Theodore Rex (142 page)

42
It was 5 February
Albert J. Beveridge to Albert Shaw, 10 Jan. 1902 (AJB);
The Washington Post
, 19 Feb. 1902.

43
Any fool could
Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 61;
Review of Reviews
, Apr. 1902; H. B. Martin and Emlen H. Miller to TR, 30 Nov. and 9 Dec. 1901, Department of Justice files (NA).

44
“Am giving it”
P. C. Knox to TR, 11 Dec. 1901 (TRB). For TR’s dispatch of his overworked Attorney General to Florida, see TR to Knox, 5 Dec. 1902 (PCK). “I am not dead,” Knox wrote a friend, “…     but so far as attending to anything personal, might just as well have been.” To James S. Young, 15 Jan. 1902 (PCK).

45
Now, eight weeks
Antitrust notes, Feb. 1902, in PCK.

46
Plunging deep into
Memorandum, “Comment on ‘Underlying Laws’ (in all social and industrial movements), as suggested by Kidd’s
Western Civilization,”
ca. 1902, in PCK.

47
What, then, of
Review of Reviews
, Apr. 1902; P. C. Knox memo, 10 Feb. 1902 (PCK); McCurdy,
“Knight
Sugar Decision of
1895.”
TR and Knox agreed that Kidd’s revisionist allowance seemed to apply to
Knight
, which had become the enabling bible of
laissez-faire
. The Attorney General advised that the best chance to “reverse”
Knight
’s effect would be to press a suit that challenged it technically, but not in principle. TR ordered him to go ahead. “This [reversal] I felt it imperative to secure.” TR to Charles G. Washburn, qu. in Washburn,
Theodore Roosevelt: The Logic of His Career
(Boston,
1916), 67–68
.

48
Knox felt that
Washburn,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 67–68.

49
For once in
Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 63–64.

50
Farther off, in
See Henry Clay Frick to P. C. Knox, 11 Nov. 1901 and 5 Feb. 1902 (PCK).

51
a fourteen-page opinion
Draft in PCK; New York
Herald
, 10 Feb. 1902. The actual delivered opinion is now lost. Eitler theorizes (although the
Herald
reports otherwise) that it was given to TR orally. “Philander Chase Knox,” 64.

52
“If you instruct”
Qu. by Walter Wellman in Chicago
Record-Herald
, 16 Mar. 1904 (a leak of TR’s own telling of the story to his Cabinet, the day before).

53
“Mr. Hanna,”
Martin,
James J. Hill
, 514.

54
Hanna, preoccupied with
Ibid.
The New York Times
, 20 Feb. 1902.

55
“The government has”
Mark Hanna to Charles E. Perkins, memorandum, 11 July 1904, qu. in Martin,
James J. Hill
, 515. Griggs was already representing Hill in Knox’s suit.

56
“Within a very”
The New York Times
, 20 Feb. 1902.

57
The statement was
Thompson,
Party Leaders
, 312; Thorelli,
Federal Antitrust Policy
, 563. The Minnesota suit indeed was rejected.
Review of Reviews
, Apr. 1902; Martin,
James J. Hill
, 512.

58
Knox’s willingness
Literary Digest, 1
Mar. 1902; New York
Herald, The Washington Post
, New York
Sun
, and New York
World
, 21 Feb. 1902.

59
It had been
The New York Times
and New York
Herald
, 21 Feb. 1902; Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 344–45; Knox qu. in
Historical Register, 1921
, 60.

60
Shortly afterward
New York Tribune
, New York
World
, and Washington
Evening Star
, 22 Feb. 1902.

61
BEFORE NIGHTFALL
New York
World
, 22 Feb. 1902;
New York Tribune
, 24 Feb. 1902. For an account of the dinner, see Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 346.

62
If the purpose
Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 346;
New York Tribune
, 24 Feb. 1902.

63
they stood shoulder
The phrase is that of L. T. Michener to E. W. Halford, ca. 25 Mar. 1902 (copy in HKB).

64
The Secretary of War
Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 345–47; William H. Taft to Mrs. Taft, 1 Mar. 1902 (WHT); Cleveland
Plain Dealer
, 25 Mar. 1902; William H. Taft qu. in Archibald Butt,
Taft and Roosevelt: The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt
(New York,
1930), 2, 690.
Harbaugh,
Life and Times
, 160–61, discusses TR’s probable reasons for excluding Root.

65
Either that, or
Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 347.

66
There was something
See Edward Steichen’s famous 1903 portrait of Morgan, reproduced with another “take” in Strouse,
Morgan
, 496–97.

67
Yet interlocutors
Ray Stannard Baker, “Morgan”; “J. P. Morgan,” bound obituaries file, 1913, NYPL. The definitive life is Strouse,
Morgan
.

68
“That is just”
Bishop,
Theodore Roosevelt
, vol. 1, 184–85. For another interpretation of this famous dialogue, see Kolko,
Triumph of Conservatism
, 69.

69
“send your man”
“Your man” is Knox; “my man” is Francis Lynde Stetson, Morgan’s personal attorney.

70
Alone with Knox
Bishop,
Theodore Roosevelt
, vol. 1, 184–85.

71
THE HOUSE OF
The New York Times
, 31 Mar. 1913, in Knox scrapbooks (PCK); Knox qu. in
New York American
, 12 Jan. 1912, Knox scrapbooks (PCK).

72
Knox’s formal complaint
The New York Times, 11
Mar. 1902; James Montgomery Beck,
May It Please the Court
(New York, 1930), 333.

73
OF THE THREE
Martin,
James J. Hill
, 515–16;
The New York Times
, 21 Feb. 1902; Meyer, “The Northern Securities Case,” 246–47; Joseph G. Pyle,
The Life of James J. Hill
(New York, 1917), vol. 2, 171–72.

74
Roosevelt’s action
Adler,
Jacob H. Schiff
, vol. 1, 111; Albert Shaw in
Review of Reviews
, Apr. 1902; Robert Wiebe,
Businessmen and Reform
(Cambridge, Mass., 1902), 44; Eitler, “Philander Chase Knox,” 67–68; Presidential scrapbook (TRP). TR was emphatic that his object was not to extend the applicability of
Knight
as to overturn it, and thus revitalize the necessity for some government control over business.

75
“I am rather”
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 236.

76
He pretended to
Lee,
Good Innings
, vol. 1, 261; TR,
Letters
, 3, 225, 237; Presidential scrapbook (TRP); TR,
Letters
, 3, 237, 239; Irwin Hoover,
Forty-Two Years in the White House
, (Boston, 1934), 293; Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 234; dinner plans and settings in J. E. Fenwick, compiler, “The White House Record of Social Functions” (NA). The last-named record, in thirteen volumes, offers documentary evidence of the splendor of White House entertainments in the Roosevelt Era, 1901–1909.

77
Alice Roosevelt—debutante
Marguerite Cassini,
Never a Dull Moment
(New York, 1956), 168–89;
Literary Digest
, 12 Apr. 1902.

78
He regretted the
Literary Digest
, 12 Apr. 1902; Cassini,
Never a Dull Moment
, 194; Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 351; Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
. See also Rixey,
Bamie
, 196ff.

79
Previous Presidents
Thorelli,
Federal Antitrust Policy
, 586–87. The adverb
voluntarily
emphasizes that all of Harrison’s, Cleveland’s, and McKinley’s antitrust suits were initiated outside their administrations, at the state or private level.

80
For these reasons
Wister,
Roosevelt
, 209. See also Lamoreaux,
Great Merger Movement
, 166.

  
1
It looks to me
“Mr. Dooley,” qu. in Sullivan,
Our Times
, vol. 3, 86.

  
2
“CHAOS! EVERYWHERE!”
The Washington Post
, 15 Mar. 1902.

  
3
“Both compass and”
Ibid.

  
4
On the very day
Washington Times
, 15 Mar. 1902.

  
5
Hanna’s presidential
Adams,
Letters
, vol. 5, 349; “The Hanna Presidential Boom,”
Literary Digest
, 7 June 1902, 23;
The Washington Post
, 10 Mar. 1901. “There is now in operation the most complete Bureau since 1896, and that Bureau is working day and night for Mark Hanna.” L. T. Michener to Eugene Hay, ca. 24 Dec. 1901 (copy in HKB).

  
6
They estimated
Cleveland
Plain Dealer
, 13 Mar. 1902;
The Washington Post
, 15 Mar. 1902; Chairman of the New York Irish Republican League to Mark Hanna, 21 July 1902 (MHM). This last correspondent reported that in a recent poll of his membership, representing Manhattan and the Bronx, more than two thirds had expressed a preference for Hanna.

  
7
Hanna dismissed the
Public Opinion
, 27 Mar. 1902; Volnay W. Foster, assistant treasurer of the Republican National Committee, qu. in unidentified news clip (MHM); Toledo
Blade
news clip, ca. 15 Mar. 1902 (MHM). The dinner was held in New York on 5 Mar. 1902.

  
8
Deep in his
Mrs. Hanna, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 19 May 1905 (MHM); Robert C. Rhodes, interviewed by J. B. Morrow, 17 Apr. 1906 (MHM).

  
9
Yet Hanna’s web
Croly,
Marcus Alonzo Hanna
, 375–76; Missouri
Post-Dispatch
, 5 Apr. 1902, news clip in MHM. Gould,
Reform and Regulation
, 40, discounts the strength of Hanna’s web, finding it “fragile.” That may have been the case later on, but contemporary sources are united in depicting the Senator as the GOP leader and likely nominee in 1904. He remained at this apex of power through the rest of the year.

10
It was understood
John T. Flynn, “Mark Hanna—Big Business in Politics,”
Scribner’s
, Aug. 1933; Croly,
Marcus Alonzo Hanna
, 272, 344–45, 373.

11
Such eminence
A. B. Hough, interviewed by J. B. Morrow (MHM);
The Washington Post
, 29 Mar. 1902.

12
The Commanding General
The Washington Post
, 15 Mar. 1902.

13
“General Miles’s most”
Boston
Herald
, 19 Mar. 1902.

14
Not content with
TR to Nelson A. Miles, 17 Feb. 1902 (TRP; suppressed). See also TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 245.

15
The letter was
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 232, 240–42, 244–47.

16
He had hardly
Washington
Evening Star
, 19 Feb. 1902.

17
Root wrote separately
57 Cong., 1 sess., 1902, S. Doc. 205, pt. 1, 1–3; Leopold,
Elihu Root
, 36; Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 1, 338–39.

18
Root’s words masked
57 Cong., 1 sess., 1902, S. Doc. 24, pt. 1, 881–85. For racism among United States soldiers in the Philippines, see Richard E. Welch, Jr.,
Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War, 1899–1902
(Chapel Hill, 1979), chap. 8, and for their moral degeneration see Stuart Creighton Miller,
“Benevolent Assimilation”: The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903
(New Haven, 1983), chap. 10.

19
So damning was
Taft qu. in
The Washington Post
, 11 Apr. 1902. Attached to the report was the statement of a provincial official that one third of the population of Batangas—some one hundred thousand Filipinos—had died from war, disease, and famine. This document was not included in the final released text. Herbert Welsh to Moorfield Storey, 11 Apr. 1902 (MST).

20
Root was guilty
Taft to Root, 8 Apr. 1902, in Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 1, 340; John R. M. Taylor, ed.,
The Philippine Insurrection Against the United States: A Compilation of Documents
(Pasay, Philippines,
1971–1973), 294–95;
Literary Digest
, 26 Apr. 1902.

21
This measure
Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 1, 240–60; William H. Carter, “Creation of the Army General Staff,” 68 Cong., 1 sess., 1923, S. Doc. 119. For a review of Root’s service as Secretary of War, see Leopold,
Elihu Root
, 38–46.

22
It sought to
James B. Martin, “Irresistible Force”; Jessup,
Elihu Root
, 251;
Report of the Secretary of War
(Washington, D.C.,
1902), 46–48.
For an extended discussion of these changes, see Samuel P. Huntington,
The Soldier and the Statesman: Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations
(Cambridge, Mass., 1957). See also John A. Matzko, “President Theodore Roosevelt and Army Reform,”
Proceedings of the South Carolina History Association
, 1973.