CHAPTER XVI. THE SQUARE DEAL IN ACTION
Having seen briefly how President Roosevelt dealt with Capital, let us look even more briefly at his dealings with Labor. I think that he took the deepest personal satisfaction in fighting the criminal rich and the soulless corporations, because he regarded them not only as lawbreakers, malefactors of great wealth, but as despicably mean, in that they used their power to oppress the poor and helpless cla.s.ses. The Labor groups when they burst out into violence merely responded to the pa.s.sion which men naturally feel at injustice and at suffering; to their violence they did not add slyness or legal deceits. But Roosevelt had no toleration for the Labor demagogue, for the walking delegate, and all similar parasites, who preyed upon the working cla.s.ses for their own profit, and fomented the irritation of Labor and Capital.
Stronger, however, than his sympathy for any individual, and especially for those who suffered without redress, was his love of justice. This he put in a phrase which he invented and made current, a phrase which everybody could understand: "the labor unions shall have a square deal, and the corporations shall have a square deal." At another time he expressed the same idea, by saying that the rich man should have justice, and that the poor man should have justice, and that no man should have more or less.
Time soon brought a test for his devotion to social justice. In the summer of 1902 the coal-miners of Pennsylvania stopped working. Early in September the public awoke with a start to the realization that a coal famine threatened the country. In the Eastern States, in New York, and Pennsylvania, and in some of the Middle Western States, a calamity threatened, which would be quite as terrible as the invasion of an enemy"s army. For not only would lack of fuel cause incalculable hardship and distress from cold, but it would stop transportation, and all manufacturing by machinery run by coal. The mine operators and the miners were at a deadlock. The President invited the leaders on both sides to confer with him at the White House. They came and found him stretched out on an invalid"s chair, with one of his legs much bandaged, from an accident he had received in a collision at Pittsfield a few weeks before, but his mental vigor was unsubdued. John Mitch.e.l.l spoke for the miners. The President urged the quarrelers to come to terms. But the big coal operators would not yield. They knew that the distress among the mining population was great, and they believed that if the authorities would only maintain peace, the miners would soon be forced to give in. So the meeting broke up and the "coal barons," as the newspapers dubbed the operators, quitted with evident satisfaction. They felt that they had not only repelled the miners again, but virtually put down the President for interfering in a matter in which he had no legal jurisdiction.
And, in truth, the laws gave the President of the United States no authority to play the role of arbiter in a strike. His plain duty was to keep the peace. If a strike resulted in violent disorders he could send United States troops to quell them, but only in case the Governor of the State in which the riots occurred declared himself unable, by the State force at his command, to keep the peace, and requested a.s.sistance from the President. In the coal strike the Governor of Pennsylvania, for reasons which I need not discuss here, refused to call for United States troops, and so did the Pennsylvania Legislature. Roosevelt acted as a patriotic citizen might act, but being the President, his interference had immensely greater weight than that of any private citizen could have. He knew the law in the matter, but he believed that the popular opinion of the American people would back him up.
In spite of the first rebuff, therefore, he persuaded the miners and the operators to agree to the appointment of an arbitration commission, and this suggested a settlement which both contestants accepted. It ended the great coal strike of 1902, but it left behind it much indignation among the American people, who realized for the first time that one of the three or four great industries essential to the welfare and even to the life itself of the Nation, was in the hands of men who preferred their selfish interests to those of the Nation. It taught several other lessons also; it taught, for instance, that great combinations of Labor may be as dangerous as those of Capital, and as heedless of everything except their own selfish control. It taught that the people of the States and of the Nation could not go on forever without taking steps to put an end to the already dangerous hostility between Capital and Labor, and that that end must be the establishment of justice for all. An apologist of the "coal barons" might have pleaded that they held out not merely for their private gain on that occasion, but in order to defeat the growing menace of Labor. Their stubbornness might turn back the rising flood of socialism.
Respecters of legal precedent, on the other hand, criticised the President. They acknowledged his good intentions, but they pointed out that his extra-legal interference set an ominously bad example. And some of them would have preferred to go cold all winter, and even to have had the quarrel sink into civil war, rather than to have had the const.i.tutional ideals of the Nation distorted or obscured by the President"s good-natured endeavor.
Roosevelt himself, however, never held this opinion. In 1915, he wrote to Mr. Washburn: "I think the settlement of the coal strike was much the most important thing I did about Labor, from every standpoint."
I find an intimate letter of his which dates from the time of the conflict itself and gives frankly his motives and apology, if we should call it that. He admits that his action was not strictly legal, but he asks that, if the President of the United States may not intervene to prevent a widespread calamity, what is his authority worth? If it had been a national strike of iron-workers or miners, he would have held himself aloof, but the coal strike affected a product necessary to the life and health of the people. It was easy enough for well-to-do gentlemen to say that they had rather go cold and see the fight carried. through until the strikers submitted, than to have legal precedence ignored; for these gentlemen had money enough to buy fuel at even an exorbitant price, and they would be warm anyway, while the great ma.s.s of the population froze. I may add that it seems more legal than sensible that any official chosen to preserve the public welfare and health should not be allowed to interpose against persons who would destroy both, and may stir only after the destroyers have caused the catastrophe they aimed at.
Roosevelt"s action in the great coal strike not only averted the danger, but it also gave Labor means of judging him fairly. Every demagogue, from the days of Cleon down, has talked glibly in behalf of the downtrodden or unjustly treated working-men, and we might suppose that the demagogue has acquired enlargement of the heart, owing to his overpowering sympathy with Labor. But the questions we have to ask about demagogues are two: Is he sincere?
Is he wise?
Sincerity alone has been rather too much exalted as an excuse for the follies and crimes of fanatics and zealots, blatherskites and cranks. Some of our "lunatic fringe" of reformers have been heard to palliate the Huns" atrocities in Belgium, by the plea: "Ah, but they were so perfectly sincere!" Sincerity alone, therefore, is not enough; it must be wise or it may be diabolical. Now Roosevelt was both sincere and wise. He left no doubt in the strikers" minds that he sympathized with their sufferings and grievances and with their attempts to better their condition, so far as this could be achieved without violence, and without leaving a permanent state of war between Labor and Capital. In a word, he did not aim at merely patching up a temporary peace, but at finding, and when found, applying, a remedy to the deep-rooted causes of the quarrel.
In his first message to Congress, the new President said: "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.""
By his settlement of the coal strike, Roosevelt showed the workers that he would practice towards them the justice which he preached, but this did not mean that he would be unjust towards the capitalists. They, too, should have justice, and they had it.
He never intended to coddle laborers or to make them feel that, having a grievance, as they alleged, they must be specially favored. Since Labor is, or should be, common to all men, Roosevelt believed that every laborer, whether farmer or mechanic, employer or employee, merchant or financier, should stand erect and look every other man straight in the eyes, and neither look up nor down, but with level gaze, fearless, uncringing, uncondescending. The laws he proposed, the adjustments he arranged, had the self-respect, the dignity, of the individual, for their aim. He knew that nothing could be more dangerous to the public, or more harmful to the laboring cla.s.s itself, than to make of it a privileged cla.s.s, absolved from the obligations, and even from the laws, which bound the rest of the community. By this ideal he set a great gulf between himself and the demagogues who fawned upon Labor and corrupted it by granting its unjust demands.
He had always present before him a vision of the sacred Oneness of the body politic. This made him the greatest of modern Democrats, and the chief interpreter, as it seems to me, of the highest ideal of American Democracy. The ideal of Oneness can never be realized in a State which permits a single cla.s.s to enjoy privileges of its own at the expense of all other cla.s.ses; and it makes no difference whether this cla.s.s belongs to the Proletariat or to the Plutocracy. Equality before the law, and justice, are the two eternal instruments for establishing the true Democracy. And I do not recall that in any of the measures which Roosevelt supported these two vital principles were violated. The following brief quotations from later messages summarize his creed:
"In the vast and complicated mechanism of our modern civilized life, the dominant note is the note of industrialism, and the relations of capital and labor, and especially of organized capital and organized labor, to each other, and to the public at large, come second in importance only to the intimate questions of family life."
The corporation has come to stay, just as the trade union has come to stay. Each can do and has done great good. Each should be favored as long as it does good, but each should be sharply checked where it acts against law and justice.
Any one can profess a creed; Theodore Roosevelt lived his.
Nothing better tested his impartiality than the strike of the Federation of Western Miners in 1907. Many murders and much violence were attributed to this organization and they were charged with a.s.sa.s.sinating Governor Steunenberg of Idaho. Their leaders, Moyer and Haywood, were anarchists like themselves, and although they professed contempt for law, as soon as they were arrested and brought up for trial, they clutched at every quibble of the law, as drowning men clutch at straws to save them; and, be it said to the glory or shame of the law, it furnished enough quibbles, not only to save them from the gallows, but to let them loose again on society with the legal whitewash "not guilty"
stamped upon them.
Roosevelt understood the great importance of punishing these men, and he committed the indiscretion of cla.s.sing them with certain big capitalists as "undesirable citizens." Members of the Federation then wrote him denouncing his attempt to prejudice the courts against Moyer and Haywood, and they resented that their leaders should be coupled with Harriman and other big capitalists as "undesirable citizens." This gave the President the opportunity to reply that such criticism did not come appropriately from the Federation; for they and their supporters had got up parades, ma.s.s-meetings, and pet.i.tions in favor of Moyer and Haywood and for the direct purpose of intimidating the court and jury. "You want," he said in substance, "the square deal for the defendants only. I want the square deal for every one"; and he added, "It is equally a violation of the policy of the square deal for a capitalist to protest against denunciation of a capitalist who is guilty of wrongdoing and for a labor leader to pro test against the denunciation of a labor leader who has been guilty of wrongdoing." *
* Autobiography, 531.
But Moyer and Haywood, as I have said, escaped punishment, and before long Haywood reappeared as leader of the Industrial Workers of the World, an anarchistic body with a comically inappropriate name for its members objected to nothing so much as to industry and work. The I.W.W., as they have been known for short, have consistently preached violence and "action," by which they might take for themselves the savings and wealth of others as a means to enable them to do no work. And some of the recent strikes which have brought the greatest misery upon the laborers whom they misled, have been directed by I. W. W. leaders.
"I treated anarchists and bomb-throwing and dynamiting gentry precisely as I treated other criminals," Roosevelt writes: "Murder is murder. It is not rendered one whit better by the allegation that it is committed on behalf of a cause." * I need hardly state that the President was as consistently vigilant to prevent labor unions from persecuting non-union men as he was in upholding the just rights of the union.
* Autobiography, 532.
Consider what this record of his with Capital and Labor really means. The social conditions in the United States, owing to the immense expansion in the production of wealth--an expansion which included the invention of innumerable machines and the application, largely made possible by immigration, of millions of laborers--had changed rapidly, and had brought pressingly to the front novel and gigantic industrial and financial problems. In the solution of these problems Justice and Equality must not only be regarded, but must play the determining part. Now, Justice and Equality were beautiful abstractions which could be praised by every demagogue without laying upon him any obligation except that of dulcet lip service. Every American, young or old, had heard them lauded so unlimitedly that he did not trouble himself to inquire whether they were facts or not; they were words, sonorous and pleasing words, which made his heart throb, and himself feel a worthier creature. And then came along a young zealot, mighty in physical vigor and moral energy, who believed that Justice and Equality were not mere abstractions, were not mere words for politicians and parsons to thrill their audiences by, but were realities, duties, which every man in a Democracy was bound to revere and to make prevail. And he urged them with such power of persuasion, such tirelessness, such t.i.tanic zeal, that he not only converted the ma.s.ses of the people to believe in them, too, but he also made the legislators of the country understand that they must embody these principles in the national statute book. He did not originate, as I have said, all or most of the reforms, but he gave ear to those who first suggested them, and his enthusiasm and support were essential to their adoption. In order to measure the magnitude of Roosevelt"s contribution in marking deeply the main principles which should govern the New Age, we need only remember how little his predecessor, President McKinley, a good man with the best intentions, either realized that the New Age was at hand, or thought it necessary even to outline the principles which should guide it; and how little his successor, President Taft, a most amiable man, understood that the New Age, with the Rooseveltian reforms, had come to stay, and could not be swept back by actively opposing it or by allowing the Rooseveltian ideals to lapse.
CHAPTER XVII. ROOSEVELT AT HOME
Although Theodore Roosevelt was personally known to more people of the United States than any other President has been, and his manners and quick responsive cordiality made mult.i.tudes feel, after a brief sight of him, or after shaking his hand, that they were old acquaintances, he maintained during his life a dignified reticence regarding his home and family. But now that he is dead and the world craves eagerly, but not irreverently, to know as much as it can about his many sides, I feel that it is not improper to say something about that intimate side which was in some respects the most characteristic of all.
Early in the eighties he bought a country place at Oyster Bay, Long Island, and on the top of a hill he built a s.p.a.cious house.
There was a legend that in old times Indian Chiefs used to gather there to hold their powwows; at any rate, the name, the Sagamores" Hill, survived them, and this shortened to Sagamore Hill he gave to his home. That part of Long Island on the north coast overlooking the Sound is very attractive; it is a country of hills and hollows, with groves of tall trees, and open fields for farming, and lawns near the house. You look down on Oyster Bay which seems to be a small lake shut in by the curving sh.o.r.e at the farther end. From the house you see the Sound and the hills of Connecticut along the horizon.
After the death of his first wife in January, 1884, Roosevelt went West to the Bad Lands of North Dakota where he lived two years at Medora, on a ranch which he owned, and there he endured the hardships and excitements of ranch life at that time; acting as cow-puncher, ranchman, deputy sheriff, or hunting big and little game, or writing books and articles. In the autumn of 1886, however, having been urged to run as candidate for Mayor of New York City, he came East again. He made a vigorous campaign, but having two opponents against him he was beaten. Then he took a trip to Europe where he married Miss Edith Kermit Carow, whom he had known in New York since childhood, and on their return to this country, they settled at Sagamore Hill. Two years later, when President Harrison appointed Roosevelt a Civil Service Commissioner, they moved to Washington. There they lived in a rather small house at 1720 Jefferson Place--"modest," one might call it, in comparison with the modern palaces which had begun to spring up in the National Capital; but people go to a house for the sake of its occupants and not for its size and upholstery.
So for almost six years pretty nearly everybody worth knowing crossed the Roosevelts" threshold, and they themselves quickly took their place in Washington society. Roosevelt"s humor, his charm, his intensity, his approachableness, attracted even those who rejected his politics and his party. Bright sayings cannot be stifled, and his added to the gayety of more than one group. He was too discreet to give utterance to them all, but his private letters at that time, and always, glistened with his remarks on public characters. He said, for instance, of Senator X, whom he knew in Washington: He "looks like Judas, but unlike that gentleman, he has no capacity for remorse."
When the Roosevelts returned to New York, where he became Police Commissioner in 1895, they made their home again at Oyster Bay.
This was thirty miles by rail from the city, near enough to be easily accessible, but far enough away to deter the visits of random, curious, undesired callers. Later, when automobiles came in, Roosevelt motored to and from town. Mrs. Roosevelt looked after the place itself; she supervised the farming, and the flower gardens were her especial care. The children were now growing up, and from the time when they could toddle they took their place--a very large place--in the life of the home.
Roosevelt described the intense satisfaction he had in teaching the boys what his father had taught him. As soon as they were large enough, they rode their horses, they sailed on the Cove and out into the Sound. They played boys" games, and through him they learned very young to observe nature. In his college days he had intended to be a naturalist, and natural history remained his strong est avocation. And so he taught his children to know the birds and animals, the trees, plants, and flowers of Oyster Bay and its neighborhood. They had their pets--Kermit, one of the boys, carried a pet rat in his pocket.
Three things Roosevelt required of them all; obedience, manliness, and truthfulness. And I imagine that all these virtues were taught by affection and example, rather than by constant correction. For the family was wholly united, they did everything together; the children had no better fun than to accompany their father and mother, and there were a dozen or more young cousins and neighbors who went out with them too, forming a large, delighted family for whom "Uncle" or "Cousin Theodore " was leader and idol. And just as formerly, in the long winter nights on his ranch at Medora, he used to read aloud to the cowboys and hunters of what was then the Western Wilderness, so at Sagamore Hill, in the days of their childhood, he read or told stories to the circle of boys and girls.
In 1901, Mr. Roosevelt became President, and for seven years and a half his official residence was the White House, where he was obliged to spend most of the year. But whenever he could steal away for a few days he sought rest and recreation at Oyster Bay, and there, during the summers, his family lived. So far as the changed conditions permitted, he did not allow his official duties to interfere with his family life. "One of the most wearing things about being President," a President once said to me, "is the incessant publicity of it. For four years you have not a moment to yourself, not a moment of privacy." And yet Roosevelt, masterful in so many other things, was masterful in this also. Nothing interfered with the seclusion of the family breakfast. There were no guests, only Mrs. Roosevelt and the children, and the simplest of food. At Oyster Bay he would often chop trees in the early morning, and sometimes, while he was President, he would ride before breakfast, but the meal itself was quiet, private, uninterrupted. Then each member of the family would go about his or her work, for idleness had no place with them. The President spent his morning in attending to his correspondence and dictating letters, then in receiving persons by appointment, and he always reserved time when any American, rich or poor, young or old, could speak to him freely. He liked to see them all and many were the odd experiences which he had.
He asked one old lady what he could do for her. She replied: "Nothing; I came all the way from Jacksonville, Florida, just to see what a live President looked like. I never saw one before."
"That"s very kind of you," the President replied; "persons from up here go all the way to Florida just to see a live alligator"--and so he put the visitor at her ease.
Luncheon was a varied meal; sometimes there were only two or three guests at it; at other times there might be a dozen. It afforded the President an opportunity for talking informally with visitors whom he wished to see, and not infrequently it brought together round the table a strange, not to say a motley, company.
After luncheon followed more work in his office for the President, looking over the letters he had dictated and signing them, signing doc.u.ments and holding interviews. Later in the afternoon he always reserved two hours for a walk or drive with Mrs. Roosevelt. Nothing interfered with that. In the season he played tennis with some of the large group of companions whom he gathered round him, officials high and low, foreign Amba.s.sadors and Cabinet Ministers and younger under-secretaries who were popularly known as the "Tennis Cabinet." There were fifty or more of them, and that so many should have kept their athletic vigor into middle age, and even beyond it, spoke well for the physique of the men of official Washington at that time.
At Oyster Bay Roosevelt had inst.i.tuted "hiking." He and the young people and such of the neighbors as chose would start from Sagamore Hill and walk in a bee-line to a point four or five miles off. The rule was that no natural impediment should cause them to digress or to stop. So they went through the fields and over the fences, across ditches and pools, and even clambered up and down a haystack, if one happened to be in the way, or through a barnyard. Of course they often reached home spattered with mud or even drenched to the skin from a plunge into the water, but with much fun, a livelier circulation, and a hearty appet.i.te to their credit.
In Washington the President continued this practice of hiking, but in a somewhat modified form. His favorite resort was Rock Creek, then a wild stream, with a good deal of water in it, and here and there steep, rocky banks. To be invited by the President to go on one of those hikes was regarded as a mark of special favor. He indulged in them to test a man"s bodily vigor and endurance, and there were many amusing incidents and perhaps more amusing stories about them. M. Tardieu, who at that time was paying a short visit to this country and was connected with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told me that the dispatches which the new French Amba.s.sador, M. Jusserand, sent to Paris were full of reports on President Roosevelt"s personality. The Europeans had no definite conception of him at that time, and so the sympathetic and much-esteemed Amba.s.sador, who still represents France at Washington, tried to give his Government information by which it could judge for itself what sort of a person the President was. What must have been the surprise in the French Foreign Office when it received the following dispatch: (I give the substance, of course, because I have not seen the original.):
"Yesterday," wrote Amba.s.sador Jusserand, "President Roosevelt invited me to take a promenade with him this afternoon at three.
I arrived at the White House punctually, in afternoon dress and silk hat, as if we were to stroll in the Tuileries Garden or in the Champs Elysees. To my surprise, the President soon joined me in a tramping suit, with knickerbockers and thick boots, and soft felt hat, much worn. Two or three other gentlemen came, and we started off at what seemed to me a breakneck pace, which soon brought us out of the city. On reaching the country, the President went pell-mell over the fields, following neither road nor path, always on, on, straight ahead! I was much winded, but I would not give in, nor ask him to slow up, because I had the honor of La belle France in my heart. At last we came to the bank of a stream, rather wide and too deep to be forded. I sighed relief, because I thought that now we had reached our goal and would rest a moment and catch our breath, before turning homeward. But judge of my horror when I saw the President unb.u.t.ton his clothes and heard him say, "We had better strip, so as not to wet our things in the Creek." Then I, too, for the honor of France, removed my apparel, everything except my lavender kid gloves. The President cast an inquiring look at these as if they, too, must come off, but I quickly forestalled any remark by saying, "With your permission, Mr. President, I will keep these on, otherwise it would be embarra.s.sing if we should meet ladies." And so we jumped into the water and swam across."
M. Jusserand has a fine sense of humor and doubtless he has laughed often over this episode, although he must have been astonished and irritated when it occurred. But it gave Roosevelt exactly what he wanted by showing him that the plucky little French man was "game" for anything, and they remained firm friends for life.
Occasionally, one of the guests invited on a hike relucted from taking the plunge, and then he was allowed to go up stream or down and find a crossing at a bridge; but I suspect that his host and the habitual hikers instinctively felt a little less regard for him after that. General Leonard Wood was one of Roosevelt"s boon companions on these excursions, and, speaking of him, I am reminded of one of the President"s orders which caused a great flurry among Army officers in Washington.
The President learned that many of these officers had become soft, physically, through their long residence in the city, where an unmilitary life did not tend to keep their muscles hard. As a consequence these great men of war became easy-going, indolent even, better suited to loaf in the armchairs of the Metropolitan Club and discuss campaigns and battles long ago than to lead troops in the field. "Their condition," said Roosevelt, "would have excited laughter, had it not been so serious, to think that they belonged to the military arm of the Government. A cavalry colonel proved unable to keep his horse at a sharp trot for even half a mile when I visited his post; a major-general proved afraid even to let his horse canter when he went on a ride with us; and certain otherwise good men proved as unable to walk as if they had been sedentary brokers." After consulting Generals Wood and Bell, who were themselves real soldiers at the top of condition, the President issued orders that the infantry should march fifty miles, and the cavalry one hundred, in three days.
There was an outcry. The newspapers denounced Roosevelt as a tyrant who followed his mere caprices. Some of the officers intrigued with Congressmen to nullify the order. But when the President himself, accompanied by Surgeon-General Rixey and two officers, rode more than one hundred miles in a single day over the frozen and rutty Virginia roads, the objectors could not keep up open opposition. Roosevelt adds, ironically, that three naval officers who walked the fifty miles in a day, were censured for not obeying instructions, and were compelled to do the test over again in three days.
Dinner in the White House was usually a formal affair, to which most, if not all the guests, at least, were invited some time in advance. There were, of course, the official dinners to the foreign diplomats, to the justices of the Supreme Court, to the members of the Cabinet; ordinarily, they might be described as general. The President never forgot those who had been his friends at any period of his life. It might happen that Bill Sewall, his earliest guide from Maine, or a Dakota ranchman, or a New York policeman, or one of his trusted enthusiasts in a hard- fought political campaign, turned up at the White House. He was sure to be asked to luncheon or to dinner, by the President. And these former chums must have felt somewhat embarra.s.sed, if they were capable of feeling embarra.s.sment, when they found themselves seated beside some of the great ladies of Washington. Perhaps Roosevelt himself felt a little trepidation as to how the unmixables would mix. He is reported to have said to one Western cowboy of whom he was fond: "Now, Jimmy, don"t bring your gun along to-night. The British Amba.s.sador is going to dine too, and it wouldn"t do for you to pepper the floor round his feet with bullets, in order to see a tenderfoot dance."
But those dinners were mainly memorable occasions, and the guests who attended them heard some of the best talk in America at that time, and came away with increased wonder for the variety of knowledge and interest, and for the unceasing charm and courtesy of their host, the President. Contrary to the opinion of persons who heard him only as a political speaker shouting in the open air from the back platform of his train or in a public square, Roosevelt was not only a speaker, he was also a most courteous listener. I watched him at little dinners listen not only patiently, but with an astonishing simulation of interest, to very dull persons who usurped the conversation and imagined that they were winning his admiration. Mr. John Morley, who was a guest at the White House at election time in 1904, said: "The two things in America which seem to me most extraordinary are Niagara Falls and President Roosevelt."