Theodore Roosevelt and His Times: A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement

Roosevelt's most important single achievement as President of the United States was the building of the Panama Canal. The preliminary steps which he took in order to make its building possible have been, of all his executive acts, the most consistently and vigorously criticized.

It is not our purpose here to follow at length the history of American diplomatic relations with Colombia and Panama. We are primarily concerned with the part which Roosevelt played in certain international occurrences, of which the Panama incident was not the least interesting and significant. In after years Roosevelt said laconically, "I took Panama." In fact he did nothing of the sort. But it was like him to brush aside all technical defenses of any act of his and to meet his critics on their own ground. It was as though he said to them, "You roundly denounce me for what I did at the time of the revolution which established the Republic of Panama. You declare that my acts were contrary to international law and international morals. I have a splendid technical defense on the legal side; but I care little about technicalities when compared with reality. Let us admit that I did what you charge me with. I will prove to you that I was justified in so doing. I took Panama; but the taking was a righteous act."

Fourteen years after that event, in a speech which he made in Washington, Roosevelt expressed his dissatisfaction with the way in which President Wilson was conducting the Great War. He reverted to what he had done in relation to Panama and contrasted his action with the failure of the Wilson Administration to take prompt possession of two hundred locomotives which had been built in this country for the late Russian Government. This is what he said:

"What I think, of course, in my view of the proper governmental policy, should have been done was to take the two hundred locomotives and then discuss. That was the course that I followed, and to which I have ever since looked back with impenitent satisfaction, in reference to the Panama Canal. If you remember, Panama declared itself independent and wanted to complete the Panama Canal and opened negotiations with us. I had two courses open. I might have taken the matter under advisement and put it before the Senate, in which case we should have had a number of most able speeches on the subject. We would have had a number of very profound arguments, and they would have been going on now, and the Panama Canal would be in the dim future yet. We would have had half a century of discussion, and perhaps the Panama Canal. I preferred that we should have the Panama Canal first and the half century of discussion afterward. And now instead of discussing the canal before it was built, which would have been harmful, they merely discuss me—a discussion which I regard with benign interest."

The facts of the case are simple and in the main undisputed. Shortly after the inauguration of Roosevelt as President, a treaty was negotiated with Colombia for the building of a canal at Panama. It provided for the lease to the United States of a strip six miles wide across the Isthmus, and for the payment to Colombia of $10,000,000 down and $250,000 a year, beginning nine years later. The treaty was promptly ratified by the United States Senate. A special session of the Colombian Senate spent the summer marking time and adjourned after rejecting the treaty by a unanimous vote. The dominant motive for the rejection was greed. An attempt was first made by the dictatorial government that held the Colombian Congress in its mailed hand to extort a large payment from the French Canal Company, whose rights and property on the Isthmus were to be bought by the United States for $40,000,000. Then $15,000,000 instead of $10,000,000 was demanded from the United States. Finally an adroit and conscienceless scheme was invented by which the entire rights of the French Canal Company were to be stolen by the Colombian Government. This last plot, however, would involve a delay of a year or so. The treaty was therefore rejected in order to provide the necessary delay.

But the people of Panama wanted the Canal. They were tired of serving as the milch cow for the fattening of the Government at Bogota. So they quietly organized a revolution. It was a matter of common knowledge that it was coming. Roosevelt, as well as the rest of the world, knew it and, believing in the virtue of being wise in time, prepared for it. Several warships were dispatched to the Isthmus.

The revolution came off promptly as expected. It was bloodless, for the American naval forces, fulfilling the treaty obligations of the United States, prevented the Colombian troops on one side of the Isthmus from using the Panama Railroad to cross to the other side where the revolutionists were. So the revolutionists were undisturbed. A republic was immediately declared and immediately recognized by the United States. A treaty with the new Republic, which guaranteed its independence and secured the cession of a zone ten miles wide across the Isthmus, was drawn up inside of two weeks and ratified by both Senates within three months. Six weeks later an American commission was on the ground to plan the work of construction. The Canal was built. The "half century of discussion" which Roosevelt foresaw is now more than a third over, and the discussion shows no sign of lagging. But the Panama Canal is in use.

Was the President of the United States justified in preventing the Colombian Government from fighting on the Isthmus to put down the unanimous revolution of the people of Panama? That is precisely all that he did. He merely gave orders to the American admiral on the spot to "prevent the disembarkation of Colombian troops with hostile intent within the limits of the state of Panama." But that action was enough, for the Isthmus is separated from Colombia on the one hand by three hundred miles of sea, and on the other by leagues of pathless jungle.

Roosevelt himself has summed up the action of the United States in this way:

"From the beginning to the end our course was straightforward and in absolute accord with the highest of standards of international morality.... To have acted otherwise than I did would have been on my part betrayal of the interests of the United States, indifference to the interests of Panama, and recreancy to the interests of the world at large. Colombia had forfeited every claim to consideration; indeed, this is not stating the case strongly enough: she had so acted that yielding to her would have meant on our part that culpable form of weakness which stands on a level with wickedness.... We gave to the people of Panama, self-government, and freed them from subjection to alien oppressors. We did our best to get Colombia to let us treat her with more than generous justice; we exercised patience to beyond the verge of proper forbearance.... I deeply regretted, and now deeply regret, the fact that the Colombian Government rendered it imperative for me to take the action I took; but I had no alternative, consistent with the full performance of my duty to my own people, and to the nations of mankind."

The final verdict will be given only in another generation by the historian and by the world at large. But no portrait of Theodore Roosevelt, and no picture of his times, can be complete without the bold, firm outlines of his Panama policy set as near as may be in their proper perspective.

CHAPTER XII. THE TAFT ADMINISTRATION

In the evening of that election day in 1904 which saw Roosevelt made President in his own right, after three years of the Presidency given him by fate, he issued a brief statement, in which he said: "The wise custom which limits the President to two terms regards the substance and not the form, and under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination." From this determination, which in his mind related to a third consecutive term, and to nothing else, he never wavered. Four years later, in spite of a widespread demand that he should be a candidate to succeed himself, he used the great influence and prestige of his position as President and leader of his party to bring about the nomination of his friend and close associate, William Howard Taft. The choice received general approval from the Republican party and from the country at large, although up to the very moment of the nomination in the convention at Chicago there was no certainty that a successful effort to stampede the convention for Roosevelt would not be made by his more irreconcilable supporters.

Taft was elected by a huge popular plurality. His opponent was William Jennings Bryan, who was then making his third unsuccessful campaign for the Presidency. Taft's election, like his nomination, was assured by the unreserved and dynamic support accorded him by President Roosevelt. Taft, of course, was already an experienced statesman, high in the esteem of the nation for his public record as Federal judge, as the first civil Governor of the Philippines, and as Secretary of War in the Roosevelt Cabinet. There was every reason to predict for him a successful and effective Administration. His occupancy of the White House began under smiling skies. He had behind him a united party and a satisfied public opinion. Even his political opponents conceded that the country would be safe in his hands. It was expected that he would be conservatively progressive and progressively conservative. Everybody believed in him. Yet within a year of the day of his inauguration the President's popularity was sharply on the wane. Two years after his election the voters repudiated the party which he led. By the end of his Presidential term the career which had begun with such happy auguries had become a political tragedy. There were then those who recalled the words of the Roman historian, "All would have believed him capable of governing if only he had not come to govern."

It was not that the Taft Administration was barren of achievement. On the contrary, its record of accomplishment was substantial. Of two amendments to the Federal Constitution proposed by Congress, one was ratified by the requisite number of States before Taft went out of office, and the other was finally ratified less than a month after the close of his term. These were the amendment authorizing the imposition of a Federal income tax and that providing for the direct election of United States Senators. Two States were admitted to the Union during Taft's term of office, New Mexico and Arizona, the last Territories of the United States on the continent, except Alaska.

Other achievements of importance during Taft's Administration were the establishment of the parcels post and the postal savings banks; the requirement of publicity, through sworn statements of the candidates, for campaign contributions for the election of Senators and Representatives; the extension of the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission over telephone, telegraph, and cable lines; an act authorizing the President to withdraw public lands from entry for the purpose of conserving the natural resources which they may contain—something which Roosevelt had already done without specific statutory authorization; the establishment of a Commerce Court to hear appeals from decisions of the Interstate Commerce Commission; the appointment of a commission, headed by President Hadley of Yale, to investigate the subject of railway stock and bond issues, and to propose a law for the Federal supervision of such railway securities; the Mann "white slave" act, dealing with the transfer of women from one State to another for immoral purposes; the establishment of the Children's Bureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor; the empowering of the Interstate Commerce Commission to investigate all railway accidents; the creation of Forest Reserves in the White Mountains and in the southern Appalachians.

Taft's Administration was further marked, by economy in expenditure, by a considerable extension of the civil service law to cover positions in the executive departments hitherto free plunder for the spoilsmen, and by efforts on the part of the President to increase the efficiency and the economical administration of the public service.

But this good record of things achieved was not enough to gain for Mr. Taft popular approval. Items on the other side of the ledger were pointed out. Of these the three most conspicuous were the Payne-Aldrich tariff, the Ballinger-Pinchot controversy, and the insurgent movement in Congress.

The Republican party was returned to power in 1908, committed to a revision of the tariff. Though the party platform did not so state, this was generally interpreted as a pledge of revision downward. Taft made it clear during his campaign that such was his own reading of the party pledge. He said, for instance, "It is my judgment that there are many schedules of the tariff in which the rates are excessive, and there are a few in which the rates are not sufficient to fill the measure of conservative protection. It is my judgment that a revision of the tariff in accordance with the pledge of the platform, will be, on the whole, a substantial revision downward, though there probably will be a few exceptions in this regard." Five months after Taft's inauguration the Payne-Aldrich bill became law with his signature. In signing it the President said, "The bill is not a perfect bill or a complete compliance with the promises made, strictly interpreted"; but he further declared that he signed it because he believed it to be "the result of a sincere effort on the part of the Republican party to make downward revision."

This view was not shared by even all Republicans. Twenty of them in the House voted against the bill on its final passage, and seven of them in the Senate. They represented the Middle West and the new element and spirit in the Republican party. Their dissatisfaction with the performance of their party associates in Congress and in the White House was shared by their constituents and by many other Republicans throughout the country. A month after the signing of the tariff law, Taft made a speech at Winona, Minnesota, in support of Congressman James A. Tawney, the one Republican representative from Minnesota who had not voted against the bill. In the course of that speech he said; "This is the best tariff bill that the Republican party has ever passed, and, therefore, the best tariff bill that has been passed at all."

He justified Mr. Tawney's action in voting for the bill and his own in signing it on the ground that "the interests of the country, the interests of the party" required the sacrifice of the accomplishment of certain things in the revision of the tariff which had been hoped for, "in order to maintain party solidity," which he believed to be much more important than the reduction of rates in one or two schedules of the tariff.

A second disaster to the Taft Administration came in the famous Ballinger-Pinchot controversy. Louis R. Glavis, who had served as a special agent of the General Land Office to investigate alleged frauds in certain claims to coal lands in Alaska, accused Richard Ballinger, the Secretary of the Interior, of favoritism toward those who were attempting to get public lands fraudulently. The charges were vigorously supported by Mr. Pinchot, who broadened the accusation to cover a general indifference on the part of the Secretary of the Interior to the whole conservation movement. President Taft, however, completely exonerated Secretary Ballinger from blame and removed Glavis for "filing a disingenuous statement unjustly impeaching the official integrity of his superior officer." Later Pinchot was also dismissed from the service. The charges against Secretary Ballinger were investigated by a joint committee of Congress, a majority of which exonerated the accused Cabinet officer. Nevertheless the whole controversy, which raged with virulence for many months, convinced many ardent supporters of the conservation movement, and especially many admirers of Mr. Pinchot and of Roosevelt, that the Taft Administration at the best was possessed of little enthusiasm for conservation. There was a widespread belief, as well, that the President had handled the whole matter maladroitly and that in permitting himself to be driven to a point where he had to deprive the country of the services of Gifford Pinchot, the originator of the conservation movement, he had displayed unsound judgment and deplorable lack of administrative ability.

The first half of Mr. Taft's term was further marked by acute dissensions in the Republican ranks in Congress. Joseph G. Cannon was Speaker of the House, as he had been in three preceding Congresses. He was a reactionary Republican of the most pronounced type. Under his leadership the system of autocratic party control of legislation in the House had been developed to a high point of effectiveness. The Speaker's authority had become in practice almost unrestricted.

In the congressional session of 1909-10 a strong movement of insurgency arose within the Republican party in Congress against the control of the little band of leaders dominated by the Speaker. In March, 1910, the Republican Insurgents, forty in number, united with the Democratic minority to overrule a formal decision of the Speaker. A four days' parliamentary battle resulted, culminating in a reorganization of the all-powerful Rules Committee, with the Speaker no longer a member of it. The right of the Speaker to appoint this committee was also taken away. When the Democrats came into control of the House in 1911, they completed the dethronement of the Speaker by depriving him of the appointment of all committees.

The old system had not been without its advantages, when the power of the Speaker and his small group of associate party leaders was not abused. It at least concentrated responsibility in a few prominent members of the majority party. But it made it possible for these few men to perpetuate a machine and to ignore the desires of the rest of the party representatives and of the voters of the party throughout the country. The defeat of Cannonism put an end to the autocratic power of the Speaker and relegated him to the position of a mere presiding officer. It had also a wider significance, for it portended the division in the old Republican party out of which was to come the new Progressive party.

When the mid-point of the Taft Administration was reached, a practical test was given of the measure of popular approval which the President and his party associates had achieved. The congressional elections went decidedly against the Republicans. The Republican majority of forty-seven in the House was changed to a Democratic majority of fifty-four. The Republican majority in the Senate was cut down from twenty-eight to ten. Not only were the Democrats successful in this substantial degree, but many of the Western States elected Progressive Republicans instead of Republicans of the old type. During the last two years of his term, the President was consequently obliged to work with a Democratic House and with a Senate in which Democrats and Insurgent Republicans predominated over the old-line Republicans.

The second half of Taft's Presidency was productive of little but discord and dissatisfaction. The Democrats in power in the House were quite ready to harass the Republican President, especially in view of the approaching Presidential election. The Insurgents in House and Senate were not entirely unwilling to take a hand in the same game. Besides, they found themselves more and more in sincere disagreement with the President on matters of fundamental policy, though not one of them could fairly question his integrity of purpose, impugn his purity of character, or deny his charm of personality.

Three weeks after Taft's inauguration, Roosevelt sailed for Africa, to be gone for a year hunting big game. He went with a warm feeling of friendship and admiration for the man whom he had done so much to make President. He had high confidence that Taft would be successful in his great office. He had no reason to believe that any change would come in the friendship between them, which had been peculiarly intimate. From the steamer on which he sailed for Africa, he sent a long telegram of cordial and hearty good wishes to his successor in Washington.

The next year Roosevelt came back to the United States, after a triumphal tour of the capitals of Europe, to find his party disrupted and the progressive movement in danger of shipwreck. He had no intention of entering politics again. But he had no intention, either, of ceasing to champion the things in which he believed. This he made obvious, in his first speech after his return, to the cheering thousands who welcomed him at the Battery. He said:

"I have thoroughly enjoyed myself; and now I am more glad than I can say to get home, to be back in my own country, back among people I love. And I am ready and eager to do my part so far as I am able, in helping solve problems which must be solved, if we of this, the greatest democratic republic upon which the sun has ever shone, are to see its destinies rise to the high level of our hopes and its opportunities. This is the duty of every citizen, but is peculiarly my duty; for any man who has ever been honored by being made President of the United States is thereby forever rendered the debtor of the American people and is bound throughout his life to remember this, his prime obligation."

The welcome over, Roosevelt tried to take up the life of a private citizen. He had become Contributing Editor of The Outlook and had planned to give his energies largely to writing. But he was not to be let alone. The people who loved him demanded that they be permitted to see and to hear him. Those who were in the thick of the political fight on behalf of progress and righteousness called loudly to him for aid. Only a few days after Roosevelt had landed from Europe, Governor Hughes of New York met him at the Commencement exercises at Harvard and urged him to help in the fight which the Governor was then making for a direct primary law. Roosevelt did not wish to enter the lists again until he had had more time for orientation; but he always found it difficult to refuse a plea for help on behalf of a good cause. He therefore sent a vigorous telegram to the Republican legislators at Albany urging them to support Governor Hughes and to vote for the primary bill. But the appeal went in vain: the Legislature was too thoroughly boss-ridden. This telegram, however, sounded a warning to the usurpers in the house of the Republican Penelope that the fingers of the returned Odysseus had not lost their prowess with the heroic bow.

During the summer of 1910, Roosevelt made a trip to the West and in a speech at Ossawattomie, Kansas, set forth what came to be described as the New Nationalism. It was his draft of a platform, not for himself, but for the nation. A few fragments from that speech will suggest what Roosevelt was thinking about in those days when the Progressive party was stirring in the womb. "At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of free men to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.

"Every special interest is entitled to justice, but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office. The Constitution guarantees protection to property, and we must make that promise good. But it does not give the right of suffrage to any corporation.

"The absence of effective state and, especially, national restraint upon unfair money getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise.

"We are face to face with new conceptions of the relations of property to human welfare, chiefly because certain advocates of the rights of property as against the rights of men have been pushing their claims too far.

"The State must be made efficient for the work which concerns only the people of the State; and the nation for that which concerns all the people. There must remain no neutral ground to serve as a refuge for lawbreakers, and especially for lawbreakers of great wealth, who can hire the vulpine legal cunning which will teach them how to avoid both jurisdictions.

"I do not ask for overcentralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we work for what concerns our people as a whole.

"We must have the right kind of character—character that makes a man, first of all, a good man in the home, a good father, a good husband—that makes a man a good neighbor.... The prime problem of our nation is to get the right kind of good citizenship, and to get it, we must have progress, and our public men must be genuinely progressive.

"I stand for the Square Deal. But when I say that I am for the square deal I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service."

These generalizations Roosevelt accompanied by specific recommendations. They included proposals for publicity of corporate affairs; prohibition of the use of corporate funds for political purposes; governmental supervision of the capitalization of all corporations doing an interstate business; control and supervision of corporations and combinations controlling necessaries of life; holding the officers and directors of corporations personally liable when any corporation breaks the law; an expert tariff commission and revision of the tariff schedule by schedule; a graduated income tax and a graduated inheritance tax, increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate; conservation of natural resources and their use for the benefit of all rather than their monopolization for the benefit of the few; public accounting for all campaign funds before election; comprehensive workmen's compensation acts, state and national laws to regulate child labor and work for women, the enforcement of sanitary conditions for workers and the compulsory use of safety appliances in industry.

There was nothing in all these proposals that should have seemed revolutionary or extreme. But there was much that disturbed the reactionaries who were thinking primarily in terms of property and only belatedly or not at all of human rights. The Bourbons in the Republican party and their supporters among the special interests "viewed with alarm" this frank attack upon their intrenched privileges. The Progressives, however, welcomed with eagerness this robust leadership. The breach in the Republican party was widening with steadily accelerating speed.

In the fall of 1910 a new demand arose that Roosevelt should enter actively into politics. Though it came from his own State, he resisted it with energy and determination. Nevertheless the pressure from his close political associates in New York finally became too much for him, and he yielded. They wanted him to go as a delegate to the Republican State Convention at Saratoga and to be a candidate for Temporary Chairman of the Convention—the officer whose opening speech is traditionally presumed to sound the keynote of the campaign. Roosevelt went and, after a bitter fight with the reactionists in the party, led by William Barnes of Albany, was elected Temporary Chairman over Vice-President James S. Sherman. The keynote was sounded in no uncertain tones, while Mr. Barnes and his associates fidgeted and suffered.

Then came a Homeric conflict, with a dramatic climax. The reactionary gang did not know that it was beaten. Its members resisted stridently an attempt to write a direct primary plank into the party platform. They wished to rebuke Governor Hughes, who was as little to their liking as Roosevelt himself, and they did not want the direct primary. After speeches by young James Wadsworth, later United States Senator, Job Hedges, and Barnes himself, in which they bewailed the impending demise of representative government and the coming of mob rule, it was clear that the primary plank was defeated. Then rose Roosevelt. In a speech that lashed and flayed the forces of reaction and obscurantism, he demanded that the party stand by the right of the people to rule. Single-handed he drove a majority of the delegates into line. The plank was adopted. Thenceforward the convention was his. It selected, as candidate for Governor, Henry W. Stimson, who had been a Federal attorney in New York under Roosevelt and Secretary of War in Taft's Cabinet. When this victory had been won, Roosevelt threw himself into the campaign with his usual abandon and toured the State, making fighting speeches in scores of cities and towns. But in spite of Roosevelt's best efforts, Stimson was defeated.

All this active participation in local political conflicts seriously distressed many of Roosevelt's friends and associates. They felt that he was too big to fritter himself away on small matters from which he—and the cause whose great champion he was—had so little to gain and so much to lose. They wanted him to wait patiently for the moment of destiny which they felt sure would come. But it was never easy for Roosevelt to wait. It was the hardest thing in the world for him to decline an invitation to enter a fight—when the cause was a righteous one.

So the year 1911 passed by, with the Taft Administration steadily losing prestige, and the revolt of the Progressives within the Republican party continually gathering momentum. Then came 1912, the year of the Glorious Failure.

CHAPTER XIII. THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY

The Progressive party and the Progressive movement were two things. The one was born on a day, lived a stirring, strenuous span of life, suffered its fatal wound, lingered on for a few more years, and received its coup de grace. The other sprang like a great river system from a multitude of sources, flowed onward by a hundred channels, always converging and uniting, until a single mighty stream emerged to water and enrich and serve a broad country and a great people. The one was ephemeral, abortive—a failure. The other was permanent, creative—a triumph. The two were inseparable, each indispensable to the other. Just as the party would never have existed if there had been no movement, so the movement would not have attained such a surpassing measure of achievement so swiftly without the party.

The Progressive party came into full being at the convention held in Chicago on August 5, 1912 under dramatic circumstances. Every drama must have a beginning and this one had opened for the public when, on the 10th of February in the same year, the Republican Governors of West Virginia, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Michigan, Kansas, and Missouri addressed a letter to Roosevelt, in which they declared that, in considering what would best insure the continuation of the Republican party as a useful agency of good government, they had reached the conclusion that a large majority of the Republican voters of the country favored Roosevelt's nomination, and a large majority of the people favored his election as the next President. They asserted their belief that, in view of this public demand, he should soon declare whether, if the nomination came to him unsolicited and unsought, he would accept it. They concluded their request with this paragraph:

"In submitting this request we are not considering your personal interests. We do not regard it as proper to consider either the interest or the preference of any man as regards the nomination for the Presidency. We are expressing our sincere belief and best judgment as to what is demanded of you in the interests of the people as a whole. And we feel that you would be unresponsive to a plain public duty if you should decline to accept the nomination, coming as the voluntary expression of the wishes of a majority of the Republican voters of the United States, through the action of their delegates in the next National Convention."

The sincerity and whole-heartedness of the convictions here expressed are in no wise vitiated by the fact that the letter was not written until the seven Governors were assured what the answer to it would be. For the very beginning of our drama, then, we must go back a little farther to that day in late January of 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt himself came face to face with a momentous decision. On that day he definitely determined that his duty to the things in which he profoundly believed—and no less to the friends and associates who shared his beliefs—constrained him once more to enter the arena of political conflict and lead the fight.

Roosevelt had come to this conclusion with extreme reluctance. He had no illusions as to the probable effect upon his personal fortunes. Twice he had been President once by the hand of fate, once by a great popular vote. To be President again could add nothing to his prestige or fame; it could only subject him for four years to the dangerous vagaries of the unstable popular mood. He had nothing to gain for himself by entering the ring of political conflict again; the chances for personal loss were great. His enemies, his critics, and his political adversaries would have it that he was eaten up with ambition, that he came back from his African and European trip eager to thrust himself again into the limelight of national political life and to demand for himself again a great political prize. But his friends, his associates, and those who, knowing him at close range, understood him, realized that this was no picture of the truth. He accepted what hundreds of Progressive leaders and followers throughout the country—for the man in the ranks had as ready access to him as the most prominent leader, and received as warm consideration—asserted was his clear duty and obligation.

A letter which he had written two days before Christmas, 1911, shows unmistakably how his mind was working in those days of prologue to the great decision. The letter was entirely private, and was addressed to my father who was a publisher and a friend and not a politician. There is, therefore, no reason whatever why the letter should not be accepted as an accurate picture of Mr. Roosevelt's mind at that time: "Now for the message Harold gave me, that I should write you a little concerning political conditions. They are very, very mixed. Curiously enough, my article on the trusts was generally accepted as bringing me forward for the Presidential nomination. Evidently what really happened was that there had been a strong undercurrent of feeling about me, and that the talk concerning the article enabled this feeling to come to the surface. I do not think it amounts to anything. It merely means that a great many people do not get the leadership they are looking for from any of the prominent men in public life, and that under the circumstances they grasp at any one; and as my article on the McNamaras possessed at least the merit of being entirely clearcut and of showing that I knew my own mind and had definite views, a good many plain people turned longingly to me as a leader. Taft is very weak, but La Follette has not developed real strength east of the Mississippi River, excepting of course in Wisconsin. West of the River he has a large following, although there is a good deal of opposition to him even in States like Kansas, Washington, and California. East of the Mississippi, I believe he can only pick up a few delegates here and there. Taft will have most of the Southern delegates, he will have the officeholders, and also the tepid and acquiescent, rather than active, support of the ordinary people who do not feel very strongly one way or the other, and who think it is the usual thing to renominate a President. If there were a strong candidate against him, he would I believe be beaten, but there are plenty of men, many of the leaders not only here but in Texas, for instance, in Ohio, in New Hampshire and Illinois, who are against him, but who are even more against La Follette, and who regard themselves as limited to the alternative between the two. There is, of course, always the danger that there may be a movement for me, the danger coming partly because the men who may be candidates are very anxious that the ticket shall be strengthened and care nothing for the fate of the man who strengthens it, and partly because there is a good deal of honest feeling for me among plain simple people who wish leadership, but who will not accept leadership unless they believe it to be sincere, fearless, and intelligent. I most emphatically do not wish the nomination. Personally I should regard it as a calamity to be nominated. In the first place, I might very possibly be beaten, and in the next place, even if elected I should be confronted with almost impossible conditions out of which to make good results. In the tariff, for instance, I would have to face the fact that men would keep comparing what I did, not with what the Democrats would or could have done but with an ideal, or rather with a multitude of entirely separate and really incompatible ideals. I am not a candidate, I will never be a candidate; but I have to tell the La Follette men and the Taft men that while I am absolutely sincere in saying that I am not a candidate and do not wish the nomination, yet that I do not feel it would be right or proper for me to say that under no circumstances would I accept it if it came; because, while wildly improbable, it is yet possible that there might be a public demand which would present the matter to me in the light of a duty which I could not shirk. In other words, while I emphatically do not want office, and have not the slightest idea that any demand for me will come, yet if there were a real public demand that in the public interest I should do a given job, it MIGHT be that I would not feel like flinching from the task. However, this is all in the air, and I do not for one moment believe that it will be necessary for me even to consider the matter. As for the Democrats, they have their troubles too. Wilson, although still the strongest man the Democrats could nominate, is much weaker than he was. He has given a good many people a feeling that he is very ambitious and not entirely sincere, and his demand for the Carnegie pension created an unpleasant impression. Harmon is a good old solid Democrat, with the standards of political and commercial morality of twenty years ago, who would be eagerly welcomed by all the conservative crowd. Champ Clark is a good fellow, but impossible as President.

"I think a good deal will depend upon what this Congress does. Taft may redeem himself. He was fairly strong at the end of the last session, but went off lamentably on account of his wavering and shillyshallying on so many matters during his speaking trip. His speeches generally hurt him, and rarely benefit him. But it is possible that the Democrats in Congress may play the fool, and give him the chance to appear as the strong leader, the man who must be accepted to oppose them."

This was what Roosevelt at the end, of December sincerely believed would be the situation as time went on. But he underestimated the strength and the volume of the tide that was rising.

The crucial decision was made on the 18th of January. I was in the closest possible touch with Roosevelt in those pregnant days, and I know, as well as any but the man himself could know, how his mind was working. An entry in my diary on that date shows the origin of the letter of the seven governors:

"Senator Beveridge called on T. R. to urge him to make a public statement soon. T. R. impressed by his arguments and by letters just received from three Governors, Hadley, Glasscock, and Bass. Practically determined to ask these Governors, and Stubbs and Osborne, to send him a joint letter asking him to make a public statement to the effect that if there is a genuine popular demand for his nomination he will not refuse-in other words to say to him in a joint letter for publication just what they have each said to him in private letters. Such joint action would give him a proper reason—or occasion—for making a public declaration. T. R. telegraphed Frank Knox, Republican State Chairman of Michigan and former member of his regiment, to come down, with intention of asking him to see the various governors. H. H., at Ernest Abbott's suggestion, asked him not to make final decision till he has had conference—already arranged—with editorial staff. T. R. agrees, but the inevitableness of the matter is evident."

After that day, things moved rapidly. Two days later the diary contains this record: "Everett Colby, William Fellowes Morgan, and Mark Sullivan call on T. R. All inclined to agree that time for statement is practically here. T. R.—The time to use a man is when the people want to use him." M. S.—"The time to set a hen is when the hen wants to set." Frank Knox comes in response to telegram. Nat Wright also present at interview where Knox is informed of the job proposed for him. Gifford Pinchot also present at beginning of interview while T. R. tells how he views the situation, but leaves (at T. R.'s suggestion) before real business of conference begins. Plan outlined to Knox, who likes it, and subsequently, in H. H.'s office, draws up letter for Governors. Draft shown to T. R., who suggests a couple of added sentences emphasizing that the nomination must come as a real popular demand, and declaring that the Governors are taking their action not for his sake, but for the sake of the country. Knox takes copy of letter and starts for home, to go out to see Governors as soon as possible.

On the 22d of January the Conference with The Outlook editorial staff took place and is thus described in my diary:

"T. R. had long conference with entire staff. All except R. D. T. [Mr. Townsend, Managing Editor of The Outlook] and H. H. inclined to deprecate a public statement now. T. R.—'I have had all the honor the American public can give me. If I should be elected I would go back not so young as I once was, with all the first fine flavor gone, and take up the horrible task of going in and out, in and out, of the same hole over and over again. But I cannot decline the call. Too many of those who have fought with me the good fight for the things we believe in together, declare that at this critical moment I am the instrument that ought to be used to make it possible for me to refuse. I BELIEVE I SHALL BE BROKEN IN THE USING. But I cannot refuse to permit myself to be used. I am not going to get those good fellows out on the end of a limb and then saw off the limb.' R. D. T. suggested that it be said frankly that the Governors wrote the joint letter at T. R.'s request. T. R. accepted like a shot. Went into H. H.'s room, dictated two or three sentences to that effect, which H. H. later incorporated in letter. [This plan was later given up, I believe on the urging of some or all of the Governors involved.] T. R.—'I can't go on telling my friends in private letters what my position is, but asking them not to make it public, without seeming furtive.' In afternoon H. H. suggests that T. R. write first draft of his letter of reply soon as possible to give all possible time for consideration and revision. T. R. has two inspirations—to propose presidential primaries in order to be sure of popular demand, and to use statement made at Battery when he returned home from Europe."

The next day's entry reads as follows:

"Sent revised letter to Knox. T. R. said, "Not to make a public statement soon would be to violate my cardinal principle—never hit if you can help it, but when you have to, hit hard. NEVER hit soft. You'll never get any thanks for hitting soft." McHarg called with three men from St. Louis. T. R. said exactly the same thing as usual—he would never accept the nomination if it came as the result of an intrigue, only if it came as the result of a genuine and widespread popular demand. The thing he wants to be sure of is that there is this widespread popular demand that he "do a job," and that the demand is genuine."

Meanwhile Frank Knox was consulting the seven Governors, each one of whom was delighted to have an opportunity to say to Roosevelt in this formal, public way just what they had each said to him privately and forcefully. The letter was signed and delivered to T. R. On the 24th of February Roosevelt replied to the letter of the seven Governors in unequivocal terms, "I will accept the nomination for President if it is tendered to me, and I will adhere to this decision until—the convention has expressed its preference." He added the hope that so far as possible the people might be given the chance, through direct primaries, to record their wish as to who should be the nominee. A month later, in a great address at Carnegie Hall in New York, he gave voice publicly to the same thought that he had expressed to his friends in that editorial conference: "The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then 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 that the victory may be won. In the long fight for righteousness the watchword for all 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."

The decision once made, Roosevelt threw himself into the contest for delegates to the nominating convention with his unparalleled vigor and forcefulness. His main opponent was, of course, the man who had been his friend and associate and whom he had done more than any other single force to make President as his successor. William Howard Taft had the undivided support of the national party organization; but the Progressive Republicans the country over thronged to Roosevelt's support with wild enthusiasm. The campaign for the nomination quickly developed two aspects, one of which delighted every Progressive in the Republican party, the other of which grieved every one of Roosevelt's levelheaded friends. It became a clean-cut conflict between progress and reaction, between the interests of the people, both as rulers and as governed, and the special interests, political and business. But it also became a bitter conflict of personalities between the erstwhile friends. The breach between the two men was afterwards healed, but it was several years after the reek of the battle had drifted away before even formal relations were restored between them.

A complicating factor in the campaign was the candidacy of Senator La Follette of Wisconsin. In July, 1911, La Follette had begun, at the earnest solicitation of many Progressive leaders in Congress and out, an active campaign for the Republican nomination. Progressive organizations were perfected in numerous States and "in less than three months," as La Follette has written in his Autobiography, his candidacy "had taken on proportions which compelled recognition." Four months later a conference of some three hundred Progressives from thirty States, meeting in Chicago, declared that La Follette was, because of his record, the logical candidate for the Presidency. Following this conference he continued to campaign with increasing vigor, but concurrently the enthusiasm of some of his leading supporters began to cool and their support of his candidacy to weaken. Senator La Follette ascribes this effect to the surreptitious maneuvering of Roosevelt, whom he credits with an overwhelming appetite for another Presidential term, kept in check only by his fear that he could not be nominated or elected. But there is no evidence of any value whatever that Roosevelt was conducting underground operations or that he desired to be President again. The true explanation of the change in those Progressives who had favored the candidacy of La Follette and yet had gradually ceased to support him, is to be found in their growing conviction that Taft and the reactionary forces in the Republican party which he represented could be defeated only by one man—and that not the Senator from Wisconsin. In any event the La Follette candidacy rapidly declined until it ceased to be a serious element in the situation. Although the Senator, with characteristic consistency and pertinacity, stayed in the fight till the end, he entered the Convention with the delegates of but two States, his own Wisconsin and North Dakota, pledged to support him.

The pre-convention campaign was made unusually dramatic by the fact that, for the first time in the history of Presidential elections, the voters of thirteen States were privileged not only to select the delegates to the Convention by direct primary vote but to instruct them in the same way as to the candidate for whom they should cast their ballots. There were 388 such popularly instructed delegates from California, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. It was naturally in these States that the two candidates concentrated their campaigning efforts. The result of the selection of delegates and of the preferential vote in these States was the best possible evidence of the desire of the rank and file of the party as to the Presidential candidate. Of these 388 delegates, Senator La Follette secured 36; President Taft 71—28 in Georgia, 2 in Illinois, 18 in Massachusetts, 14 in Ohio, and 9 in Pennsylvania; and Roosevelt 281—26 in California, 56 in Illinois, 16 in Maryland, 18 in Massachusetts, 16 in Nebraska, 28 in New Jersey, 34 in Ohio, 10 in Oregon, 67 in Pennsylvania, and 10 in South Dakota. Roosevelt therefore, in those States where the voters could actually declare at primary elections which candidate they preferred, was the expressed choice of more than five times as many voters as Taft.

When the Republican convention met in Chicago an interesting and peculiar situation presented itself. There were 1078 seats in the Convention. Of the delegates elected to those seats Taft had committed to him the vast majority of the delegates from the States which have never cast an electoral vote for a Republican candidate for President since there was a Republican party. Roosevelt had in support of him the great majority of the delegates from the States which are normally Republican and which must be relied upon at election time if a Republican President is to be chosen. Of the 1078 seats more than 200 were contested. Aside from these contested seats, neither candidate had a majority of the delegates. The problem that confronted each side was to secure the filling of a sufficient number of the disputed seats with its retainers to insure a majority for its candidate. In the solution of this problem the Taft forces had one insuperable advantage. The temporary roll of a nominating convention is made up by the National Committee of the party. The Republican National Committee had been selected at the close of the last national convention four years before. It accordingly represented the party as it had then stood, regardless of the significant changes that three and a quarter years of Taft's Presidency had wrought in party opinion.

In the National Committee the Taft forces had a strength of more than two to one; and all but an insignificant number of the contests were decided out of hand in favor of Mr. Taft. The temporary roll of the Convention therefore showed a distinct majority against Roosevelt. From the fall of the gavel, the Roosevelt forces fought with vigor and determination for what they described as the "purging of the roll" of those Taft delegates whose names they declared had been placed upon it by fraud. But at every turn the force of numbers was against them; and the Taft majority which the National Committee had constituted in the Convention remained intact, an impregnable defense against the Progressive attack.

These preliminary engagements concerned with the determination of the final membership of the Convention had occupied several days. Meanwhile the temper of the Roosevelt delegates had burned hotter and hotter. Roosevelt was present, leading the fight in person—not, of course, on the floor of the Convention, to which he was not a delegate, but at headquarters in the Congress Hotel. There were not wanting in the Progressive forces counsels of moderation and compromise. It was suggested by those of less fiery mettle that harmony might be arrived at on the basis of the elimination of both Roosevelt and Taft and the selection of a candidate not unsatisfactory to either side. But Roosevelt, backed by the majority of the Progressive delegates, stood firm and immovable on the ground that the "roll must be purged" and that he would consent to no traffic with a Convention whose make-up contained delegates holding their seats by virtue of fraud. "Let them purge the roll," he declared again and again, "and I will accept any candidate the Convention may name." But the organization leaders knew that a yielding to this demand for a reconstitution of the personnel of the Convention would result in but one thing—the nomination for Roosevelt—and this was the one thing they were resolved not to permit.

As the hours of conflict and turmoil passed, there grew steadily and surely in the Roosevelt ranks a demand for a severance of relations with the fraudulent Convention and the formation of a new party devoted, without equivocation or compromise, to Progressive principles. A typical incident of these days of confusion and uncertainty was the drawing up of a declaration of purpose by a Progressive alternate from New Jersey, disgusted with the progress of the machine steam roller and disappointed at the delayed appearance of a positive Progressive programme of action. Circulated privately, with the knowledge and approval of Roosevelt, it was promptly signed by dozens of Progressive delegates. It read as follows:

"We, the undersigned, in the event that the Republican National Convention as at present constituted refuses to purge its roll of the delegates fraudulently placed upon it by the action of the majority of the Republican National Committee, pledge ourselves, as American citizens devoted to the progressive principles of genuine popular rule and social justice, to join in the organization of a new party founded upon those principles, under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt."

The first signer of the declaration was Governor Hiram W. Johnson of California, the second, Governor Robert S. Vessey of South Dakota, the third, Governor Joseph M. Carey of Wyoming, and farther down the list were the names of Gifford and Amos Pinchot, James R. Garfield, ex-Governor John Franklin Fort of New Jersey, with Everett Colby and George L. Record of the same State, Matthew Hale of Massachusetts, "Jack" Greenway of Arizona, Judge Ben B. Lindsey of Colorado, Medill McCormick of Illinois, George Rublee of New Hampshire, and Elon Huntington Hooker, of New York, who was to become the National Treasurer of the new party. The document was, of course, a purely informal assertion of purpose; but it was the first substantial straw to predict the whirlwind which the masters of the convention were to reap.

When at last it had become unmistakably clear that the Taft forces were and would remain to the end in control of the Convention, the Progressive delegates, with a few exceptions, united in dramatic action. Speaking for them with passion and intensity Henry J. Allen of Kansas announced their intention to participate no longer in the actions of a convention vitiated by fraud. The Progressive delegates would, he declared, remain in their places but they would neither vote nor take any part whatever in the proceedings. He then read, by permission of the Convention, a statement from Roosevelt, in which he pronounced the following indictment:

"The Convention has now declined to purge the roll of the fraudulent delegates placed thereon by the defunct National Committee, and the majority which has thus indorsed the fraud was made a majority only because it included the fraudulent delegates themselves who all sat as judges on one another's cases.... The Convention as now composed has no claim to represent the voters of the Republican party.... Any man nominated by the Convention as now constituted would merely be the beneficiary of this successful fraud; it would be deeply discreditable for any man to accept the Convention's nomination under these circumstances; and any man thus accepting it would have no claim to the support of any Republican on party grounds and would have forfeited the right to ask the support of any honest man of any party on moral grounds."

So while most of the Roosevelt delegates sat in ominous quiet and refused to vote, the Convention proceeded to nominate Taft for President by the following vote: Taft 561—21 votes more than a majority; Roosevelt 107; La Follette 41; Cummins 17; Hughes 2; absent 6; present and not voting 344.

Then the Taft delegates went home to meditate on the fight which they had won and the more portentous fight which they must wage in the coming months on a broader field. The Roosevelt delegates, on the other hand, went out to Orchestra Hall, and in an exalted mood of passionate devotion to their cause and their beloved leader proceeded to nominate Theodore Roosevelt for the Presidency and Hiram Johnson for the Vice-Presidency. A committee was sent to notify Roosevelt of the nomination and when he appeared in the hall all precedents of spontaneous enthusiasm were broken. This was no conventional—if the double entendre may be permitted—demonstration. It had rather the quality of religious exaltation.

Roosevelt made a short speech, in which he adjured his hearers to go to their several homes "to find out the sentiment of the people at home and then again come together, I suggest by mass convention, to nominate for the Presidency a Progressive on a Progressive platform that will enable us to appeal to Northerner and Southerner, Easterner and Westerner, Republican and Democrat alike, in the name of our common American citizenship. If you wish me to make the fight I will make it, even if only one State should support me."

Thus ended the first act in the drama. The second opened with the gathering of some two thousand men and women at Chicago on August 5, 1912. It was a unique gathering. Many of the delegates were women; one of the "keynote" speeches was delivered by Miss Jane Addams of Hull House. The whole tone and atmosphere of the occasion seemed religious rather than political. The old-timers among the delegates, who found themselves in the new party for diverse reasons, selfish, sincere, or mixed, must have felt astonishment at themselves as they stood and shouted out Onward Christian Soldiers as the battle-hymn of their new allegiance. The long address which Roosevelt made to the Convention he denominated his "Confession of Faith." The platform which the gathering adopted was entitled "A Contract with the People." The sessions of the Convention seethed with enthusiasm and burned hot with earnest devotion to high purpose. There could be no doubt in the mind of any but the most cynical of political reactionaries that here was the manifestation of a new and revivifying force to be reckoned with in the future development of American political life.

The platform adopted by the Progressive Convention was no less a novelty. Its very title—even the fact that it had a title marked it off from the pompous and shopworn documents emanating from the usual nominating Convention—declared a reversal of the time-honored view of a platform as, like that of a street-car, "something to get in on, not something to stand on." The delegates to that Convention were perfectly ready to have their party sued before the bar of public opinion for breach of contract if their candidates when elected did not do everything in their power to carry out the pledges of the platform. The planks of the platform grouped themselves into three main sections: political reforms, control of trusts and combinations, and measures of "social and industrial justice."

In the first section were included direct primaries, nation-wide preferential primaries for the selection of candidates for the Presidency, direct popular election of United States Senators, the short ballot, the initiative, referendum and recall, an easier method of amending the Federal constitution, woman suffrage, and the recall of judicial decisions in the form of a popular review of any decision annulling a law passed under the police power of the State.

The platform in the second place opposed vigorously the indiscriminate dissolution of trusts and combinations, on the ground that combination in the business field was not only inevitable but necessary and desirable for the promotion of national and international efficiency. It condemned the evils of inflated capitalization and unfair competition; and it proposed, in order to eliminate those evils while preserving the unquestioned advantages that flow from combination, the establishment of a strong Federal commission empowered and directed to maintain permanent active supervision over industrial corporations engaged in interstate commerce, doing for them what the Federal Government now does for the national banks and, through the Interstate Commerce Commission, for the transportation lines.

Finally in the field of social justice the platform pledged the party to the abolition of child labor, to minimum wage laws, the eight-hour day, publicity in regard to working conditions, compensation for industrial accidents, continuation schools for industrial education, and to legislation to prevent industrial accidents, occupational diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, and other injurious effects incident to modern industry.

To stand upon this platform and to carry out the terms of this "contract with the people," the Convention nominated without debate or dissent Theodore Roosevelt for President and Hiram W. Johnson of California for Vice-President. Governor Johnson was an appropriate running mate for Roosevelt. In his own State he had led one of the most virile and fast moving of the local Progressive movements. He burned with a white-hot enthusiasm for the democratic ideal and the rights of man as embodied in equality of opportunity, freedom of individual development, and protection from the "dark forces" of special privilege, political autocracy and concentrated wealth. He was a brilliant and fiery campaigner where his convictions were enlisted.

So passed the second act in the drama of the Progressive party.