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A Cartoon History
of
Roosevelt's Career
Illustrated by Six Hundred and Thirty Contemporary Cartoons and Many Other Pictures
By Albert Shaw

CHAPTER XVIII

THERE was no well-defined issue in the campaign of  1904, as in the two previous ones.    In 1896 the question of sound money was  threshed out  and permanently settled.    In 1900 the people ratified the expansion policy, and the momentous national and international developments that followed our war with Spain.    In 1904 the real question was whether the people were well enough pleased with the man who had succeeded McKinley by a fateful accident to give him another four years' lease of power.

Wall Street interests were bitterly opposed to Mr. Roosevelt, because his investigation and prosecution of various trusts and corporations, and his attacks upon railroad rebates and like abuses had for the time being not only checked the prosperous schemes of many promoters, but had also confused and disturbed legitimate business,—the whole fabric of corporation finance and control being so closely interwoven. Thus Wall Street, largely under Democratic leadership, had undertaken a more positive part in politics than ever before. If only the Republicans could be prevented from nominating: a man as bold
and aloof as Roosevelt, and the Democrats could be persuaded to nominate a representative of their conservative wing rather than a radical like Bryan, Wall Street would have nothing to fear from the result of the election. So the " magnates " reasoned.

Thus in 1903 and early in 1904 Wall Street had done its best to aid in the movement to secure the nomination of Senator Hanna in place of Mr. Roosevelt; and as early as 1903 certain eminent legal advisers of Wall Street had selected Judge Alton B. Parker (then chief justice of the highest court of the State of New York) as an excellent representative of the so-called " safe and sane " type of Democratic candidates. All this was in no way to Judge Parker's discredit; for he was an upright judge and a public man of sound views and a well-poised mind. Mr. Bryan had been twice defeated; and Judge Parker, though of a different school of political thought and training, had maintained his party regularity at all times, just as Roosevelt on his side had been a Republican under all conditions.

Judge Parker was not widely known to the country, and his candidacy could not be otherwise than the merely negative one of opposition to Roosevelt. It was not possible for the Democrats to frame any successful issues. They could not ask boldly for tariff reform, because the South had become protectionist. They talked of scandals in administration, but. the country knew that Roosevelt had cleaned out the Post Office frauds with as much vigor as any Democratic President could have shown. They could not denounce Roosevelt as a foe of trusts and corporations, because the major part of the Democratic party had always professed to be far more deeply opposed to monopoly and corporate aggrandizement than the Republicans.

In short, the logic of the situation was with Roosevelt. The people of the country, regardless of party, liked both the man and his policies. As the campaign progressed the Democratic managers denounced the Republicans as collecting large campaign funds from the very trusts and corporations that Mr. Roosevelt was supposed to be righting. Moreover, Wall Street quickly lost confidence in itself as a political Warwick, and was inclined to disavow Judge Parker's candidacy as of its choosing. Doubtless various corporation interests contributed to both campaign funds; and it is unquestionably true that the greater part of the responsible business men of the country thought it better to keep Roosevelt and the Republicans in power than to bring in the Democrats on a dubious platform, with no knowledge of the make-up of a prospective Democratic cabinet.

Associated with Mr. Roosevelt was Secretary Hay, in charge of our foreign affairs; Mr. Root (who had just been succeeded by Mr. Taft), in charge of the War Department and our island dependencies ; Mr. Knox, brilliantly heading the judiciary department ; and that remarkable campaigner, the Hon. Leslie M. Shaw, who had succeeded Mr. Gage as Secretary of the Treasury.

The President's Secretary, Mr. Cortelyou, had been secretary to President Cleveland, then to President McKinley ; and three successive Presidents testified to his ability and faithfulness. He had political tact, administrative skill, and absolute honesty. He it was whom Mr. Roosevelt selected to conduct the campaign, and to serve as chairman of the National Republican Committee. One of the notable achievements of Mr. Roosevelt's first administration had been the creation of the new Department of Commerce and Labor, and Mr. Cortelyou had been promoted to the cabinet as Secretary of this new department.    Mr. Roosevelt had advanced his assistant secretary, Mr. William Loeb, Jr., to succeed Mr. Cortelyou as Secretary to the President.

Of the bureaus grouped together under the  Secretary of Commerce  and  Labor,  the
most important was a new one called the Bureau of Corporations. Mr. Roosevelt placed at the head of this bureau the Hon. James R. Garfield, transferring him from the post of Civil Service Commissioner. These are the names of a very few of the strong and able men with whom Mr. Roosevelt was surrounded. Mr. Hitchcock, of St. Louis, Secretary of the Interior, was exposing and prosecuting land frauds in the West, while the new Bureau of Corporations was investigating the Beef Trust, the Standard Oil Trust, and other corporations accused of violating the Sherman anti-trust law.

 Under the circumstances, Mr. Roosevelt's overwhelming triumph at the polls was to have been expected. All sections of the country seemed to be contented with the outcome, and Judge Parker, though badly defeated, was regarded as having lost no important States which Roosevelt might not have carried against any possible Democratic nominee.

Mr. Roosevelt felt that his victory was not of a strictly partisan nature, and that the country was entitled to know in just what spirit he accepted it. On the night of his election, therefore, he issued a statement declaring that under no circumstances would he be a candidate or accept a nomination in 1908.

There was already much political talk to the effect that Mr. Roosevelt had merely been serving out Mr. McKinley's term, and that his acceptance of another nomination in 1908 would not be in violation of the tradition that limits an American President to two consecutive terms. His friends and his opponents alike had been thus looking forward to the next contest. Mr. Roosevelt won the approval and renewed confidence of the country in the decisive announcement he made. It was believed that with no ambition to secure another nomination, he could give the more devoted and patriotic attention to the service of the whole people in his high office.

There was nothing more remarkable than the contented acquiescence of the Democratic press in the result. The people of the South showed their approval in many ways that could not be mistaken, and flooded Mr. Roosevelt with invitations to visit their respective States and cities. It had been the good fortune of Mr. McKinley, in a period of declining partisanship, to be regarded as the President of the whole country without regard to section or party; and this general good-will was transferred to Roosevelt even as the mantle of Elijah had in ancient time fallen upon the shoulders of his successor.

CHAPTER XIX
As Peace-Maker and World Figure

IT was in the summer of 1904,—his renomination secured and his election certain,— that Mr. Roosevelt began clearly to emerge in the mature sense as one of the great world figures of his day. The completion of the second McKinley (Roosevelt) term had secured the full establishment of the policy of expansion. Our navy had become strong and efficient under Mr. Roosevelt's guidance. The army had been thoroughly reorganized through Mr. Root's constructive statesmanship and his ability to win the approval of Congress for his policies. We were gaining renown through extirpation of yellow fever in Cuba and our success in sanitary measures at Panama.

The international prestige of the United States was enormously increased, and in the eyes of the world President Roosevelt was the man who typified the Twentieth Century America. He had, of course, followed in McKinley's footsteps in so far as he saw the path of duty leading in that direction. But it had been easy to work with Mr. McKinley's appointees, and Mr. Roosevelt had found no difficulty in holding to his pledge of September, 1901, that he would do his best to carry out Mr. McKinley's plans.

Now, however, the country had deliberately chosen him for its helmsman, and there could be no doubt of its mandate to go forward according to his own judgment. It was not necessary to wait for inauguration day in March. The new mandate took effect on
election day in November, and his message to Congress in December came with a strength and force that had perhaps been equalled in none of his previous state papers. It was then that he laid down that guiding principle of the " square deal,"—the determination to secure justice to all men to the best of his ability, to capitalist as well as to workman; to humble immigrant or Asiatic coolie as well as to the descendants of the Pilgrims or the Patroons. And recognizing the commanding prestige that the United States had secured abroad as a result of its new policies and recent growth, the Roosevelt administration gladly accepted the responsibilities and the opportunities that go with prestige and power 

(pages 117 & 118 missing rjk)

for the Pacific Ocean and the Farther East, we had also a duty to perform in that region. It was our business to maintain friendly relations with Japan and to help support the integrity of China. With Alaska, the Sandwich Islands, and the Philippines in our possession, besides our great States of the Pacific seaboard, and with the Panama Canal in process of construction, it was evident that our interests in the Pacific had become larger than those of any other single power.

Mr.   Roosevelt's   attitude was not belligerent, to use their own influence and power to help keep the world in order. Mr. Roosevelt saw this duty clearly, and had no shrinking from its performance. He did not in the least object to being pictured as the " World's Constable." He believed that it was quite clearly the business of the United States to maintain peace and order throughout the whole of North America and the regions around the Caribbean Sea, including the West Indies, Central America, and the countries on the northern coast of South America.
 
He regarded it as our duty, furthermore, through friendliness and good will, to serve the cause of peace for the remainder of South America. As
but, on the contrary, was most tactful, and friendly toward all the powers of America, Europe, and Asia. But it was an attitude of firmness and of conscious recognition of power. Instead of arousing the hostility of an ambitious monarch and empire like those of Germany, this American attitude helped to establish us in the good-will of the people and the government of that great nation. Further, we were more free from differences of opinion with the people and government of the British Empire than at any previous time in all our history.
 
A certain masterfulness that the administration had assumed in its international relations was also felt in its policies of law enforcement at home. The question had been boldly asked whether the great aggregations of capital had not become so powerful as to be able to control politics, the press, and the organs of government. Mr. Roosevelt stood firmly on the ground that law and government must be supreme over the corporations created under the law. It was to be a long and difficult struggle,—that of finding the best way to regulate and control the forces of modern business without hampering them in their proper development and progress. It is by no means to be asserted that Mr. Roosevelt possessed any rare or peculiar wisdom in his dealing with such subjects.

He had no desire to destroy the forces of modern business. He had none of the antagonism toward corporations that Mr. Bryan had always shown. But he perceived that if some great capitalistic enterprises were beneficent in their methods and results, others were guilty of oppression, and were prospering through disregard both of the laws of the land and of the natural rights of a host of citizens. Mr. Roosevelt tried, therefore, to find some workable applications of justice, with government and law supreme.

About some questions he was an opportunist ally have been glad to see a revision of the tariff undertaken somewhat early during his second administration. He did what he could to bring the question before Congress and the country. But he found that Congress was not ready for tariff revision., and that there was no compelling sentiment in favor of it anywhere in the country. His convictions on the tariff question were not of a sort that made him regard it as his duty to go forth upon a crusade against the Dingley tariff. As a party question and as a sectional question, the tariff was no longer in the thick of bitter controversy. It had become a business man's question and one of industrial evolution.

It was not only the prestige and the power of the United States in world matters, but it was also the confidence felt in President Roosevelt himself, and in the fairness and good will of our government and people, that made it possible for Mr. Roosevelt, in the summer of 1905, to bring about a conclusion of the war between Russia and Japan and a settlement of the issues involved by the adoption of a treaty of peace.

This  was  perhaps  the  crowning  act   of .Mr.   Roosevelt's   career.     Russia's   misfor-
tunes in the war made it highly desirable for her that hostilities should end. Japan's financial resources were becoming strained, and it was better for her future power and prestige to end the war promptly than to continue it. Both countries were on terms of especial friendship with the United States. And thus Mr. Roosevelt was able to bring them into negotiation for settlement, and through his influence and earnest intercession and efforts, the Treaty of Portsmouth was drafted and signed, and one of the great wars of history brought to an end.

This achievement was indeed appreciated in the United States as constituting a bright page in the country's history. But it was even more widely recognized in Europe and Asia, where the magnitude of the war and the profound consequences of an unforeseen kind that follow in the wake of so colossal a struggle were more vividly felt and better understood.

Thus, Mr. Roosevelt's international reputation as a peacemaker suddenly flamed up and filled the eyes of an astonished world. Congratulations came from all lands. The Emperor William of Germany is reported to have cabled: " The whole of mankind must unite in thanking you for the great boon you have given it." The cartoonists began with increasing frequency to picture Roosevelt and the German Kaiser together as "kindred spirits of the strenuous life "; and a cartoon in the London Punch to that effect was confiscated by the Berlin police as lacking in the reverence due to two men so noble and majestic, whereupon the irreverent cartoonist, Mr. E. T. Reed, drew a caricature of his original cartoon. Both pictures are reproduced on page 122; and another amusing drawing by the same artist, which we have reproduced on page 127, records the deeds of the peace-making Theodore under the guise of an old Assyrian tablet and chronicle.

And thus the press of all Europe made much of the Treaty of Portsmouth; while the Norwegian parliament, at the first opportunity, awarded to Mr. Roosevelt the Nobel Prize as the man who had done the most within the year to promote the world's peace

CHAPTER XX
The "Big Stick" at Home and Abroad

SOME casual remark of Mr. Roosevelt's, quoting the old proverb that it is well to speak softly but carry a big stick, had caught the visualizing imagination of the cartoonists; and on many occasions they have found it convenient to depict him as armed with a heavy club. He was not, however, making belligerent use of that or of other offensive implements in the year that followed his inauguration. There were many other matters of international concern in the spring and summer of 1905 besides the Russo-Japanese war and its termination. There was a Pan-American Congress at Rio de Janeiro, and we were bent upon using that occasion as a means of increasing our friendly relations with South America. Secretary Hay had passed away, and his place at the head of the Department of State had been filled by the Hon. Elihu Root.

Mr. Root, after five years of eminent service under McKinley and Roosevelt as Secretary of War, had returned to the practice of law in New York, refusing to be a candidate for governor and a prospective candidate for the Presidency in 1908, and having no ambitions for further public office. But the call to be Secretary of State is one that it has been the tradition of eminent New York lawyers to accept. Even while Secretary of War, Mr. Root had been the leading member of the cabinet, and the President's chief adviser in foreign matters involving legal knowledge. He brought to the post of
Secretary of State a peculiar personal fitness for its duties, and a comprehensive knowledge of its problems.

Mr.   Root,   more   than any one else, had devised the   arrangement   which brings   Cuba   under   our protection and control in certain   emergencies.      It now   devolved   upon  him to find a way for the regulation of the broken-down finances  of  the  little  re-• public   of   San   Domingo. The  European powers were bent upon a forcible collection of their debts, San Domingo having defaulted   upon   its   foreign bonds.    Our   government virtually    guaranteed     a new   issue   of   San   Domingo securities, and was permitted to take charge of the custom-houses in order to satisfy foreign creditors and promote the peace of the distracted island. Mr. Root, meanwhile, proceeded upon a South American tour, visiting the Pan-American conference at Rio and receiving tributes at the leading capitals of other South American republics.

He had visited Canada with fruitful results for the settlement of all outstanding questions between the United States and the Dominion. His visit to South America was of so tactful and sympathetic a character, and so appreciative of everything creditable in South American statesmanship and progress, that it removed not a little of the prejudice that had existed among the polite peoples of Latinic origin in the Southern republics
against what they regarded as the brusque,  commercial Yankee nation.

Mr.  Taft,  furthermore, had  come home from the Philippines to take Mr. Root's former place as Secretary of War, and he had at once assumed a very influential place in the cabinet. With Mr. Root on his travels, and President Roosevelt in the West on a brief hunting trip, Mr. Taft was in special charge of the unfinished business relating to San Domingo, Cuba, and our outlying responsibilities in general. It was a little later on that a situation of chaotic turmoil somehow arose among the little republics of Central America. Again the man with the " Big Stick " spoke softly, and peace was restored. It was largely by Mr. Root's efforts that a plan was devised for settling Central American difficulties through a representative tribunal that was expected to prevent future hostilities among half a dozen small sovereignties. The plan was good, even if it has not as yet produced the expected results.

As the autumn advanced, the attention of the man who carried the big stick was centered upon the approaching session of Congress. It was his determination to secure the passage of a law that would put an end to the almost universal practice among the
railroads of granting rebates to the large corporations, and other favored shippers. The principle of national regulation of railroads had become firmly established, and it was considered that the one point above all others most necessary to be secured was the equal and impartial treatment of all whose business required them to use the means of interstate transportation. It was a hard fight, but the legislation was secured, its results were accepted by the railroads, and a great reform was put into effect that the railroads have since regarded as even more valuable to them  than  to those  who  had  so strenuously fought against the rebate system.

Along with  the granting of freight rebates, there disappeared the  granting of free passes to politicians and their henchmen, which   had  been   an   abuse   of  almost   incredible dimensions, and which had played no small part in the corruption of legislatures and the obstruction of honest government.

MR. Roosevelt's messages to Congress for that period are elaborate discussions of the economic and social conditions of the country. Their value as presentments of fact, and as contemporary discussion of evils and remedies, will have great appreciation at the hands of the future historian. Thus in the message of December, 1906, statements are made regarding the working of the recent Railway Rate bill; and it is shown that this and other recent legislative steps toward the better regulation of interstate commerce had already been justified in experience. In view of conditions that led, in 1910, to the enactment of the new Railroad Rate bill, with its enlargement of the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, it is worth while to quote a little from Mr. Roosevelt's message of 1906. Let us take, for example, the following paragraphs:

It must not be supposed, however, that with the passage of these laws it will be possible to stop progress along the line of increasing the power of the national government over the use of capital m interstate commerce. For example, there will ultimately be need of enlarging the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission along several different lines, so as to give it a larger and more efficient control over the railroads.

It cannot too often be repeated that experience has conclusively shown the impossibility of securing by the actions of nearly half a hundred different State legislatures anything but ineffective chaos in the way of dealing with the great corporations which do not operate exclusively within the limits of any one State. In some method, whether by a national license law or in other fashion, we must exercise, and that at an early date, a far more complete control than at present over these great corporations,— a control that will, among other things, prevent the evils of excessive overcapitalization,—and that will compel the disclosure by each big corporation of its stockholders and of its properties and business, whether owned directly or through subsidiary or affiliated corporations.

These paragraphs set forth a program that Mr. Roosevelt well understood could not be carried out at once. It is precisely the program that President Taft took up in 1909, and that was included in (i) the Railroad Rate bill, which became a law in June, 1910; (2) the work outlined by President Taft for a commission to report upon the best way to regulate the issue of railroad stocks and bonds, and (3) the bill of Attorney-General Wickersham, providing for the federal incorporation of railroads and large industrial companies.

Many of the progressive ideas advocated by Mr. Roosevelt in 1905, and the two following years, which brought upon him the enmity and violent criticism of the exponents of great corporate wealth, had already, by the time Congress adjourned in the summer of 1910, found acceptance as self-evident and commonplace doctrine in the platforms of both wings of both great parties.

CHAPTER XXI
Some Activities of a Versatile President

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S hold upon the confidence of the country was again put to the test in the Congressional elections of 1906. It was recognized that the President and his policies formed the issue, and a clever cartoonist at the time depicted Mr. Roosevelt as the candidate in front of the polling booths of every State. The campaign was also notable as one in which the Republican party tried to obtain its funds by small popular subscriptions rather than in large sums from business interests.

Ever since the Civil War, the Republican party had made the protective tariff its shibboleth, and had relied upon the manufacturing interests to provide its election funds. This practise of collecting from wealthy business interests had been continued; but it became embarrassing when the government was attempting to enforce the Sherman antitrust law to break up illegal railroad practices and dissolve industrial combinations*

The election having resulted in an emphatic endorsement of the administration, Mr. Roosevelt broke the traditions which had held our President strictly upon American soil by making a trip to Panama to inspect personally the sanitary and engineering work of our new Canal Zone, and to pay his respects to the young Republic of Panama, which he had been accused of creating. He came back prepared to refute the attacks that had been made upon our beginnings with the canal, and besides his regular message to Congress, at its assembling in December, he prepared a special message on conditions at Panama,
providing each Congressman with a copy elaborately supplied with photographic illustrations

Incidentally it may be said that these messages to Congress were much commented upon by reason of their use of the simplified spelling that 'had been recommended by a group of learned gentlemen who had banded themselves together  to reform the spelling of the English language. They had appealed to Mr. Roosevelt during his summer vacation at Oyster Bay by telling him they had hit upon a method of arousing an apathetic nation to the adoption of phonetic spelling not by gradual process by a sudden stroke. If Mr. Roosevelt would but use the simplified form himself, and instruct the Government Printing Office at Washington to put all public documents in this new phonetic dress, the reformed system would be virtually established, and the newspapers and public schools would have to follow.

The outcome proved, however, that there were some things that even the dauntless President could not accomplish. The English language resisted the attack. Mr. Roosevelt accepted his defeat with entire cheerfulness. There was little if any reformed spelling in his Romanes lecture at Oxford three or four years later. About spelling reform. as about the revision of the tariff, Mr. Roosevelt was, in fact, at heart an opportunist. At one time or another he urged both reforms at the request of his earnest and convinced friends; but he himself could afford to abide the general verdict and await the slower processes of time.

Through all this period there was constant and relentless ef-;fort in the Department of Commerce and Labor, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Justice to prove and to punish violations of law by great corporations. Mr. Hitchcock had retired from the interior Department, to be succeeded by Mr. James R. Garfield. Mr. Cortelyou, after the successful campaign of 1904, had become Postmaster-General, and in the middle of Mr. Roosevelt's second term he had been transferred to the head of the Treasury Department upon the retirement of the Hon. Leslie M. Shaw. Mr. Moody, who had succeeded Mr. Knox as Attorney-General (Mr. Knox having entered the Senate) was as energetic as Knox himself in the prosecution of offending corporations. Meanwhile, a vacancy having occurred on the Supreme Bench, Mr. Moody was appointed to that high tribunal, and Mr. Charles J. Bonaparte became Attorney-General.

Mr. Oscar S. Straus had succeeded Mr. Cortelyou as head of the Department of Commerce, and Herbert Knox Smith had become head of the Bureau of Corporations succeeding Mr. Garfield. Mr. Pinchot, who had for a long time been Chief Forester under the veteran head of the Department of Agriculture (Mr. Wilson), had by this time become an official of great influence and power.

His strength was due to the greatness of the situations he had to deal with, and the breadth of his view and the strength of his grasp. When Mr. Pinchot had taken office years before, we were practically without forest reserves. No one had supposed that our timber supply could be exhausted. But by degrees it came to be understood that great lumber companies were managing to monopolize the forest areas that remained as part of the Western public domain, and that for reasons of large public policy the remaining timber areas must be kept as national forests.

President Cleveland had made an important beginning in this direction • President McKinley had gone still further, and it remained for President Roosevelt, with his exceptional knowledge of the physical conditions of the country, to make forest preservation, and the protection of other great natural resources, one of the leading concerns of his administration. There was earnest co-operation among all the executive departments to protect the public domain, to enforce the Interstate Commerce law in the interest of the people, and to see that the   law   was   enforced   against   oppressive combinations.

A delicate situation, moreover, had arisen on account of anti-Japanese riots in Pacific Coast States. Japanese laborers were not excluded under the law that prevented Chinese immigration. A good many Japanese laborers were finding employment. California demanded the extension of the Exclusion act to Japanese and Korean laborers. Japan's victory in the great war against Russia had naturally enhanced the consciousness of power and importance among the Japanese people, and they resented the idea of exclusion from America. The situation was met with tact and good-will by both governments.

The great financial panic that spread from the banks and trust companies of New York City throughout the country in the last weeks of 1907 created situations that called for government relief. Mr. Roosevelt, through his Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Cortelyou, acted with his accustomed promptness. The money stringency was relieved by the government's proposal to issue and place on the market many millions in Panama Canal bonds, and many more millions in short-term notes under a law that had been enacted in the period of the Spanish War.

The panic illustrated the need of a reform in our money and banking system; and Mr. Roosevelt did everything in his power to promote the view of those who were working for banking reform and an elastic currency. There were many financiers embarrassed by the panic who imagined at the time that President Roosevelt's efforts to enforce the law as respects interstate commerce and industrial monopolies had created distrust and brought about the crisis that was so disastrous to the stock market. Most of those men, two years later, in looking back upon the course of events, would have acknowledged their entire mistake as to the facts and causes.

The panic had been brought about by conditions of over-speculation and bad business methods that were brought clearly to' light when the strain came. The panic, in other words, was but a symptom of those very evils in the industrial and commercial world that Mr. Roosevelt had been pointing out and trying to remedy.

Out  of  the   intense  discussion  of  that  period, several plans of financial reform were evolved; and these had much debate during the ensuing Presidential campaign.    Thus Mr. Bryan made himself an advocate of the plan of guaranteeing bank deposits; and -he secured the endorsement of this plan in the Democratic platform. Mr. Roosevelt and his administration agreed with most of the bankers that the guaranteeing of deposits would not be wise. They advocated, on their part, the establishment of a general system of postal savings-banks, so that if the people were afraid to deposit their savings in ordinary banks they could commit them to the care of the government under reasonable conditions. It was believed that this might be an especially effective thing in times of business panic or distrust.

In the last two years of the administration, the place of Postmaster-General was filled by Mr. George von L. Meyer, who had served as ambassador at more than one leading European capital. Mr. Meyer bent all his energies toward securing the adoption by Congress of the postal savings-bank scheme; and although its success was deferred, there was every assurance that postal savings-banks would be established in the very near future. The plan was endorsed by the Republican national convention, and Congress accordingly passed the bill, with Mr. Taft and the Postmaster-General (Frank Hitchcock) also favoring it, early in 1910.

Mr. Roosevelt had managed through these years of high pressure and varied activity to avoid those effects of strain and over-work that few men have been able to escape whose responsibilities are great and whose duties are incessant. His, through the Presidential years, was always the clear, strong mind of the man who sleeps well, takes his exercise, and wards off the disease called worry.

Thus, as the panic came on Mr. Roosevelt was on his way back to Washington from a bear hunt in the Louisiana canebrakes. These absences were always well-planned, never interfered with public business, associated themselves with helpful visits to different parts of the country, and kept the President physically able to meet the tasks that only a strong man could survive.

That period of Mr. Roosevelt's Presidency was one in which his dominant note of justice and public duty was of more value to the country than any other tone or quality could have been. Whether the civil service, the national forests, tariff reciprocity with European countries, naval growth, insular questions, canal problems at Panama, an army and race theme like the Brownsville affair, or any other of a hundred topics was under consideration, Mr. Roosevelt brought to bear in every case the power of a vigorous mind and conscience. He saw in a clear, broad manner the thing that was right to be done, and demanded of Congress and the country the ethical solution and no other.

CHAPTER XXII
Refusing a Third Term

NOTHING like the Roosevelt third-term movement had ever before been known in American history.    The struggle to give President Grant a third term was entered upon by his friends and political beneficiaries, in the very face of a disapproving national and party sentiment.    But the movement to give Roosevelt a third term was national and almost irresistible, ^and its successful resistance was due to his own firm will and the use of his prestige and power to secure a different result.    

Naturally the Republican party desired success, and it was sure to win under his leadership. But he had made his announcement on election night in 1904, and he saw no good reason for changing his mind. He was, of course, plainly bound not to seek in any way a renomination, or to abet the movement. There was, however, no reason of honor or good faith that could have prevented his taking the oath of office and serving again, if he had been nominated and elected.

The President of the United States exercises in reality a greater power than do the hereditary rulers of monarchical countries. A masterful and positive President like Mr. Roosevelt, though loyal in all intent to the Constitution, drives swiftly to the ends he deems wise and right, and builds up for the executive an authority and an influence that tend to permeate the whole government. So popular a President as Roosevelt influences political situations in the States, and without any such precise purpose may bring under his moral sway many men in the Congresses he has helped to elect. He fills vacancies in the federal judiciary,—from the Supreme Bench to the district judgeships in all the States; and without a thought of undue influence over the judiciary, he may name a good many judges of his own way of thinking.

Thus the power of a strong President is cumulative; and there is wisdom and safety in the tradition that limits the President to a consecutive period of eight years. Mr. Roosevelt had not read American history amiss. If we had been in the thick of a great foreign war, and the country regardless of party had insisted upon his taking another term, he might have seen a sufficient reason for remaining at his post. But the country had an abundance of trained and capable men, and there was some reason to think that the time had come for a President of a different temperament. Few people will ever understand how great a pressure Mr. Roosevelt resisted. Even those politicians who were thought to be opposing him were constantly pressing the idea upon his attention. After it had become certain that Taft would win as against any of the other candidates, there was a renewed effort to nominate Roosevelt, both to make the election easier and also to clear the field for 1912.

CHAPTER  XXIII
Helping to Choose His  Successor

MR. TAFT'S candidacy was not of his own seeking, neither was it arbitrarily forced upon the party by Mr. Roosevelt.    It was the result of much consultation; and Mr. Taft, who would have preferred to return  to the  federal bench, became  a candidate only because it was the prevailing view of the administration  and the party that he was the most available man.    Until the very last moment, there were great numbers of Republicans who clung to the hope that  the  convention  would  be  stampeded  for Mr. Roosevelt.

There were those who said that while Roosevelt himself would be acceptable to them, they did not approve of his dictating the choice of his successor. Governor Hughes had entered upon a brilliant record in New York, and it was decided by a majority of the New York delegation that his name should be presented at the Chicago convention as a candidate for Presidential honors. Senator Knox was the favorite son of Pennsylvania, and his name also was offered to the convention. Vice-President Fairbanks had the endorsement of his own State of Indiana, and some strength in other parts of the country.

Speaker Cannon had the great State of Illinois behind him, although he himself regarded his Presidential boom in the light of a mere personal compliment, and was ready to support Taft. The delegation from Wisconsin was instructed to present the name of Senator La Follette by way of reminding the convention of the turn in that gentleman's fortunes since the refusal of the convention of 1904 to seat him and his friends.

But Mr. Roosevelt fully realized that if the convention were deadlocked by reason of the conflicting claims of too many favorite sons, the outcome would inevitably be his own re-nomination. He bent all his energies, therefore, toward the securing of enough pledged delegates to nominate Mr. Taft; and so the thing was accomplished. It was regarded by the country as an endorsement of the Roosevelt administration, and a determination to continue the Roosevelt policies.

For Mr. Taft had been a very conspicuous and highly trusted member of the administration, and at all times one of Mr. Roosevelt's two or three closest advisers. Mr. Roosevelt had a very high opinion of all his cabinet officers, but for the statesmanship of
Mr. Root and Mr. Taft he had an especial regard. He ranked them with the great men of the early period of the Republic in respect of attainments, experience and constructive statesmanship.

- Governor Hughes, who might have had the Vice-Presidency, was unwilling to accept it, and the New York delegation secured the convention's approval of the Hon. James S. Sherman. The ticket of Taft and Sherman was regarded as a little more conservative than Roosevelt himself, and the Democrats were ready to try their chances again under Mr. Bryan's leadership.

The old opposition to Bryan within the Democratic party had largely disappeared. There was a strong feeling that the ticket of Bryan and Kern might win against that of Taft and Sherman. Mr. Roosevelt as President could not, of course, go on the stump, but he took an intense and active interest in the work of the campaign, and did his best to refute the claims of Mr. Bryan that he, rather than Taft, was the true exponent of Roosevelt's progressive policies. The election of Mr. Taft was universally hailed as another Roosevelt victory.

It was a notable thing that both Taft and Bryan were presented to the country bv their chief exponents as true and fit successors of Roosevelt, in respect of their doctrines and policies and of their personal attitude toward their fellow-citizens at large. The whole campaign as conducted on both sides,—even though it developed the usual asperities and heated accusations,—was in reality a tribute to the character .of Roosevelt as a national figure who summed up the general aim and common belief of all honest and right-minded men, regardless of party.

The controversies of the campaign were not about fundamental things. The Republicans were accused of receiving campaign contributions from Wall Street,—with considerable truth, no doubt,—and the opponents of Mr. Taft were annoyed by disclosures connecting some of them with a certain Trust then under government prosecution. But these things were mere incidents, inevitable always in national campaigns. The Roosevelt administration was again before the country for endorsement. Taft was part and parcel of that administration, was the choice of Mr. Roosevelt, and was fully ratified by the party. And the country in the election once more gave a vote of its confidence in government of the Rooseveltian stamp.

CHAPTER XXIV
Last Phases of the Administration

MR. ROOSEVELT had by no means secured ready acquiescence by Congress in all of his policies, and his last year was full of storm and controversy. Thus in the session before the election of Mr. Taft he had laid down a program of rapid battleship construction, less than half of which had been endorsed. Nevertheless he had seen our navy grow to formidable dimensions.

Early in 1908, he had sent a great battleship fleet, under Admiral Evans, to make a tour of both South American coasts, then to cross the Pacific to Honolulu, Japan, the Philippines, and China, and to return by way of Australia, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean. This project was bitterly criticized, but it was most fortunate in its outcome.

Anti-Japanese riots in California had stirred up some feeling of antagonism to the United States among the more ignorant masses in Japan. It was predicted that if our ships entered Asiatic waters, they would encounter those of Japan in hostile action. As it turned out, the fleet was received with enthusiasm wherever it went, and nowhere more than in Japanese waters. Its visits of courtesy at the South American ports, and in the Far East, were felicitous in their strengthening of friendly ties with all the countries whose seaports were entered upon the route.

For a full year before the end of his term Mr. Roosevelt was using leisure moments
to plan his trip to Africa and to make thorough preparations for his expedition. His eager looking forward to a year of adventures in a new field strengthened his courage for the public business that was pressing upon his attention. The prosecution of the Central and Southern Pacific railroads had been entered upon with a view to breaking up the combination they had formed.

A great action was pending for the dissolution of the Standard Oil Company as an illegal trust. Meanwhile one of Mr. Roosevelt's judicial appointees, Judge Landis, had imposed an enormous fine upon the Standard Oil Company for violation of the law against rebates; and Judge Gross cup, of the Circuit Court, had reversed Judge Landis' decision. During the campaign the relations of the Standard Oil Company to the press and to politics were a topic of violent controversy. The decision of Judge Landis
was regarded by the business world as too drastic altogether, and there had grown up a feeling that Mr. Roosevelt was pressing with undue relentlessness a crusade against large business interests.

Whether or not there was good reason for this feeling, it involved the last year of Mr. Roosevelt's incumbency in heated argument and more show of temper and feeling than had been aroused at any previous stage in his career. At one time it had been thought that Mr. Roosevelt, in declining a third term as President, might accept a seat in the United States Senate. The term of Senator Platt was to expire on March 4, at the same time as that of the President. But Mr. Roosevelt, although at one time this idea appealed to him, had definitely rejected it, and Secretary Root was the unopposed choice of his party in New York for the Senatorial toga.

The last annual message sent to Congress by Mr. Roosevelt in December, 1908, was a document of great length, devoted in the main to a recapitulation of the views and policies which had so strongly characterized his administration. His State papers had been much more extensive, and his formal utterances to Congress and the public more frequent, than those of any of his predecessors in the Executive office. The message did not serve to abate controversy or to soothe the worn and inflamed nerves of railway presidents or Wall Street bankers. Business was in the dumps, and some one must be blamed.

Congress in the previous session had undertaken to limit the President in the use of secret service funds placed at his disposal for the detection of crime; and the scathing comment made by the President in his message was ill-received in both legislative chambers. Attempts were made to expunge sections of the message before receiving It and entering it upon the record of Congress. However absurd such proposals might have been, they pointed to a certain bitterness and strain that was to affect the relations of the Chief Magistrate and the law-making body through the remaining three months of Mr. Roosevelt's term. The attempt of Congress to punish Roosevelt for his message was not successful and produced in the public mind a reaction in his favor.

One of the controversies of that session had to do with the President's old subject, the civil service. In passing a law providing for the taking of the Census of 1910, Congress had disregarded the President's advice that the thousands of extra census employees should be appointed under civil service rules. In this controversy Mr. Roosevelt finally triumphed.

He had also succeeded in extending the principle of the merit system to the retention of postmasters appointed to the smaller or fourth-class offices. During all his seven and a half years in the Presidency he had been able, in one way after another, to extend thesphere and improve the working of the civil-service rules, and thus to reduce the evils of the spoils system to comparatively few and small areas.

Several months before his retirement from office it had been announced that his literary activities would be resumed, and that his African experiences would be productive of a series of articles to be published in Scribner's Magazine. It was further made known that he would have a regular connection, as a frequent writer and contributing editor with the Outlook, of New York, a widely read weekly periodical edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott. These announcements are reflected in two or three of the cartoons reproduced in the present chapter of our narration.

What may be regarded as the final controversy of his administration had to do with certain newspaper attacks upon the honesty of men connected with the purchase of the French  Panama company's assets and the beginnings of our work on the canal.
 
Mr. Roosevelt had made great progress with the work at Panama. He had abandoned the original plan of constructing the canal under the direction of a board of engineers chosen from civil life and railroad work, and had turned it over to engineer officers of the regular army, with the most fortunate results. He looked upon the Panama enterprise as in some respects the crowning work of his administration; and he could not allow libels upon the honesty and good faith of the government and its agents, as respects the Panama Canal, to pass unnoticed.

The charges had involved, by express mention, well-known men closely related to the President and to the President-elect; and the charges had thus reflected upon the honor both of Mr. Roosevelt and of Mr. Taft, who, as Secretary of War, was in immediate charge of Panama affairs. Libel suits were entered by direction of President Roosevelt, and while their prosecution was eventually abandoned, they were successful in their essential purpose. The prompt action taken by Mr. Roosevelt had secured complete retractions; and no stain had been left upon a page of our history that must always be memorable, and should, therefore, be without spot or tarnish.

CHAPTER XXV
Stepping Out of the White House

IF any man had ever seen Mr. Roosevelt in a mood of dejection or disheartenment, the fact had never been revealed.    He was  always  the  man  of  confidence  and  strong heart.    It was  not that he  took his responsibilities recklessly, but he never allowed them to burden or weigh him down.   There was never a day, however difficult, when he was not prepared to say of the Presidency, " I like my job," or to declare to friends and foes alike, " I am having a perfectly corking time."

Doubtless this was due in large part to his great physical vitality, to the evenness and regularity of his habits of life and work, and to the firmness of a nervous system that was not, like those of most other men, subject to reaction after excitement. In the language of a White House usher, who had served through several administrations, " there was never any man like him for hard work; yet no matter how late he was at it every night, he came downstairs each morning as fresh as the dew upon the roses." If Mr. Roosevelt ever had any days or hours of illness, the secret never leaked out.

All his work was planned well in advance and finished easily on time. If he had a speech-making tour ahead of him, his dates were well arranged, and the speech to be made at each place had been carefully drafted and put on paper. Some Presidents had never found time while in office to read a book. Mr. Roosevelt always kept up with current literature, and was always digging into more or less recondite fields of history and science. He read whole libraries while in the White House, although no one knows , how he found the time. He was conversant with early Celtic literature and with the sagas of the Teutonic North. He was more thoroughly familiar than any other American with all books relating in a general way to sportsmanship, travel, and natural history. His constant devotion to the interests and concerns of his family had kept him acquainted also with the books that interest young people and children.

At the moment of his leaving the White House and starting on his adventurous journey to Africa he was, without doubt, more completely and freshly informed about African hunting,—in so far as knowledge could come from the reading of books and conversation with sportsmen and travelers,—than any other man in the world. He left the White House with no regrets, and with a sense of having served the country to the best of his ability. And somehow the world did not think of him as a man passing into retirement, or as one who had run his race and finished his course. Everybody was asking what Roosevelt would do next.

On February 12, less than a month before Mr. Roosevelt retired from the Presidency, he went to Hodgenville, Kentucky, to speak at the farm where Abraham Lincoln was born, a hundred years before. His tribute to Lincoln on that occasion was, in rhetorical form, the most perfect speech he had ever prepared. Its portrayal of Lincoln's devotion to duty and high qualities as a great President was in some sense a revelation of Mr. Roosevelt's own ideals. It seemed to reflect something of the spirit in which, from his entrance into the political life of New York in 1882, through all his successive experiences, to the end of his term in the White House, he had given his own best courage and best effort for what he believed to be right causes.

CHAPTER XXVI
The Faunal Naturalist in Africa

EVEN in Africa Mr. Roosevelt was in a certain sense an official of the United States Government. He was the head of a scientific expedition, authorized by the Smithsonian Institution, to obtain faunal specimens for the National Museum. His expenses were otherwise provided for, but his mission was public and official. His preliminary report, made to Dr. Walcott as head of the Smithsonian, was forwarded from Khartum when the expedition disbanded.

Mr.  Roosevelt has fortunately given us, first in magazine articles in Scribner's and then   in   permanent   form   as   a   notable volume,   under   the   title   " African   Game Trails," an account of his experiences and achievements from the time of his leaving New York, March 23, 1909, to his arrival at Cairo in March,  1910.    No quest of wild creatures was ever more carefully planned or better justified by its purposes, its methods, and its results.    Its success was beyond Mr. Roosevelt's ardent expectations.

The first of two results that will best serve to give this expedition a place of its own, memorable and influential, must be the vast collection of African animals and birds that will be the chief treasure of the National Museum at Washington and that will be familiar to young Americans for generations to come. The second result must be the book itself,—written by Mr. Roosevelt while on the ground,—constituting one of the best volumes in the long series of his writings, and also one of the most valuable contributions to the literature of animal life and natural conditions in Africa.

Most of Mr. Roosevelt's experiences were in British East Africa and Uganda, where he came in contact also with British officials, missionaries, and ranchmen, whose fondness for the African wilderness recalled to him his own experiences as a ranchman on the intensely interested in race questions, and in all phases of life and nature in the portions of Africa where he sojourned,, hunted, and camped.

All of his experiences are set down in vivid form upon the fascinating pages of his book, just as other volumes of his tell us with swift and firm narration — but with the discursiveness of a naturalist who sees the whole environment — all about the hunting of game in our own Western wilds. The habit, to which we have already made reference, of giving immediate, vivid, and charming literary form to all of his active experiences out of doors, is one of the very best things attributable to his early life in his frontier ranch-house, where he had good books and not too many of them, and the power to see a narrative worth telling in each well-considered expedition after bear, mountain lion, or other creatures of highland and plain.

Accompanying Mr. Roosevelt, as his fellow members of the scientific Smithsonian African Expedition entrusted to  his   charge, were and Messrs. Mearns, Heller, and Loring, American naturalists; and Messrs. Cunninghame Tarlton, who were British experts on African hunting and travel.    More than 11,000 specimens   were   secured   for  the   National / Museum, including  nearly  5000  mammals, —most of them large, about 4000 birds, and a large number   of   reptiles   and   smaller creatures

The expedition would have been followed through Africa by an army of press representatives but for Mr. Roosevelt's stern insistence. So great, however, was the demand for news that there was some yielding to the tendency to manufacture it on the coast, or else to send to the European and American papers exaggerated tales based upon half-accurate rumors. There was no indiscriminate slaughter of animals, and no departure from the excellent plans originally made. Such plans, obviously enough, took into account all questions of climate, risk of illness, and sanitary precautions. Mr. Roosevelt was accompanied by his son, Mr. Kermit Roosevelt, whose skill and prowess as a hunter form a part of the true story of the expedition. 

Mr. Roosevelt's habit of applying all proper means to the ends that he wished to secure was perfectly illustrated in the African expedition throughout. Every detail of the itinerary had been planned and every item of equipment had been considered to a nicety. Even the books that he meant to read were carefully selected in advance, and all bound in pigskin, forming a compact little library for entertainment, diversion, and intellectual stimulus   in   hours   of   leisure   during  the African twelve month.

Thus the results to which we have alluded,—namely, the great Smithsonian collection of African fauna and the admirable . volume on " African Game Trails," together with the building up of physical vigor a»d the ripening of knowledge concerning colonial, imperial, and racial problems, as well as knowledge of natural history,—all these results, and many others, were not in the least matters of " Roosevelt luck " so-called, but were all of them matters of Roosevelt industry, perseverance, and faithful application of the right means to the desired ends.

The human family has grown very rapidly during the past century, in spite of that tendency to apply Malthusian checks which, —in highly civilized countries like France and the United States,—has led Mr. Roosevelt to utter warnings against what he has   _ called " race suicide."    And with    the multiplication   of  the  members  of  the   human species there has naturally been growth in the numbers of domesticated animals. But the wild creatures which had shared with man the vicissitudes of mundane existence have perforce become fewer in numbers and subject to conditions ever more precarious.

A knowledge of these fellow creatures,—t heir ways and struggles,—constitutes a very noble and interesting department of science. Mr. Roosevelt has taught the boys of America, and now also those of Europe as well, not merely to slaughter birds and beasts, but to know about them and to have the true attitude of mind towards them. His relation towards these fellow creatures has always been humane, never cruel.

There is always struggle among the animals themselves, whether in the American wilderness or in the African jungle. And if mankind had not struggled against powerful beasts of prey, the human race must long ago have perished from the earth.

Mr. Roosevelt's teachings and example in all these things,—from the time of his college essays and studies as a naturalist, and his early Western hunting trips, down to his last great quest of animals in Africa,—have been of immeasurable value in leading young Americans to the love of enjoyment of out-of-door things, and away from pleasures and occupations that would enervate mind and body.

CHAPTER XXVII
Strenuously Visiting Old Europe

THE expedition of our hunter and naturalist came to an end with its arrival and disbanding at Khartum, on March 14, 1910.    Here his wife and daughter were  awaiting  Mr.  Roosevelt,  as  were the   representatives   of   many   newspapers, both European and American. The remaining days of March were spent in Egypt; and April, May, and the early part of June were taken up with a memorable tour of Europe.

 It is the object of this chapter chiefly to bring together some of the amusing caricatures and cartoons that were produced in consequence of a journey that caused more comment than any other of recent times. Our former chapters show how large a figure Mr. Roosevelt as President had become in the estimation of the world. 

It was not strange, therefore, that Europe should have manifested a keen interest in his visit, and that there should have been a general desire to extend a hearty welcome to the best-known   and  most  typical of  Americans   as  the   opportunity   offered. 

In an address at the University of Egypt he told the Nationalists what preparation 'for self-government meant; and was naturally criticized by hot-headed patriots for giving some excellent counsel. For the Egyptians to seek independence at the present time would mean chaos and ruin; and Mr. Roosevelt's words of praise for England's usefulness in Egypt were wisely spoken, and at the time and place where they could serve the best use.

Mr. Roosevelt was received with honor and cordiality by rulers and by people throughout Italy. His visits in Naples and Rome were notable, and he found ovations awaiting him at Milan, Genoa, and Venice. He was received with the highest honors at Vienna; and at Budapest and elsewhere in Hungary there was boundless enthusiasm among a people who remembered well the story of Kossuth's reception in the United States.    The sympathy of Hungary was to be expected. 

The many European cartoons that are reproduced in this chapter indicate at once the amusement, liking, and aroused curiosity of the intelligent public all the way from Italy to
Norway, and from Hungary to the British Isles. It was in Paris, on the 23d of April, that Mr..Roosevelt delivered his address on " Citizenship in a Republic," as had been planned long in advance. From Paris the journey was continued, by way of Belgium and Holland, to the Scandinavian countries. His reception in Holland was especially hearty because of his own Dutch ancestry. At Christiania, following visits and royal receptions in Copenhagen and Stockholm, he made an address upon world peace, in recognition of his having received the Nobel Prize.

The  death of King Edward of  England changed his   plans   somewhat,   but   lie   proceeded to Berlin, where he was privately received and entertained by the Kaiser, in company with whom he reviewed a body of

German troops, and where on May 12 (the Emperor attending) he addressed the University of Berlin on " The World Movement." 

In the meanwhile, President Taft had notified him by cable of his appointment as a special ambassador to England to represent the United States at the funeral of King Edward. He arrived in London on May 16, and his ambassadorial rank, together with his own prestige, made him one of the most conspicuous of the personages who were in official attendance at the royal funeral. A few days later he received a degree at the University of Cambridge, and on May 31 he was granted the freedom of the city of London, making an address in the Guildhall, in which he discussed especially England's status in Egypt.

His endorsement of a firm policy on the part of the British Government in the land of the Nile became a matter of world-wide comment and argument. The British Prime Minister, some time after Mr. Roosevelt's departure for America, commended the speech on the floor of Parliament; and it produced a visible effect upon public opinion as regards England's mission in Egypt and our own in the Philippines. On June 7, at the University of Oxford, he delivered the Romanes lecture, which was the primary occasion of his visit to England, his subject being " Biological Analogies in History." A day or two later he set sail for New York.

CHAPTER XXVIII
His Home-Coming and Welcome

IN Europe the plain people had received Roosevelt gladly everywhere.   The European   enemies   of  America   have   always been among the rulers and privileged classes.    The  United  States  has  meant  to the workman and the peasant of Europe the land of opportunity and of promise, and Roosevelt's name had become familiar as that of the man typifying the best things in the life of the American people.

The European press had received Roosevelt with interest, curiosity, and expressions of amusement more or less polite. His address at the Guildhall, which was admirable in form and spirit, quite shocked the British newspapers because it was the conventional British thing to appear shocked. In reality, nobody was in the smallest degree perturbed or offended.

But much more important than Europe's casual impressions, and the comments of the European press, was the sort of effect upon the state of mind of his own countrymen that Mr. Roosevelt's return was destined to produce. His last year in the White House had been difficult, and many of the newspapers had been harsh in their criticisms. The President is a man of great power by virtue of the bearings his office has upon the fortunes of hundreds of thousands of men who are of some consequence in their own communities. When Mr. Roosevelt refused another term and his successor was duly elected people began to think of the man who was coming into power and who was already choosing- his official associates, rather than of the man who was not only laying down the sceptre of rule, but who was also going into a voluntary exile, banishing himself to the heart of Africa, in order that there might be no man able to say that Roosevelt out of office was still trying to order the affairs of the country.

There was widespread interest in his African movements, but only scanty news. Not one word of authorized interview, or of comment upon American affairs or his own intentions, did Mr. Roosevelt utter during his entire absence. Many business men throughout the country, led by Wall Street, had expressed themselves, with rather brutal frankness, as happy to have Mr. Roosevelt go to Africa. They were eager to enter upon the expected years of calmness and unruffled business prosperity that were sure to come with the wise and steady administration of Taft, succeeding the headstrong and turbulent years of the Rough Rider in leadership of the nation.

It is not the President alone, however, who makes our politica1 and financial weather. Mr. Taft's first year was stormier than any one of Mr. Roosevelt's seven and a half years. This was for many reasons; some of which were subject to Mr. Taft's control. Many of them, however, were beyond his power.

It happened, nevertheless, that just as Wall Street and the people whose state of mind  is determined by the business barometers had formed the habit  of abusing Mr. Roosevelt with extreme exaggeration, even so had they in one short year begun to abuse Mr. Taft quite as unsparingly.   And since Mr. Taft was the man at the helm, it was easy enough to forget the other man's faults and to wish that he were steering the ship again. 

And so a good many of the men who had been willing to have Roosevelt exile himself, but who had not been willing in March, 1909, to go down the harbor to bid him God-speed, were quite elated to find themselves appointed to serve on the large reception committee of June, 1910; and down the harbor they cheerfully went, to welcome Mr. Roosevelt back home with effusion, if not with life-long affection.

The country as a whole, however, welcomed him home with an enthusiasm and a devotion that were sincere beyond any doubt. He was greeted with an applause that rang true in every State and Territory. Nothing of its kind so impressive had ever been seen in New York as the crowds that lined the route of his drive from the Battery up Broadway to Central Park at high noon of June 18, 1910.

It would be easy to make up a volume of the clever and amusing cartoons drawn for the American newspapers in the few days just before and just after Mr. Roosevelt's arrival. We have selected a few of these, in order to give some impression of the spirit and character of the country's greeting. It was deeply gratifying to Mr. Roosevelt to be welcomed home with such heartiness; and the little speech he made, in response to Mayor Gaynor's formal but kindly words of welcome, must be recorded in these pages as belonging to our condensed chronicle of Roosevelt's career. The speech in full was 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 frowning 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 honored 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.

On the following page is a picture of Mr. Roosevelt in the act of uttering these appropriate words. The meaning of the statement was clear beyond a doubt. Mr. Roosevelt meant as ex-President to serve his country as best he could, doing everything in his power to promote progress and justice, without seeking anything for himself.

CHAPTER XXIX
An Ex-President in His Active Retirement

FOR ex-Presidents there is no established code of duty or of etiquette. It has come to be well understood that a Vice-President should be dignified, without seeming to be aspiring or expectant, and without allowing himself to be influential. What ex-Presidents, however, ought to do, besides remembering that they are to set an example of dignity and of unselfish devotion to country, is a question that has always been debated but never conclusively answered.

There are those who would make our ex-Presidents  Senators for life.    There are others who would not permit them to hold any kind of public office. John Quincy Adams, after leaving the White House, in 1829, was elected to the House of Representatives, where he served for eighteen years,—-until his death,—as a contentious and eloquent- member of Congress.

President Cleveland was sixty years old when he left the White House in 1897, and he died at the age of seventy-one. His quiet and consistent life at Princeton was not without its relation to public opinion and the country's affairs; but his health was not vigorous, and his life as an ex-President was private rather than public.

President Harrison practiced law and wrote an excellent book on constitutional government in the short period of life remaining to him after leaving office in 1893. President Arthur lived less than two years after his retirement in 1885. President Hayes retired to his country home in Ohio, in 1881, after four years in the White House, and died in 1893. He was highly useful, for twelve years, in many causes of philanthropy and education.
General Grant was an ex-President for eight years, and most of that period was actively spent in a blaze of publicity. His tour around the world occupied more than two years, from May 17, 1877, to November 12, 1879. He was received with the highest honors in all the countries he visited. In the years immediately following he visited Mexico and Cuba, and was a United States commissioner to make a commercial treaty with Mexico. In 1880 he was again a candidate for the Presidency, his name holding together a large body of delegates through thirty-six- ballots. In the period of illness before his death, he wrote his memoirs, without dreaming of the importance of this contribution to our knowledge of the Civil War and of his own career.

Of the earlier ex-Presidents, Jefferson was by far the most influential. He retired from the Presidency in March, 1809, and died July 4, 1826. His seventeen years of retirement were spent, for the most part, at his Virginia home, Monticello; but he was during all that time the real head of the great political party to which he belonged, and his relation to public affairs was constant and important. In this period of retirement, also he founded and created the University of Virginia, and produced much that appears in his collected writings.

 By   a   strange   coincidence,   ex-President John Adams (father of John Quincy Adams) died on the same day as Jefferson.    He had   been an ex-President for twenty-five years, and his almost complete withdrawal  from public    affairs    was    in    marked    contrast with Jefferson’s varied and vital activities.  

President Jackson, after his eight years in the White House, imitated Washington in the issuing of a farewell address to the nation, and retired to his home called the Hermitage, near Nashville, Tenn. Like Mr. Roosevelt, he had influence enough to select, nominate, and help elect his successor; and he remained an influential public personage during the remaining eight years of his life. 
An exceedingly active and untiring ex- President was Jackson's successor, Martin Van Buren. He was President from 1837 to 1841,— running for a second term in 1840 but beaten by William Henry Harrison, of the opposing party. Four years later, in 1844, Van Buren was again a candidate before the Democratic convention, where he had a clear majority of the delegates but was unable, on account of the " two-thirds rule," to win the nomination. He had opposed the annexation of Texas, and the Southern Democrats nominated and elected James K. Polk against Henry Clay- By 1848, ex-President Van Buren had gone over to the Free Soil movement, and was the Presidential nominee of the new party. His candidacy won no electoral votes, but it defeated the Democrats and put the Whigs into power. He was an active supporter of Pierce in 1852, of Buchanan in 1856, and stood with his party against Lincoln in 1860. But he became a War Democrat, supporting Lincoln's policies until his own death in 1862, at his country home near Kinderhook, New York.
However men may differ as to the public uses to make of an ex-President,  most men of thought and experience would agree that there ought to be some salary or pension granted him,—as to a retired judge,—until his death. Mr. Monroe and General Grant were not the only ex-Presidents whose last days were more or less clouded by financial difficulties. Mr. Roosevelt, returning to the plaudits and greetings of a friendly nation, was subject to extraordinary expenditures by reason of those numerous demands of hospitality, correspondence, travel, and the like, that a public man cannot evade.

Mr. Roosevelt had agreed, before going abroad, to make use of a room in the editorial offices of the Outlook, a weekly family paper published in New York, and to contribute to the paper as he might be able. He had also to put his new book through the press, and to prepare the speeches which he had agreed to make at the John Brown celebration in Kansas, the Conservation Congress at St. Paul, and on other occasions, at the end of August and in the months of September and October. 

He had gone to Harvard College at commencement time, where he had met Governor Hughes of New York and paid his respects to President Taft, who was summering at Beverly, Mass. Meanwhile, except for a few hours a week at the Outlook office, he was at home at Sagamore Hill, where many public men from different parts of the country called upon him, and where it was believed by the newspapers and the cartoonists that he was much interested in hearing about the political affairs of the State of New York and the strain in the Republican party between the regulars and the so-called " insurgents " or " progressives." 
It was known that he would visit Indiana to make a speech  on behalf of the reelection of Senator Beveridge, and this was regarded as an endorsement of the " progressives." It was also known that he would make a speech on behalf of Senator Lodge's reelection in Massachusetts, and this was said to be a matter of personal friendship rather than of championship of the New England junta of high-tariff Senators.
Unquestionably Mr. Roosevelt's general sympathies were with progressives movements in the Republican party. At the moment when Governor Hughes had call a special session of the New York Legislature, Mr. Roosevelt at the Governor's request had declared himself in favor of the Governor's bill for primary elections. In the preliminary plans for the New York State convention, and in the discussion of possible candidates for the Governorship, Mr. Roosevelt's influence was undoubtedly against the further control of the so-called " machine " or " Old Guard," and in favor of Republican progress as it had been exemplified by men of the type of Governor Hughes.

And it was well known in advance that this spirit would be expressed in the speech to be delivered at Ossawatomie, Kansas, on the last day of August. It had become evident that Mr. Roosevelt was to be highly active, and to regard the ex-Presidency as a post of public duty. It was also clear that the cartoonists would find it necessary to keep him under continued observation, and that a record like this which had been prepared with some historical perspective must needs end abruptly, or else be continued in daily postscripts. The End

A concluding word from Robert J. Kuniegel

TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoy our books.  Theodore Roosevelt lived his life in a manner that is the only way possible to make government responsive to the people.  He has written how to make meaningful reform possible not only for his generation but for future generations, if we read what he has said.  We only need to interest others in reading what he has said to transform our government. 

Reading the books on TR AMERICAN PATRIOT DOT COM  and having others do the same, will develop citizens and leaders capable of transforming American politics into a system of government that will be honest, and responsive to “a square deal”.  A square deal has no special deals for the rich, the middle class, or the poor.  Our government today has degenerated into a system that rewards citizens for not being productive.  It promotes entitlements under the guise of helping people, when in fact it only helps politicians to protect their own royal positions.  Policies that foster a special privileged class was the type of government policies Theodore Roosevelt fought against and won.  He was a visionary.  He knew this fight would need to be fought through the ages if we were to keep our country strong.  He was an intrepid pioneer that blazed a trail through a jungle of corrupt government, so that others might follow his proven and highly successful common sense approach toward honest government.  His fearless course helped make America a beacon of hope to all that seek justice.  His endless devotion to America helped make America a super power that no just nation has needed to fear as long as our citizens value his lofty resolute square deal policy toward our fellow citizens and those of other nations. 

Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest gift to this country is before us.  It is not in the past, if we as Americans recognize that his message is not just a story from American history pages.  His message is an example, clearly defined.  It details actions that are required if we desire to do something meaningful for our country.  Join the good fight today.  You only need to read and interest others to do the same.  

David Boyd, repeating what he had read, once said, “The person we become is because of our experiences in life, the people we meet, and the books we read. ” It is time to have others meet Theodore Roosevelt.  It is time for a Theodore Roosevelt revival, “Fear God and do your own part”.  Dare to help make Theodore Roosevelt the standard and not the exception.  America needs to adopt a wise, fearless and honest role model as the standard we revere, so that our public servants know what we expect.  The first step to honest government is no harder than setting proper standards of conduct for our public servants through the use of a proper role model.  Can you find one quality in Theodore Roosevelt that is not right in a public servant?  If you think you can, I bet your conjecture is based upon something other than truth and honest reasoning and this American would love an opportunity to debate any such conjecture.