Theodore Roosevelt Part 14

March 4, 1909, was a wintry day in Washington. A snowstorm and high winds prevented holding the inaugural exercises out of doors as usual on the East Front of the Capitol. President Roosevelt and President-elect Taft drove in state down Pennsylvania Avenue, and Mr. Taft, having taken the oath of office, delivered his inaugural address in the Senate Chamber. The ceremonies being over, Mr. Roosevelt, instead of accompanying the new President to the White House, went to the railway station and took the train for New York. This innovation had been planned some time before, because Mr. Roosevelt had arranged to sail for Europe in a few days, and needed to reach Oyster Bay as soon as possible to complete his preparations.

Many an eye-witness who watched him leave, as a simple civilian, the Hall of Congress, must have felt that with his going there closed one of the most memorable administrations this country had ever known. Roosevelt departed, but his invisible presence still filled the capital city and frequented every quarter of the Nation.

CHAPTER XX. WORLD HONORS

What to do with ex-Presidents is a problem which worries those happy Americans who have nothing else to worry over. They think of an ex-President as of a sacred white elephant, who must not work, although he has probably too little money to keep him alive in proper ease and dignity. In fact, however, these gentlemen have managed, at least during the past half-century, to sink back into the civilian ma.s.s from which they emerged without suffering want themselves or dimming the l.u.s.tre which radiates from the office. Roosevelt little thought that in quitting the Presidency he was not going into political obscurity.

Roosevelt had two objects in view when he left the White House.

He sought long and complete rest, and to place himself beyond the reach of politicians. In fairness, he wished to give Mr. Taft a free field, which would hardly have been possible if Roosevelt had remained in Washington or New York, where politicians might have had access to him.

Accordingly, he planned to hunt big game in Africa for a year, and in order to have a definite purpose, which might give his expedition lasting usefulness, he arranged to collect specimens for the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution in Washington. His second son, Kermit, then twenty years of age, besides several naturalists and hunters, accompanied him. His expedition sailed from New York on March 23d, touched at the Azores and at Gibraltar, where the English Commander showed him the fortifications, and transshipped at Naples into an East-African liner. He found his stateroom filled with flowers sent by his admiring friend, Kaiser William II, with a telegram of effusive greeting, and with messages and tokens from minor potentates. More important to him than these tributes, however, was the presence of Frederick C. Selous, the most famous hunter of big game in Africa, who joined the ship and proved a congenial fellow pa.s.senger. They reached Mombasa on April 23rd, and after the caravan had been made ready, they started for the interior.

We need not follow in detail the year which Roosevelt and his party spent in his African hunting. The railroad took them to Lake Victoria Nyanza, but they stopped at many places on the way, and made long excursions into the country. Then from the Lake they proceeded to the Albert Nyanza and steamed down the Nile to Gondokoro, which they reached on February 26, 1910. On March 14th at Khartoum, where Mrs. Roosevelt and their daughter Ethel awaited them, Roosevelt emerged into civilization again. He and Kermit had shot 512 beasts and birds, of which they kept about a dozen for trophies, the rest going to the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution and to the museums. A few of their specimens were unique, and the total product of the expedition was the most important which had ever reached America from Africa.

After spending a few days in visiting Omdurman and other scenes connected with the British conquest of the Mahdists, less than a dozen years before, the Roosevelts went down the river to Cairo, where the ex-President addressed the Egyptian students. These were the backbone of the so-called Nationalist Party, which aimed at driving out the British and had killed the Prime Minister a month before. They warned Roosevelt that if he dared to touch on this subject he, too, would be a.s.sa.s.sinated. But such threats did not move him then or ever. Roosevelt reproved them point-blank for killing Boutros Pasha, and told them that a party which sought freedom must show its capacity for living by law and order, before it could expect to deserve freedom.

>From Egypt, Roosevelt crossed to Naples, and then began what must be described as a triumphal progress through Central and Western Europe. Only General Grant, after his Presidency, had made a similar tour, but he did not excite a tenth of the popular interest and enthusiasm which Roosevelt excited. Although Grant had the prestige of being the successful general of the most tremendous war ever fought in America, he had nothing picturesque or magnetic in his personality. The peasants in the remote regions had heard of Roosevelt; persons of every cla.s.s in the cities knew about him a little more definitely; and all were keen to see him. Except Garibaldi, no modern ever set mult.i.tudes on fire as Roosevelt did, and Garibaldi was the hero of a much narrower sphere and had the advantage of being the hero of the then downtrodden ma.s.ses. Roosevelt, on the other hand, belonged to the ruling cla.s.s in America, had served nearly eight years as President of the United States, and was equally the popular idol without cla.s.s distinction. And he had just come from a very remarkable exploit, having led his scientific and hunting expedition for twelve months through the perils and hardships of tropical Africa. We Americans may well thrill with satisfaction to remember that it was this most typical of Americans who received the honors and homage of the world precisely because he was most typically American and strikingly individual.

Before he reached Italy on his way back, he had invitations from most of the sovereigns of Europe to visit them, and universities and learned bodies requested him to address them. At Rome, as guest of King Victor Emanuel II, he received ovations of the exuberant and throbbing kind, which only the Italians can give.

But here also occurred what might have been, but for his common sense and courage, a hitch in his triumphal progress. The intriguers of the Vatican, always on the alert to edify the Roman Catholics in the United States, thought they saw a chance to exalt themselves and humble the Protestants by stipulating that Colonel Roosevelt, who had accepted an invitation to call upon the Pope, should not visit any Protestant organization while he was in that city. Some time before, Vice-President Fairbanks had incensed Cardinal Merry del Val, the Papal Secretary, and his group, by remarks at the Methodist College in Rome. Here was a dazzling opportunity for not only getting even, but for coming out victorious. If the Vatican schemers could force Colonel Roosevelt, who, at the moment, was the greatest figure in the world, to obey their orders, they might exult in the sight of all the nations. Should he balk, he would draw down upon himself a hostile Catholic vote at home. Probably the good-natured Pope himself understood little about the intrigue and took little part in it, for Pius X was rather a kindly and a genuinely pious pontiff. But Cardinal Merry del Val, apt pupil of the Jesuits, made an egregious blunder if he expected to catch Theodore Roosevelt in a Papal trap. The Rector of the American Catholic College in Rome wrote: " 'The Holy Father will be delighted to grant audience to Mr. Roosevelt on April 5th, and hopes nothing will arise to prevent it, such as the much-regretted incident which made the reception of Mr. Fairbanks impossible.' Roosevelt replied to our Amba.s.sador as follows: 'On the other hand, I in my turn must decline to have any stipulations made or submit to any conditions which in any way limit my freedom of conduct.' To this the Vatican replied. through our Amba.s.sador: 'In view of the circ.u.mstances for which neither His Holiness nor Mr. Roosevelt is responsible, an audience could not occur except on the understanding expressed in the former message.'" *

* Washburn, 164.

Ex-President Roosevelt did not, by calling upon the Pope, furnish Cardinal Merry del Val with cause to gloat. A good while afterward in talking over the matter with me, Roosevelt dismissed it with "No self-respecting American could allow his actions or his going and coming to be dictated to him by any Pope or King."

That, to him, was so self-evident a fact that it required no discussion; and the American people, including probably a large majority of Roman Catholics, agreed with him.

>From Rome he went to Austria, to Vienna first, where the aged Emperor, Francis Joseph, welcomed him; and then to Budapest, where the Hungarians, eager for their independence, shouted themselves hoa.r.s.e at sight of the representative of American independence. Wherever he went the ma.s.ses in the cities crowded round him and the people in the country flocked to cheer him as he pa.s.sed. Since Norway had conferred on him the n.o.bel Peace Prize after the Russo-j.a.panese War, he journeyed to Christiania to pay his respects to the n.o.bel Committee, and there he delivered an address on the conditions necessary for a universal peace in which he foreshadowed many of the terms which have since been preached by the advocates of a League of Nations. In Berlin, the Kaiser received him with ostentatious friendliness. He addressed him as "Friend Roosevelt." Since the Colonel was not a monarch the Kaiser could not address him as "Brother" or as "Cousin," and the word "Friend "disguised whatever condescension he may have felt. There was a grand military review of twelve thousand troops, which the Kaiser and his "Friend" inspected, and he took care to inform Roosevelt that he was the first civilian to whom this honor had ever been paid. An Imperial photographer made snapshots of the Colonel and the Kaiser, and these were subsequently given to the Colonel with superscriptions and comments written by the Kaiser on the negatives. Roosevelt's impression of his Imperial host was, on the whole, favorable. I do not think he regarded him as very solid, personally, but he recognized the results of the power which William's inherited position as Emperor conferred on him.

Paris did not fall behind any of the other European capitals in the enthusiasm of its welcome. There, Roosevelt was received in solemn session by the Sorbonne, before which he spoke on citizenship in a Republic, and, with prophetic vision, he warned against the seductions of phrase-makers as among the insidious dangers to which Republics were exposed.

His most conspicuous triumph, however, was in England. On May 6th, King Edward VII died, and President Taft appointed Colonel Roosevelt special envoy, to represent the United States at the royal funeral. This drew together crowned heads from all parts of Europe, so that at one of the State functions at Buckingham Palace there were no fewer than thirteen monarchs at table. The Colonel stayed at Dorchester House with the American Amba.s.sador, Mr. Whitelaw Reid, and was beset by calls and invitations from the crowned personages. I have heard him give a most amusing account of that experience, but it is too soon to repeat it.

Then, as always, he could tell a bore at sight, and the bore could not deceive him by any disguise of ermine cloak or Imperial t.i.tle. The German Kaiser seems to have taken pains to pose as the preferred intimate of "Friend Roosevelt," but the "Friend"

remained unwaveringly Democratic. One day William telephoned to ask Roosevelt to lunch with him, but the Colonel diplomatically pleaded a sore throat, and declined. At another time when the Kaiser wished him to come and chat, Roosevelt replied that he would with pleasure, but that he had only twenty minutes at the Kaiser's disposal, as he had already arranged to call on Mrs.

Humphry Ward at three-thirty. These reminiscences may seem trifling, unless you take them as ill.u.s.trating the truly Democratic simplicity with which the First Citizen of the American Republic met the scions of the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns on equal terms as gentleman with gentlemen.

Some of his backbiters and revilers at home whispered that his head was turned by all these pageants and courtesies of kings, and that he regretted that our system provided for no monarch.

This afforded him infinite amus.e.m.e.nt. "Think of it!" he said to me after his return. "They even say that I want to be a prince myself! Not I! I've seen too many of them! Do you know what a prince is? He's a cross between Ward McAllister and Vice-President Fairbanks. How can any one suppose I should like to be that?" It may be necessary to inform the later generation that Mr. Ward McAllister was by profession a decayed gentleman in New York City who achieved fame by compiling a list of the Four Hundred persons whom he condescended to regard as belonging to New York Society. Vice-President Fairbanks was an Indiana politician, tall and thin and oppressively taciturn, who seemed to be stricken dumb by the weight of an immemorial ancestry or by the sense of his own importance; and who was not less cold than dumb, so that irreverent jokers reported that persons might freeze to death in his presence if they came too near or stayed too long.

All this was only the froth on the stream of Roosevelt's experience in England. He took deep enjoyment in meeting the statesmen and the authors and the learned men there. The City of London bestowed the freedom of the city upon him. The Universities of Cambridge and Oxford gave him their highest honorary degrees. At the London Guildhall he made a memorable address, in which he warned the British nation to see to it that the grievances of the Egyptian people were not allowed to fester.

Critics at the moment chided this advice as an exhibition of bad taste; an intrusion, if not an impertinence, on the part of a foreigner. They did not know, however, that before speaking, Roosevelt submitted his remarks to high officers in the Government and had their approval; for apparently they were well pleased that this burning topic should be brought under discussion by means of Roosevelt's warning.

At Cambridge University he exhorted the students not to be satisfied with a life of sterile athleticism. "I never was an athlete," said he, "although I have always led an outdoor life, and have accomplished something in it, simply because my theory is that almost any man can do a great deal, if he will, by getting the utmost possible service out of the qualities that he actually possesses ... . The average man who is successful--the average statesman, the average public servant, the average soldier, who wins what we call great success--is not a genius. He is a man who has merely the ordinary qualities that he shares with his fellows, but who has developed those ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree."

The culmination of his addresses abroad was his Romanes Lecture, delivered at the Convocation at Oxford University on June 7, 1910. Lord Curzon, the Chancellor, presided. Roosevelt took for his theme, "Biological a.n.a.logies in History," a subject which his lifelong interest in natural history and his considerable reading in scientific theory made appropriate. He afterwards said that in order not to commit shocking blunders he consulted freely his old friend Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, head of the Museum of Natural History in New York City, but the substance and ideas were unquestionably his own.

Dr. Henry Goudy, "the public orator" at Cambridge, in a Presentation Speech, eulogized Roosevelt's manifold activities and achievements, declaring, among other things, that he had "acquired a t.i.tle to be ranked with his great predecessor Abraham Lincoln--'of whom one conquered slavery, and the other corruption.'" Lord Curzon addressed him as, "peer of the most august kings, queller of wars, destroyer of monsters wherever found, yet the most human of mankind, deeming nothing indifferent to you, not even the blackest of the black."

This cl.u.s.ter of foreign addresses is not the least remarkable of Roosevelt's intellectual feats. No doubt among those who listened to him in each place there were carping critics, scholars who did not find his words scholarly enough, dilettanti made tepid by over-culture, intellectual cormorants made heavy by too much information, who found no novelty in what he said, and were insensible to the rush and freshness of his style. But in spite of these he did plant in each audience thoughts which they remembered, and he touched upon a range of interests which no other man then alive could have made to seem equally vital.

On June 18th Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt reached New York. All the way up the harbor from Sandy Hook, he was escorted by a vast concourse of vessels, large and small, tugs, steamboats, and battleships. At the Narrows, Fort Wadsworth greeted him with the Presidential salute of twenty-one guns. The revenue-cutter, Androscoggin, took him from the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, on which he had crossed the ocean, and landed him at the Battery.

There an immense mult.i.tude awaited him. Mayor Gaynor bade him welcome, to which he replied briefly in affectionate words to his fellow countrymen. Then began a triumphal procession up Broadway, and up Fifth Avenue, surpa.s.sing any other which New York had seen. No other person in America had ever been so welcomed. The million or more who shouted and cheered and waved, were proud of him because of his great reception in Europe, but they admired him still more for his imperishable work at home, and loved him most of all, because they knew him as their friend and fellow, Theodore Roosevelt, their ideal American. A group of Rough Riders and two regiments of Spanish War Veterans formed his immediate escort, than whom none could have pleased him better.

His head was not turned, but his heart must have overflowed with grat.i.tude.

Later, when the crowds had dispersed, he went into a bookstore, and some one in the street having recognized him, the word pa.s.sed, and a great crowd cheered him as he came out. Telling his sister of the occurrence, he said, "And they soon will be throwing rotten apples at me!"

CHAPTER XXI. WHICH WAS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?

Did those words of Roosevelt spring from his sense of humor--humor which recognizes the topsy-turvy of life and its swift changes, and still laughs--or from the instinct which knows that even in the sweetest of all experiences there must be a drop of bitterness? Whatever their cause, they proved to be a true foreboding. He had not been home twenty four hours before he perceived, on talking with his friends, that the Republican Party during his absence had drifted far from the course he had charted. "His policies" had vanished with his control, and the men who now managed the Administration and the party regarded him, not merely with suspicion, but with aversion.

To tell the story of this conflict is the disagreeable duty of the historian of. that period, especially if he have friends and acquaintances on both sides of the feud. There are some facts not yet known; there are others which must be touched upon very delicately if at all; and, in the main, so much of the episode grew out of personal likes and dislikes that it is hard to base one's account of it on doc.u.ments. In trying to get at the truth, I have been puzzled by the point-blank contradictions of antagonistic witnesses, whose veracity has not been questioned.

Equally perplexing are the lapses of memory in cases where I happen to have seen letters or doc.u.ments written at the time and giving real facts. The country would a.s.suredly have been alarmed if it had suspected that, during the years from 1909 to 1912, the statesmen who had charge of it, were as liable to attacks of amnesia as they proved to be later.

The head and front of the quarrel which wrecked the Republican Party must be sought in Roosevelt's thoroughly patriotic desire to have a successor who should carry on the principles which he had fought for and had embodied in national laws during the nearly eight years of his Presidency. He felt more pa.s.sionately than anybody else the need of continuing the work he had begun, not because it was his work, but because on it alone, as he thought, the reconciliation between Capital and Labor in the United States could be brought about, and the impending war of cla.s.ses could be prevented. So he chose Judge Taft as the person who, he believed, would follow his lead in this undertaking. But the experience of a hundred and ten years, since Washington was succeeded by John Adams, might have taught him that no President can quite reproduce the qualities of his predecessor and that the establishment of a Presidential dynasty is not congenial to the spirit of the American people. Jefferson did, indeed, hand on his mantle to Madison, and the experiment partially succeeded. But Madison was much nearer Jefferson in ability and influence than Judge Taft was near Roosevelt.

During the campaign of 1908, and immediately after the election, we can imagine that Mr. Taft was sincerely open to Roosevelt's suggestions, and that he quite naturally gave Roosevelt the impression that he intended to follow them, not because they were Roosevelt's, but because they were his own also. As soon as he began to realize that he was President, and that a President has a right to speak and act on his own motion, Mr. Taft saw other views rising within him, other preferences, other resolves. From the bosom of his family he may have heard the exhortation, "Be your own President; don't be any body's man or rubber stamp." No doubt intimate friends strengthened this advice. The desire to be free and independent, which lies at the bottom of every normal heart, took possession of him also; further, was it not the strict duty of a President to give the country the benefit of his best judgment instead of following the rules laid down by another, or to parrot another's doctrines?

Whatever may have been the process by which the change came, it had come before Taft's inauguration. He chose a new Cabinet, although Roosevelt supposed that several of the members of his Cabinet would be retained. Before the Colonel started for Africa he felt that a change had come, but he went away with the hope that things would turn out better than he feared. His long absence under the Equator would relieve any anxiety Taft might have as to Roosevelt's intention to dictate or interfere.

Very little political news reached the Colonel while he was hunting. On reaching Italy, on his return journey, he met Mr.

Gifford Pinchot, who had come post-haste from New York, and conveyed to him the latest account of the political situation at home. It was clear that the Republican Party had split into two factions-the Regulars, who regarded President Taft as their standard-bearer, and the Insurgents, who rallied round Roosevelt, and longed desperately for his return. To the enemies of the Administration, it seemed that Mr. Taft had turned away from the Rooseveltian policies. In his appointments he had replaced Roosevelt men by Regulars. His Secretary of the Interior, Mr.

Ballinger, came into conflict with Mr. Pinchot over conservation, and the public a.s.sumed that the President was not only unconcerned to uphold conservation, but was willing that the natural resources of the Nation should fall again into the hands of greedy private corporations. This a.s.sumption proved to be false, and Secretary Ballinger was exonerated by a public investigation; but for two years, at least, the cloud hung over Mr. Taft's reputation, and, as always happens, the correction being far less nimble than the accusation, took a much longer time in remedying the harm that it had done.

When, therefore, Roosevelt landed at the Battery on June 18, 1910, the day of his apotheosis, he knew that a factional fight was raging in the Republican Party. His trusty followers, and every one who bore a grudge against the Administration, urged him to unfurl his flag and check any further disintegration; but prudence controlled him and he announced that he should not speak on political matters for at least two months. He was sincere; but a few days later at the Harvard Commencement exercises he met Governor Hughes, of New York State, who was waging a fierce struggle against the Machine to put through a bill on primary elections. The Governor begged the Colonel as a patriotic boss-hating citizen, to help him, and Roosevelt hastily wrote and dispatched to Albany a telegram urging Republicans to support Hughes. In the result, his advice was not heeded, a straw which indicated that the Machine no longer feared to disregard him.

For several weeks Roosevelt waited and watched, and found out by personal investigation how the Republican Party stood. It took little inspection to show him that the Taft Administration was not carrying out his policies, and that the elements against which he had striven for eight years were creeping back. Indeed, they had crept back. It would be unjust to Mr. Taft to a.s.sert that he had not continued the war on Trusts. Under his able Attorney-General, Mr. George W. Wickersham, many prosecutions were going forward, and in some cases the legislation begun by Roosevelt was extended and made more effective. I speak now as to the general course of Mr. Taft's Administration and not specially of the events of 1910. In spite of this continuation of the battle with the Octopus--as the Big Interests, Wall Street, and Trusts were indiscriminately nicknamed--the public did not believe that Mr. Taft and his a.s.sistants pushed the fight with their whole heart. Perhaps they were misjudged. Mr. Taft being in no sense a spectacular person, whatever he did would lack the spectacular quality which radiated from all Roosevelt's actions.

Then, too, the pioneer has deservedly a unique reward. Just as none of the navigators who followed Columbus on the voyage to the Western Continent could win credit like his, so the prestige which Roosevelt gained from being the first to grapple with the great monopolies could not be shared by any successor of his, who simply carried on the work of "trust-busting," as it was called, which had be come commonplace.

Nevertheless, although n.o.body doubted Mr. Wickersham's legal ability, the country felt that during the Taft Administration zeal had gone out of the campaign of the Administration against the Interests. Roosevelt had plunged into the fray with the enthusiasm of a Crusader. Taft followed him from afar, but without feeling the Crusader's consecration or his terrible sincerity. And during the first six months of his Administration, President Taft had unwittingly given the country the measure of himself.

The Republican platform adopted at Chicago declared "unequivocally for a revision of the tariff by a special session of Congress, immediately following the inauguration of the next President .... In all tariff legislation the true principle of protection is best maintained by the imposition of such duties as will equal the difference between the cost of production at home and abroad, together with a reasonable profit to American industries. We favor the establishment of maximum and minimum rates to be administered by the President under limitations fixed in the law, the maximum to be available to meet discriminations by foreign countries against American goods entering their markets, and the minimum to represent the normal measure of protection at home." The American public, regardless of party, a.s.sumed that the "revision" referred to in this plank of the Republican platform meant a revision downward; and it supposed, from sayings and opinions of Mr. Taft, that he put the same construction upon it. He at once called a special session of Congress, and a new tariff bill was framed under the direction of Sereno E. Payne, a Stand-Pat Republican member of Congress, Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, and Nelson W.

Aldrich, Senator from Rhode Island, and guardian angel and factotum for the Big Interests. For several months these gentlemen conducted the preparation of the new bill. Payne had already had experience in putting through the McKinley Tariff in 1890, and the Dingley Tariff in 1897. Again the committee-room was packed by greedy protectionists who, for a consideration, got from the Government whatever profit they paid for. Neither Payne nor Aldrich had the slightest idea that to fix tariff rates to enrich special individuals and firms was a most corrupt practice.

When a Republican Senator, who honestly supposed that the revision would be downward, privately remonstrated, the reply he heard was, "Where shall we get our campaign funds?" Finally, after some discussion between the House and the Senate--a discussion which did not lessen the enormities of the measure--the Payne-Aldrich Bill was pa.s.sed by Congress and signed by President Taft, and it enjoyed the bad eminence of being worse than the McKinley and the Dingley tariffs which had preceded it.

The public, which had seen more clearly than on former occasions, how such charters to legalize industrial piracy were devised, was somewhat dashed--by President Taft's approval. Perhaps it still hoped that the creation of a non-partisan Tariff Commission of experts would put an end to this indecent purchase and sale of privileges and would establish rates after the scientific investigation of each case. Soon, however, these hopes were swept away; for on September 17, 1909, the President delivered at Winona, Minnesota, a laudatory speech on the new tariff. He admitted that some points in Schedule K--that comprising wool and woolen goods--were too high. But, he said solemnly that this was "the best tariff law the Republicans ever made, and, therefore, the best the country ever had." In that Winona speech, Mr. Taft hung a millstone round his own neck. His critics and his friends alike had thrust upon them this dilemma: either he knew that the Payne-Aldrich Tariff had been arrived at by corrupt ways and was not a revision downward--in spite of which he p.r.o.nounced it the "best ever"; or he did not know its nature and the means used in framing it. In the latter case, he could not be considered a person sufficiently informed on great financial questions, or on the practices of some of the politicians who made laws for him to sign, to be qualified to sit in the President's chair. If, on the other hand, knowing the measure to be bad he declared it the "best ever," he was neither sincere nor honest, and in this case also he was not a President whom the country could respect.

I would not imply that the American public went through this process of reasoning at once, or arrived at such clear-cut conclusions; Demos seldom indulges in the luxury of logic; but the shock caused by the Winona speech vibrated through the country and never after that did the public fully trust Mr. Taft.

It knew that the Interests had crawled back and dictated the Payne-Aldrich Tariff, and it surmised that, although he prosecuted the Trusts diligently, they did not feel greatly terrified. But n.o.body whispered or suspected that he was not honest.

While President Taft slowly lost his hold on the American people, he gained proportionately with the Republican Machine. That Machine was composed of the Regulars of the party, or the Conservatives, as they preferred to be called, and it was losing its hold on the country. There comes a time in every sect, party, or inst.i.tution when it stops growing, its arteries harden, its young men see no visions, its old men dream no dreams; it lives in the past and desperately tries to perpetuate the past. In politics when this process of petrifaction is reached, we call it Bourbonism, and the sure sign of the Bourbon is that, being unconscious that he is the victim of sclerosis, he sees no reason for seeking a cure. Unable to adjust himself to change and new conditions he falls back into the past, as an old man drops into his worn-out armchair.

Now Roosevelt had been, of course, the negation of Bourbonism. He had led the Republican Party into new fields and set it to do new work, and far off, shining clearly, its goal beckoned it on. His followers were mostly young men; they saw that the world had changed, and would change still further, and they went forward valiantly to meet it and, if possible, to shape its changes. For ten years past, these Radicals, as the Regulars named them some what reproachfully, and who were better defined as "Insurgents,"

had played an increasingly important part in Congress. They would not submit to the Bosses and the Machine, but voted independently, and, although they were not all of them avowed Rooseveltians, they all were going in his direction. In the second year of Mr. Taft's Administration, they rebelled against the rigid dictatorship of Joseph G. Cannon, the Speaker of the House. "Uncle Joe," as the public nicknamed him, dated from before the Civil War, and entered Congress in 1863, forty-seven years before 1910. It was as if a rigid Bourbon, who had served under Louis XV in France in 1763, had been chief law-maker under Napoleon I in 1810. Mr. Cannon, however, had never learned that the Civil War was over, whereas every Frenchman who survived the Revolution knew that it had taken place. So the Insurgents rose up against him, in his old age, deprived him of his dictatorial power, and, at the next election, Democrats and Republicans combined to sweep him out of office altogether.