occurred--there was no question of crookedness
in the other offices in the State, and they could be handled in the
ordinary manner. Legal proceedings were undertaken against his colleague
in the Senate, and one of his colleagues in the lower house, and the
former was convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary.

In a number of instances the legality of executive acts of my
Administration was brought before the courts. They were uniformly
sustained. For example, prior to 1907 statutes relating to the
disposition of coal lands had been construed as fixing the flat price at
$10 to $20 per acre. The result was that valuable coal lands were sold
for wholly inadequate prices, chiefly to big corporations. By executive
order the coal lands were withdrawn and not opened for entry until
proper classification was placed thereon by Government agents. There was
a great clamor that I was usurping legislative power; but the acts were
not assailed in court until we brought suits to set aside entries made
by persons and associations to obtain larger areas than the statutes
authorized. This position was opposed on the ground that the
restrictions imposed were illegal; that the executive orders were
illegal. The Supreme Court sustained the Government. In the same way our
attitude in the water power question was sustained, the Supreme Court
holding that the Federal Government had the rights we claimed over
streams that are or may be declared navigable by Congress. Again, when
Oklahoma became a State we were obliged to use the executive power
to protect Indian rights and property, for there had been an enormous
amount of fraud in the obtaining of Indian lands by white men. Here we
were denounced as usurping power over a State as well as usurping power
that did not belong to the executive. The Supreme Court sustained our
action.

In connection with the Indians, by the way, it was again and again
necessary to assert the position of the President as steward of the
whole people. I had a capital Indian Commissioner, Francis E. Leupp. I
found that I could rely on his judgment not to get me into fights that
were unnecessary, and therefore I always backed him to the limit when
he told me that a fight was necessary. On one occasion, for example,
Congress passed a bill to sell to settlers about half a million acres of
Indian land in Oklahoma at one and a half dollars an acre. I refused to
sign it, and turned the matter over to Leupp. The bill was accordingly
withdrawn, amended so as to safeguard the welfare of the Indians, and
the minimum price raised to five dollars an acre. Then I signed the
bill. We sold that land under sealed bids, and realized for the Kiowa,
Comanche, and Apache Indians more than four million dollars--three
millions and a quarter more than they would have obtained if I had
signed the bill in its original form. In another case, where there
had been a division among the Sac and Fox Indians, part of the tribe
removing to Iowa, the Iowa delegation in Congress, backed by two Iowans
who were members of my Cabinet, passed a bill awarding a sum of nearly
a half million dollars to the Iowa seceders. They had not consulted
the Indian Bureau. Leupp protested against the bill, and I vetoed it. A
subsequent bill was passed on the lines laid down by the Indian Bureau,
referring the whole controversy to the courts, and the Supreme Court in
the end justified our position by deciding against the Iowa seceders and
awarding the money to the Oklahoma stay-at-homes.

As to all action of this kind there have long been two schools of
political thought, upheld with equal sincerity. The division has not
normally been along political, but temperamental, lines. The course I
followed, of regarding the executive as subject only to the people, and,
under the Constitution, bound to serve the people affirmatively in cases
where the Constitution does not explicitly forbid him to render the
service, was substantially the course followed by both Andrew Jackson
and Abraham Lincoln. Other honorable and well-meaning Presidents, such
as James Buchanan, took the opposite and, as it seems to me, narrowly
legalistic view that the President is the servant of Congress rather
than of the people, and can do nothing, no matter how necessary it be to
act, unless the Constitution explicitly commands the action. Most able
lawyers who are past middle age take this view, and so do large numbers
of well-meaning, respectable citizens. My successor in office took this,
the Buchanan, view of the President's powers and duties.

For example, under my Administration we found that one of the favorite
methods adopted by the men desirous of stealing the public domain was
to carry the decision of the Secretary of the Interior into court. By
vigorously opposing such action, and only by so doing, we were able
to carry out the policy of properly protecting the public domain. My
successor not only took the opposite view, but recommended to Congress
the passage of a bill which would have given the courts direct appellate
power over the Secretary of the Interior in these land matters. This
bill was reported favorably by Mr. Mondell, Chairman of the House
Committee on public lands, a Congressman who took the lead in every
measure to prevent the conservation of our natural resources and
the preservation of the National domain for the use of home-seekers.
Fortunately, Congress declined to pass the bill. Its passage would have
been a veritable calamity.

I acted on the theory that the President could at any time in his
discretion withdraw from entry any of the public lands of the United
States and reserve the same for forestry, for water-power sites, for
irrigation, and other public purposes. Without such action it would
have been impossible to stop the activity of the land thieves. No one
ventured to test its legality by lawsuit. My successor, however, himself
questioned it, and referred the matter to Congress. Again Congress
showed its wisdom by passing a law which gave the President the power
which he had long exercised, and of which my successor had shorn
himself.

Perhaps the sharp difference between what may be called the
Lincoln-Jackson and the Buchanan-Taft schools, in their views of the
power and duties of the President, may be best illustrated by comparing
the attitude of my successor toward his Secretary of the Interior, Mr.
Ballinger, when the latter was accused of gross misconduct in office,
with my attitude towards my chiefs of department and other subordinate
officers. More than once while I was President my officials were
attacked by Congress, generally because these officials did their duty
well and fearlessly. In every such case I stood by the official
and refused to recognize the right of Congress to interfere with me
excepting by impeachment or in other Constitutional manner. On the other
hand, wherever I found the officer unfit for his position I promptly
removed him, even although the most influential men in Congress fought
for his retention. The Jackson-Lincoln view is that a President who is
fit to do good work should be able to form his own judgment as to his
own subordinates, and, above all, of the subordinates standing highest
and in closest and most intimate touch with him. My secretaries
and their subordinates were responsible to me, and I accepted the
responsibility for all their deeds. As long as they were satisfactory to
me I stood by them against every critic or assailant, within or without
Congress; and as for getting Congress to make up my mind for me about
them, the thought would have been inconceivable to me. My successor took
the opposite, or Buchanan, view when he permitted and requested Congress
to pass judgment on the charges made against Mr. Ballinger as an
executive officer. These charges were made to the President; the
President had the facts before him and could get at them at any time,
and he alone had power to act if the charges were true. However, he
permitted and requested Congress to investigate Mr. Ballinger. The party
minority of the committee that investigated him, and one member of
the majority, declared that the charges were well founded and that Mr.
Ballinger should be removed. The other members of the majority declared
the charges ill founded. The President abode by the view of the
majority. Of course believers in the Jackson-Lincoln theory of the
Presidency would not be content with this town meeting majority and
minority method of determining by another branch of the Government what
it seems the especial duty of the President himself to determine for
himself in dealing with his own subordinate in his own department.

There are many worthy people who reprobate the Buchanan method as a
matter of history, but who in actual life reprobate still more strongly
the Jackson-Lincoln method when it is put into practice. These persons
conscientiously believe that the President should solve every doubt in
favor of inaction as against action, that he should construe strictly
and narrowly the Constitutional grant of powers both to the National
Government, and to the President within the National Government. In
addition, however, to the men who conscientiously believe in this course
from high, although as I hold misguided, motives, there are many men who
affect to believe in it merely because it enables them to attack and to
try to hamper, for partisan or personal reasons, an executive whom
they dislike. There are other men in whom, especially when they are
themselves in office, practical adherence to the Buchanan principle
represents not well-thought-out devotion to an unwise course, but simple
weakness of character and desire to avoid trouble and responsibility.
Unfortunately, in practice it makes little difference which class
of ideas actuates the President, who by his action sets a cramping
precedent. Whether he is highminded and wrongheaded or merely infirm
of purpose, whether he means well feebly or is bound by a mischievous
misconception of the powers and duties of the National Government and
of the President, the effect of his actions is the same. The President's
duty is to act so that he himself and his subordinates shall be able to
do efficient work for the people, and this efficient work he and they
cannot do if Congress is permitted to undertake the task of making up
his mind for him as to how he shall perform what is clearly his sole
duty.

One of the ways in which by independent action of the executive we were
able to accomplish an immense amount of work for the public was through
volunteer unpaid commissions appointed by the President. It was possible
to get the work done by these volunteer commissions only because of the
enthusiasm for the public service which, starting in the higher
offices at Washington, made itself felt throughout the Government
departments--as I have said, I never knew harder and more disinterested
work done by any people than was done by the men and women of all ranks
in the Government service. The contrast was really extraordinary between
their live interest in their work and the traditional clerical apathy
which has so often been the distinguishing note of governmental work
in Washington. Most of the public service performed by these volunteer
commissions, carried on without a cent of pay to the men themselves,
and wholly without cost to the Government, was done by men the great
majority of whom were already in the Government service and already
charged with responsibilities amounting each to a full man's job.

The first of these Commissions was the Commission on the Organization
of Government Scientific Work, whose Chairman was Charles D. Walcott.
Appointed March 13, 1903, its duty was to report directly to the
President "upon the organization, present condition, and needs of the
Executive Government work wholly or partly scientific in character, and
upon the steps which should be taken, if any, to prevent the duplication
of such work, to co-ordinate its various branches, to increase its
efficiency and economy, and to promote its usefulness to the Nation
at large." This Commission spent four months in an examination which
covered the work of about thirty of the larger scientific and executive
bureaus of the Government, and prepared a report which furnished the
basis for numerous improvements in the Government service.

Another Commission, appointed June 2, 1905, was that on Department
Methods--Charles H. Keep, Chairman--whose task was to "find out what
changes are needed to place the conduct of the executive business of
the Government in all its branches on the most economical and effective
basis in the light of the best modern business practice." The letter
appointing this Commission laid down nine principles of effective
Governmental work, the most striking of which was: "The existence of any
method, standard, custom, or practice is no reason for its continuance
when a better is offered." This Commission, composed like that just
described, of men already charged with important work, performed its
functions wholly without cost to the Government. It was assisted by a
body of about seventy experts in the Government departments chosen
for their special qualifications to carry forward a study of the best
methods in business, and organized into assistant committees under
the leadership of Overton W. Price, Secretary of the Commission. These
assistant committees, all of whose members were still carrying on their
regular work, made their reports during the last half of 1906. The
Committee informed itself fully regarding the business methods of
practically every individual branch of the business of the Government,
and effected a marked improvement in general efficiency throughout the
service. The conduct of the routine business of the Government had never
been thoroughly overhauled before, and this examination of it resulted
in the promulgation of a set of working principles for the transaction
of public business which are as sound to-day as they were when
the Committee finished its work. The somewhat elaborate and costly
investigations of Government business methods since made have served
merely to confirm the findings of the Committee on Departmental Methods,
which were achieved without costing the Government a dollar. The actual
saving in the conduct of the business of the Government through the
better methods thus introduced amounted yearly to many hundreds of
thousands of dollars; but a far more important gain was due to the
remarkable success of the Commission in establishing a new point of view
in public servants toward their work.

The need for improvement in the Governmental methods of transacting
business may be illustrated by an actual case. An officer in charge of
an Indian agency made a requisition in the autumn for a stove costing
seven dollars, certifying at the same time that it was needed to keep
the infirmary warm during the winter, because the old stove was worn
out. Thereupon the customary papers went through the customary routine,
without unusual delay at any point. The transaction moved like a glacier
with dignity to its appointed end, and the stove reached the infirmary
in good order in time for the Indian agent to acknowledge its arrival in
these words: "The stove is here. So is spring."

The Civil Service Commission, under men like John McIlhenny and
Garfield, rendered service without which the Government could have been
conducted with neither efficiency nor honesty. The politicians were
not the only persons at fault; almost as much improper pressure for
appointments is due to mere misplaced sympathy, and to the spiritless
inefficiency which seeks a Government office as a haven for the
incompetent. An amusing feature of office seeking is that each man
desiring an office is apt to look down on all others with the same
object as forming an objectionable class with which _he_ has nothing in
common. At the time of the eruption of Mt. Pelee, when among others
the American Consul was killed, a man who had long been seeking an
appointment promptly applied for the vacancy. He was a good man, of
persistent nature, who felt I had been somewhat blind to his merits. The
morning after the catastrophe he wrote, saying that as the consul was
dead he would like his place, and that I could surely give it to him,
because "even the office seekers could not have applied for it yet!"

The method of public service involved in the appointment and the work of
the two commissions just described was applied also in the establishment
of four other commissions, each of which performed its task without
salary or expense for its members, and wholly without cost to the
Government. The other four commissions were:

Commission on Public Lands;

Commission on Inland Waterways;

Commission on Country Life; and

Commission on National Conservation.

All of these commissions were suggested to me by Gifford Pinchot, who
served upon them all. The work of the last four will be touched upon in
connection with the chapter on Conservation. These commissions by their
reports and findings directly interfered with many place-holders who
were doing inefficient work, and their reports and the action
taken thereon by the Administration strengthened the hands of those
administrative officers who in the various departments, and especially
in the Secret Service, were proceeding against land thieves and other
corrupt wrong-doers. Moreover, the mere fact that they did efficient
work for the public along lines new to veteran and cynical politicians
of the old type created vehement hostility to them. Senators like Mr.
Hale and Congressmen like Mr. Tawney were especially bitter against
these commissions; and towards the end of my term they were followed
by the majority of their fellows in both houses, who had gradually been
sundered from me by the open or covert hostility of the financial or
Wall Street leaders, and of the newspaper editors and politicians who
did their bidding in the interest of privilege. These Senators and
Congressmen asserted that they had a right to forbid the President
profiting by the unpaid advice of disinterested experts. Of course I
declined to admit the existence of any such right, and continued the
Commissions. My successor acknowledged the right, upheld the view of the
politicians in question, and abandoned the commissions, to the lasting
detriment of the people as a whole.

One thing is worth pointing out: During the seven and a half years of
my Administration we greatly and usefully extended the sphere of
Governmental action, and yet we reduced the burden of the taxpayers;
for we reduced the interest-bearing debt by more than $90,000,000. To
achieve a marked increase in efficiency and at the same time an increase
in economy is not an easy feat; but we performed it.

There was one ugly and very necessary task. This was to discover and
root out corruption wherever it was found in any of the departments. The
first essential was to make it clearly understood that no political or
business or social influence of any kind would for one moment be even
considered when the honesty of a public official was at issue. It took
a little time to get this fact thoroughly drilled into the heads both
of the men within the service and of the political leaders without. The
feat was accomplished so thoroughly that every effort to interfere in
any shape or way with the course of justice was abandoned definitely and
for good. Most, although not all, of the frauds occurred in connection
with the Post-Office Department and the Land Office.

It was in the Post-Office Department that we first definitely
established the rule of conduct which became universal throughout the
whole service. Rumors of corruption in the department became rife, and
finally I spoke of them to the then First Assistant Postmaster-General,
afterwards Postmaster-General, Robert J. Wynne. He reported to me, after
some investigation, that in his belief there was doubtless corruption,
but that it was very difficult to get at it, and that the offenders
were confident and defiant because of their great political and business
backing and the ramifications of their crimes. Talking the matter over
with him, I came to the conclusion that the right man to carry on the
investigation was the then Fourth Assistant Postmaster-General, now
a Senator from Kansas, Joseph L. Bristow, who possessed the iron
fearlessness needful to front such a situation. Mr. Bristow had perforce
seen a good deal of the seamy side of politics, and of the extent of the
unscrupulousness with which powerful influence was brought to bear to
shield offenders. Before undertaking the investigation he came to see
me, and said that he did not wish to go into it unless he could be
assured that I would stand personally behind him, and, no matter where
his inquiries led him, would support him and prevent interference
with him. I answered that I would certainly do so. He went into
the investigation with relentless energy, dogged courage, and keen
intelligence. His success was complete, and the extent of his services
to the Nation are not easily to be exaggerated. He unearthed a really
appalling amount of corruption, and he did his work with such absolute
thoroughness that the corruption was completely eradicated.

We had, of course, the experience usual in all such investigations. At
first there was popular incredulity and disbelief that there was much
behind the charges, or that much could be unearthed. Then when the
corruption was shown there followed a yell of anger from all directions,
and a period during which any man accused was forthwith held guilty
by the public; and violent demands were made by the newspapers for the
prosecution not only of the men who could be prosecuted with a fair
chance of securing conviction and imprisonment, but of other men whose
misconduct had been such as to warrant my removing them from office, but
against whom it was not possible to get the kind of evidence which would
render likely conviction in a criminal case. Suits were brought against
all the officials whom we thought we could convict; and the public
complained bitterly that we did not bring further suits. We secured
several convictions, including convictions of the most notable
offenders. The trials consumed a good deal of time. Public attention was
attracted to something else. Indifference succeeded to excitement, and
in some subtle way the juries seemed to respond to the indifference. One
of the worst offenders was acquitted by a jury; whereupon not a few of
the same men who had insisted that the Government was derelict in not
criminally prosecuting every man whose misconduct was established so as
to make it necessary to turn him out of office, now turned round and,
inasmuch as the jury had not found this man guilty of crime, demanded
that he should be reinstated in office! It is needless to say that the
demand was not granted. There were two or three other acquittals, of
prominent outsiders. Nevertheless the net result was that the majority
of the worst offenders were sent to prison, and the remainder dismissed
from the Government service, if they were public officials, and if
they were not public officials at least so advertised as to render
it impossible that they should ever again have dealings with the
Government. The department was absolutely cleaned and became one of the
very best in the Government. Several Senators came to me--Mr. Garfield
was present on the occasion--and said that they were glad I was putting
a stop to corruption, but they hoped I would avoid all scandal; that if
I would make an example of some one man and then let the others quietly
resign, it would avoid a disturbance which might hurt the party. They
were advising me in good faith, and I was as courteous as possible in
my answer, but explained that I would have to act with the utmost rigor
against the offenders, no matter what the effect on the party, and,
moreover, that I did not believe it would hurt the party. It did not
hurt the party. It helped the party. A favorite war-cry in American
political life has always been, "Turn the rascals out." We made it
evident that, as far as we were concerned, this war-cry was pointless;
for we turned our own rascals out.

There were important and successful land fraud prosecutions in several
Western States. Probably the most important were the cases prosecuted in
Oregon by Francis J. Heney, with the assistance of William J. Burns,
a secret service agent who at that time began his career as a great
detective. It would be impossible to overstate the services rendered to
the cause of decency and honesty by Messrs. Heney and Burns. Mr. Heney
was my close and intimate adviser professionally and non-professionally,
not only as regards putting a stop to frauds in the public lands, but
in many other matters of vital interest to the Republic. No man in the
country has waged the battle for National honesty with greater courage
and success, with more whole-hearted devotion to the public good; and
no man has been more traduced and maligned by the wrong-doing agents
and representatives of the great sinister forces of evil. He secured the
conviction of various men of high political and financial standing
in connection with the Oregon prosecutions; he and Burns behaved with
scrupulous fairness and propriety; but their services to the public
caused them to incur the bitter hatred of those who had wronged the
public, and after I left office the National Administration turned
against them. One of the most conspicuous of the men whom they had
succeeded in convicting was pardoned by President Taft--in spite of the
fact that the presiding Judge, Judge Hunt, had held that the
evidence amply warranted the conviction, and had sentenced the man to
imprisonment. As was natural, the one hundred and forty-six land-fraud
defendants in Oregon, who included the foremost machine political
leaders in the State, furnished the backbone of the opposition to me in
the Presidential contest of 1912. The opposition rallied behind Messrs.
Taft and LaFollette; and although I carried the primaries handsomely,
half of the delegates elected from Oregon under instructions to vote for
me, sided with my opponents in the National Convention--and as regards
some of them I became convinced that the mainspring of their motive
lay in the intrigue for securing the pardon of certain of the men whose
conviction Heney had secured.

Land fraud and post-office cases were not the only ones. We were
especially zealous in prosecuting all of the "higher up" offenders
in the realms of politics and finance who swindled on a large scale.
Special assistants of the Attorney-General, such as Mr. Frank Kellogg,
of St. Paul, and various first-class Federal district attorneys in
different parts of the country secured notable results: Mr. Stimson and
his assistants, Messrs. Wise, Denison, and Frankfurter, in New York, for
instance, in connection with the prosecution of the Sugar Trust and of
the banker Morse, and of a great metropolitan newspaper for opening its
columns to obscene and immoral advertisements; and in St. Louis Messrs.
Dyer and Nortoni, who, among other services, secured the conviction and
imprisonment of Senator Burton, of Kansas; and in Chicago Mr. Sims,
who raised his office to the highest pitch of efficiency, secured the
conviction of the banker Walsh and of the Beef Trust, and first broke
through the armor of the Standard Oil Trust. It is not too much to say
that these men, and others like them, worked a complete revolution in
the enforcement of the Federal laws, and made their offices organized
legal machines fit and ready to conduct smashing fights for the people's
rights and to enforce the laws in aggressive fashion. When I took the
Presidency, it was a common and bitter saying that a big man, a rich
man, could not be put in jail. We put many big and rich men in jail;
two United States Senators, for instance, and among others two great
bankers, one in New York and one in Chicago. One of the United States
Senators died, the other served his term. (One of the bankers was
released from prison by executive order after I left office.) These were
merely individual cases among many others like them. Moreover, we
were just as relentless in dealing with crimes of violence among the
disorderly and brutal classes as in dealing with the crimes of cunning
and fraud of which certain wealthy men and big politicians were guilty.
Mr. Sims in Chicago was particularly efficient in sending to the
penitentiary numbers of the infamous men who batten on the "white
slave" traffic, after July, 1908, when by proclamation I announced
the adherence of our Government to the international agreement for the
suppression of the traffic.

The views I then held and now hold were expressed in a memorandum made
in the case of a Negro convicted of the rape of a young Negro girl,
practically a child. A petition for his pardon had been sent me.

WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D. C., August 8, 1904.

The application for the commutation of sentence of John W. Burley is
denied. This man committed the most hideous crime known to our laws, and
twice before he has committed crimes of a similar, though less horrible,
character. In my judgment there is no justification whatever for paying
heed to the allegations that he is not of sound mind, allegations made
after the trial and conviction. Nobody would pretend that there has ever
been any such degree of mental unsoundness shown as would make people
even consider sending him to an asylum if he had not committed this
crime. Under such circumstances he should certainly be esteemed sane
enough to suffer the penalty for his monstrous deed. I have scant
sympathy with the plea of insanity advanced to save a man from the
consequences of crime, when unless that crime had been committed it
would have been impossible to persuade any responsible authority to
commit him to an asylum as insane. Among the most dangerous criminals,
and especially among those prone to commit this particular kind of
offense, there are plenty of a temper so fiendish or so brutal as to be
incompatible with any other than a brutish order of intelligence; but
these men are nevertheless responsible for their acts; and nothing more
tends to encourage crime among such men than the belief that through the
plea of insanity or any other method it is possible for them to escape
paying the just penalty of their crimes. The crime in question is one
to the existence of which we largely owe the existence of that spirit
of lawlessness which takes form in lynching. It is a crime so revolting
that the criminal is not entitled to one particle of sympathy from any
human being. It is essential that the punishment for it should be not
only as certain but as swift as possible. The jury in this case did
their duty by recommending the infliction of the death penalty. It is
to be regretted that we do not have special provision for more summary
dealing with this type of case. The more we do what in us lies to
secure certain and swift justice in dealing with these cases, the more
effectively do we work against the growth of that lynching spirit which
is so full of evil omen for this people, because it seeks to avenge one
infamous crime by the commission of another of equal infamy.

The application is denied and the sentence will be carried into effect.

(Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

One of the most curious incidents of lawlessness with which I had to
deal affected an entire State. The State of Nevada in the year 1907
was gradually drifting into utter governmental impotence and downright
anarchy. The people were at heart all right; but the forces of evil had
been permitted to get the upper hand, and for the time being the decent
citizens had become helpless to assert themselves either by controlling
the greedy corporations on the one hand or repressing the murderous
violence of certain lawless labor organizations on the other hand. The
Governor of the State was a Democrat and a Southern man, and in the
abstract a strong believer in the doctrine of State's Rights. But his
experience finally convinced him that he could obtain order only through
the intervention of the National Government; and then he went over too
far and wished to have the National Government do his police work for
him. In the Rocky Mountain States there had existed for years what
was practically a condition of almost constant war between the wealthy
mine-owners and the Western Federation of Miners, at whose head stood
Messrs. Haywood, Pettibone, and Moyer, who were about that time indicted
for the murder of the Governor of Idaho. Much that was lawless, much
that was indefensible, had been done by both sides. The Legislature of
Nevada was in sympathy with, or at least was afraid of not expressing
sympathy for, Messrs. Moyer, Haywood, Pettibone, and their associates.
The State was practically without any police, and the Governor had
recommended the establishment of a State Constabulary, along the lines
of the Texas Rangers; but the Legislature rejected his request. The
Governor reported to me the conditions as follows. During 1907 the
Goldfield mining district became divided into two hostile camps. Half
of the Western Federation of Miners were constantly armed, and arms and
ammunition were purchased and kept by the union as a body, while the
mine-owners on their side retained large numbers of watchmen and guards
who were also armed and always on duty. In addition to these opposing
forces there was, as the Governor reported, an unusually large number of
the violent and criminal element, always attracted to a new and
booming mining camp. Under such conditions the civil authorities were
practically powerless, and the Governor, being helpless to avert civil
war, called on me to keep order. I accordingly threw in a body of
regular troops under General Funston. These kept order completely, and
the Governor became so well satisfied that he thought he would like
to have them there permanently! This seemed to me unhealthy, and on
December 28, 1907, I notified him that while I would do my duty, the
first need was that the State authorities should do theirs, and that
the first step towards this was the assembling of the Legislature.
I concluded my telegram: "If within five days from receipt of this
telegram you shall have issued the necessary notice to convene the
Legislature of Nevada, I shall continue the troops during a period of
three weeks. If when the term of five days has elapsed the notice has
not been issued, the troops will be immediately returned to their former
stations." I had already investigated the situation through a committee,
composed of the Chief of the Bureau of Corporations, Mr. H. K. Smith,
the Chief of the Bureau of Labor, Mr. C. P. Neill, and the Comptroller
of the Treasury, Mr. Lawrence Murray. These men I could thoroughly
trust, and their report, which was not over-favorable to either side,
had convinced me that the only permanent way to get good results was to
insist on the people of the State themselves grappling with and solving
their own troubles. The Governor summoned the Legislature, it met, and
the constabulary bill was passed. The troops remained in Nevada until
time had been given for the State authorities to organize their force so
that violence could at once be checked. Then they were withdrawn.

Nor was it only as regards their own internal affairs that I sometimes
had to get into active communication with the State authorities. There
has always been a strong feeling in California against the immigration
of Asiatic laborers, whether these are wage-workers or men who occupy
and till the soil. I believe this to be fundamentally a sound and proper
attitude, an attitude which must be insisted upon, and yet which can be
insisted upon in such a manner and with such courtesy and such sense of
mutual fairness and reciprocal obligation and respect as not to give any
just cause of offense to Asiatic peoples. In the present state of
the world's progress it is highly inadvisable that peoples in wholly
different stages of civilization, or of wholly different types of
civilization even although both equally high, shall be thrown into
intimate contact. This is especially undesirable when there is a
difference of both race and standard of living. In California the
question became acute in connection with the admission of the Japanese.
I then had and now have a hearty admiration for the Japanese people.
I believe in them; I respect their great qualities; I wish that our
American people had many of these qualities. Japanese and American
students, travelers, scientific and literary men, merchants engaged in
international trade, and the like can meet on terms of entire equality
and should be given the freest access each to the country of the other.
But the Japanese themselves would not tolerate the intrusion into
their country of a mass of Americans who would displace Japanese in the
business of the land. I think they are entirely right in this position.
I would be the first to admit that Japan has the absolute right to
declare on what terms foreigners shall be admitted to work in her
country, or to own land in her country, or to become citizens of her
country. America has and must insist upon the same right. The people
of California were right in insisting that the Japanese should not
come thither in mass, that there should be no influx of laborers, of
agricultural workers, or small tradesmen--in short, no mass settlement
or immigration.

Unfortunately, during the latter part of my term as President certain
unwise and demagogic agitators in California, to show their disapproval
of the Japanese coming into the State, adopted the very foolish
procedure of trying to provide by law that the Japanese children should
not be allowed to attend the schools with the white children, and
offensive and injurious language was used in connection with the
proposal. The Federal Administration promptly took up the matter with
the California authorities, and I got into personal touch with them. At
my request the Mayor of San Francisco and other leaders in the movement
came on to see me. I explained that the duty of the National Government
was twofold: in the first place, to meet every reasonable wish and every
real need of the people of California or any other State in dealing
with the people of a foreign power; and, in the next place, itself
exclusively and fully to exercise the right of dealing with this foreign
power.

Inasmuch as in the last resort, including that last of all resorts, war,
the dealing of necessity had to be between the foreign power and the
National Government, it was impossible to admit that the doctrine
of State sovereignty could be invoked in such a matter. As soon as
legislative or other action in any State affects a foreign nation, then
the affair becomes one for the Nation, and the State should deal with
the foreign power purely through the Nation.

I explained that I was in entire sympathy with the people of California
as to the subject of immigration of the Japanese in mass; but that of
course I wished to accomplish the object they had in view in the way
that would be most courteous and most agreeable to the feelings of the
Japanese; that all relations between the two peoples must be those of
reciprocal justice, and that it was an intolerable outrage on the part
of newspapers and public men to use offensive and insulting language
about a high-spirited, sensitive, and friendly people; and that such
action as was proposed about the schools could only have bad effects,
and would in no shape or way achieve the purpose that the Californians
had in mind. I also explained that I would use every resource of the
National Government to protect the Japanese in their treaty rights, and
would count upon the State authorities backing me up to the limit in
such action. In short, I insisted upon the two points (1) that the
Nation and not the individual States must deal with matters of such
international significance and must treat foreign nations with entire
courtesy and respect; and (2) that the Nation would at once, and in
efficient and satisfactory manner, take action that would meet the needs
of California. I both asserted the power of the Nation and offered a
full remedy for the needs of the State. This is the right, and the only
right, course. The worst possible course in such a case is to fail to
insist on the right of the Nation, to offer no action of the Nation to
remedy what is wrong, and yet to try to coax the State not to do what
it is mistakenly encouraged to believe it has the power to do, when no
other alternative is offered.

After a good deal of discussion, we came to an entirely satisfactory
conclusion. The obnoxious school legislation was abandoned, and I
secured an arrangement with Japan under which the Japanese themselves
prevented any immigration to our country of their laboring people, it
being distinctly understood that if there was such emigration the United
States would at once pass an exclusion law. It was of course infinitely
better that the Japanese should stop their own people from coming rather
than that we should have to stop them; but it was necessary for us to
hold this power in reserve.

Unfortunately, after I left office, a most mistaken and ill-advised
policy was pursued towards Japan, combining irritation and inefficiency,
which culminated in a treaty under which we surrendered this important
and necessary right. It was alleged in excuse that the treaty provided
for its own abrogation; but of course it is infinitely better to have a
treaty under which the power to exercise a necessary right is explicitly
retained rather than a treaty so drawn that recourse must be had to the
extreme step of abrogating if it ever becomes necessary to exercise the
right in question.

The arrangement we made worked admirably, and entirely achieved its
purpose. No small part of our success was due to the fact that we
succeeded in impressing on the Japanese that we sincerely admired and
respected them, and desired to treat them with the utmost consideration.
I cannot too strongly express my indignation with, and abhorrence
of, reckless public writers and speakers who, with coarse and vulgar
insolence, insult the Japanese people and thereby do the greatest wrong
not only to Japan but to their own country.

Such conduct represents that nadir of underbreeding and folly. The
Japanese are one of the great nations of the world, entitled to stand,
and standing, on a footing of full equality with any nation of Europe
or America. I have the heartiest admiration for them. They can teach us
much. Their civilization is in some respects higher than our own. It is
eminently undesirable that Japanese and Americans should attempt to
live together in masses; any such attempt would be sure to result
disastrously, and the far-seeing statesmen of both countries should join
to prevent it.

But this is not because either nation is inferior to the other; it is
because they are different. The two peoples represent two civilizations
which, although in many respects equally high, are so totally
distinct in their past history that it is idle to expect in one or two
generations to overcome this difference. One civilization is as old
as the other; and in neither case is the line of cultural descent
coincident with that of ethnic descent. Unquestionably the ancestors of
the great majority both of the modern Americans and the modern Japanese
were barbarians in that remote past which saw the origins of the
cultured peoples to which the Americans and the Japanese of to-day
severally trace their civilizations. But the lines of development of
these two civilizations, of the Orient and the Occident, have been
separate and divergent since thousands of years before the Christian
era; certainly since that hoary eld in which the Akkadian predecessors
of the Chaldean Semites held sway in Mesopotamia. An effort to mix
together, out of hand, the peoples representing the culminating points
of two such lines of divergent cultural development would be fraught
with peril; and this, I repeat, because the two are different, not
because either is inferior to the other. Wise statesmen, looking to the
future, will for the present endeavor to keep the two nations from mass
contact and intermingling, precisely because they wish to keep each in
relations of permanent good will and friendship with the other.

Exactly what was done in the particular crisis to which I refer is shown
in the following letter which, after our policy had been successfully
put into execution, I sent to the then Speaker of the California lower
house of the Legislature:

THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, February 8, 1909.

HON P. A. STANTON, Speaker of the Assembly, Sacramento, California:

I trust there will be no misunderstanding of the Federal Government's
attitude. We are jealously endeavoring to guard the interests of
California and of the entire West in accordance with the desires of our
Western people. By friendly agreement with Japan, we are now carrying
out a policy which, while meeting the interests and desires of the
Pacific slope, is yet compatible, not merely with mutual self-respect,
but with mutual esteem and admiration between the Americans and
Japanese. The Japanese Government is loyally and in good faith doing its
part to carry out this policy, precisely as the American Government
is doing. The policy aims at mutuality of obligation and behavior. In
accordance with it the purpose is that the Japanese shall come here
exactly as Americans go to Japan, which is in effect that travelers,
students, persons engaged in international business, men who sojourn for
pleasure or study, and the like, shall have the freest access from one
country to the other, and shall be sure of the best treatment, but that
there shall be no settlement in mass by the people of either country in
the other. During the last six months under this policy more Japanese
have left the country than have come in, and the total number in the
United States has diminished by over two thousand. These figures are
absolutely accurate and cannot be impeached. In other words, if the
present policy is consistently followed and works as well in the future
as it is now working, all difficulties and causes of friction
will disappear, while at the same time each nation will retain its
self-respect and the good will of the other. But such a bill as this
school bill accomplishes literally nothing whatever in the line of the
object aimed at, and gives just and grave cause for irritation; while
in addition the United States Government would be obliged immediately to
take action in the Federal courts to test such legislation, as we hold
it to be clearly a violation of the treaty. On this point I refer you to
the numerous decisions of the United States Supreme Court in regard to
State laws which violate treaty obligations of the United States. The
legislation would accomplish nothing beneficial and would certainly
cause some mischief, and might cause very grave mischief. In short, the
policy of the Administration is to combine the maximum of efficiency in
achieving the real object which the people of the Pacific Slope have at
heart, with the minimum of friction and trouble, while the misguided men
who advocate such action as this against which I protest are following a
policy which combines the very minimum of efficiency with the maximum of
insult, and which, while totally failing to achieve any real result for
good, yet might accomplish an infinity of harm. If in the next year or
two the action of the Federal Government fails to achieve what it is now
achieving, then through the further action of the President and Congress
it can be made entirely efficient. I am sure that the sound judgment of
the people of California will support you, Mr. Speaker, in your effort.
Let me repeat that at present we are actually doing the very thing which
the people of California wish to be done, and to upset the arrangement
under which this is being done cannot do good and may do great harm.
If in the next year or two the figures of immigration prove that the
arrangement which has worked so successfully during the last six months
is no longer working successfully, then there would be ground for
grievance and for the reversal by the National Government of its present
policy. But at present the policy is working well, and until it works
badly it would be a grave misfortune to change it, and when changed it
can only be changed effectively by the National Government.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

In foreign and domestic affairs alike the policy pursued during my
Administration was simple. In foreign affairs the principle from which
we never deviated was to have the Nation behave toward other nations
precisely as a strong, honorable, and upright man behaves in dealing
with his fellow-men. There is no such thing as international law in the
sense that there is municipal law or law within a nation. Within the
nation there is always a judge, and a policeman who stands back of the
judge. The whole system of law depends first upon the fact that there is
a judge competent to pass judgment, and second upon the fact that there
is some competent officer whose duty it is to carry out this judgment,
by force if necessary. In international law there is no judge, unless
the parties in interest agree that one shall be constituted; and there
is no policeman to carry out the judge's orders. In consequence, as
yet each nation must depend upon itself for its own protection. The
frightful calamities that have befallen China, solely because she has
had no power of self-defense, ought to make it inexcusable in any wise
American citizen to pretend to patriotic purpose, and yet to fail to
insist that the United States shall keep in a condition of ability if
necessary to assert its rights with a strong hand. It is folly of the
criminal type for the Nation not to keep up its navy, not to fortify
its vital strategic points, and not to provide an adequate army for its
needs. On the other hand, it is wicked for the Nation to fail in either
justice, courtesy, or consideration when dealing with any other power,
big or little. John Hay was Secretary of State when I became President,
and continued to serve under me until his death, and his and my views
as to the attitude that the Nation should take in foreign affairs were
identical, both as regards our duty to be able to protect ourselves
against the strong and as regards our duty always to act not only justly
but generously toward the weak.

John Hay was one of the most delightful of companions, one of the most
charming of all men of cultivation and action. Our views on foreign
affairs coincided absolutely; but, as was natural enough, in domestic
matters he felt much more conservative than he did in the days when as
a young man he was private secretary to the great radical democratic
leader of the '60's, Abraham Lincoln. He was fond of jesting with me
about my supposedly dangerous tendencies in favor of labor against
capital. When I was inaugurated on March 4, 1905, I wore a ring he sent
me the evening before, containing the hair of Abraham Lincoln. This ring
was on my finger when the Chief Justice administered to me the oath of
allegiance to the United States; I often thereafter told John Hay that
when I wore such a ring on such an occasion I bound myself more than
ever to treat the Constitution, after the manner of Abraham Lincoln,
as a document which put human rights above property rights when the
two conflicted. The last Christmas John Hay was alive he sent me the
manuscript of a Norse saga by William Morris, with the following note:

Christmas Eve, 1904.

DEAR THEODORE: In your quality of Viking this Norse saga should belong
to you, and in your character of Enemy of Property this Ms. of William
Morris will appeal to you. Wishing you a Merry Christmas and many happy
years, I am yours affectionately,

JOHN HAY.

In internal affairs I cannot say that I entered the Presidency with any
deliberately planned and far-reaching scheme of social betterment. I
had, however, certain strong convictions; and I was on the lookout for
every opportunity of realizing those convictions. I was bent upon making
the Government the most efficient possible instrument in helping
the people of the United States to better themselves in every way,
politically, socially, and industrially. I believed with all my heart
in real and thoroughgoing democracy, and I wished to make this
democracy industrial as well as political, although I had only partially
formulated the methods I believed we should follow. I believed in the
people's rights, and therefore in National rights and States' rights
just exactly to the degree in which they severally secured popular
rights. I believed in invoking the National power with absolute freedom
for every National need; and I believed that the Constitution should be
treated as the greatest document ever devised by the wit of man to aid
a people in exercising every power necessary for its own betterment, and
not as a straitjacket cunningly fashioned to strangle growth. As for the
particular methods of realizing these various beliefs, I was content
to wait and see what method might be necessary in each given case as it
arose; and I was certain that the cases would arise fast enough.

As the time for the Presidential nomination of 1904 drew near, it became
evident that I was strong with the rank and file of the party, but that
there was much opposition to me among many of the big political leaders,
and especially among many of the Wall Street men. A group of these men
met in conference to organize this opposition. It was to be done with
complete secrecy. But such secrets are very hard to keep. I speedily
knew all about it, and took my measures accordingly. The big men in
question, who possessed much power so long as they could work under
cover, or so long as they were merely throwing their weight one way or
the other between forces fairly evenly balanced, were quite helpless
when fighting in the open by themselves. I never found out that anything
practical was even attempted by most of the men who took part in the
conference. Three or four of them, however, did attempt something. The
head of one big business corporation attempted to start an effort to
control the delegations from New Jersey, North Carolina, and certain
Gulf States against me. The head of a great railway system made
preparations for a more ambitious effort looking towards the control of
the delegations from Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and California
against me. He was a very powerful man financially, but his power
politically was much more limited, and he did not really understand his
own limitations or the situation itself, whereas I did. He could not
have secured a delegate against me from Iowa, Nebraska, or Kansas. In
Colorado and California he could have made a fight, but even there I
think he would have been completely beaten. However, long before the
time for the Convention came around, it was recognized that it was
hopeless to make any opposition to my nomination. The effort was
abandoned, and I was nominated unanimously. Judge Parker was nominated
by the Democrats against me. Practically all the metropolitan newspapers
of largest circulation were against me; in New York City fifteen out
of every sixteen copies of papers issued were hostile to me. I won by a
popular majority of about two million and a half, and in the electoral
college carried 330 votes against 136. It was by far the largest popular
majority ever hitherto given any Presidential candidate.

My opponents during the campaign had laid much stress upon my supposed
personal ambition and intention to use the office of President to
perpetuate myself in power. I did not say anything on the subject
prior to the election, as I did not wish to say anything that could be
construed into a promise offered as a consideration in order to secure
votes. But on election night, after the returns were in I issued the
following statement: "The wise custom which limits the President to two
terms regards the substance and not the form, and under no circumstances
will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination."

The reason for my choice of the exact phraseology used was twofold. In
the first place, many of my supporters were insisting that, as I had
served only three and a half years of my first term, coming in from the
Vice-Presidency when President McKinley was killed, I had really had
only one elective term, so that the third term custom did not apply to
me; and I wished to repudiate this suggestion. I believed then (and I
believe now) the third term custom or tradition to be wholesome, and,
therefore, I was determined to regard its substance, refusing to quibble
over the words usually employed to express it. On the other hand, I did
not wish simply and specifically to say that I would not be a candidate
for the nomination in 1908, because if I had specified the year when I
would not be a candidate, it would have been widely accepted as meaning
that I intended to be a candidate some other year; and I had no such
intention, and had no idea that I would ever be a candidate again.
Certain newspaper men did ask me if I intended to apply my prohibition
to 1912, and I answered that I was not thinking of 1912, nor of 1920,
nor of 1940, and that I must decline to say anything whatever except
what appeared in my statement.

The Presidency is a great office, and the power of the President can be
effectively used to secure a renomination, especially if the President
has the support of certain great political and financial interests. It
is for this reason, and this reason alone, that the wholesome principle
of continuing in office, so long as he is willing to serve, an incumbent
who has proved capable, is not applicable to the Presidency. Therefore,
the American people have wisely established a custom against allowing
any man to hold that office for more than two consecutive terms.
But every shred of power which a President exercises while in office
vanishes absolutely when he has once left office. An ex-President stands
precisely in the position of any other private citizen, and has not one
particle more power to secure a nomination or election than if he had
never held the office at all--indeed, he probably has less because of
the very fact that he has held the office. Therefore the reasoning on
which the anti-third term custom is based has no application whatever
to an ex-President, and no application whatever to anything except
consecutive terms. As a barrier of precaution against more than two
consecutive terms the custom embodies a valuable principle. Applied
in any other way it becomes a mere formula, and like all formulas
a potential source of mischievous confusion. Having this in mind, I
regarded the custom as applying practically, if not just as much, to a
President who had been seven and a half years in office as to one
who had been eight years in office, and therefore, in the teeth of a
practically unanimous demand from my own party that I accept another
nomination, and the reasonable certainty that the nomination would be
ratified at the polls, I felt that the substance of the custom applied
to me in 1908. On the other hand, it had no application whatever to any
human being save where it was invoked in the case of a man desiring a
third consecutive term. Having given such substantial proof of my own
regard for the custom, I deem it a duty to add this comment on it. I
believe that it is well to have a custom of this kind, to be generally
observed, but that it would be very unwise to have it definitely
hardened into a Constitutional prohibition. It is not desirable
ordinarily that a man should stay in office twelve consecutive years as
President; but most certainly the American people are fit to take care
of themselves, and stand in no need of an irrevocable self-denying
ordinance. They should not bind themselves never to take action which
under some quite conceivable circumstances it might be to their great
interest to take. It is obviously of the last importance to the safety
of a democracy that in time of real peril it should be able to command
the service of every one among its citizens in the precise position
where the service rendered will be most valuable. It would be a
benighted policy in such event to disqualify absolutely from the
highest office a man who while holding it had actually shown the highest
capacity to exercise its powers with the utmost effect for the public
defense. If, for instance, a tremendous crisis occurred at the end of
the second term of a man like Lincoln, as such a crisis occurred at the
end of his first term, it would be a veritable calamity if the American
people were forbidden to continue to use the services of the one man
whom they knew, and did not merely guess, could carry them through the
crisis. The third term tradition has no value whatever except as it
applies to a third consecutive term. While it is well to keep it as
a custom, it would be a mark both of weakness and unwisdom for the
American people to embody it into a Constitutional provision which could
not do them good and on some given occasion might work real harm.

There was one cartoon made while I was President, in which I appeared
incidentally, that was always a great favorite of mine. It pictured an
old fellow with chin whiskers, a farmer, in his shirt-sleeves, with his
boots off, sitting before the fire, reading the President's Message. On
his feet were stockings of the kind I have seen hung up by the dozen in
Joe Ferris's store at Medora, in the days when I used to come in to town
and sleep in one of the rooms over the store. The title of the picture
was "His Favorite Author." This was the old fellow whom I always used to
keep in mind. He had probably been in the Civil War in his youth; he had
worked hard ever since he left the army; he had been a good husband and
father; he had brought up his boys and girls to work; he did not wish to
do injustice to any one else, but he wanted justice done to himself and
to others like him; and I was bound to secure that justice for him if it
lay in my power to do so.[*]

[*] I believe I realized fairly well this ambition. I shall turn to
my enemies to attest the truth of this statement. The New York _Sun_,
shortly before the National Convention of 1904, spoke of me as follows:

"President Roosevelt holds that his nomination by the National
Republican Convention of 1904 is an assured thing. He makes no
concealment of his conviction, and it is unreservedly shared by his
friends. We think President Roosevelt is right.

"There are strong and convincing reasons why the President should feel
that success is within his grasp. He has used the opportunities that
he found or created, and he has used them with consummate skill and
undeniable success.

"The President has disarmed all his enemies. Every weapon they had,
new or old, has been taken from them and added to the now unassailable
Roosevelt arsenal. Why should people wonder that Mr. Bryan clings to
silver? Has not Mr. Roosevelt absorbed and sequestered every vestige of
the Kansas City platform that had a shred of practical value?
Suppose that Mr. Bryan had been elected President. What could he have
accomplished compared with what Mr. Roosevelt has accomplished? Will his
most passionate followers pretend for one moment that Mr. Bryan could
have conceived, much less enforced, any such pursuit of the trusts as
that which Mr. Roosevelt has just brought to a triumphant issue? Will
Mr. Bryan himself intimate that the Federal courts would have turned to
his projects the friendly countenance which they have lent to those of
Mr. Roosevelt?

"Where is 'government by injunction' gone to? The very emptiness of that
once potent phrase is beyond description! A regiment of Bryans could not
compete with Mr. Roosevelt in harrying the trusts, in bringing wealth to
its knees, and in converting into the palpable actualities of action the
wildest dreams of Bryan's campaign orators. He has outdone them all.

"And how utterly the President has routed the pretensions of Bryan, and
of the whole Democratic horde in respect to organized labor! How empty
were all their professions, their mouthings and their howlings in the
face of the simple and unpretentious achievements of the President! In
his own straightforward fashion he inflicted upon capital in one short
hour of the coal strike a greater humiliation than Bryan could have
visited upon it in a century. He is the leader of the labor unions of
the United States. Mr. Roosevelt has put them above the law and above
the Constitution, because for him they are the American people." [This
last, I need hardly say, is merely a rhetorical method of saying that I
gave the labor union precisely the same treatment as the corporation.]

Senator La Follette, in the issue of his magazine immediately following
my leaving the Presidency in March, 1909, wrote as follows:

"Roosevelt steps from the stage gracefully. He has ruled his party to a
large extent against its will. He has played a large part in the
world's work, for the past seven years. The activities of his remarkably
forceful personality have been so manifold that it will be long before
his true rating will be fixed in the opinion of the race. He is said to
think that the three great things done by him are the undertaking of the
construction of the Panama Canal and its rapid and successful carrying
forward, the making of peace between Russia and Japan, and the sending
around the world of the fleet.

"These are important things, but many will be slow to think them his
greatest services. The Panama Canal will surely serve mankind when in
operation; and the manner of organizing this work seems to be fine.
But no one can say whether this project will be a gigantic success or
a gigantic failure; and the task is one which must, in the nature of
things, have been undertaken and carried through some time soon, as
historic periods go, anyhow. The Peace of Portsmouth was a great thing
to be responsible for, and Roosevelt's good offices undoubtedly saved
a great and bloody battle in Manchuria. But the war was fought out, and
the parties ready to quit, and there is reason to think that it was
only when this situation was arrived at that the good offices of the
President of the United States were, more or less indirectly, invited.
The fleet's cruise was a strong piece of diplomacy, by which we informed
Japan that we will send our fleet wherever we please and whenever we
please. It worked out well.

"But none of these things, it will seem to many, can compare with some
of Roosevelt's other achievements. Perhaps he is loath to take credit as
a reformer, for he is prone to spell the word with question marks, and
to speak disparagingly of 'reform.'

"But for all that, this contemner of 'reformers' made reform respectable
in the United States, and this rebuker of 'muck-rakers' has been the
chief agent in making the history of 'muck-raking' in the United States
a National one, conceded to be useful. He has preached from the White
House many doctrines; but among them he has left impressed on the
American mind the one great truth of economic justice couched in the
pithy and stinging phrase 'the square deal.' The task of making reform
respectable in a commercialized world, and of giving the Nation a slogan
in a phrase, is greater than the man who performed it is likely to
think.

"And, then, there is the great and statesmanlike movement for the
conservation of our National resources, into which Roosevelt so
energetically threw himself at a time when the Nation as a whole knew
not that we are ruining and bankrupting ourselves as fast as we can.
This is probably the greatest thing Roosevelt did, undoubtedly. This
globe is the capital stock of the race. It is just so much coal and oil
and gas. This may be economized or wasted. The same thing is true of
phosphates and other mineral resources. Our water resources are immense,
and we are only just beginning to use them. Our forests have been
destroyed; they must be restored. Our soils are being depleted; they
must be built up and conserved.

"These questions are not of this day only or of this generation. They
belong all to the future. Their consideration requires that high moral
tone which regards the earth as the home of a posterity to whom we owe a
sacred duty.

"This immense idea Roosevelt, with high statesmanship, dinned into the
ears of the Nation until the Nation heeded. He held it so high that it
attracted the attention of the neighboring nations of the continent,
and will so spread and intensify that we will soon see the world's
conferences devoted to it.

"Nothing can be greater or finer than this. It is so great and so fine
that when the historian of the future shall speak of Theodore Roosevelt
he is likely to say that he did many notable things, among them that of
inaugurating the movement which finally resulted in the square deal,
but that his greatest work was inspiring and actually beginning a world
movement for staying terrestrial waste and saving for the human race
the things upon which, and upon which alone, a great and peaceful and
progressive and happy race life can be founded.

"What statesman in all history has done anything calling for so wide a
view and for a purpose more lofty?"