The 1904 Republican National Convention in Chicago, with Mark Hanna’s portrait visible above the speaker’s platform.
WHEN ROOSEVELT UPROOTED TAFT FROM the Philippines to make him a pivotal figure in his Washington cabinet, he had warned his friend that he would lean on him heavily. In an era when it was still considered undignified for candidates to stump heavily on their own behalf, Taft would serve as a campaign surrogate, clarifying and promoting Roosevelt’s positions. As the president had feared when he called Taft home, the mood of the country was becoming increasingly unstable. In the opening months of the 1904 election year, tensions between labor and capital had escalated to a dangerously volatile point.
No single incident illustrates the severity of this instability better than the Colorado labor wars, a series of conflicts that pushed the region to the brink of revolution. In the spring, labor violence in Colorado threatened to unbalance the carefully calibrated middle ground Roosevelt had forged in his dealings with unions and management. A continuous round of strikes by the Western Federation of Miners had roiled the region for over a year. The previous November, James Peabody, Colorado’s conservative Republican governor, had declared martial law and urged Roosevelt to send federal troops to quell the disturbances. Strikers, he reported, had shut down mining activity across most of the state and were threatening a range of other businesses. The safety of Colorado’s citizens and the security of their private property were in peril. After consulting with his cabinet, Roosevelt sent a telegram to the governor. While he understood the difficult conditions, he explained that he had “no lawful authority” to intervene unless the situation amounted to “an insurrection . . . beyond the power of the civil police and military forces of the State to control.”
As the violence escalated, Ray Baker traveled to Colorado and began researching the history of “corruption & bribery on the part of the corporations & violence on the part of the strikers. I am going to go for them hard,” as he told his father. Upon hearing that Baker was preparing an article on the Colorado labor strife, Roosevelt invited him to the White House. Throughout their lunch, Baker wrote his wife, Jessie, the president “had a pad of paper at his hand” and “asked me much in detail about conditions in the West.”
As Baker labored to complete his 10,000-word article, “The Reign of Lawlessness: Anarchy and Despotism in Colorado,” he sought Roosevelt’s permission to quote from a statement in their private correspondence. “I believe in corporations,” Roosevelt had written. “I believe in trade 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.” With the president’s blessing, Baker used the quote to headline his argument that both capital and labor had broken the law in Colorado, equally contributing to the pervasive disorder and destruction.
Tracing the chronology of the conflict from the 1890s, Baker began with the Western Federation strikes in Cripple Creek, which successfully obtained “everything the men wanted,” including higher wages, closed shops, and an eight-hour workday. But in both Colorado City and Denver, Baker noted, a number of mills remained “open shops,” and Telluride mill owners refused to grant an eight-hour day. Federation leaders ordered all 3,000 men out in a “sympathetic strike,” exercising a nearly “autocratic” authority over their statewide membership, a majority of whom were reluctant to strike. As union mines shut down across the state and unionized workers instigated violent altercations with non-union men in the smelting plants, public opinion began to turn against the Western Federation. Seizing this opportunity to break the union altogether, mine owners called on the governor to bring in state troops and keep the non-union mines open.
The governor needed little persuasion, Ray Baker reported, for he unabashedly “sided with the mine owners” in an effort “not merely to prevent violence, but to break the strike.” The state militia arrested union members “without charges,” suspending the writ of habeas corpus. Soldiers “entered and searched” private homes without warrants, and a local newspaper was shut down after its editor “criticized the methods of the soldiery.”
“One of the great underlying reasons for the existing struggle,” Baker determined, “was the demand for an eight-hour day in the smelters and mills of Colorado.” In 1899, the state legislature had passed a law restricting work in extremely hazardous occupations to eight hours. After Colorado’s supreme court declared the law unconstitutional, the unions sponsored an amendment to the state constitution. Passed by a large majority, the measure mandated that the legislature enact an eight-hour law. When lawmakers assembled, however, lobbyists from the Smelter Trust, controlled by John D. Rockefeller, descended upon the capitol. An eight-hour day would require three shifts instead of two, cutting profits. Money for bribes was plentiful. Despite the clear mandate, the legislature ended its session without having acted on the eight-hour law.
Little wonder, Baker mused, that after years of struggling for this legislation, the unions “were discouraged, even desperate.” Nonetheless, he emphasized, the chaos in Colorado was the work of all parties: unions had utilized violent means to drive scabs from work; military forces had become despotic; corporations had bribed legislators; and the legislature itself had defied “the will of the people.” Only public outrage and pressure could hope to stem the corruption and violence.
In mid-April, Baker sent an advance copy to Roosevelt. “I have endeavored in this article to set down the truth with absolute frankness, no matter who it hit,” he wrote the president, “and if the truth were ever needed, it is needed today in Colorado.” Baker’s investigation and analysis drew widespread praise throughout the country. The Arena called it “the most masterly, exhaustive and on the whole judicially impartial account of the reign of anarchy in Colorado.” The evenhanded stance evidenced in the Roosevelt quote Baker cited also occasioned favorable comment. “This language is not calculated to please either the extremists on the side of capital, or the extremists on the side of labor,” the Wall Street Journal asserted, “but it commends itself to the sober thought of the great mass of people, who, while believing in the right of capital and labor to organize, hold that neither capital nor labor shall be permitted to exercise a power of monopoly.” Roosevelt not only read the piece but had it circulated among officials in the Labor Department.
On June 6, the long-simmering tensions in Colorado ignited. At two o’clock that morning, twenty-five miners who had just completed a shift in defiance of the union’s strike waited at the Cripple Creek station for the 2:15 a.m. train. Suddenly, a massive charge of dynamite detonated near the tracks, rocking the depot. Over a dozen men died instantly in the blast and more were gravely injured. The Western Federation of Miners was blamed for the “dastardly crime.” News of this fatal explosion, destructive enough to render the dead unidentifiable by doctors and family members, quickly led to rioting. The governor called out the militia, and soldiers roamed the streets arresting anyone who uttered “the least anarchistic expression.” Under orders of the state national guard, more than one hundred union miners were corralled onto a special train and banished from Cripple Creek. Among the thousands who thronged the station, one reporter observed, were “wives and sisters, fathers and mothers of the deported men, and the scenes were affecting.”
The Western Federation appealed to the president, “in the name of law and order,” pressing him to investigate “the terrible crimes that are being perpetrated in Colorado.” The union’s plea placed Roosevelt in a difficult position. “Having refused to send them in at the request of one side,” he explained, “we are now asked to send them in at the request of the other.” Exasperated by inaction, Roosevelt dispatched an investigative team to Colorado. “If it becomes necessary for me to act, or merely lay before Congress a statement of what has occurred, I want to know fully the exact facts,” he told labor commissioner Carroll Davis Wright.
Commissioner Wright later informed Ray Baker that his article had served as “the basis of the government investigation in Colorado,” which likewise traced the origin and history of the region’s labor struggles and analyzed the same incidents, also attributing to both sides responsibility for the confrontation. Reading Wright’s preliminary report, Roosevelt concurred with Baker that Governor Peabody had exacerbated the situation, intervening not simply “as the representative of law, order and justice” but “as the supporter and representative of the capitalist against the laborer.” Nevertheless, the president believed the miners had erred, leaving strike decisions to an autocratic inner circle and using violence to accomplish their goals. The report validated Roosevelt’s initial reluctance to interfere, providing abundant evidence that would justify his decision to Congress and to the public. Once the president had transmitted the final report to the House and the Senate, he again invited Baker to lunch. “He was most gratifyingly complimentary about my work,” Baker informed his father. The president’s response, he maintained, confirmed that his article “had been absolutely correct & fair.”
The turbulence in Cripple Creek eventually subsided, though many of the deported miners never returned. In Telluride, the strike ended when the mine owners finally agreed to an eight-hour day. Governor Peabody was forced out of office, and the state legislature passed a state law limiting working hours for dangerous occupations, including work in mines, smelters, and reduction mills.
AS THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION opened in Chicago on June 21, 1904, Roosevelt was confident that, “barring a cataclysm,” he would secure the nomination. The old bosses who still controlled the delegations might engage in “a great deal of sullen grumbling,” but their hope of mounting a successful opposition had died with Marcus Hanna. Rather than “the thunderous demonstration usually attendant upon political conventions,” newspapers described “a lifeless gathering,” a “sober and unhysterical” affair. An enormous portrait of Hanna had been positioned above the speaker’s platform and the first mention of the former chairman’s name provoked a wild outburst. Although the majority of the delegates would be voting for Roosevelt, they made it clear from the outset that they supported him “because they had to.” Had there been a “shadow of the chance” that any member of the conservative Old Guard could win the presidency, the majority would have “embraced it gladly.”
More than any other writer covering the convention, William Allen White perceived the significance of the Republicans’ peevish mood. Despite the empty seats, lack of enthusiasm, and “mechanical” twenty-minute cheer when Roosevelt’s name was put into nomination, White nevertheless concluded that the convention was the “most successful gathering” in more than a generation. He recognized that “the puppet show” in Chicago was not an accurate reflection of national sentiment: the American people were exerting their will—and the people wanted Roosevelt. “It makes little difference whether the politicians cheered for Roosevelt twenty-three minutes or twenty-four hours,” White insisted. Politicians and political machines were “dangerous” only if the people remained passive, but let a reformer like Roosevelt gain public confidence, and “the service of the politicians” would be at his command. “There is no boss so powerful that he can overcome the people.”
White believed that this spirit of rebellion, the push to realize “a better world,” was fueled by “a new element in political life”—the appearance of progressive newspapers and magazines urging the country to move forward. A decade earlier, men who called for a more equitable distribution of wealth were castigated as socialists or bomb-hurling anarchists. Now reformers were everywhere: small businessmen sought to regulate railroads, merchants demanded new laws to regulate the trusts, skilled laborers were striking for higher wages and shorter hours. All these agents of change, he concluded, now looked to Roosevelt “to speak and act for his times.”
The appointment of George Cortelyou to replace Mark Hanna as campaign manager and chairman of the Republican National Committee confirmed that the embattled party needed Roosevelt far “more than he needed the party.” A former newspaperman of modest background, Cortelyou had served as private secretary to Cleveland, McKinley, and Roosevelt before becoming head of the Department of Commerce and Labor. Roosevelt’s support for Cortelyou drew immediate opposition from “professional politicians,” who correctly sensed that they “were losing their grip of power.” With his reputation for honesty and dedication, Cortelyou represented a younger, forward-thinking generation that was “taking control of the party,” and conservatives “could not bear to abdicate without leaving a monumental growl behind them.” Roosevelt moved swiftly to quash the opposition. “People may as well understand that if I am to run for President then Cortelyou is to be Chairman,” he told a Massachusetts businessman and politician. “I will not have it any other way,” he stated with finality. “The choice of Cortelyou is irrevocable.” Delegates were left with no alternative but to ratify Roosevelt’s selection.
Roosevelt was less successful in dictating the Republican Party platform. While it largely mirrored the president’s public actions and statements on foreign policy, the Panama Canal, trusts, and labor, observers noted that it reflected a difference of opinion on the tariff. Roosevelt argued that failure to revise the tariff would put “a formidable weapon in the hands of our opponents,” yet the platform espoused the principle of protectionism as “a cardinal policy of the Republican party.” As Roosevelt predicted, the Democrats seized on the issue to proclaim that a Republican victory would herald “four years more of trust domination, of high prices to the consumer and of low prices to the producer.” Nevertheless, Roosevelt hesitated to push the issue, fearful that a tariff battle would pit westerners anxious for relief against the eastern industrial and financial establishment, thereby creating a disastrous schism in the party.
Nor did Roosevelt contest the selection of Indiana senator Charles Fairbanks as vice president. Although he far preferred Illinois congressman Robert Hitt, “of all men the pleasantest to work with,” he accepted the “cautious, slow, conservative” Fairbanks as a concession to the Old Guard. Since his own experience as vice president had convinced him that the office was essentially powerless, there was no need to take a stand. Paramount was winning his party’s presidential nomination.
Seated with his family on the south veranda of the White House, Roosevelt received news of his unanimous nomination. They had just finished lunch when his private secretary, William Loeb, brought the anticipated telegram. After “affectionate congratulations” from his wife and children, Roosevelt returned to his office, where members of the press, many of whom he considered “his personal friends,” had convened. The president was “in exceptionally good humor” as he handed out cigars, joking that the stern prohibitionist Carrie Nation would not approve. The AP reporter described the scene: “With genial raillery he chatted with one; exchanged comments on men or things with another; laughed heartily at a cartoon of himself to which his attention was drawn; sketched in a free-hand way incidents of the convention; recalled some interesting situations, personal and political; and in conclusion again thanked his friends for expressions of their congratulations.”
WHEN THE DEMOCRATS ASSEMBLED IN St. Louis two weeks later, the party’s conservative wing had clearly regained control. Though William Jennings Bryan remained the heartfelt choice of the rank and file, the professional politicians were starved for victory. After two consecutive defeats with Bryan, party leaders turned to a “gold Democrat,” Judge Alton B. Parker. Bryan’s repeated calls for using silver rather than gold as the standard unit of currency value had pleased western debtors who would benefit from inflation but had angered eastern creditors whose money would be devalued. Democratic bosses hoped Parker could both retain Bryan’s liberal base in the West and win back eastern conservatives who had broken with the party on the gold issue.
Covering the Democratic Convention for Collier’s, William Allen White portrayed Bryan as “the hero of the occasion, even though he did not triumph.” Though deafening yells and “epileptic spasms” greeted Bryan’s every appearance, the delegates had vowed not to let sentiment rule a third time. “They were like men who had been stark mad,” observed White, “and the fear of it coming back was in their hearts.” Bryan managed to keep the platform from endorsing gold, but the overwhelming vote for Parker’s nomination signaled that his “eight-year reign was over.” The platform roundly denounced trusts and protectionism as “robbery of the many to enrich the few,” demanded large reductions in public spending, decried executive usurpation of legislative functions, called for Philippine independence, and advocated direct election of U.S. senators.
The nomination voting was completed shortly before midnight on Friday, July 8. The reporters gathered in Parker’s hometown of Esopus, New York, were disappointed to learn that the judge had retired with orders that he not be awakened. As a result, the nominee was not apprised of his victory until returning from his regular morning swim in the Hudson River. Asked for a statement, Parker replied that he would wait until he received official notification. The delay provided time for a shrewd strategic maneuver: at noon, he dictated a telegram to be read before the convention adjourned, informing delegates that he regarded “the gold standard as firmly and irrevocably established.” If his views on this issue “proved to be unsatisfactory to the majority,” he should feel it his duty “to decline the nomination.” The convention moved swiftly to adopt a resolution stating that the currency question did not appear in the platform simply because it was no longer “an issue at this time.” The gold standard would not be challenged, they assured Parker, leaving nothing to prevent him from accepting the nomination.
Parker’s move “was most adroit,” Roosevelt acknowledged. “He is entitled to hearty praise, from the standpoint of a clever politician,” the president observed, adding that the maneuver had gained for Parker “all of Cleveland’s strength without any of Cleveland’s weakness, and made him, on the whole, the most formidable man the Democrats could have nominated.” William Taft disagreed, predicting that the success of Parker’s machination would be short-lived, unlike the rift within the party it had perpetuated. He assured Roosevelt that Parker “was stronger the morning the telegram was published than he ever will be again.” Nevertheless, Roosevelt fretted that he now faced “a hard and uphill fight” in the general election.
According to his habit, Theodore Roosevelt sought to harness anxiety through action. He had begun crafting his acceptance speech immediately after his nomination, but now he turned to it with a vengeance, determined to sharpen its tone. “I always like to do my fighting in the adversary’s corner,” he told Lodge. The speech, delivered on July 27 from the sun-splashed veranda at Sagamore Hill, “was received with immense enthusiasm” by the assembled crowd. “It is just such a statement as we should expect Theodore Roosevelt to make,” the Minneapolis Journal editorialized: “terse, luminous, logical, convincing.” His defense of Republican policy, said another paper, was “characteristically forceful,” and his satirical commentary on the Democratic Party, noted Lodge, was “keen and polished as a Japanese sword blade.”
Parker’s acceptance speech had no such luster. Between bouts of heavy rain, the Democratic candidate held forth for forty minutes from the soaked lawn of his Esopus country home. Parker’s flat style and lack of oratorical experience were immediately apparent; he “used few gestures,” failed to distinguish his positions from Roosevelt’s, and mustered no “bugle call.” The most vigorous applause reportedly followed his closing declaration that, if elected, he would not run for a second term. Roosevelt was relieved that his rival’s “shifty and tricky” gambit had failed to “straddle” the factions within the Democratic Party. Perhaps, Roosevelt told Lodge, Taft’s assessment had been correct from the start.
Characteristically, Roosevelt began drafting his formal letter of acceptance weeks before its early September publication date, ensuring ample time for consultation with his advisers. Taft attended numerous breakfasts, lunches, and midnight discussions to dissect each section. “His opponents may attack the letter,” Taft told Nellie, “but they will not say it is lacking in snap or ginger.” Seeking a broad sounding board, Roosevelt also circulated drafts to Root, Lodge, Knox, Hay, Garfield, and the civil service reformer Lucius Swift—requesting merciless critiques. “I went at the letter hammer and tongs,” Swift told his wife, “and got in a good many points.”
Published on September 12, Roosevelt’s letter received widespread praise. “Remarkable,” the New York Times declared, “astonishingly able.” The Washington Post observed that he had constructed “a veritable keynote for the stump,” in which signal Republican objectives were championed with “enough spirit to arouse the partisan masses.” The letter’s strength, Taft told Roosevelt, was “the challenge contained in every line of it to the Democrats to be specific in their charges and to deal with facts.” He maintained that if Parker produced a letter of acceptance akin to his tepid speech it would be glaringly apparent just “how little real ammunition the Democrats have.”
The lackluster piece Taft anticipated from the Democratic candidate did not materialize. Parker’s 6,000-word letter presented a spirited attack against centralized government at home and imperialism abroad, along with a robust call for tariff reform and further trust regulation. Republicans frankly acknowledged that now “the issues of the campaign would be more squarely joined.” The New York Times deemed Parker’s letter “a great paper.” Though not designed to stir “the yells of crowds,” it would appeal “to men who think,” presenting “a first-rate test of the people.”
Roosevelt conceded that Parker had cleverly managed to engage disparate factions of his party, giving “heart to his supporters” and halting “the downward movement of his campaign.” At such moments, Roosevelt sorely longed to “take the offensive in person” and face his Democratic challenger on the stump. “I could cut him into ribbons if I could get at him in the open,” he wrote to Kermit. “But of course a President can’t go on the stump and can’t indulge in personalities.” His only option was to “sit still” and trust that his cabinet officials, traversing the country on his behalf, could make the case for his election.
GIVEN WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT’S MARKED aversion to preparing and delivering public speeches, he surprised even himself by emerging as the most sought-after speaker on the campaign trail. “It seems strange that with an effort to keep out of politics and with my real dislike for it, I should thus be pitched into the middle of it,” he told his close friend Howard Hollister. Yet, in letters to Nellie, he confided his irritation at the extent to which “mere political discussion” dominated cabinet meetings. “I suppose it is natural,” he lamented, “but it seems to me to be undignified.” Nevertheless, as the campaign heated up, he settled into his role as spokesman for the administration. “I rather think I am to do more work than any other member of the cabinet,” he noted with pride, “but I don’t object to that.”
Regardless of his engagement, Taft struggled with his inveterate tendency to procrastinate. Preparing for his first major speech during Harvard’s commencement, where he and former Democratic secretary of state Richard Olney would square off on the Philippine issue, he confessed to his brother Charley that he was “right down to almost the last day in the preparation, as is usual with me.” The night before departing for Cambridge, he reviewed the speech with the president and James Garfield. The president anticipated that the address would stand as “a great public document.” Garfield too rated it “a masterly argument,” recording in his diary that he considered Taft “a truly great man.”
William Taft presented his speech to the Harvard Law School alumni at Sanders Theatre, presided over by Chief Justice Melville Fuller and Harvard president Charles W. Eliot. For two hours in the morning, Taft simply but clearly recounted the history of America’s relationship with the Philippines, beginning with the war against Spain and the decision to exert sovereignty over the islands. He argued that American policy promoted “the Philippines for the Filipinos” and would eventually prepare the people to govern themselves. To promise independence before educating the populace, as many Democrats and independents urged, Taft believed would be a mistake.
Olney’s rebuttal openly acknowledged that Taft had rightly earned “the general admiration” of the islanders “by the justice and skillfulness of his rule, and by the tact, patience and humanity of his dealings” with the Filipino people. He insisted, however, that the United States must not “sacrifice American lives and American treasures indefinitely and without stint for the education and elevation of Filipinos.” The Constitution did not authorize the government to “turn itself into a missionary to the benighted tribes” or “to tax the toiling masses of this country for the benefit of motley groups of the brown people of the tropics.” Simply, continued occupation of the Philippines represented a departure from the traditions and interests of the United States.
Despite their opposing views, both speakers remained impeccably civil. “Their differences,” the Cincinnati Enquirer observed, “were, of course, stated in terms that prevented any exhibition of acrimony. When such men as Taft and Olney meet, the public can expect enlightenment on high ground.” Olney’s presentation was “a good thing,” the Enquirer added, for it allowed “the young men of Harvard to have an opportunity to hear both sides of the question. Otherwise Secretary Taft might have hypnotized them, for they love him.”
Taft was emboldened when his first campaign appearance generated nothing but positive notices. “I fired my gun at Cambridge and was pleasantly disappointed to find how well received it was,” he drolly wrote to Roosevelt.
Will, Nellie, and the children soon departed Cambridge for their summer home on Murray Bay. Having spent the previous two summers in the Philippines, Taft was overjoyed at their return to this “magical place,” where his brothers and their families could readily gather for picnics, trout fishing, and daily rounds of golf. “The air is bracing and delightful,” Taft wrote to Roosevelt at Oyster Bay early in July. “I feel a boyish feeling—I’d like to jump up and down and shout.” Nellie and the children planned to remain in Murray Bay until late September, but campaign and cabinet duties required Will’s return to Washington at the end of July.
In August, Taft delivered two more impressive speeches on the Philippines, one in St. Louis and the other at Chautauqua. Increasingly confident in his area of expertise, Taft nevertheless remained anxious about a campaign appearance in Montpelier, Vermont, at the end of August. “The next ten days I must devote myself to the preparation,” he told his wife. For better than twenty years, Taft had not given a purely political speech, and feared he was “a bit rusty on general politics.” Indeed, he mused, “the Bench disqualifies one in this respect.”
Roosevelt was particularly eager for Taft to speak in Vermont, where the September state elections were considered an important indicator of the vote in the presidential contest. Though the Green Mountain State generally leaned Republican, “the size of her majority” was thought to portend “the trend of public opinion.” Rather than presenting an overview of Republican policies, Taft chose to focus on Roosevelt’s leadership, mounting a spirited defense against repeated charges that the president was a bully, whose dictatorial demeanor toward Congress transgressed the constitutional separation between executive and legislative powers. “When Theodore Roosevelt is attacked for being a strong-headed tyrant, obstinate in his pride of opinion, and failure to listen to argument, I am in a position to know,” he reassured his audience of more than 1,500 Vermonters. “In all my experience I never have met a man in authority with less pride of opinion,” he asserted. “I have never met a man who was so amenable to reason, so anxious to reach a just conclusion, and so willing to sacrifice a previously formed opinion.” Rather than a litany of clichéd tributes, Taft’s vivid, personal testimony concerning the president’s nature and character won the interest and enthusiasm of his listeners.
“It was a success,” he told Nellie, proudly relaying that he was “told by many that it was thought to be the best political speech delivered in Vermont.” The press concurred: “It would be difficult to praise it too highly,” one Pennsylvania paper editorialized. “Judge Taft had already attained a high reputation as a jurist and executive officer.” Now, he had established himself “as a political orator of the first rank. . . . Probably no member of the President’s cabinet will prove more effective in defense and support of his administration.” Published in its entirety in the Boston Transcript, Taft’s speech promised to become “a text-book for Republican orators and writers.” Most important, the Vermont vote proved a “glorious” triumph for Republicans, with a larger margin than anyone had predicted. “I am pleased as Punch about Vermont,” Roosevelt exclaimed to Taft, adding that the unforeseen magnitude should “cut off some of the money supply of our adversaries.”
Taft next proceeded to Portland, Maine; Roosevelt had received “a rather gloomy letter” from Senator Eugene Hale about Republican prospects in the state and hoped that Taft’s presence could help energize support. Buoyed by positive reactions, Taft prepared himself “to speak without notes” for the first time. Despite initial anxiety that his memory might fail and leave him floundering, his performance went smoothly.
Taft continued north to Murray Bay for a final two weeks of vacation before the true rigors of the campaign began. To his “great surprise,” a large contingent of Murray Bay residents appeared at his house on the night of his forty-seventh birthday. A torchlight parade escorted him to the Bay’s largest house, where they feasted and drank, danced the Virginia reel, sang songs, presented gifts, and proposed toasts.
Taft wrote to Roosevelt every other day during his vacation, planning future speeches, exchanging political gossip, discussing Parker’s campaign. “Mrs. Taft says that you must be bored by the number of letters that I write you,” he jested; “now that I have my Secretary with me you may expect more.” Ease and camaraderie mark their correspondence from this period as they discussed matters both personal and political: Roosevelt complained freely about their mutual friend Maria Storer; Taft described a new diet requiring him to refrain from drinking all liquids with his meals; Roosevelt cursed the “infernal liars” in the independent press—“the New York Times, Evening Post, Herald”—with their outrageous claims that he had sent “a corruption fund” to influence the vote in Vermont; Taft recounted “playing golf every day in air that is as invigorating as dry champagne without any evil after effect.”
Upon his return to Washington in late September, Taft was immediately dispatched to Ohio, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. “Do not in any speech take any position seeming in the least to be on the defensive,” Roosevelt cautioned. “Attack Parker. Show that his proposals are insincere; his statements lacking in candor, and disingenuous. Announce that we have not the slightest apology to make; that we intend to continue precisely as we have been doing in the past; that we shall not abandon building up the navy and keeping up the army, or abandon rural free delivery, or irrigation of the public lands. Either Parker is insincere, or else he must propose to abandon these works and other works like them in order to economize.”
On October 1, Taft opened the Republicans’ Ohio campaign with a daylong extravaganza in Warren’s public square that featured marching bands, songs, and large delegations from neighboring Cleveland, Youngstown, and Akron. With nearly 2,000 people in attendance, the campaign kickoff was considered “the most auspicious in years.” Sharing the platform with the state’s governor and two U.S. senators, Taft delivered the keynote address. Following Roosevelt’s directives, he targeted Parker directly, saving his most stinging condemnation for the gross distortions and outright lies the Democratic candidate had spread about the administration’s expenditures in the Philippines. “After reading the statements of Judge Parker concerning the Philippines,” Taft repeatedly avowed, “I sometimes wonder whether I was ever there.”
Taft would have welcomed Nellie’s company on the campaign trail, but she had to settle the family into their new house at 1904 K Street in Washington and prepare the children for school. In daily letters, she related her progress in unpacking cartons of furniture, carpeting floors, setting up beds, working with carpenters, and arranging books in the library. With Robert attending Horace’s boarding school in Watertown, Connecticut, only the two younger children remained at home. Thirteen-year-old Helen joined Ethel Roosevelt at the National Cathedral School. Seven-year-old Charlie was enrolled in the local public school, where he became great friends with Quentin Roosevelt. “I hope Charley’s first day in school was a success,” Taft wrote from Indiana. “I can remember mine. It was not.”
As the campaign ground on, Taft’s yearning to be home with his wife and children intensified. “I wish I could get on the train and go right to you now,” he told Nellie early in October. With each passing day, he grew wearier of presenting the same speech. In Indianapolis, the crowd grew restless, some departing early as he held forth for nearly two hours. “I don’t think my style of speaking is calculated to hold the curious,” he admitted to Nellie, “but the audience which remained was most attentive.” She “could not but smile,” Nellie replied, when he mentioned the length of the speech. “If you confine it to an hour,” she suggested, “I think people will stay.”
A tense situation developed in mid-October, when a delegation of cigar and tobacco manufacturers, irate at Taft’s proposed reduction of the tariff on Philippine tobacco, threatened “to control cigar makers enough to defeat Roosevelt in N.Y., Conn, Missouri and almost everywhere else.” Enlisting the support of labor organizations in the cigar trade, they petitioned Congress and approached the president, “just at the anxious time when everything assumes distorted proportions.” That same day, Taft wrote to the president. “I feel sure you would not wish me to retract anything on that subject,” he began, adding that he would willingly cancel his appearances in affected states that might “emphasize the issue.” If the president felt it necessary, Taft concluded, he would retire from the cabinet rather than back down on the principle.
“Fiddle-dee-dee!” Roosevelt responded, quickly dismissing Taft’s resignation talk as “nerves, or something.” While there was certainly no sense in exacerbating the issue by dwelling on the tobacco tariff, the New England states were precisely where his talent was most necessary. With this reassurance, Taft continued his grueling schedule but grumbled to his wife that the issue confirmed his resolve that he “would not run for President if you guaranteed the office. It is awful to be made afraid of one’s shadow.”
AS SUMMER ADVANCED INTO FALL, the struggles between labor and capital increasingly defined the campaign. Democrats sought to contrast Roosevelt, “a man who never needed to do a day’s work,” and Parker, “a man who has always had to work to maintain himself and his family.” This emblematic opposition sought to distinguish “the party of aristocracy and oligarchy” from “the party of liberty and equality.” Democratic newspapers predicted that the rank and file of labor would vote in record numbers against Roosevelt. “It is the culmination of many grievances which union labor has against the party and its leaders,” judged one paper. In Pennsylvania, Old Guard Republican senator Boies Penrose had “utterly ignored” union demands relating to construction of the state’s new capitol. In the Rocky Mountain states, the bitterness of union miners against conservative Governor Peabody threatened to supply Parker with such overwhelming labor support that Republicans were reportedly conceding the region to Democrats. The rising cost of living fueled these complaints of the working class, undercutting Republican campaign strategies of a“full dinner pail” that had once helped McKinley.
All the while, Roosevelt was hammered by party conservatives for being too friendly with labor. Day after day, the New York Sun savaged him for his actions in the coal strike, his temerity in inviting labor men to dinner at the White House, and his honorary membership in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen. “He is on the side of the men who are every day seeking to overthrow the Constitution,” the Sun stridently charged. “He has joined their organizations, espoused their creed, received their leaders at his dwelling and in his official residence; and as President of the United States has welcomed their delegates.” Simultaneously, Roosevelt lamented that populist publications reviled him for breaking bread with the great corporate heads.
As this antagonism intensified, Ray Baker began drafting a piece for McClure’s to dissect each candidate’s point of view on the labor issue. He read every one of Judge Parker’s decisions addressing unions and corporations, discovering that “without exception,” they were “strongly favorable to the contentions of labor.” In one case, Parker had declared that “the state has a right to limit the hours of employment for bakers to sixty a week”; in another instance, he stated “that cities must pay the ‘prevailing rate of wages’ ”; in still another, he ruled in favor of the closed shop.
Baker expected a discussion of labor issues when he was invited to spend the afternoon with the judge at Esopus. “Personally he is a most attractive man—a good type of the comfortable country gentleman,” Baker told his father. “I was disappointed in finding him so apparently uninformed on labor affairs, though, of course, his mode of life has given him little opportunity of coming into contact with the great vital forces of the industrial conflict.” Indeed, beyond his judicial decisions, Baker was unable to decipher coherent underlying principles governing Parker’s approach to the paramount issue of the day.
In contrast, when Baker requested from Roosevelt a clarification of what many considered a contradictory position on the labor issue, Roosevelt promptly produced a nearly 2,000-word reply. “I cannot help feeling,” the president testily responded, “that the people who have been ‘confused by my action in the various labor cases,’ must be of such limited brain power that nothing in the world will make my position clear to them.” To comprehend his stance, he insisted, one need only study his words and actions over time. If such “creatures” remained confused, he continued, “I hardly think it will be possible to set them right; for they must be people who do not understand that when I say I wish to give a square deal to every man I mean just exactly that, and that I intend to stand by the capitalist when he is right and by the laboring man when he is right, and will oppose the one if he goes wrong just as fearlessly as I should oppose the other.” Those offended by his dinner invitations to labor leaders should understand that the White House door would always swing open for labor leaders “just as easily” as “for the big capitalists, but no easier.”
In this striking letter, Roosevelt proceeded to articulate his actions in the coal strike, the eight-hour day, the Colorado situation, immigration law, and convict labor. The basic principles and convictions Roosevelt so aggressively outlined spurred Baker to reread carefully all of the president’s speeches and writings on the subject of labor. “I am perfectly astonished,” he wrote to Roosevelt, “though I thought myself pretty well informed before—at the number and definiteness and breadth of your declarations on the labor question, as well as the record of your acts since your early days in the Legislature. And if I, who represent, perhaps the average busy American, am astonished, I believe a great many other people will be.”
Before the election, Baker’s article, entitled “Parker and Roosevelt on Labor: Real Views of the Two Candidates on the Most Vital National Problem,” appeared in McClure’s. Without any direct exposition or elaboration from Parker, Baker had relied on the judge’s reasoning in the applicable half-dozen cases he had presided over. On the other hand, with access to a lifetime of Roosevelt’s statements and decisions, Baker could present “a clear idea of the labor platform upon which he stands.” Beginning with Roosevelt’s early success as a state legislator against sweatshop conditions in tenement cigar factories, Baker demonstrated that, unlike Old Guard Republicans, the president was “a thoroughgoing believer in labor organization.” In contrast to radical Democrats, however, Roosevelt recognized that “there is no worse enemy of the wage-worker than the man who condones mob violence in any shape, or who preaches class hatred.”
The time and attention Roosevelt had devoted to the journalist’s request proved most rewarding. The Los Angeles Times observed that Baker’s “thorough and painstaking” methods provided McClure’s vast middle-class audience with a clear, illuminating portrait of the president’s fair-minded and long-standing attitudes toward labor.
WITH ONLY WEEKS REMAINING UNTIL the election, Roosevelt recognized that while “the bulk of the voters” would “oppose or support” him based on his three years in office, “a sufficient mass of voters” remained who might yet be swayed by a dramatic turn in the campaign. Mid-October delivered just such a development, when the discovery of immense corporate contributions to the Republican Party suddenly threatened to compromise Roosevelt’s hopes for victory. “The steady advance in the influence of money in our public life,” decried a New York Times editorial, works “as a poison on the minds and hearts of men.” Such toxicity was abundantly clear, the Times added, “when a man of Mr. Roosevelt’s native scorn for corruption can be the willing, the eager beneficiary of funds paid into his campaign chest through his former secretary and former cabinet officer [Mr. Cortelyou] with the undisguised hope that it will be repaid in favors to the subscribers.”
Lincoln Steffens called on Roosevelt at the White House to suggest that the issue could be lanced if he were to return all corporate contributions and look instead to small donations from the general public to fund his campaign. An informed public of small contributors “would make the millions feel that it was their government, as it is; and that you and your administration were beholden to the many, not to the few.” Such a change, Steffens believed, would herald a new era in election politics. “If we must have campaign contributions, this is the way to raise them,” he concluded. “If you would start this method now you really would begin a tremendous reform.”
Roosevelt “most emphatically” rejected the premise of Steffens’s argument, insisting that he already felt “beholden to the many more than to the few.” Whether an individual or corporation contributed one dollar or one hundred thousand dollars would never sway him to sponsor legislation or take executive action. It was “entirely legitimate to accept contributions, no matter how large,” he contended, so long as “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.”
In the end, Roosevelt willingly received hundreds of thousands of dollars from executives in dozens of corporations, including J. P. Morgan’s banking house, New York Central Railroad, Standard Oil, General Electric, and International Harvester. Only when apprised of a check for $100,000 from the Standard Oil Company, “the Mother of Trusts,” did Roosevelt draw the line. He instructed Cortelyou to return the money immediately: “In view of the open and pronounced opposition of the Standard Oil Company to the establishment of the Bureau of Corporations, one of the most important accomplishments of my Administration, I do not feel willing to accept its aid.” So long as other “big business corporations” believed that the country’s well-being could “only be secured through the continuance in power of the republican party,” however, he deemed their contributions “entirely proper.”
Roosevelt’s justification did not satisfy the editorial board of the New York Times. “The fact that the chief beneficiary of the process is blind to its gross impropriety,” declared the Times, “and can see in it only a means to the promotion of the welfare of the Nation dependent beyond question upon his attainment of the Presidential office by election shows how insidious and how irresistible has been the demoralization.” The general unseemliness of large corporate contributions made little impact on the campaign, however, since it was widely known that corporations habitually “contributed to both campaign funds.”
The scandal that did catch the public’s attention and threatened to derail Roosevelt’s campaign was the far more lethal accusation that the president and George Cortelyou were engaged “in a conspiracy to blackmail corporations.” Judge Parker and fellow Democrats charged the Republicans with extortion—using detailed information on violations obtained from the newly created Bureau of Corporations “like a big stick with the threat of prosecution if a fat contribution to the republican campaign [was] not made.” Democratic newspapers insinuated that “the prostitution of an entire federal department to the use of a campaign committee was cleverly planned and carefully executed.” First, the papers accused, Roosevelt had appointed Cortelyou head of the cabinet department overseeing the new bureau; then, having amassed the necessary information, Cortelyou was made chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Roosevelt’s advisers were divided over how to respond. Initially, Cortelyou and Garfield were reluctant to dignify the infamous accusation with a rejoinder. Taft disagreed. “I don’t see why Cortelyou does not deny it but he keeps mum,” he wrote Nellie. “Of course Parker cites no evidence to sustain his charge and Cortelyou’s position is that until he does so, he is not called upon to answer. But I think it would be better to make a short denial.”
Roosevelt concurred with Taft that the charges must be refuted, but resolved, against all precedent, to answer them personally. “I am the man against whom Parker’s assaults are really directed and I am the man who can give the widest publicity to the denial,” he told Cortelyou. “I should feel an intolerable humiliation if I were beaten because infamous charges had been made against me and good people regarded my silence as acquiescence in them.” In characteristic fashion, Roosevelt drafted the statement himself, submitting it to his advisers for criticism. Revised speech in hand, he asked Garfield to take the midnight train to New York and confer with Cortelyou and Root.
All reservations concerning the propriety of the president’s personal involvement in the fray vanished when, in an inflammatory speech on November 3, five days before the election, Parker labeled Cortelyou’s fund “Blood Money.” From the rear of his train in Meriden, Connecticut, Parker spoke “without notes for the first time since the campaign began.” The Democratic candidate, reporters suggested, was stirred from his usual reticence by the loud enthusiasm of the immense crowd of 5,000. “His eyes flashed, his clenched hand swung above his head and his voice rang out with a vigor that betrayed his emotion,” as he declared that all other issues of the campaign were now subsumed by one great question: “whether it is possible for interests in this country to control the elections with money.” Parker scornfully claimed that when “every trust in this country, including the Standard Oil Trust, is doing its best to elect the Republican ticket,” it becomes the duty of the American people to determine “once and for all, whether money or manhood suffrage shall control.” He described how Cortelyou had exploited his cabinet position to blackmail the trusts for campaign contributions. “This country,” he pledged in closing, “shall not pass into the hands of the trusts.” The crowd responded “with a thundering cry that lasted until the train drew out of sight.”
At ten o’clock the following night, William Loeb summoned members of the press to the White House, where he handed them the president’s signed statement. The “direct and fierce” tone of this letter “became the common news of the hotels and streets in a few moments,” prompting a flurry of discussion among politicians and the press. “The gravamen of these charges,” Roosevelt began, “lies in the assertion that corporations have been blackmailed into contributing,” and that in return, “they have been promised certain immunities or favors.” Such accusations leveled without any evidence were “monstrous,” he maintained. “If true, they would brand both of us forever with infamy, and inasmuch as they are false, heavy must be the condemnation of the man making them.” He unequivocally dismissed the charge that Cortelyou had used intelligence gleaned from his cabinet position to coerce contributions as “a falsehood” and the insinuations that pledges were offered for contributions as “a wicked falsehood.” All these allegations, the president flatly concluded, were “unqualifiedly and atrociously false.”
In the wake of Roosevelt’s vigorous and categorical rebuttal, Parker seemed to backpedal, claiming that “he had made no criticism of the President, but had simply called attention to a ‘notorious and offensive situation.’ ” Nor, in response to Roosevelt’s direct challenge, did he offer to substantiate his earlier claims. “Parker fails to furnish proofs,” headlines blared in response. The president’s public rebuttal, Garfield happily observed, “has knocked Parker flat.”
The outcome delighted Roosevelt. “Parker’s attacks became so atrocious,” an ebullient Roosevelt told Kermit, “that I determined—against the counsel of my advisors—to hit; and as I never believe in hitting soft, I hit him in a way he will remember. In spite of loud boasting he made no real return attack at all, and I came out of the encounter with flying colors.”
AS ELECTION DAY APPROACHED, ROOSEVELT’S anxiety escalated. He confessed to his sister Corinne that “he had never wanted anything in his life quite as much as the outward and visible sign of his country’s approval.” Elevated to the presidency as a result of “a calamity to another rather than as the personal choice of the people,” he longed “to be chosen President on his own merits by the people of the United States.” Should his campaign end in rejection, he consoled himself in moments fraught with tension that he had enjoyed “a first class run.” And if, in defeat, he “felt soured at not having had more, instead of being thankful for having had so much,” it would signal “a small and mean mind.”
Late on the morning of November 8, Roosevelt cast his vote in Oyster Bay. A crowd of “home folk” greeted him at the train station with flags and banners. Arriving at the polling place, he “sprang briskly from the carriage and ran up the stairs.” As soon as his ballot was cast, he caught the 1:14 train back to Washington, reaching the White House at 6:30 p.m. Not expecting returns for several hours, Roosevelt tried “not to think of the result, but to school [himself] to accept it as a man.” He had scarcely crossed the threshold when news arrived that he had carried doubtful New York with “a plurality so large as to be astonishing.” By the time he sat down with his family at dinner, sufficient returns had been received from key precincts in various states to suggest “a tremendous drift” in his direction.
After dinner, the president joined a group of intimate friends and members of his official family in the Red Parlor to await further results. While Taft had not yet returned from voting in Cincinnati, Nellie and the wives of the other cabinet members were present. Eleven-year-old Archie, “fairly plastered with badges,” carried telegrams from the telegraph operator to his father, who read them aloud. At 9 p.m., a personal telegram arrived from Judge Parker conceding the election. It was “the greatest triumph I ever had had or ever could have,” Roosevelt wrote, “and I was very proud and happy.”
An hour later, Roosevelt greeted the Washington correspondents in the executive mansion office. Following an animated discussion in which he made “no attempt to conceal his gratification,” the president leaned back in his chair and dictated a statement to his secretary. “So quiet was everyone in the room,” one correspondent noted, “that one could hear the clock tick on the mantel shelf” as he read his startling pronouncement.
I am deeply sensible of the honor done me by the American people in thus expressing their confidence in what I have done and have tried to do. I appreciate to the full the solemn responsibility this confidence imposed on me, and I shall do all that in my power lies not to forfeit it. On the 4th of March next I shall have served three and one half years and the three and one half years constitute my first term. The wise custom which limits the President to two terms regards the substance and not the form, and under no circumstance will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.
Roosevelt’s statement was not an impulsive gesture made in a moment of delirious joy; he had considered renouncing a third term weeks earlier but decided to wait for the election results lest it seem “a bid for votes.” From his first days in office, critics had disparaged Roosevelt’s single-minded focus on his own advancement. Such negativity sharpened during the campaign as opponents charged that he would “use the office of President to perpetuate [himself] in power.” His simple pledge in the wake of the election-day triumph silenced all such criticism.
“I feel very strongly,” Roosevelt explained to the British historian George Trevelyan, that “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.” Even if custom had not frowned upon a third term, he maintained, “it would yet be true that 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 the essentials of policy they look upon things as I do; but . . . what they did and said would have a freshness which what 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.”
When all the votes were finally tallied, Roosevelt had achieved “the greatest popular majority and the greatest electoral majority ever given to a candidate for President.” He had won all the northern states, carried the western states previously claimed by Bryan, and added a totally unexpected coup in Missouri, breaking the Democratic Party’s enduring hold on the South. “I am stunned by the overwhelming victory we have won,” Roosevelt confessed. “I had no conception that such a thing was possible.”
Everyone in the administration, Taft told his brother Charley, “has had a smile that won’t come off since the election.” William Taft could well take particular satisfaction in his own vital contribution to the victorious campaign. Personal letters and newspaper articles recorded his tireless efforts and powerful speeches in defense of administration policy. “The document that gave the most force to the Roosevelt campaign,” journalist Murat Halstead told Taft, “was your utterance on the Philippines on the stump—that had the air and the dignity and the conclusiveness of a decision handed down by the Supreme Court.” Howard Hollister proudly noted that his old friend had generated “thousands of votes” by standing “fearlessly” on the issues, making “a contribution much greater probably than you would be willing to admit.” Characteristically, Taft refused to take credit, replying to all who congratulated him that “the victory is so overwhelming that I cannot think that anything that was done in the way of speaking had any particular effect.” Above all, he insisted, the success was “a tribute to the personal popularity of the President.”
Notwithstanding the general elation surrounding the historic election, Taft issued a public warning to the Republican Party: “It is no unheard of thing to have a majority as large and sweeping as this followed by a defeat equally emphatic at the next Presidential election.” Without a candidate as compelling and charismatic as Roosevelt, it was very possible that the country would have voted Democratic; the Republican Party must not “diminish in any way the care with which the public interests must be protected.” His timely admonition met with widespread approval.“Unless the Republican party is wise and liberal toward all legitimate and right demands of the people in the social and economic controversies which are going on,” one respondent agreed, “we must expect sweeping radical victories during the next few years.”
For those who hoped to see a more progressive Republican Party, Roosevelt’s surprise decision to forgo a third term seemed “pregnant with promise” of a vigorous future for reform. Now that he was “absolutely independent of all party bosses and party machines,” the Minneapolis Journal predicted, “Theodore Roosevelt is likely to make the administration of 1905–9 one of the two or three most resplendent and beneficial in the history of the republic.” The St. Paul Globe endorsed this sanguine assessment, proclaiming that if Roosevelt stayed true “to the best that is in him,” he could “become one of the great presidents in our history.” Even his harshest critics had “nothing but praise” for Roosevelt’s declaration. It was “to his everlasting honor,” the New York Sun proclaimed, that “in the hour of his triumph,” the president chose to make his second term his last.
Though he reveled in the acclaim that accompanied his declaration, Theodore Roosevelt would come to bitterly regret his action, later reportedly telling a friend that if he could rescind the pledge, he would willingly cut off his hand at the wrist.