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CHAPTER ELEVEN 

Of Theodore Roosevelt And his Time Volume 2

PREPARATIONS   FOR   AFRICAN   TRIP: 

REFLECTIONS AFTER TAFT'S ELECTION: 

His African trip, which he was to enter upon after retiring from the Presidency, was much in Roosevelt's mind during the last year of his term and many references to it appear in his letters. To Lord Curzon, in England, who had asked him to deliver the Romanes lecture, at Oxford, he wrote on August 18, 1908:

"I can think of few things which I would rather do than deliver the Romanes lecture. I accept with pleasure, and if Oxford desires to give me a degree I shall be much pleased to receive it. Indeed, your letter relieves me from rather a quandary. Next March, immediately after leaving the Presidency, I shall go to Africa, starting in at Mombasa, working to and fro in British, and perhaps in German, East Africa, and coming out via the Nyanza and the Nile at Cairo about the first of April following. Now there are many friends whom I have in England whom I should really like to see; but I have rather a horror of ex-Presidents traveling around with no real business, and thereby putting unfortunate potentates who think they ought to show courtesy to the United States in a position where they feel obliged to entertain the said ex-Presidents, no matter how great a hero any one of them may be. If I could make the sovereigns and leading men of each country understand that I did not expect any attention and would be only too glad to be left to my own resources, and be permitted to call upon the people I already knew and a very few others whom I would like to know, why, that would be all right; but to make a kind of mock triumphal procession would offer about as unattractive an outing to me as could be imagined."
 On the same date he wrote to Senator Lodge: "Curzon, who is Chancellor of Oxford, has just asked me to go there to get a degree and to deliver the Romanes lecture in the spring of 1910 on my way back from Africa. This I am really glad to do. The lecture has been delivered in the past by men like Gladstone, Huxley, John Morley, and Bryce, and I regard it as an honor to be asked and moreover, as something right in my line. Then it gives me a legitimate reason for visiting England. I felt I would really like, when I left Africa, to spend a couple of months in Italy, France, Holland, and to end with a couple of weeks in England; but I rather hated to go there without a genuine object, because, if I finally came to the conclusion that I would have to be presented to the King and call on various public men, it would look as if I were simply traveling about for that purpose. Now this puts the matter right."
To Frederic Remington, for whom he cherished a warm friendship, he wrote on October 28, 1908, in reply to a letter of sympathy on his retirement:
"It was good of you to write us and I appreciate it. You are one of the men whose friendship I value. Do you know I am rather ashamed to say that I can not accept your condolence? I am still looking forward, and not back. I do not know any man who has had as happy a fifty years as I have had. I have had about as good a run for my money as any human being possibly could have; and whatever happens now I am ahead of the game. Besides, I hope still to be able to do some good work now and then; and I am looking forward to my African trip with just as much eagerness as if I were a boy; and when I come back there are lots of things in our social, industrial and political life in which I shall take an absorbed interest. I have never sympathized in the least with the kind of man who feels that because he has been fortunate enough to hold a big position he can not be expected to enjoy himself afterward in a less prominent position. In fact, I do not in the least care for a position because of its title, so to speak—I want to try to do good work wherever I am and I am far more concerned with that than with the question of what position it is in which I am to do the good work. Gushing, who sunk the Albemarle, was only a lieutenant, but there are mighty few admirals with whom, if I had been in his shoes, I should have thought it worth while to change positions."
When later proposals were made to him to have newspaper correspondents accompany him on his African trip, he declined them peremptorily, setting forth his reasons in a letter to Melville E. Stone, General Manager of the Associated Press, on December 2, 1908:
"When I start on this African trip I shall have ceased to be President, and shall be simply a private citizen, like any other private citizen. Not only do I myself believe, but I am firmly convinced that the great mass of the American people believe, that when the President leaves public office he should become exactly like any other man in private life. He is entitled to no privileges, but, on the other hand, he is also entitled to be treated no worse than any one else. Now, it will be an indefensible wrong, a gross impropriety from every standpoint, for any newspaper to endeavor to have its representatives accompany me on this trip, or to fail to give me the complete privacy to which every citizen who acts decently and behaves himself is entitled.''
Roosevelt's gratification at the great victory achieved for Taft and the Republican party in the election found expression in his letters written immediately afterwards. One to E. S. Martin, of Life, on November 6, 1908, is a fair sample of many others:

"Naturally I am greatly pleased at the election. I have finished my career in public life; I have enjoyed it to the full; I have achieved a large proportion of what I set out to achieve; and I am almost ashamed to say that I do not mind in the least retiring to private life. No President has ever enjoyed himself as much as I have enjoyed myself, and for the matter of that I do not know any man of my age who has had as good a time. Of course if I had felt that I could conscientiously keep on in the Presidency I should have dearly liked to have tried again; and I shall miss a very little having my hands on the levers of the great machine; but I am really almost uneasy to find that I do not mind the least bit in the world getting out."
On November 6, 1908, the President wrote a letter to Sir George Otto Trevelyan which is a worthy supplement to the one that he wrote to him on June 19, 1908, quoted in a previous chapter. A noteworthy passage in the later letter is that in which Roosevelt expresses the absolute faith that he then had in Taft's ability and determination to carry forward the causes and policies which had been the chief features of the Roosevelt administration—a faith which he was to learn later with sadness was misplaced:
"Well, the election is over, and to say that I am pleased with the result is to express it mildly. I can hardly express my satisfaction. If the result of my 'renunciation' had been either the nomination of a reactionary in the place of Taft, or the turning over of the government to Bryan, I should have felt a very uncomfortable apprehension as to whether I did not deserve a place beside Dante's pope who was guilty of il gran rifiuto. Renunciation is so often the act of a weak nature, or the term by which a weak nature seeks to cover up its lack of strength, that I suppose that every man who feels that he ought to renounce something also tends to feel a little uncomfortable as to whether he is really acting in accordance with the dictates of a sound morality or from weakness. Yet feeling as I do about this people and about the proper standard for its chosen leaders, I would not have acted otherwise than as I did; and naturally the relief is very great to have the event justify me.
"Taft will carry on the work substantially as I have carried it on. His policies, principles, purposes and ideals are the same as mine and he is a strong, forceful, efficient man, absolutely upright, absolutely disinterested and fearless. In leaving, I have the profound satisfaction of knowing that he will do all in his power to further every one of the great causes for which I have fought and that he will persevere in every one of the great governmental policies in which I most firmly believe. Therefore nothing whatever is lost by my having refused to run for a third term, and much is gained.
"Washington and Lincoln set the standard of conduct for the public servants of this people. They showed how men of the strongest type could also possess all the disinterested, all the unselfish, devotion to duty and to the interests of their fellow countrymen that we have a right to expect, but can only hope to see in the very highest type of public servant. At however great a distance, I have been anxious to follow in their footsteps, and anxious that, however great the difference in degree, my service to the Nation should be approximately the same in kind as theirs.''
To his friend, Mr. Strachey of the London Spectator, he wrote on November 28, 1908, giving his views on the use of ex-Presidents:
"When people have spoken to me as to what America should do with its ex-Presidents, I have always answered that there was one ex-President as to whom they need not concern themselves in the least, because I would do for myself. It would be to me personally an unpleasant thing to be pensioned and given some honorary position. I emphatically do not desire to clutch at the fringe of departing greatness. Indeed, to me there is something rather attractive, something in the way of living up to a proper democratic ideal, in having a President go out of office just as I shall go, and become absolutely and without reservation a private man, and do any honorable work which he finds to do. My first work will be to go to Africa for the National Museum.

   "I am fifty, I have led a very sedentary life for ten years, and I feel that this is my last chance for something in the nature of a 'great adventure.' If a war should occur while I am still physically fit, I should certainly try to raise a brigade, and if possible a division, of cavalry, mounted riflemen, such as those in my regiment ten years ago. But if, as I most earnestly hope, there is peace then, after my return from Africa, and in view of the fact that I am not fit any longer for really arduous exploration, the work open to me which is best worth doing is fighting for political, social and industrial reform, just as I have been fighting for it for the twenty-eight years that I have been in politics.

"I feel very strongly that one great lesson to be taught here in America is that while the first duty of every man is to earn enough for his wife and children, that when once this has been accomplished no man should treat money as the primary consideration. He is very foolish unless he makes it the first consideration, up to the point of supporting his family; but normally, thereafter it should come secondary. Now, I feel that I can still for some years command a certain amount of attention from the American public, and during those years and before my influence totally vanishes I want to use it so far as possible to help onward certain movements for the betterment of our people."
In a letter to the Kaiser, on December 26, 1908, he repeated the remark about raising a regiment in case of war, which is of curious interest in view of his vain effort to get permission to raise a division in the war against the Kaiser in 1917:
"It is very unlikely that I shall ever hold office again. But if—what I most earnestly hope may never occur—there should be a big war in which the United States was engaged, while I am still in bodily vigor, I should endeavor to get permission to raise a division of mounted rifles—cavalry, in our use of the word; that is, nine regiments such as the one I commanded in the war with Spain. I hope the chance may never come, however."
The first explicit statement of Roosevelt's attitude towards woman suffrage which appears in his correspondence was in a letter addressed on November 10, 1908, to Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, of Warren, Ohio, Treasurer of the National American "Woman Suffrage Association:
"I will give you exactly my feeling about your request that I speak a word for woman suffrage in my annual message. I do not think it would be wise to do so; not in the least because of any consideration about myself, but because I think that it is not in any shape or way a live issue at this time, and because I do not see what good would come of my mentioning it.
"Personally I believe in woman suffrage, but I am not an enthusiastic advocate of it because I do not regard it as a very important matter. I am unable to see that there has been any special improvement in the position of women in those States in the West that have adopted woman suffrage, as compared with those States adjoining them that have not adopted it. I do not think that giving the women suffrage will produce any marked improvement in the condition of women. I do not believe that it will produce any of the evils feared, and I am very certain that when women as a whole take any special interest in the matter they will have the suffrage if they desire it. But at present I think most of them are lukewarm; I find some actively for it and some actively against it.
"I am, for the reasons above given, rather what you would regard as lukewarm or tepid in my support of it because, while I believe in it, I do not regard it as of very much importance. I believe that man and woman should stand on an equality of right, but I do not believe that equality of right means identity of function; and I am more and more convinced that the great field, the indispensable field, for the usefulness of woman is as the mother of the family. It is her work in the household, in the home, her work in bearing and rearing the children, which is more important than any man's work, and it is that work which should be normally the woman's special work, just as normally the man's work should be that of the breadwinner, the supporter of the home, and if necessary the soldier who will fight for the home. There are exceptions as regards both man and woman; but the full and perfect life, the life of highest happiness and of highest usefulness to the State, is the life of the man and the woman who are husband and wife, who live in the partnership of love and duty, the one earning enough to keep the home, the other managing the home and the children.
"I do not desire to go into a public discussion of this matter, so I will be obliged if you will treat this letter as private."
Both during the campaign and after the election Roosevelt was besought by men in public positions of various kinds to request his successor to retain them in office. To all he made replies similar to those in the subjoined letters to members of the diplomatic service, whose names, for obvious reasons, are omitted:
September 17, 1908.
Now, my dear Mr. Minister, about your request,—I can not ask Taft for any appointment. I will gladly tell him how highly I think of you, and of my belief that you would do excellent work if continued in the service. But of course I should not be willing to speak of any particular place to which I thought you would do good work. I am not asking Taft for any appointments of any kind, and I am certain that you will appreciate the wisdom of this position of mine when you think over it. You see, if I ask for any man, I could not well avoid asking for a countless number whom I have appointed in the service.
January 31, 1909.
I have not asked Mr. Taft to retain a single man; no Cabinet officer, nobody in any position; in the cases of a very few small men in different States who had been devoted adherents of his for the nomination I have informed him of the fact, and I have given him full information about a number of men in office concerning whom he asked me, and as to one or two in response to questions of his, I have told him positions in which I thought they would do well or which I thought they would like. But I have volunteered no information and said nothing to him unless he has asked me to say it; except that as regards one representative at a foreign court whom I had appointed I told him certain facts which I felt I ought to, as they were not to the representative's credit.
Roosevelt's own summary of his work as President was made in a letter to Sidney Brooks, a London publicist, on December 28, 1908:
"During my term as President I have more than doubled the navy of the United States, and at this moment our battle fleet is doing what no other similar fleet of a like size has ever done—that is, circumnavigating the globe— and is also at this moment in far more efficient battle trim, from the standpoint of battle tactics, and even from the standpoint of gunnery, than when it started out a year ago, while the individual ships are each just a trifle more efficient.
"Then take the Panama Canal. I do not think that any feat of quite such far-reaching importance has been to the credit of our country in recent years; and this I can say absolutely was my own work, and could not have been accomplished save by me or by some man of my temperament.
"Again, I think the peace of Portsmouth was a substantial achievement. You probably know the part we played in the Algeciras conference.
"Again, I believe what I did in settling the anthracite coal strike was a matter of very real moment from the standpoint not only of industrial but of social reform and progress.
"Again, I have doubled or quadrupled the forest reserves of the country; have put through the reorganization of the forest service, placing it under the Agricultural Department; and I may add as a small incident, have created a number of reservations for preserving the wild things of nature, the beasts and birds as well as the trees.
"In legislation I succeeded in getting through the national irrigation act in the development of the semi-arid States, of the great plains and Rockies; I think this achievement in importance comes second only to the creation of the homestead act; and indeed in those particular States it is more important than the homestead act.
"During these eight sessions of Congress I have succeeded in getting the administration of the civil government in the Philippine Islands put upon a satisfactory basis; and I got Congress to approve of my action in interfering in Cuba—and here, by the way, let me interject that I think we have given a pretty fair example of international good faith of the kind I preach, for after having our army for the second time for several years in Cuba, we are now about to leave the island prosperous and thriving, and with a reasonable hope that it can achieve self-government for itself; at least, if it can not, it is evident that we have done our best to put it on the road of stable and orderly independence.
"In Santo Domingo, after two years' delay I got the Senate to ratify the Treaty I had made (and under which, incidentally, I had been acting for two years) and have now put the affairs of the island on a better basis than they have been for a century—indeed, I do not think it would be an over-statement to say on a better basis than they have ever been before. The Senate has ratified our actions with regard to South America, and in consequence our position in regard to the Latin-American Republics is infinitely better than it ever has been before; and so, I may add, is the case with Japan, thanks to our demonstrating that we desire to act with fairness and courtesy, and in entire good faith, and that we carry a big stick.
"We succeeded in passing a law improving the administration of the army, and also a law improving the administration of the national guard or militia. We got another law passed which established the Department of Commerce and Labor, with the Bureau of Corporations, and thereby enabled us to take the first really efficient step toward exercising proper national supervision and control over the great corporations.
"Partly by law and partly by executive order we have completely reorganized the consular service of the United States. We passed a law giving vitality to the Interstate Commerce Commission, and for the first time providing some kind of efficient control by the National Government over the great railroads. We passed a law providing for Federal meat inspection of the packing houses, and also the pure food law, both of them of the utmost importance from the sanitary standpoint. In matters of social and industrial reform I got a law creating a juvenile court for the District of Columbia; another, providing for the investigation of the condition of women and child workers of the United States; an employers' liability law for corporations engaged in interstate commerce, and for the Government service itself, and for the District of Columbia; where we have also regulated child labor by law. This means, all told, a considerable sum of legislative achievements.
"We settled the Alaskan boundary dispute; we have laid the Pacific cable. By the establishment of army and navy maneuvers I have, I think, much increased the efficiency of the army and doubled the efficiency of the navy. I have started the movement for the development of our inland waterways as part of the great movement for the conservation of our national resources. I also started the movement for the betterment of the conditions of country life. All these latter, however, have been done by me without the assistance of Congress. Furthermore, through the Department of Justice we have brought big corporations and labor unions impartially before the courts, and have actually brought to justice and secured the punishment by fine and imprisonment of the most powerful wrongdoers in the land. So many successful suits, civil and criminal, have been undertaken by the Department of Justice that I would not even attempt to enumerate them. The anger of labor leaders like Gompers, and of the largest Wall Street magnates on the other side, is a sufficient guaranty of what we have done."
Roosevelt's allusion in this letter to his services for the conservation of natural resources is slight and far from adequate. The fact is that his services in that field, which began with his Presidency and continued without a break to its end, were exceeded in lasting public benefit by none others of his career. For seven and a half years he used the vast powers and influence of his office to advance this cause by stimulating and informing public opinion, by preparing and urging upon Congress fundamental legislation, and, most of all, by the vigorous and fearless use of executive powers under the laws. The full story of what he accomplished is told by him in his 'Autobiography.'
One of the last acts of Roosevelt as President was in taking personal direction of proceedings to bring the Sugar Trust, as the American Sugar Refining Company was known, to book for fraudulent evasion of duties in the importation of sugar. In 1907 the discovery was made by a special agent of the customs service that by means of a spring attachment to the weighing scales of the company on the wharves where imported sugar was landed, the figures registered were far below the actual weight of the sugar. A suit was brought by the U. S. District Attorney of the Eastern New York district against the company's superintendent of the docks in Brooklyn where the fraud was perpetrated, but was not successful. At this point Roosevelt took personal charge of the matter. He had Henry L. Stimson, the U. S. District Attorney of the Southern District, appointed a special assistant by the Attorney General, in order to give him jurisdiction and put him in charge of the case. Roosevelt selected Mr. Stimson for the task because as District Attorney he had prosecuted the sugar companies for extorting rebates from railway companies and had won his suits, completely breaking up the practice. As special assistant to the Attorney General, Mr. Stimson, early in February 1909, brought a civil suit against the American Sugar Refining Company, in the Southern District where its offices were situated, for fraudulent evasion of customs duties, selecting a single cargo of sugar as a test case. The trial lasted about a month, and on March 4, 1909, the day on which Roosevelt retired from the Presidency and Taft was inaugurated as his successor, the jury, after an hour's deliberation, brought in a verdict of guilty against the company.
Through some occult but powerful influences, the local news accounts of the trial minimized or suppressed entirely the startling evidence of the fraud and the prompt verdict against the company. This curious silence in the press excited both surprise and indignation on the part of Roosevelt. He had, before leaving the Presidency, accepted the position of contributing editor of the Outlook and at his first meeting with his editorial associates he asked if they would favor the publication of an article giving the full story of the sugar frauds and the result of the trial. They replied unanimously and heartily that they would.
The story was published in the Outlook on May 1, 1909, with illustrations showing how the spring attachment had worked and giving figures showing that the company had by means of it smuggled through the customs many million tons of sugar.
The publication aroused great interest throughout the country and indignant protests came from the newspapers because the news had been kept from them. Almost immediately the guilty sugar company made an offer to pay over to the Government about $2,000,000 in evaded duties. Other sugar refining companies, guilty of various methods of defrauding the revenue, also confessed judgment, and paid over about $1,500,000 more, making the total result of Roosevelt's energetic personal leadership in the matter a gain of $3,500,000 to the Treasury of the United States.
In his final message to Congress, on December 8, 1908, Roosevelt reiterated his well-established views on the leading policies of his administration and urged continued support of them. Not much of value is usually accomplished at the session of Congress which comes at the end of the term of an outgoing President, but the following letter which Roosevelt wrote to his son Theodore, on January 31, 1909, shows that he kept firm control of the situation till the end:
"I have entered on the last month of my Presidency and I think I can hold Congress down so that no disastrous break-up can occur during that period. But they have been anxious to see if they could not do me up this winter. I have a very strong feeling that it is a President's duty to get on with Congress if he possibly can, and that it is a reflection upon him if he and Congress come to a complete break. For seven sessions I was able to prevent such a break. This session, however, they felt that it was safe utterly to disregard me because I was going out and my successor had been elected; and I made up my mind that it was just a case where the exception to the rule applied and that if I did not fight and fight hard, I should be put in a contemptible position; while inasmuch as I was going out on the fourth of March I did not have to pay heed to our ability to cooperate in the future. The result has, I think, justified my wisdom. I have come out ahead so far, and I have been full President right up to the end, which hardly any other President has ever been."
Among many letters which reached Roosevelt on his retirement was the following:
british  embassy, washington,
March 6, 1909. My dear Mr. Roosevelt:
Now that you may have a little time to read letters, I want to tell you what has been much in my mind in reflecting on your seven years of office. You seem to me to have done more for the advancement of good causes, more to stir the soul of the nation and rouse it to a sense of its incomparable opportunities and high mission, for the whole world as well as for this Continent, than any one of your predecessors for a century save Abraham 'Lincoln himself. The results will endure; some of them will be even greater, I venture to think, than we can yet see. The bringing about peace between Russia and Japan, the construction of the Canal, the setting on foot of the Conservation of Resources Movement, all fall into their places along with and cohere with this appeal to the Nation's heart and its larger thoughts for the future which you have made.
I remember once saying to you that the one of your predecessors you most resembled in range and variety of interests was Thomas Jefferson. You are unlike him in this, that he lost nearly all his friends, and yours draw always closer to you and prize your friendship more.
One thing I can't tell you and that is how great and constant a pleasure it has been to me to represent my country to yours when you were at the latter's head, and to know that never were the relations so intimate and so trustful between the two peoples that ought to be the closest friends and fellow workers.
May you have a happy and healthful time and soon come back to your land, for which you have still much to do.
Always your sincere friend,
James BRyce.