CHAPTER 18 Hermann Hagedorn’s: The Boy’s Life of Theodore Roosevelt.

HE   RETURNS   TO    HIS    OWN    PEOPLE   AND   FIGHTS   A GOOD   FIGHT AGAINST  ODDS

HE returned to his own people a greater man than he had been when he went.  His countrymen had been eagerly and anxiously waiting for him.  During the fifteen months of his absence the struggle for popular government in which for ten years he had been the leader had been moving swiftly to a crisis.  Signs of popular unrest had been plentiful, and manifest to all except those who stubbornly refused to see.  While Roosevelt was President the unrest had been sporadic and local.  A majority of the American people which far transcended the lines of the Republican party was satisfied that the administration of national affairs was conscientious, efficient, progressive, and free from the control of "special privilege. "

His successor had inherited this popular confidence.  No President for generations had come to office under more favorable auspices.  On March 4, 1909, a united Republican party entered on a new term of service amid the cheers of a united and prosperous nation which asked nothing of it except that it should continue on the road along which Roosevelt had led it. 

Four months later, almost to a day, the new President signed the Payne-Aldrich Tariff bill.     The platform on which he had been elected had pledged revision   downward.  The bill as it was passed revised upward.      Progressives of both parties   protested.  The   President warmly   defended the bill.     Popular confidence  turned to dismay. 

Scandals within the Cabinet intensified the feeling of distrust.  Many of the commissions which Roosevelt had appointed were discontinued.  Notable projects lapsed.  Men felt that the conservation policy was imperilled when Gifford Pinchot, Chief Forester, was dismissed for insubordination because he protested against what he believed was the connivance of the Secretary of the Interior in the schemes of a group of coal speculators in Alaska.  The American people discovered, to their amazement, that the radical they had elected to carry on the policies of Roosevelt's administration had allied himself with the most obdurate group of reactionaries.  The forces which had been struck into impotence when Roosevelt came to power were once more gaining control of the government.  When Roosevelt emerged from the jungle, less than a year after the inauguration of the new President, the
Republican party, which he had left a solid and united organization, pledged to progressive principles, had been disrupted.  A fierce factional fight was raging.  The "stand-patters" in Congress, under Aldrich and Cannon were confronted by a  small group of "insurgents" under Borah, La Follette, Beveridge, and Cummins.  The President stood with the '' stand-patters. ''

All eyes were turned to Roosevelt.  At Khartoum he had refused to comment on the political situation in the United States.  Both factions hoped for his support.  Meanwhile his triumphal journey through Europe greatly heightened his prestige.  In the national enthusiasm for the returning hero party lines played no part.  To the American people Theodore Roosevelt was no longer either Republican or Democrat.  He was the foremost American citizen and they welcomed him home as such. 

He arrived in New York on June i8th.  He was met at Quarantine by a committee of prominent citizens and, after a parade of water-craft, taken on a special tug to the Battery, where the Mayor was waiting to receive him with bands and banners and committees and a great throng of American citizens at the water's edge, hungry to catch a first glimpse. 

He was driven up Broadway, where, three deep, along the sidewalks, the people of New York shouted their welcome.  Men and women wept for joy.  No man had ever received such an ovation there. 

That 18th of June he reached the zenith of his popular fame.  Wherever he went crowds gathered about him, cheering. 

"It is a kind of hysteria," he said to a friend.  "They will be throwing rotten eggs at me soon. "
Roosevelt was back home again.  Now the question was what to do with him.  Wild suggestions were made. 

On one thing only every one seemed united  this man of force and boundless energy must be utilized in the service of the country; every one, that is, with a few exceptions.  The exceptions wanted him to retire from public life and become the Sage of Oyster Bay until with years he became America's Grand Old Man, beloved by all because he should never under any circumstances do anything to hurt anybody's feelings. 

Such a prospect did not allure Theodore Roosevelt.  He was not made to be a sage in retirement. 

He was a fighter born and bred, to whom no champion of a good cause appealed in vain.  

Before he had been home two weeks Governor Hughes of New York had asked his support of a direct primary bill.  He gave it whole-heartedly.  The opponents of the bill attacked him with vigor, and at once, to the distress of many of his friends who were jealous of his great fame, but to the surprise only of those who did not know him, he was again up to his neck in politics.  

It was truly a good cause which called him.  In New York State, as in the nation, was raging the struggle between the "special interests" and the people, between the "stand-patters" who believed that property rights were supreme, and the "progressives" who believed with Roosevelt that "human rights must have the upper hand, for property belongs to man, and not man to property. " Both the Republican and Democratic parties in the state were under the iron rule of the bosses and the financial interests, who at need conspired together, irrespective of party, to gain their sinister ends. 

Roosevelt's sympathies in such a struggle were altogether with the people.  He realized, moreover, that to suppress the endeavors of the people to secure their rights meant, sooner or later, revolution. 

While the opposing forces were mustering their adherents during the summer he made a trip through the Middle West in support of those progressive principles for whose success he had fought so persistently as President.  Here, as in Europe and on Broadway that i8th' of June, his journey was a triumphal progress.  But the enthusiasm of the enormous crowds that greeted him had a deeper meaning than those other demonstrations.  For the crowds that lined the streets of Kansas City, of Omaha, of Cheyenne, that packed the great Denver Auditorium and thronged about him, twenty-five thousand strong, at Osawatomie, were not moved by curiosity or the effervescent thrill of watching a popular hero pass.  Wherever he went he was greeted as a personal friend who understood, as a very human champion of human rights against the hard and merciless tyranny of organized greed. 

The men and women of the nation he found were in a grave mood.  There was a sense of impending conflict in the air.  The people had gradually become conscious that they were being defrauded, that public interest was being sacrificed everywhere to private interests.  Roosevelt made the issues clear.  The rights of property, he declared, required protection.  Whenever those rights came into conflict, however, with human rights, they must be subordinated.  It was not sufficient, moreover, to play the game fairly according to the rules.  Whenever the rules were shown to be unfair they should be changed. 

At Osawatomie he struck the keynote: "The object of government is the welfare of the people.  The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens. "

It was an old doctrine that he had preached persistently for twenty years, and put in practice at every opportunity.  His demands for the regulation of trusts, for the conservation of natural resources, were his practical applications of it.  " The interests'' had attacked him on it in the past, but those attacks were as nothing compared to the drumfire with which the metropolitan newspapers, representing privilege, now assailed him.  At Osawatomie, he spoke of the "new nationalism" which was gradually developing out of the new conception of the duties of government, pointing out the necessity for Federal action when the separate states showed themselves incapable of safeguarding the public interest.  The phrase was taken up by . the hostile newspapers and made the text of scathing denunciations.  The doctrine it proclaimed was declared by the New York Sun "more nearly revolutionary than anything that ever proceeded from the lips of any American who has held high office in our government. "

Before Roosevelt returned from the West, early in September, he was once more the storm center of American politics.     In New York the Republican organization was making a frantic effort to control the state convention that was to nominate a Governor.  The forces of reaction were led by the Vice-President, Sherman of Utica, and the battle turned about the election of the temporary chairman of the convention.  Roosevelt took charge of the progressive forces against the machine and after a fierce contest was victorious.  The progressives begged him to run for Governor himself, but he refused, suggesting Henry L.  Stimson, a lawyer who had successfully prosecuted the Sugar Trust.  Stimson was nominated. 

The opposition shouted that Roosevelt, who was pretending to fight the "bosses," was himself the "boss-boss" of all. 

"I am a leader," Roosevelt replied.  '' I am not a boss.  The difference between a boss and a leader is that the leader leads and the boss drives. "

The explanation was received with scornful laughter.  Now followed a campaign bitter in the extreme.  The Republican machine leaders refused to abide by the decision of the convention and made no secret of their support of Dix, the Tammany nominee.  They were followed by the majority of the great newspapers of the state and by many prominent Republicans. 

The attack centered on Roosevelt.  From the beginning he was the main issue, and though he endeavored to make clear that he had no intention of exercising any direction over Stimson, if elected, he remained the issue to the end.  The opposition to him, which at the opening of the six weeks' campaign was tempered by the recognition that in defeating the Albany bosses he had done the state a notable service, became frantic.  "The interests" realized, as the people themselves scarcely realized, that the victory of the Republicans under Roosevelt's leadership meant not only the dominance of Roosevelt in the Republican party, but also the dominance of the progressive principles of which he was the foremost defender.  But they did not dare fight him on that issue.  Through the newspapers which they controlled they created the impression that Roosevelt was seeking to overthrow the Constitution and the rights of the people.  They declared that he wanted to make himself dictator.  They shouted that he wanted to be king. 

Roosevelt laughed at that.  "They forget that I've been seeing kings," he remarked, dryly. 

Party lines were ignored in the struggle, Republican reactionaries combining with Democratic reactionaries to defeat the acknowledged leader in the fight for the restoration to the people of their fundamental rights of self-government. 

It is not that Roosevelt is aiming to be a king, as they charge [exclaimed the New York Press, which supported him].  It is not that Roosevelt is an enemy of the courts, as they charge; it is not that Roosevelt is seeking to foment discontent merely to serve his own ambitions, as they charge; it is not that Roosevelt is a madman, as they charge.  It is that Roosevelt is leading the American people, who are going out to battle against the boss rule which works in behalf of the special interests!

"The interests" did not fear the coming of a dictator.  They feared the coming of justice. 

The fight was a struggle between the people and the forces of privilege, and the forces of privilege won.  Roosevelt was disastrously defeated not only in New York, but in Indiana and in other states where the men he had actively supported went down under a Democratic landslide.  In less than five months after his triumphal progress up Broadway the reversion he had prophesied was complete. 

His enemies shouted triumphantly that he was discredited and politically dead, and "the man on the street" who had shouted himself hoarse for Roosevelt five months previous cracked jokes about the "poor back-number who thought he was the Lord God Almighty. " A man in Wisconsin who tried to auction off a signed photograph of Theodore Roosevelt was greeted with derisive laughter and found no bidder at twenty-five cents. 

Defeat was a new experience to Roosevelt.  With the motto in his mind, "When I'm through with a thing I'm through with it," he bore it with equanimity and humor, knowing that the fight had been worth all that it had cost him.  Since his retirement from the Presidency he had been a contributing editor of the Outlook, and through its columns continued to fight for the cause he had at heart.  The delight of his opponents in the triumph of the Democrats in the state was short-lived.  As he had prophesied, Tammany Hall took complete control of the new Governor.  Roosevelt found a certain grim satisfaction in the wails of disillusionment that came from the newspapers which had insisted so violently on electing the wrong man. 

The strength of the progressive element in the Republican party steadily grew as the months went by.  In the West there was sentiment for La Follette for President, but the East believed him, not unjustly, to be brilliant but ill-balanced, a vigorous fighter, but personally pompous and vain, and intellectually radical in the extreme.  They turned to Roosevelt as to their natural leader.  Early in 1912 La Follette's supporters in the West joined the progressives in the East in a demand that Roosevelt agree to run. 

To friends Roosevelt stated that he did not wish to be a candidate, that he did not want the office again, that he had everything to lose and nothing to gain by entering the contest; but that, if there should be a popular demand for him he should not refuse to be drafted.  The supporters of other candidates were struggling for delegates.  He stated again and again that he did not wish any attempts made to secure delegates pledged to him.  But the trend toward him became day by day more definite and unmistakable. 

On February 10, 1912, the progressive Republican Governors of seven states met in Chicago and sent him a formal letter asking him to become a candidate for the Presidency.  Two weeks later he sent his acceptance.  In his own phrase, "his hat was in the ring. "

Now began a fierce fight between the factions of the party for delegates and for control of the convention which was to meet in Chicago in June.  The President was the candidate of the conservatives, the "stand-patters. " Popular sentiment, from the very first, was against him.  In March the results of primary elections in different states began to show with unmistakable clearness that the rank and file of the party wished to have Roosevelt as their candidate.  One state after another, including the President's own, declared itself for him by an overwhelming majority. 

But the National Committee, not the rank and file, was to have charge of the convention, and the National Committee was controlled by the "standpatters. " When, early in June, the convention met in Chicago, they exercised this control with cynical disregard of the verdict the primaries had delivered.  Many of the "bosses" who during these June days relentlessly excluded from the convention delegates pledged to Roosevelt were merely crooked politicians trying to save their own skins; but the foremost among them, men like Elihu Root and the President, in whose behalf the unjust struggle was carried on, sincerely believed that a great principle was at stake and that Roosevelt was seeking to undermine the Constitution.  They fought as men fight for a religion whose foundation appears to threatened. 

But Roosevelt and the progressives, too, were fighting for a principle.  To them the battle was a battle for social justice against "the powers of the darkness of this world," and they were willing to be flung to the lions for it.  Between two groups thus arrayed there was no hope for a saving compromise. 

The National Committee gave no quarter; they made no attempt to deal justly with the claims of delegates opposed to them.  Before the convention was ready to vote on candidates, the progressive members withdrew.  In a neighboring hall they held a meeting and organized a new National Progressive party. 

The Republican convention nominated the President without further opposition; the Democratic party, meeting shortly after at Baltimore, nominated Woodrow Wilson, Governor of New Jersey. 

On August 6th delegates of the new Progressive party met at Chicago and held a convention such as had never before been held in the history of American politics.  The clap-trap, the iron rule of a small group, the sordid bickering and bargaining of cheap politicians all were absent.  Instead, there was the deep religious enthusiasm of a revival meeting.  The prayers that were spoken were not perfunctory, but rather the devout expression of a great desire for unselfish and successful service.  Men and women were there whose lives had been devoted to the public good and who saw in this meeting the coming to fulfilment of the dreams of a lifetime; politicians were there, "professionals in the game," who turned against their own past as they caught a gleam of something higher than anything they had known before.  In a sense, the meeting was not a political convention at all, but a gathering of crusaders, who sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers," and the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" with the rapt devotion of men "who meet at Armageddon to battle for the Lord. "

Truly, the American people were in a grave mood. 

Roosevelt made a notable speech, a "Confession of Faith" which stirred the delegates to wild enthusiasm and won the admiration even of his enemies.  He was nominated for President by acclamation. 

In the campaign that followed, as in 1910, Roosevelt was the target for the shafts of both Republicans and Democrats.  He was attacked with the utmost virulence by the newspapers of both parties, abused as a "dangerous demagogue" of "unparalleled viciousness and dishonesty," shameless, revolutionary, hypocritical, self-seeking, an ambitious Aaron Burr, "eager to use fraud. " 

He fought back with all the power that was in him.  Most of the men with whom he had been associated in the past turned against him.  One friendship after another he saw shattered.  He fought on, struggling forward over the prostrate bodies of friend and foe alike.  He spared others no more than he spared himself.  To him in this battle individuals no longer mattered.  The cause was all.  He gave himself to the cause with his whole soul. 

The leader, for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won.  In the long fight for righteousness the watchword for all of us is spend and be spent.  It is of little matter whether any one man fails or succeeds; but the cause shall not fail, for it is the cause of mankind.  We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men. 

He campaigned in different parts of the country most of the summer and autumn.  On the evening of October i4th he was to speak at Milwaukee.  He had dined at the Gilpatrick Hotel and was cheered toy a throng outside as he crossed the sidewalk to enter the automobile that was to take him to the Auditorium. 
Suddenly, out of the dark crowd in the dimly lighted street beyond, a man stepped forward, raised his right arm, and at ten feet distance fired point blank at the ex-President.  

The men who were with him sprang on the assailant.  Roosevelt sank back in the automobile.  But in an instant he was on his feet again.  "Stop!" he called to the men who were struggling with the assassin.  "Don't hurt him.  Bring him to me. "

The man was lifted up.  For an instant the assailant and the man he had sought to kill stood face to face.  Then the assassin was turned over to the police. 

"Now to the hospital!" some one cried. 

"You get me to that speech!" ordered Roosevelt, with savage emphasis.  "It may be the last one I shall ever make. "

His friends protested, but he stood firm.  In an anteroom of the Auditorium he consented to have a clean handkerchief tied over the wound.  Then he walked to the stage.  Ten thousand men and women roared a welcome.  The chairman quietly told the audience that the ex-President had been shot, and a roar of anger shook the hall that was succeeded by a deafening roar of applause as Roosevelt carne forward to speak. 

He drew the manuscript of his speech from his right-hand breast pocket.  A shudder ran through the audience.  There were two bullet holes in each sheet.  The manuscript had been folded.  One hundred thicknesses of paper had served to save his life. 

He began his speech a little ramblingly, for the sight of the manuscript had for an instant shaken even his iron nerves.  Then he proceeded with his speech.  His friends on the platform, one after another, tried to interrupt him, to persuade him to allow himself to be taken to the hospital to have the wound attended to.  He insisted on saying what he had to say.  For an hour and a half with a bullet in his breast he defended the principles of the progressive cause. 

"I tell you with absolute truthfulness," he said, "I am not thinking of my own life, I am not thinking of my own success.  I am thinking only of the success of this great cause. "

When he had finished, he consented to be taken to the hospital.  The bullet, he found, had passed within half an inch of his right lung.  The man who had fired it was a poor insane wretch who had been led by the denunciation of Roosevelt in the newspapers to believe that he had a call from Heaven to remove this "menace to American liberties. "

Governor Wilson offered at once to cease campaigning, but Roosevelt refused to allow himself thus to be favored. 

"The welfare of any one man in this fight is wholly immaterial," he answered.  "This is not a contest about any man; it is a contest concerning principles.  . . .  I shall be sorry if Mr.  Wilson does not keep on the stump. "

The campaign went on.  Roosevelt's extraordinary constitution asserted itself and in a fortnight he was once more speaking to the American people. 

The election was held on November 5th.  Woodrow Wilson was elected.