The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (146 page)

R
OOSEVELT’S SECOND
Annual Message was greeted by most Republican newspapers as “statesmanlike” in its attitude to trusts (thanks to judicious modification of the original text by Elihu Root).
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Strangely, the conservation section, with revolutionary pleas for a “system of forestry gradually developed and conducted along scientific principles,” passed largely unnoticed. Here the Governor was reflecting the views of another expert adviser—Gifford Pinchot, Chief Forester of the United States. Tall, lithe, dreamy-eyed, irresistibly attractive to women, the thirty-four-year-old Pinchot had for years been Roosevelt’s main source of ecological information. His theory that “controlled, conservative lumbering” of state and national forests would improve not only the economy, but the forests themselves was enthusiastically pro-pounded in the gubernatorial message.
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Roosevelt also hinted that a bill to scrap the present five-man Forest, Fish, and Game Board and replace it with a single, progressive commissioner would be forthcoming early in the session.

The Governor disclaimed any personal responsibility for the measure, but its opponents, headed by Senator Platt, were quick to note that it had been prepared by the Boone & Crockett Club, and that both Pinchot and the proposed commissioner, W. Austin Wadsworth, were members of that Rooseveltian organization.
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W
ITHIN A FEW DAYS
of his message Roosevelt received word that Judge Charles T. Saxton, another “independent organization man of the best type,” was willing to accept the post of Superintendent of Insurance, providing Senator Platt and Charles Odell could
be persuaded to forsake Payn. Roosevelt was optimistic. “While I did not intend to make an ugly fight unless they forced me to it, yet if they do force me the fight shall be had.”
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U
NEXPECTED AMMUNITION
fell into his hands on 11 January 1900, when a stockholder of the State Trust Company of New York, one of Payn’s strongest backers, came to Albany with evidence calculated to embarrass the superintendent and liquidate the company. According to the stockholder’s figures, Payn had received $435,000 in loans based on “various unsaleable industrial securities of uncertain and doubtful value, together with what purports to be a certified bank check for $100,000.” He petitioned for an immediate investigation of State Trust’s books by the Superintendent of Banking, Frederick D. Kilburn.
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Roosevelt, showing his usual disregard for niceties of protocol in an emergency, ignored Kilburn and ordered Adjutant General Andrews to conduct the investigation within twenty-four hours. “I had to act at once,” he explained to a doubtful Supreme Court Justice.
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The unspoken implication was that Kilburn, a holdover from the Black Administration, might be rather less willing than Andrews to involve the Superintendent of Insurance in a major scandal.

Andrews had his report ready the next day, 13 January. Although it betrayed signs of hasty and superficial analysis, there was enough evidence of Laocoön-like entanglements between the directors of State Trust and Louis F. Payn for Roosevelt to proceed well-armed to a “bloody breakfast” with Senator Platt. “When I go to war,” the Governor confided to a friend, “I try to arrange it so that all the shooting is not on one side.”
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T
HE BREAKFAST
, which was also attended by Chairman Odell (parchment-pale, glowering and watchful, secretly ambitious to supplant Platt as boss of the party), took place on Saturday, 20 January.
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It proved to be less of a war than a series of brief preparatory skirmishes. Roosevelt insisted that Payn must be replaced. Platt
insisted that Payn would stay. The Governor was sure that Judge Saxton would be an acceptable substitute. The Boss was equally sure he would not. Retreating slightly, Roosevelt produced his usual list of names, “most of whom are straight organization Republicans … who would administer the office in a perfectly clean and businesslike manner.” Platt waved the list aside with loathing, but allowed Odell to pocket it. Then Roosevelt delivered his ultimatum: the organization had until Tuesday, 23 January, to approve one of the names. If no word was received by then, he would pick his own candidate and send the nomination in as soon as the Legislature opened for business on Wednesday morning.
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Thanks to the Payn scandal, he felt quite confident there would be enough votes in the Senate to ratify his choice.

Platt’s response was to make a public announcement shortly afterward that he believed Roosevelt “ought to take the Vice-Presidency both for National and State reasons.”
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Judge Saxton gracefully withdrew his conditional acceptance of the nomination, and suggested the Governor again approach Francis J. Hendricks. Roosevelt did so, but had yet to receive a reply when he encountered Platt on the afternoon of the twenty-third. The Senator still refused to consider any other Superintendent of Insurance but Payn, and threatened “war to the knife” if Roosevelt tried to oust him. With only hours to go before his self-imposed deadline expired, the Governor threw caution to the winds. He politely informed Platt that he would send in Hendricks’s name in the morning without fail—a massive bluff, considering that Hendricks had not yet given him formal permission to do so.
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A little later in the day Odell asked for a final, prewar conference with the Governor. Roosevelt said he could be found at the Union League Club that evening.

If he hoped that Odell would arrive with conciliatory messages, he was soon disillusioned. Platt, he was told, “would under no circumstances yield.” If Roosevelt insisted on opposing him, his “reputation would be destroyed,” and there would be “a lamentable smash-up” from which he would never recover politically. At this, the Governor got up to go, saying there was nothing to be gained from further talk.

Recollecting this dialogue in his
Autobiography
, Roosevelt commented, “I never saw a bluff carried more resolutely to the final limit.”
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It is not certain whether by this he meant Odell’s or his own.

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, Wednesday, Hendricks telephoned acceptance, and on Friday afternoon Roosevelt joyfully released news of the nomination to the press. Privately, to his old Assembly colleague Henry L. Sprague, he wrote: “I have always been fond of the West African proverb: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.’ ”
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I
N THIS CASE
, the Big Stick took him as far as the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. Although the proceedings there did not open until 19 June 1900, Theodore Roosevelt’s trajectory toward the vice-presidential nomination began to accelerate from the moment the New York State Senate confirmed Hendricks as Superintendent of Insurance on 31 January. The very next morning a mysteriously planted article appeared in the
Sun
saying that “representatives of the Republican National Committee” had visited Roosevelt in Albany and urged him to consider acceptance of the nomination. Another mysterious article in the same paper, date-lined from Washington, reported that many of the most influential
Republicans in the capital, “including probably a majority of Senators and Representatives,” believed him to be “the logical candidate of the party for Vice-President.”
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It was not difficult for Roosevelt to guess which persons might have provided the
Sun
with this information. “I need not speak of the confidence I have in you and Lodge,” the Governor wrote plaintively to Platt that morning, “yet I can’t help feeling more and more that the Vice-Presidency is not an office in which I could do anything.…”
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Unfortunately, as he well knew, the newspaper articles were for the most part accurate. He had indeed been visited in Albany by a national committeeman from Wisconsin, who told him that “most of the Western friends of McKinley” thought his name would strengthen the ticket, and that he would be nominated “substantially without opposition” if he agreed to run. The committeeman added that he would be “extremely lucky” to get through 1900 without alienating either the organization men or the Independents forever, and that “it would be tempting Providence to try for two terms.”
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