“I have left Taft sitting on the lid,” Roosevelt remarked before departing on a western tour, prompting this April 5, 1905, cartoon in the Washington Times.
AFTER WEEKS OF CLOUDY SKIES and heavy snow, the morning of March 4, 1905, broke “blue, flecked with lazily floating white clouds”—the day Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated president in his own right. Washingtonians happily remarked that once again “Roosevelt luck” had brought “Roosevelt weather.” For the tens of thousands lining the streets to watch the president’s carriage pass from the White House to the Capitol, “the morning sun gave brilliancy and luster to the fluttering mass of flags and banners.”
Roosevelt appeared “supremely happy,” waving and bowing as a record-breaking crowd hailed him with “the roar of the ocean upon a rockbound coast.” The galleries were filled inside the Senate chamber, where Charles Fairbanks prepared to take the vice-presidential oath. Raucous cheers broke out when Roosevelt arrived. Stepping onto the floor, he at once scanned the gallery for Edith and the children; spotting them, he did not wave “furtively, nor half-heartedly, nor as if he were afraid someone might see this evidence of his domestic affection but with demonstration frank and full.” His demeanor proclaimed simply: “This, my dear wife and children, is the proudest moment of our lives.”
Hundreds of spectators perched in trees, crowded on rooftops, and lined the wings of the Capitol building as the president stood before the vast multitude and delivered “a friendly little homily on the duties of the nation and citizen,” betraying nothing of the “truculent note” that often marked his speeches. “Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us,” he told the crowd. “We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth. . . . Our relations with the other powers of the world are important, but still more important are our relations among ourselves.” The Industrial Revolution, Roosevelt maintained, had generated both “marvelous material well-being” and the “care and anxiety inseparable from the accumulation of great wealth”—creating a host of problems that government had the responsibility to address. He spoke with characteristic “earnestness,” one reporter wrote, stressing every word with such force that it seemed “as if he would like to get hold of each individual person in his audience and pound home the truths which he believes he is uttering, till the wretched man should be forced to admit the error of his ways and agree with the speaker.”
Editorialists predicted “tempestuous doings” now that Roosevelt was president in his own right rather than by the happenstance of assassination. Backed by a massive popular mandate, he would no longer be held in check by the conservative bloc in Congress. “The Republican party has turned the corner and is now on a new road,” William Allen White proclaimed. “It is hard to believe that the party that eight years ago was advocating the policy of ‘hands off’ is now ready to lay hands on capital, and such rough hands, too, when capital goes wrong. ‘The old order changeth, yielding place to the new.’ ”
TURBULENT EVENTS WOULD INDEED FOLLOW, but first the newly elected president embarked on a two-month vacation trip through the Southwest and the Rocky Mountain region. A Rough Riders reunion in Texas began the hiatus, followed by a five-day wolf-hunting expedition in Oklahoma and a three-week bear hunt in Colorado. “Everybody rejoices that he is to have some time for recuperation,” an Ohio newspaper editorialized. “Only the bears and the mountain lions have occasion for regret.” On the morning of April 4, cheered by well-wishers at the Pennsylvania Railroad Station, Roosevelt stepped onto a “handsomely fitted” train consisting of a private car, a Pullman sleeper, and a buffet car. He looked, one reporter noted, “like a small boy let out of school,” rejoicing that he would soon enter wild country beyond the reach of official duties and office seekers.
Along the route, Roosevelt followed his customary procedure, emerging onto the platform at every stop to shake hands and deliver brief remarks. It was “much more pleasant than ordinarily,” he told his son Kermit, because the presidential race was over and he was finally “free from the everlasting suspicion” a candidate invariably arouses. Even in the traditionally Democratic strongholds of Louisville, Austin, and Dallas, flags waved, cannons thundered, and tens of thousands greeted him with “wild enthusiasm.”
Clearly, these hunting expeditions not only afforded Roosevelt a most “genuine pleasure” but provided the opportunity for revitalization. In Oklahoma, he was “in the saddle eight or nine hours every day” helping to track and kill eleven wolves: “It was tremendous galloping over cut banks, prairie dog towns, flats, creek bottoms, everything,” he exulted. “One run was nine miles long and I was the only man in at the finish except the professional wolf hunter.” In Colorado, he was “up at daybreak” and refused to stop until the sun set, keeping his “little band of huntsmen” in constant motion. As always, Roosevelt found the intense physical trial invigorating; while his face was “roughened by wind and sun and snow,” he felt healthier than he had for months.
Reporters questioned how any pressing matters arising in his absence would be handled. “Oh, things will be all right,” he emphatically responded. “I have left Taft sitting on the lid.” The vivid phrase instantly inspired cartoons and commentary. One widely reprinted caricature depicted Taft wielding a big stick while seated on the lid of a boiling cauldron. Even his impressive bulk appears scarcely able to stem the “grave and exacting problems of the highest interest”—Panama, Santo Domingo, Venezuela, and Morocco—threatening to burst forth. In another cartoon, an outsized Taft spans three chairs. He is firmly planted on the widest, the “Chair of the President,” but his legs extend on either side, occupying both the “Chair of the Sec’y of State” and the “Chair of the Sec’y of War.”
In the absence of both President Roosevelt and Secretary of State John Hay, who was on a long cruise attempting to recover his health, official Washington considered Taft “acting President” and “the real head of all executive departments.” Little mention was made in the press of the sitting vice president, Charles A. Fairbanks, as the press focused all attention on Taft. Reporters noted “the unusual sight” of “foreign diplomats going to the War Department instead of to the State Department to conduct business.” Such a proliferation of responsibilities might well have intimidated a weaker man, an Ohio paper commented, but “William Howard Taft is a very large man, mentally and physically.”
Panama soon emerged as the most pressing of the trouble spots threatening to boil over. Taft had been 8,000 miles away in November 1903 when Roosevelt sent U.S. ships to support a Panamanian uprising against Colombia. Recognition was swiftly granted to the newly formed Republic of Panama, and a treaty was negotiated that guaranteed Panamanian independence. In return, the United States was allowed to purchase land to build a canal. “I took the Canal Zone,” Roosevelt later boasted.
When word first arrived at the McClure’s office “that Roosevelt had snitched Panama,” Viola Roseboro remembered, “there were gasps,” accompanied by “amusement and excitement.” Ida Tarbell, however, “was very grave.” Tarbell considered the president’s seizure of the Canal Zone “a dishonorable outrage,” according to Roseboro. Ida “got a line on Teddy that she never lost sight of.” While she considered him “a delight and a wonderful person and of great value to the country,” Tarbell could not overlook the despotic side of Roosevelt’s leadership. “You cannot conceive of Lincoln’s trifling with his conscience,” she had admonished, “even for the sake of an international canal.”
Taft had also been absent during the fierce senatorial debate surrounding the treaty that granted the United States permanent rights to a ten-mile strip in exchange for $10 million and a significant annual payment. Assuming responsibility for overseeing the Panama Commission shortly after his return, Taft proved a quick study. “He had an enormous capacity for mastering official detail,” one historian observed, “content that the overall direction came from his superior.” Under Taft’s command, the commission was authorized to establish official guidelines for the Canal Zone; make all engineering, construction, and sanitary contracts; acquire private lands; tabulate all monies spent; and institute a civil service system. This complex supervisory job was “really enough to occupy the whole time of any average executive,” Taft’s biographer maintains, yet it was just one among the many tasks that fell to Secretary Taft during these “crowded years.”
As construction of the Canal got under way in the fall of 1904, a wave of popular discontent swept through Panama. Panamanians began to suspect that the United States intended to establish “an independent colony” within their country, compromising their own sovereignty and economic well-being. A small band of soldiers threatened to seize power. Endeavoring to defuse tensions, Roosevelt dispatched Taft to the isthmus.
Conscious of the need to project goodwill and friendship, Taft asked Nellie to accompany him. Their arrival in Colón, Nellie recalled, felt like coming home. “The whole atmosphere and surroundings, the people, the language they spoke, the houses and streets, the rank earth odours and the very feel of the air reminded me so strongly of the Philippines as to give me immediately a delightful sense of friendly familiarity with everything and everybody,” she later wrote. They remained in Panama for two weeks. During the day, Taft held private conferences with Panamanian officials; in the evenings, he and Nellie socialized at receptions, dinners, and balls. As in the Philippines, Taft charmed the local citizens with his surprising skill on the dance floor. Finally, an agreement was forged that encompassed a range of political and economic issues. Panamanian citizens greeted the published text with delight. As small boys hawking newspapers shouted “Extras” from every street corner, Nellie recalled, “excited groups stood about here and there wreathed in smiles and talking with great animation. Everybody seemed wholly satisfied and wherever we went we were met with cheers and cries of ‘Viva!’ ”
A number of problems regarding the construction of the Canal required attention before Roosevelt returned from his hunting trip. A serious dispute had arisen between John Wallace, the chief engineer, and William Gorgas, the chief sanitary officer. Wallace remained highly skeptical of his colleague’s work to contain the spread of mosquitoes on the theory that the insect transmitted yellow fever. Castigating Gorgas’s ideas as merely “experimental,” Wallace failed to carry out safety protocols that recommended mosquito-proof screens in all government offices. When a virulent outbreak of yellow fever sent a majority of American workers retreating back to the States, Gorgas demanded greater independent authority from both Wallace and the commission. “Here again I must trust your judgment,” Roosevelt wrote to Taft from Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Taft wisely threw his support to Gorgas and eventually called for Wallace to resign.
With equal insight and acumen, Taft resolved conflicts in Santo Domingo that threatened U.S. interests in Morocco and Venezuela. “You are handling everything just right,” Roosevelt praised him on April 8. Two weeks later, Roosevelt again assured Taft he was “keeping the lid on in great shape!” Each letter expressed unconditional confidence and support: “You are on the ground,” he reiterated, “you see the needs of the situation, and I shall back up whatever you do.” Invariably, Roosevelt’s letters reflect profound respect and gratitude for his friend’s service. “I wish you knew Taft, whom I have had acting as Secretary of State as well as Secretary of War in Hay’s absence,” he told George Trevelyan. “To strength and courage, clear insight, and practical common sense, he adds a very noble and disinterested character. I know you would like him. He helps me in every way more than I can say.” And to John Hay, Roosevelt confided: “Taft, by the way, is doing excellently, as I knew he would, and is the greatest comfort to me.”
ROOSEVELT FINALLY RETURNED TO WASHINGTON on May 12; six weeks later, Taft left for a journey of his own—a three-month cruise to the Philippines and the Far East. Recalling his pledge that the Filipino people would always remain first in his heart, Taft had been troubled by reports from Dr. Pardo de Tavera, one of the three Filipino members of the Philippine Commission. When Taft had departed two years earlier, Tavera wrote, “everything was in good order and every Filipino was confident in the future,” but the commission had since lost its “Pole star”—the policy of working together with the Filipino people to shape their destiny. Under Luke Wright, Taft’s successor, “discontent [was] general, resentment profound and well-founded.” Tavera implored Taft to return to the islands for a visit. The Filipino people regarded the former governor general as “the only man who can and will reestablish justice and liberty here.”
Convinced that he must return to assess the situation in person, Taft assembled a party of eighty people to accompany him, including seven senators, twenty-three congressman, and a dozen journalists. His guest list was inclusive and bipartisan, embracing Democrats and Republicans, pro–tariff reduction men and “standpatters,” strong supporters of the administration’s policy and fierce opponents alike. He hoped that firsthand experience of the islands’ rich potential and personal encounters with the Filipino people would beget a more supportive attitude toward legislation to reduce tariffs, build railroads, and speed agricultural development. “I doubt if so formidable a Congressional representation ever went so far,” he proudly noted.
Not long after Taft’s party embarked for Southeast Asia, Secretary of State John Hay lost his long battle with illness. “Just heard sad news,” Taft cabled Roosevelt, wondering if he should postpone his journey and return to Washington. “If it were not that I feel so keenly the great importance of having you in the Philippines,” Roosevelt replied, “I should have been tempted to keep you over here, for I shall miss you greatly.” He informed Taft that he would likely ask Elihu Root to take Hay’s place. Although he confided to Lodge that he “hesitated a little between Root and Taft,” noting that Taft was “very close” to him, the prospect of having both men by his side left “no room for doubt.” Taft dispelled any qualms Roosevelt might have felt, urging the president to appoint Root to the premier post. “My dear fellow,” Roosevelt replied, “I could say nothing higher of you than that it was just exactly characteristic of you, I do not believe that you will ever quite understand what strength and comfort and help you are to me.”
Under the sway of Taft’s amicable leadership, everyone who had joined the expedition got along surprisingly well. “I do not think that I have ever known any one with the equanimity, amiability, and kindliness of Mr. Taft,” Alice Roosevelt reported. “During all that summer, I never once saw him really cross or upset. He was always beaming, genial, and friendly, through all his official duties, and the task of keeping harmony among his varied and somewhat temperamental army of trippers.” In the evenings, guests enjoyed formal dances, sleight-of-hand performances, mock trials, and pillow fights. “The party has been a very jolly one,” Taft related to Roosevelt, “and Democrats and Republicans have joined alike in praising the fine weather and really delightful voyage.”
Friends and family had warned Taft that dealing with Alice—or “Princess Alice,” as she had been dubbed by the press—would prove challenging; despite such admonitions, he found her unspoiled and delightfully forthright. “She is quite amenable to suggestion and I have seen nothing about the girl to indicate conceit or a swelled head,” he told Nellie, who had elected to spend “a quiet summer in England” with the children following their hectic year. At times, she could be “oblivious to the comforts of other people,” he explained, but considering “what she has gone through and who she is,” the young woman managed to make herself extremely popular with the entire party. Nevertheless, he remained troubled by Alice’s flamboyant flirtation with Nicholas Longworth, a worldly thirty-five-year-old congressman from Cincinnati with a reputation for numerous dalliances.
Taft was aware that Alice and Nick had been seeing one another before the cruise. He had heard stories about the “fast set” to which they belonged. “She seems to be so much taken up with Nick,” he reported to Nellie, that she “pays little attention to anybody else.” They took meals together, sat side by side on deck, and partnered on the dance floor, where Alice reportedly “looked almost unreal in her clinging gown, which matched the sea. As she glided through the dance, her long, spangled scarf wound itself around her, serpent like.” Noting that the young couple appeared to revel in conversations “usually confined to husband and wife,” Taft finally confronted Alice. “I think I ought to know if you are engaged to Nick,” he suggested in a gently paternal manner. Alice cryptically replied: “More or less, Mr. Secretary, more or less.”
The arrival of the Taft party in Manila on August 4 inspired widespread celebration. Guns boomed and thousands filled the streets as the official delegation progressed to the Malacañan Palace for the welcoming ceremony. From the outset, Taft was determined to remedy the growing animosity between the Filipino people and the current insular government. The policy of the Roosevelt administration, he reiterated at every stop, was “the Philippines for the Filipinos. If the American officials were not in sympathy with this policy,” he assured the islanders, “they would be recalled.” While he continued to believe the Filipinos needed to prepare for independence, Taft officially announced that the long-anticipated popular assembly would be established in April 1907. The Filipino people, the New York Tribune reported, greeted this definitive proclamation with great enthusiasm.
Informed that the colonial administration considered Filipino families not “of sufficient rank to entertain Senators and Congressmen,” Taft decided that he and Alice would move immediately from the palace to the home of a Filipino member of the commission, Benito Legarda. “I knew no way, but the direct way,” he explained, “to show that we had no sympathy with the apparent desire to exclude Filipino hosts from those who should entertain the party.” At a “very handsome ball” hosted by the Legardas, Taft and Alice delighted the Filipinos by joining in the native rigadon square dance. Taft had taken care to practice the complex steps with Alice and several other young ladies during the long ocean voyage. A number of similar receptions in the homes of local citizens went “a long way in cementing friendships.”
Lodging with the Legardas also allowed Taft to meet with scores of disaffected Filipinos who would never have visited him at the palace with Governor General Wright present. “All day long,” one observer recorded, “the great hall was occupied, the men sitting by the open windows disposing of one long cigar after another.” Hearing their grievances, Taft reluctantly concluded that the majority of the commission—including the governor general—were “utterly lacking in the proper spirit” toward the native population. “They seem to think it does not make much difference whether they have the support of the Filipinos or not,” he lamented. “To me it makes every difference in the success of the government.” Indeed, he wrote to Nellie, many Filipinos insisted that if only the Tafts returned to Manila, they would soon “restore the old condition of things.” The current situation was dispiriting, for it necessitated the removal of the governor general and possibly two other commission members, whom he considered friends.
Taft and his entourage “made the round” of the archipelago, traveling by small boats, bamboo rafts, carriages, and on horseback. They surveyed agricultural conditions where sugar, hemp, and rice were grown, meeting with tradesmen, government officials, educators, manufacturers, and farmers. Correspondents who accompanied the party noted “a happy sea change” in the attitudes of several protectionist congressmen, particularly Sereno Payne, chairman of the House and Ways Committee, and General Charles Grosvenor of Ohio. “It is already apparent,” the Tribuneeditorialized, “that Sec. Taft’s plan of enlarging the political and mental horizons of leading men of both parties as respects Philippine questions is working out admirably.” Several legislators personally expressed their amazement and gratitude to Taft. “It was a great trip and cannot be otherwise than helpful to the Government,” one member told him. “I never realized until this journey the magnitude of the Philippine problem, nor did I realize your devotion to the cause. I have heard a great many speeches made in my time, but never heard a series of better ones than were made by you while touring the islands. It is a miracle that so large a party was so harmonious, and the credit is due to your example.”
Although Taft’s primary mission was to the Philippines, the expedition also made stops in China and Japan, where Taft secretly met with Japan’s prime minister, Taro Katsura. Undisclosed for the next twenty years, this meeting would have lasting consequences for the region. Long-standing hostilities between Russia and Japan had flared into war over competing territorial interests in Korea and China. Roosevelt had closely followed the evolution of this conflict, hoping he might mediate between the two warring powers. From the start, he had sympathized with Japan’s desire to oversee affairs in Korea, to keep a strong hold on Port Arthur, and to return Manchuria to China. Still, he recognized that mounting Japanese victories would expand the imperial government’s demands, upsetting the balance of power in the Far East. He was delighted, therefore, when Taft contacted him in late April to affirm that the Japanese were interested in having the U.S. president facilitate peace talks. In fact, Roosevelt was so enthusiastic that he curtailed his hunting expedition by a week to commence dialogue with the Japanese and Russian ministers.
Concealing the fact that the Japanese had initiated the process, Roosevelt sent identical letters to both sides. He requested that they “open direct negotiations for peace,” offering his services “in arranging preliminaries as to time and place of meeting.” When both the belligerents agreed, Roosevelt received accolades: “It is recognized all the world over as another triumph of Roosevelt the man,” the New York Tribune editorialized. “It was America alone that assumed the responsibility. It is to America alone that the world will give the credit.”
As preparations for a peace conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, began, Taft sailed into Yokohama, where his party received “a demonstrative welcome.” Fireworks heralded the arrival of the ship, and thousands of citizens lined gaily decorated streets. From the harbor city, Taft journeyed to Tokyo for his confidential talk with Count Katsura. Taft assured Katsura that while he did not officially speak for the president, he was certain of Roosevelt’s position. Katsura made it clear that “Korea being the direct cause of our war with Russia,” it was “of absolute importance” that after the war, Japan should control Korea “to the extent of requiring that Korea enter into no foreign treaties without the consent of Japan.” In return, Taft sought assurance that Japan did “not harbor any aggressive designs whatever on the Philippines.”
Having reached agreement on both points, Taft informed Katsura that without the U.S. Senate’s consent, the president could not enter into a formal alliance or even “a confidential informal agreement.” Nevertheless, he expressed certainty that the two countries were in such fundamental accord on the issues discussed that the conversation could be treated “as if” a treaty had been signed. Taft promptly telegraphed a memo of the entire exchange to the president. “If I have spoken too freely or inaccurately or unwittingly,” he concluded, “I know you can or will correct it.” Roosevelt immediately dismissed his concerns, replying, “Your conversation with Count Katsura absolutely correct in every respect. Wish you would state to Katsura that I confirm every word you have said.”
On August 5, accompanied by the sound of booming guns, the peace envoys from Russia and Japan met with the president aboard the presidential yacht Mayflower, anchored in Oyster Bay. After a buffet lunch served with cold white wine, the envoys proceeded to the U.S. Naval Base at Portsmouth. In the days that followed, agreements on Korea, Port Arthur, and Manchuria were reached with relative ease. Japan’s insistence on some form of compensation from Russia threatened to torpedo the conference. The Russian envoys took the position that Russia had neither been conquered nor could be considered “prostrate in the enemy’s hands.” Therefore, they argued, Japan had no right to extract an “indemnity.” Increasingly frustrated with mediating the dispute, Roosevelt confided to Kermit, “I am having my hair turned gray by dealing with the Russian and Japanese negotiators.” In the end, the president persuaded the Japanese that prolonging the war simply to secure money would lose international support. A peace treaty was finally signed on September 5, 1905, earning Roosevelt praise at home and abroad, as well as the Nobel Peace Prize.
DESPITE SUCH INTERNATIONAL TRIUMPHS, PRESSING and complex domestic issues threatened the solidarity of the Republican Party. Once again, Taft had barely returned when he was recruited to suture the wound. Taft’s three-month odyssey ended at 3:27 p.m. on October 2, 1905, when he stepped onto the platform at Union Station, appearing “hearty and vigorous” as he greeted colleagues with a big smile and a warm handshake. That evening, he dined with the president and first lady, along with Root, Garfield, and a few family friends. “We had a most interesting dinner,” Garfield told his wife. “Mr. Taft is full of interesting accounts of the Orient.”
Taft had little time to reacquaint himself with affairs in his department before he was called upon to deal with a troubling situation in Ohio. Factional disputes there threatened the reelection of Republican governor Myron Herrick. Earlier that summer, Lincoln Steffens had published his electrifying report contrasting Democrat Tom Johnson’s principled governance of Cleveland with the venal mismanagement of Cincinnati’s Republican boss Tom Cox. The piece revealed how Cox had become a millionaire twice over through corrupt alliances with traction companies, banks, and railroads. “The city is all one great graft,” Steffens charged. “The reign of Cox is a reign of fear.”
The exposé had created a sensation in Ohio. Although Cox claimed it was “full of falsehoods,” the tale sparked public outrage and engendered bitter conflict within the Republican Party. Those beholden to the old machines dominated by corporations and political bosses inevitably opposed the progressive drive toward popular rule and governmental regulation. The growing split within the Republicans opened the door to Democrats, who successfully likened Governor Herrick’s management of the state to Cox’s grip on the city. In fact, they intimated that the governor had become “subservient” to Cox and his crowd, a participant in the systemic graft. “The stampede from Herrick is growing like a wild fire,” one Ohio paper reported, “and so consuming is the anti-Cox, anti-bossism flame, that the disaffected thousands say they will vote the democratic ticket from top to bottom this year.”
Believing that Ohio’s gubernatorial race could influence the fortunes of the entire Republican Party, Roosevelt dispatched Taft to deliver a speech on Herrick’s behalf. When Steffens learned of this step, he wrote an impassioned letter to the president, imploring him not to help the governor. “Governor Herrick is not a bad man,” conceded Steffens, “he is simply weak. He is one of those men who can do dishonest things honestly.” State politics could not be separated from Cincinnati’s municipal situation, he insisted, arguing that the growing effort to vanquish Cox—whose candidates were on local ballots that accompanied the gubernatorial election—would be thwarted by the president’s push to keep Republicans “in line” behind Herrick.
Caught in this hazardous political knot, Taft devised what newspapers called “a most adroit and ingenuous” speech. Voicing support for Herrick, whom he believed to be a decent man, he leveled a fierce barrage of criticism at the Cox regime. Public condemnation of Cox was “not pleasant” for Taft, particularly given that his brother Charley owned and edited the Cincinnati-Times, “the official organ” of the Cox regime. “Any pain you feel at the expressed difference of opinion between us finds a corresponding deep regret in my heart,” Taft told Charley on the eve of his speech, “for I love you Charley as I love no one except my wife and children.” Nevertheless, he felt bound to declare his opposition to Cox and his corrupt lieutenants.
Delivered before an overflowing audience in Akron, Ohio, the speech was termed “the most severe rebuke” ever suffered by the powerful boss. Accustomed to criticism leveled by his Democratic opponents and the progressive press, Cox now faced censure “from so prominent a Republican, a member of the president’s cabinet.” In straightforward language, Taft likened “Cox and Coxism” to “a curse” upon the people of Hamilton County, “a local despotism” designed for the financial benefit of the boss, his cronies, and the big corporations. He described the political machine’s “distressing effect” on aspiring young Republicans, who were forced to submit “to the tyranny of the boss” or abandon public service altogether. If he were to vote in the upcoming race, Taft acknowledged, he would “vote against the municipal ticket nominated by the Republican organization.”
Despite his condemnation, Taft “made clear the difference between Herrick—the clean-living, trusted and honored businessman and efficient executive of the State—and the foul boss of Cincinnati.” While he refused to endorse the Republican ticket in Hamilton County, Taft declared that he would happily vote for Governor Herrick and hoped others would do the same. If he believed his visit to Ohio would perpetuate the Cox machine, Taft assured his listeners, he would never have come. But it would be unfair to abandon “a governor who has done well by his State and his party.”
Although Taft had sought to rally support for Herrick, newspapers focused on his “scathing denunciation” of Cox, which fell upon the city and state “like the explosion of a bomb.” Excerpts from the speech were carried in more than six hundred papers. Dozens of editorials and letters commended Taft for his honesty and courage. “We had about come to the conclusion that there wasn’t a man in Ohio who dared call his soul his own without the permission of George Cox,” one Ohio citizen wrote. “You are the only man who can lead this city out of the slough of despond,” another remarked. “You have done more good for your own town by that speech than you have any idea of,” Taft’s close friend Howard Hollister wrote. “The weakness and cowardice of a great many of our principal men have been a chief trouble here, and now they are encouraged to come out and talk and act like men. I hear it everywhere.”
The elections that fall brought a crushing defeat for the Cox machine. But Taft’s hope that voters would split their tickets, voting Democratic in the local election and Republican in the gubernatorial race, proved vain: John Pattison, the Democratic candidate for the governorship, defeated Myron Herrick by a wide margin. “Do not concern yourself about the stories that are afloat that you caused my defeat,” Herrick graciously told Taft. “I know my friends and know you to be one whom I love and respect.”
Buoyed by the demise of the Cox machine, young Republicans in Cincinnati formed a new Republican Club with a progressive agenda. Led by Howard Hollister, they called on members to stand unequivocally against bossism and machine politics and advocate a platform that included national regulation of railroads and tariff revision. At Hollister’s request, both Taft and Roosevelt accepted honorary memberships in the “Roosevelt Republican Club.” Only such clear dissociation from corrupt and self-serving elements of the Republican Party, Hollister argued, could“disabuse the public mind of the growing feeling of domination of the party by the corporations and money making commercial politicians.”
AS THEODORE ROOSEVELT HAD SURMISED, the struggle against corruption and consolidation in Ohio reflected a burgeoning movement across the country. And the president was acutely aware of the difficult balance he would have to strike in order to realign his party without compromising the nation’s prosperity. In the winter of 1905, a dramatic “Oil War” in the state of Kansas illuminated this intensifying conflict, captivating the interest of the entire country. “Kansas is in the clutches of the Standard Oil Company,” the Hutchinson News reported, “and is howling for relief.”
A year earlier, spectacular deposits that surpassed the total volume of the Pennsylvania oil fields had been discovered in Kansas and the Indian Territory in Oklahoma. “On the instant,” Ida Tarbell recalled, “Kansas went oil-mad, practically every farmer in the state dreamed of flowing wells.” The Standard Oil Company immediately began furnishing tanks, building refineries, and constructing pipelines. Independent producers were placated with the promise that they would receive market price for their oil. Only when Standard had a total lock on refining and transportation, William Allen White explained, did the company “put on the screws.” A barrel of oil that had yielded a dollar and eighteen cents in 1904 had dropped to thirty-seven cents a year later. With control of both in-state refineries and all the pipelines, Standard Oil had effectively become “the only transporter and buyer” of the region’s crude oil, with power to set whatever price it chose.
Popular anger fueled the successful gubernatorial campaign of Kansas Republican Edward Hoch, who challenged the Republican machine with a platform calling for construction of “a first-class” state refinery that would force Standard “to be reasonable.” In his inaugural address, Hoch proposed a series of additional measures to regulate the oil trade, including one to make pipelines common carriers, rendering them subject to the same state supervision as railroads. When the upper house passed the bill for the state refinery, Standard retaliated by boycotting Kansas oil entirely, leaving the producers “without a market” and throwing “a large number of men out of work.” Standard’s despotic tactics backfired when public recognition that the giant company “was punishing Kansas” generated such outrage that the refinery bill sailed through the lower chamber. Borne on a wave of defiance, the legislation even garnered support from conservatives, who felt the measure smacked of socialism. “Scare Kansas! Well, we’ll see about that!”
At the White House, telegrams poured in, urging the president to protect the state “from oppression of the Standard Oil trust.” Congressman Philip Campbell of southeast Kansas introduced a resolution requesting an investigation into “the unusually large margin” between the price of Kansas crude oil and the market price of refined products. It was “hardly a secret,” one Kansas newspaper suggested, that the situation in Kansas presented President Roosevelt with the opening he was seeking to move against “the mother of all trusts.” Indeed, some observers speculated that the resolution was instigated by the administration.
After discussing the situation with the Kansas representative, Roosevelt in February 1905 announced that he had directed Bureau of Corporations director James Garfield to undertake “a rigid and comprehensive review” of Standard Oil’s methods of operation, “especially in the Kansas field.” Garfield planned to travel to Kansas the following month to oversee a team of fifty special agents, ensuring a thorough investigation of the trust’s practices. The president clearly understood, Campbell maintained, that this was the “most important investigation of the kind which has been undertaken.” Although passage of the House resolution brought Standard’s boycott in Kansas to an end, the fundamental problem of monopoly lingered.
Two days after the president’s announcement, Ida Tarbell wrote to John Phillips: “What would you think of an article on Kansas & the Standard Oil Company?” Having spent nearly four years studying Standard Oil, Tarbell remained vitally interested in the company’s activities. Her twenty-four-part magazine series had been republished as a two-volume book the previous November to great acclaim. One critic predicted it would “rank as one of the most complete and authoritative contributions to economic history written in the last quarter century.” Miss Tarbell’s study, another wrote, “is to the present time the most remarkable book of its kind ever written in this country.” The oil war in Kansas promised to furnish a new and vital postscript.
When she wrote her proposal, Tarbell had returned home to Titusville to be with her father, who was suffering from stomach cancer. His death on March 1 had suddenly “darkened” her world, for he had “built himself into every crook and cranny” of her childhood home—indeed, of the entire town. Her family at the magazine did their best to console her. “I have thought a great deal of you in your sorrow,” S. S. McClure wrote from Switzerland when the news reached him. “There are times when your face expresses a singular pathos & sense of suffering & I know how sad & heartbroken you have been.” He hoped she found some solace in the fact that her father had seen “with his own eyes” how she had used her substantial gifts to dignify the Tarbell name.
Not long after the funeral, Ida left for Kansas, exhibiting what McClure termed her “pathetic & characteristic” impulse relentlessly to immerse herself in work. Though she set out “with a heavy heart,” the monthlong journey proved to be “as exciting” as any she had undertaken. Independent oilmen hailed her arrival as the coming of “a prophet,” certain that she would reveal Standard’s “unfair and illegal methods” in Kansas to “all the world.” Local journalists trailed her throughout the state, taking her picture and printing her remarks. Embarrassed by her celebrity, she told Albert Boyden she hoped “to Heaven . . . all the foolishness” published about her would not be taken seriously in the office. “Believe nothing,” she entreated them, “until I have a hearing!”
Straightaway, Tarbell called on the governor. Initially skeptical about his plan for a state refinery, she came away convinced that the project would be “a good thing,” and serve “as a measuring stick” for the public to determine the real costs of refining. In the long run, however, Standard’s control over oil transport had to be addressed. “Build your own pipe line,” she urged the oil producers; “build it to the seas.” In addition, she recommended that they pressure Congress to pass a law “making all pipelines common carriers,” subject to regulations that would ensure fair play.
Soon afterward, Tarbell joined Governor Hoch and Congressman Campbell at “the biggest mass meeting of oil producers ever known.” Diffident when asked to speak before 3,000 people, she composed a letter to be delivered at the convention. She challenged Kansas “to play the oil game as well as the Standard Company plays it,” but “with due regards for the rights of men, something the Standard has never done.”
Next, Tarbell embarked on a ten-day field trip through the countryside to gauge for herself the extent of the new oil fields. Traveling by a two-horse open carriage over primitive roads, she encountered the worst dust storm in many years. Her driver, bellowing to be heard over the rising wind, roared: “Jehoshaphat! Wrap your head up.” Even after the storm passed, Ida was unable to bathe for ten days because dust had seeped into the water supply, producing “a muddy liquid quite impossible to drink and hopeless for cleansing.” Undeterred, she continued her mission. “The wonder is that discomfort doesn’t count out here,” she explained to John Phillips. All hardships were eclipsed by the contagious excitement of the farmers, by the promise that every little town would become “a world’s center,” every well “a gusher.” One weekend, Tarbell crossed the Oklahoma border to see the oil fields in the Indian Territory. Everywhere she went, crowds gathered, bands serenaded her, and people gave her flowers and candy. In the “new town of Tulsa,” she was “paraded up and down” the main thoroughfare. At the request of a local citizen in Muskogee, she “submitted to five sittings for her picture.” From early morning until midnight, she was called upon to make little speeches.
Needful of respite, Tarbell spent a leisurely weekend in Emporia with William and Mary White. She had taken the “city-shy” boy “by the hand” when he first ventured into New York and had always appreciated “his affection and loyalty for his state.” She was delighted now to see his home, his place of work, and his beloved town. In Emporia, Tarbell agreed to address a group of students at a chapel. “The new thing which Kansas has put in the fight against the evils of Standard monopoly,” she told them, “is an ethical question. Here people say they oppose Standard’s methods because they are wrong.” Kansas was not merely motivated by the monopoly’s impact on business—“Standard had never met with this spirit in any of its previous fights.” After her departure, White wrote an editorial echoing her conviction that the problem with Standard Oil was “as much a moral issue as it is a financial one.” The machinations Standard employed—bribing legislatures, tampering with juries, purchasing judges—constituted “the real danger to the country.” Yet, he concluded, “because it is a corporation and has neither soul nor body,” Standard had largely managed “to escape the vengeance which the law . . . would surely have visited upon natural persons guilty of similar practices.”
As Tarbell passed through Kansas City on her way to New York, she stopped for a brief visit to express her gratitude and admiration for the state’s spirit. She found that spirit so compelling that she extended her visit. “I stayed and stayed, and even now I am reluctant to return to the east,” she later explained, describing how the nature of this fight set it apart: “The Kansans are not fighting now for the money they can make. They are not fighting because their oil doesn’t market well. They’re fighting because a monopoly, a trust, has sought to come into their state and dictate to them where their products shall go and what shall be paid for their products. It’s the fight for justice and right.”
In a two-part article, Tarbell argued that “if one wants a neat demonstration, complete to the last detail, that the Standard Oil Company is to-day, as always, ‘a conspiracy in restraint of trade,’ he should go to Kansas”; there, the company continued to perpetuate “exactly what it did” three decades earlier in Pennsylvania—crushing independents, fixing prices, operating pipelines as private fiefdoms, and colluding with railroads. Her revelations produced a growing demand for official action. If her charges proved accurate, the Wall Street Journal commented, “we take it that Commissioner Garfield will be honest enough to report the fact, and if the fact is reported, we believe that the administration is courageous enough to prosecute even the Standard Oil Company.”
Early on, Garfield had decided to take on the daunting task of expanding the scope of his investigation beyond Kansas, to encompass Standard’s methods of operation nationwide. He traveled to “nearly all of the great fields” and talked with hundreds of producers, refiners, and railroadmen. Special agents were dispatched throughout the United States and even to Europe. Garfield’s wife, Helen, was anxious about the investigation. “Do read Ida Tarbell’s McClure article,” she urged her husband. “It is very cleverly written—I feel that the man and those in the ring will lie to you just as she says they have lied all along.” She needn’t have worried; not only had Garfield read the piece, he had borrowed Tarbell’s collection of relevant sources and documentary evidence. “I shall try to find the truth,” he reassured his wife.
Garfield’s report was published in two parts. The first concluded that Standard Oil had continued to receive the same “unjust and illegal” preferences from the railroads outlined in Tarbell’s exhaustive series and that these rebates, bribes, and kickbacks had facilitated development of the trust’s extensive pipeline system. The second outlined the monopolistic position of Standard Oil in the petroleum industry. Roosevelt transmitted the first report to the Congress with a special message: “All the power of the government will be directed toward prosecuting the Rockefeller trust.” Commentators agreed that the report, endorsed by the president, constituted “the most severe arraignment of a corporation” ever issued from such “a high official source.”
“Garfield’s Report Causes Sensation,” blasted the Laredo (Texas) Times. “Makes Almost as Good Reading as Ida Tarbell’s Magazine Articles.” Indeed, public commentary invariably referenced Tarbell’s earlier work. “All that Ida Tarbell told in McClure’s Magazine is being reaffirmed,” one newspaper remarked; another termed the report “a vindication” of her methods, validated now by the official seal. If the commissioner “can prove all he says,” Tarbell herself told a reporter, “he has rendered one of the most important public services in the history of the country.”
The Justice Department prepared two lines of attack corresponding to Garfield’s report: the first alleged illegal rebates under the Elkins Act of 1903; the second charged “conspiracy in restraint of trade” based on violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. “If my report affords the basis for making these prosecutions successful I shall be mightily pleased,” Garfield wrote to Helen. While “conspiracy and monopoly” were difficult to prove, the rebate case promised to be relatively straightforward.
Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, a colorful jurist who would later become the first commissioner of baseball, presided over the first case, in which the government charged Standard of Indiana with receiving illegal rebates from the Chicago & Alton Railroad. On the day the ruling was handed down, hundreds of would-be spectators were denied entrance to the overcrowded courtroom. The ruling, which found Standard guilty of accepting rebates on 1,462 carloads of oil, required nearly two hours to read. Landis rendered the judgment with a series of dramatic“sledgehammer blows,” drawing applause on two occasions for his condemnation of Standard’s corrupting influence on its employees and the nation as a whole. Never before, one court reporter noted, had a judicial sentence featured such inflamed rhetoric.
Although the guilty verdict surprised few, the size of the resulting fine stunned the company and the country. For each of the 1,462 carloads of oil that had enjoyed an illegal rebate, Landis levied the highest possible fine, $20,000, generating a spectacular cumulative total of $29,240,000. Commenting on the hefty charge, Mark Twain drolly remarked that the sum evoked the bride’s proverbial astonishment on the morning after her wedding: “I expected it but didn’t suppose it would be so big.”
Ida Tarbell optimistically declared that the decision presaged the “beginning of the end” for the “giant octopus.” For thirty-five years, Rockefeller’s corporation had absorbed small fines as the cost of doing business; this “Big Fine,” she hoped, would mark the moment when Standard “must either conform” to “fair dealing” or face ruin. Despite such predictions, John D. Rockefeller remained sanguine about his company’s prospects. He was on a golf course when word of the judgment reached him. “Judge Landis,” he complacently predicted, “will be dead a long time before this fine is paid.” Rockefeller’s prophecy was confirmed eleven months later when Appeals Court Judge Peter Grosscup overturned the decision on a technicality. “It’s nothing more than we expected,” the Standard attorneys smugly proclaimed. Roosevelt publicly derided Grosscup’s ruling as “a gross miscarriage of justice,” further proof of “too much power in the bench.”
His momentary frustration aside, Roosevelt remained optimistic about the administration’s second and more trenchant line of attack. Six months after the publication of the Garfield Report, the attorney general filed suit in St. Louis, charging Standard Oil of New Jersey and its five dozen subsidiaries with conspiracy to monopolize the oil industry in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. With this prosecution, the Des Moines Daily News observed, “the government [had] finally attacked the very citadel of the Standard Oil Company.” Again, reports invariably cited Tarbell’s work as both inspiration and template for the government’s case. “The petition of the US government for an injunction dissolving the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey reads like a chapter from Ida Tarbell,” one commentator asserted. “Every essential charge made by Miss Tarbell in her exposé,” another suggested, was “repeated and put into the form of a legal allegation,” substantiating her crusade against bribery and spying, sham independent companies, preferential relationships with the railroads, and interlocking boards of directors. In sum, the editorial continued, “the person who more than any other started the government attack on the biggest trust in the world was Ida Tarbell.”
This time, the federal court found in the government’s favor. Two years later, in a decision that stunned the business world, the Supreme Court affirmed the lower court’s ruling. The High Court condemned Standard Oil, “not because it is a trust, but because it has an infamous record,” and delivered a warning to “every trust that is tempted to oppress and destroy.” A few short weeks later, the Court drove the point home with a similar judgment against the American Tobacco Company. Standard Oil was given six months to dissolve. Once again, Rockefeller was in the middle of a golf game when the news arrived. “Buy Standard Oil,” he curtly responded. Even when the corporate “octopus” was divided into thirty-eight parts, Standard Oil of New Jersey preserved its identity, eventually morphing into Exxon; Standard Oil of New York incorporated as Mobil; and Standard Oil of Indiana evolved into Amoco.
While Roosevelt exulted in each of his anti-trust victories, he continued to regard the judicial system as an ineffective arena for controlling giant corporations. For the Department of Justice simultaneously “to carry on more than a limited number” of major suits was “not feasible,” and protracted delays meant that “even a favorable decree may mean an empty victory.” Regulation, he believed, promised a far better remedy. “The design should be to prevent the abuses incident to the creation of unhealthy and improper combinations,” he argued, “instead of waiting until they are in existence and then attempting to destroy them by civil or criminal proceedings.”
Unlike anti-trust proceedings, federal regulation required approval in the House and Senate, where conservative Republicans remained a dominant force. After failing to defeat the Bureau of Corporations, this reactionary bloc was determined to prevent Roosevelt from miring the party and the country in policy it considered tantamount to socialism. “The fundamental idea on which our government was founded,” conservatives argued, “was that the functions of the federal government were strictly limited, and that all regulations which most closely affect the lives of the people should be left in the hands of state and municipal bodies.” Roosevelt’s regulatory ideas would “extend the power of the federal government” to an unlimited degree. “Are we to have a national government as highly centralized as that of France or Germany?” opponents ominously queried, warning, “That is what we certainly shall have if we find no way of checking the tendencies in government of which Theodore Roosevelt is so conspicuous and enterprising an exponent.”