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CHAPTER TWENTY ONE 

Of Theodore Roosevelt And his Time Volume 2

"NEW  NATIONALISM":

CANDIDACY AGAINST  TAFT: 

eaRly in 1911, Roosevelt made another speaking tour through the South and West, occupying about six weeks. One of the objects of this trip was to be present at the dedication of the great Roosevelt Dam at Roosevelt, Arizona, which took place on March 18, 1911. His speeches covered a variety of subjects and are chiefly interesting so far as they foreshadowed the principles which he was to make the basis of his national campaign in 1912. At Phoenix, Arizona, and at several points in California, he advocated the recall of judicial decisions, saying that he favored it only when by actual experience the people were driven to it in order to do away with some serious evil.
While passing through Reno, Nevada, and addressing a large assemblage of citizens in a public park, on April 3, he dealt a characteristically courageous blow at what might be called one of the State's chief industries. Speaking of its '' divorce colony,'' he said: '' It is one colony of which you want to rid yourselves; I don't care what you do with those of your own State who seek divorces, but keep citizens of other States who want divorces out of Nevada. Don't allow yourselves to be deceived by the argument that such a colony brings money to your city. You can't afford to have that kind of money brought here."
The chief topics of his speeches were treated in a series of eight articles which he published in the Outlook during this period under the general title of "The New Nationalism." In these he simply embodied the views which he had advocated while President, both in his messages to Congress and in his public speeches, in regard to the regulation and control of corporations and industrial combinations, the relations of capital and labor, social and industrial justice, special privilege, conduct of the judiciary and similar subjects which had been steadily occupying serious consideration in his mind from the time he had been a member of the New York Legislature. There was nothing really new in his advocacy of them; they were the logical development of thirty years of thought and experience and were based on a steadily growing faith in their patriotism, wisdom and justice. Nothing could be farther from the truth than the assertions which his persistent critics made in regard to them—that they were the outcome of sudden impulse, or hasty thought, or demagogic desire for popularity. No one who had followed his career could make such charges in relation to them. The story of his career as shown from his utterances and acts and recorded in these pages supplies complete and final refutation.
While he was on this Southern and Western tour in 1911, serious trouble occurred in Mexico and there were rumors of intervention and possible war. Roosevelt was at the time in San Francisco and on March 14, 1911, he wrote a letter to President Taft which it is interesting to compare with a similar one that he wrote to President Wilson a few years later on the eve of war with Germany:
"I don't suppose that there is anything in this war talk, and I most earnestly hope that we will not have to intervene even to do temporary police duty in Mexico. But just because there is, I suppose, one chance in a thousand of serious trouble such as would occur if Japan or some other big power were to back Mexico, I write. Of course I would not wish to take any part in a mere war with Mexico —it would not be my business to do peculiarly irksome and disagreeable police duty of the kind that any occupation of Mexico would entail. But if by any remote chance—and I know how remote it is—there should be a serious war, a war in which Mexico was backed by Japan or some other big power, then I would wish immediately to apply for permission to raise a division of cavalry, such as the regiment I commanded in Cuba. The division would consist of three brigades of three regiments each. If given a free hand, I could render it, I am certain, as formidable a body of horse riflemen, that is, of soldiers such as those of Sheridan, Forest and Stuart, as has ever been seen. In order to make it efficient and formidable, and to prepare it in the shortest possible time, I would need to choose my own officers. To follow any other course would be to risk losing half, or possibly all, of the efficiency of the force. I have my brigade commanders, colonels, and in many cases majors and captains already in mind, and they would be men under whose organization could be pushed to very rapid completion, while the ranks would be immediately filled to overflowing with men, every one of whom would be already a good horseman and rifleman able to live in the open and take care of himself."
Throughout the year 1911 the pressure upon Roosevelt by his most zealous followers to run as a candidate for the Presidency in 1912 steadily increased. He was greatly disturbed by this as two letters that he wrote to me at Panama in December show very clearly:
December 13, 1911.
"As for the nomination, I should regard it from my personal standpoint as little short of a calamity. I not merely do not want it, but if I honorably can, I desire to avoid it. On the other hand, I certainly will not put myself in a position which would make it necessary for me to shirk a plain duty if it came unmistakably as a plain duty. As yet I am not convinced that it will so come, and, on the contrary, believe there is practically little or no chance of it. I will not be a candidate in any ordinary sense of the word, and my judgment is that the Federal office holders together with the timid conservative people will give Taft the nomination. At any rate, as far as I am concerned, my anxieties are in this order: first, not to be nominated if it can honorably be avoided, and, second, if nominated, to have it made perfectly clear that it is in response to a genuine popular demand and because the public wishes me to serve them for their purpose, and not to gratify any ambition of mine."
December 29, 1911.
"I have been immensely worried and puzzled over the Presidential business. I am really not thinking of myself at all now, but as to what is right to do. Taft is utterly hopeless. I think he would be beaten if nominated, but in any event it would be a misfortune to have him in the Presidential chair for another term, for he has shown himself an entirely unfit President, and he merely discredits the Republican Party, and therefore discredits those of us who believe that, with the Democratic Party as it is now constituted, the Republican Party offers the only instrument through which to secure really sane, progressive government. . . .
"But I am sure that, from the personal standpoint, it would be rough on me to have me nominated, and I am as yet not sure that it would not be damaging from the public standpoint. I think a great many men would have a vague feeling that I was nominated to gratify my own ambition, and would pay no heed whatever to the circumstances of the nomination. The New York newspapers, for instance, would probably without a single exception assert that I had corruptly intrigued for the nomination, and keep up the assertion until they had deceived a good number of people. Very possibly I should be beaten if I ran, and if I was not beaten it might well be that I would be elected under circumstances which would render it impossible to put through any constructive program—and if ever I hold the Presidency again I shall regard it as a capital misfortune unless I am able to hold it not merely for the sake of holding the office but for the sake of doing a job. In other words, I want to see the Presidency handled along the lines that the job of digging the Panama Canal has been handled."
In January, 1912, Frank A. Munsey, then editor of The Press of New York City, made a public appeal to Roosevelt to announce that if nominated for the Presidency he would not refuse the nomination. In a long private and confidential letter to Mr. Munsey, under date of January 16, 1912, which was published several weeks later, Roosevelt gave his reasons for not granting the request. In this letter he said:
"I am not and shall not be a candidate. I shall not seek the nomination, nor would I accept it if it came to me as the result of an intrigue. But I will not tie my hands by a statement which would make it difficult or impossible for me to serve the public by undertaking a great task if the people as a whole seemed definitely to come to the conclusion that I ought to do that task. In other words, as far as in me lies I am endeavoring to look at this matter purely from the standpoint of the public interest, of the interest of the people as a whole, and not in the least from my own standpoint.
"If I should consult only my own pleasure and interest, I should most emphatically and immediately announce that I would under no circumstances run. I have had all the honor that any man can have from holding the office of President. From every personal standpoint there is nothing for me to gain either in running for the office or in holding the office once more, and there is very much to lose.
"Under such circumstances, if I consulted only my own interest, the obvious thing to do would be to announce that I would not obey any popular mandate, that I would not run if nominated. I shall not follow this course because I am sincerely endeavoring to look at the matter only from the standpoint of the popular interest. It is not only necessary for the people to have the right instrument, the right tool, with which to work in any given emergency, but it is necessary that they themselves shall choose, and shall believe in the sufficiency of, that instrument. If at this particular crisis, with the particular problems ahead of us at this particular time, the people feel that I am the one man in sight to do the job, then I should regard myself as shirking a plain duty if I refused to do it.
   
"What I am interested in, remember, is not in the least holding the office, but doing a job that is actually worth doing; this is the position that to the best of my belief I have always taken, and always shall take. If the people should feel that I was the instrument to be used at this time, I should accept even although I knew that I should be broken and cast aside in the using; for often it is true that at a given moment there is one tool, one instrument, particularly available, and then that instrument must be used even though to use it necessarily means to break it. The right motto for any man is ' Spend and be spent'; and if, in order to do a job worth doing from the public standpoint, he must pay with his own life, actual life on the field of battle, or political life in civic affairs, he must not grudge the payment.
"If my position were only a pose, I should certainly act differently from the way I am acting, for I am well aware that the way I am acting is not the way in which to act if I desire to be made President. But my attitude is not a pose, I am acting as I do because, according to my lights, I am endeavoring, in a not too easy position, to do what I believe the interests of the people demand. From this standpoint I am convinced that although it is entirely proper for other men to seek the Presidency, it is neither wise nor proper for me to do so, the conditions being what they actually are. I have been President; I was President for nearly eight years; I am well known to the American people; I am to be judged not by words but by my acts; and whether the people like me or dislike me, they have these acts all before them for their decision."
Writing to. me at Panama, on January 29, 1912, he enclosed a copy of the Munsey letter, and said:

"It may be necessary for me to speak, and very possibly I will have to speak before the first open primaries. I hope not, however. The trouble is that if I speak it looks as if I were making myself a candidate, and if I do not speak it looks as if I were acting furtively.
   
"I write you, confidentially, that my own reading of  the situation is that while there are a great many people in this country who are devoted to me, they do not form more than a substantial minority of the ten or fifteen millions of voters. I have had a great time; I have done my work. Unless I am greatly mistaken, the people have made up their mind that they wish some new instrument, that they do not wish me; and if I know myself, I am sincere when I tell you that this does not cause one least little particle of regret to me. If it becomes necessary for me in the popular interest to attempt any job, of course I would attempt it; but nothing would persuade me to attempt it in my own interest and welfare, and as far as in me lies I shall endeavor to make it clear that such is the case."
The pressure upon him to be a candidate increased in volume steadily and rapidly and during January, 1912, it extended virtually to the entire country with the exception of the South. Governors of States, recognized leaders of opinion, newspaper editors, and others whose utterances had weight, either visited him or wrote to him begging him to become a candidate. They convinced him that at least two-thirds of the rank and file of the party wished him to run. They convinced him also that the principles for which he had fought throughout his career were at stake and that unless he took the field as their champion no fight whatever would be made for them. While he was in this state of mind, which may justly be called a, but not the, psychological moment in his career—for he had many such moments—a letter reached him, written on February 10, 1912, signed by the Republican governors of seven States—Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, West Virginia and Wyoming—formally requesting him to be a candidate for the Presidency. This letter was ingeniously framed to exert a powerful influence upon Roosevelt. Its authors declared their belief that a large majority of the Republican voters favored his nomination and a large majority of the voters favored his election; that he represented, as no other man did, the principles and policies which must appeal to the American people and which were necessary to the happiness and prosperity of the country; that in making the request the authors of the letter were not considering his personal interests, but the interests of the people as a whole, and that if he were to decline he would show himself unresponsive to a plain public duty.
Two days after the date of this letter, February 12, 1912, President Taft made a speech before the Republican Club in New York City in which he said:
"There are those who look upon the present situation as one full of evil and corruption and as. a tyranny of concentrated wealth, and who in apparent despair at any ordinary remedy are seeking to pull down those things which have been regarded as the pillars of the temple of freedom and representative government and to reconstruct our whole society on some new principle, not definitely formulated and with no intelligent or intelligible forecast of the exact constitutional and statutory results to be obtained. Such extremists would hurry us into a condition which would find no parallel except in the French Revolution or in that babbling anarchy that once characterized the South American Republics. Such extremists are not progressives; they are political emotionalists or neurotics.''
This was nothing less than a direct assault upon Roosevelt for his utterances in his Colorado and Ossawatomie speeches. Coming as it did at the critical moment when Roosevelt was considering the question of consenting to be a candidate, its effect was decisive. It removed from his mind the last lingering doubt as to the irreconcilable difference on matters of principle which existed between himself and Mr. Taft, and as to his duty to become a candidate against him. To his mind, Mr. Taft's words were not only an assault but a challenge, for never before in his career and never afterwards were more offensive epithets than "political emotionalist" and "neurotic" applied to him. If Mr. Taft had designed to goad him into acceptance of the proposal of the governors, he could scarcely have hit upon surer means. He fairly compelled Roosevelt to take one of two courses—either defend his principles or abandon them, and no one could have known better than Mr. Taft must have known what Roosevelt's choice would be. That he decided at once to be a candidate, and that personal considerations had nothing whatever to do with his decision, is too clear to dispute. Neither his past nor present personal relations with Mr. Taft entered into the matter at all. It was purely a question of principles and Mr. Taft's own utterances showed how hopeless agreement on them had become.
Before answering the letter of the governors, Roosevelt went to Columbus, Ohio, and on February 21 delivered an address before the Ohio Constitutional Convention, on "A Charter of Democracy," which by its radical utterances made it virtually impossible for the Republican National Convention to nominate him. While passing through Cleveland on his way to Columbus on February 21, he was asked if he was to be a candidate and in replying he used a phrase which became famous: "My hat is in the ring. You will have my answer on Monday." In this speech at Columbus he declared himself in favor of the initiative and referendum proposals and of the recall of judicial decisions, while at the same time reiterating and reaffirming his views in regard to corporations and trusts and other subjects. He had, as I have noted in a previous chapter, favored the recall of judicial decisions in his speeches in the West in 1911, but in his Columbus address he stated his views on the question with far greater emphasis. The address fairly startled the conservative sentiment of the country, and alienated hundreds of thousands of Republican voters. If he had studied to make his own nomination by the Republican Convention impossible he could not have hit upon a surer course. It was a plain defiance to the leaders of the party and a notification that they could hope for no compromise of principles from him; that he valued loyalty to those principles above any support that they were able to give. That he was perfectly aware of this effect of his utterances, is not to be questioned. He had thought the matter out most earnestly, as the letters that I have quoted show, and he had reached the conclusion that he must make the fight for the principles dearest to his heart, or leave them to be abandoned without a struggle. That there was no possibility of his own election, or of political advantage of any kind for himself, he was too shrewd a man not to perceive. Had he been seeking such advantage he would have refrained from saying what was not at all needed to bind his radical followers more closely to him, and what was certain to drive away thousands who would have remained with him had he kept silent. His answer to the seven governors, on February 24, 1912, was as follows:
"I deeply appreciate your letter, and I realize to the full the heavy responsibility it puts upon me, expressing as it does the carefully considered convictions of the men elected by popular vote to stand as the heads of government in their several States.
"I absolutely agree with you that this matter is not one to be decided with any reference to the personal preferences or interests of any man, but purely from the standpoint of the interests of the people as a whole. I will accept the nomination for President if it is tendered to me, and I will adhere to this decision until the convention has expressed its preference. One of the chief principles for which I have stood and for which I now stand, and which I have always endeavored and always shall endeavor to reduce to -action, is the genuine rule of the people; and therefore I hope that so far as possible the people may be given the chance, through direct primaries, to express their preference as to who shall be the nominee of the Republican Presidential Convention."
Writing to me at Panama on March 18, 1912, he said: "Do not get the idea into your head that I am going to win in this fight. It was a fight that had to be made and there was no alternative to my making it."