Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography,

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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 class
itself, than to make of it a privileged class, 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 class to
enjoy privileges of its own at the expense of all other classes;
and it makes no difference whether this class 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 assassinating 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 classing 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, mass-meetings, and petitions 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 titanic zeal,
that he not only converted the masses 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 multitudes 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 spacious 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 shore
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 documents 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 Ambassadors
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 instituted "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 appetite 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 Ambassador, 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 Ambassador, 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 Ambassador 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
unbutton 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 embarrassing 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 embarrassed, if they
were capable of feeling embarrassment, 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 Ambassador 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."

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