Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City on 27 October 1858.
He admired his father as the best person he ever knew
because of his courage, gentleness, and unselfishness.
He did not tolerate his children being selfish, cruel, idle, cowardly, or untruthful.
His mother was from Georgia and supported the Confederacy.
His father did not join the Union Army, but he helped start an allotment system
that enabled Union soldiers to send pay to their families.
Theodore began suffering from asthma when he was four.
In 1863 his father hired a substitute to avoid conscription.
Theodore was taught by tutors, and he went to Europe with his parents when he was ten.
To improve his health he began lifting weights, and he took up boxing.
He considered wrestling more violent than boxing.
He also liked riding horses, walking, and climbing.
He practiced with a rifle.
In April 1869 his father helped establish the American Museum of Natural History.
They went to Europe again, and Theodore took long walks in the Alps.
He had trouble seeing until he was given spectacles before his trip to Europe in 1872.
On the Nile River in Egypt he collected birds, shooting nearly 200.
He spent five months with a family in Dresden and learned some German.
He admired Germans for their hard work, duty, and interest in literature and science.
Before going to college he taught a mission class for three years.
He studied and got into Harvard in the fall of 1876.
He wanted to be a scientist like John James Audubon.
President Hayes nominated his father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., to be the
Collector of Customs at the Port of New York; but the powerful
Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York resented the snub and delayed
the process until the Senate rejected Roosevelt in December.
Two days later his father collapsed, and he died of stomach cancer on 9 February 1878.
Theodore inherited $125,000 which gave him about $8,000 a year.
On 22 March 1879 he weighed 135 pounds and fought a semifinal bout in the
Harvard Athletic Association’s lightweight boxing championship and lost but did not give up.
Roosevelt at Harvard studied mostly sciences and languages.
He excelled in German and took vertebrate physiology from William James.
He graduated magna cum laude on 30 June 1880 ranked 21 in his class of 177,
and his senior thesis was “The Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women Before the Law.”
That summer he went hunting with his brother Elliott.
He married Alice Lee on October 27 in a Unitarian Church.
He entered the Columbia Law School,
and he joined a Republican Association in New York City.
In his Autobiography he later wrote, “Some of the teaching of the law-books
and of the classroom seemed to me to be against justice.”1
He and Alice left for Europe on 12 May 1881 and returned on October 2.
Roosevelt was nominated for the New York Assembly from the wealthiest district,
and he easily defeated the Democrat on November 8.
On December 27 the New York Times exposed Jay Gould’s acquisition of the
Manhattan Elevated Railroad and accused him of depressing its stock before his purchase.
Roosevelt became concerned about the corrupt politicians who were called
the “Black Horse Cavalry” because they traded political favors for money.
The wealthy Gould manipulated the market to double the stock price,
and then his allies amended a bill to reduce taxes on the elevated line by a third.
Tammany Democrat Mike Costello opposed the corruption and
began a filibuster and was arrested and removed from the chamber.
At that moment Roosevelt rushed in and continued speaking.
Amidst the chaos the Speaker pronounced the measure passed.
Later more discussion persuaded Gov. Alonzo Cornell to veto the bill.
On 29 March 1882 Roosevelt demanded an investigation of the
New York Supreme Court Judge T. R. Westbrook and Attorney General Hamilton Ward.
They debated his resolution on April 5, and one week later
the Assembly voted 104 to 6 for the investigation.
The Judiciary Committee was to make its report on May 31,
but early that morning bribes of $2,500 each persuaded committee members
to withdraw their approval from the majority report.
The chairman said that Westbrook was only guilty of “excessive zeal”
to save the Manhattan Elevated Railroad.
The Assembly voted 77 to 35 to accept the report, and they adjourned on June 2.
Roosevelt in October helped to organize the City Reform Club in Manhattan.
In his Autobiography he wrote about what he learned during his early period in politics.
I became so impressed with the virtue
of complete independence that I proceeded to act
on each case purely as I personally viewed it, without
paying any heed to the principles and prejudices of others.
The result was that I speedily and deservedly
lost all power of accomplishing anything at all;
and I thereby learned the invaluable lesson that
in the practical activities of life no man can render
the highest service unless he can act in combination
with his fellows, which means a certain amount
of give and take between him and them.2
Roosevelt’s The Naval War of 1812 got good reviews, and in 1886
a special order put at least one copy on every US Navy ship.
In August 1882 he joined the New York National Guard as a second lieutenant,
and he was promoted to captain in February 1883.
The New York Assembly met on 2 January 1883,
and the minority Republicans elected Roosevelt their leader.
He worked with Gov. Grover Cleveland on civil service reform.
Roosevelt criticized Jay Gould and the “wealthy criminal class.”
In September he went to the Dakota Badlands and invested $14,000
in two cattle-ranches by the Little Missouri River.
There he had a “hardy life with horse and rifle.”
He also worked as a deputy sheriff.
In November he was re-elected to the Assembly.
The new Assembly session began on 1 January 1884,
and Roosevelt investigated corruption.
On 12 February 1884 his wife Alice gave birth to a daughter;
but two days later both his mother and his wife died.
In his diary he wrote, “The light has gone out of my life.”
Roosevelt because of health issues supported Samuel Gompers
in his effort to ban work in the tenements.
At this time Roosevelt was skeptical of government helping people,
and he opposed a pay increase for firemen and pensions for teachers.
He was elected as an at-large delegate to the 1884 National Republican Convention.
He considered James Blaine dishonest and thought President Arthur was even worse.
He became friends with Henry Cabot Lodge.
At the Convention in Chicago on June 3 he seconded Lodge’s nomination
of the black John R. Lynch of Mississippi who was anti-machine
and was elected temporary chairman.
They supported for President Vermont’s black Senator George Edmunds
who was nominated by Gov. John Long of Massachusetts.
Edmunds was third in the voting behind Blaine and Arthur, and Blaine was nominated
on the fourth ballot; but he lost the election to the Democrats’ Grover Cleveland.
Roosevelt criticized Gov. Cleveland for having vetoed a recent reform bill.
Lodge was running for Congress, and Roosevelt campaigned for him in Massachusetts;
but the incumbent Democrat Rep. Lovering defeated Lodge by less than one percent.
Roosevelt in late July began building a house on his ranch in the Dakota Badlands.
In June 1885 he returned to New York and stayed for eight weeks with his sister Anna
and his daughter Alice at his new home in Oyster Bay he had built for $45,000.
His Hunting Trips of a Ranchman was published in July.
He became secretly engaged to his childhood friend Edith Carow on November 17.
In the Badlands the Deputy Sheriff Roosevelt and two ranch hands went after
Redhead Finnegan and the gunmen Burnsted and Pfaffenbach for horse-stealing,
and they pursued them and on the Little Missouri River from 30 March 1886
to April 11 when they captured the three thieves.
Roosevelt withdrew the charge against Pfaffenbach, and he was present in August
when Finnegan and Burnsted were sentenced to three years in prison.
Roosevelt had sponsored a bill in the New York Assembly
to give the Mayor of New York City more authority.
The lawyer Elihu Root promoted Roosevelt, and Republicans nominated him
on October 15 as a candidate for Mayor of New York.
An early poll reported by the New York Tribune showed that he was leading,
but on October 31 the Star reported that President Cleveland,
after he vetoed Roosevelt’s Tenure of Office Bill, said,
“Of all the defective and shabby legislation which has been presented to me,
this is the worst and the most inexcusable.”3
The New York World reprinted it the next day.
In the election on November 2 Roosevelt came in third behind
the Democrat Abram Hewitt and the United Labor candidate Henry George.
Roosevelt married Edith Carow on 2 December 1886,
and they traveled to Italy, France, and London.
In April 1887 he went to the Badlands to try to save his dying cattle,
and he ended up losing $20,000.
He published his Life of Thomas Hart Benton.
He also wrote Essays on Practical Politics and Gouverneur Morris:
The Study of His Life and Work, and they were published in 1888.
In April 1889 President Benjamin Harrison appointed Roosevelt
one of three members of the US Civil Service Commission.
Even though it paid only $3,500 a year, he accepted and began on May 13.
He insisted on enforcing the laws.
By then the Republican administration had replaced many Democrats in Postal Service jobs.
Roosevelt’s mandate only covered 28,000 of the 140,000 jobs in that department.
On May 20 he began examining the New York Custom House,
and he recommended dismissing three officials.
The other two commissioners, Charles Lyman and Hugh Thompson,
were older and let him lead, and in June they went to the Great Lakes post offices.
At Milwaukee the superintendent Hamilton Shidy, testified that Postmaster
George H. Paul gave lucrative post office jobs to “whomever he chose,”
and he ordered Shidy to make the list appear that they passed examinations.
Roosevelt advised the removal of Paul.
On July 28 the ex-postmaster Frank Hatton, who edited the Washington Post
and hated civil service reform, began a series of attacks on Roosevelt.
President Harrison did not dismiss Paul, but he accepted his resignation.
The frustrated Roosevelt decided to go west and hunt bear.
His first two volumes on The Winning of the West,
which described the period from 1769 to 1783, came out in June.
In the fall he rented a house in Washington DC where he could be near his friends
Henry Cabot
Lodge, John Hay, Henry Adams,
and the Speaker of the House Thomas Reed.
His family joined him there at the end of the year.
In the 1890 elections Republicans lost 93 seats
in the House of Representatives and their majority.
In both houses of Congress the spoils politicians had a majority,
and on 27 January 1891 the House Committee on Reform in the Civil Service
was ordered to conduct an investigation led by the outgoing Rep. Hamilton Ewart
of South Carolina and the prosecutor Frank Hatton as his assistant.
Roosevelt welcomed the probe and actively defended the Civil Service Commission
and his own actions in the hearings that began on February 19 with 12 charges.
On June 13 the committee’s report stated, “The public service has been
greatly benefitted, and the law, on the whole, well-executed.”4
Roosevelt in May had read and enthusiastically agreed with
The Influence of Sea Power Upon History by Alfred Thayer Mahan
that advocated continuous growth of the United States Navy.
Roosevelt published his History of the City of New York
and the 146-page Report of Commissioner Roosevelt Concerning
Political Assessments and the Use of Official Influence to
Control Elections in the Federal Offices at Baltimore, Maryland.
He yielded to the advice of commissioners Lyman and Thompson
to release it during the summer when it would arouse less resistance.
On 8 March 1892 Roosevelt went to New York for the executive meeting
of the City Civil Service Reform Association, and he accused
Postmaster General John Wanamaker and President Harrison of obstructing justice.
Carl Schurz suggested the House committee ask why 25 federal employees
advised to be dismissed in July 1891 were still getting their pay in March 1892.
Roosevelt visited Indian reservations and was upset by the wretchedness at Pine Ridge.
In a speech on civil service reform he said, “To the Indians the workings
of the spoils system at the agencies is a curse and an outrage.”5
In February 1895 revolutionaries in Cuba declared war on Spanish colonialism,
and expansionists in Washington began discussing how to support Cuban independence.
Roosevelt wrote to New York’s Gov. Levi Morton asking that
if there is a war against Spain, that he be included in any regiment sent out
by the state because he must have a commission in the force going to Cuba.
Roosevelt and Cabot Lodge co-authored Hero Tales From American History.
Their heroes included George Washington, Daniel Boone,
George Rogers Clark, Gouverneur Morris, John Quincy Adams,
Frances Parkman, Stonewall Jackson, General Grant, and Abraham Lincoln.
Roosevelt at the end of March expressed a desire to be
one of the four New York Police Commissioners.
On April 3 he said he would accept, and his appointment was confirmed on April 17.
President Cleveland had kept him on in his Civil Service position,
and in his letter of resignation Roosevelt reported to him,
“Since you yourself took office this time nearly six thousand positions
have been put into the classified service.”6
When the New York City’s Board of Police Commissioners met,
they elected Roosevelt their president.
A Fusion Party had elected Mayor William Strong
who provided a break from Tammany Hall politics.
Roosevelt moved against corrupt Police Chief Thomas Byrnes, and he resigned
on May 28 followed by the Inspector “Clubber” Williams in that last week of May.
New York’s Sunday Excise Law banned selling alcohol on Sundays,
and in 1892 the Democrats in the legislature reaffirmed the law.
On 10 June 1895 Roosevelt directed his officers to enforce rigidly
the closing of saloons from midnight Saturday for 24 hours.
On July 16 he spoke to German-Americans of the Good Government Club and said,
Where justice is bought,
where favor is the price of money or political influence,
the rich man held his own
and the poor man went to the wall.
Now all are treated exactly alike.7
Roosevelt became good friends with the journalist Lincoln Steffens
and the reformer Jacob Riis.
They wondered if the president of the Police Board was working
to become the US President, and Roosevelt said,
Never, never, you must never either of you remind
a man at work on a political job that he may be President.
It almost always kills him politically.
He loses his nerve; he can’t do his work;
he gives up the very traits that are making him a possibility.
I, for instance, I am going to do great things here,
hard things that require all the courage, ability,
work that I am capable of….
I won’t let myself think of it; I must not, because if I do,
I will begin to work for it, I’ll be careful, calculating,
cautious in word and act, and so—I’ll beat myself. See?8
Roosevelt published “The Enforcement of the Law”
in the September 1895 Forum, writing,
On entering office we found, what indeed had long been
a matter of common notoriety, that various laws,
and notably the Excise Law, were enforced rigidly
against people who had no political pull,
but were not enforced at all against the men
who had a political pull, or who possessed sufficient means
to buy off the high officials who controlled,
or had influence in, the Police Department.
All that we did was to enforce the laws,
not against some wrongdoers,
but honestly and impartially against all wrongdoers.9
While he was president of the Police Board for nearly two years,
he increased the law-enforcement by 1,600 men who were more qualified.
By keeping men on their beats he improved discipline, and crime decreased.
He introduced the first bicycle squad that was adopted in other places.
He provided New York City with an honest election,
and he got rid of much corruption by removing venal officers.
He lowered the maximum age required,
and he used the civil service reform of written examinations.
About a hundred of the worst tenement slums were closed.
On 2 January 1896 Roosevelt supported President Cleveland’s asking
for Congress to support the US mediation in a dispute between Venezuela
and British Guiana because he favored supporting the Monroe Doctrine.
He wrote, “The Monroe Doctrine forbids us to acquiesce in any territorial
aggrandizement by a European power on American soil
at the expense of an American state.”10
On 6 April 1897 President McKinley nominated Theodore Roosevelt
to be Assistant Secretary of the Navy with a salary of $4,500 a year
under the new Navy Secretary John Long.
Roosevelt began working on April 19, and in a memorandum on
the preparation of the fleet that he wrote for McKinley one week later
he included four warnings of “trouble with Cuba.”
On June 2 he spoke to the graduates of the Naval War College
at Newport, Rhode Island agreeing with George Washington who said,
“To be prepared for war is the most effectual means to promote peace.”
Roosevelt said, “We need a large navy, a full proportion
of powerful battleships able to meet those of any other nation.”
He argued that keeping foreign navies out of the western hemisphere
would reduce
the chance of an unnecessary war,
and that the US force would be able to win a necessary war.
During his speech he used the word “war” 62 times.
He also said,
All the great masterful races have been fighting races;
and the minute that a race loses the hard fighting virtues,
then … it has lost its proud right
to stand as the equal of the best....
Cowardice in a race, as in an individual,
is the unpardonable sin….
Better a thousand times err on the side of over-readiness
to fight, than to err on the side of tame submission to injury,
or cold-blooded indifference to the misery of the oppressed.
No triumph of peace is quite so great
as the supreme triumphs of war….
It may be that at some time in the dim future of the race
the need of war will vanish; but that time is yet ages distant.
As yet no nation can hold its place in the world,
or can do any work really worth doing, unless it stands
ready to guard its rights with an armed hand….
It is too late to prepare for war
when the time for peace has passed….
We should have to build, not merely the weapons we need,
but the plant with which to make them
in any large quantity….
Since the change in military conditions in modern times,
there has never been an instance in which a war
between two nations has lasted more than about two years.
In most recent wars the operations of the first ninety days
have decided the results of the conflict….
Diplomacy is utterly useless
when there is no force behind it;
the diplomat is the servant, not the master of the soldier….
There are higher things in this life
than the soft and easy enjoyment of material comfort.
It is through strife, or the readiness for strife,
that a nation must win greatness.
We ask for a great navy, partly because we feel that
no national life is worth having if the nation is not willing,
when the need shall arise,
to stake everything on the supreme arbitrament of war, and
to pour out its blood, its treasure, and its tears like water,
rather than submit to the loss of honor and renown.11
The entirety of this speech was printed in major newspapers
across the nation with sensational results.
On May 3 Roosevelt had written to Alfred Thayer Mahan
who wrote two books on the The Influence of Sea Power:
This letter must, of course, be considered
as entirely confidential, because in my position I am merely
carrying out the policy of the secretary and the President.
I suppose I need not tell you that as regards Hawaii
I take your views absolutely,
as indeed I do on foreign policy generally.
If I had my way we would annex those islands tomorrow.
If that is impossible
I would establish a protectorate over them.12
The Assistant Secretary of State William Day with support from
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and other expansionists persuaded
President William McKinley to approve the annexation of Hawaii on June 16.
The next morning the Navy Secretary John Davis Long went on a two-week vacation.
While he was gone, Roosevelt prepared a new war plan that was completed
by June 30 and prepared for a war against Spain to liberate Cuba.
The US Navy was to attack the Philippine Islands and perhaps even Spain in Europe.
On September 27 Roosevelt learned that Michigan’s Senator Zach Chandler
was advising Long to put Commodore John A. Howell in command of the Asiatic Station.
Roosevelt wanted Commodore George Dewey, and he got Senator Redfield Proctor
of Vermont to persuade McKinley to appoint Dewey instead.
Before Long returned, Roosevelt urged the construction of 6 battleships,
6 large cruisers, 75 torpedo-boats, 4 dry docks, and 95 rapid-fire guns along with
9,000 armor-piercing projectiles and 2 million pounds of smokeless gunpowder.
In 1897 he published American Ideals and Other Essays.
Roosevelt was pleased that the battleship Maine was sent to Havana Harbor
where it arrived on 25 January 1898.
On the night of February 15 an explosion on the USS Maine
caused the ship to sink as 262 men died.
Roosevelt soon called it “an act of dirty treachery on the part of the Spaniards.”13
When Navy Secretary Long left for the afternoon on February 25,
Roosevelt sent the following telegram to:
Dewey, Hong Kong: ORDER THE SQUADRON,
EXCEPT THE MONOCACY, TO HONG KONG.
KEEP FULL OF COAL.
IN THE EVENT OF DECLARATION OF WAR BY SPAIN,
YOUR DUTY WILL BE TO SEE THAT THE SPANISH
SQUADRON DOES NOT LEAVE THE ASIATIC COAST,
AND THEN OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS
IN PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.
KEEP OLYMPIA UNTIL FURTHER ORDERS.
Roosevelt14
He also alerted all other commanders to “Keep full of coal.”
After Congress appropriated $50 million for the military, Roosevelt negotiated
with the financier Charles R. Flint to buy the Brazilian ship Nictheroy for $500,000.
On March 28 Roosevelt sent a memo to Long that a flying machine built
by Samuel Langley could be used in a war, and that year Langley would get $50,000
from the War Department and $20,000 from the Smithsonian to develop his “Aerodrome.”
While McKinley was preparing to declare war against Spain in early April,
Roosevelt said, “McKinley has no more backbone than a chocolate éclair.”15
Roosevelt was looking for a fighting commission in the army
after having “the Navy in good shape,” and he managed
to be appointed a Lt. Col. under Col. Leonard Wood.
On May 1 Commodore Dewey’s force destroyed
Spain’s Asiatic Squadron in Manila Harbor.
Roosevelt recruited volunteers for what he called the “Rough Riders”
from Harvard and other colleges.
They gathered in San Antonio, Texas.
Men were drawn more to the ambitious Roosevelt because they noticed that
Wood often asked for advice but rarely sought information
while Roosevelt sought information but never advice.
On May 29 they loaded 1,200 horses and mules on seven trains
that took them in four days nearly to Tampa, Florida.
They rode horses for the last six miles.
A fleet of ships carried them to the southern coast of Cuba,
and on June 22 they debarked at Daiquirí and marched to Siboney.
Col. Wood’s Rough Riders took a trail at dawn on June 24,
and in the battle of Las Guasimas they had to overcome Spanish snipers
to attack entrenched Spaniards on a ridge.
The Americans with some Cuban rebels fought under General Joseph Wheeler
and had 1,764 men against 1,500 Spanish soldiers.
The allies with only one field gun attacked the Spaniards who had two mountain guns.
The Spaniards fled to Santiago.
The American side had 17 killed and 52 wounded
while the Spanish had only 21 casualties.
On June 30 Wood was promoted to brigadier general,
and Roosevelt became a regimental commander.
General William Rufus Shafter led 8,412 men with 4 Gatling guns toward Santiago on
July 1 while Roosevelt led the Rough Riders in attacks on Kettle Hill and San Juan Hill.
They defeated 521 Spaniards, though the
Americans
had more men killed, wounded, and missing.
The Rough Riders had 89 casualties.
Roosevelt at Santiago spent $5,000 of his own money
to make sure his men had good food and medicine.
They suffered from malaria, and on August 3 he wrote a petition
demanding they be sent to the Northern coast of the United States
lest they be destroyed by yellow fever.
On August 15 they reached Montauk on Long Island.
President McKinley came there and shook hands with the popular hero Roosevelt.
The Republican Governor Frank Black of New York was tarnished by a scandal,
and even Tom Platt agreed to support Roosevelt for governor.
He had declared he was a legal resident of Washington since October 1897
which enabled him to save $50,000 in taxes.
Yet the New York Constitution required candidates
to reside continuously in New York for five years prior to nomination.
He consulted his lawyers Joseph Choate and Elihu Root,
and no one accused him of wrong-doing.
On October 3 Roosevelt sent a check for $995 to pay his New York City taxes.
Republicans and Independents nominated Roosevelt,
and he defeated the Democratic candidate, Judge August van Wyck by 17,794 votes.
On 1 January 1899 Theodore Roosevelt became Governor of New York.
At midnight he had to break glass to get into the executive mansion
because servants had locked the doors.
New York’s US Senator Thomas Platt wanted to control Roosevelt
who found ways to come to terms with him.
In his first annual message on January 2 Gov. Roosevelt said
he would be “an independent organization man of the best type.”
He declined to appoint Platt’s choice of Francis J. Hendricks
as the Superintendent of Public Works.
Roosevelt said he liked Hendricks,
But he came from a city along the line of the Canal, so that
I did not think it best that he should be appointed anyhow;
and moreover what was far more important, it was necessary
to have it understood at the outset that the Administration
was my Administration and no one else's but mine.
So I told the Senator very politely that I was sorry,
but that I could not appoint his man.
This produced an explosion, but I declined to lose my temper,
merely repeating that I must decline to accept any man chosen for me,
and that I must choose the man myself.
Although I was very polite, I was also firm,
and Mr. Platt and his friends finally abandoned their position.16
He gave Platt four names he would accept,
and Platt chose Col. John Nelson Partridge on January 13.
Roosevelt spent 15 minutes twice a day answering questions by reporters.
In his Autobiography he wrote,
At that time neither the parties nor the public
had any realization that publicity was necessary,
or any adequate understanding of the dangers
of the “invisible empire”
which throve by what was done in secrecy.”17
In the first seven years of the 1890s there had been 156 industrial mergers in the
United States, and in 1898 the $900 million of capital incorporated set a new record.
On March 18 Roosevelt announced that he wanted a system
to tax corporations on the public franchises they controlled.
Platt demanded a joint legislative committee to investigate the issue and then report
in 1900, and Roosevelt agreed; but on April 7 he said he would sign Senator
John Ford’s Franchise Bill if it passed which it did with amendments on May 27.
Roosevelt considered it “the most important law
passed in recent times by any State Legislature.”
On May 2 he had signed the Hallock Bird Protection Bill
that outlawed killing and selling nongame birds for commercial purposes.
He hired scientists to work for New York’s Fisheries, Game, and Forest Commission.
On June 29 he announced that he was not a candidate for President,
and he endorsed President McKinley.
Roosevelt wrote a short biography of Oliver Cromwell
in one month and published it in August.
In a letter he wrote about Cromwell,
The more I have studied Cromwell, the more I have
grown to admire him, and yet the more I have felt that
his making himself a dictator was unnecessary
and destroyed the possibility of making the effects
of that particular revolution permanent.18
That summer Roosevelt published The Rough Riders.
Roosevelt had helped Governor Cleveland pass a Civil Service law in 1883,
but it was repealed in 1897.
He managed to get a Civil Service Act that was
more advanced than that of any other state.
Gov. Roosevelt signed bills that improved working conditions in tenement sweatshops,
improved factory inspections, limited working hours by women and children,
and put state workers on an eight-hour day.
On 28 September 1899 Gov. Roosevelt led a parade in New York City
that included Admiral Dewey, President McKinley,
Senator Mark Hanna, and 35,000 marchers.
Vice President Hobart died on November 21.
Gov. Roosevelt in his annual message in December asked for more
public control over public utilities that were acquiring wealth immorally,
and he wanted lumber laws altered to prohibit dumping wood-dyes,
sawdust, and other industrial products in Adirondack streams.
He asked for a forest system conducted by scientific principles.
He pleaded for protecting birds, especially songbirds.
He wanted to dismiss the Superintendent of Insurance Louis F. Payn
who had been loaned $435,000, and he ordered an investigation.
On 20 January 1900 Tom Platt told Roosevelt not to fire Payn.
Roosevelt asked Platt to find a replacement,
or he would make his own choice which turned out to be Hendricks.
Platt announced that in his opinion Roosevelt “ought to take
the Vice-Presidency both for National and State reasons.”19
On March 2 Orville Platt’s amendment defined the withdrawal of US troops
but also authorized the United States to intervene in Cuba
if requested by Cuban authorities, and this was put in the Cuba constitution.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge urged Roosevelt to run for Vice President,
and newspapers began suggesting that.
McKinley appointed Lodge the chairman of the Republican Convention.
Roosevelt was not sure he wanted to be Vice President,
and he asked to be re-nominated as Governor.
On April 17 he was elected as a New York delegate-at-large
to the convention in Philadelphia.
On May 11 President McKinley gave a dinner in honor of Roosevelt.
Yet he complained when he heard that McKinley
and his advisors did not want him to run.
Then Roosevelt said he would accept, if the Convention wanted him.
When he arrived in Philadelphia, he was cheered.
While seconding the nomination of McKinley, Roosevelt said,
We stand on the threshold of a new century
big with the fate of mighty nations.
It rests with us now to decide whether in the opening years
of that century we shall march to fresh triumphs or whether
at the outset we shall cripple ourselves for the contest.
Is America a weakling,
to shrink from the work of the great world-powers?
No. The young giant of the West stands on a continent
and clasps the crest of an ocean on either hand.
Our nation, glorious in youth and strength,
looks into the future with eager eyes
and rejoices as a strong man to run a race.20
All 926 delegates nominated McKinley for President again.
Roosevelt for Vice President got 925 with only himself voting no.
During the campaign while McKinley stayed home,
Roosevelt traveled 21,209 miles in 24 states and
gave 673 speeches in 567 towns to 3 million people.
In the election on November 6 the Republicans had their greatest victory
since Grant was re-elected in 1872.
Roosevelt’s governorship ended on the last day of 1900,
and he was inaugurated as Vice President on 4 March 1901.
Four days later the US Senate adjourned until December,
and Roosevelt went home to Oyster Bay.
In a speech at the Minnesota State Fair on September 2 Roosevelt said,
There is a homely adage which runs,
“Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”
If the American nation will speak softly
and yet build and keep at a pitch
of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy,
the Monroe Doctrine will go far.21
On September 6 he was at a luncheon of the
Vermont Fish and Game League on an island in Lake Champlain.
That afternoon he was notified that President McKinley had been shot in Buffalo,
and Roosevelt immediately went to see him.
When McKinley seemed to be recovering,
Roosevelt joined his family in the Adirondacks.
On September 14 he received a telegram that the President had died.
Not yet 43 Theodore Roosevelt became the youngest President
in the history of the United States.
He traveled all night to Buffalo, and in the afternoon of
September 14 he took the oath of office.
War Secretary Elihu Root advised him to “declare his intention to
continue unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace,
prosperity, and honor of the country,”22
and Roosevelt in the shortest address by a new US President said,
I shall take the oath at once.
And in this hour of deep and terrible national bereavement
I wish to state that it shall be my aim to continue absolutely
without unbroken the policy of President McKinley,
for the peace, the prosperity, and the honor of our beloved country.23
He announced that the six cabinet officers would remain “at least for the present.”
His first presidential order proclaimed September 19 a day of official mourning.
Late at night on September 29 Roosevelt met secretly
with Booker T. Washington in the White House.
After the death of a Federal judge in Montgomery, Alabama,
Washington in a letter asked the President to appoint the former governor
Thomas G. Jones because he was for a fair election law,
opposed lynching, and advocated education for both races.
Although Jones was a Democrat, who voted for Bryan, Roosevelt appointed him.
When news got out that Booker T. Washington dined at the White House
on October 16, there was a backlash that surprised Roosevelt.
On 8 November 1901 President Roosevelt wrote in a letter to Albion W. Tourgée:
Your letter pleases and touches me.
I too have been at my wits' ends in dealing with the black man.
In this incident I deserve no particular credit.
When I asked Booker T. Washington to dinner, I did not devote
very much thought to the matter one way or the other.
I respect him greatly and believe in the work he has done.
I have consulted so much with him it seemed to me that
it was natural to ask him to dinner to talk over this work,
and the very fact that I felt a moment's qualm on inviting him
because of his color made me ashamed of myself
and made me hasten to send the invitation.
I did not think of its bearing one way or the other,
either on my own future or on anything else.
As things have turned out, I am very glad that
I asked him, for the clamor aroused by the act
makes me feel as if the act was necessary.
I have not been able to think out any solution of the terrible
problem offered by the presence of the negro on this continent,
but of one thing I am sure, and that is that inasmuch as he is
here and can neither be killed nor driven away, the only wise
and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black
man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man, giving
him no more and no less than he shows himself worthy to have.
I say I am "sure" that this is the right solution.
Of course I know that we see through a glass dimly,
and after all it may be that I am wrong;
but if I am, then all my thoughts and beliefs are wrong,
and my whole way of looking at life is wrong.
At any rate while I am in public life, however
short a time that may be, I am in honor bound to act up
to my beliefs and convictions.
I do not intend to offend the prejudices of anyone else,
but neither do I intend to allow their prejudices
to make me false to my principles.24
On November 18 Secretary of State John Hay and the
British Ambassador Julian Paunceforte signed a treaty that granted
to the United States the exclusive right to build a canal in Central America.
Roosevelt asked the Attorney General Philander Knox to help him
with his First Annual Message to Congress which he read aloud to his cabinet
on November 22 before it was delivered to Congress on December 3.
He began with another calamity of an assassinated President, and he suggested
that politically violent immigrants “should be kept out of this country.”
Then he paid tribute to President McKinley
and the enormous prosperity of the American economy.
He admitted that the accumulation of wealth had led to abuses,
and he noted that the evil of over-capitalization needed correction.
He suggested the first step is knowing the facts through publicity.
He wrote,
It is no limitation upon property rights
or freedom of contract to require that
when men receive from Government
the privilege of doing business under corporate form,
which frees them from individual responsibility,
and enables them to call into their enterprises
the capital of the public,
they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations
as to the value of the property
in which the capital is to be invested.
Corporations engaged in interstate commerce
should be regulated if they are found to exercise
a license working to the public injury.
It should be as much the aim of those
who seek for social-betterment
to rid the business world of crimes of cunning
as to rid the entire body politic of crimes of violence.
Great corporations exist only because
they are created and safeguarded by our institutions;
and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that
they work in harmony with these institutions.
The first essential in determining
how to deal with the great industrial combinations
is knowledge of the facts—publicity.
In the interest of the public, the Government should have
the right to inspect and examine the workings
of the great corporations engaged in interstate business.
Publicity is the only sure remedy which we can now invoke.
What further remedies are needed
in the way of governmental regulation, or taxation,
can only be determined after publicity has been obtained,
by process of law, and in the course of administration.
The first requisite is knowledge, full and complete—
knowledge which may be made public to the world.
Artificial bodies, such as corporations
and joint stock or other associations, depending upon
any statutory law for their existence or privileges,
should be subject to proper governmental supervision,
and full and accurate information as to their operations
should be made public regularly at reasonable intervals.
The large corporations, commonly called trusts,
Though organized in one State,
always do business in many States,
often doing very little business in the State
where they are incorporated.
There is utter lack of uniformity
in the State laws about them;
and as no State has any exclusive interest in
or power over their acts,
it has in practice proved impossible
to get adequate regulation through State action.
Therefore, in the interest of the whole people,
the Nation should, without interfering
with the power of the States in the matter itself,
also assume power of supervision and regulation
over all corporations doing an interstate business.
This is especially true where the corporation derives
a portion of its wealth from the existence of some
monopolistic element or tendency in its business.
There would be no hardship in such supervision;
banks are subject to it, and in their case
it is now accepted as a simple matter of course.
Indeed, it is probable that supervision of corporations
by the National Government need not go so far as is now
the case with the supervision exercised over them by so
conservative a State as Massachusetts,
in order to produce excellent results.25
He asserted that railways are public servants,
and their rates should be just and open to all.
He was also concerned about the workers and wrote,
The most vital problem with which this country,
and for that matter the whole civilized world, has to deal,
is the problem which has for one side the betterment
of social conditions, moral and physical, in large cities,
and for another side the effort
to deal with that tangle of far-reaching questions
which we group together when we speak of “labor.”
The chief factor in the success of each man—
wage-worker, farmer, and capitalist alike—
must ever be the sum total
of his own individual qualities and abilities.
Second only to this comes the power
of acting in combination or association with others.
Very great good has been and will be accomplished
by associations or unions of wage-workers,
when managed with forethought,
and when they combine insistence upon their own rights
with law-abiding respect for the rights of others.
The display of these qualities in such bodies is a duty to
the nation no less than to the associations themselves.
Finally, there must also in many cases be action
by the Government in order to safeguard
the rights and interests of all.
Under our Constitution there is much more scope for such
action by the State and the municipality than by the nation.
But on points such as those touched on above
the National Government can act. 26
Roosevelt placed great value on forests, and he wrote,
The forest reserves should be set apart forever for
the use and benefit of our people as a whole and
not sacrificed to the shortsighted greed of a few.
The forests are natural reservoirs.
By restraining the streams in flood and replenishing
them in drought they make possible
the use of waters otherwise wasted.
They prevent the soil from washing, and so protect
the storage reservoirs from filling up with silt.
Forest conservation is therefore an essential
condition of water conservation.
The forests alone cannot, however, fully regulate
and conserve the waters of the arid region.
Great storage works are necessary to equalize
the flow of streams and to save the flood waters.
Their construction has been conclusively shown to be
an undertaking too vast for private effort.
Nor can it be best accomplished by
the individual States acting alone.
Far-reaching interstate problems are involved;
and the resources of single States would often be inadequate.
It is properly a national function,
at least in some of its features.
It is as right for the National Government to make the streams
and rivers of the arid region useful by engineering works for
water storage as to make useful the rivers and harbors of
the humid region by engineering works of another kind.
The storing of the floods in reservoirs at the headwaters
of our rivers is but an enlargement of our present policy
of river control, under which levees are built
on the lower reaches of the same streams.
The Government should construct and maintain these
reservoirs as it does other public works.
Where their purpose is to regulate the flow of streams,
the water should be turned freely into the channels
in the dry season to take the same course
under the same laws as the natureal flow.27
Near the end of this annual message Roosevelt
reported on the recent Pan-Americacn Congress:
We view with lively interest and keen hopes of beneficial
results the proceedings of the Pan-American Congress,
convoked at the invitation of Mexico,
and now sitting at the Mexican capital.
The delegates of the United States are under the most
liberal instructions to cooperate with their colleagues in all
matters promising advantage to the great family of American
commonwealths, as well in their relations among themselves
as in their domestic advancement and
in their intercourse with the world at large.
My predecessor communicated to the Congress the fact
that the Weil and La Abra awards against Mexico have been
adjudged by the highest courts of our country to have been
obtained through fraud and perjury on the part of the
claimants, and that in accordance with the acts of the
Congress the money remaining in the hands of the
Secretary of State on these awards
has been returned to Mexico.
A considerable portion of the money received from Mexico
on these awards had been paid by this Government to the
claimants before the decision of the courts was rendedered.
My judgment is that the Congress should return to Mexico
an amount equal to the sums
thus already paid to the claimants.28
President Roosevelt did not allow reporters to quote him,
and paraphrases had to be approved.
Grover Cleveland said, “Roosevelt is the most perfectly equipped
and the most effective politician thus far seen in the Presidency.”29
The US House of Representatives voted 308 to 2
for a canal in Nicaragua on 9 January 1902.
Yet on Saturday the 18th Roosevelt issued a press release that the Canal Commission
had decided that Panama is best, and the report was given to Congress on Monday.
Roosevelt replaced the Postmaster General Charles Emory Smith and the
First Assistant Perry S. Heath who were accused
of using their positions for political purposes.
Roosevelt replaced Smith with Henry Payne on January 9
and Treasury Secretary Lyman Gage with L. M. Shaw on February 1.
Mail to the President demanded the prosecution of trusts,
and the US Attorney General Philander Knox began working on it in February.
He found that in 483 CE the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno ordered,
No one may presume to exercise a monopoly of any kind …
and if anyone shall presume to practice a monopoly,
let his property by forfeited
and himself condemned to perpetual exile.30
Roosevelt and Knox agreed with the British philosopher Benjamin Kidd
who wrote in Social Evolution that laissez-faire
may suit one phase of national development but not the next.
Since the Sherman Anti-trust Act of 1890 the US Supreme Court
in U.S. v. E. C. Knight in 1895 tolerated monopolies,
but U.S. v. Trans-Missouri Freight Association in 1897
decided that any combination restraining trade was unlawful.
Justice John Harlan had argued, “Combinations, governed entirely by the law of greed …
threaten the integrity of our institutions,”30 and he was still on the Court.
Knox told Roosevelt he could win a suit.
By February 20 the US was suing the Northern Securities Company
f
or having combined the Northern Pacific and Great Northern railway systems.
J. P. Morgan and members of his Corsair Club were opposed,
and even the War Secretary Root was concerned that he was not consulted.
On March 10 Knox named Morgan, James J. Hill, and E. H. Harriman as defendants.
Bankers and industrialists began to consider Senator Mark Hanna
as a presidential candidate in 1904.
Hanna received visitors in the Capitol’s vice-presidential suite.
General Nelson Miles was angry about secret reports of American atrocities
against Filipinos in the insurrection, and these stories spread in March.
War Secretary Root wrote to Senator Lodge acknowledging 44 cases
of American cruelty with 39 soldiers already convicted by military justice.
Major Cornelius Gardener governed Tayabas and reported that American officers
and soldiers called the Filipinos “niggers,”
and Governor William Howard Taft suppressed his report for seven weeks.
Lodge’s committee published the Gardener Report on April 11, provoking outrage.
On the 13th the Anti-Imperialist League distributed testimony by Major C. M. Waller
who was being tried for atrocities in Samar.
He said that General Jacob Smith had ordered killed
all persons able to bear arms over the age of ten.
Roosevelt on April 15 told Root to cable General Adna Chaffee
the US commander in the Philippines “to see that the most vigorous care is exercised
to detect and prevent any cruelty or brutality,
and that men who are guilty thereof are punished.”31
Roosevelt ordered General Smith to be brought before a court martial.
Taft wrote that Filipinos are liars, satanic, and unscrupulous,
that they were “utterly unfit for self-government.”
He predicted, “They need the training of fifty to a hundred years
before they shall even realize what Anglo-Saxon liberty is.”32
Navy Secretary Long retired on April 30,
and he was replaced by Congressman William Moody of Massachusetts.
After visiting Cuba the War Secretary Root returned to find that the
Anti-Imperialist League had published an inaccurate account of his war “severities.”
Roosevelt asked Senator Lodge to defend Root in a speech that he made on May 5
in which he described cruelties experienced
by American prisoners of war in the Philippines.
During the debate Senator Hoar joined Democrats
in voting for complete Filipino independence.
In his speech Hoar said,
You have wasted six hundred millions of treasure.
You have sacrificed nearly ten thousand American lives—
the flower of our youth.
You have devastated provinces.
You have slain uncounted thousands
of the people you desire to benefit....
I believe—nay, I know—
that in general our officers are humane.
But in some cases they have carried on your warfare with
a mixture of American ingenuity and Castilian creuelty. 33
On May 20 President Roosevelt directed General Leonard Wood in Havana
to transfer the government to the representatives of the people of Cuba,
and President Tomás Estrada Palma accepted the documents.
During the American occupation
Cuba became free of yellow fever for the first time in nearly two centuries.
On Memorial Day (May 30) Roosevelt attempted to defend his Philippine policy,
but his comparing the inhuman cruelty and barbarity of “lynchings”
to what US troops had done in the Philippines
alienated the South and bothered northerners.
On June 3 Senate Republicans except Hoar approved the Philippines bill.
On June 13 Roosevelt sent Congress a Special Message on Cuba.
Although Cubans resented the United States garrison at Guantánamo,
he was asking Congress to approve reciprocal trade with an independent Cuba.
On that day he sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee
chairman Cannon asking him to support the National Reclamation Bill
to give relief to arid regions in the West.
Congress passed it, and the President signed on June 17 what funded
600 persons working on civil engineering in the National Geological Survey.
The federal irrigation project affected 16 states in the West.
The US Senate had begun debating the Central American canal on June 4,
and on the 19th they voted 67 to 6 to build a Panama canal
and 44-34 for the Spooner Amendment which approved purchasing assets
from the French effort for $40 million.
The bill became law on June 28, and Congress adjourned on July 1.
US Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray resigned,
and on August 11 Roosevelt nominated the
Chief Justice of the
Massachusetts Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Homes Jr.
Anthracite coal miners had gone on strike in eastern Pennsylvania on May 12,
and by summer about 250,000 coal miners were on strike.
Roosevelt went on a tour of New England.
On August 20 he proclaimed the Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve in Alaska.
On the 23rd he spoke to 20,000 people outside City Hall in Providence, saying,
At a time when most men prosper somewhat,
some men always prosper greatly….
Under present-day conditions it is as necessary
to have corporations in the business world as it is
to have organizations, unions, among wage workers….
The great corporations which we have grown to speak of
rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State,
and the State not only has the right to control them,
but it is in duty bound to control them
wherever need of such control is shown.34
On August 26 he spoke to about 250,000 people from the back of a train.
On September 3, the last day of the tour, a trolley car ran into the President’s carriage,
and Roosevelt was thrown down, smashing his face on the ground and injuring a shin
while his Secret Service bodyguard “Big Bill” Craig was killed.
Roosevelt’s face was swollen, and the injury to his shin developed into a large tumor
that required two operations to remove.
He had to use a wheelchair for a time and then crutches.
Iowa’s Gov. Albert Cummins got the state platform to adopt a policy
to prohibit discriminatory ratemaking and to modify tariff schedules
to prevent them from sheltering a monopoly.
Roosevelt did not like this and went on a trip to the Midwest to argue against them;
but his swollen shin caused him to return to Washington on September 24.
On the 30th the Massachusetts Gov. Murray Crane told Roosevelt
he must intervene to end the coal strike before it has dreadful consequences.
The strike had been going for five months.
Roosevelt agreed to mediate, and the meetings began in Washington in October
with George Baer and two other railway owners
and John Mitchell of the United Mine Workers.
Grover Cleveland agreed to sell his coal shares in order to help the mediation.
Roosevelt instructed General John Schofield how he may need to intervene
to end the strike, dispossess the owners, and run the mines.
On October 13 J. P. Morgan met with the owners,
and they devised a 5-man commission of experts to make a ruling.
This was accepted after it was increased to seven including one labor man.
Roosevelt was credited with helping to resolve a very large problem.
In March 1903 the Anthracite Coal Commission presented to Roosevelt a report
that granted the coal miners a 10% increase in wages, a 9-hour workday,
and arbitration for job disputes, but beyond their mandate
they considered recognizing the United Mine Workers.
In the elections on 4 November 1902 the Democrats
gained 25 seats in the US House of Representatives
while Republicans gained 6 and maintained a 206-176 advantage.
In the US Senate the Democrats gained one more seat
as Republicans still had a 57-32 majority.
Roosevelt appointed the African-American, Dr. William D. Crum,
as Collector of Customs in Charleston, South Carolina.
The President went hunting in Mississippi on November 14,
and despite efforts of others to help him shoot a bear, he failed to do so.
The Washington Post cartoonist Clifford Berryman
began depicting Roosevelt with a black bear.
More cartoons made the bear look cute, and a toy company in Germany
began producing bear cubs that sold for $1.50 in New York.
For decades these “Teddy Bears” would multiply into millions.
The Roosevelts moved into the refurbished White House,
and he worked on his Second Annual Message
which he sent to Congress on December 2.
He reported on the prosperous economy, suggested adjusting tariffs,
and proposed creating a Secretary of Commerce.
He described a favorable trend for humanity writing,
As civilization grows, warfare becomes less and less
the normal condition of foreign relations.
The last century has seen a marked diminution of wars
between civilized powers;
wars with uncivilized powers are largely mere matters
of international police duty,
essential for, the welfare of the world.
Wherever possible, arbitration or some similar method
should be employed in lieu of war
to settle difficulties between civilized nations,
although as yet the world has not progressed sufficiently
to render it possible, or necessarily desirable,
to invoke arbitration in every case.
The formation of the international tribunal
which sits at The Hague is an event of good omen
from which great consequences
for the welfare of all mankind may flow.
It is far better, where possible,
to invoke such a permanent tribunal
than to create special arbitrators for a given purpose.
It is a matter of sincere congratulation to our country that
the United States and Mexico should have been the first
to use the good offices of The Hague Court.
This was done last summer with most satisfactory
results in the case of a claim at issue
between us and our sister Republic.
It is earnestly to be hoped that this first case will serve
as a precedent for others, in which not only the
United States but foreign nations may take advantage
of the machinery already in existence at The Hague.35
He hoped the planned canal across Central America would benefit
the United States and be important for the world.
He claimed that no nation need fear aggression from the United States.
He hinted at a future way of preventing wars when he wrote,
More and more the increasing interdependence
and complexity of international political
and economic relations render it incumbent
on all civilized and orderly powers
to insist on the proper policing of the world.36
He believed there was no chance of trouble with a foreign power,
and as usual he called for a strong navy to “insure its continuance.”
He reported, “For the first time in our history naval maneuvers on a large scale
are being held under the immediate command of the Admiral of the Navy.”37
Then he described the need for more funds for the US Navy.
On November 25 Britain and Germany had informed the United States
that they intended to proceed against Venezuela to collect their debts.
Yet in his message he never mentioned Germany nor Venezuela.
By December 4 the US Navy Secretary Moody had deployed 53 warships
near Venezuela where Germany and their British ally had only 29.
On the 7th Germany and Britain told Venezuela’s President Cipriano Castro
that they were closing their consulates in Caracas.
The next day the German ambassador Theodor von Holleben
met with Roosevelt in the White House.
The President later reported that he warned him,
I should be obliged to interfere, by force if necessary,
if the Germans took any action which looked like
the acquisition of territory in Venezuela
or elsewhere along the Caribbean.38
Roosevelt told him secretly that Berlin had ten days to send “a total disclaimer,”
or he would order Admiral Dewey “to observe matters along Venezuela.”
On December 9 allied ships from the blockade destroyed four Venezuelan gunboats.
President Castro proposed arbitrating all the claims,
and he asked the United States to intercede.
US Secretary of State John Hay sent that proposal to London and Berlin.
Kaiser Wilhelm II decided to refrain from using force
and said they would follow the British lead.
After Venezuelans boarded a British merchant ship and briefly arrested the crew,
the British did not get an apology.
On December 13 their ships and one German cruiser
bombarded Venezuelan forts at Puerto Cabello.
On the 19th Britain and Germany asked Roosevelt
to arbitrate their claims against Venezuela.
As the US Congress gathered for its last session on 5 January 1903
before the inauguration of the new Congress on March 4,
President Roosevelt was ready with his legislative priorities.
The power of the corporations and the American economy were growing so fast
that oil production in 1902 had increased by 27%.
His three ways to control the trusts included a new Commerce Department with a
Bureau of Corporations for investigations, banning railway rebates for big corporations,
and the Expedition Act to fund the Justice Department’s actions
to break up large combinations that were illegal.
Rep. Charles Littlefield of Maine had a bill to empower the Interstate Commerce
Commission (ICC) against monopolies, but Roosevelt considered his
Commerce Department’s Bureau of Corporations more practical.
Attorney General Knox wanted government and industry
to cooperate by exchanging information.
President Roosevelt and Secretary of State John Hay
hosted a diplomatic reception at the White House on January 8.
Hay told Cuba’s minister Don Gonzalo de Quesada that if Congress
did not approve their reciprocal trade treaty by March 4,
the President would summon the new Congress to a special session.
Roosevelt warned Venezuela’s President Castro that
he had the means to enforce the arbitration agreement.
Columbia’s chargé d’affaires, Dr. Thomas Herrán, was getting ambiguous
directions from Bogotá on the canal treaty through Panama.
On January 22 Roosevelt conferred with Senators Hanna, Spooner, and
the Foreign Relations chairman Shelby Cullom of Illinois on the Panama Canal Treaty.
Columbia wanted more money for the land, and on that day Hay wrote to Herrán
that the US would increase the annual payment from $100,000 to $250,000.
Herrán had orders to accept an offer to avoid a long delay, and he signed the treaty.
On January 24 Hay and the British ambassador Michael H. Herbert signed a treaty
that established the boundary between the US Territory of Alaska and Canada.
Roosevelt came to the defense of the black Mrs. Minnie Cox who had been
appointed postmaster in Indianola, Mississippi by President Benjamin Harrison.
A meeting of whites demanded she resign,
and Indianola’s mayor threatened her with violence if she came back.
Roosevelt did not accept her resignation.
He kept the Indianola post office closed,
and they had to get their mail 30 miles away in Greenville.
On January 12 Roosevelt appointed a black Assistant District Attorney in Boston.
These issues provoked a backlash and filibusters
by southern Democrats in the US Senate.
On February 7 Roosevelt told France’s new ambassador, Jules Jusserand,
that he was not for disarmament and that he was
building up the army and navy to handle any foes.
The US House of Representatives approved four new battleships
and two armored cruisers, and the US Senate created
an Army General Staff that Root wanted.
Congress approved the US Department of Commerce and Labor on February 14.
Four days later George Cortelyou, who had been McKinley’s personal secretary
and a top advisor to Roosevelt, became the new
Secretary of Commerce and Labor in the cabinet.
These successes led the Washington Evening Star
to call President Roosevelt the original “trust-buster.”
When Admiral Dewey bragged that the Venezuelan solution
was “an object lesson to the Kaiser,”
Roosevelt reprimanded him and wrote to him,
Do let me entreat you to say nothing that can be
taken hold of by those anxious to foment trouble
between ourselves and any foreign power,
or who delight in giving the impression that as a nation
we are walking about with a chip on our shoulder.
We are too big a people to be able
to be careless in what we say.39
On February 27 President Roosevelt sent to the United States Senate
a cable from Governor Taft, and he also included
this report on the situation in the Philippines:
I have just received a cable from Governor Taft
which runs as follows:
"Necessity for passage House tariff bill most urgent.
The conditions of productive industry and business
considerably worse than in November, the date of last
report, and growing worse each month.
Some revival in sugar, tobacco prices
due to expectation of tariff law.
The interest of Filipinos in sugar and tobacco extensive,
and failure of bill will be blow in face of those interests.
Number of tobacco factories will have to close,
and many sugar haciendas will be put up for sale
at a sacrifice, if the bill will not pass.
Customs receipts have fallen off this month one-third,
showing decrease of purchasing power of islands.
General business stagnant.
All political parties, including labor unions,
most strenuous in petition for tariff bill.
Effect of its failure very discouraging."
Vice-Governor Luke Wright endorses in the strongest
manner all that Governor Taft has said, and states that
he has the gravest apprehension as to the damage that may
come to the islands if there is not a substantial reduction
in the tariff levied against Philippine goods
coming into the United States.
I very earnestly ask that this matter receive the immediate
attention of Congress and that the relief prayed for be granted.
As Congress knows, a series of calamities
have befallen the Philippine people.
Just as they were emerging from nearly six years of
devastating warfare with the accompanying destruction of
property and the breaking up of the bonds of social order
and the habits of peaceful industry, there occurred an
epidemic of rinderpest, which destroyed 90 percent of the
carabaos, the Filipino cattle, leaving the people without
draft animals to till the land or to aid
in the ordinary work of farm and village life.
The extent of the disaster can be seen from the fact that
the surviving carabaos have increased over tenfold in value.
At the same time a peculiar oriental horse disease became
epidemic, further crippling transportation.
The rice crop, already reduced by various causes to but a
fourth of its ordinary size, has been damaged by locusts,
so that the price of rice has nearly doubled.
Under these circumstances there is
imminent danger of famine in the islands.
Congress is in course of generously appropriating $3,000,000
to meet the immediate needs; but the indispensable and
preeminent need is the resurrection of productive industry
from the prostration into which it has been thrown
by the causes above enumerated.
I ask action in the tariff matter, not merely from the
standpoint of wise governmental poliicy,
but as a measure of humanity in response to an appeal
to which this great people should not close its ears.
We have assumed responsibilities toward the Philippine
Islands which we are in honor bound to fulfill.
We have the specific duty of taking every measure
in our power to see to their prosperity.
The first and most important step in this direction
has been accomplished by the joint action of the military
and civil authorities in securing peace and civil government.
The wisdom of Congress at the present session has
provided for them a stable currency, and its spirit of humane
liberality and justice toward them will be shown in the
appropriation now substantially agreed upon of $3,000,000
to meet the pressing, immediate necessities; but there
remains a vital need that one thing further shall be done.
The calamities which have befallen them as above
enumerated could have been averted by no human wisdom.
They can not be completely repaired; but the suffering can
be greatly alleviated and a permanent basis of future
prosperity assured if the economic relations of the islands
with the United States are put upon a satisfactory basis.40
As the old Congress was ending without voting on Cuban reciprocity,
Roosevelt proclaimed that the US Senate would meet on March 5.
If funds were not provided for the Navy, the House would be called back too.
On March 3 a House-Senate conference approved funding for five new battleships,
but the filibustering Senator Tillman of South Carolina demanded money for his state.
On March 17 the US Senate approved the Hay-Herrán Treaty voting 73 to 5.
One week later Roosevelt sent the Isthmian Canal Commission to Panama
to report on what had been done there.
Roosevelt in March took on the challenge of saving the bird rookeries of Florida.
The Indian River Lagoon contained Pelican Island and 4,300 species
of animals and plants including 685 fish and 370 bird species.
Fishermen did not like competing with the skillful brown pelicans, and some shot at them.
Paul Kroegel aimed to save the 3,000 pelicans on Pelican Island,
and Roosevelt enforced the Lacey Act and had those
who shot the protected nongame birds put in jail.
The ornithologist Frank M. Chapman helped Roosevelt establish federal bird reservations,
and the President made Kroegel the first national
wildlife refuge warden on Pelican Island on April 1.
Roosevelt also organized the Biological Survey for wildlife protection.
When the Warden Guy Bradley tried to arrest violators,
a member of Walter Smith’s gang shot Bradley dead.
Roosevelt responded by appointing more wardens in Florida in collaboration
with the Audubon Society and expanded federal bird reservations to include
protection of cormorants, herons, egrets, and other nongame birds.
On April 1 Roosevelt boarded a train at Altoona, Pennsylvania for a
66-day and 14,000-mile trip to the West that would take him
to 150 towns in 25 states where he gave over 260 speeches.
At Chicago he spoke to a crowd of 6,000 in an auditorium designed for 5,000,
and he gave them his “big stick” speech that discussed
how to implement the Monroe Doctrine.
At St. Paul he talked about tariffs, then addressed
labor issues in Sioux Falls and his Philippines debacle in Fargo.
Roosevelt camped in the Yellowstone National Park from April 8 to the 24th,
and they learned that the US Circuit Court in St. Louis had decided unanimously
that any combination that could restrain trade whether exercised
by a holding company or not violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
At Yellowstone he spent time with John Burroughs who wrote about nature and published
John James Audubon in 1902 and Camping and Tramping with Roosevelt in 1905.
Roosevelt spoke near the Northern Pacific Railroad depot in Gardiner, Montana
about how national parks are essential to democracy to protect it from vandals
and exploiters, and the Forest and Stream magazine published the whole speech.
About 50,000 people welcomed Roosevelt to Omaha, Nebraska,
and he urged them to plant more trees.
His executive orders in 1902 established the Dismal River Reserve
and the Niobrara Forest Reserve, and in the spring of 1903
they had planted 70,000 jack pine seeds from Minnesota
and 30,000 ponderosa seedlings from the Black Hills.
Roosevelt’s Union Pacific train stopped at Oskaloosa, Iowa on April 28 so that he could
see Rep. John F. Lacey who did more to protect wildlife than anyone else in Congress.
About 30,000 people came to his speech dedicating a new YMCA building.
Lacey urged him to protect historic sites in New Mexico and forests in Alaska.
Roosevelt met Grover Cleveland in St. Louis at the World’s Fair dedication
honoring Thomas Jefferson and celebrating the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase.
In his presidency Roosevelt would preserve over 234 million acres
which was half the size of that territorial expansion.
Between 1899 and 1907 the Roosevelt Administration helped
indict 1,021 timber violators and convicted 126.
On May 6 Roosevelt arrived at the Grand Canyon in the Arizona Territory
with Governor Brodie, and he was impressed by the immense canyon.
People there had been discussing whether to preserve it in its natural condition
or begin mining it for zinc, copper, asbestos, and other precious metals.
Roosevelt said,
I want to ask you to do one thing in connection with it.
In your own interest and the interest of all the country
keep this great wonder of nature as it now is.
I hope you won’t have a building of any kind
to mar the grandeur and sublimity of the cañon.
You cannot improve upon it.
The ages have been at work on it,
and man can only mar it.
Keep it for your children and your children’s children
and all who come after you
as one of the great sights for Americans to see.41
Roosevelt would proclaim the Grand Canyon Game Preserve in November 1906,
and it would become a National Monument in January 1908
and a National Park in February 1919.
During the spring of 1903 irrigation projects were being constructed in Colorado,
Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and the Arizona Territory
where a large dam was being built in the Salt River Valley.
They were expected to cost about $7 million,
and then the settlers would repay the government over ten years.
In addition to reclamation and preservation Roosevelt approved
engineering projects to promote irrigation and renewable hydropower
that also caused some environmental disruption.
Roosevelt spent three days with John Muir in Yosemite National Park,
and he praised California for its beautiful flowers.
On May 11 he said, “I am glad to see your big trees
and to see that they are being preserved.
They should be, as they are the heritage of the ages.”42
They honored Roosevelt by naming a redwood tree after him.
On May 13 Stanford University’s President David Starr Jordan
introduced Roosevelt who talked about Congress saving the wilderness heritage.
Over 200,000 people gathered along the streets to see him in San Francisco.
In his speech he predicted, “In the century that is opening the commerce and the
progress of the Pacific will be factors of incalculable moment in the history of the world.”43
He went from Sacramento to Mount Shasta, and at Portland, Oregon,
20,000 people turned out for the dedication of a Lewis and Clark Memorial.
The Roosevelt Special train left Seattle and stopped at Walla Walla, Washington
and in Helena, Montana on its way back to Washington DC where it arrived on June 5.
By then Republican organizations in 16 states had endorsed him for the 2004 nomination.
In his speeches he had begun offering people a Square Deal.
The American Hebrew reported that a Russian pogrom,
which was probably ordered by Tsar Nicholas II in April,
killed about 120 Jews in Kishinev and injured over 500.
On June 15 Leo N. Levi and five Jewish leaders told President Roosevelt
that Americans were contributing to help 10,000 homeless refugees.
Roosevelt asked Hay and Root if he should offer $100 of his own money,
and they said it was not politically wise to interfere in a sovereign nation.
Roosevelt expressed sympathy and told how he had sent forty Jewish police
to protect an agitator who was denouncing Jews in New York,
and he promised to read their petition very carefully.
Roosevelt agreed to have Secretary of State Hay send a cable to Russia’s
Minister of Foreign Affairs in July with the text of conditions for Jews in Russia
in the petition which could be published worldwide.
On the night of June 22 a mob near Wilmington, Delaware broke into a prison
and burned to death a black man named White who had killed a white girl in her teens.
On August 9 Roosevelt sent an open letter to Indiana’s Gov. Winfield T. Durbin
thanking him for taking some action against lynching.
He wrote,
Even where the real criminal is reached, the wrong done
by the mob to the community itself is well-nigh as great.
Especially is this true where the
lynching is accompanied with torture.
There are certain hideous sights which when once seen
can never be wholly erased from the mental retina.
The mere fact of having seen them implies degradation.
This is a thousandfold stronger when instead of
merely seeing the deed the man has participated in it.
Whoever in any part of our country has ever taken part
in lawlessly putting to death a criminal
by the dreadful torture of fire must forever after
have the awful spectacle of his own handiwork
seared into his brain and soul.
He can never again be the same man.44
By August there had been 3,500 nationwide strikes in 1903.
James S. Clarkson headed patronage outside Washington and sent Roosevelt statistics
showing that socialists’ votes were increasing,
and he reminded the President that he was promising “a square deal.”
He had enforced an open shop in the Government Printing Office, and Roosevelt said,
“I will not for one moment submit to dictation by the labor unions
any more than by the trusts.”45
After a long lunch with Roosevelt the incoming House Speaker Joseph Cannon
visited Wall Street on July 23 and said he could not
discuss financial legislation during a financial panic.
Banks stopped giving credit, and syndicates sold investments in high-grade securities.
This caused US Steel stock to go down over 50%, and
J. P. Morgan’s United States Shipbuilding Company became bankrupt.
Four brokers were out of business.
At night on September 1 a youth with a gun was trying to shoot Roosevelt
through a White House window because he was not helping organized labor
and the working man; but two guards overcame him before he could shoot.
Roosevelt gave a speech on September 7 (Labor Day) in Syracuse.
He said that true liberties can only come through order
and square-dealing between capitalists and workers.
When there is a recession or strikes and violence,
the first to suffer most are those “who are least well off.”
On June 13 the New York World published an article on how Roosevelt
was determined to build a canal in Panama even if Panamanians had to secede
from Colombia which had rejected the deal offered them.
On August 12 the Colombian Senate voted 24 to 0 with 2 abstaining
to reject the US treaty offer.
They demanded at least $5 million more in addition to kickbacks
from the Panama Railroad and the Compagnie Nouvelle
in which Philippe Bunau-Varilla had large investments.
After meeting with Roosevelt two days later the Senate chairman of the
Foreign Relations Committee Shelby Cullom told the press that
the Roosevelt Administration might make a treaty with Panama
which may break away from Colombia.
The expert on international law, John Bassett Moore, assured Roosevelt that
the 1846 US treaty with New Granada, which later became Colombia,
could be considered still valid.
US President Fillmore had sent troops to the Isthmus in 1852,
and Colombia did not object.
Roosevelt found that since 1846 there had been 53 insurrections, riots, and revolts
in Panama, and he stated the United States had not perpetrated any of them.
At least ten times the US intervened against rebels on the Panama Railroad,
and Bogotá had requested six of them including two during Roosevelt’s administration.
He believed that building the canal was morally justified.
He welcomed an uprising in Panama; but he would not say so publicly
because it would be instigating a revolt.
On October 7 Roosevelt declared, “No one connected with this government
had any part in preparing, inciting or encouraging the revolution.”46
The Western Federation of Miners was on strike
in various places in Colorado from March 1903 to June 1904.
Ray Stannard Baker was working on a long article
“The Reign of Lawlessness: Anarchy and Despotism in Colorado.”
On October 21 he asked Roosevelt for permission to quote this statement:
I believe in corporations. I believe in labor unions.
Both have come to stay
and are necessities in our present industrial system.
But where, in either the one or the other,
there develops corruption or
mere brutal indifference to the rights of others …
then the offender, whether union or corporation,
must be fought.47
Colorado’s Gov. James Peabody in November asked Roosevelt
to send federal troops because the strike had stopped mining in most of the state.
Roosevelt telegraphed that he had no lawful authority to intervene
unless an insurrection could not be controlled by civil police or state forces.
Captain Chauncey Humphrey had been to Panama, and he told Roosevelt
that the junta had 500 troops, 2,500 arms, and $365,000 in cash and promises.
Bunau-Varilla transferred $100,000 from Paris to New York.
By November 2 the Navy Secretary Moody had sent several ships to Panama.
While Roosevelt was traveling on trains to New York to vote
and then back to Washington, changes were occurring in Panama.
The USS Nashville reached Colón.
The next morning the Colombian troopship Cartagena
brought 500 tiradores to the Panama Railroad dock.
The US Consul Oscar Malmros telegraphed the State Department that
400 men under General Tovar had arrived but that they would not stop the revolution.
In the evening the junta began organizing a Provisional Government for Panama.
Roosevelt ordered the Nashville to stop the Colombian troops from going
to Panama City and sent the USS Atlanta and the USS Boston to help.
Colombia’s General Tovar and his officers were in jail with Governor Obaldía.
US Rear Admiral John Hubbard on the Nashville ordered American men
in Colón to take cover while women and children were urged to board steamers.
Colombia’s Col. Torres had the 500 tiradores surround the railroad yard.
Bunau-Varilla cabled 50,000 pesos (about $25,000),
a quarter of his pledge, to his friend in Panama City.
Hubbard let two Colombian envoys have safe conduct to Panama City
with Col. James Shaler who was the Superintendent of the Panama Railroad.
People celebrated revolutionary bonuses in Panama City
while in Bogotá mobs rioted and stoned President Marroquín’s house.
Malmros cabled Washington that the Panamanians had taken possession in Colón.
Hubbard deployed cannons around the depot
where Col. Torres waited for an order from General Tovar.
At sunset Torres accepted an $8,000 indemnity from Col. Shaler.
The Royal Mail Company steamship captain agreed to take the tiradores
home to Colombia for $1,000 credit, and 465 men and 13 women boarded.
Then the USS Dixie arrived with 400 US Marines.
The junta asked for diplomatic recognition for the Republic of Panama.
The first strong critic of the operation was Oswald Garrison of the New York Post
who disparaged “indecent haste” and called it “ignoble beyond words.”
Most of the conservative newspapers supported Roosevelt’s venture.
On November 18 Bunau-Varilla as the Minister Plenipotentiary of the Republic
of Panama signed a treaty with US Secretary of State Hay in the White House.
The treaty authorized the $10 million indemnity and the $250,000 annual rent
to begin “nine years after the opening date” for a US monopoly
on the Panama Canal Zone that is ten miles wide.
President Roosevelt summoned a special session of the Congress before Thanksgiving.
The 1900 Census had increased the House of Representatives to 386 members,
and more than half the 120 freshmen elected in 1902 were Democrats;
but the Republicans still had thirty more seats.
On November 19 the US Senate passed the Cuban reciprocity bill.
The beet-sugar interests in the Senate wanted adjournment;
but House Speaker Cannon argued that the House must vote on that
and on the Cuban bill which kept them in session through Thanksgiving.
Most major nations recognized Panama,
and Nicaragua was the first Latin American country to do so.
In his Third Annual Message on 7 December 1903 Roosevelt reviewed the achievements
of the year including starting the Department of Commerce and Labor with the
Bureau of Corporations, a surplus for the fiscal year of $54,297,667,
efforts to enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act,
punishment of the bribery conviction in St. Louis, agreement on the Alaska border,
enforcing international law at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague,
a commercial treaty with China, progress in the Philippines and Puerto Rico,
improved irrigation, and more civil service employees selected by competitive exams.
He asked for better education in the Indian Territory
and for continued improvements for the Navy.
As the Third Annual Message to Congress is 33 pages long, I include only highlights.
President Roosevelt began by reviewing the improvements in handling capital and labor,
and he concluded by describing in detail the
history and revolution in Panama that created a republic.
The country is to be congratulated on the amount of
substantial achievement which has marked the past year
both as regards our foreign and
as regards our domestic policy.
With a nation as with a man the most important things
are those of the household, and therefore the country
is especially to be congratulated on what has been
accomplished in the direction of providing for the exercise
of supervision over the great corporations and combinations
of corporations engaged in interstate commerce.
The Congress has created the Department of Commerce
and Labor, including the Bureau of Corporations with for the
first time authority to secure proper publicity of such
proceedings of these great corporations
as the public has the right to know.
It has provided for the expediting of suits for the
enforcement of the Federal anti-trust law; and by
another law it has secured equal treatment to all
producers in the transportation of their goods,
thus taking a long stride forward in making effective work
the work of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
The establishment of the Department of Commerce
and Labor with the Bureau of Corporations thereunder, marks
a real advance in the direction of doing all that is possible
for the solution of the questions vitally affecting
capitalists and wage-workers.
The act creating the Department was approved
on February 14, 1903, and two days later the head of the
Department was nominated and confirmed by the Senate.
Since then the work of organization has been pushed as
rapidly as the initial appropriations permitted, and with
due regard to thoroughness and the broad purposes
which the Department is designed to serve.
After the transfer of the various bureaus and branches to
the Department at the beginning of the current fiscal year,
as provided for in the act, the personnel comprised 1,289
employees in Washington and 8,836 in the country at large.
The scope of the Department's duty and authority embraces
the commercial and industrial interests of the Nation.
It is not designed to restrict or control the fullest liberty
of legitimate business action, but to secure exact and
authentic information which will aid the Executive in
enforcing existing laws, and which will enable the
Congress to enact additional legislation,
if any should be found necessary, in order to prevent the
few from obtaining privileges at the expense of
diminished opportunities for the many.
The preliminary work of the Bureau of Corporations
in the Department has shown the wisdom of the creation.
Publicity in corporate affaris will tend to do away
with ignorance, and will afford facts upon which
intelligent action may be taken.
Systematic, intelligent investigation is already developing
facts the knowledge of which is essential to a right
understanding of the needs and duties of the business world.
The corporation which is honestly and fairly organized,
whose managers in the conduct of its business recognize
their obligation to deal squarely with their stockholders,
their competitors, and the public,
has nothing to fear from such supervision.
The purpose of this Bureau is not to embarass or
assail legitimate business, but to aid in bringing about a
better industrial condition—a condition under which there
shall be obedience to law and recognition of public
obligation by all corporations, great or small.
The Department of Commerce and Labor will be not only
the clearing house for information regarding the business
transactions of the Nation, but the executive arm of the
Government to aid in strengthening our domestic and
foreign markets, in perfecting our transportation facilities,
in building up our merchant marine, in preventing the
entrance of undesirable immigrants, in improving
commercial and industrial conditions, and in bringing
together on common ground those necessary partners
in industrial progress—capital and labor.
Commerce between the nations is steadily growing in volume,
and the tendency of the times is toward closer trade relations.
Constant watchfulness is needed to secure to Americans the
chance to participate to the best advantage in foreign trade;
and we may confidently expect that the new Department
will justify the expectation of its creators by the exercise
of this watchfulness, as well as by the businesslike
administration of such laws relating to our internal affairs
as are entrusted to its care.
In enacting the laws above enumerated the Congress
proceeded on sane and conservative lines.
Nothing revolutionary was attempted; but a common-sense
and successful effort was made in the direction of seeing that
corporations are so handled as to subserve the public good.
The legislation was moderate.
It was characterized throughout by the idea that we were not
attacking corporations, but endeavoring to provide for doing
away with any evil in them; that we drew the line against
misconduct, not against wealth; gladly recognizing the great
good done by the capitalist who alone, or in conjunction with
his fellows, does his work along proper and legitimate lines.
The purpose of the legislation, which purpose will undoubtedly
be fulfilled, was to favor such a man when he does well,
and to supervise his action only to prevent him from doing ill.
Publicity can do no harm to the honest corporation which
shrinks from the light, and about the welfare of such
corporations we need not be oversensitive.
The work of the Department of Commerce and Labor
has been conditioned upon this theory, of securing
fair treatment alike for labor and for capital.
The consistent policy of the National Government,
so far as it has the power, is to hold in check the
unscrupulous man, whether employer or employee;
but to refuse to weaken individual initiative or to hamper
or cramp the industrial development of the country.
We recognize that this is an era of federation and
combination, in which great capitalistic corporations
and labor unions have become factors of tremendous
importance in all industrial centers.
Hearty recognition is given the far-reaching, beneficent
work which has been accomplished through both
corporations and unions, and the line as between different
corporations, as between different unions, is drawn as it is
between different individuals; that is, it is drawn on conduct,
the effort being to treat both organized capital and organized
labor alike; asking nothing save that the interest of each
shall be brought into harmony with the interest of the
general public, and that the conduct of each shall conform to
the fundamental rules of obedience to law, of individual
freedom, and of justice and fair dealing towards all.
Whenever either corporation has jurisdiction,
it will see to it that the misconduct is stopped,
paying not the slightest heed to the position or power
of the corporation, the union or the individual, but only
to one vital fact—that is, the question whether or not
the conduct of the individual or aggregate of individuals
is in accordance with the law of the land.
Every man must be guaranteed his liberty and his
right to do as he likes with his property or his labor,
so long as he does not infringe the rights of others.
No man is above the law, and no man is below it; nor do we
ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it.
Obedience to the law is demanded as a right;
not asked as a favor.
We have cause as a nation to be thankful
for the steps that have been so successfully
taken to put there principles into effect.
The progress has been by evolution, not by revolution.
Nothing radical has been done;
the action has been both moderate and resolute.
Therefore the work will stand.
There shall be no backward step.
If in the working of the laws it proves desirable that
they shall at any point be expanded or amplified,
the amendment can be made as its desirability is shown.
Meanwhile they are being administered with judgment,
but with insistence upon obedience to them
and their need has been emphasized in signal fashion
by the events of the past year.
From all sources, exclusive of the postal service,
the receipts of the Government for the last fiscal year
aggregated $560,396,674.
The expenditures for the same period were $506,099,007,
the surplus for the fiscal year being $54,297,667.
The indications are that the surplus for the present year
will be very small, if indeed there be any surplus.
From July to November the receipts from customs
were approximately nine million dollars less than
the receipts from the same source for a
corresponding portion of last year.
Should this decrease continue at the same ratio
throughout the fiscal year, the surplus would be
reduced by approximately thirty million dollars.
Should the revenue from customs suffer much further
decrease during the fiscal year, the surplus would vanish.
A large surplus is certainly undesirable.
Two years ago the war taxes were taken off with the
express intention of equalizing the governmental receipts
and expenditures, and though the first year thereafter still
showed a surplus, it now seems likely that as substantial
equality of revenue and expenditure will be attained.
Such being the case it is of great moment both to
exercise care and economy in appropriations, and to scan
sharply any change in our fiscal revenue system
which may reduce our income.
The need of strict economy in our expenditures is
emphasized by the fact that we can not afford to be
parsimonious in providing for what is
essential to our national well-being.
Careful economy wherever possible will alone prevent
our income from falling below the point required
in order to meet our genuine needs.
The integrity of our currrency is beyond question, and
under present conditions it would be unwise and unnecessary
to attempt a reconstruction of our entire monetary system.
The same liberty should be granted the Secretary of the
Treasury to deposit customs receipts as is granted him
in the deposit of receipts from other sources.
In my Message of Decmeber 2, 1902, I called attention to
certain needs of the financial situation, and I again ask
the consideration of the Congress for these questions....
We cannot have too much immigration of the right kind,
and we should have none at all of the wrong kind.
The need is to devise some system by which undesirable
immigrants shall be kept out entirely, while desirable
immigrants are properly distributed throughout the country.
At present some districts which need immigrants have none;
and in others, where population is already congested,
immigrants come in such numbers as to depress the
conditions of life for those already there.
During the last two years the immigration service
at New York has been greatly improved, and the corruption
and inefficiency which formerly obtained there
have been eradicated....
There can be no crime more serious than bribery.
Other offenses violate one law while corruption
strikes at the foundation of all law....
After unavailing attempts to reach an understanding
through a Joint High Commission, followed by prolonged
negotiations, conducted in an amicable spirit, a convention
between the United States and Great Britain was signed,
January 14, 1903, providing for an examination of the
subject by a mixed tribunal of six members, three on a side,
with a view to its final disposition....
It will be remembered that during the second session
of the last Congress Great Britain Germany, and Italy
formed an alliance for the purpose of blockading the ports
of Venezuela and using such other means of pressure as
would secure a settlement of claims due, as they alleged,
to certain of their subjects.
Their employment of force for the collection of these claims
was terminated by an agreement brought about through the
offices of the diplomatic representatives of the United States
at Caracas and the Government at Washington, thereby
ending a situation which was bound to cause increasing
friction, and which jeopardized the peace of the continent....
Venezuela, on the other hand, insisted that all her creditors
should be paid upon a basis of exact equality.
During the efforts to adjust this dispute it was suggested
by the powers in interest that it should be referred to me
for decision, but I was clearly of the opinion that a far
wiser course would be to submit the question to the
Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.
It seemed to me to offer an admirable opportunity to
advance the practice of the peaceful settlement of disputes
between nations and to secure for the Hague Tribunal a
memorable increase of its pratical importance.
The nations interested in the controversy were so numerous
and in many instances so powerful as to make it evident that
beneficent results would follow from their appearance at the
same time before the bar of that august tribunal of peace....
There seems good ground for the belief that there has
been a real growth among the civilized nations of a sentiment
which will permit a gradual substitution of other methods than
the method of war in the settlement of disputes.
It is not pretended that as yet we are near a position in
which it will be possible wholly to prevent war, or that a just
regard for national interest and honor will in all cases permit
of the settlement of international disputes by arbitration;
but by a mixture of prudence and firmness with
wisdom we think it is possible to do away with
much of the provocation and excuse for war, and
at least in many cases to substitute some other and
more rational method for the settlement of disputes.
The Hague Court offers so good an example of what
can be done in the direction of such settlement that
it should be encouraged in every way....
Last year the Interparliamentary Union for the
International Arbitration met at Vienna, six hundred
members of the different legislatures
of civilized countries attending.
It was provided that the next meeting should be in 1904
at St. Louis, subject to our Congress extending an invitation.
Like the Hague Tribunal, this Interparliamentary Union is
one of the forces tending towards peace among the nations
of the earth, and it is entitled to our support.
I trust the invitation can be extended....
The signing of a new commercial treaty with China,
which took place at Shanghai on the 8th of October,
is a cause for satisfaction.
This act, the result of long discussion and negotiation,
places our commercial relations with the great
Oriental Empire on a more satisfactory footing
than they have ever heretofore enjoyed....
I trust that the Congress will continue to favor in
all proper ways the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.
This exposition commemorates the Louisiana purchase,
which was the first step in the expansion
which made us a continental nation.
The expedition of Lewis and Clark across the continent
followed thereon, and marked the beginning of the process
of exploration and colonization which
thrust our national boundaries to the Pacific....
Of our insular possessions the Philippines and Porto Rico
it is gratifying to say that their steady progress
has been such as to make it unnecessary to
spend much time in discussing them.
Yet the Congress should ever keep in mind that a peculiar
obligation rests upon us to further in every way
the welfare of these communities....
The cotton-growing States have recently been
invaded by a weevil that has done much damage
and threatens the entire cotton industry.
I suggest to the Congress the prompt enactment of such
remedial legislation as its judgment may approve....
The Indian agents should not be dependent for their
appointment or tenure of office upon considerations of
partisan politics; the practice of appointing, when possible,
ex-army officers or bonded superintendents
to the vacancies that occur is working well.
Attention is invited to the widespread illiteracy
due to lack of public schools in the Indian Territory.
Prompt heed should be paid to the need of education
for the children in this Territory....
During the year ended June 30 last 25,566 persons
were appointed through competitive examinations
under the civil-service rules.
This was 12,672 more than during the preceding year,
and 40 percent of those who passed the examinations....
By the act of June 28, 1902 the Congress authorized
the President to enter into treaty with Colombia for the
building of the canal across the Isthmus of Panama;
it being provided that in the event of failure to secure
such treaty after the lapse of a reasonable time, recourse
should be had to building a canal through Nicaragua.
It has not been necessary to consider this alternative,
as I am enabled to lay before the Senate a treaty providing
for the building of the canal across the Isthmus of Panama.
This was the route which commended itself to the deliberate
judgment of the Congress, and we can now acquire by
treaty the right to construct the canal over this route.
The question now, therefore, is not by which route
the isthmian canal shall be built, for that question is
simiply whether or not we shall have an isthmian canal.
When the Congress directed that we should take the
Panama route under treaty with Colombia, the essence
of the condition, of course, referred not to the Government
which controlled that route, but to the route itself;
to the territory across which the route lay, not to the
name which for the moment the territory bore on the map.
The purpose of the law was to authorize the
President to make a treaty with the power in
actual control of the Isthmus of Panama.
This purpose has been fulfilled....
A new Republic, that of Panama, which was at one time a
sovereign state, and at another time a mere department of
the successive confederations known as New Granada and
Columbia, has now succeeded to the rights which first one
and then the other formerly exercised over the Isthmus....
In 1865 Mr. Seward in different communications
took the following position:
The United States have taken and will take no interest
in any question of internal revolution in the State of Panama,
or any State of the United States of Colombia,
but will maintain a perfect neutrality in
connection with such domestic altercations.
The United States will, nevertheless, hold themselves
ready to protect the transit trade across the Isthmus
against invasion of either domestic or foreign disturbers
of the peace of the State of Panama....
Last spring under the act above referred to, a treaty
concluded between the representatives of the Republic of
Colombia and of our Government was ratified by the Senate....
The people of Panama had long been discontented
with the Republic of Colombia, had long been kept
quiet only by the prospect of the conclusion of the treaty,
which was to them a matter of vital concern.
When it became evident that the treaty,
which was hopelessly lost, the people of Panama rose
literally as one man.
Not a shot was fired by a single man on the Isthmus
in the interest of the Colombian Government.
Not a life was lost in the accomplishment of the revolution.
The Colombian troops stationed on the Isthmus,
who long had been unpaid, made common cause with
the people of Panama, and with astonishing unanimity
the new Republic was started....
In short the experience of over half a century
has shown Colombia to be utterly incapable of
keeping order on the Isthmus.
Only the active interference of the United States
has enabled her to preserve so much
as a semblance of sovereignty.
Had it not been for the exercise by the United States of the
police power in her interest, her connection with the Isthmus,
to protect life and property, and to see that the transit across
the Isthmus would have been sundured long ago....
The possession of a territory fraught with such peculiar
capacities as the Isthmus in question
carries with it obligations to mankind.
The course of events has shown that this canal cannot be
built by private enterprise, or by any other nation than
our own; therefore it must be built by the United States....
The new Republic of Panama immediately
offered to negotiate a treaty with us.
This treaty I herewith submit.
By it our interests are better safeguarded than
in the treaty with Colombia which was ratified
by the Senate at its last session....
In other details, particularly as to the acquisition of the
interests of the New Panama Canal Company and the
Panama Railway by the United States and the
condemnation of private property for the uses of the canal
the stipulations of the Hay-Herran treaty are closely
followed, while the compensation to be given for these
enlarged grants remains the same, being ten millions
of dollars payable on exchange of ratifications; and
beginning nine years from that date, an annual payment
of $250,000 during the life of the convention.48
Roosevelt inherited $30,000 from an uncle who died, and his publisher paid him
the same amount for a new edition of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt in 14 volumes.
On 4 January 1904 President Roosevelt sent to the US Congress
information supporting the US construction by the
Panama Canal Company with numerous documents.
In justification he argued,
That the canal was eagerly demanded by the people
of the locality through which it was to pass,
and that the people of this locality no less eagerly
longed for its construction under American control,
are shown by the unanimity of action
in the new Panama Republic.49
William Howard Taft retired from being Governor-General of the Philippines
on 23 December 1903, and he became the Secretary of War on 1 February 1904,
replacing Elihu Root who wanted to return to his law practice.
Russia had been expanding its empire in the East into Manchuria
and appeared to be threatening Korea.
Japan was an advancing nation, and on February 8 and 9 their navy
led by Admiral Heihachiro Togo with only minor losses damaged
seven of the 13 ships in Russia’s fleet at Port Arthur.
On February 11 Roosevelt announced the neutrality of the United States,
though Russians believed he favored the Japanese.
Battles near Port Arthur continued until May 15
when Japan lost two of their six battleships.
After debating the Panama Canal Treaty for nine weeks,
the US Senate ratified it 66 to 14 on February 23.
On March 14 the US Supreme Court announced
their decision on U.S. v. Northern Securities.
Justice Harlan reviewed the facts of the case, and he argued that
the merger of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific railroads
effectively and certainly suppressed free competition.
The Court affirmed the lower court’s decision.
The vote was 5-4, and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
issued a strong dissenting opinion.
He believed that the Northern Securities Company was not a monopoly
and may have restrained competition, but he argued
it did not violate the Sherman Act by restraining trade.
He suggested that Congress had exceeded its constitutional powers.
Before the Congress could improve the benefits of veterans,
Roosevelt issued an executive order moving up benefits to the age of 62.
Traditional Republicans expected Indiana’s Senator Charles W. Fairbanks
to be nominated for Vice President.
The Dominican Republican was having trouble paying their debts to Germany,
and the US Navy was conducting exercises in the Caribbean.
On February 1 Kaiser Wilhelm II had written a letter to Roosevelt praising him,
“You must accept it as a fact that your figure
has moved to the foreground of the world.”49
The Dominican Foreign Minister Juan Franco Sanchez asked Washington
for annexation, but Roosevelt commented that he could not stomach that.
On April 28 he signed An Act to Provide for the Temporary Government of the
Canal Zone at Panama, the Protection of the Canal Works, and Other Purposes,
and he appointed the new War Secretary Taft as the chief authority in the Canal Zone
to supervise the Isthmian Canal Commission that included Admiral John G. Walker
as chairman, Major General George W. Davis, USMC as Governor of the Zone,
and five engineers.
The rights of all inhabitants of the Canal Zone were to be protected,
and Roosevelt added,
I desire that every possible effort be made
to protect our officers and workmen from the dangers
of tropical and other diseases, which in the past
have been so prevalent and destructive in Panama.50
On April 30 he opened the World’s Fair in St. Louis,
and he praised Thomas Jefferson for making the Louisiana Purchase a century ago.
On May 10 Cornelius Bliss declined to be chairman of the Republican Party,
and Roosevelt said he would recommend Commerce and Labor Secretary
George B. Cortelyou who had been the private secretary
to Cleveland, McKinley, and Roosevelt.
On May 18 the wealthy Greek-American Ion Perdicaris, who was living in Tangier,
Morocco, was abducted with his stepson Cromwell Varley
by the insurgent leader Ahmad al-Raisuni and his men.
The American Consul General Gummeré cabled the State Department asking for
a man-of-war for a serious situation.
Secretary Hay was out of town, and his Assistant
Francis Loomis replied that ships would be sent.
On May 20 Roosevelt wrote a letter that Elihu Root read
during his speech to the Cuba Society of New York which said,
Brutal wrongdoing, or an impotence which results
in a general loosening of the ties of a civilized society,
may finally require intervention by some civilized nation,
and in the Western Hemisphere the United States
cannot ignore this duty, but it remains true that
our interests, and those of our southern neighbors,
are in reality identical.51
Conservative Senators led by Aldrich of Rhode Island and Spooner of Wisconsin
came to the White House to oppose Cortelyou
as National chairman because of his inexperience.
The White House released the news that after the election
Cortelyou would become Postmaster General, a position with much patronage.
Roosevelt said that if he is the candidate, then Cortelyou will be chairman.
Pennsylvania’s Senator Matthew Quay died on May 28,
and on June 10 Gov. Samuel Pennypacker announced that
he would replace him with Philander Knox who resigned as Attorney General.
Roosevelt replaced him with Navy Secretary William Henry Moody.
The businessman Paul Morton became Navy Secretary on July 1 for exactly one year.
On June 21 Elihu Root in the keynote address at the Republican National
Convention in Chicago reviewed the achievements of the
Roosevelt administration without mentioning his name.
He noted the increased number of ships in the Navy
with 13 battleships and 13 cruisers being built.
Ion Perdicaris and his stepson were supposed to be released on June 21,
and Gummeré and Admiral Chadwick on the USS Brooklyn asked Secretary Hay
for an ultimatum with an indemnity for each day of delay
and with Marines seizing customs.
The next day at the Convention the clerk read the following bulletin:
“Washington, June 22.
Secretary of State Hay has sent instructions
to Consul General Samuel R. Gummeré, as follows:
‘We want either Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.’”52
The delegates cheered and shouted.
The next day New York’s former Gov. Frank S. Black nominated Roosevelt and said,
A profound student of history,
he is today the greatest history maker in the world….
Whether we wish it or not, America is abroad in the world.
Her interests are on every street;
her name is on every tongue.
Those interests so sacred and stupendous should be trusted
only to the care of those whose power,
skill and courage have been tested and approved.
And in the man whom you will choose,
the highest sense of every nation in the world beholds
a man who typifies as no other living American does,
the spirit and purposes of the twentieth century.53
The cheering and demonstration went on for 21 minutes.
The delegates unanimously nominated Roosevelt for President
and Fairbanks for Vice President, and they confirmed Cortelyou as the party chairman.
Early the next morning Perdicaris and other hostages
were taken back to Tangiers and released.
In 1904 the former President Grover Cleveland and the 1896 and 1900
Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan declined to run for President.
Alton Brooks Parker, the Chief Justice of the New York Court of Appeals,
emerged as a likely candidate, and he decided to run.
When the Democratic National Convention met in St. Louis on July 6,
about 200 delegates were pledged to the radical newspaper owner
William Randolph Hearst.
Cleveland endorsed Parker, and Democrats worked on their platform.
On July 8 a newspaper editorial suggested that “sound-money Democrats
will demand that he declare, that the gold monetary standard,
as now established by law, is permanent.”54
Parker sent a telegram to the convention stating that he “regarded the gold standard
as firmly and irrevocably established.”
He asked to have his view made known to delegates.
If it was “unsatisfactory to the majority,” he would decline the nomination.
Delegates nominated him and then chose the wealthy
80-year-old Henry G. Davis of West Virginia for Vice President.
Five New York newspapers endorsed Parker
including the Times, the Herald, and the World.
Both Roosevelt and Parker declined to make speeches during the campaign
except one accepting the nomination, and each also wrote a letter.
On July 27 no less than 43 Republicans went to Roosevelt’s home on Sagamore Hill
to notify him that he got the Republican nomination.
Roosevelt was concerned that Turkey was not granting American missionaries
the privileges that Europeans experienced.
On August 5 he ordered Admiral Jewell to take three cruisers
to the Levant as a gesture of “goodwill.”
Cornelius Bliss agreed to supervise eastern fund-raising for the Republicans.
On August 8 Secretary of State Hay directed the US Minister in Constantinople
to go to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire once more.
As the warships arrived at Smyrna, the Sultan Abdul Hamid II
granted all of the minister’s claims.
Roosevelt told Leishman to accept the Sultan’s promise and to bring the fleet home.
In his acceptance speech Parker said,
I protest against the feeling, now far too prevalent,
that by reason of the commanding position
we have assumed in the world we must take part
in the disputes and broils of foreign countries.55
Parker got the most applause when he said he would serve for only one term.
Roosevelt wrote 20,000 words in his acceptance letter
and listed 18 achievements of his presidency.
He also wrote letters to journalists throughout the country.
Ray Stannard Baker’s article “Parker and Roosevelt on Labor:
Real Views of the Two Candidates on the Most Vital National Problems”
was published in McClure’s Magazine.
Jacob Riis wrote the campaign biography Theodore Roosevelt: The Citizen.
Lincoln Steffens came to the White House and urged Roosevelt to
return corporate contributions and seek donations from the general public
for his
campaign because that would make millions feel they were part of the campaign.
Steffens believed this would start a new era in politics.
Roosevelt did not agree and believed he was
“beholden to the many more than to the few.”
He would accept large donations if:
they were given and received with no thought of
any more obligation on the part of the National Committee
or of the National Administration than is implied in the
statement that every man shall receive a square deal.56
The Standard Oil Company gave Bliss a $100,000 check for the Republicans.
Joseph Pulitzer in his New York World asked how much the seven trusts of
beef, paper, coal, sugar, oil, tobacco, steel, and insurance contributed to Mr. Cortelyou
for Roosevelt’s campaign along with the national banks and six major railroads.
As Roosevelt was sure to win, his donations slowed down and were less than half
of what Mark Hanna had raised for McKinley in 1900.
Roosevelt in October met with E. H. Harriman who
promised to raise $260,000 for New York Republicans.
George J. Gould for Western Union and the New York Life Insurance Company
topped them all by giving $500,000.
George Perkins wrote three checks that added up to $450,000
from Morgan, New York Life Insurance, and himself.
Senator Chauncey Depew was also chairman of the
New York Central Railroad and provided $100,000.
Henry Clay Frick put in $50,000.
Republicans also got support from National City Life,
General Electric, American Can, and International Harvester.
Parker criticized the “menace” of campaign funds
from corporations as “debasing and corrupt.”
Because they wanted to “control the results of election contests.”
Roosevelt wrote a posterity letter to Cortelyou telling him
to return the $100,000 to Standard Oil.
Five days before the election on November 8 the Republican National Committee
accused Parker of “blackmail,” and they threatened to release information
from the Bureau of Corporations.
That night Roosevelt released his statement of over 1,000 words.
On November 4 he wrote to the historian George Otto Trevelyan,
“A public man’s usefulness in the highest position becomes in the end
impaired by the mere fact of too long continuance in that position.”
He believed,
In 1908 it would be better to have some man
like Taft or Root succeed me in the presidency,
at the head of the Republican party,
than to have me succeed myself.
In all essentials of policy they look upon things as I do,
but ... what they did and said would have a freshness
which when I did and said could not possibly have;
and they would be free from the animosities and
suspicions which I had accumulated,
and would be able to take a new start.57
The Socialist Party of America nominated Eugene Debs.
They raised only $32,700, but he made many speeches and got 402,810 votes (3%).
Roosevelt dominated with 7,630,457 votes to 5,083,880 for Parker.
Roosevelt won in 34 states with 336 electoral votes, the most so far.
Parker prevailed in only 12 southern states with 140 electoral votes.
On election night Roosevelt made a brief statement that
in reverence to George Washington, he would not be a candidate again for President.
President Roosevelt's 4th Annual Message to Congress on December 6 is 36 pages,
and here are some highlights on various issues.
Roosevelt began by confirming the continued prosperity:
The Nation continues to enjoy noteworthy prosperity.
Such prosperity is of course primarily due to the high
individual average of our citizenship, taken together with
our great national resources; but an important factor therein
is the working of our long-continued governmental policies.
The people have emphatically expressed their approval of
the principles underlying these policies, and their desire that
these principles be kept substantially unchanged, although
of course applied in a progressive spirit
to meet changing conditions.
The enlargement of scope of the functions of the National
Government required by our development as a nation
involves, of course, increase of expense; and the period of
prosperity through which the country is passing justifies
expenditures for permanent improvements far greater
than would be wise in hard times.
Battle ships and forts, public buildings, and improved
waterways are investments which should be made
when we have the money; but abundant revenues and a large
surplus always invite extravagance, and constant care should
be taken to guard against unnecessary increase of the
ordinary expenses of government.
The cost of doing Government business should be regulated
with the same rigid scrutiny as the
cost of doing a private business....
I believe that under modern industrial conditions it is often
necessary, and even where not necessary it is yet often wise,
that there should be organization of labor in order better to
secure the rights of the individual wage-worker.
All encouragement should be given to any such organization,
so long as it is conducted with a due and decent regard
for the rights of others....
Of course any violence, brutality, or corruption,
should not for one moment be tolerated....
When we come to deal with great corporations the need for
the Government to act directly is far greater than in the case
of labor, because great corporations can become such only
by engaging in interstate commerce, and interstate commerce
is peculiarly the field of the General Government....
But these corporations should be managed with due regard
to the interest of the public as a whole.
Where this can be done under the present laws
it must be done.
Where these laws come short, others
should be enacted to supplement them...
"It is my belief we can better serve each other,
better understand the man as well as his business,
when meeting face to face, exchanging views, and realizing
from personal contact we serve but one interest,
that of our mutual prosperity.
"Serious misunderstandings cannot occur where personal
good will exists and opportunity
for personal explanation is present....
"Violent prejudice exists towards corporate activity and
capital today, much of it, is founded in reason, more in
apprehension, and a large measure is due to the personal
traits of arbitrary, unreasonable, incompetent, and offensive
men in positions of authority.
The accomplishment of results by indirection, the endeavor
to thwart the intention, if not the expressed letter of the law
(the will of the people), a disregard of the rights of others,
a disposition to withhold what is due, to force by main
strength or inactivity a result not justified, depending upon
the weakness of the claimant and his indisposition to
become involved in litigation, has created a sentiment
harmful in the extreme and a disposition to consider
anything fair that gives gain to the individual at the
expense of the company....
The Bureau of Corporations has made careful preliminary
investigation of many important corporations.
It will make a special report on the beef industry....
In my judgment the most important legislative act now
needed as regards the regulation of corporations is this act to
confer on the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to
revise rates and regulations, the revised rate to at once
go into effect, and stay in effect unless
and until the court of review reverses it.
Steamship companies engaged in interstate commerce
and protected in our coastwise trade should be held to a
strict observance of the interstate commerce act....
There should be severe child-labor
and factory-inspection laws....
In the vital matter of taking care of children, much
advantage could be gained by a careful study of what
has been accomplished in such States as Illinois
and Colorado by the juvenile courts.
The work of the juvenile court is
really a work of character building.
It is now generally recognized that young boys and young
girls who go wrong should not be treated as criminals,
not even necessarily as needing for this end to have
them tested and developed by a system of probation....
Several considerations suggest the need for a
systematic investigation into and improvement
of housing conditions in Washington.
The hidden residential alleys are breeding grounds of vice
and disease, and should be opened into minor streets....
The Department of Agriculture has grown
into an educational institution with a faculty
of two thousand specialists making research
into all the sciences of production.
The Congress appropriates, directly and indirectly,
six millions of dollars annually to carry on this work....
The crop-reporting system of the Department of Agriculture
is being brought closer to accuracy every year.
The forest reserves themselves are of extreme
value to the present as well as to the future
welfare of all the western public-land States.
They powerfully affect the use
and disposal of the public lands.
They are of special importance because they
preserve the water supply and the supply of
timber for domestic purposes, and so promote
settlement under the reclamation act....
There is no danger of having too many
immigrants of the right kind.
It makes no difference from what country they come.
If they are sound in body and in mind, and above all,
if they are of good character, so that we can rest
assured that their children and grandchildren will be
worthy fellow-citizens of our children and grandchildren,
then we should welcome them with cordial hospitality....
It is our duty to remember that a nation has no more
right to do injustice to another nation, strong or weak,
than an individual has to do injustice to another individual;
that the same moral law applies in one case as in the other.
But we must also remember that it is as much the duty
of the Nation to guard its own rights and its own interests
as it is the duty of the individual so to do.
Within the Nation the individual has now delegated
this right to the State, that is, to the representative
of all the individuals, and in international law
we have not advanced by any means as far as
we have advanced in municipal law.
There is as yet no judicial way of enforcing
a right in international law....
Under any circumstances a sufficient armament
would have to be kept up to serve the purposes of
international police; and until international cohesion
and the sense of international duties and rights are
far more advanced than at present, a nation desirous
both of securing respect for itself and of doing good
to others must have a force adequate for the work
which it feels is allotted to it
as its part of the general world duty.
Therefore it follows that a self-respecting, just, and
far-seeing nation should on the one hand endeavor by
every means to aid in the development of the various
movements which tend to provide substitutes for war,
which tend to render nations in their actions toward
one another, and indeed toward their own peoples,
more responsive to the general sentiment of humane
and civilized mankind; and on the other hand that it
should keep prepared, while scrupulously avoiding
wrongdoing itself, to repel any wrong, and in exceptional
cases to take action which in a more advanced stage
of international relations would come under the head
of the exercise of the international police.
A great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind
not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil.
We are in every way endeavoring to help on, with
cordial good will, every movement which will tend to bring
us into more friendly relations with the rest of mankind....
Within the last three years the United States has set an
example in disarmament where disarmament is proper.
By law our Army is fixed at a maximum of one hundred
thousand and a minimum of sixty thousand men....
There is need of a vigilant and disinterested support
of our public servants in the Philippines
by good citizens here in the United States.
Unfortunately hitherto those of our people here at home
who have specially claimed to be the champions of the
Filipinos have in reality been their worst enemies.
This will continue to be the case as long as they strive
to make the Filipinos indpendent, and stop all industrial
development of the islands by crying out against the
laws which would bring it on the ground that
capitalists must not "exploit" the islands.
Such proceedings are not only unwise, but are most
harmful to the Filipinos, who do not need independence
at all, but who do need good laws, good public servants,
and the industrial development that can only come
if the investment of American and foreign capital in th
islands is favored in all legitimate ways.
Every measure taken concerning the islands should
be taken primarily with a view to their advantage.
We should certainly give them lower tariff rates on their
exports to the United States; if this is not done,
it will be a wrong to extend our shipping laws to them.
I earnestly hope for the immediate American capital to
seek investment in the islands in railroads, in factories,
in plantations, and in lumbering and mining.58
Roosevelt also noted that the safety-appliance law,
which was amended in March 1903, proved beneficial to railway employees.
He emphasized investigating the problems of child labor.
He urged passing a law requiring the school attendance
of all children in Washington DC.
He discussed foreign trade, agriculture, and the value of forest reserves.
He called for better service by the employees in the Indian Service.
He favored admitting more healthy immigrants of good character.
He recommended improving the naturalization laws.
He hoped that the government of the Alaska Territory would be improved.
He reminded Americans,
This has been called the “Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.”
He urged developing arbitration of international disputes,
and he promoted a second Hague conference.
He discussed the Monroe Doctrine and current issues involving Russia.
He reported that the US reduced its troops in the Philippines to 28,000 men.
He concluded by asking Americans to invest capital in those “islands in railroads,
in factories, in plantations, and in lumbering and mining.”
On 1 February 1905 President Roosevelt announced the transfer
of the federal forest reserves from the Interior Department,
and the Forest Service was established in the Agriculture Department on March 3.
On February 7 the Dominican Republican agreed to a diplomatic protocol that gave the
United States the responsibility of collecting Dominican customs and of managing their
foreign debt, though the US Senate avoided the two attempts at ratification by adjourning.
Roosevelt’s Administration would continue managing these until the end of July 1907.
Ida Tarbell had begun writing a 19-part series on the history of the
Standard Oil Company in November 1902, and she completed it
in October 1904 and published it as a book.
In the winter of 1905 the Hutchinson News reported,
“Kansas is in the clutches of the Standard Oil Company and is howling for relief.”59
In February President Roosevelt sent the Bureau of Corporations
director James Garfield to investigate Standard Oil’s operations in Kansas.
He studied Tarbell’s history and her documentary evidence and published a report
in two parts exposing in the first Standard Oil’s “unjust and illegal” dealings
with railroads involving rebates, bribes, and kickbacks.
In the second part Garfield described Standard Oil’s petroleum monopoly.
Roosevelt sent the first part to Congress with a special message
directing the government to prosecute the Rockefeller trust.
The US Justice Department found evidence of illegal rebates based on the
1903 Elkins Act, and in regard to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act
they charged Standard Oil with a “conspiracy in restraint of trade.”
The trial would be in July 1907.
On 28 January 1905 the journalist Ray Stannard Baker had lunch with Roosevelt,
and a long conversation led to him getting support for his research
from the Interstate Commerce Commission.
Baker in March began writing the six-part series “The Railroads on Trial.”
In his Second Inaugural Address on March 4 Roosevelt affirmed that
the United States had become a great nation that should fulfill
its responsibilities by having good relations with all nations.
Then he asked people to consider the modern challenges they face
from the increasing industrial wealth.
This is his entire inaugural address:
My fellow-citizens, no people on earth have more cause
to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently in no
spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with
gratitude to the Giver of Good who has blessed us with
the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large
a measure of well-being and of happiness.
To us as a people it has been granted to lay the
foundations of our national life in a new continent.
We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay
few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted
by the dead hand of a bygone civilization.
We have not been obliged to fight for our existence
against any alien race; and yet our life has called for
the vigor and effort without which the manlier
and hardier virtue whither away.
Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed;
and the success which we have had in the past, the success
which we confidently believe the future will bring,
should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a
deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us;
a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours;
and a fixed determination to show that under a free
government a mighty people can thrive best, alike as
regards the things of the body and the things of the soul.
Much has been given us, and much
will rightfully be expected from us.
We have duties to others and duties to ourselves;
and we can shirk neither.
We have become a great nation, forced by the
fact of its greatness into relations with the other
nations of the earth, and we must behave as
beseems a people with such responsibilities.
Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude
must be one of cordial and sincere friendship.
We must show not only our words, but in our deeds,
that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will
by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous
recognition of all their rights.
But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual,
count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong.
While ever careful to refrain from wronging others,
we must be no less insistent that
we are not wronging ourselves.
We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice,
the peace of righteousness.
We wish it because we think it is right
and not because we are afraid.
No weak nation that acts manfully and justly
should ever have cause to fear us, and no
strong power should ever be able to single us out
as a subject for insolent aggression.
Our relations with the other powers of the world
are important; but still more important
are our relations among ourselves.
Such growth in wealth, in population, and in power as this
nation has seen during the century and a quarter of its
national life is inevitably accompanied by a like growth
in the problems which are ever before
every nation that rises to greatness.
Power invariably means both responsibility and danger.
Our forefathers faced certain perils
which we have outgrown.
We now face other perils, the very existence of which
it was impossible that they should foresee.
Modern life is both complex and intense,
and the tremendous changes wrought by the
extraordinary industrial development of the last half
century are felt in every fiber
of our social and political being.
Never before have men tried so vast and formidable
an experiment as that of administering the affairs
of a continent under the forms of a Democratic republic.
The conditions which have told
for our marvelous material well-being,
which have developed to a very high degree
our energy, self-reliance, and individual initiative,
have also brought the care and anxiety inseparable from
the accumulation of great wealth in industrial centers.
Upon the success of our experiment much depends,
not only as regards our own welfare,
but as regards the welfare of mankind.
If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout
the world will rock to its foundations, and therefore our
responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world
as it is today, and to the generations yet unborn.
There is no good reason why we should fear the future,
but there is every reason why we should face it seriously,
neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems
before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the
unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.
Yet, after all, though the problems are new, though the
tasks set before us differ from the tasks set before our
fathers who founded and preserved the Republic,
the spirit in which these tasks must be undertaken
and these problems faced, if our duty is to be well done,
remains essentially unchanged.
We know that self-government is difficult.
We know that no people needs such high traits of
character as that people which seeks to govern its
affairs aright through the freely expressed will
of the freemen who compose it.
But we have faith that we shall not prove false
to the memories of the men of the mighty past.
They did their work; they left us
the splendid heritage we now enjoy.
We in our turn have an assured confidence that we shall
be able to leave this heritage unwasted and enlarged
to our children and our children's children.
To do so we must show, not merely in great crises,
but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of
practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and
endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty
ideal, which made great the men who founded this
Republic in the days of Washington, which made
the great men who preserved this Republic
in the days of Abraham Lincoln.60
On April 5 Roosevelt visited Frederick, Oklahoma and began his
speech by expressing his hope that Oklahoma would soon become a state.
He also discussed the Monroe Doctrine and Indian rights before going on a wolf hunt.
On June 2 he would proclaim the return of buffalo to the Wichita Mountains.
Roosevelt had advised the ailing Secretary of State John Hay on March 10
to inform the Japanese Government that he would “be glad to be of use” to work out
a negotiated settlement of its war against Russia.
On that day the Japanese army ended an 18-day battle at Mukden
by defeating a larger Russian army.
Hay told Lloyd C. Griscom, the US Minister to Japan, that the President was available.
On March 17 Roosevelt went to New York to give away his niece Eleanor Roosevelt
in a wedding to his fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
At this time neither the Russians nor the Japanese wanted to lose face
by asking for an end to the war.
On April 3 Roosevelt left to go hunting for wolves in Oklahoma and bears in Colorado.
He left War Secretary William Howard Taft in charge, and on April 18 the Japanese Minister
Takahira met with Taft and implied that Japan would accept Roosevelt as a mediator.
He explained that Japan would negotiate directly
and would not make any pledges in advance.
Roosevelt telegraphed Taft that he accepted that, and he said that Japan must adhere
to the Open Door in Manchuria and accept its restoration as part of China.
On April 25 Japan’s Foreign Minister Baron Jutaro Komura sent a wire that he agreed
on the Manchuria issues, and Roosevelt’s private secretary William Loeb carried it to him.
Roosevelt sent Taft in May to a conference of 300 railway executives
in Washington, and he advised them,
Railroads are a public institution—
an institution which must be regulated by law.
You cannot run the railroads
as you would run a private business.
You must respond to the public demand.61
Roosevelt returned to Washington on May 11.
After the Japanese naval victory that devastated the Russian fleet in the Tsushima Strait
and killed over 5,000 on May 27 and 28, the Japanese
asked Roosevelt to mediate the conflict with Russia.
The President advised Tsar Nicholas II that Russia was facing more losses
in East Asia and should send representatives to discuss peace.
Nicholas accepted that offer to negotiate on June 7.
Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II wrote to Roosevelt about his concern over France’s
intervention in Morocco, and Roosevelt feared a “world conflagration” in Europe.
Secretary of State John Hay died on July 1,
and Roosevelt persuaded Elihu Root to replace him.
US Navy Secretary Paul Morton was accused of previous wrong-doing
as a railroad executive, and he resigned and was replaced
by the progressive lawyer Charles Bonaparte.
Japan’s army invaded Sakhalin Island on July 7 and occupied it
by the end of the month as the Russians surrendered.
Taft and Roosevelt’s daughter Alice arrived at Tokyo on July 25,
and two days later Taft took notes in a conversation with
Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Katsura that Taft cabled to Roosevelt.
Katsura said that Korea was the cause of the war, and he believed that
Japan should have sovereignty over Korea.
Taft and Roosevelt accepted that.
Russian and Japanese diplomats began negotiating
with Roosevelt at Portsmouth, New Hampshire on August 6.
Baron Komura demanded that Russia withdraw troops from Manchuria
and cease trading there, recognize Japan’s interests in Korea,
pay an indemnity for Japan’s war costs, and accept
Japan’s control of the Liaotung Peninsula and Sakhalin Island.
Roosevelt urged both sides to make concessions.
Japan agreed to let go of Vladivostok, and
Russia’s former Finance Minister Sergei Witte
suggested that Japan could have economic interests in southern Sakhalin
if Russia had a security zone in the north.
On August 25 Roosevelt sent a telegram to the US Minister George Meyer
at St. Petersburg for Tsar Nicholas II that concluded,
If peace is not made now and war is continued,
it may well be that, though the financial strain
upon Japan would be severe, yet in the end
Russia would be shorn of those east Siberian
provinces which have been won by her by the
heroism of her sons during the last three centuries.
The proposed peace leaves
the ancient Russian boundaries absolutely intact.
The only change will be that Japan will get that part
of Sakhalin which was hers up to thirty years ago.
As Sakhalin is an island it is,
humanly speaking impossible that the Russians should
reconquer it in view of the disaster to their navy;
and to keep the northern half of it is a guarantee for the
security of Vladivostok and eastern Siberia to Russia.
I seems to me that every consideration of national
self-interest, of military expediency and of broad
humanity makes it eminently wise and right for Russia
to conclude peace substantially along these lines,
and it is my hope and prayer
that your Majesty may take this view.62
Roosevelt warned the Japanese that being greedy for the money and refusing
to make concessions could cost them more in another year of war.
Then he made the following appeal:
Ethically it seems to me that
Japan owes a duty to the world at this crisis.
The civilized world looks to her to make peace;
the nations believe in her; let her show her leadership
in matters ethical no less than matters military.
The appeal is made to her
in the name of all that is lofty and noble;
and to this appeal I hope she will not be deaf.63
On August 29 Russia’s Chairman Sergei Witte made a final offer that was
less generous than what Tsar Nicholas II had proposed a week earlier.
After a long silence Baron Komura said that he accepted the division of Sakhalin
at 50 degrees north latitude, and he withdrew the request for an indemnity.
The treaty was signed on September 5, and it was ratified
by Japan on October 10 and by Russia four days later.
Henry Adams called Roosevelt “the best herder of Emperors since Napoleon.”
Roosevelt toured the south in October to promote his policies.
Ray Stannard Baker in the November issue of McClure’s Magazine
in the first article in a railroad series wrote,
We are at this moment facing a new conflict in this
country, the importance of which
we are only just beginning to perceive.
It lies between two great parties,
one a progressive party seeking
to give the government more power in business affairs,
the other a conservative party
striving to retain all the power possible in private hands.
One looks toward socialism,
the other obstinately defends individualism.
It is industrialism forcing itself into politics.
And the crux of the new conflict in this case,
recognized by both sides, is the Railroad Rate.64
On November 11 Baker explained to Roosevelt in a letter that fixing the
maximum rate was not unjust, but the trusts’ compelling railroads
to give them lower rates than others was the “evil power.”
The problem was the minimum rate, and the solution was to “fix a definite rate.”
Roosevelt's Fifth Annual Message on 5 December 1905 to Congress filled 50 pages,
and here are some highlights:
In our industrial and social system the interests
of all men are so closely intertwined that in the
immense majority of cases a straight-dealing man who
by his efficiency, by his ingenuity and industry, benefits
himself must also benefit others.
Normally the wage-worker, the man of small means, and
the average consumer, as well as the average producer,
are all alike helped by making conditions such that
the man of exceptional business ability
receives an exceptional reward for his ability.
Something can be done by legislation
to help the general prosperity;
but no such help of a permanently beneficial character
can be given to the less able and less fortunate, save as
the results of a policy which shall inure to the advantage
of all industrious and efficient people who act decently;
and this is only another way of saying that any benefit
which comes to the less able and less fortunate
must of necessity come even more
to the more able and more fortunate.
If, therefore, the less fortunate man is moved by envy
of his more fortunate brother to strike at the conditions
under which they have both, though unequally, prospered,
the result will assuredly be that
while danger may come to the one struck at,
it will visit with an even heavier load
the one who strikes the blow.
Taken as a whole we must all go up or down together....
So long as the finances of the Nation are kept upon an
honest basis no other question of internal economy with
which the Congress has the power to deal begins to
approach in importance the matter of endeavoring to
secure proper industrial conditions under which the
individuals—and especially the great corporations—
doing an interstate business are to act.
The makers of our National Constitution
provided especially that the regulation of
interstate commerce should come within
the sphere of the General Government....
The Department of Justice has for the last flour years
devoted more attention to the enforcement of the
anti-trust legislation than to anything else.
Much has been accomplished, particularly marked has
been the moral effect of the prosecutions; but it is
increasingly evident that there will be a very sufficient
beneficial result in the way of economic change....
The question of transportation lies at the root of all
industrial success, and the revolution in transportation
which has taken place during the last half century has
been the most iomportant factor in the growth
of the new industrial conditions....
Over five million American women are now engaged
in gainful occupations; yet there is an almost complete
dearth of data upon which to base any trustworthy
conclusions as regards a subject as important
as it is vast and complicated.
There is need of full knowledge on which to base action
looking toward State and municipal legislation
for the protection of working women.
The decrease in marriage, and especially in the birth rate,
has been coincident with it....
The noblest of all forms of government is
self-government; but it is also the most difficult....
The great insurance companies afford striking examples
of corporations whose business has extended so far
beyond the jurisdiction of the States which created them
as to preclude strict enforcement of supervision and
regulation by the parent States....
I earnestly recommend to Congress the need of economy
and to this end of a rigid scrutiny of appropriations....
At various times I have instituted investigations
into the organization and conduct of the business
of the executive departments....
I recommend that the Congress consider this subject with
a view to provide by legislation for the transfer, distribution,
consolidation, and assignment of duties and executive
organizations or parts of organizations, and for the changes
in business methods, within or between the several
departments, that will best promote the economy, efficiency,
and high character of the Government work.
In my last annual message I said:
"The power of the Government to protect the integrity
of the elections of its own officials is inherent and has been
recognized and affirmed by repeated
declarations of the Supreme Court.
There is no enemy of free government more dangerous
and none so insidious as the corruption of the electorate.
No one defends or excuses corruption,
and it would seem to follow that none would
oppose vigorous measures to eradicate it.
I recommend the enactment of a law directed against
bribery and corruption in Federal elections.
The details of such a law may be safely left to the wise
discretion of the Congress, but it should go as far as
under the Constitution it is possible to go, and should
include severe penalties against him who gives or receives
a bribe intended to influence his act or opinion as an elector;
and provisions for the publication not only of the
expenditures for nominations and elections of all
candidates, but also of all contributions received and
expenditures made by political committees."...
The first conference of nations held at The Hague in 1899,
being unable to dispose of all the business before it,
recommended the consideration and settlement of a number
of important questions by another conference to be called
subsequently and at an early date.
These questions were the following:
(1) The rights and duties of neutrals;
(2) the limitation of the armed forces
on land and sea, and of military budgets;
(3) the use of new types and calibres
of military and naval guns:
(4) the inviolability of private property
at sea in times of war;
(5) the bombardment of ports, cities,
and villages by naval forces.
In October 1904 at the instance of the
Interparliamentary Union, which, at a conference
held in the United States, and attended by the
lawmakers of fifteen different nations, has reiterated
the demand for a second conference of nations, I issued
invitations to all the powers signatory to The Hague
Convention to send delegates to such a conference,
and suggested that it be again held at The Hague.
In its note of December 16, 1904 the United States
Government communicated to the representatives
of foreign governments its belief that the conference
could be best arranged under the privisions of the
present Hague treaty....
More and more war is coming to be looked upon
as in itself a lamentable and evil thing.
A wanton or useless war, or a war of mere aggression—
in short, any war begun or carried on in a conscientious
spirit, is to be condemned as a peculiarly atrocious crime
against all humanity.
We can, however, do nothing of permanent value,
for peace unless we keep ever clearly in mind the ethical
element which lies at the root of the problem....
So much it is emphatically necessary to say in order both
that the position of the United States may not be
misunderstood, and that a genuine effort to bring nearer
the day of the peace of justice among the nations may not
be hampered by a folly which, in striving to achieve the
impossible, would render it hopeless to attempt the
achievement of the practical.
But while recognizing most clearly all above set forth,
it remains our clear duty to strive in every practicable way
to bring nearer the time when the sword shall not be
the arbiter among nations.
At present the practical thing to do is to try to minimize
the number of cases in which it must be the arbiter,
and to offer, at least to all civilized powers, some
substitute for war which will be available in at least
a considerable number of instances.
Very much can be done through another Hague
conference in this direction, and I most earnestly urge
that this Nation do all in its power to try to further the
movement and to make the result of the decisions
of The Hague conference effective....
The Golden Rule should be, and as the world grows in
morality it will be, the guiding rule of conduct among nations
as among individuals; though the Golden Rule must not be
construed in fantastic manner as forbidding
the exercise of the police power.
This mighty and free Republic should ever deal with all
other States, great or small, on a basis of high honor
respecting their rights as jealously as it safeguards its own.
One of the most effective instruments for peace is the
Monroe Doctrine as it has been and is being gradually
developed by this Nation and accepted by other nations.
No other policy could have been as efficient in promoting
peace in the Western Hemisphere and in giving to each
nation thereon the chance to develop along its own lines....
This brings me to what should be one of the
fundamental objects of the Monroe Doctrine.
ourselves in good faith try to help upward
We must ourselves in good faith try to help upward
toward peace and order those of our sister republics
which need such help.
Just as there had been a gradual growth of the ethical
element in the relations of one individual to another,
so we are, even though slowly, more and more coming
to recognize the duty of bearing one another's burdens,
not only as individuals, but also as among nations.
Santo Domingo in her turn has now made an appeal
to us to help her, and not only every principle of wisdom
but every generous instinct within us
bids us respond to the appeal....
But in the effort to carry out the policy of excluding
Chinese laborers, Chinese coolies, grave injustice and
wrong have been done by this Nation to the people of
China, and therefore ultimately to this Nation itself.
Chinese students, business and professional men
of all kinds—not only merchants, but bankers, doctors,
manufacturers, professors, travelers, and the like—
should be encouraged to come here, and treated on
precisely the same footing that we treat students,
business men, travelers, and the like of other nations....
The law forbidding the emission of dense
black or gray smoke in the city of Washington
has been sustained by the courts....
During the year just past, the phase of the Indian
question which has been most sharply brought to
public attention is the larger legal significance
of the Indian's induction into citizenship.
This has made itself manifest not only in a great
access of litigation in which the citizen Indian figures
as a party defendant and in a more widespread
disposition to levy local taxation upon his personality,
but in a decision of the United States Supreme Court
which struck away the main prop on which has
hitherto rested the Government's benevolent effort to
protect him against the evils of intemperance....
Among the crying present needs of the Indians are
more day schools situated in the midst of their
settlements, more effective instruction in the industries
pursued on their own farms, and a more liberal extension
of the field-matron service, which means the education
of the Indian women in the arts of home making....
I earnestly advocate the adoption of legislation
which will explicitly confer American citizenship
on all citizens of Porto Rico.
There is, in my judgment, no excuse for failure to do this.
The harbor of San Juan should be dredged and improved.
The expenses of the Federal Court of Porto Rico should
be met from the Federal Treasury
and not from the Porto Rican treasury.
The elections in Porto Rico should take place every
four years, and the Legilature should
meet in session every two years....
In the proper desire to prevent the islands being exploited
by speculators and to have them develop in the interests
of their own people an error has been made in refusing
to grant sufficiently liberal terms to induce the investment
of American capital in the Philippines and in Porto Rico....
I earnestly ask that Alaska be given an elective delegate.
Some person should be chosen who can speak with
authority of the needs of the Territory....
I recommend that Indian Territory and Oklahoma be
admitted as one State and that New Mexico
and Arizona be admitted as one State....
The treaty between the United States and the
Republic of Panama, under which the construction
of the Panama Canal was made possible, went into
effect with its ratification by the United States Senate
on February 23, 1904.
The canal properties of the French Canal Company were
transferred to the United States on April 23, 1904,
on payment of $40,000,000 to that company.65
The concern was to get rid of discriminatory rates.
A commission of the Interstate Commerce Commission should have
the right to establish a maximum reasonable rate when a rate was unfair.
The unfair rates were the minimum rates for big shippers
and excessive rates for the small ones.
In this message Roosevelt proposed 73 moderately progressive new laws,
and he worked with Iowa’s Senator Jonathan P. Dolliver on a railroad bill.
Roosevelt also called the Department of Commerce and Labor
to investigate the working conditions of many employed women.
He also discussed the situation of Santo Domingo,
and he hoped to allow them the progress already gained by the Cubans.
He urged establishing a Federal Bureau of Naturalization,
and he described the value of the Reclamation Act.
He regretted the injustice of excluding Chinese immigrants and suggested encouraging
immigration of “Chinese students, business and professional men of all kinds.”
He defended the civil service reforms including the examinations for selecting employees.
He advised regulation of food, drinks, and drugs, writing,
I recommend that a law be enacted to regulate
inter-State commerce in misbranded
and adulterated foods, drinks, and drugs.
Such law would protect legitimate manufacture
and commerce, and would tend to secure
the health and welfare of the consuming public.
Traffic in food-stuffs which have been debased
or adulterated so as to injure health
or to deceive purchasers should be forbidden.66
He noted, “The law forbidding the emission of dense black or gray smoke
in the city of Washington has been sustained by the courts.”
He reviewed the series of disasters that were occurring in the Philippines
and some improvements in harbors, roads, and bridges that were being made.
He praised “the number of enrolled students in the public schools”
that increased “from 300,000 to half a million pupils.”
A few days later US Attorney General Moody was ordering prosecutions
of shippers, and many corporations were being indicted including three
who were part of the beef trust exposed by articles in Collier’s magazine.
When the McClure Newspaper Syndicate sent Lincoln Steffens to Washington
to write about the Federal government, on 9 January 1906 Roosevelt gave him
the note “To any officer of or employee of the Government” that ordered,
Please tell Mr. Lincoln Steffens anything whatever
about the running of the government that you know
(not incompatible with the public interests) and provided
only that you tell him the truth—no matter what it may be—
I will see that you are not hurt.71
On January 15 The Cosmopolitan magazine began publishing
“The Treason of the Senate” by David Graham Phillips.
The first article criticized New York’s Senators Thomas Platt and Chauncey Depew.
Roosevelt wrote to New York’s Attorney General Julius Mayer because he believed
the publisher William Randolph Hearst controlled so many newspapers and magazines
that had an “influence for evil upon the social life of this country.”
Senator Dolliver sent his bill, which expanded the power of the Interstate
Commerce Commission (ICC), from the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee
to the House of Representatives where it was sponsored by Rep. William Hepburn of Iowa
on January 4 and gave the ICC the authority to set “just and reasonable” maximum rates.
To get the Speaker Joseph Cannon to allow the bill on the floor
Roosevelt agreed to preserve protective tariffs.
On February 8 the House passed it with only seven votes opposing.
The US Senate began debating it on February 28,
and it passed on May 18 with a vote of 71 to 3.
On February 17 Roosevelt’s daughter Alice was wedded in the White House to
Congressman Nicholas Longworth of Ohio after she received many valuable wedding gifts.
The editor of the popular socialist magazine, The Appeal to Reason,
in 1905 had offered Upton Sinclair $500 to serialize his next novel.
After the serialization The Jungle was published as a book on 26 February 1906,
and it exposed the corruption of the meat-packing industry.
Senator Aldrich was moved to withdraw his opposition to the Pure Food Bill
even though he had invested in the food industry.
On February 21 the US Senate passed the bill 63 to 4.
In a speech to the Gridiron Club on March 17 Roosevelt quoted a passage
about a “muckraker” from Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.
Many began using this term to criticize investigative journalists.
He referred to the expression again at a dedication of the House Office Building
on April 14 and talked about the problems in a capitalist society, saying,
No amount of charity in spending such fortunes
in any way compensates for misconduct in making them.
As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending
to discuss the details or formulate the system,
I feel that we should ultimately have to consider
the adoption of some such scheme as that of a
progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount,
either given in life or devised or bequeathed
upon the death of any individual—
a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner
of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on
more than a certain amount to any one individual.72
US Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brown had announced his retirement
in March. Senator Knox, who had been Attorney General, declined the nomination.
On May 22 Senator Albert Beveridge introduced a bill to institute federal
inspection of the meat-packing industry from the slaughter of the animals
to the production of sausage and canned meat.
Unhealthy food was condemned, and food that was
inspected and passed got a government label of approval.
Roosevelt warned senators that if the legislation was not passed quickly,
he would make public the government’s report on the unhealthy working conditions.
Within three days the Senate passed the bill.
Many of the policies Roosevelt had asked for in his annual message were included
in An Act for the Preservation of American Antiquities that he signed on June 8.
This law covered national monuments, historic sites,
insurance for job accidents, and statehood for Oklahoma.
In the last three days of the month they protected Niagara Falls
from hydro-elective power, gave witnesses immunity in antitrust cases,
raised naturalization standards, established a lock system for the Panama Canal,
approved the major reforms of Railroad Rate Regulation,
and provided $3 million for the Meat Inspection Act.
Samuel Hopkins Adams had written 11 articles for Collier’s magazine
on patent medicines in 1905.
He found experts who had tested over 200 medicines
most of which were “harmless frauds or deleterious drugs.”
This research led to passing the Pure Food and Drug Act on June 30.
On August 16 Roosevelt received a telegram from the mayor
and citizens of Brownsville, Texas that on the 13th at night
about 25 men of the US 25th infantry, who were colored,
had fired rifles at police and citizens and into buildings.
After shooting about 200 bullets the soldiers returned to their barracks.
One policeman was wounded and had an arm amputated.
The angry soldiers threatened to repeat the incident, and the town was terrorized.
Roosevelt ordered the War Department to make a report,
and they learned that the black soldiers who had arrived three weeks before
were being discriminated against, beaten, and threatened with death
because of an alleged rape of a white woman who
could only describe the khaki trousers of the alleged assailant.
About 15 men went on the rampage,
and at a call to arms all the men were in the barracks.
On August 18 General William McCaskey telegraphed the US War Department
saying, “Citizens of Brownsville entertain race hatred to an extreme degree …
provocation given the soldiers not taken into account.”73
At least 70 Army-rifle casings were found.
Five officers considered the 25th Infantry guilty.
On the 20th Roosevelt ordered the battalion moved to a nearby fort
and then most of them to Fort Reno, Oklahoma.
Major Blocksom found that the rioters were soldiers, and he suggested
discharging them and debarring them from re-enlistment.
Roosevelt sent the new Army Inspector General Ernest Garlington
to Oklahoma and Texas to question the quarantined infantry.
The Brownsville incident provoked a mob in Atlanta,
and they killed twenty blacks and wounded hundreds
because of rumors that white women had been assaulted.
On September 28 Cuba’s President Estrada Palma resigned
during an uprising to protest alleged election rigging.
He advised American control instead of sharing power with an insurrection.
War Secretary Taft felt bound by the Platt Amendment to order an American
intervention in Cuba, and Roosevelt sent him 6,000 more troops and emphasized
there was to be no bloodshed between Americans and Cubans.
Taft installed the pliant Charles Magoon as Cuba’s Provisional Governor
and then went back to Washington.
Senator Foraker was pleased, and he urged
Roosevelt to improve race relations at home.
On October 12 Roosevelt’s friend Arthur Lee came to Washington from England
and Roosevelt told him that he wanted to deal with him because
the British Ambassador Mortimer Durand was unsuitable and ineffective.
Roosevelt shared private correspondence with Lee showing how
the German and French embassies were so much better than the British.
Roosevelt consulted with Taft, Secretary of State Elihu Root, justices, and senators
and then nominated William Moody of Massachusetts for the US Supreme Court.
His name was leaked on October 24 to gain more voters from that state.
General Garlington reported that none of the suspects in San Antonio would talk
about the Brownsville rampage even though they all would be found guilty.
Roosevelt decided that all 167 should be dishonorably discharged.
On October 30 Roosevelt met with Booker T. Washington and told him
he was going to dismiss 167 soldiers without a court martial or trial.
Washington said it would be a mistake not to let even one man testify.
On November 3 he wrote to the President
that he had more information to consider before he acted.
On the day before the election Elihu Root implied that he and Roosevelt believed
that William Randolph Hearst was responsible for McKinley’s death.
New York voters chose Charles Evan Hughes over Hearst for governor,
and black voters helped Rep. Nicholas Longworth get re-elected.
Democrats gained 28 seats in the US House of Representatives but were still a minority,
and Republicans took over three more seats in the US Senate.
Socialist candidates did not get many votes.
Roosevelt’s decision to discharge the 167 black soldiers
was released after the election.
Blacks’ attitudes toward Roosevelt changed.
He defended himself by saying that he would have done the same thing
if it had been white men.
From November 14 to 17 Roosevelt visited the work on the Panama Canal.
This was the first time a US President left the United States while in office.
The blacks from the West Indies, whom they had hired over Americans
because they were used to the heat, were complaining about the yams.
Roosevelt learned that the yams were rotting from the heat.
In the previous month 85 men had died of pneumonia,
and Roosevelt advised men not to sleep in the wet clothes they used for working.
Taft cabled him that the New York Republican Club and many others
were protesting the discharging of colored troops without a hearing.
Taft had suspended the cases,
and Roosevelt reversed that unless there was new evidence.
The multi-racial Constitution League financed an investigation.
Their black attorney Gilchrist Stewart in late November brought a 4-page report
to the White House, but Roosevelt’s secretary
William Loeb said the President was not available.
Stewart then gave it to Senator Foraker.
In his Sixth Annual Message to Congress on 3 December 1906
Roosevelt again recommended prohibiting corporations
from making political contributions.
He warned against the judiciary abusing its use of injunctions.
This message filled 48 pages, and here are some highlights:
As a nation we still continue to enjoy a literally
unprecedented prosperity; and it is probable that only
reckless speculation and disregard of legitimate business
methods on the part of the business world
can materially mar this prosperity....
The best judges have ever been foremost
to disclaim any immunity from criticism.
This has been true since the days of the great English
Land Chancellor Parker, who said:
"Let all people be at liberty to know what I found my
judgment upon; that, so when I have given it in any cause,
others may be at liberty to judge of me."
The properties of the case were set forth with singular
clearness and good temper by Judge W. H. Taft, when a
United States circuit judge eleven years ago in 1895:
"The opportunity freely and publicly to criticize judicial
action is of vastly more importance to the body politic
than the immunity of courts and judges
from unjust aspersions and attack.
Nothing tends more to render judges careful in their
decisions and anxiously solicitous to do exact justice
than the consciousness that every act of theirs is to be
subjected to the intelligent scrutiny
and candid criticism of their fellow-men.
Such criticism is beneficial in proportion as it is fair,
dispassionate discriminating, and based on
a knowledge of sound legal principles....
The free public school, the chance for each boy or girl
to get a good elementary education, lies at the
foundation of our whole political situation.
In every community the poorest citizens,
those who need the schools the most, would be
deprived of them if they only received school
facilities proportioned to the taxes they paid.
This is as true of one portion of our country as of another.
It is as true for the negro as for the white man.
The white man, if he is wise, will decline to allow the
negroes in a mass to grow to manhood
and womanhood without education....
The plain people who think—the mechanics, farmers,
merchants, workers, with head or hand, the men to whom
American traditions are dear, who love their country and
try to act decently by their neighbors, owe it to themselves
to remember that the most damaging blow that can be
given popular government is to elect un unworthy and
sinister agitator on a platform of violence and hypocrisy.
Whenever such an issue is raised in this country nothing
can be gained by flinching from it, for in such case
democracy is itself on trial, popular self-government
under republican forms is itself on trial.
The triumph of the mob is just as evil a thing as the
triumph of plutocracy, and to have escaped one danger
avails nothing whatever if we succumb to the other.
In the end the honest man, whether rich or poor, who
earns his own living and tries to deal justly by his fellows,
has as much to fear from the insincere and unworthy
rich or poor, who earns his own living and tries to deal
justly by his fellows, has as much to fear from the
insincere and unworthy demagog, promising much and
performing nothing, or else performing nothing but evil,
who would set on the mob to plunder the rich,
as from the crafty corruptionist, who, for his own ends,
would permit the common people
to be exploited by the very wealthy....
Indeed, so far as it is in our power, it should be our aim
steadily to reduce the number of hours of labor, with
as a goal the general introduction of the eight-hour day....
Records show that during the twenty years from
January 1, 1881 to December 31, 1900, there are strikes
affecting 117,509 establishments, and
6,105,694 employees were thrown out of employment.
During the same period there were 1,005 lockouts,
involving nearly 10,000 establishments, throwing over
one million people out of employment.
These strikes and lockouts involved in estimated loss to
employees of $307,000,000 and to employers of
$143,000,000, a total of $450,000,000.
The public suffered directly and indirectly
probably as great additional loss.
But the money loss, great as it was, did not measure the
anguish and suffering endured by the wives and children
of employees whose pay stopped when their work stopped,
or the disastrous effect of the strike or lockout upon the
business of employers, or the increase in the cost of
products and the inconvenience and loss to the public....
It would be impossible to overstate
(though it is of course difficult quantitatively to measure)
the effect upon a nation's growth to greatness of what may
be called organized patriotism, which necessarily includes
the substitution of a national feeling for mere local pride;
with as a resultant a high ambition for the whole country.
No country can develop its full strength so long as the
parts which make up the whole, each put a feeling of
loyalty to the part above the feeling of loyalty to the whole.
This is true of sections, and it is just as true of classes.
The industrial and agricultural classes must work together,
capitalists and wageworkers must work together, if the
best work of which the country is capable is to be done.
It is probable that a thoroughly efficient system of
education comes next to the influence of patriotism in
bringing about national success of this kind....
Last August an insurrection broke out in Cuba
which it speedily grew evident that the existing
Cuban Government was powerless to quell.
This Government was repeatedly asked by the then
Cuban Government to intervene, and finally was notified
by the President of Cuba that he intended to resign;
that his decision was irrevocable; that none of the other
constitutionall officers would consent to carry on the
Government, and he was powerless to maintain order....
Peace has come in the island; and the harvesting of the
sugar-cane crop, the great crop of the island,
is about to proceed.
When the election has been held and the new
government inaugurated in peaceful and orderly fashion,
the provisional government will come to an end.
I take this opportunity of expressing upon behalf of the
American people, with all possible solemnity, our most
earnest hope that the people of Cuba will realize the
imperative need of preserving justice
and keeping order in the Island....
Secretary Root ... in an address to the Third Conference
at Rio on the 31st of July—an address of such note that
I send it in, together with this message—he said:
"We wish for no victories but those of peace;
for no territory except our own; for no sovereignty
except the sovereignty over ourselves.
We deem the independence and equal rights of the
smallest and weakest member of the family of nations
entitled to as much respect as those of thegreatest empire,
and we deem the observance of that respect the chief
guarantee of the weak against the oppression of the strong.
We neither claim nor desire any rights or privileges or
powers that we do not freely
concede to every American Republic.
We wish to increase our prosperity, to extend our trade,
to grow in wealth, in wisdom, and in spirit,
but our conception of the true way to accomplish this
is not to pull down others and profit by their ruin,
but to help all friends to a common prosperity and a
common growth, that we may all
become greater and stronger together.
Within a few months for the first time the recognized
possessors of every foot of soil upon the American
continents can be, and I hope will be, represented with
the acknowledged rights of equal sovereign states
in the great World Congress at The Hague....
Last June trouble which had existed for some time
between the Republics of Salvador Guatemala, and
Honduras culminated in war—a war which threatened
to be ruinous to the countries involved and very
destructive to the commercial interests of Americans,
Mexicans, and other foreigners who are taking an
important part in the development of these countries.
The thoroughly good understanding which exists between
the United States and Mexico enabled this Government
and that of Mexico to unite in effective mediation
between the warring Republics; which mediation resulted,
not without long-continued and patient effort, in bringing
about a meeting of the representatives of the hostile
powers on board a United States warship as neutral
territory, and peace was there concluded; a peace which
resulted in the saving of thousands of lives and in the
prevention of an incalculable amount of misery and the
destruction of property and of the means of livelihood.
The Rio Conference passed the following resolution
in reference to this action:
"That the Third International American Conference
shall address to the Presidents of the United States of
America and of the United States of Mexico a note in
which the conference which is being held at Rio expresses
its satisfaction at the happy results of their mediation for
the celebration of peace between the Republics of
Guatemala, Honduras, and Salvador."...
The Algeciras Convention, which was signed by the
United States as well as by most of the powers of Europe,
supersedes the previous convention in 1880, which was
also signed both by the United States
and a majority of the European powers.
This treaty confers upon us equal commercial rights
with all European countries and does not entail a single
obligation of any kind upon us,
and I earnestly hope it may be speedily ratified....
In my last message I advised you that the Emperor of
Russia had taken the intiative in bringing about
a second peace conference at The Hague.
Under the guidance of Russia the arrangement
of the preliminaries for such a conference has
been progressing during the past year.
Progress has necessarily been slow, owing to
the great number of countries to be consulted
upon every question that has arisen.
It is a matter of satisfaction that all of the American
Republics have now, for the first time, been invited
to join in the proposed conference.
The close connection between the subjects to be taken
up by the Red Cross Conference held at Geneva last
summer and the subjects which naturally would come
before The Hague Conference made it apparent tha
it was desirable to have the work of the Red Cross
Conference completed and considered by the different
powers before the meeting at The Hague.
The Red Cross Conference ended its labors on the
6th day of July, and the revised and amended convention,
which was signed by the American delegates,
will be promptly laid before the Senate....
We should as a nation do everything in our power
for the cause of honorable peace.
It is morally as indefensible for a nation to commit
a wrong upon another nation, strong or weak,
as for an individual thus to wrong his fellows.
We should do all in our power to hasten the day
when there shall be peace among the nations—
a peace based upon justice
and not upon cowardly submission to wrong....74
Also in this message President Roosevelt in eight paragraphs
strongly condemned racial hatred and lynching.
He expounded extensively on the relations of labor and capital,
and he reviewed the progress of congressional efforts on reforms.
He discussed various taxes.
He suggested how conditions for workers and farmers were improving.
He reported on conditions in the Philippines,
and he urged granting citizenship to Puerto Ricans.
Isolated Hawaii and Alaska had different needs.
He asked for good will toward immigrants from all nations.
He noted sporadic hostility toward Japanese, and he asked that
the earlier tradition of friendship be continued.
He wished that the Army and Navy could be used to protect the rights of aliens.
He described the recent problems in Cuba and noted that peace had been maintained.
He commended the recent International Conference of American Republics
which met for six weeks at Rio de Janeiro.
On December 10 Roosevelt learned that he won the Nobel Peace Prize
“for his role in bringing to an end the bloody war recently waged
between two of the world’s great powers, Japan and Russia.”
He donated the prize of about $37,000 to “a foundation to establish
at Washington a permanent Industrial Peace Committee.”
Roosevelt appointed the first Jew to a US cabinet office,
and on December 17 Oscar S. Straus became Secretary of Commerce and Labor.
Foraker in the Senate proposed a resolution directing the War Secretary
to provide all US Senators with copies of all the official documents in
the Brownsville case and the service records of all the soldiers discharged.
Taft complied and defended the President’s prerogative.
Roosevelt studied the reports and asked Taft to make a thorough investigation.
On December 19 the President sent a special message to Congress summarizing
the evidence against the soldiers who fired the rifles
and the complicity of the others who protected them.
President Roosevelt had kept on McKinley’s Interior Secretary Ethan Hitchcock;
but in January 1907 he was suspected of corruption with the extraction industries
in the West, and he was declining in old age.
Roosevelt replaced him with the former President’s son James R. Garfield
who was confirmed as the new Secretary of the Interior on January 15.
On January 14 Roosevelt sent another special message to the Congress
on the dismissed Brownsville soldiers, and most of the US Senate decided that
he had not exceeded his constitutional powers.
George W. Perkins worked for J. P. Morgan on complicated deals such as
the 1902 merger of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and other companies
to form the International Harvester Company, and he arranged for its president
Cyrus McCormick to meet with U.S. Steel’s chairman, Judge Elbert H. Gary
and with Roosevelt’s Corporation Commissioners,
the outgoing James Garfield and the incoming Herbert Knox Smith.
Roosevelt wanted to alleviate Wall Street’s concern about his radical reforms,
and they met on January 18 in a New York hotel.
The US Congress wanted to know if McCormick’s company was a monopoly,
and its board members Perkins and Gary wanted most-favored-trust status.
Garfield and Roosevelt made a gentlemen’s agreement even though they knew that
the Harvester Company controlled 85% of the reaping and harvesting market.
On January 26 Roosevelt and Senator Foraker of Ohio got into a contentious
debate over the Brownsville debacle that delayed the dining at the Gridiron Club.
Roosevelt was also concerned about how the labor unions in San Francisco
were opposing Japanese immigration even though Japan had contributed
$100,000 in emergency aid after the San Francisco earthquake in April 1906.
The city segregated the Japanese in the public schools.
Japan’s government in Tokyo promised Secretary of State Root
that they would restrict their emigration.
On February 13 two cabinet officers in the White House tried to get San Francisco’s
Mayor Eugene Schmitz to persuade the school board to admit Japanese students
who spoke English and were not too old.
The President wanted a new immigration act to facilitate the naturalization of the Japanese.
The San Francisco Chronicle called Roosevelt unpatriotic.
Japan had proved they had a powerful navy,
and Roosevelt wanted large battleships called “dreadnoughts.”
The House of Representatives funded them on February 15, and three days later
Congress passed the immigration bill with an exclusion amendment.
On February 22 Oregon’s Republican Senator Charles Fulton added an amendment
to the Agricultural Appropriations bill excluding forest reserves in six northwestern states
and it passed on the 25th; but Roosevelt never signed the bill.
Then on March 2 he proclaimed 21 new forest reserves in those six states.
On March 4 the old Congress adjourned,
and Roosevelt made some changes in his cabinet.
Cortelyou became Treasury Secretary, and the former ambassador to Italy and Russia,
George von L. Meyer, replaced Cortelyou as Postmaster General.
Victor Metcalf became Navy Secretary,
and James R. Garfield was the new Secretary of the Interior.
When the New York Stock Exchange fell sharply on March 14,
Cortelyou quickly deposited $12 million in gold from the US Treasury
into New York banks to replenish their money supply.
This prevented the need for J. P. Morgan, E. H. Harriman,
and other investors to do something similar.
Because of the reforms of unfettered capitalists many investors had become
hesitant to risk their assets in railroad construction and improvements.
Roosevelt invited Morgan, Harriman, and railroad executives
to the White House, but none came.
The Immigration Act did not slow down the Japanese workers coming to California,
and anti-immigrant riots broke out in San Francisco in May.
Senator Foraker announced that he was opposing Taft’s running for President
even though Taft had not declared his candidacy.
On June 22 Secretary of War Taft gave Roosevelt his detailed plan
for defending the Philippines, Hawaii, Guam, and the Pacific Coast.
The President transmitted this in code to General Leonard Wood in the Philippines on July 6.
Roosevelt in late June had met with Navy Secretary Metcalf,
Postmaster General Meyer, and representatives of the Navy and the Army.
The Japanese immigration crisis in San Francisco led to
the opposition in Japan calling for war,
though Secretary of State Root assured Roosevelt that
it was “an ordinary diplomatic affair.”
The President told Meyer,
The business of statesmen is to try constantly
to keep international relations better,
to do away with the causes of friction,
and to secure as nearly ideal justice
as actual conditions will permit.”75
US Navy Intelligence informed Roosevelt that Japan was preparing for war
by purchasing armored ships from Europe.
Roosevelt said that he did not believe there was a real chance for war
between Japan and the United States in the near future,
though he predicted there would be a war between the US and Japan someday.
Admiral Dewey advised sending a battle fleet to the Orient,
and Roosevelt ordered Metcalf to stockpile coal at Subic Bay in the Philippines,
move guns there from Cavite, and send four armored cruisers to the West Coast.
The President wanted the Atlantic fleet to go to San Francisco in October.
On August 3 Standard Oil was found guilty of getting illegal rebates
on 1,462 carloads of oil, and Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis
fined the company $20,000 for each carload for a total of $29,240,000.
That verdict caused the stock market to go down.
John D. Rockefeller did not expect to pay the fine,
and in July 1908 the Appeals Court Judge Peter Grosscup negated the fine,
criticized the 1,462 separate counts, and ordered a retrial.
Roosevelt called that a “miscarriage of justice,”
and he said it proved that judges had too much power.
He noted that the markets in Britain, France, Germany, and Canada were also failing.
He said the government would prosecute Standard Oil again
because the defendant was guilty.
Yet he ordered the Attorney General Bonaparte to
postpone the prosecution of International Harvester.
The environmentalist W. J. McGee wanted to make a massive hydro-system
in the United States, and his friend Gifford Pinchot persuaded Roosevelt
to form the Inland Waterways Commission to develop
a plan to improve and control rivers in the US.
He appointed McGee the chairman and directed him to file a report within one year.
On October 1 Roosevelt joined McGee and Pinchot on a steamer at Keokuk, Iowa
with twenty governors of states, and on the way to Memphis
they planned a great conference at the White House in the spring of 1908.
On October 4 Roosevelt spoke at Memphis about the Deep Waterways Convention.
Then he spent two weeks hunting bears in Louisiana.
The bank magnates F. August Heinz and Charles W. Mors
tried to corner the copper market in October by driving up prices.
When their stock became depressed, people learned that their speculation
had been financed by the Knickerbocker Trust Company.
That caused it to collapse on October 18 and provoked a panic.
The Treasury Secretary Cortelyou worked with
financier J. P. Morgan to prevent bank failures.
By the time Roosevelt returned to the White House the loan rates had risen 125%.
Treasury Secretary Cortelyou deposited $25 million in national banks.
The next day the president of the New York Stock Exchange warned Morgan
that he would have to shut it down.
Morgan asked for time, and with chief executives of New York’s largest banks
they pledged $25 million which kept it open as stocks began to recover.
On October 28 New York City could not get a loan and was about to default.
Morgan persuaded U.S. Steel to save Moore & Schley
by buying the collateral shares for its loans.
Elbert Gary would not join the plan unless Roosevelt endorsed it also.
Henry Clay Frick agreed with Gary,
and Frick on November 4 went to the White House
and quickly persuaded the President to grant his approval.
That day the market was relieved as prices rose.
On November 11 Roosevelt signed 46 copies of a document that called for
a national conservation conference at the White House in May 1908,
and they were sent to the states with 500 more going to influential people
including Congress, the US Supreme Court, newspaper editors, scientists, and tycoons.
Roosevelt considered it important because he did not know
how long the natural resources of the country would last.
Roosevelt's Seventh Annual Message to Congress on 3 December 1907
has 55 pages, and here are some more highlights:
No nation has greater resources than ours, and I think
it can be truthfully said that the citizens of no nation
possess greater energy and industrial ability.
In no nation are the fundamental business conditions
sounder than in ours at this very moment; and it is foolish,
when such is the case, for people to hoard money instead
of keeping it in sound banks; for it is such hoarding that is
the immediate occasion of money stringency.
Moreover, as a rule, the business of our people is
conducted with honesty and probity, and this applies alike
to farms and factories, to railroads and banks,
to all our legitimate commercial enterprises....
The antitrust law should not be repealed;
but it should be made both more efficient
and more in harmony with actual conditions.
It should be so amended as to forbid only the kind of
combination which does harm to the general public,
such amendment to be accompanied by, or to be an
incident of, a grant of supervisory power to the
Government over these big concerns
engaged in interstate business.
This should be accompanied by provision
for the compulsory publication of accounts
and the subjection of books and papers to
the inspection of the Government officials.
A beginning has already been made for such supervision
by the establishment of the Bureau of Corporations.
The antitrust law should not prohibit combinations that
do no injustice to the public, still less those the existence
of which is on the whole of benefit to the public....
Those who fear, from any reason, the extension of
Federal activity will do well to study the history not only
of the national banking act but of the pure-food law,
and notably the meat inspection law recently enacted.
The pure-food law was opposed so violently that its
passage was delayed for a decade; yet it was even more
violently assailed; and the same men who now denounce
the attitude of the National Government in seeking to
oversee and control the workings of interstate commerce
carriers and business concerns, then asserted that we
were "discrediting and ruining a great American industry."
Two years have not elapsed, and already it has become
evident that the great benefit the law confers upon the
public is accompanied by an equal benefit to the
reputable packing establishments.
The latter are better off under the law
than they were without it.
The benefit to interstate common carriers
and business concerns from the legislation
I advocate would be equally marked.
Incidentally, in the passage of the pure-food law the
action of the various State food and dairy commissioners
showed in striking fashion how much good for the whole
people results from the hearty cooperation of the
Federal and State officials in securing a given reform.
It is primarily of the action of these State commissioners
that we owe the enactment of this law, without which
the State laws were largely ineffective.
There must be the closest cooperation
between the National and State governments
in administering these laws....
When our tax laws are revised, the question of an
incomce tax and an inheritance tax should
receive the careful attention of our legislators.
In my judgment both of these taxes should be part
of our system of Federal taxation.
I speak diffidently about the income tax because
one scheme for an income tax was declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; while in addition
it is a difficult tax to administer in its practical working,
and great care would have to be exercised to see that
it was not evaded by the very men whom it was most
desirable to have taxed, for if so evaded, it would,
of course, be worse than no tax at all; as the least
desirable of all taxes is the tax which bears heavily
upon the honest as compared with the dishonest man.
Nevertheless, a graduated income tax of the proper type
would be a desirable feature of Federal taxation,
and it is hoped that one may be devised which the
Supreme Court will declare constitutional.
The inheritance tax, however, is both a far better method
of taxation, and far more important for the purpose of
having the fortunes of the country bear in proportion to
their increase in size a corresponding
increase and burden of taxation.
The Government has the absolute right to decide
as to the terms upon which a man shall receive a
bequest or devise from another, and this point in the
devolution of property is especially appropriate
for the imposition of a tax.
Laws imposing such taxes have repeatedly been placed
upon the National statute books and as repeatedly
declared constitutional by the courts; and these laws
contained the progressive principle, that is, after a
certain amount is reached the bequest or gift, in life
or death, is increasingly burdened, and the rate of
taxation is increased in proportion to the remoteness
of blood of the man receiving the bequest.
These principles are recognized already in
the leading civilized nations of the world....
A few years ago there was loud complaint that the law
could not be invoked against wealthy offenders.
There is no such complaint now.
The course of the Department of Justice during the last
few years has been such as to make it evident that
no man stands above the law, that no corporation is
so wealthy that it cannot be held to account.
The Department of Justice has been as prompt to
proceed against the wealthiest malefactor whose crime
was one of greed and cunning as to proceed against
the agitator who incites to brutal violence.
Everything that can be done under the existing law,
and with the existing state of public opinion,
which so profoundly influences both the courts
and juries, has been done.
But the laws themselves need strengthening in more than
one important point; they should be made more definite,
so that no honest man can be led unwittingly to break them,
and so that the real wrongdoer can be readily punished.
Moreover, there must be the public opinion back of the
laws or the laws themselves will be of no avail.
At present, while the average juryman undoubtedly wishes
to see trusts broken up, and is quite ready to fine the
corporation itself, he is very reluctant to find the facts
proven beyond a reasonable doubt when it comes to
sending to jail a member of the business community for
indulging in practices which are profoundly unhealthy,
but which, unfortunately, the business community has
grown to recognize as well-nigh normal.
Both the present condition of the law and the present
temper of juries render it a task of extreme difficulty
to get at the real wrongdoer in any such case,
especially by imprisonment.
Yet it is from every standpoint far preferable to punish the
prime offender by imprisonment rather than to fine the
corporation, with the attendant damage to stockholders....
The National Government should be a model employer.
It should demand the highest quality of service from each
of its employees, and it should care
for all of them properly in return....
The Congress should consider the extension
of the eight-hour day law....
No question growing out of our rapid and complex
industrial development is more important than that
of the employment of women and children.
The presence of women in industry reacts
with extreme directness upon the character of
the home and upon family life, and the conditions
surrounding the employment of children
bear a vital relation to our future citizenship....
The two citizens whose welfare is in the aggregate
most vital to the welfare of the Nation, and therefore
to the welfare of all other citizens, are the wage-worker
who does manual labor and
the tiller of the soil, the farmer....
The Department of Agriculture has in many places,
perhaps especially in certain districts of the South,
accomplished an extraordinary amount by
cooperating with and teaching the farmers
through their associations, on their own soil,
how to increase their income by managing
their farms better than they were hitherto managed.
The farmer must not lose his independence,
his initiative, his rugged self-reliance,
yet he must learn to work in the heartiest cooperation
with his fellows, exactly as the business man has
learned to work; and he must prepare to use to constantly
better advantage the knowledge that can be obtained from
agricultural colleges, while he must insist upon a practical
curriculum in the schools in which his children are taught....
The mineral wealth of the country, the coal, iron,
oil, gas, and the like, does not reproduce itself,
and therefore is certain to be exhausted ultimately;
and wastefulness in dealing with it today means that
our descendants will feel the exhaustion a
generation or two before they otherwise would....
Work on the Panama Canal is proceeding
in a highly satisfactory manner....
The chief engineer and all his professional associates are
firmly convinced that the 85 feet level lock canal which
they are constructing is the best that could be desired....
Oklahoma has become a State, standing on a full
equality with her elder sisters, and her future
is assured by her great natural resources.
The duty of the National Government to guard the
personal and property rights of the Indians within
her borders remains of course unchanged....
Under our form of government voting is not merely a
right but a duty, and moreover a fundamental and
necessary duty if a man is to be a good citizen.
It is well to provide that corporations shall not
contribute to Presidential or National campaigns,
and furthermore to provide for the publication
of both contributions and expenditures.
There is, however, always danger in laws of this kind,
which from their very nature are difficult of enforcement;
the danger being lest they be obeyed only by the honest,
and disobeyed by the unscrupulous, so as
to act only as a penalty upon honest men.
Moreover, no such law would hamper an unscrupulous
man of unlimited means from buying his way into office.
There is a very radical measure which would, I believe,
work a substantial improvement in our system of
conducting a campaign, although I am well aware that
it will take some time for people so to familiarize
themselves with such a proposal as to
be willing to consider its adoption.
The need for collecting large campaign funds
would vanish if Congress provided an appropriation
for the proper and legitimate expenses of each of the
great national parties, an appropriation ample enough
to meet the necessity for thorough organization and
machinery, which requires a large expenditure of money.
Then the stipulation should be made that
no party receiving campaign funds from the
Treasury should accept more than a fixed amount
from any individual subscriber or donor;
and the necessary publicity for receipts and
expenditures could without difficulty be provided....
The Biological Survey is quietly working for the good
of our agricultural interests, and is an excellent example
of a Government bureau which conducts original scientific
research the finds of which are of much practical utility....
Not only there is not now, but there never has been,
any other nation in the world so wholly free from the
evils of militarism as is ours.
There never has been any other large nation,
not even China, which for so long a period has
had relatively to its numbers so small
a regular army as has ours.
Never at any time in our history has this Nation
suffered from militarism or been in the remotest
danger of suffering from militarism.
Never at any time of our history has the Regular Army
been of a size which caused the slightest appreciable
tax upon the tax-paying citizens of the Nation....
The Medical Corps should be much larger
than the needs of our Regular Army in war.
Yet at present it is smaller than the needs
of the service demand even in peace.
The Spanish war occurred less than ten years ago.
The chief loss we suffered in it was by disease
among the regiments which never left the country....
The Second International Peace Conference was
convened at The Habue on the 15th of June last and
remained in session until the 18th of October.
For the first time the representatives of practically all
the civilized countries of the world united in the
temperate and kindly discussions of the methods by
which the causes of war might be narrowed
and its injurious effects reduced.
Although the agreements reached in the Conference
did not in any direction go to the length hoped for by the
more sanguine, yet in many directions important steps
were taken, and upon every subject on the program
there was such full and considerate discussion as to
justify the belief that substantial progress has been
made toward further agreements in the future.
Thirteen conventions were agreed upon embodying
the definite conclusions which had been reached,
and resolutions were adopted marking the progress
made in matters upon which agreement was not yet
sufficiently complete to make conventions practicable.
The delegates of the United States were instructed to
favor an agreement for obligatory arbitration,
the establishment of a permanent court of arbitration
to proceed judicially in the hearing and decision of
international causes, the prohibition of force for the
collection of contract debts alleged to be due from
governments to citizens of other countries until after
arbitration as to the justice and amount of the debt
and the time and manner of payment, the immunity of
private property at sea, the better definition of the
rights of neutrals, and in case any measure to that end
should be introduced, the limitation of armaments.
In the field of peaceful disposal of international
differences several important advances were made.
First, as to obligatory arbitration.
Although the Conference failed to secure a unanimous
agreement upon the details of a convention for
obligatory arbitration, it did resolve as follows:
"It is unanimous:
(1) In accepting the principle for obligatory arbitration;
(2) In declaring that certain differences, and
notably those relating to the interpretation and
application of international conventional stipulations
are susceptible of being submitted to obligatory
arbitration without any restriction."
In view of the fact that as a result of the discussion
the vote upon the definite treaty of obligatory
arbitration, which was proposed, stood 32 in favor
to 9 against the adoption of the treaty, there can be
little doubt that the great majority of the countries
of the world have reached a point where they are
now ready to apply practically the principles thus
uanimously agreed upon by the Conference.
The second advance, and a very great one, is the
agreement which relates to the use of force
for the collection of contract debts.
Your attention is invited to the paragraphs upon
this subject in my Message of December 1906
and to the resolution of the Third American
Conference at Rio in the summer of 1906.
The convention upon this subject adopted
by the Conference substantially as proposed
by the American delegates is as follows:
"In order to avoid between nations armed conflicts of
a purely pecuniary origin arising from contractual debts
claimed of the government of one country by the
government of another country to be due to its nationals,
the signatory Powers agree not to have recourse to
armed force for the collection of such contractual debts.
"However, this stipulation shall not be applicable,
or in case of acceptance, makes it impossible to
formulate the terms of submission, or after arbitration,
fails to comply with the award rendered.
"It is further agreed that arbitration here contemplated
shall be in conformity, as to procedure, with Chapter III
of the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of
International Disputes adopted at The Hague, and that it
shall determine, in so far as there shall be no agreement
between the parties, the justice and the amount of the
debt, the time and mode of payment thereof."
Such a provision would have prevented much injustice
and extortion in the past, and I cannot doubt that its
effect in the future will be most salutary.
A third advance has been made in amending and
perfecting the convention of 1899 for the voluntary
settlement of international disputes, and particularly
the extension of those parts of that convention
which relate to commissions of inquiry.
The existence of those provisions enabled the
Governments of Great Britain and Russia to avoid war,
notwithstanding great public excitement at the time of
the Dogger Bank incident, and the new convention
agreed upon by the Conference gives practical effect
to the experience gained in that inquiry.
Substantial progress was also made towards
the creation of a permanent judicial tribunal
for the determination of international causes.
There was very full discussion of the proposal
for such a court and a general agreement was
finally reached in favor of its creation.
The Conference recommended to the signatory
Powers the adoption of a draft upon which
is agreed for the organization of the court,
leaving to be determined only the method
by which the judges should be selected.
This remaining unsettled question is plainly
one which time and good temper will solve.
A further agreement of the first importance was
that for the creation of an international prize court.
The constitution, organization and procedure of
such a tribunal were provided for in detail.
Anyone who recalls the injustices under which this
country suffered as a neutral power during the early
part of the last century cannot fail to see in this
provision for an international prize court the great
advance which the world is making towards the
substitution of the rule of reason and justice
in place of simple force.
Not only will the international prize court be the
means of protecting the interests of neutrals,
but it is in itself a step towards the creation of the
more general court for the hearing of international
controversies to which reference has just been made.
The organization and action of such a prize court
cannot fail to accustom the different countries to the
submission of international questions to the decision
of an international tribunal, and we may confidently
expect the results of such submission to bring about a
general agreement upon the enlargement of the practice.
Numerous provisions were adopted for reducing
the evil effects of war and for defining
the rights and duties of neutrals.
The conference also provided for the holding of a
third Conference within a period similar to that which
elapsed between the First and Second Conferences.
The delegates of the United States worthily
represented the spirit of the American people
and maintained with fidelity and ability the
policy of our Government upon all the great
questions discussed in the Conference.
The report of the delegation, together with
authenticated copies of the conventions signed,
when received, will be laid before
the Senate for its consideration....
In the judgment of the most competent experts of the
Treasury Department and the Department of Commerce
and Labor it was wholly unnecessary for the due
collection of the customs revenues, and the attempt to
defend it merely illustrates the demoralization which
naturally follows from a long continued
course of reliance upon such methods.
I accordingly caused the regulations governing this
branch of the customs service to be modified so that
values are determined upon a hearing in which all the
parties interested have an opportunity to be heard
and to know the evidence against them.
Moreover our Treasury agents are accredited to
the government of the country in which they seek
information, and in Germany receive assistance of the
quasi-official chambers of commerce in determining the
actual market value of goods, in accordance with what
I am advised to be the true construction of the law.
These changes of regulations were adapted to the
removal of such manifest abuses that I have not felt
that they ought to be confined to our relations with
Germany; and I have extended their operation to
all other counries which have expressed a desire
to enter into similar administrative relations.
I ask for authority to reform the agreement with China
under which the indemnity of 1900 was fixed, by remitting
and cancelling the obligation of China for the payment of
all that part of the stipulated indemnity which is in excess
of the sum of eleven million, six hundred and fifty-five
thousand four hundred and ninety-two dollars
and sixty-nine cents, and interest at four percent.
After the rescue of the foreign legations in Peking
during the Boxer troubles in 1900 the Powers required
from China the payment of equitable indemnities to the
several nations, and the final protocol under which the
troops were withdrawn, signed at Peking,
September 7, 1901 fixed the amount of this indemnity
allotted to the United States at over $20,000,000,
and China paid, up to and including the
1st day of June last, a little over $6,000,000.
It was the first intention of this Government at the
proper time, when all claims had been presented and
all expenses ascertained as fully as possible, to revise
the estimates and account, and as a proof of sincere
friendship for China voluntarily to release that country
from its legal liability for all payments in excess of the
sum which should prove to be necessary for actual
indemnity to the United States and its citizens.
This nation should help in every practicable way
in the education of the Chinese people, so that the
vast and populous Empire of China may gradually
adapt itself to modern conditions.
One way of doing this is by promoting the coming
of Chinese students to this country and making it
attractive to them to take courses at our
universities and higher educational institutions.
Our educators should, so far as possible,
take concerted action toward this end.
On the courteous invitation of the President of Mexico,
the Secretary of State visited that country in September
and October and was received everywhere
with the greatest kindness and hospitality.
He carried from the Government of the
United States to our southern neighbor a
message of respect and good will and of desire
for better acquaintance and increasing friendship.
The response from the Government and the
people of Mexico was hearty and sincere.
No pains were spared to manifest the most friendly
attitude and feeling toward the United States.
In view of the close neighborhood of the two countries
the relations which exist between Mexico and the
United States are just cause for gratification.
We have a common boundary of over 1,500 miles
from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific.
Much of it is marked only by the
shifting waters of the Rio Grande.
Many thousands of Mexicans are residing upon
our side of the line, and it is estimated that over
40,000 Americans are resident in Mexican territory
and that American investments in Mexico amount
to over seven hundred million dollars.
The extraordinary industrial and commercial prosperity
of Mexico has been greatly promoted by American
enterprise, and Americans are sharing largely in its results.
The foreign trade of the Republic already exceeds
$240,000,000 per annum, and of this two-thirds both of
exports and imports are exchanged with the United States.
Under these circumstances numerous questions
necessarily arise between the two countries.
These questions are always approached and disposed of
in a spirit of mutual courtesy and fair dealing.
Americans carrying on business in Mexico testify uniformly
to the kindness and consideration with which they are
treated and their sense of the security of their property
and enterprises under the wise administration of the
great statesman who has so long held the office
of Chief Magistrate of that Republic.
The two Governments have been uniting
efforts for a considerable time past to aid
Central America in attaining the degree of peace
and order which have made possible the prosperity
of the northern ports of the Continent.
After the peace between Guatemala, Honduras, and
Salvador, celebrated under the circumstances described
in my last Message, a new war broke out between the
Republics of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Salvador.
The effort to compose this new difficulty has resulted
in the acceptance of the joint suggestion of the Presidents
of Mexico and of the United States for a general peace
conference between all the countries of Central America.
On the 17th day of September last a protocol was
signed between the representatives of the five
Central American countries accredited to this
Government agreeing upon a conference to be held
in the City of Washington "in order to devise the
means of preserving peace in those countries."
The protocol includes the expression of a wish
that the Presidents of the United States and Mexico
should appoint representatives to lend their good
and impartial offices in a purely friendly way toward
the realization of the objects of the conference."
The conference is now in session and will have our best
wishes and, where it is practicable, our friendly assistance.
One of the results of the Pan American Conference
at Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1906 has been
a great increase in the activity and usefulness of
the International Bureau of American Republics.
That institution, which includes all the American
Republics in its membership and brings all their
representatives together, is doing a really valuable
work in informing the people of the United States
about the other Republics and in making
the United States known to them.
Its action is now limited by appropriations determined
when it was doing a work on a much smaller scale
and rendering much less valuable service.
I recommend that the contribution of this Government
to the expenses of the Bureau be made
commensurate with its increased work.76
Roosevelt expressed this idea:
There may be honest differences of opinion
as to many governmental policies;
but surely there can be no such differences
as to the need of unflinching perseverance
in the war against successful dishonesty.77
He discussed the economy and government’s role in preserving justice.
He urged the Congress to extend the 8-hour day to more workers.
He discussed the value of the waterways.
He gave a detailed account of the progress being made on the Panama Canal.
He called for a national gallery of art in the capital city,
and he explained the work being done by the Biological Survey.
He denied that militarism has ever caused any evil “in this country.”
He hoped that the next Hague Conference would deal with the limitation of armaments.
On December 11 Roosevelt announced that
he would not seek another nomination for President.
On December 16 the Great White Fleet of 16 warships left the James River estuary
after Roosevelt secretly ordered Admiral Robley D. Evans to stay in the Pacific Ocean
for several months before returning by way of the Indian Ocean and the Suez Canal.
On 6 January 1908 the United States Supreme Court ruled that
the Employers’ Liability Act of 1906 could not be applied to intrastate corporations
because that violated states’ rights.
President Roosevelt sent to Justice William R. Day the book
Moral Overstrain by George W. Alger
that argued federal liability law should protect workers.
Roosevelt wrote,
If the spirit which lies behind these two decisions
obtained in all the actions of the Federal and State courts,
we should not only have a revolution,
but it would be absolutely necessary to have a revolution,
because the condition of the worker
would become intolerable.78
President Roosevelt in a special message to the Congresss on 31 Janaury 1908 wrote:
Superficially it may seem that the laws, the passage
of which I herein again advocate—for I have repeatedly
advocated them before—are not connected.
But in reality they are connected.
Each and every one of these laws, if enacted, would
represent part of the campaign against privilege,
part of the campaign to make the class of
great property holders realize that
property has its duties no less than its rights.
When the courts guarantee to the employer,
as they should, the rights of the employer,
and to property the rights of property, they should
no less emphatically make it evident that they will exact
from property and from the employer the duties which
should necessarily accompany these rights; and hitherto
our laws have failed in precisely this point of enforcing
the performance of duty by the man of property toward
the man who works for him, by the man of great wealth,
especially if he uses that wealth in corporate form, toward
the investor, the wage-worker, and the general public.
The permanent failure of the man of property to fulfill his
obligations would ultimately assure the wresting from him
of the privileges which he is entitled to enjoy only
if he recognizes the obligations accompanying them.
Those who assume or share the responsibility for this
failure are rendering but a poor service to the cause
which they believe they champiion.79
Roosevelt was concerned that Senator Foraker of Ohio
and New York’s Gov. Charles Evans Hughes were challenging
William Howard Taft for the Republican nomination.
When Hughes spoke to the New York Republican Club on January 31,
Roosevelt sent a radical Special Message to Congress
to distract attention away from Hughes.
The President’s message urged the Congress to revise the employers’ liability law
to please the Supreme Court, and he argued,
“Exactly as the working man is entitled to his wages, so he should be entitled to
indemnity for the injuries sustained in the natural course of his labor.”79
Roosevelt believed that he was “campaigning against privilege” in an “ethical movement.”
A few progressive Republicans and many moderate Democrats responded to his appeal
and passed a re-enacted Federal Employers’ Liability Act
the Workman’s Compensation Act for federal employees,
and the Child Labor Act for the District of Columbia.
On May 12 Roosevelt welcomed 45 state and territorial governor
and 30 other prominent men to a dinner at the White House
before the 3-day Conservation Conference.
The next day 360 political and social leaders including all nine Supreme Court Justices
attended the conference, though Sarah S. Platt-Decker,
president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, was the only woman.
The governors of most states attended,
but Texas and a few others states sent their lieutenant governors.
W. J. McGee had prepared the conservation issues into the following subjects:
Mineral Fuels, Ores and Related Materials, Soil, Forests, Sanitation, Reclamation,
Land Laws, Grazing and Stock Raising, Relations Between Rail and Water Transportation,
Navigation, Power, and Conservation as a National Policy.
After an invocation by the US Senate’s Chaplain Edward Everett Hale,
Roosevelt made the first speech on “Conservation as a National Duty.”
On the afternoon of May 15 a garden party
was attended by the participants and their wives.
In their declaration the governors promoted continuing and extending
the Administration’s forest and water policies, advised enacting laws
against harmful practices in mining and industry, and they concluded,
This conservation of our natural resources is a subject
of transcendent importance, which should engage
unremittingly the attention of the Nation, the States,
and the People in earnest cooperation.80
On June 8 Roosevelt proclaimed a National Conservation Commission
with Gifford Pinchot as chairman.
In six months he had authorized 16 national monuments,
20 federal irrigation projects in 14 states by the National Reclamation Act,
13 more national forests, and 16 federal bird refuges.
On June 23 he declared thousands of acres in the Grand Canyon a game preserve.
During the seven and a half years of his presidency Roosevelt created
or enlarged 150 National Forests,
and all but eleven of these were proclaimed in his last year.
All but four of these were west of the Mississippi River,
and those four were in Florida or northern Michigan.
Of the 51 bird reservations he established all but fifteen were created in his last year.
Most of them were also in the West with ten in Florida,
and four in Louisiana and two in Michigan.
He also proclaimed 18 national monuments all of which are west of the Mississippi,
and he added five National Parks in the West.
On June 16 at the Republican National Convention in Chicago
the permanent chairman Senator Lodge called Theodore Roosevelt
“the best abused and most popular man in the United States today,”
and mentioning his name started a demonstration that went on for 49 minutes.
Roosevelt answered many requests that he run
by repeating that he would not be a candidate.
When Taft was nominated, the demonstrating lasted 30 minutes.
Six other men were also nominated, and on the first ballot Taft got 702 votes,
Senator Knox 68, Gov. Hughes 67, Speaker Cannon 58, Vice President Fairbanks 40,
Senator LaFollete 25, and Senator Foraker 16.
Hughes declined to be the Vice President candidate,
and Taft chose Rep. James S. Sherman of New York.
In his acceptance speech Taft promised that he would
“clinch what has already been accomplished at the White House,”
and he would work “to complete and perfect the machinery
by which the President’s policies may be maintained.”81
Taft resigned as War Secretary on June 30,
and Roosevelt appointed Luke Wright who had been Governor-General
of the Philippines for two years and then ambassador to Japan for over a year.
On July 10 the Democratic National Convention meeting at Denver
nominated for the third time William Jennings Bryan as their candidate for President.
Roosevelt spent most of the summer at his Sagamore Hill home,
and he returned to Washington on September 23.
He issued public statements criticizing Democratic candidates
he considered corrupt or vulnerable.
Charles Haskell, the treasurer of the Democratic campaign,
resigned after he was exposed for having connections with the Standard Oil Company.
On October 26 Roosevelt released a long letter on Taft’s labor policies as a judge
and over four years as Secretary of War which included
his supervising workers in the Panama Canal Zone.
In the election on November 3 Taft won the presidency with a majority
of the popular votes and a 321-162 advantage in the Electoral College.
He won in 29 states and lost in 13 southern states
as well as in Nebraska, Colorado, and Nevada.
The Great White Fleet had a friendly visit with Japan in October.
Secretary of State Root negotiated a treaty in Washington with the
Japanese minister Kogoro Takahira, and they signed a peace treaty on November 30
that continued the open door with China and respected China’s territory.
In his last Annual Message to Congress on December 8
Roosevelt advised a continuation of the increasing power of the Federal government
in order to control the abuses of corporations and to protect workers.
He reported on finances of the Federal Government.
In the next section on “Corporations” he suggested
putting them under the Interstate Commerce Commission
which should be given the authority to supervise securities.
This could also include telegraph and telephone companies.
In the “Labor” and “Protection for Wageworkers” sections
he urged many reforms in order to increase their prosperity.
In “The Courts” he proposed increasing the salaries of judges
so that they would not be subject to “popular prejudice and passion.”
In the section “Forests” he explained
how they need to be nurtured to safeguard the future.
“Inland Waterways” also required action.
The other sections of the Message were National Parks, Denatured Alcohol,
Pure Food, Indian Service, Secret Service, Postal Savings Banks, Parcel Post,
Education, Census, Public Health, Redistribution of Bureaus, Government Printing Office,
Soldiers’ Homes, Independent Bureaus and Commissions, Statehood
(for New Mexico and Arizona), Interstate Fisheries, Fisheries and Fur Seals,
Foreign Affairs, Latin-American Republics, Panama Canal, Ocean Mail Liners,
Hawaii, The Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Japanese Exposition,
The Army, National Guard, and The Navy.
At Roosevelt’s last cabinet dinner on December 17
the Vice President-elect James Sherman attended along with Senator Philander Knox
who was expected to become Taft’s Secretary of State.
The Congress was concerned that Roosevelt was using the secret service
to investigate Congressmen, and they passed an amendment to restrict it
to protecting the President and investigating counterfeiting.
On 4 January 1909 Roosevelt sent another Special Message to Congress
in which he criticized their action and impugned their motives writing,
The chief argument in favor of the provision was that
the Congressmen did not themselves
wish to be investigated by Secret Service men….
This amendment has been of benefit only,
and could be of benefit only, to the criminal class.82
On January 8 the House of Representatives reacted by voting 212-35
to reject the President’s message because they found that it was not respectful.
On January 22 he sent another Special Message to Congress
as he transmitted the report of the National Conservation Commission
which focused on waters, forests, lands, and minerals.
In conclusion he concurred with the report’s recommendations,
and he requested an appropriation of $50,000
for the expenses of the National Conservation Commission.
Secretary of State Elihu Root in January was elected a US Senator
by New York’s legislature, and he resigned on January 27 and was replaced for 37 days
by the Assistant Secretary Robert Bacon.
Roosevelt believed that after history was written,
his administration would be known for its ideals.
Roosevelt established the Country Life Commission,
and on February 9 he sent their report to the US Senate which included
“The General Corrective Forces That Should Be Set in Motion.”
On February 22 he proudly witnessed the return of the 28 ships
in the Great White Fleet from their historic voyage around the world.
During his presidency the Roosevelt Administration spent $900 million on the Navy
that increased from 19,000 men to 44,500.
He added ten more battleships to make 27,
but the US was still behind Britain and Germany.
On his last day on March 4 he signed the bills Congress had passed overnight.
On 4 November 1901 the Philippine Commission enacted the Sedition Law
with a possible death penalty for anyone advocating
independence or separation from the United States.
In December the Americans had 126,000 troops and 639 military posts.
Both sides used brutality.
Americans burned towns and tortured prisoners with the
“water cure” and the “rope cure” to try to get information.
They poured several gallons of water down a prisoner’s throat until he talked,
and at least one died after the third water-cure treatment.
Two American officers were convicted of
nearly hanging six Filipinos and were reprimanded.
Prisoners were tied to trees, shot in the legs, and left all night.
If they did not confess the next day, the process was repeated until they talked or died.
Earlier Col. Funston had ordered all prisoners shot,
and Major Metcalf and Captain Bishop had enforced his orders.
The Americans herded many thousands of Filipinos into “reconcentration” areas.
Any man found outside the that area after 1 January 1902 without a pass
could be imprisoned or shot if he ran away.
Some Filipino rebels under General Vicente Lukban mutilated
and killed 59 American soldiers in Balangiga on Samar
while about 250 Filipinos were killed.
In revenge General Jacob Smith ordered villages burned
and all males older than ten killed instead of taking prisoners.
After this brutal campaign he was court-martialed and retired.
Lukban was captured on 27 February 1902, ending resistance in Samar,
and General Malvar surrendered on April 16.
On the 28th the Anti-Imperialist League formed the Philippine Investigation Committee,
and in June they sent a petition to the United States Senate
asking for an examination of the atrocities conducted by anti-imperialists.
Reverend W. H. Walker received a letter from his son and showed it
to the Boston Journal, which reported about it on May 5.
The letter described how 1,300 prisoners were executed over a few weeks.
A priest heard their confessions for several days and then was hanged.
Twenty prisoners at a time were made to dig their mass graves and then were shot.
The young Walker wrote, “To keep them prisoners would necessitate
the placing of the soldiers on short rations if not starving them.
There was nothing to do but kill them.”83
President Theodore Roosevelt sent Taft to the Vatican in June 1902,
and the US bought 410,000 acres of the Catholic friars’ land
in the Philippines for $7,543,000.
The land, which had about 60,000 tenants, was gradually sold
in small parcels to 50,000 Filipinos over the next ten years.
By the end of 1903 only 200 Spanish priests remained in the Philippines.
The Americans took over the capitalistic hacienda system from the Spaniards.
Also in July the US Congress passed the Organic Act by which the sugar beet lobby
prevented the sugar industry from purchasing large tracts of land
by restricting corporations from buying or leasing more than 2,500 acres.
President Roosevelt proclaimed victory on 4 July 1902,
granting amnesty to all insurgents, but 120,000 American troops
were still occupying the Philippines and suppressing resistance.
The Americans had lost 4,234 soldiers dead, 2,818 wounded,
and spent $600,000,000 on the war.
About 20,000 Filipino soldiers died in battle.
American records showed a 15-to-1 ratio between the dead and wounded Filipinos,
indicating that most of the wounded were probably left to die or were shot.
At least 200,000 civilians died from disease, hunger, torture, or execution.
About 90% of the water buffalos (caraboas) died or were slaughtered;
this hampered planting and harvesting, and rice production
went down to a quarter of what it had been.
The US Tariff Act of 1902 reduced the duty on Philippine exports to the United States
by 25% and removed the tariff on American products going to the Philippines.
The US share of the import and export trade of the Philippines
rose from 11% in 1900 to 41% by 1910.
Because the US could import hemp duty-free, their advantage depressed the price paid
to Filipino farmers from $170 per metric ton in 1902 to $97 per metric ton in 1911.
The Filipinos suffered from mercantilism as they exported raw materials
for low prices and imported expensive manufactured goods.
A cholera epidemic between 1902 and 1904 took another 200,000 Filipino lives,
and in 1903 this was aggravated by a drought and locusts.
In Albay province Simeon Ola led a revolt with 1,500 men in 1902
until he surrendered on 25 September 1903.
The Americans re-concentrated 300,000 Filipinos in Albay with a high mortality rate.
In September 1902 General Luciano San Miguel consolidated
the resistance in Rizal and Bulacan under his command.
In January 1903 he tried to unite the factions
from the old Katipunan to revive the movement.
He used a three-week truce to build up his forces
to three hundred men with two hundred guns.
American officers led hundreds of Constabulary and municipal police into Rizal and Bulacan,
and they arrested many citizens they suspected of supporting the resistance.
Farmers and their water buffalos were re-concentrated into towns,
disrupting their agriculture.
The Amigo Act was passed because so many Filipinos
were allowing the guerrillas to hide among the people.
The Constabulary found San Miguel’s headquarters.
After three attacks on two hundred of his men, San Miguel was killed on March 28.
New leaders scattered to different areas,
and Faustino Guillermo was captured and publicly executed in May 1904.
The Union de Impresores de Filipinas (UIF) had been formed on 30 December 1901,
and on 2 February 1902 a labor congress founded the Union Obrera Democrata (UOD)
with tobacco workers, carpenters, cooks, mariners, and laborers.
On July 4 the UOD held a mass meeting with 50,000 people in Manila
calling for independence, and on August 2 they demanded wage increases.
The US cavalry intimidated strikers, and De los Reyes was arrested for sedition.
The strike was broken, and the ilustrado Dr. Dominador Gomez became president
of the Union Obrera Democratica de Filipinas (UODF),
which had 150 unions and 20,000 members by February 1903.
When Taft refused to declare May Day a holiday,
the UODF turned out 100,000 people for a demonstration in Manila on May 1.
Dr. Gomez was indicted for sedition and illegal association.
The American judge John G. Sweeney sentenced him
to 50 months hard labor and a fine of 3,250 pesos.
Not until 28 September 1907 did the Supreme Court rule
that the evidence was insufficient.
The Court may have been influenced because
Gomez had recently persuaded Macario Sakay to surrender.
Taft brought in Edward Rosenberg, a representative of the American Federation of Labor,
and on 13 June 1903 he persuaded the UODF leaders to form the Union del Trabajo
de Filipinas (UTF) under the leadership of journalist Lope K. Santos.
On 12 November 1902 Taft got the Brigandage Act passed,
declaring any resistance activity robbery or disturbances.
Membership in an armed band could be punished by death or 20 years in prison,
and aiding “brigands” could get 10 years.
The prisons were overcrowded.
Americans administered the Billibad Prison in Manila where the death rate
went from 72 per thousand in 1902 to 438 per thousand in 1905.
The Philippine Commission passed the Reconcentration Act in June 1903,
authorizing the provincial governors to move
all residents from outlying barrios into the towns.
Taft left the Philippines in December 1903 to become Secretary of War,
and Luke Wright became governor.
The Muslims in the southern islands were called Moros,
and in 1899 the US General John C. Bates had made an agreement
with the Sultan Jamalul Kiram II of Sulu that American sovereignty
would not interfere with their religion and customs.
The Moro Province was established in June 1903
with Major General Leonard Wood as governor,
but the next year the US abrogated the Bates Treaty and imposed martial law.
The Moros rebelled, and the climactic battle
was at the Bud Dajo crater near Jolo on March 5-7 in 1906.
About 900 Moros fought the US Army, but only six survived the onslaught.
The American press publicized the massacre that included women and children.
General Wood argued that women fought and that children were used as shields,
and Governor-General Ide claimed that they were killed by artillery.
Wood was replaced by General Tasker H. Bliss, and the US became more conciliatory.
In the outlying areas the resistance movements often had religious leaders
who promised redemption or miraculous protection with amulets.
Ruperto Rios led peasants in the hills of Tayabas, and the military governor,
Col. Harry Bandholtz, had the Constabulary round up for reconcentration
thousands of people suspected of aiding his guerrillas.
His group diminished, and Rios fled to Laguna
where he was turned in and hanged in December 1903.
After the US Army completed its withdrawal from Negros in January 1903,
Papa Isio revived the revolt.
Captain John R. White ordered the Constabulary
to burn villages suspected of supporting him.
As the sugar harvest improved in 1905, support for Isio declined.
He tried to instigate an uprising in February 1907 by attacking Suay and burning houses.
He gained a hundred new recruits but had to surrender in August,
when he was tried and executed.
In Cebu the brothers Quintin and Anatalio Tabal
led the pulajanes who wore red uniforms.
They killed four American teachers and faced the vengeance
of the Constabulary with their amulets.
Because they had popular support, about 5,000 people
were re-concentrated into 14 barrios guarded by Constabulary forces.
Eventually Governor Sergio Osmeña negotiated the surrender of the Tabal brothers.
For five years until he was captured on 11 June 1907 the peasant Faustino Ablen
was called Pope (Papa) and led the Dios-Dios revolt on the island of Leyte.
The pulajanes and the Dios-Dios believers were also active on Samar.
They were led by Papa Pablo, and by 1905 they dominated much of the island.
In 1906 Nazario Aguillar led a group that pretended to surrender
to Governor Curry but then started fighting.
In November the pulajan chief De la Cruz and other officers were captured,
and a few days later the constables surprised and killed Papa Pablo.
Papa Otoy eluded them for four more years,
but the Constabulary force finally found his band and killed him in October 1911.
About 7,000 pulajanes died in the resistance movement on Samar.
On 26 February 1904 General Ricarte called for a Filipino uprising,
but Ricarte was captured again on June 7 and was
put in solitary confinement for six years and then banished again to Hong Kong.
Macario Sakay issued a manifesto in April 1904
urging the patriotic duty to fight for independence.
In September the resistance groups in Cavite joined with
Sakay, Julian Montalan, and Cornelio Felizardo.
They established the Tagalog Republic with Sakay as president.
They raided Cavite and Batangas to steal arms and ammunition.
Constabulary troops were sent in, and on 31 January 1905
the writ of habeas corpus was suspended in those two provinces.
Montalan taxed merchants, farmers, and laborers 10% of their income.
Sakay ordered those who could pay but refused to do so to be arrested and put to work.
Suspected informers were tortured or had their ears and lips cut off as a warning to others.
Felizardo was captured and killed by two men pretending to be deserters,
and they collected 5,000 pesos reward money from the Americans.
Manuel Tomines led the resistance in Isabela,
but he was captured and hanged on 10 April 1905.
Sakay was invited to negotiate in Manila in July, but he was treacherously captured,
tried, and then hanged with Col. Lucio de Vega on 13 September 1907.
Felipe Salvador was also known as Apo Ipe.
He treated the peasants well and promised them land.
His Santa Iglesia movement spread in
Bulacan, Pampanga, Tarlac, Pangasinan, and Nueva Ecija.
A reward of 2,000 pesos was offered for Salvador’s capture.
By May 1906 he had an army of 300 men with 100 rifles.
Santa Iglesia suffered a major defeat in July,
and for the next four years Apo Ipe fled alone from place to place.
Salvador was finally caught, prosecuted, and executed in August 1910.
In 1904 Elihu Root informed the Federal party leaders Tavera and Legarda
that Americans would not accept the Philippines as a state because
“The Negroes are a cancer on our body politic, a source of constant difficulty,
and we wish to avoid developing another such problem.”84
When Governor Luke Wright taxed cigars and alcohol to balance the budget, Tavera,
whose wealth came from tobacco,
and Legarda, who owned distilleries, complained and lost their patronage.
Secretary of War Taft visited the Philippines in 1905
and replaced Wright with James F. Smith.
The Federal Party became the Progressive Party (Progresistas),
and on 21 May 1905 they abandoned the lost hope of
becoming a state in the US and favored “eventual” independence.
No party was allowed to mention independence
until Governor Henry C. Ide lifted the ban in early 1906.
In January the radical leaders Justo and Vicente Lukban, Alberto Baretta,
Fernando Ma Guerrero, Sergio Osmeña, and Manuel L. Quezon
founded the Partido Independista Inmediatista, but later in the year they merged
with two more conservative parties to form the Union Nacionalista party.
By the first national election of 1907 every party had independence as a top priority.
Out of eight million Filipinos only about 150,000 in the upper class were eligible to vote.
To qualify one had to be male, 21, a resident for six months,
and either an office-holder prior to 13 August 1898
or an owner of real property worth 500 pesos
or be able to read, write, or speak English or Spanish.
In 1907 in the civil service Americans had an average income of $1,504,
but the average Filipino civil servant earned only $419.
Local governments spent almost all their funds on salaries with little left for public works.
Governor-General James F. Smith explained to Taft in a letter
that the real political parties in the Philippines were the Ins and the Outs.
Those in power were conservative to preserve their positions
while those out of office were radical to impress the people.
The Taft administration sent a hundred Filipino students to the United States in 1903,
and by 1912 two hundred had earned degrees.
David Barrows ran the education program in the Philippines from 1902
until he was succeeded by Frank White in 1909.
By then the Philippines had 4,000 elementary schools with 355,722 pupils
but only 3,404 high school students.
Five-sixths of the students dropped out before reaching the fourth grade.
On 4 November 1901 the Philippine Commission enacted the Sedition Law
with a possible death penalty for anyone advocating
independence or separation from the United States.
In December the Americans had 126,000 troops and 639 military posts.
Both sides used brutality. Americans burned towns and tortured prisoners
with the “water cure” and the “rope cure” to try to get information.
They poured several gallons of water down a prisoner’s throat until he talked,
and at least one died after the third water-cure treatment.
Two American officers were convicted of nearly hanging six Filipinos and were reprimanded.
Prisoners were tied to trees, shot in the legs, and left all night.
If they did not confess the next day, the process was repeated until they talked or died.
Earlier Col. Funston had ordered all prisoners shot,
and Major Metcalf and Captain Bishop had enforced his orders.
The Americans herded many thousands of Filipinos into “reconcentration” areas.
Any man found outside the that area after 1 January 1902
without a pass could be imprisoned or shot if he ran away.
Some Filipino rebels under General Vicente Lukban mutilated and killed 59 American
soldiers in Balangiga on Samar while about 250 Filipinos were killed.
In revenge General Jacob Smith ordered villages burned
and all males older than ten killed instead of taking prisoners.
After this brutal campaign he was court-martialed and retired.
Lukban was captured on 27 February 1902, ending resistance in Samar,
and General Malvar surrendered on April 16.
On the 28th the Anti-Imperialist League formed the Philippine Investigation Committee,
and in June they sent a petition to the United States Senate
asking for an examination of the atrocities conducted by anti-imperialists.
Reverend W. H. Walker received a letter from his son and showed it
to the Boston Journal, which reported about it on May 5.
The letter described how 1,300 prisoners were executed over a few weeks.
A priest heard their confessions for several days and then was hanged.
Twenty prisoners at a time were made to dig their mass graves and then were shot.
The young Walker wrote, “To keep them prisoners would necessitate
the placing of the soldiers on short rations if not starving them.
There was nothing to do but kill them.”83
President Theodore Roosevelt sent Taft to the Vatican in June 1902, and the
US bought 410,000 acres of the Catholic friars’ land in the Philippines for $7,543,000.
The land, which had about 60,000 tenants, was gradually sold
in small parcels to 50,000 Filipinos over the next ten years.
By the end of 1903 only 200 Spanish priests remained in the Philippines.
The Americans took over the capitalistic hacienda system from the Spaniards.
Also in July the US Congress passed the Organic Act by which the sugar beet lobby
prevented the sugar industry from purchasing large tracts of land by
restricting corporations from buying or leasing more than 2,500 acres.
President Roosevelt proclaimed victory on 4 July 1902,
granting amnesty to all insurgents, but 120,000 American troops
were still occupying the Philippines and suppressing resistance.
The Americans had lost 4,234 soldiers dead, 2,818 wounded,
and spent $600,000,000 on the war.
About 20,000 Filipino soldiers died in battle.
American records showed a 15-to-1 ratio between the dead and wounded Filipinos,
indicating that most of the wounded were probably left to die or were shot.
At least 200,000 civilians died from disease, hunger, torture, or execution.
About 90% of the water buffalos (caraboas) died or were slaughtered;
this hampered planting and harvesting, and rice production
went down to a quarter of what it had been.
The US Tariff Act of 1902 reduced the duty on Philippine exports to the United States
by 25% and removed the tariff on American products going to the Philippines.
The US share of the import and export trade of the Philippines
rose from 11% in 1900 to 41% by 1910.
Because the US could import hemp duty-free, their advantage depressed the price
paid to Filipino farmers from $170 per metric ton in 1902 to $97 per metric ton in 1911.
The Filipinos suffered from mercantilism as they exported raw materials
for low prices and imported expensive manufactured goods.
A cholera epidemic between 1902 and 1904 took another 200,000 Filipino lives,
and in 1903 this was aggravated by a drought and locusts.
In Albay province Simeon Ola led a revolt with 1,500 men in 1902
until he surrendered on 25 September 1903.
The Americans re-concentrated 300,000 Filipinos
in Albay with a high mortality rate.
In September 1902 General Luciano San Miguel consolidated
the resistance in Rizal and Bulacan under his command.
In January 1903 he tried to unite the factions
from the old Katipunan to revive the movement.
He used a three-week truce to build up his forces
to three hundred men with two hundred guns.
American officers led hundreds of Constabulary and municipal police into Rizal
and Bulacan, and they arrested many citizens they suspected of supporting the resistance.
Farmers and their water buffalos were re-concentrated into towns, disrupting their agriculture.
The Amigo Act was passed because so many Filipinos
were allowing the guerrillas to hide among the people.
The Constabulary found San Miguel’s headquarters.
After three attacks on two hundred of his men, San Miguel was killed on March 28.
New leaders scattered to different areas,
and Faustino Guillermo was captured and publicly executed in May 1904.
The Union de Impresores de Filipinas (UIF) had been formed on 30 December 1901,
and on 2 February 1902 a labor congress founded the Union Obrera Democrata (UOD)
with tobacco workers, carpenters, cooks, mariners, and laborers.
On July 4 the UOD held a mass meeting with 50,000 people in Manila
calling for independence, and on August 2 they demanded wage increases.
The US cavalry intimidated strikers, and De los Reyes was arrested for sedition.
The strike was broken, and the ilustrado Dr. Dominador Gomez became president
of the Union Obrera Democratica de Filipinas (UODF),
which had 150 unions and 20,000 members by February 1903.
When Taft refused to declare May Day a holiday, the UODF turned out
100,000 people for a demonstration in Manila on May 1.
Dr. Gomez was indicted for sedition and illegal association.
The American judge John G. Sweeney sentenced him
to 50 months hard labor and a fine of 3,250 pesos.
Not until 28 September 1907 did the Supreme Court rule
that the evidence was insufficient.
The Court may have been influenced because Gomez
had recently persuaded Macario Sakay to surrender.
Taft brought in Edward Rosenberg, a representative of the American Federation of Labor,
and on 13 June 1903 he persuaded the UODF leaders to form the Union del Trabajo de
Filipinas (UTF) under the leadership of journalist Lope K. Santos.
On 12 November 1902 Taft got the Brigandage Act passed,
declaring any resistance activity robbery or disturbances.
Membership in an armed band could be punished by death or 20 years in prison,
and aiding “brigands” could get 10 years.
The prisons were overcrowded.
Americans administered the Billibad Prison in Manila where the death rate
went from 72 per thousand in 1902 to 438 per thousand in 1905.
The Philippine Commission passed the Reconcentration Act in June 1903,
authorizing the provincial governors to move
all residents from outlying barrios into the towns.
Taft left the Philippines in December 1903 to become Secretary of War,
and Luke Wright became governor.
The Muslims in the southern islands were called Moros,
and in 1899 the US General John C. Bates had made an agreement
with the Sultan Jamalul Kiram II of Sulu that American sovereignty
would not interfere with their religion and customs.
The Moro Province was established in June 1903
with Major General Leonard Wood as governor,
but the next year the US abrogated the Bates Treaty and imposed martial law.
The Moros rebelled, and the climactic battle was
at the Bud Dajo crater near Jolo on March 5-7 in 1906.
About 900 Moros fought the US Army, but only six survived the onslaught.
The American press publicized the massacre that included women and children.
General Wood argued that women fought and that children were used as shields,
and Governor-General Ide claimed that they were killed by artillery.
Wood was replaced by General Tasker H. Bliss, and the US became more conciliatory.
In the outlying areas the resistance movements often had religious leaders
who promised redemption or miraculous protection with amulets.
Ruperto Rios led peasants in the hills of Tayabas, and the military governor,
Col. Harry Bandholtz, had the Constabulary round up for reconcentration
thousands of people suspected of aiding his guerrillas.
His group diminished, and Rios fled to Laguna
where he was turned in and hanged in December 1903.
After the US Army completed its withdrawal from Negros in January 1903,
Papa Isio revived the revolt.
Captain John R. White ordered the Constabulary
to burn villages suspected of supporting him.
As the sugar harvest improved in 1905, support for Isio declined.
He tried to instigate an uprising in February 1907 by attacking Suay and burning houses.
He gained a hundred new recruits but had to surrender in August,
when he was tried and executed.
In Cebu the brothers Quintin and Anatalio Tabal
led the pulajanes who wore red uniforms.
They killed four American teachers and faced
the vengeance of the Constabulary with their amulets.
Because they had popular support, about 5,000 people
were re-concentrated into 14 barrios guarded by Constabulary forces.
Eventually Governor Sergio Osmeña negotiated the surrender of the Tabal brothers.
For five years until he was captured on 11 June 1907 the peasant Faustino Ablen
was called Pope (Papa) and led the Dios-Dios revolt on the island of Leyte.
The pulajanes and the Dios-Dios believers were also active on Samar.
They were led by Papa Pablo, and by 1905 they dominated much of the island.
In 1906 Nazario Aguillar led a group that pretended
to surrender to Governor Curry but then started fighting.
In November the pulajan chief De la Cruz and other officers were captured,
and a few days later the constables surprised and killed Papa Pablo.
Papa Otoy eluded them for four more years, but the Constabulary force
finally found his band and killed him in October 1911.
About 7,000 pulajanes died in the resistance movement on Samar.
On 26 February 1904 General Ricarte called for a Filipino uprising,
but Ricarte was captured again on June 7 and was put in solitary confinement
for six years and then banished again to Hong Kong.
Macario Sakay issued a manifesto in April 1904
urging the patriotic duty to fight for independence.
In September the resistance groups in Cavite joined with
Sakay, Julian Montalan, and Cornelio Felizardo.
They established the Tagalog Republic with Sakay as president.
They raided Cavite and Batangas to steal arms and ammunition.
Constabulary troops were sent in, and on 31 January 1905
the writ of habeas corpus was suspended in those two provinces.
Montalan taxed merchants, farmers, and laborers 10% of their income.
Sakay ordered those who could pay but refused to do so
to be arrested and put to work.
Suspected informers were tortured or had their
ears and lips cut off as a warning to others.
Felizardo was captured and killed by two men pretending to be deserters,
and they collected 5,000 pesos reward money from the Americans.
Manuel Tomines led the resistance in Isabela,
but he was captured and hanged on 10 April 1905.
Sakay was invited to negotiate in Manila in July,
but he was treacherously captured, tried,
and then hanged with Col. Lucio de Vega on 13 September 1907.
Felipe Salvador was also known as Apo Ipe.
He treated the peasants well and promised them land.
His Santa Iglesia movement spread in Bulacan,
Pampanga, Tarlac, Pangasinan, and Nueva Ecija.
A reward of 2,000 pesos was offered for Salvador’s capture.
By May 1906 he had an army of 300 men with 100 rifles.
Santa Iglesia suffered a major defeat in July,
and for the next four years Apo Ipe fled alone from place to place.
Salvador was finally caught, prosecuted, and executed in August 1910.
In 1904 Elihu Root informed the Federal party leaders Tavera and Legarda
that Americans would not accept the Philippines as a state because
“The Negroes are a cancer on our body politic, a source of constant difficulty,
and we wish to avoid developing another such problem.”84
When Governor Luke Wright taxed cigars and alcohol to balance the budget,
Tavera, whose wealth came from tobacco, and Legarda, who owned distilleries,
complained and lost their patronage.
Secretary of War Taft visited the Philippines in 1905
and replaced Wright with James F. Smith.
The Federal Party became the Progressive Party (Progresistas),
and on 21 May 1905 they abandoned the lost hope
of becoming a state in the US and favored “eventual” independence.
No party was allowed to mention independence
until Governor Henry C. Ide lifted the ban in early 1906.
In January the radical leaders Justo and Vicente Lukban, Alberto Baretta,
Fernando Ma Guerrero, Sergio Osmeña, and Manuel L. Quezon founded
the Partido Independista Inmediatista, but later in the year
they merged with two more conservative parties to form the Union Nacionalista party.
By the first national election of 1907 every party had independence as a top priority.
Out of eight million Filipinos only about 150,000 in the upper class were eligible to vote.
To qualify one had to be male, 21, a resident for six months,
and either an office-holder prior to 13 August 1898
or an owner of real property worth 500 pesos
or be able to read, write, or speak English or Spanish.
In 1907 in the civil service Americans had an average income of $1,504,
but the average Filipino civil servant earned only $419.
Local governments spent almost all their funds on salaries with little left for public works.
Governor-General James F. Smith explained to Taft in a letter
that the real political parties in the Philippines were the Ins and the Outs.
Those in power were conservative to preserve their positions
while those out of office were radical to impress the people.
The Taft administration sent a hundred Filipino students to the United States in 1903,
and by 1912 two hundred had earned degrees.
David Barrows ran the education program in the Philippines from 1902
until he was succeeded by Frank White in 1909.
By then the Philippines had 4,000 elementary schools with 355,722 pupils
but only 3,404 high school students.
Five-sixths of the students dropped out before reaching the fourth grade.
1. T.R.: The Last Romantic by H. W. Brands, p. 125.
2. Ibid., p. 150.
3. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, p. 354-355.
4. Ibid., p. 425.
5. Ibid., p. 455.
6. Ibid., p. 478.
7. Ibid., p. 503.
8. Ibid., p. 510-511.
9. The Annals of America Volume 12 1895-1904, p. 68.
10. Ibid., p. 84.
11. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, p. 569-571.
12. The Annals of America Volume 12 1895-1904, p. 150.
13. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, p. 600.
14. Ibid., p. 602.
15. Ibid., p. 610.
16. Ibid., p. 692.
17. Ibid., p. 693.
18. Ibid., p. 707.
19. Ibid., p. 715.
20. Ibid., p. 729.
21. The Annals of America Volume 12 1895-1904, p. 84.
22. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 14.
23. Ibid.
24. Letters and Speeches by Theodore Roosevelt, p. 244-245.
25. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908,
Volume 10, p. 424-425.
26. Ibid., p. 426-427.
27. Ibid., p. 433.
28. Ibid., p. 455-456.
29. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 83.
30. Ibid., p. 88.
31. Ibid., p. 100-101.
32. Ibid., p. 102.
33. Ibid., p. 110.
34. Ibid., p. 138-139.
35. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908,
Volume 10, p. 535-536.
36. Ibid., p. 536.
37. Ibid., p. 540.
38. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 186-187.
39. Ibid., p. 210.
40. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908,
Volume 10, p. 555-557.
41. The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America
by Douglas Brinkley, p. 527.
42. Ibid., p. 532.
43. Ibid., p. 534.
44. T.R.: The Last Romantic by H. W. Brands, p. 497.
45. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 259.
46. Theodore Roosevelt by Henry F. Pringle, p. 225.
47. The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft,
and the Golden Age of Journalism by Doris Kearns Goodwin, p. 402.
48. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908,
Volume 10, p. 636-639, 640, 643, 644, 646, 647, 648, 649, 650,
651, 654, 655, 658-659, 660, 661, 664, 666, 667.
49. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume 10, p. 682.
50. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 321.
51. Ibid., p. 326.
52. Ibid., p. 335.
53. Ibid., p. 336.
54. Ibid., p. 341.
55. Ibid., p. 350.
56. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin, p. 417-418.
57. Ibid., p. 422.
58. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908,
Volume 10, p. 802-803, 803-804, 806, 807, 808, 809, 810,
811, 812, 813, 815, 816, 824, 830-831, 835, 837-838.
59. The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin, p. 436.
60. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908,
Volume 10, p. 838-840.
61. Ibid., p. 448.
62. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 412.
63. Ibid., p. 413.
64. Ibid., p. 426.
65. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908,
Volume 11, p. 1131-1132, p. 1132, 1133-1134, 1138-1139,
1142, 1147, 1148, 1149, 1149-1150, 1151, 1152, 1154-1155,
167, 1170, 1172, 1176, 1177, 1178.
66. Ibid., p. 1170.
63. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908,
Volume 10, p. 839, 840.
70. Ibid., p. 1148.
71. Lincoln Steffens: a biography by Justine Kaplan, p. 145.
72. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 444.
73. Ibid. p. 454.
74. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908,
Volume 11, p. 1181, 1186, 1190, 1192, 1193, 1195,
1202, 1214, 1214-1215, 1217, 1219-1220, 1220, 1223, 1224.
75. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 492-493.
76. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908,
Volume 11, p. 1228, 1238, 1241-1242, 1243, 1248, 1249,
1251, 1255, 1258, 1260, 1261, 1263-1264, 1264, 1267,
1269, 1276-1278, 1281-1283.
77. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 501.
78. Ibid., p. 506.
79. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908,
Volume 11, p. 1290.
80. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris, p. 518.
81. Ibid., p. 534.
82. T.R.: The Last Romantic by H. W. Brands, p. 633.
83. Boston Journal, May 5, 1902 in “Benevolent Assimilation”
by Stuart Creighton Miller, p. 239.
84. In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines
by Stanley Karnow, p. 177.