The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (82 page)

“I
HAVE MADE
this Commission a living force,” Roosevelt rejoiced on 23 June.
⁵²
He was in tremendous spirits, as always after battling the ungodly. There was, as yet, no official reaction to his
“slam among the post offices.” Some rumblings of displeasure over the Indianapolis affair had been heard down Pennsylvania Avenue, but he doubted the President was really upset. “It is to Harrison’s credit, all we are doing in enforcing the law. I am part of the Administration; if I do good work it redounds to the credit of the Administration.”
⁵³

This cheerful optimism was not shared by his Republican friends, nor by Postmaster General Wanamaker, who was reported “enraged” by the press coverage enjoyed by Roosevelt on tour.
⁵⁴
To investigate discreetly was one thing; to cross-examine senior Post Office executives in public, and express his contempt for them afterward, at dictating speed, was another. Even the loyal Cabot Lodge warned him to keep out of the headlines until he was more settled in his job. “I cry
peccavi,”
Roosevelt replied, “and will assume a statesmanlike reserve of manner whenever reporters come near me.”
⁵⁵

Reserved or not, he could not quell his bubbling good humor. Things were going particularly well for that other Roosevelt, the man of letters. Volumes One and Two of
The Winning of the West
had been published during his absence, to panegyrical newspaper reviews. “No book published for many years,” remarked the
Tribune
, “has shown a closer grasp of its subject, a more thorough fitness in the writer, or more honest and careful methods of treatment. Nor must the literary ability and skill displayed throughout be overlooked. Many episodes … are written with remarkable dramatic and narrative power.
The Winning of the West
is, in short, an admirable and deeply interesting book, and will take its place with the most valuable and indispensable works in the library of American history.”
⁵⁶

He would have to wait for several months for more learned opinions, but in the meantime he could cherish a complimentary letter from the great Parkman himself. “I am much pleased you like the book,” Roosevelt wrote in acknowledgment. “I have always intended to devote myself to essentially American work; and literature must be my mistress perforce, for although I enjoy politics I appreciate perfectly the exceedingly short nature of my tenure.”
⁵⁷

If John Wanamaker had had his way, Roosevelt’s tenure would have been the shortest in the history of the Civil Service Commission. The Postmaster General was reluctant—and the President even
more so—to fire Postmaster Paul for abuse of the merit system, even though that individual was a Democratic holdover. The precedent thus established would mean that Roosevelt, in future, could demand the dismissal of Republican postmasters for the same reason. In any case, Wanamaker did not like being told what to do in his own department by a junior member of the Administration. His chance for revenge came at the beginning of July, when Roosevelt came to him in great agitation to report that Paul had dismissed Hamilton Shidy for treachery and insubordination. Wanamaker curtly refused to intervene.
⁵⁸

This placed Roosevelt in a highly embarrassing position. As Shidy’s promised protector, he was in honor bound to find him another federal job. But as Civil Service Commissioner, he was in honor bound to enforce the law. How could he give patronage to a confessed falsifier of government records? How could he, in all conscience, not do so? Wanamaker, of course, understood his dilemma, and knew that the best way out was for him to resign. “That hypocritical haberdasher!” Roosevelt exploded. “He is an ill-constitutioned creature, oily, with bristles sticking up through the oil.”
⁵⁹

On 10 July a telegram summoned the three Commissioners to the White House. Roosevelt may have wondered if he was about to go the same way as Shidy, but he was pleasantly surprised by Harrison’s attitude. “The old boy is with us,” he told Lodge. “The Indianapolis business gave him an awful wrench, but he has swallowed the medicine, and in his talk with us today did not express the least dissatisfaction with any of our deeds or utterances.”
⁶⁰

Fortified by these signs of Presidential approval, Roosevelt was able to persuade the Superintendent of the Census to find a place for Hamilton Shidy in his bureau.
⁶¹
Wanamaker philosophically agreed to the transfer, and Roosevelt, feeling that he had settled a gentlemanly debt, doubtless thought no more about it.

D
AILY THE SUN GREW
hotter, softening the asphalt in the streets and glaring on marble and whitewash. Slum dwellers began to sweep out their shanties, filling the air with acrid dust. Pleasure-boats on the Potomac hoarsely encouraged office-workers to play
hooky. Every evening millions of mosquitoes left the marshes south of the White House and fanned out in search of human blood. As August approached, the city’s population decreased by almost one-third, and the tempo of government business slowed almost to a standstill.
⁶²

Roosevelt was unable to prevent the Civil Service Commission from lapsing into what he called “innocuous desuetude.” The evidence is he did not try very hard, for his own duties were light. “It is pretty dreary to sizzle here, day after day, doing routine work that the good Lyman is quite competent to attend to himself.” He tried to begin his history of New York, but found he could not write. He spent $1.50 on a new volume of Swinburne, read a few voluptuous lines, then threw it away in disgust. “My life,” he mourned, “seems to grow more and more sedentary, and I am rapidly sinking into fat and lazy middle age.”
⁶³

Clearly he was in need of his annual vacation in the West. If President Harrison would only hurry up and announce the dismissal of Postmaster Paul, he could take the next train out of town “with a light heart and a clear conscience.”
⁶⁴
But the White House preserved an enigmatic silence. Then, as Roosevelt chafed at his desk, a thunderbolt struck him.

F
RANK
H
ATTON
, editor of the
Washington Post
, was an ex–Postmaster General and an enemy of Civil Service Reform.
⁶⁵
He was also a shrewd promoter who knew the value of a running fight in boosting circulation. On 28 July he suddenly decided to launch an attack on Roosevelt. His lead editorial derided the Commissioner as “this young ‘banged’ (and still to be banged more) disciple of counterfeit reform.” He accused Roosevelt of personally condoning many violations of the Civil Service Law, and of misappropriating—or misspending—large sums of federal money. Without being specific as to any recent crimes, Hatton said that “the Fifth Avenue sport” had bribed his way into the New York mayoralty campaign, and made “disreputable” deals with machine politicians.
⁶⁶

Nostrils dilated, Roosevelt rushed to the podium to deny these “falsehoods.” He was tempted, he said, to use “a still stronger and
shorter word.”
⁶⁷
Hatton’s reply, published the following day, shrewdly played upon that temptation.

On the same day this editorial appeared, Roosevelt bumped into President Harrison, who had doubtless read it with amusement over breakfast. Psychologically the moment was unsuitable for a speech in Western dialect, but Roosevelt, hoping he could persuade Harrison not to take Wanamaker’s side in the Paul case, made one anyhow. He quoted the prayer of a backwoodsman battling a grizzly: “Oh Lord, help me kill that b’ar, and if you don’t help me, oh Lord, don’t help the b’ar.”
⁶⁸
But Harrison reserved the Almighty’s right of no reply, and walked on, leaving Roosevelt no wiser than before.

July ended, and August began, with the offending postmaster still in office. Roosevelt vented his frustration in an interview with the
New York Sun
, accusing “a certain Cabinet officer” of working against the cause of Civil Service Reform.
⁶⁹
Hatton reprinted his words in the
Post
, and commented that if this charge by “the High,
Joint, Silver-Plated Reform Commissioner” was true, it reflected upon the entire Cabinet, and upon President Harrison himself. “It is all very well for this powdered and perfumed dude to be interviewed every day, but what the public would like to know is whom he meant, what Cabinet officer he referred to, when he said that the Civil Service law was being evaded … This is a very serious charge for you, Mr. Commissioner Roosevelt, to make against the Administration.”
⁷⁰

Hatton sent a squad of reporters to ask all the Cabinet members whom they thought Roosevelt was accusing. “I would have to be a mind-reader to guess,” said John Wanamaker smoothly.
⁷¹

On 5 August Roosevelt was summoned to the White House and told that God had decided in favor of the grizzly. Rather than dismiss Postmaster Paul outright, Harrison had merely accepted a letter of resignation. “It was a golden chance to take a good stand; and it had been lost,” Roosevelt wrote bitterly.
⁷²

That night he headed West to clear his mind and recondition his body. With unconscious symbolism, he proclaimed himself “especially hot for bear.”
⁷³

J
UST AS THE SUN
sank behind the Rockies, and dusk crept down into the Montana foothills, he came across a brook in a clearing carpeted with moss and
kinni-kinic
berries.
⁷⁴
He spread his buffalo-bag across a bed of pine needles, dragged up a few dry logs, and then strolled off, rifle on shoulder, to see if he could pick up a grouse for supper.

Walking quickly and silently through the August twilight, he came to the crest of a ridge and peeped over it. There, in the valley below, was his grizzly. It was ambling along with its huge head down—a perfect shot at sixty yards. Roosevelt fired. His bullet entered the flank, ranging forward into the lungs. There was a moaning roar, and the bear galloped heavily into a thicket of laurel. He raced down the hill in pursuit, but the grizzly disappeared before he could cut it off. A peculiar savage whining told him it had not gone far. Unwilling to risk death by following, he began to tiptoe around the thicket, straining for a glimpse of fur through the glossy leaves. Suddenly they parted, and man and bear encountered each other.