Colonel Roosevelt (55 page)

Roosevelt forgot, or chose to ignore, that Wilson’s professional career had begun in Georgia.
He blustered on in a way that grated on the sensibilities of his listeners, used as they were to the polite formalities of Southern speech. There were ten thousand people in the hall, including two thousand standees who crowded close to the stage to get a better view of him. As heckling spread and anger grew, he sprang onto the speaker’s table and bellowed, “I’ll get up here so you’ll all have a chance to see me.” His truculence momentarily struck the crowd dumb. Afterward, he had to be hustled out a side door.

HE RETURNED TO
Oyster Bay on 2 October, worn out from his trip, only to find that O. K. Davis had organized another, to begin in a matter of days. It would link strategic points of the Midwest that he had missed the first time around, including lower and upper Michigan, the main cities of Minnesota, Illinois, and Wisconsin, and scores of lesser whistle-stops across the heartland of Republican insurgency. Wilson was again barnstorming that territory, attracting huge crowds, and looking more and more like the next President of the United States. Roosevelt had so far managed only to pull well ahead of Taft and Debs. His best hope was to make such a strong second-place finish as to confirm regulatory Progressivism as the political philosophy of the future.

Willard Straight, a family friend of the Roosevelts, came to visit and found Sagamore Hill a gloomy place.
He got the impression that Theodore and Edith were worried about money, with two boys still boarding in expensive schools and each looking forward to four years at Harvard. Roosevelt was also harassed by yet another Senate probe—this time into charges that he had accepted improper campaign contributions in 1904. The committee’s evidence, focusing on an alleged $25,000 payment from Standard Oil in exchange for immunity from antitrust prosecution, made no sense, because he had sued the company anyway. But he now had to sacrifice a day of rest and go to Washington to testify.

After he got back,
a conference of Progressive leaders took place at Sagamore
Hill. Senator Dixon presided, with George Perkins exuding new authority as chairman of the Party’s Executive Committee. Hiram Johnson was there, a small man with a loud voice, and Oscar Straus, who was running for governor of New York, along with Frank Munsey and Walter F. Brown, the Ohio boss.

It was essentially a godspeed session, to cheer the Colonel up and discuss strategy and tactics for the final four weeks of the campaign.
Wilson had come up with a catchy slogan, promising Americans a “New Freedom” to restore the balance of government and individualism that had served them so well before the age of combination. It would be a policy subject, however, to the restraints of modern antitrust law. In that respect it amounted to a Jeffersonian rewrite of Roosevelt’s New Nationalism—what Wilson, in another telling phrase, called “government by experts.”

The electorate had to be persuaded that the Progressive Party was not paternalistic, nor was it a one-man band.
Johnson had a twenty-two-state speaking tour planned, while Straus took care of the Empire State, and Brown worked to humiliate Taft at home.
In Indiana, Albert Beveridge was also running for governor, pouring out a flood of eloquent addresses that were widely reprinted. The Party had dozens of other gubernatorial aspirants campaigning as far south as Florida and Texas, plus state, Congressional, and local candidates in all regions of the country. A loose-strung but vital network of bosses, reformers, publishers, and legislators supported this drive for recognition. In some states, including most of New England, the network sagged hopelessly, due to lack of leadership or funds. But on the whole, Dixon’s National Committee had distinguished itself—appointing, at the outset, four women as members-at-large. That Progressivism had in fact spread so far, staffed so many offices, and publicized so comprehensive an ideology since August was something of a political miracle. Whatever the movement’s immediate prospects, it looked to be firmly established in 1916. Roosevelt had to hide the fact that he dreaded being asked to lead it again.

“
CHILDREN, DON’T CROWD
so close to the car, it might back up, and
(falsetto)
we can’t afford to lose any little Bull Mooses, you know.”

The Colonel was back in his private Pullman, the
Mayflower
, traveling west. Young Philip Roosevelt attended as his personal aide, plus Dr. Scurry Terrell, a throat specialist, Cecil Lyon, leader of the Texan Progressives, and Henry F. Cochems, chairman of the Party speaker’s bureau. O. K. Davis and two stenographers, Elbert E. Martin and John W. McGrath, made up the rest of the entourage. An adjoining car carried gentlemen of the press.

Roosevelt seemed a new man after his brief stay at home, quickly absorbing an eighty-thousand-word dossier on Wilson. Lawrence Abbott, reporting
for
The Outlook
, compared him to “an electric battery of inexhaustible energy,” making decisions “with a celerity of judgment which takes one’s breath away.” At some stops, he was so charged that he would shadow-box through the caboose before bursting out and haranguing whatever throng he found ranged across the track. On 9 October alone, he gave thirty speeches in Michigan, pointedly quoting some anti-labor remarks that Wilson had made as president of Princeton.

“
I’m fur Teddy,” a scrubwoman declared. Asked why, she said, “He’s fur me.”

When not orating, he would dictate further speeches for use down the line. The toll on his voice soon began to show. There was something manic about the way he drove himself, and the way he ate: Philip’s main duty was to keep large meals coming. Since February, Roosevelt had gained so much weight that Frank
Munsey, a strict dieter, felt obliged to warn him of the coronary effect of too much heavily salted roast beef and Idaho potatoes.
Rumors persisted that he was a boozer. “Did you see that?” somebody said in Duluth, Minnesota, as the Colonel’s retinue hustled him through a surging crowd in the lobby of his hotel. “He was so drunk they had to carry him upstairs!”

Actually, “they” were worried about physical assaults, whether affectionate, as from those who wished to tear at his clothing, or worse. The fanaticism of his followers became more apparent the deeper he penetrated the Midwest. Almost half the population of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, turned out in pouring rain to hear him.
His speech—a comparison of his and Wilson’s tariff policies—was received as if it were the Holy Writ. He decided to use parts of it again when he spoke in Milwaukee, in the heart of La Follette country.

But first, Chicago beckoned: a much more favorable city, with Medill McCormick’s newspaper, the
Tribune
, daily propounding Progressivism. By the time Roosevelt got there on the morning of the twelfth, Dr. Terrell was seriously concerned about his roughening throat, and persuaded him to cancel three speeches the following day. That afternoon Roosevelt addressed an open-air meeting. A raw wind blew in from the lake, nearly silencing him.
After dinner he had to speak again, in the enormous Coliseum, and his voice broke altogether. For the next thirty-six hours he was reduced to whispering.

He should have nursed his laryngitis through Monday, 14 October, in order to save vocal strength for his important speech in Milwaukee that evening. But he impulsively decided to make an appearance in Gary, Indiana, the home of U.S. Steel. He wanted to show that he was not ashamed of his relationship with the world’s biggest trust, nor of having one of its directors, George W. Perkins, as his closest adviser—something Wilson had drawn attention to.

Roosevelt spoke there for no more than four minutes, but it was enough to fray his voice again.
He returned to Chicago for lunch. During the meal, O. K.
Davis handed him a letter from a well-wisher in Detroit, enclosing a newspaper clipping and suggesting that action should be brought against its publisher.

The clipping was only two days old, and came from the Ishpeming, Michigan,
Iron Ore
, a small Republican sheet owned and published by one George A. Newett. It concerned the Colonel’s moral character, and contained the direct libel he had been looking for:

He read the article through, then said to Davis, “
Let’s go at him.”

LATER THAT AFTERNOON
, the
Mayflower
hitched itself to another train and headed for Wisconsin. Advance word came that a “GXLC” situation portended in Milwaukee, with plans for a grand parade and public dinner before Roosevelt’s speech. Dr. Terrell refused to let his patient be subjected to these strains.

Upon the train’s arrival in Milwaukee at six o’clock, members of the local Progressive committee came aboard, and were told that the Colonel was “extremely tired.” He would dine privately in his car, rest for an hour or so, and not use his voice until the time came for him to speak at the Auditorium. Even then, he would be able to make only a few opening remarks. The main text of his address would have to be read for him. O. K. Davis explained that Roosevelt had long speeches scheduled every night for the rest of the campaign.

The committee chairman complained so bitterly that Roosevelt took pity on him and said to Davis, “
I want to be a good Indian, O. K.”

From that moment he was the committee’s prisoner. He was driven through a mile-long, rejoicing crowd to the Gilpatrick Hotel on Third Street. A hospitality suite awaited him upstairs. Before sitting down to dinner, he lay back in a rocking chair and napped—something Davis had never seen him do before. Shortly after eight, he folded his speech typescript into his inner right jacket pocket and walked down two flights of stairs to the lobby. Henry Cochems and a bodyguard named Alfred Girard preceded him. He was flanked on one side by Elbert Martin and Cecil Lyon, and on the other by Philip Roosevelt and Fred Leuttisch, a Party security man.

OUTSIDE IN THE ILL-LIT STREET
, his roofless, seven-seat automobile stood waiting. A rope cordon kept the sidewalk clear, but several hundred onlookers clustered in the street beyond. Martin opened the vehicle’s near rear door, and
Roosevelt got in. He took his customary right-hand seat while his escorts fanned out to take theirs. Lyon ran round the back. As he did so, the crowd in the street moved closer, cheering. The Colonel stood up to bow, waving his hat in his right hand.