The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page Volume I Part 6

I send you (wrongly, perhaps, when you are trying to rest) the shortest statement that I could make about the demonstration field-work of the Department of Agriculture. This is the best tool yet invented to shape country life. Other (and shorter) briefs will be ready in a little while.

You asked me who I thought was the best man for Secretary of Agriculture. Houston[7], I should say, of the men that I know. You will find my estimate of him in the little packet of memoranda. Van Hise[8] may be as good or even better if he be young in mind and adaptable enough. But he seems to me a man who may already have done his big job.

I answer the other questions you asked at Princeton and I have taken the liberty to send some memoranda about a few other men--on the theory that every friend of yours ought now to tell you with the utmost frankness about the men he knows, of whom you may be thinking.

The building up of the countryman is the big constructive job of our time. When the countryman comes to his own, the town man will no longer be able to tax, and to concentrate power, and to bully the world.

Very heartily yours, WALTER H. PAGE.

_To Henry Wallace_

Garden City, N.Y.

11 March, 1913.

MY DEAR UNCLE HENRY:

What a letter yours is! By George! we must get on the job, you and I, of steering the world--get on it a little more actively. Else it may run amuck. We have frightful responsibilities in this matter.

The subject weighs the more deeply and heavily on me because I am just back from a month's vacation in North Carolina, where I am going to build me a winter and old-age bungalow. No; you would be disappointed if you went out of your way to see my boys. Moreover, they are now merely clearing land. They sold out the farm they put in shape, after two years' work, for just ten times what it had cost, and they are now starting another one _de novo_. About a year hence, they'll have something to show. And next winter, when my house is built down there, I want you to come and see me and see that country. I'll show you one of the most remarkable farmers'

clubs you ever saw and many other interesting things as well--many, very many. I'm getting into this farm business in dead earnest.

That's the d.i.c.kens of it: how can I do my share in our partnership to run the universe if I give my time to cotton-growing problems?

It's a tangled world.

Well, bless your soul! You and the younger Wallaces (my regards to every one of them) and Poe[9]--you are all very kind to think of me for that difficult place--too difficult by far, for me. Besides, it would have cost me my life. If I were to go into public life, I should have had to sell my whole interest here. This would have meant that I could never make another dollar. More than that, I'd have thrown away a trade that I've learned and gone at another one that I know little about--a bad change, surely. So, you see, there never was anything serious in this either in my mind or in the President's. Arthur hit it off right one day when somebody asked him:

"Is your father going to take the Secretaryship of Agriculture?"

He replied: "Not seriously."

Besides, the President didn't ask me! He knew too much for that.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Charles D. McIver of Greensboro, North Caroline, a leader in the cause of Southern Education]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Woodrow Wilson in 1912]

But he did ask me who would be a good man and I said "Houston." You are not quite fair to him in your editorial. He does know--knows much and well and is the strongest man in the Cabinet--in promise.

The farmers don't yet know him: that's the only trouble. Give him a chance.

I've "put it up" to the new President and to the new Secretary to get on the job immediately of _organizing country life_. I've drawn up a scheme (a darned good one, too) which they have. I have good hope that they'll get to it soon and to the thing that we have all been working toward. I'm very hopeful about this. I told them both last week to get their minds on this before the wolves devour them.

Don't you think it better to work with the Government and to try to steer it right than to go off organizing other agencies?

G.o.d pity our new masters! The President is all right. He's sound, earnest, courageous. But his party! I still have some muscular strength. In certain remote regions they still break stones in the road by hand. Now I'll break stones before I'd have a job at Washington now. I spent four days with them last week--the new crowd. They'll try their best. I think they'll succeed. But, if they do succeed and survive, they'll come out of the scrimmage bleeding and torn. We've got to stand off and run 'em, Uncle Henry.

That's the only hope I see for the country. Don't d.a.m.n Houston, then, beforehand. He's a real man. Let's get on the job and tell 'em how.

Now, when you come East, come before you need to get any of your meetings and strike a bee-line for Garden City; and don't be in a hurry when you get here. If a Presbyterian meeting be necessary for your happiness, I'll drum up one on the Island for you. And, of course, you must come to my house and pack up right and get your legs steady sometime before you sail--you and Mrs. Wallace: will she not go with you?

In the meantime, don't be disgruntled. We can steer the old world right, if you'll just keep your shoulder to the wheel. We'll work it all out here in the summer and verify it all (including your job of setting the effete kingdoms of Europe all right)--we'll verify it all next winter down in North Carolina. I think things have got such a start that they'll keep going in some fashion, till we check up the several items, political, ethical, agricultural, journalistic, and international. G.o.d bless us all!

Most heartily always yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

Though Mr. Wilson did not offer Page the Agricultural Department, he much desired to have him in his Cabinet, and had already decided upon him for a post which the new President probably regarded as more important--the Interior. The narrow margin with which Page escaped this responsibility ill.u.s.trates again the slender threads upon which history is constructed. The episode is also not without its humorous side. For there was only one reason why Page did not enter the Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior; and that is revealed in the above letter to "Uncle Henry"; he was so busy planning his new house in the sandhills of North Carolina that, while cabinets were being formed and great decisions taken, he was absent from New York. A short time before the inauguration, Mr. Wilson asked Colonel House to arrange a meeting with Page in the latter's apartment. Mr. Wilson wished to see him on a Sat.u.r.day; the purpose was to offer him the Secretaryship of the Interior. Colonel House called up Page's office at Garden City and was informed that he was in North Carolina. Colonel House then telegraphed asking Page to start north immediately, and suggesting the succeeding Monday as a good time for the interview. A reply was at once received from Page that he was on his way.

Meanwhile certain of Mr. Wilson's advisers had heard of the plan and were raising objections. Page was a Southerner; the Interior Department has supervision over the pension bureau, with its hundreds of thousands of Civil War veterans as pensioners; moreover, Page was an outspoken enemy of the whole pension system and had led several "campaigns"

against it. The appointment would never do! Mr. Wilson himself was persuaded that it would be a mistake.

"But what are we going to do about Page?" asked Colonel House. "I have summoned him from North Carolina on important business. What excuse shall I give for bringing him way up here?"

But the President-elect was equal to the emergency.

"Here's the cabinet list," he drily replied. "Show it to Page. Tell him these are the people I have about decided to appoint and ask him what he thinks of them. Then he will a.s.sume that we summoned him to get his advice."

When Page made his appearance, therefore, Colonel House gave him the list of names and solemnly asked him what he thought of them. The first name that attracted Page's attention was that of Josephus Daniels, as Secretary of the Navy. Page at once expressed his energetic dissent.

"Why, don't you think he is Cabinet timber?" asked Colonel House.

"Timber!" Page fairly shouted. "He isn't a splinter! Have you got a time table? When does the next train leave for Princeton?"

In a couple of hours Page was sitting with Mr. Wilson, earnestly protesting against Mr. Daniels's appointment. But Mr. Wilson said that he had already offered Mr. Daniels the place.

II

About the time of Wilson's election a great calamity befell one of Page's dearest friends. Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, the President of the University of Virginia, one of the pioneer educational forces in the Southern States, and for years an a.s.sociate of Page on the General Education Board, was stricken with tuberculosis. He was taken to Saranac, and here a patient course of treatment happily restored him to health. One of the dreariest aspects of such an experience is its tediousness and loneliness. Yet the maintenance of one's good spirits and optimism is an essential part of the treatment. And it was in this work that Page now proved an indispensable aid to the medical men. As soon as Dr. Alderman found himself stretched out, a weak and isolated figure, cut off from those activities and interests which had been his inspiration for forty years, with no companions except his own thoughts and a few sufferers like himself, letters began to arrive with weekly regularity from the man whom he always refers to as "dear old Page." The gayety and optimism of these letters, the lively comments which they pa.s.sed upon men and things, and their wholesome and genial philosophy, were largely instrumental, Dr. Alderman has always believed, in his recovery. Their effect was so instant and beneficial that the physicians asked to have them read to the other patients, who also derived abounding comfort and joy from them. The whole episode was one of the most beautiful in Page's life, and brings out again that gift for friendship which was perhaps his finest quality. For this reason it is a calamity that most of these letters have not been preserved. The few that have survived are interesting not only in themselves; they reveal Page's innermost thoughts on the subject of Woodrow Wilson. That he admired the new President is evident, yet these letters make it clear that, even in 1912 and 1913, there was something about Mr. Wilson that caused him to hesitate, to entertain doubts, to wonder how, after all, the experiment was to end.

To Edwin A. Alderman

Garden City, L.I.

December 31, 1912.

MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

I have a new amus.e.m.e.nt, a new excitement, a new study, as you have and as we all have who really believe in democracy--a new study, a new hope, and sometimes a new fear; and its name is Wilson. I have for many years regarded myself as an interested, but always a somewhat detached, outsider, believing that the democratic idea was real and safe and lifting, if we could ever get it put into action, contenting myself ever with such patches of it as time and accident and occasion now and then sewed on our gilded or tattered garments.

But now it is come--the real thing; at any rate a man somewhat like us, whose thought and aim and dream are our thought and aim and dream. That's enormously exciting! I didn't suppose I'd ever become so interested in a general proposition or in a governmental hope.

Will he do it? Can he do it? Can anybody do it? How can we help him do it? Now that the task is on him, does he really understand? Do I understand him and he me? There's a certain unreality about it.

The man himself--I find that n.o.body quite knows him now. Alas! I wonder if he quite knows himself. Temperamentally very shy, having lived too much alone and far too much with women (how I wish two of his daughters were sons!) this Big Thing having descended on him before he knew or was quite prepared for it, thrust into a whirl of self-seeking men even while he is trying to think out the theory of the duties that press, knowing the necessity of silence, surrounded by small people--well, I made up my mind that his real friends owed it to him and to what we all hope for, to break over his reserve and to volunteer help. He asks for conferences with official folk--only, I think. So I began to write memoranda about those subjects of government about which I know something and have opinions and about men who are or who may be related to them. It has been great sport to set down in words without any reserve precisely what you think. It is imprudent, of course, as most things worth doing are. But what have I to lose, I who have my life now planned and laid out and have got far beyond the reach of grat.i.tude or hatred or praise or blame or fear of any man? I sent him some such memoranda. Here came forthwith a note of almost abject thanks. I sent more. Again, such a note--written in his own hand. Yet not a word of what he thinks. The Sphinx was garrulous in comparison. Then here comes a mob of my good friends crying for office for me. So I sent a ten-line note, by the hand of my secretary, saying that this should not disturb my perfect frankness nor (I knew it would not) his confidence. Again, a note in his own hand, of perfect understanding and with the very glow of grat.i.tude.

And he talks--generalities to the public. Perhaps that's all he can talk now. Wise? Yes. But does he know the men about him? Does he really know men? n.o.body knows. Thus 'twixt fear and hope I see--suspense. I'll swear I can't doubt, I can't believe. Whether it is going to work out or not--whether he or anybody can work it out of the haze of theory--n.o.body knows; and n.o.body's speculation is better than mine and mine is worthless.

This is the game, this is the excitement, this is the doubthope and the hopedoubt. I send this word about it to you (I could and would to n.o.body else: you're s...o...b..und, you see, and don't write much and don't see many people: restrain your natural loquacity!) But for the love of heaven tell me if you see any way _very clearly_. It's a kind of misty dream to me.

I ask myself why should I concern myself about it? Of course the answer's easy and I think creditable: I do profoundly hold this democratic faith and believe that it can be worked into action among men; and it may be I shall yet see it done. That's the secret of my interest. But when this awful office descends on a man, it oppresses him, changes him, you are not quite so sure of him, you doubt whether he knows himself or you in the old way.

And I find among men the very crudest ideas of government or of democracy. They have not thought the thing out. They hold no ordered creed of human organization or advancement. They leave all to chance and think, when they think at all, that chance determines it. And yet the Great Hope persists, and I think I have grown an inch by it.

I wonder how it seems, looked at from the cold mountains of Lake Saranac?