Theodore Rex (23 page)

Shortly afterward, all telecommunications with Washington were broken. A violent snowstorm descended over the Atlantic seaboard, coating the Northeastern grid with ice. Wires snapped by the thousand, hanging from their poles in tinkling festoons. By the time Hanna and Griggs reached the capital, Pennsylvania Avenue was muffled with snow.

BEFORE NIGHTFALL THE
following day, seven representatives of the House of Morgan had arrived in town, including Morgan himself. He marched through the Arlington Hotel’s slushy entrance under a testudo of umbrellas. A spokesman announced that the chairman had come south to dine with his old friend Senator Depew and a group of mutual acquaintances prominent in politics, finance, and industry. Morgan called this occasional fraternity the “Corsair Club.” The name, taken from his yacht, had waggish associations with piracy, not to mention his image as captain of the United States economy.

If the purpose of the dinner was convivial, it failed miserably. Henry Adams described the general mood as “black,” and reported that “Pierpont sulked like a child.” When, at ten o’clock, a telephone call from the President invited Depew to bring his guests around for a visit, Morgan had to be coaxed to go along. Thirteen Corsairs piled into a series of hacks and automobiles and drove four blocks through the still-falling snow. Roosevelt received them with polite formality. Responding in kind, they stayed off the subject of Northern Securities.

He was intelligent enough to know they came only because a presidential invitation could not be declined. Until forty-eight hours before, these men
had stood with him. Now
they stood shoulder to shoulder against him, legionnaires of the established economic order, bristling with wealth, courteously hostile behind their breastplates of boiled cotton. Depew. Morgan. Perkins. Rockefeller. Steele. Hanna. Cassatt. Their very names spelled power. So did that of Elihu Root—a Corsair too, and no longer Roosevelt’s automatic ally.

The Secretary of War was a bitter man that night. It was humiliating for him to have been surprised by Wednesday’s announcement. The knowledge that other Cabinet colleagues had been surprised too only emphasized Knox’s sudden ascendancy. Root was convinced that Roosevelt must have “some personal reason” for eschewing his counsel.

Either that, or as Henry Adams put it, “Theodore betrays his friends for his own ambition.”

SURE ENOUGH
, it was Knox, not Root, who sat at the President’s elbow when J. P. Morgan returned to the White House alone the next morning, Saturday, 22 February. Aware, perhaps, that lava was rolling his way, Roosevelt needed the protection of a cool, hard legal front.

There was something volcanic about Morgan. The hot glare and fiery complexion, flushing so deep that the engorged nose seemed about to burst, the smoldering cigar, the mountainous shoulders—merely to look at him was to register tremors.

Yet interlocutors soon discovered that Morgan’s sparks and smoke were a kind of screen, concealing someone essentially quiet and shy, almost clerical. As a youth, he had dreamed of becoming a professor of mathematics; he was equally attracted to the rituals of the Episcopal Church, in which he had served as a vestryman for forty years. But he was also the inheritor of a family bank, and had a lightning ability to figure large sums of money. These endowments, plus his involuntary power of domination, made him
de ipse
the nation’s financial leader. He sought relief from numbers by collecting indiscriminate quantities of great or ghastly art. His Madison Avenue library bulged with uncut volumes. Occasionally, in country homes, Morgan would fumble at a passing woman.

Whatever qualms the President may have had in granting an interview, he had little difficulty handling Morgan. Or at least Roosevelt chose not to remember any, when recounting the conversation afterward. Morgan had seemed less furious than puzzled. Why had the Administration not asked
him
to correct irregularities in the new trust’s charter?

Alone with Knox later, Roosevelt mused, “That is a most illuminating illustration of the Wall Street point of view.” Morgan could think of the President of the United States only as “a big rival operator” with whom to cut a deal.

THE HOUSE OF MORGAN
was reduced to pleading, in the weeks that followed, that its chairman be spared the indignity of public testimony. He was old; his honor was vital to the nation’s credit. Roosevelt asked Knox if it was necessary to include Morgan in the suit. “Well, Mr. President, if you direct me to leave his name out I will,” the Attorney General said. “But in that case I will not sign my name to the bill.”

Knox’s formal complaint, dated 10 March 1902, accordingly listed James J. Hill and J. Pierpont Morgan as defendants. E. H. Harriman, who stood to make more out of the merger than both principals, was granted technical anonymity as an “associate stockholder.” But Assistant Attorney General James M. Beck, assigned by Knox to brief the Eighth Circuit Court on the case, named Harriman as one of “the great triumvirate” seeking to impose upon the Northwest a monopoly “infinite in scope, perpetual in character.”

OF THE THREE DEFENDANTS
, Hill was the angriest and most determined to fight all the way to the Supreme Court. Morgan and Harriman suggested a settlement, in order to protect their other interests. But Hill insisted on contesting the government’s suit. “There is nothing in the operation of the Northern Securities Company that violates the Sherman Law or the laws of any other state.” The two railroads named by Knox had been cooperating amicably for twenty years. Indeed, in regions where they could have competed, the Great Northern and Northern Pacific had charged mostly identical rates. Was this the “restraint of trade” Roosevelt sought to prosecute? Hill was damned if he was going to dismantle the world’s greatest transport combination because of “political adventurers who have never done anything but pose and draw a salary.”

Roosevelt’s action won support from both sides of the political field alike, as a much-needed check on the ramifications of
U.S. v. E. C. Knight
. Liberals welcomed a blow struck by authority against monopoly. Conservatives were
confident that the Supreme Court would reaffirm that holding-company combinations were both legal and benign.

Roosevelt uttered no predictions and made no boasts. He accepted full responsibility for the suit, even excusing the original plaintiffs in Minnesota. “
I am rather inclined to think it was as much a surprise to them as to anyone.” He was content, after seizing public attention, to let
Northern Securities v. U.S
. have due process. The case was unlikely to reach the Supreme Court before the winter term of 1903–1904; time enough for trumpeting then, if he won. Until another large matter arose to challenge his powers, he could return to routine presidential affairs.

He pretended to be bored by the state visit of Prince Heinrich of Prussia (“I shall take him out to ride in the rain—and I hope it will rain like hell!”), but obviously enjoyed playing host amid pomp and ceremony. Prince Heinrich was the brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and an admiral in the German Navy, so Roosevelt was able to pump him on European politics and naval affairs. When a providential downpour came, he was touched by the efforts of “the wretched creature” to gallop at full speed behind him. Heinrich was rewarded with the most elaborate stag dinner ever seen in Washington.

Alice Roosevelt—debutante of the season, and glowing prettier by the day
as the richest bucks in town vied for her favor—attracted even more attention than the royal visitor. Gorgeous in white lace and “Alice blue” velvet, she smashed champagne over a new, American-built yacht, which the Prince had come to pick up for his brother. Heinrich, enchanted, returned home and recommended that Fraulein Alice be invited to visit the Kaiser’s court. But Roosevelt decided she should go to London instead, as his representative at King Edward VII’s coronation.

“ROOSEVELT … TOLD THE DISAPPOINTED GIRL
SHE WOULD HAVE TO STAY HOME.”
Father and daughter at the launching of the Kaiser’s yacht, 25 February 1902
(photo credit 5.1)

He regretted the impulse when a British newspaper counseled that Alice be treated as “the oldest daughter of an Emperor.” A Washington scandal sheet began to make arch references to “the Crown Prin—beg pardon—daughter of the President.” Roosevelt was annoyed by these intimations of antirepublicanism, and told the disappointed girl she would have to stay home.