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CHAPTER TWENTY 

Of Theodore Roosevelt And his Time Volume 2

GREAT WELCOME IN NEW YORK: 

ATTITUDE TOWARD TAFT: 

Roosevelt arrived in New York from his European travels on June 18, 1910, receiving a truly royal welcome. Nothing approaching it had ever been given a private citizen coming back to his native land after a brief absence abroad. He had been absent only a little more than a year. A greater part of that time had been passed in the wilds of Africa, and while only occasional and brief references to his doings had been published in the newspapers, his own account of his hunting exploits had been in process of publication monthly in Scribner's Magazine since October, 1909, under the title of "African Game Trails."
While he was in Europe, his various public addresses had been published widely and commanded extremely warm approval in all quarters, especially in those journals that had been his severest critics while he was in public life. His presence as special envoy of the United States at the funeral of King Edward, by request of President Taft, had been generally commended and he had figured in the press accounts of the ceremonies on that occasion. Beyond this he had done nothing to keep himself in the minds of the people. Yet when his return was announced the whole country joined in welcoming him home. A committee of citizens, headed by the mayor of the city, was formed to arrange a public reception and delegations and representatives of civic and other societies from many cities and states went to New York to join in it. The steamer upon which he arrived was met in the harbor by a great naval parade, and the harbor itself was crowded with pleasure yachts, excursion steamers and merchant craft of all kinds, making his progress to the landing place at the Battery through a long line of vessels laden with thousands of cheering people and amid salvos of artillery from the naval vessels and the forts on the shores of the bay. On landing he was met with an official greeting by the mayor, to which he responded as follows:
"I thank you, Mayor Gaynor. Through you I thank your committee, and through them I wish to thank the American people for their greeting. I need hardly say I am most deeply moved by the reception given me. No man could receive such a greeting without being made to feel both very proud and very humble.
"I have been away a year and a quarter from America, and I have seen strange and interesting things alike in the heart of the growing wilderness and in the capitals of the mightiest and most highly polished of civilized nations. I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, and now I am more glad than I can say to get home, to be back in my own country, back among the people I love.
"And I am ready and eager to do my part, so far as I am able, in helping solve problems which must be solved if we of this, the greatest democratic Republic upon which the sun has ever shone, are to see its destinies rise to the high level of our hopes and its opportunities.
"This is the duty of every citizen, but it is peculiarly my duty, for any man who has ever been favored by being made President of the United States is thereby forever after rendered the debtor of the American people, and is bound throughout his life to remember this as his prime obligation, and in private life as much as in public life so to carry himself that the American people may never have cause to feel regret that once they placed him at their head."
A procession, composed of citizens, members of various civic societies and associations in the city and from other parts of the land, escorted him over lower Broadway and Fifth Avenue to Forty-second Street through solid walls of cheering humanity that crowded the sidewalks, windows and even roofs of buildings, all eager to get a glimpse of him. A squad of his old regiment of Rough Riders, who had gathered from the West to join in the welcome, acted as a guard of honor. On the afternoon of the same day, accompanied by members of his family, he went to his home in Oyster Bay, where he was greeted on arrival by his fellow townsmen, who assembled en masse to welcome him back.
The closing part of his speech at the Battery indicated clearly the course that he intended to pursue in future in regard to public affairs. By a few of the extreme radicals among his followers it was interpreted to mean that he would return to active politics, but his intimates knew that he had no such intention. He had said, before retiring from the Presidency, that the role of sage had no attractions for him; that he considered it both his privilege and duty to take active part in the discussion of public questions, commending or criticizing as his judgment dictated, but that he should never again be a candidate for political office, or engage in active political work. That he was firmly determined on this point when he landed in New York, there is no question; yet he had been in the country only ten days when he was persuaded, greatly against his will, to take sides in a factional political contest in New York State, and become the leader of one of the parties to it.
His first public appearance after his return was at the Commencement exercises at Harvard University. While there he met Governor Hughes of New York, who fairly besieged him to champion his cause in a contest that he was waging against the most powerful of the leaders of the Republican party organization for the enactment of a direct primary law. The Governor's appeal proved to be irresistible, and in explanation of his yielding, Roosevelt said in introducing him to the Alumni luncheon over which he was presiding on June 29, 1910:
"Our Governor has a very persuasive way with him. I had intended to keep absolutely clear from any kind of public or political question after coming1 home, and I could carry out my resolution all right until I met the Governor this morning, and he then explained to. me that I had come back to live in New York now; that I had to help him out, and after a very brief conversation, I put up my hands and agreed to help him."
On the same day he sent a telegram to the chairman of the New York Republican State Committee, giving his approval to the direct primary bill and expressing his earnest hope that it would be made law. From the minute that he took this action he became, of course, the leader of those supporting the bill, consequently the chief figure in an intensely bitter partisan contest.
It was not in New York alone that his aid was sought. He was overwhelmed on his arrival in the United States with a multitude of requests to visit various parts of the country and make addresses. Before he had been at home two months he had received about two thousand of these. One of them which appealed to him especially was to attend the Frontier Celebration at Cheyenne, Wyoming. He had many things in mind that he wished to say, for he felt that during his absence from the country the causes that were nearest to his heart had lacked a champion through the disinclination of the national administration to uphold them, and in consequence were slipping into the background of the public mind. To visit Cheyenne he would have to traverse many states and stop at many cities where addresses would be expected of him. He arranged an itinerary, prepared addresses for many of the principal points at which he was to speak, and in August, 1910, he set his face westward on a journey which covered more than five thousand miles and traversed fourteen States. He was accompanied by a host of newspaper correspondents and his formal addresses and occasional speeches were reported fully in the press. One of the first addresses to excite interest and hostile comment was made before the Colorado Legislature on August 29, 1910. In this he condemned the action of the Supreme Court of the United States in two cases, in one of which it had declared unconstitutional a Mw enacted in New York State designed to abolish unhealthy conditions in bakeshops. Of this decision Roosevelt said: "The decision was nominally against State rights, really against popular rights. Such decisions, arbitrarily and irresponsibly limiting the power of the people, are of course fundamentally hostile to every species of real popular government." He was accused of "attacking the courts," and in a later speech at Syracuse, New York, on September 17, 1910, and in an article in the Outlook, of which he had been a contributing editor since leaving the Presidency, he explained fully his first utterance, citing in defense of his course the words of Lincoln in regard to the Dred Scott decision: "I believe the decision was improperly made, and I go for reversing it." He quoted also the dissenting opinion of three Justices of the Supreme Court in the Bake Shop case.
Another address which aroused even more bitter criticism was that made on August 31, 1910, at the dedication of the John Brown battlefield at Ossawatomie, Kansas, under the title of the "New Nationalism." In this he reiterated the views which he had held when he was President in regard to governmental regulation and control of corporations, and in regard to labor and capital and other subjects. One passage in particular was sharply criticized as an '' attack on property.'' It was:
"The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have themselves called into being."
Writing to Senator Lodge, on September 12, 1910, in regard to the criticisms, he said: "Now what I said about the courts.   This was suggested to me by Moody, and it was gone over most carefully by Arthur Hill, who thoroughly approved it and made certain suggestions which I accepted verbatim—his approval was not an off-hand approval, for he wrote me later approving it and giving me the exact text of what I was to put in. Now of course I need not tell you that the responsibility is in no shape Moody's or Hill's. It is purely mine. But when the utterance is spoken of as revolutionary, as incendiary, as an attack on the courts, it is curious to think it was suggested to me by a Chief Justice who comes from Massachusetts, and approved by an ex-District Attorney of Boston. My point was to show by the use of these two decisions, which decisions were given me by Moody when he called my attention to the point as one which he would like me to make, that the courts not only sometimes erred in deciding against the National Government, but sometimes erred against States' rights, and thereby created a neutral ground in which no governmental body had power. Arthur Hill's word to me in his letter was stronger than I have used, for he said that in the Bake Shop decision, it amounted to turning the Supreme Court into an irresponsible House of Lords, a position which the people would never stand."
In the same letter, Roosevelt said:
"About my use of the word 'property': I only used it, so far as I now remember, as a quotation when I quoted Lincoln's remarks or commented on them. It is rather a curious thing that what people think is most revolutionary in my speech should be nearly a quotation from Lincoln. All my other statements have already been made, or at least have in effect been made, in my messages to Congress. I may have here and there strengthened them, or made them a little clearer, but substantially what I said at Ossawatomie consisted of assembling those points made in my messages to Congress which I regarded as of most importance at the moment."
Writing again to Senator Lodge, on September 20, 1910, he said with characteristic frankness:
"I am perfectly straight on my position, but it is also perfectly true that I had no business to take that position in the fashion I did. A public man is to be condemned if he states a proper position in such fashion that he fails to make his point clear, and permits good men to go wrong from misunderstanding. I ought to have made my original speech in such fashion that it would have included what I have since said at Syracuse and in the Outlook, and it was a blunder of some gravity not to do it."
Roosevelt returned from his western trip early in September and found himself unpleasantly involved in the bitter political wrangle into which his promise to Governor Hughes had precipitated him. That he entered the contest reluctantly and with little or no hope of success, his letters written at this time show conclusively. He had been requested by the Hughes leaders to be their candidate for temporary chairman of the Republican State Convention which was to meet on September 26, 1910, and had consented. The anti-Hughes faction, led by the recognized boss of the party, had selected Vice-President Sherman as its candidate for the same position. Writing to Senator Lodge on September 12, 1910, Roosevelt said: "It may well be that I shall be beaten at the Convention, and if not at the Convention, we shall in all probability be beaten at the polls. But that does not alter the fact, that, to quote the words once used by that worthy non-Mugwump, the Black Douglas: 'We have come to the ring and now we must hop.' "
Writing again to Senator Lodge on September 21, 1910, he said:

"Hughes made a fight on an issue upon which the people were not really aroused. He aroused a considerable fraction of people to support him, but left a much larger fraction lukewarm and even hostile. As a result he has put us in such shape that if we did not support him we were certain to be defeated, and if we did support him we were likely to be defeated. He had created a situation, and had put me in a situation, where the least of two evils was to stand by him. The fight is very disagreeable. Twenty years ago I should not have minded it in the least; it would have been entirely suitable for my age and my standing. But it is not the kind of fight into which an ex-President should be required to go. I could not help myself; I could not desert the decent people. But this whole political business now is bitterly distasteful to me. There is no way out of it that I can see."
When the Convention met on September 26, 1910, it was soon made apparent that Roosevelt was in comparatively easy control of it. He was chosen temporary chairman by a considerable majority, and the candidate of his selection, Henry L. Stimson, who, as United States District Attorney of New York, had conducted successfully the sugar fraud cases in 1909, was nominated for Governor. From first to last, Roosevelt dominated the Convention and by his forceful and uncompromising assaults upon the leaders of the opposition, he carried all points. In his speech to the Convention he did not mince matters at all in defining his political creed, saying in the opening part of it:
"Democracy means nothing unless the people rule. The rule of the boss is the negation of democracy. It is absolutely essential that the people should exercise self-control and self-mastery, and he is a foe to popular government who in any way causes them to lose such self-control and self-mastery whether from without or within."
That he had returned from his foreign trip grievously dissatisfied with President Taft's conduct of affairs, he did not conceal. Writing to Elihu Root on October 21, 1910, he said:
   
"I have been cordially helping the election of a Republican Congress, having split definitely with the Insurgents, on this point; for though I am bitterly disappointed with Taft, and consider much of his course absolutely inexplicable, I have felt that, as in so many other cases, I had to make the best of conditions as they actually were and do the best I possibly could to carry Congress and to carry the State of New York, with the entire understanding on my part that victory in either means the immense strengthening of Taft. In New York State I deliberately went in to put the close supporters of Taft in control of the Republican machinery, and have done and am now doing my best to elect a man whom, I assume, is a Taft man; because I felt that the one clear duty of a decent citizen was to try to put the Republican Party on a straight basis, and now to try to put that party in power in the State instead of turning the State over to Murphy of Tammany Hall, acting as the agent, ally and master of crooked finance.
"I have never had a more unpleasant summer. The sordid baseness of much or most of the so-called Regulars, who now regard themselves as especially the Taft men, and the wild irresponsible folly of the ultra-Insurgents, make a situation which is very unpleasant. From a variety of causes, the men who are both sane and progressive, the men who make up the strength of the party, have been left so at sea during these months that they have themselves tended to become either sordid on the one hand, or wild on the other. I do not see how I could as a decent citizen have avoided taking the stand I have taken this year, and striving to reunite the party and to help the Republicans retain control of Congress and of the State of New York, while at the same time endeavoring to see that this control within the party was in the hands of sensible and honorable men who were progressives and not of a bourbon reactionary type. But as far as my personal inclinations were concerned, my personal pleasure and comfort, I should infinitely have preferred to keep wholly out of politics. I need hardly say that I never made a speech or took an action save in response to the earnest and repeated requests of men many of whom I well knew, in spite of their anxiety to use me at the moment, were exceedingly anxious to limit that use before elections with the understanding that I should have no say afterwards.
"I have on every occasion this year praised everything I conscientiously could of both Taft and the Congress, and I have never said a word in condemnation of either, strongly though I have felt. Very possibly circumstances will be such that I shall support Taft for the Presidency next time; but this is not a point now necessary for decision, and if I do support him it will be under no illusion and simply as being the best thing that the conditions permit."
At the elections in November, 1910, the Democrats were victorious in all parts of the country, carrying New York State by a majority of 67,000, thus confirming Roosevelt's prediction in his letter to Senator Lodge, on September 12, 1910, quoted above. In the Outlook of November 19, 1910, Roosevelt published this announcement:
"On every hand, personally and by correspondence, I have been asked to make a statement regarding the election. So far as I am concerned, I have nothing whatever to add to or to take away from the declaration of principles which I have made in the Ossawatomie speech and elsewhere, East and West, during the past three months. The fight for progressive popular government has merely begun, and will certainly go on to a triumphant conclusion in spite of initial checks and irrespective of the personal success or failure of individual leaders."
Writing to me, at Panama, on November 21, 1910, he outlined freely the elements which had entered into the election, giving his reasons for the course he had pursued and his views of the effect that the result would have upon his political future:
"I faced a situation where there was no 'best course'; it was merely a choice between courses, all of them unsatisfactory. I think I took the only course that was right, and the only course that I could have taken without loss of self-respect. I told the exact truth as I saw it. I praised Taft for every action of his as to which I could conscientiously praise him. Where I could not praise him, or disapproved of what he had done, I kept silent. I was opposed by the lunatic Insurgents of all grades, receiving very lukewarm support, I am sorry to say, from those who were not contented with anything short of denunciation of Taft, and who have no conception of the difference in difficulty between tearing down and building up. On the other hand, the reactionaries, the representatives of the special interests and all those whom they control, literally went insane in their opposition.
'' The one comfort in the New York election is that I think it prevents my having to face the very unpleasant task of deciding whether or not to accept the nomination in 1912. If we had carried New York, I can see now that I would have had to make such a decision. Of course the decision seems easy enough; on the one hand to the well-meaning conservative person who regards Taft as a satisfactory President, and does not understand what any man sees to object to in him, and who feels that any reluctance to urge his re-nomination by me must be due to personal ambition on my part; on the other hand, the decision seems perfectly easy to the progressives who hate Taft so bitterly that they firmly believe every honest man must share their convictions, and that only an unworthy fear on my part, or a still more unworthy desire to truckle to ultra-conservatism, prevents my coming out openly against Taft. But the choice is really infinitely more difficult.
"I have refrained from saying that I would not be a candidate in 1912, not in the least from self-interest, for I should regard it as the greatest personal calamity to be forced into accepting the nomination, and if it is possible to avoid it, I do not intend to be so forced into accepting it; but because I do not wish to put myself in the position where if it becomes my plain duty to accept I shall be obliged to shirk such duty because of having committed myself. As things are now, I feel convinced that it will not become my duty to accept. They have no business to expect me to take command of a ship simply because the ship is sinking.
"Were I nominated under present conditions, it would mean that I should be broken down by a burden for which I was not in any way responsible, but which would have to be carried by the nominee who succeeded Taft; and, on the other hand, I would face the sullen resentment of the many respectable people with no special information or imagination, who would think that in some way or other I had been treacherous to Taft. Often when one does not like conditions it is nevertheless necessary to play the game through under the conditions, because they cannot be changed until the game is over without making things even worse. As I feel now, I would refuse the nomination if it were offered
Among the many friends who wrote to him at this time in regard to his future course was William Allen White of the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette. Mr. White said to him that he did not wish to see him run for President again if he "could possibly help it." In reply Roosevelt wrote, from Oyster Bay, on December 12, 1910:
"You have struck the real reason of my nervousness on the subject. Of course the Wall Street crowd, and my enemies generally, think I have been scheming to be President. As a matter of fact there is nothing that I want less. Indeed this is not putting it strong enough. I feel that I did good work as President because the circumstances were such as to make me in sympathy with the men whom I really cared to represent. Now if I were again made President, it might be that the circumstances would be such that I could not do what was expected of me; and in any event I do not see how I could go out of the Presidency again with the credit I had when I left it this time. Moreover I have led such an active and vigorous life that I begin to feel rather old and to appreciate rest, now that I feel the right to it and so can enjoy it with a clear conscience. I have been almost ashamed of the fact that in spite of my concern and indignation over Stimson 's defeat, I have been unable to keep from being thoroughly happy since election. Mrs. Roosevelt and I have been out here in our own home, with our books and pictures and bronzes, and big wood fires and horses to ride, and the knowledge that our children are doing well. I do not think that I have had such a pleasant five weeks for a great many years. In fact I know I have not.
"Now under these circumstances, if I consulted merely my own feelings, I would promptly announce that never under any circumstances would I consent to be President again. But I don't think that this would be right. I think the chances are a hundred to one that I never shall be President again—perhaps a thousand to one. But however improbable, it is possible that circumstances might arise when it would be unpatriotic of me, when it would represent going back on my principles and my friends, to refuse to be President. Moreover, what is much more likely, the threat of my possible Presidency may influence for good some worthy people who need just to be influenced!
"As regards myself, I think that the American people feel a little tired of me, a feeling with which I cordially sympathize ; for they cannot be expected as a whole to understand that my speeches and writings during the last six months have been due not in the least to a desire to speak and write, but to the fact that I could not avoid doing so without shirking what I regarded as my duty. Moreover I am certain that the American people would greatly resent any thought that I would want them to give me another job of any kind for my own sake. I shall never wittingly put myself in a position where they can believe this. I feel most strongly that I never again should take any public position unless it could be made perfectly clear that I was taking it not for my own sake, but because the people thought it would be to their advantage to have me do so."