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IMPRESSIONS OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT  
By Lawrence F. Abbot

1920

CHAPTER ONE

ACQUAINTANCESHIP

   I FORMED the Roosevelt habit early. In the autumn of 1881 Theodore Roosevelt was elected as a Republican to the Legislature of the State of New York. The story of that election is a characteristic and amusing one and will be referred to in more detail in the next chapter. On taking his seat in the lower house, or Assembly, of the Legislature he became at once a prominent if not a national figure. He was reelected in 1882 and 1883 and was selected by his party in the Legislature as its candidate for Speaker. All this happened when he was less than twenty-four years old. Naturally his success—based as it was on high standards and enduring, even pugnacious, courage, combined with human sympathy and democratic interest in all sorts of men, when they were real men—attracted the attention of hundreds of young Americans of his own age. They felt, somehow or other, that he was a symbol of what young America could do if it tried.

I was living in New York at the time, working as a clerk in a publishing office, and the picture of this young college man—a graduate of Harvard in the Class of 1880, scarcely a year older than myself, fighting for decency and honesty in politics at a time when American political morals were at a pretty low ebb—appealed to my imagination, and I followed his political career with intense interest.

But I was not, I think, altogether blinded by my admiration, for although I was born and brought up a Republican of a somewhat strict sect, I voted for Cleveland in the presidential election of 1884 as a protest against the forces behind Blaine, while Roosevelt, having opposed as strongly as he could the nomination of Blaine in the Republican National Convention, nevertheless voted for him as his party's regular candidate. And wisely, I think. For Roosevelt had deliberately chosen politics as his career, intended to make politics, if possible statesmanship, his profession; and in a two-party government like ours the political administrator and statesman must work with his party except in a crisis of the utmost national import. The ordinary citizen, on the other hand, may, and often should, use his vote as an independent instrument to serve as a check upon the unwise policies or unwholesome tendencies of the party in power.

It is difficult to look back over a span of thirty-five years and recall all the details of one's feelings, even in the field of politics where, generally, the emotions, prejudices, and passions of antipathy or devotion are developed and manifested in their strongest form. But apparently my difference of opinion with Roosevelt in the Blaine campaign could not have been very deep-seated, for, in 1886, when he ran as Republican candidate for Mayor of New York City, I supported and voted for him with ardour. It was a " three-cornered campaign," Abram Hewett being the Democratic (and successful) candidate while Henry George, the distinguished apostle of the single tax doctrine, represented the Radicals. Although Roosevelt ran third in the race his personality as a candidate made a deep impression upon me, and I remember that campaign as the starting point of a political career in which I have taken a constant and, whenever I could, an active interest. Whether it was because this mayoralty contest was a complete defeat or because Roosevelt's managers made it one of partisanship rather than of fundamental principles I do not know, but the fact is that it made little impression on him and apparently did not especially interest him as one of the milestones of his political progress, for I never heard him talk about it—as he was glad to do about his other political experiences—and he practically ignores it in his autobiography.

It was in this way that the foundations were laid for my later personal friendship with Roosevelt and for my sympathy with his political philosophy. But I did not make his personal acquaintance until 1895 when he was president of the Board of New York Police Commissioners.

William L. Strong, a well-known and public-spirited merchant of New York City, had been elected mayor on an anti-Tammany fusion ticket in 1894. One of the factors in his election was the work done by the "Good Government Clubs" which were organized in various districts of New York City. As a result of the impetus which I had received from the political work and qualities of Theodore Roosevelt, I entered with enthusiasm this Good Government Club movement and served as a watcher at the polls on Election Day in one of the toughest Tammany districts in what was known as the gas-house quarter on the East Side.

    The election was being carried on under a new law, which I had taken the pains to study. While at the outset the Tammany "heelers" and even the Tammany policemen endeavoured to browbeat and obstruct me, I found before the night was over (because they became convinced that I intended to be fair and was unwilling to throw out ballots on mere technicalities) that they were appealing to me for help in the canvassing; finally, they accepted both my advice and my decisions. This experience convinced me that Theodore Roosevelt's doctrines of political management and administration were workable. And so, when Mayor Strong appointed him one of the four police commissioners and he became president of the Board, I watched with more than ordinary interest his endeavours to make the police system of the city an honest and effective one.

One day Jacob Riis—at that time a representative of, I think, the Evening Sun at Police Headquarters—came into my office, when I told him of an experience that I had had with a drunken police officer, whose number I had taken the precaution of noting in my memorandum book. Riis asked me whether I had any objection to his telling the story to Roosevelt. On my assent he evidently related the incident to the new commissioner with all the colour and picturesqueness that characterized his work as a writer. For, in a day or two he came back and said that Commissioner Roosevelt wanted me to come down to Police Headquarters and make a complaint against the disreputable policeman. I went down, was ushered into Mr. Roosevelt's presence, and there met him for the first time. He had in the room to meet me the policeman whose number I had given to Mr. Riis. I recognized and identified the man and, at Mr. Roosevelt's request, made the proper complaint. The affair resulted in a police trial at which one of Mr. Roosevelt's colleagues, Commissioner Parker, presided. Commissioner Parker was not in sympathy with Mr. Roosevelt's efforts to take the police force out of corrupt politics, and although he was superficially courteous he made the day that I spent in the trial room one of the most uncomfortable of my life. What finally was the disposition of the case I do not know, for Commissioner Parker suspended judgment at the conclusion of the trial. But I have never regretted that day, miserable though it was,, because it proved to be the beginning of an acquaintanceship with Theodore Roosevelt which later became an intimate one and developed into what was, to me, a deep and delightful friendship. One of the most readable and entertaining chapters of Mr. Roosevelt's autobiography is his account of his work as Police Commissioner. He not only tells of some of his difficulties but relates stories of particular officers, like those of Otto Raphael and Captain Bourke that are as lively and as absorbing as any novel. His final estimate of his work with the police is as follows:
Let me again say that when men tell me that the police are irredeemably bad I remember scores and hundreds of cases like this of Bourke, like the case I have already mentioned of Raphael, like the other cases I have given above. It is useless to tell me that these men are bad. They are naturally first-rate men. There are no better men anywhere than the men of the New York Police force; and when they go bad it is because the system is wrong, and because they are not given the chance to do the good work they can do and would rather do. I never coddled these men. I punished them severely whenever I thought their conduct required it. All I did was to try to be just; to reward them when they did well; in short, to act squarely by them. I believe that, as a whole, they liked me. When, in 1912, I ran for President on the Progressive ticket, I received a number of unsigned letters inclosing sums of money for the campaign. One of these inclosed twenty dollars. The writer, who did not give his name, said that he was a policeman, that f had once had him before me on charges, and had fined him twenty dollars; that, as a matter of fact, he had not committed the offense for which I fine him, but that the evidence was such that he did not wonder that I had been misled, and never blamed me for it, because I had acted squarely and had given honest and decent men a chance in the Police Department; and that now he inclosed a twenty-dollar bill, the amount of the fine inflicted on him so many years before. I have always wished I knew who the man was.
It was through his work as police commissioner that I first began to realize Theodore Roosevelt's deep-seated human sympathy and his understanding of human character. He was an indefatigable worker then as he was in every phase of his life. He was not too busy to ask me, a citizen unknown to him and holding no public position, to come down and make a complaint which might help in the work he was trying to do. Since his death, an old boyhood friend of mine, a practising physician in New York City, Dr. Matthew Beattie, has sent me fifteen letters which Commissioner Roosevelt wrote to him between August, 1895, and December, 1896. They are only a few of a much larger number, nearly forty in all.

Dr. Beattie gives me the following interesting account of his experiences with Mr. Roosevelt as to police reform:
Mr. Roosevelt had been in office only a few days when I called on him at Police Headquarters and told him that
No.	and No.	on the block on which I lived were,
and had been for a long time, houses of ill fame. Quick as a flash he replied with this question: "Doctor, will you wait here until I get your police captain?" Of course I said
" yes."    Immediately Captain S.	of the West	Street
station was summoned.    He was hardly seated and informed of my complaint when Mr. Roosevelt walked up rather close to him and said, with great determination: "Captain, I will give you just five days to close those three houses."

In three days all three houses became vacant and were respectable boarding houses for the following sixteen years to my personal knowledge.

A druggist, living about half a mile from my office, wrote to me asking me to use my influence with Police Commissioner Roosevelt to curb or punish a drunken policeman, named
M	, who often insulted women in his drug store and on
the near-by streets. I presented the case to Mr. Roosevelt who at once asked me to aid him in a little detective work to
catch officer M	. I was glad to do so, and secured the
help of Professor Harry Gushing, then of Columbia College,
who lived in my house. . . . M	was found guilty
of being off post and fined on that count. Gushing and I, however, had not proved the character of the house of ill fame which we saw him enter. Therefore, he could not be dismissed from the force on our complaint, but I was informed that he was dismissed two weeks after the trial, on another charge.
Two of these letters to Dr. Beattie are typical of Mr. Roosevelt's methods. The first illustrates the directness with which he went to the point:
dear dr. beattie:
I am very doubtful indeed about the captain in question, but keep a close eye on him. As to your questions:
I.    Continue to make reports to me.
II.    Grant the request.
III.   Carry a pistol and apply for a permit to the Chief.
Very truly yours,
theodore roosevelt.
The second letter illustrates his fairmindedness. The Captain S— - who had been summoned to Mr. Roosevelt's office, on Dr. Beattie's complaint, to close three disorderly houses apparently did his duty so well, after he found that he had a real backer in the new commissioner, that he brought down on his head the wrath of the powers of corruption. When Mr. Roosevelt found that he could be relied upon for honest work he supported him, as will be seen from the second letter:
December 7, 1896. my dear dr. beattie:
Your letter gave me sincere pleasure.    I have reason to
believe that Captain S	has been persecuted, not for his
failings, but for his efficiency, and especially because of the way he has acted in support of you and your representatives —conduct that has cost him much bitter hostility. I trust you will be willing to appear as a witness to testify in his behalf if he is put on trial.
Sincerely yours,
theodore roosevelt.
Beginning with his police commissionership I came into contact with Mr. Roosevelt occasionally, but it was not until he was about to leave the White House that the real association began upon which these impressions are based.

Not long after Mr. Roosevelt's election to the Presidency in 1904 he announced that he would not be a candidate for a second consecutive term. In the summer of 1905 I began to turn over in my own mind one day what Mr. Roosevelt would do when he left the Presidency. It seemed to me that after he retired from official life he must have some organized means of expressing his views and exerting his influence on public questions. He was not a lawyer by profession, as so many other ex-Presidents have been, and he could not go into active industrial or financial business. That had been tried by one ex-President, General Grant, with disastrous consequences. Since Mr. Roosevelt was not only a statesman but a man of letters, I wondered whether some form of journalism in which he could take part in discussions on social, economic, and political questions would not be appropriate. Would it be possible to have him associate himself with the Outlook? With this idea in mind, I worked out a plan—coining the phrase "contributing editor" —and it was put before him. How he met it is described in a letter to me, dated March 5, 1917, from which I quote:
It was your father and you yourself who personally brought to my attention the idea of my joining the Outlook as a contributing editor. This was in the White House at the beginning of the year 1906. I spoke of it again with your father that summer and in the following year, but I came to no definite decision until the spring or early summer of 1908, when you came to see me at Sagamore Hill, and I agreed definitely to go in with you on practically the basis on which I afterward did go in. It was your father who was the decisive factor in getting me to accept. I might have accepted your request alone; but I have a peculiar feeling for your father. I regard him and have long regarded him as a man who in a way stands entirely apart from all others in our national life, and, if the expression does not seem exaggerated, my regard for him has in it a little of that feeling of reverence which is perhaps the finest feeling an old man can inspire in younger men—even when these younger men, like myself, become old men! I felt honoured to be associated with him, and I was also very glad to be associated with the rest of you.
The result of these negotiations was that on the yth of November, 1908, the Outlook was able to announce that "on and after the 5th of March, 1909, Theodore Roosevelt will be associated with the Outlook's editorial staff as special Contributing Editor." From that day until June, 1914, he was in a very real sense a member of our staff. He made his office with us and he regularly attended our weekly editorial conferences.

According to our mutual agreement he was to be free to express his own views over his own name and the Outlook was equally at liberty to state its opinion even when it varied from his on public questions. We rarely differed, but when we did he accepted the difference of opinion with perfect loyalty to the understanding which was the basis of our joint work. He believed in what he called "team-work," and practised his belief. He listened to the views of his colleagues, and often modified his own as a result of the interchange of opinion. He never wrote an article that he did not, before publication, submit to one of us, and he almost invariably accepted our suggestions, sometimes with regard to verbal expressions and sometimes with regard to change of ideas or views of the article. I do not mean to give the impression that he altered his mind frequently. On matters of principle he could be as fixed as adamant. But in methods of putting a principle into effect he habitually sought counsel and was eager to adopt suggestions. Not only did he contribute to our pages articles over his own name, but his wide experience, his comprehensive knowledge of men and affairs, and his unique ability as an interpreter of political and social movements found expression in our own editorials through the comments and suggestions which he made at the weekly conferences.

One of the first results of his prospective connection with the Outlook was that I had the very unusual, if not the unique, experience of attending a semiofficial cabinet meeting in Washington. Mr. Taft was running for the Presidency against Mr. Bryan, and in the latter part of the summer of 1908 there was great anxiety among the Republican managers lest Mr. Bryan might be elected on the anti-corporation "trust-busting" issue. He was, it is true, defeated by so large a majority that these anxieties now seem hardly credible, but at the time they were very real. Governor Haskell of Oklahoma was the treasurer of the National Democratic Committee and Mr. Bryan's right-hand man in managing his campaign. The Outlook had learned that the university professors and educators of Oklahoma were very much upset by Governor Haskell's management of the educational system of that state. They felt that he was trying to prostitute it to partisan political ends. During a visit which my father had made to the State of Oklahoma shortly before the campaign of 1908 he was urged to defend in the Outlook the university and schools of Oklahoma against the political machinations of Governor Haskell. My father was very glad to do this and the Outlook, supported by documents and other proof, took up the issue with some vigour. For when political bosses endeavour to turn a state educational system into a political machine they are guilty of perhaps the worst form of political corruption. To debauch the public schools in this way is to pollute the very springs of our national life. Mr. Roosevelt knew and approved of the part which the Outlook had been taking in this controversy.

One September Saturday afternoon, while playing golf at my summer home on the Hudson about fifty miles from New York, the following telegram was repeated to me by telephone from my office in. the city:
The White House, Washington, September 26, 1908. Lawrence F. Abbott The Outlook

New York City
Letter received. If you want to write on Haskell I have many records to show you which you ought to see. Come on to see me this evening or to-morrow (Sunday) afternoon or evening. Don't forget the expression used by one of the Oklahoma senators in championing Haskell that Haskell is merely Bryanism in action.
theodore roosevelt.
In reply I telegraphed that I would report at the White House the next morning, Sunday, at nine o'clock. Reluctantly I left my game of golf, hastily packed a bag, and got a train for New York which enabled me to take the midnight express over to Washington.

When I presented my card at nine o'clock at the White House the doorman was a little dubious, owing to the very unusual hour of the call, but it was sent to the President who summoned me to join him. I found him at breakfast with Mrs. Roosevelt at a small round table on the back verandah overlooking the pleasant garden with the towering Washington Monument in the distance. He explained that he and Mrs. Roosevelt were accustomed to breakfast alone on Sunday mornings, without even other members of the family, because in this way they could take one of the very few opportunities they had for an hour of uninterrupted companionship.

Mr. Roosevelt informed me that he was in the process of an exchange of open letters with Mr. Bryan on issues of the campaign; that he had written the first one; that Mr. Bryan had replied; and that he was about to write his second letter that afternoon. With the astute wisdom which he showed in all practical matters, Mr. Roosevelt had picked out the Monday morning newspapers as the medium for his open letters. Daily newspaper editors are always glad to get some striking feature for Monday morning since the Sunday issue has used up everything of sensational value in hand.

At the President's invitation I returned to take luncheon with him and afterward went up into his study, where a table was covered with documents and records of all kinds regarding the campaign. At three o'clock those members of the Cabinet who were then in Washington came to the room by appointment and Mr. Roosevelt began to dictate the open letter to Bryan, walking up and down the room as he talked to the stenographer in a characteristic fashion. Finally he came to a criticism of Mr. Bryan himself and was making the application of this criticism somewhat personal and vigorous, whereupon a member of the Cabinet remarked: " Mr. President, it does not seem to me wise to make a personal attack upon Mr. Bryan and certainly not upon Mr. Bryan's integrity, for such an attack, in my judgment, would react in his favour." Mr. Roosevelt stopped and answered: "Mr. Secretary, I want to dictate this letter based on these documents and facts before me with perfect freedom of expression. I want you to listen and form your own judgment and to come back at nine o'clock this evening prepared to make any suggestions or modifications that occur to you." He then went on with his dictation and finished the article or open letter, which I should imagine would have taken the space of a column and a half or two columns of a daily newspaper. At the conclusion of the session which was attended by Secretary Cortel-you of the Treasury, Secretary Straus of the Department of Commerce and Labour, Secretary Meyer of the Navy, and, I think, one other member of the Cabinet whose name I cannot recall (these gentlemen being the only members of the Cabinet in town at the time)—I went back to my hotel much impressed with the fact that I had been a spectator of what was at least an informal Cabinet meeting in action. I was also impressed with the conviction that the secretary who raised the question about a personal criticism of Mr. Bryan was right in his judgment; and yet I thought I understood, from my conversations with him, Mr. Roosevelt's own point of view. I therefore wrote, and sent to the White House by special messenger, a note something like this:
my dear mr. president:
May I venture to say that it seems to me that Secretary
	was right in deprecating anything that appears like an
attack upon Mr. Bryan's personal integrity, but on the other hand I do not understand that you desire to make such an attack. Is it not your purpose to point out that Mr. Bryan's close association with Governor Haskell, whose methods have been dishonourable, shows not a lack of honour but a lack of wisdom and sound judgment. What you wish to say to the American people, as I understand you, is that if Mr. Bryan can make so lamentable an error of judgment as to appoint a political spoilsman like Governor Haskell as his right-hand man and lieutenant in this campaign, what guarantee have they that he will not, if elected President, make a similar mistake of judgment in appointing the members of his Cabinet and other officers of the Government?
Five minutes after this note had gone I would have given a good-sized cheque to get it back.
"What have I done?" I said to myself. "With only a limited acquaintance with the President, I have ventured to send him a letter of advice in a matter in which his Cabinet are his proper advisers! He is reported to carry 'a big stick.' What will happen to me when I go back to him this evening?" For he had invited me to return at nine o'clock to be present when the letter was revised.

I dined with Secretary Meyer and went back to the White House at nine o'clock. As I entered the little study in which this piece of work was done I literally trembled in my shoes. The President was sitting at his desk, in a swivel chair, with his back to the door. He swung around, greeted Secretary Meyer, said good evening to me, and added: "Thank you for your note, Abbott. I was glad to get it. You are right. I shall modify the passage about Mr. Bryan accordingly."

He then asked the three or four members of the Cabinet who had heard him dictate the letter to sit down, and requested each one to read the typewritten transcript of the dictation, sheet by sheet, and to make their criticisms. I was also asked to read the pages as they left the hands of the last Cabinet officer. Suggested modifications were freely made by the Cabinet members (I, of course, was merely a silent observer) and were incorporated by Mr. Roosevelt with his own pen, until some of the pages were black with interlineation. Each revised page was sent out to be freshly copied, brought in for the President's final vise, and then sent to the telegraph office downstairs for immediate transmission through the Associated Press. Every suggestion, with one exception, was adopted by Mr. Roosevelt. I think it was Mr. Straus who asked for the modification of one sentence or phrase on the ground that it was a little too severe. The President turned to him and said: "No, Mr. Secretary, I think it should stand as it is. You must remember that this is a poster, not an etching!" This incident seems to me to be worth recording somewhat fully because it illustrates what was one of Roosevelt's striking characteristics and yet a characteristic which the general public, I think, was not aware of. I mean his constant practice of seeking the facts and complete information about a given matter from any source that he thought would be serviceable. It was this motive that led him to summon me—a comparatively unknown man, holding no public or cabinet position—that we might be able mutually to help each other in giving the public the facts about Governor Haskell. From this incident the reader will also get the impression, and I think it is the correct impression, that Mr. Roosevelt in all his public acts sought advice and followed suggestions. In this instance he summoned those members of his Cabinet who were available, had them give personally and collectively three or four hours' consideration to a newspaper-campaign letter, and invited and adopted their modifications and advice. It was these qualities of cooperation which made his public career on its human side so preeminently successful, and they have always seemed to me to be important traits of his character—so important that I shall recur to them more than once as I proceed.

Roosevelt was not only a staunch advocate of the doctrine of military preparedness—to which, by the way, he gave expression at the age of twenty-two in his "Naval History of the War of 1812," referred to more fully in a later chapter—but practised preparedness in every activity of his life. His desk was always clear, although he wrote more letters probably than any other man of his time. His articles were always finished on the day and the hour when they were promised—often a little beforehand. He pressed his work instead of being pressed by it, and was never confused or worried' by an accumulation of duties. He was the busiest man I ever knew, and yet he never seemed to be hurried. In other words, he was a remarkable executive, partly because he knew how to handle men and get them to work, but very largely, I think, because he practised preparedness.

For example, he took with him into the African wilderness a supply of stationery, with sheets of carbon paper like those that are used on the ordinary typewriter, and indelible pencils, and wrote in duplicate by means of the carbon paper, under what to most men would have been impossible conditions, some of his book, "African Game Trails," and at least one of the important addresses that he delivered in, Europe. He was distinctly what some of my Yankee forbears would have called "forehanded."

A significant instance of this forehandedness was his first editorial act as a member of the staff of the Outlook. He relinquished the Presidency on March 4, 1909, and sailed for Africa on March 23rd. In characteristic fashion, he instantly turned from the work of President to that of editor. Indeed, while still President he had written half a dozen editorial articles and had them all ready for publication. Wednesday, March 10th, was his inauguration day as one of the editorial board. When it came his turn to suggest a topic for editorial consideration he said: "I wonder whether you would be willing to tell the story of the Government's prosecution of the Sugar Trust for its criminal attempt to evade paying customs duties? The Government, in the face of incredible difficulties, has won its case, and the Sugar Trust has been convicted of smuggling sugar by the daily use of a fraudulent device extending over a period of some years. Unfortunately, for mysterious reasons which it is not wholly difficult to explain, the New York daily press has practically ignored the Government's victory and its dramatic incidents, and the public therefore does not know all it should about the crime, and the success of the Government in ferreting it out and punishing it. There may be good reasons why you do not want to go into this matter, but if you do I shall be glad to see that you are supplied with all the facts in the case."

Of course we instantly said that we should be glad to take the matter up and would do all we could, with his help and direction, to make the case public. With a smile he responded: "I rather thought that would be your decision, and so I have taken the liberty of asking United States District Attorney Stimson and his assistant, Mr. Denison, to come here this morning; they are now outside in the reception room with a large bag full of documents and other interesting pieces of evidence that we used in the trial."

Mr. Stimson and Mr. Denison were instantly invited to join us, and they related one of the most dramatic stones of fraud and prosecution that I have ever listened to. They had with them some of the incredibly ingenious and delicate mechanical devices which the Sugar Trust had used in making the scales on the pier where the sugar was unloaded register false weights. The result of this story led us to take the matter up with care, and Mr. Harold J. Howland, of our editorial staff, wrote an article— after a very careful study of the case, aided by both Mr. Stimson and Mr. Denison—entitled: "The Case of the Seventeen Holes." It was published in the Outlook a. month later, and created something of a sensation. It may be added that Mr. Stimson later became Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President Taft; and Mr. Denison became Secretary of the Interior of the Philippine Islands and member of the Philippine Commission.

It seems worth while to make these brief records of Mr. Roosevelt's essays in journalism because probably it was the first time in the history of the United States that an ex-President had chosen journalism as his professional career on returning to private life. After leaving the Outlook in 1914, Mr. Roosevelt became editorially associated with the Metropolitan Magazine, and, still later, an editorial contributor to the Kansas City Star. Thus he was engaged in active journalism for ten years from the time he ceased to be President in 1909 until his death. Indeed, he wrote editorials for the Kansas City Star almost up to the very hour of his death, for one of his last acts, the evening before he suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, was to correct the proof of a Star editorial. His success as a journalist is only another striking illustration of his almost unmatched versatility. Historians say that he might have been a historian; biologists and zoologists, that he might have been a scientific naturalist; soldiers, that he would have made a great professional soldier. It is equally clear that if the environment of his early life had so influenced him he might have become a great newspaper editor. He had the instinct for news and the faculty for interesting the public in it. He also had what is more important, but too often lost sight of in modern journalism: definite views as to the moral standards which ought to apply to the trade or profession of newspaper men as rigorously as the ethics of the medical profession or the obligations of the Hippocratic oath apply to doctors. In his first editorial he used these words of one of the  banes of American newspaper life:
Yellow journalism deifies the cult of the mendacious, the sensational, and the inane, and, throughout its wide but vapid field, does as much to vulgarize and degrade the popular taste, to weaken the popular character, and to dull the edge of the popular conscience, as any influence under which the country can suffer. These men sneer at the very idea of paying heed to the dictates of a sound morality; as one of their number has cynically put it, they are concerned merely with selling the public whatever the public will buy— a theory of conduct which would justify the existence of every keeper of an opium den, of every foul creature who ministers to the vices of mankind.
To these words he added the comment upon his new editorial associates that "it is perhaps not especially to their credit that they have avoided this pit; fortunately they are so constituted that it is a simple impossibility for them to fall into it." He defined his journalistic creed as follows: "It is not given to humanity never to err"; but the right-minded editor "makes a resolute effort to find out what the facts actually are before passing judgment." He "believes that things in this world can be made better," but he "does not indorse quixotic movements which would merely leave things worse." He "feels a peculiar desire to do all that can be done for the poor and the oppressed, and to help upward those struggling to better themselves"; but he "has no sympathy with moral weakness or sentimentality." All that he can he "does and will do for the cause of labour;" but he "will in no shape or way condone violence or disorder." He "stands for the rights of property, and therefore against the abuses of property." He "believes in a wise individualism, and in encouragement of individual initiative; and therefore all the more ... in using the collective force of the whole people to do what, but for the use of that collective force, must be left undone."
It may not be inappropriate to conclude this chapter of journalistic reminiscences with one of the amusing incidents connected with Mr. Roosevelt's new journalistic venture; I say "amusing," although at the time it was vexatious and disturbing.
The late James Stillman, one of the foremost railway financiers and bankers of the United States, had been for more than thirty years a personal friend as well as a neighbour of my father and had aided him in the purchase of the journal which later became the Outlook. The result was that he was a stockholder in the Outlook Company although he owned less than a tenth interest.
    In becoming a stockholder he had simply performed a generous act for a personal friend and he had never in any way attempted to influence the policy of the paper. He had never even attended a stockholders' meeting either in person or by proxy. He was in 1909 closely associated with the Standard Oil Company both through family and financial connections. A New York daily newspaper in search of a sensation announced that Mr. Still-man was a stockholder of the Outlook and that, therefore, Mr. Roosevelt had connected himself with a journal controlled by the Standard Oil Company. In view of Mr. Roosevelt's attitude at that time toward the great corporations and the proceedings at law which his administration had instituted against the Standard Oil Company, the newspapers took this piece of gossip up and it created a lively though temporary furore. The facts were frankly stated in the pages of the Outlook, and Mr. Roosevelt himself, in November, 1908, made the following statement through the public press:
The President has not the slightest concern with the question as to who are the stockholders of the Outlook. His concern is with the general policy of the paper, which is and has been consistently admirable in every respect. The President will be responsible only for what he himself writes; and his probable future attitude must be judged by his action in the past.
Referring to this episode President Roosevelt wrote me from the White House on November 14, 1908:
    You need not be in the least sorry. I was not caused the slightest annoyance by the statement about the Standard Oil control of the paper. On the contrary, the only effect was to give the heartiest enjoyment to the entire Cabinet at the Cabinet meeting—and the Cabinet meetings are rarely melancholy anyhow! I wanted very much to issue a statement to the effect that if the Standard Oil really controlled the Outlook, I thought they must have experienced a change of heart when they hired me to write editorials for it! But I thought it was not worth while. Last summer your father told me substantially what you tell me now, namely, that . . . Mr. Stilhnan who was an old friend and neighbour . . . owned less than a tenth of the stock, and never made any effort to influence the course of the paper. It was on the tip of my tongue to say that that was self-evident from all I had seen in the paper, but I did not say so because I was afraid your dear father might think I was speaking a little harshly of Mr. Stillman. Let me say that I have never heard anything to Mr. Stillman's discredit.
The spirit of this note is one that actuated Theodore Roosevelt in all his journalistic relations. He was quick to see the good in every man and while in controversy he often "got mad," to use the vivid expression of boyhood, he never stayed mad nor cherished resentments of any kind. He was always ready to renew friendly relations with an antagonist unless they had been broken because of some fundamental vicious streak in his opponent which could not be remedied by any kind of readjustment.