Theodore Rex (144 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
6
Petitioners visiting
TR’s current reading included a novel by the Filipino consciousness-raiser José Rizal. TR to J. C. Abrey, 31 May 1902 (TRP); Maria [Mrs. Bellamy] Storer,
In Memoriam Bellamy Storer
(privately printed,
1923), 38–39
.
7
On another occasion
New York
World
, 22 Sept. 1901. Apparently, Henry Cabot Lodge had bet him he could not do it. TR demanded, and got, the Senator’s hat in settlement.
8
He encouraged his
Baltimore Sun
, 15 May 1902;
Washington Times
, 8 June 1902.
9
Hay, who as
John Hay qu. in Byron Price memorandum (EMH). For a discussion of the question of presidential succession at this time, see George F. Hoar,
Autobiography of Seventy Years
(New York, 1903), vol. 2, 168–71.
10
a permanent Census
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 238–39.
Chronological Note:
Until TR’s Presidency, each census was conducted by a temporary “office” that went out of existence as soon as it reported. These “offices” had become sinkholes of patronage by the end of the nineteenth century; the 1900 census comprised some sixty thousand jobs, all political favors. On 6 Mar. 1902, TR signed a bill that not only created a permanent directorate, but made its appointments subject to the approval of the Secretary of the Interior. Clerkships and other administrative positions were made subject to the civil-service law. In 1903, the Bureau initiated a countrywide system of death registration and statistical reporting; in 1904, it produced the nation’s first population forecasts; in 1905, the first annual reports on cotton supply and distribution, and in 1906, the first in a series of annual “inter-censual” surveys. Theodore G. Clemence, “The Early Years of the Bureau of the Census: The Politics of Appointment and the Struggle for Independence,” ts. in Bureau of the Census, Washington, D.C., 8–12.
11
Senators Aldrich and
New York
Herald
, 18 May 1902; TR to W.H.H. Llewellyn, qu. in Douglas,
Many-Sided Roosevelt
, 83.
12
“You have wasted”
Hoar’s speech is given in
Congressional Record
, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 5788–98.
13
At Arlington National
The following account is based on TR,
Presidential Addresses and State Papers
(New York, 1910), vol. 1, 59–66; and Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
14
The year’s first
New York
Sun
and Washington
Evening Star
, 30 May 1902. 110
He had been
See ms. in TRP. No previous President had delivered a Memorial Day address at Arlington.
15
“Is it only”
TR,
Presidential Addresses and State Papers
, vol. 1, 60.
16
Had he spat
Literary Digest
, 7 June 1902. See also Welch,
Response to Imperialism
, 144, and, for a concise analysis of TR’s antilynch policies from this moment on, William L. Ziglar, “The Decline of Lynching in America,”
International Social Science Review
63.1 (1988)
.
17
Sure enough, when
Miller,
“Benevolent Assimilation,”
250. TR finally signed it into law on 1 July 1902;
Literary Digest
, 7 June 1902. An editorial exception was the New York
Sun
, which hailed TR’s speech as “a great public service … [that] excels anything that the President has yet delivered.” Alfonso,
Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines
, 203–5, finds the nation’s press, as a whole, supportive of TR’s Philippines policy.
18
Bruised and rueful
See TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 268–69, for TR’s attempt to explain his Philippines policy to an outraged cleric.
19
On Wednesday
, 4 See
Congressional Record
, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 6267–80.
20
“
Be it enacted
”
Ibid., 6267.
21
old man’s tremor
Scholars skeptical of this detail should try to read Morgan’s handwriting from 1902.
22
He had no new
Congressional Record
, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 6267–80.
23
Senator Hanna sat
The Treaty of New Granada was basically a trade agreement intended to protect free transit (then by railway) across the Isthmus of Panama. In return for right of way, the United States guaranteed the “perfect neutrality” of the Isthmus, as well as “the rights of sovereignty and property which New Granada has and possesses over the said territory.” Lawrence Beilenson,
The Treaty Trap: A History of the Performance of Political Treaties by the United States and European Nations
(Washington, D.C., 1969), 33–34.
24
Storming on
Congressional Record
, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 6275.
25
As soon as
Ibid., 6280.
26
WHEN SENATORS RECONVENED
Washington
Evening Star
, 5 June 1902; DuVal,
Cadiz to Cathay
, 165; McCullough,
Path Between the Seas
, 319–22. The volcanic map was provided courtesy of Philippe Bunau-Varilla.
27
Hanna entered to
Thomas Beer,
Hanna, Crane, and the Mauve Decade
(New York, 1941), 600;
Congressional Record
, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 6317ff. All quotations from Hanna’s speech come from the latter source.
28
The chamber settled
Beer,
Hanna
. For the “facts and conditions” behind Hanna’s conversion, see Miner,
Fight for the Panama Route
, 102–4.
29
For the next
The Washington Post
, 6 June 1902;
Congressional Record
, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 6, 6317–21.
30
“Oh, do make”
Beer,
Hanna
, 600.
31
Polls in smoke-filled
The conspiracy theory was dampened by another rumor that Hanna was the agent of James J. Hill and the transcontinental railroads. He was actually conducting a filibuster, in order to have no canal at all. New York
Journal
, 17 June 1902.
32
HANNA RESUMED HIS
Congressional Record
, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 7, 6380; Philippe Bunau-Varilla,
Panama: The Creation, Destruction, and Resurrection
(London, 1933), 242;
Congressional Record
, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 7, 6381.
Managua
is here a correction for Hanna’s misspoken
Nicaragua
.
33
For another hour
Congressional Record
, 57 Cong., sess. 1, 1902, vol. 35, pt. 7, 6377–87; Washington
Evening Star
, 6 June 1902; Bunau-Varilla,
Panama
, 248. The best account of the legislative and diplomatic struggle for the Panama Canal is in DuVal,
Cadiz to Cathay
.
34
AS LONG AS
Beer,
Hanna
, 602. The senators were Matthew Quay of Pennsylvania and Thomas Platt of New York.
35
MEANWHILE, HIS CUBAN
Guggenheim,
United States and Cuba
, 101–6; Healy,
United States in Cuba
, 196–200; TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 288. For a detailed discussion of the reciprocity issue, see United States Tariff Commission,
The Effects of the Cuban Reciprocity Treaty of 1902
, miscellaneous series, no. 22 (Washington, D.C., 1929).
36
Common sense
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 228, 265–66; U.S. Tariff Commission,
Effects
. For evidence of TR’s strong feelings on reciprocity, see his passionate reworkings of Spooner Amendment drafts in TRP.
37
On 13
June
Tomas Palma to TR, 12 Sept. 1902 (TRP). The text of TR’s Special
Message is in James D. Richardson, ed.,
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents
(Washington, D.C., 1911), vol. 15, 6682–84. See also Robert Freeman Smith, “Cuba: Laboratory for Dollar Diplomacy,
1898–1917,”
The Historian
28.4 (Aug. 1966).
38
“Cuba is a young”
Washington
Evening Star
, 13 June 1902.
39
Some senators detected
The Atlanta Constitution
, 14 June 1902; Stephenson,
Nelson W. Aldrich
, 187; Leonard Wood to Elihu Root, 9 Apr. 1902 (ER);
World’s Work
, June 1902. Embarrassingly for TR, the Message was preceded by a press revelation that Leonard Wood had used government funds for reciprocity propaganda.
40
“My dear Mr. Cannon”
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 272–73.
41
Representative Joseph
Blair Bolles,
Tyrant from Illinois: Uncle Joe Cannon’s Experiment with Personal Power
(New York,
1951), 118–19, 211, 40.
TR had spoken out on the subject of reclamation as early as Nov. 1900, at the National Irrigation Congress. D. Jerome Tweton, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Arid Lands,”
North Dakota Quarterly
36.2 (1968)
.
42
For a quarter
Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 372; Roy M. Robbins,
Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776–1936
(Princeton, N.J.,
1942), 325–29
.
43
Roosevelt expressed
TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 277. Actually, Newlands and other lawmakers representing both Eastern and Western interests had been working on sketches for the Reclamation Act since 1900. But TR managed, with considerable skill, to merge the best features of all these proposals into a bill that overcame powerful Republican opposition in Congress. See TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 317; Marc P. Reisner,
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
(New York,
1986), 116–18;
and William D. Rowley,
Reclaiming the Arid West: The Career of Francis G. Newlands
(Bloomington, Ind.,
1996), 2–6, 102–4
.
44
Cannon ignored
Rowley,
Reclaiming the Arid West
, 103; P. P. Wells, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Conservation Record,” Oct. 1919 memorandum prepared for Joseph Bucklin Bishop (GP); Robbins,
Our Landed Heritage
, 331–33; Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 372.
45
“They must be”
TR to National Irrigation Congress, 15 Sept. 1903,
Letters
, vol. 3, 600. TR’s role in bringing about the Reclamation Act was but a chapter in the overall story. See Samuel P. Hays,
Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890–1920
(Cambridge, Mass.,
1959), 10–15.
For the intellectual and sociological aspects of the reclamation movement, see Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making”; for a view of the Reclamation Act as “the first and most durable example of the modern welfare state,” see Reisner,
Cadillac Desert
, 115ff.
46
Reclamationists spoke
Beer,
Hanna
, 595. See also
Review of Reviews
, Apr. 1902. Tweton, “Theodore Roosevelt and the Arid Lands,” quotes
The Denver Post:
“For the happy termination of an endeavor which … appeared almost hopeless, the people of the West are indebted to President Roosevelt, without whose influence the passage of the bill would have been practically impossible.” For the subsequent application of the Reclamation Act, beginning with Nevada’s Truckee Dam (dedicated 17 June 1905), see Rowley,
Reclaiming the Arid West
, 1–6, and Hays,
Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency
, 15–26.
47
DURING THE NEXT
Beer,
Hanna
, 601; Bunau-Varilla,
Panama
, 247; McCullough,
Path Between the Seas
, 324; Miner,
Fight for the Panama Route
, 154–55. At least one bribe of ten thousand dollars in cash was offered to Senator Fred T. Dubois of Idaho, on behalf of certain “New York legal interests.” John T. Morgan to Henry Watterson, 10 Dec. 1903 (JTM).
48
By a margin
Review of Reviews
, Aug. 1902; TR,
Letters
, vol. 3, 284. For a full
account of the passage of the Panama Canal Act, see Miner,
Fight for the Panama Route
, 125–56.
49
ROOSEVELT’S EUPHORIA
Washington
Evening Star
, 21 June 1902;
Literary Digest
, 26 July 1902, qu.
Le Temps
(France); New York
Evening Post
, 14 June 1902. See also Healy,
United States in Cuba
, 201.
50
Somewhat cheered
Boston
Herald
, 26 June 1902; Morris,
Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
, 104.
51
Grief; disease; desire
EKR’s miscarriage seems to have occurred in mid-May 1902. Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 237. Strangely, however, TR was still boasting about her pregnancy at the end of that month. Possibly EKR kept the news from him. A year later, she miscarried again.
52
At the welcoming
The Boston Globe
, 25 June 1902.
53
“When we were”
Wister,
Roosevelt
, 7. Wister had just published his epochal Western novel,
The Virginian
. It was dedicated to TR.
