Theodore Rex (105 page)

Nor was it long before the Man became plural—denoting all writers of Phillips’s type—and the noun a verb, as in
muckrakers, muckraking, to muckrake
. A new buzzword was born. Ray Stannard Baker reacted to it as if stung. Opprobrium cast on all investigative journalists, he wrote Roosevelt, might discourage the honest ones, leaving the field to “outright ranters and inciters.” Roosevelt’s reply indicated a determination to give the Gridiron speech again, in some more public forum. “People so persistently misunderstand what I said that I want to have it reported in full.”

THE LAST THING
Roosevelt needed, as he prepared for the final stages of debate on the Hepburn Bill, was escalation of the Algeciras Conference into another full-scale diplomatic crisis. But any proceedings involving the Kaiser seemed to slide toward war at some point, and this one was no exception. After six weeks of talk and translation, the conferring powers (most actively, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, and Great Britain) had deadlocked in a dangerous squabble about how Morocco was to be policed. France wanted gendarmes in control of all port cities. Wilhelm II objected, because German traders might then be denied access to the interior. His negotiants suggested that a multinational force, equally representing all parties to the conference, might keep order more peaceably.

Roosevelt felt the first, distinct tuggings of a foreign entanglement absolutely contrary to his inclinations.
With some asperity, he told an informal emissary from the Kaiser that Germany had “perhaps fourteen times less interests” in Morocco than France.

“We do not admit that anyone except ourselves be the judge of our interests,” the German replied.

“Then I do not understand this insistence upon having a conference. Why take the opinion of others if only your own counts for you?”

Roosevelt repeated this exchange to Jusserand afterward, along with the alarming information that Germany’s ruling trinity—the Kaiser, Count von Bülow, and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz—apparently all believed that the Reich was now omnipotent in Europe.

“Never have I seen the President so upset,” Jusserand reported to the Quai d’Orsay.

Austria was now backing Germany at Algeciras, while Britain sided with France. As the confrontation worsened, both camps turned to Roosevelt to bring about another successful mediation. Jusserand and Speck von Sternburg
plagued him with warnings and cajolements. He resisted them as he could. They did not seem to understand, or care, that he was more interested in trying to figure out why
Senator Knox had so tersely rejected his offer of an appointment to the Supreme Court. (Justice Brown had resigned at the beginning of March; now Taft was considering the position.)

Unwilling as he was to intervene over White’s head, Roosevelt saw a definite if distant threat looming at Algeciras. He suspected that what the Kaiser really wanted was “the partition of Morocco”—followed by the establishment of a German or German-friendly port, too far west for American comfort. Von Sternburg was reminded that the conference would never have taken place if Wilhelm had not begged the United States to push for it, nine months before. As a return favor, Roosevelt suggested, His Majesty might consider fashioning a compromise out of existing proposals. The policing issue could be solved if Germany accepted a Moorish force in all ports, commanded by French and Spanish “instructing officers.” The force would be paid for by all conferees, and France and Spain would unequivocally declare an open door to all Morocco.

In a letter of unusual frankness, Roosevelt told the Kaiser that though Germany would not get the multinational police it wanted, France was going to have to accept a considerable reduction of its current authority in Tangier.

Wilhelm responded by translating this proposal—with variations minor and not so minor—into German for Austria’s benefit, then retranslating it into English as a proposal of his own. Roosevelt was reminded, as so often in his presidency, of Tweedledum’s need to trump Tweedledee, and decided not to accept it. He told von Sternburg that he suspected Germany really did want a war with France. If so, the Kaiser would have to live with the consequences, and a severe decline in American goodwill.

Secretary Root added his own grave opinion, which the Ambassador cabled to the Wilhelmstrasse: that Germany’s conduct at the conference was “
paltry and unworthy of a great power.”

On 19 March, White cabled that yet another proposal, described as “Austrian” but more largely the President’s own, had been laid on the table at Algeciras. Again with feelings of
déjà vu
, Roosevelt allowed Wilhelm to retreat in glory. “
Communicate to His Majesty,” he instructed Speck von Sternburg,
“my sincerest felicitation on this epochmaking political success at Algeciras. The policy of His Majesty on the Morocco question has been masterly from beginning to end.”

THE ARTICLE IN
The Cosmopolitan
that had so exercised Roosevelt’s wrath was a portrait of Senator Aldrich as “The Head of It All.” If that muck-spattered gentleman was grateful to him for returning the attack, there was no apparent lessening of Old Guard opposition to the railroad rate bill in the last days of March. Twenty-four implacable conservatives stood pat between Roosevelt and regulation. Many lesser items of presidential legislation, such as a statehood bill for Arizona and New Mexico and a tariff bill for the Philippines, were held up too, while in the House, Speaker Cannon had emerged as an eloquent spokesman for impure food. Sir Mortimer Durand revised his recent positive predictions. “At the present moment it seems as if the session were likely to close with a series of defeats for Mr. Roosevelt.… Some of the strongest men in the Republican party are at the head of the malcontents.”

One of the weakest men in the Republican Party, influentially speaking, visited Roosevelt late at night to urge him to demand rates that were reasonable as well as nondiscriminatory. Robert LaFollette had been studying railroad finance for thirty years, and thought that the President might listen to him on the subject.

“But you can’t get any such bill as that through Congress.”

“That is not the first consideration, Mr. President.”

A fault line instantly ran between the idealist and the practical politician. LaFollette did not see—or, seeing, did not understand that it was already unbridgeable, and must one day become a chasm.

“But I want to get something through,” Roosevelt said.

To do so, he needed forty-six of the Senate’s ninety votes. Assuming he got none of the Old Guard block of twenty-four, he would have to build a majority out of sixty-six votes, thirty-three of which belonged to the opposing party. Senator Tillman undertook to deliver only twenty-six Democrats, since not all his colleagues liked the idea of rate regulation, and very few liked Roosevelt. Washington insiders delighted in the paradox that “Teddy” now depended on the parliamentary tactics of “Pitchfork Ben.”

A small group of proregulatory senators from the Plains states came to the President’s rescue on 31 March. There was something symbolic about their solidarity: they represented the old agrarian values of grain and grassland, eternally resisting the spread of smoke and steel. But they saw that Roosevelt, unless he compromised on the issue of court review, would never get the Hepburn Bill through the Senate. Some language had to be included to check and
balance the ICC’s proposed rate-making power. This would persuade more Republicans to vote for the measure. Senator Chester I. Long of Kansas suggested adding an amendment that was “broad” enough to please more Republicans, yet still “narrow” in the sense that the ICC would retain plenty of regulatory power. Courts should be allowed to rule on whether any disputed order was “beyond the authority of the Commission,” or in violation of the constitutional rights of railroad operators.

The President was agreeable to this idea, which he thought might yield fifteen or even twenty votes on top of Tillman’s twenty-six. But he was embarrassed by the fact that he could not discuss it with his legislative lieutenant. Tillman and he were not on speaking terms. In 1902, the Senator had been banned from the White House for punching out a colleague, mid-debate. That disinvitation was now canceled, but Tillman showed no inclination to drop by. He had never forgiven Roosevelt for some prepresidential wisecracks about Populists. (“A taste for learning and cultivated friends, and a tendency to bathe frequently, cause them the deepest suspicion.… Senator Tillman’s brother has been frequently elected to Congress upon the issue that he wore neither an overcoat nor an undershirt.”)

Somebody suggested that the President enlist the aid of a distinguished former Senator, William Eaton Chandler, who was close to Tillman and presumably proregulatory, having been lobbied out of office by a railroad company some years before. Chandler was summoned to the White House that evening, massaged into complicity, and sent on to Tillman with secret expressions of Roosevelt’s wrath against the “lawyers” impeding reform in the Senate.

Tillman knew he was being manipulated, but agreed to help build a bipartisan majority in favor of what he genuinely felt was “a great legislative bill.” For the next two weeks, he and Senator Bailey labored over the amendment with Attorney General Moody, while Roosevelt polished prose of his own. It was a restatement of the “Muckrake” speech, scheduled for delivery at the most public ceremony on his upcoming schedule, the dedication of the House Office Building on 14 April.

BUNYAN’S NOISOME FIGURE
, more interested in piling up dirt than stargazing, duly made every major newspaper in the country. But the very potency of the image, and the speed with which it became a cliché, distracted popular attention from the rest of Roosevelt’s address, which had ominous implications for the very rich.

He noted that the United States was passing through a period of “social, political, and industrial unrest.” So far as the unrest took the form of a struggle between the “haves” and “have-nots,” those essential counterbalances of
a capitalist economy, it was to be condemned. But where it was moral, and sought to punish evildoers of any stamp, it was a “sign of healthy life” that government should welcome.