Theodore Rex (50 page)

The arbitration negotiations, begun in plenary on the twenty-sixth, were not going well. Herbert Bowen was blustering so much about American security that he was neglecting the desperate condition of Venezuela, starved even for bread and salt. Britain was agreeable to a token settlement, but Germany insisted on full retribution. Her envoys now talked of occupying Venezuela’s customs houses for the next six or seven years.

That sounded, to Roosevelt, ominously like the beginning of another “ninety-nine year lease.”

“
Are people in Berlin crazy?” he burst out to the German
chargé d’affaires
, Count Albert von Quadt. “Don’t they know that they are inflaming public opinion more and more here?”

He did not add that one of his own German informants had told him that war fever was on the rise in the Reich. But he counted the hours until Quadt’s new boss arrived at the White House on 31 January.

BARON VON STERNBURG
found the atmosphere along Massachusetts Avenue much changed from the days when he and Sir Michael Herbert had been young men about town together, playing tennis with “Teddy” and courting American girls. Indeed, it had become more formal in the few months since von Sternburg had been the President’s houseguest. Now he represented the full majesty of the German state.

After his first formal meeting with Roosevelt, von Sternburg told Sir
Michael (“Mungo” no longer) that the President had not concealed his impatience for a prompt settlement of the Venezuela dispute. Roosevelt had also, disturbingly, suggested that the Anglo-German alliance was weakening. If so, the Kaiser’s small squadron might soon be left alone in the Caribbean, facing 130,000 tons of American armor.

Von Sternburg sent a worried cable to the Wilhelmstrasse, just as his predecessor had done in December. He warned that the United States fleet had again been ordered to “hold itself in readiness.”
Whether it was this threat, or Bowen’s bullying, or advices from London that the British Government was in danger of collapse, German intransigence at the arbitration table soon moderated.

ROOSEVELT COULD NOT
resist boasting about his sense of burgeoning American power to his next ambassadorial visitor, Jules Jusserand, on 7 February. “
I am not for disarmament,” he said. On the contrary, he intended to build up the American Army and Navy until they could handle “foes more formidable than Spain ever was.”

Relaxing in the silken glow of the Blue Room, the two men took stock of each other. Roosevelt was familiar with Jusserand’s writings, in particular a study of
Piers Plowman
that had made him temporarily wistful about the low estate of American literary scholarship. Now he saw a dapper, dark-bearded little diplomat, shorter even than Secretary Hay, yet wiry beneath his weight of gold braid. Jusserand’s eyes were a brilliant black, his nose sharply beaked. He had a birdlike habit of cocking his head to one side, and when he did so with his plumed helmet on, Roosevelt had to struggle not to laugh.

The Ambassador’s own first impression of “the extraordinary President … more powerful than a King,” was one of both relief and surprise. He felt himself being swept away by a
joie de vivre
that engulfed all trouble. Unlike Bowen, he sensed no brutality, only the “force of will to do things.”

Beaming like a schoolboy proud of his homework, Roosevelt launched into a discussion of Jusserand’s books. He related material in
English Wayfaring Life
to the habits of hoboes in Colorado, said he had been reading
Piers Plowman
on his ill-fated trip west, and talked of Chaucer and Petrarch, Shakespeare and Voltaire. Then, perhaps sensing Hay’s polite distress, he intoned a few “cordial sentiments” for transmittal to the Quai d’Orsay, and the interview was over.

THAT EVENING
, Roosevelt the diplomat reverted to Roosevelt the politician. For several weeks he had been log-walking nimbly from one antitrust bill to another, keeping up with the general flow through Congress, waiting to see which would prove the most buoyant and fastest-moving.
Already, almost
twenty different such measures had jammed or sunk from sight. Knox’s Expedition Bill floated free out front, sure of passage. With a special “antitrust provision” promised out of general appropriations, the Attorney General could now count on the substantial funds and quick process he needed to prosecute rogue corporations. Senator Stephen B. Elkins similarly guaranteed an Anti-Rebate Bill that would satisfy both the Administration and fair-minded railroad executives.

Congressman Charles Littlefield’s antimonopoly bill lay ponderously low despite House approval, and its sharpest protuberance—a clause empowering the government to subpoena corporate records—seemed certain to jag at the weir of the Senate.
Just behind came what was now known (greatly to Roosevelt’s irritation) as the “Department of Commerce and Labor” Bill. Having been subtly reshaped in committee by Senator Knute Nelson, it sought to establish a double agency that would monitor all aspects of industrial production, while giving the President of the United States direct control over the Bureau of Corporations.
Thus, Roosevelt alone would decide whether the private workings of trusts should be publicized or not.

In view of this privilege, he decided to step finally from Littlefield’s to his own bill. But before doing so, he wanted to get full press attention. Luck and perfect timing gave him a story that made headlines all over the country:

Not since his Northern Securities announcement had Roosevelt so effectively provoked a popular outcry. Thanks to
McClure’s
, John D. Rockefeller was once again a depised symbol of corporate greed, and Standard Oil stereotyped as the ultimate antigovernment trust.
Both impressions were unfair: Rockefeller was semiretired and devoted to charitable works, while his great corporation had operated fairly and lawfully for years. But Roosevelt knew from experience that a public image, once registered, is almost impossible to rephotograph: later exposures only darken the underlying silhouette. Just as
he
was for all time “the Rough Rider,” so was Rockefeller “the Robber Baron,” and Standard Oil “the Anaconda,” constricting democracy in its coils.

By publicizing these three images simultaneously, he simplified the complicated situati
on in Congress and strengthened support for the “Roosevelt plan.” And by identifying six senators as recipients of Standard Oil’s “orders,” he ensured six votes in favor of the Bureau of Corporations: the honorable gentlemen could hardly reject him now without seeming to be Rockefeller stooges.

Subsequent articles revealed that the name
Rockefeller
had appeared on only two of Standard Oil’s germane telegrams, and that it was in any case qualified by the abbreviation
Jr
. This did not save Rockefeller Senior from being accused of “the most brazen attempt in the history of lobbying.”

The old tycoon maintained a hurt silence. When the Department of Commerce and Labor Bill got to the Senate, it was approved in thirty seconds flat.

ON 8 FEBRUARY
, Woodrow Wilson, the president of Princeton, got a big laugh explaining to a meeting of alumni why this year’s groundhog had returned to its burrow. It was afraid that Theodore Roosevelt would put a “coon” in.

“
JUST AT PRESENT,”
Roosevelt wrote his eldest son, “Congress is doing most of the things I wish.”

For the first time since becoming President, he felt real political momentum. In response to his urgent demands, echoed by the General Board of the Navy, the House initiated legislation for four new battleships and two armored cruisers, while the Senate rewarded
Elihu Root’s long struggle for an Army General Staff.
By agreement with Great Britain, Roosevelt and King Edward VII were each empowered to appoint three “impartial jurists of repute” to negotiate the Alaskan boundary dispute.
Favorable action on the Panama Canal Treaty was promised—as soon as Senator Morgan stopped filibustering it.

Roosevelt did not like the sound of that filibuster, and he was wary of corresponding tactics to delay the Cuban Reciprocity Treaty through the end of the session. Knowing that his legislative luck might not last, he worked around the clock without intermission, lobbying even as he ate.

On Saturday, 14 February, the Commerce and Labor Act arrived on his desk. He signed it with two pens, one of which went to the man he had decided to appoint as Secretary of the new Department: George Cortelyou. The other pen went to George Perkins of J. P. Morgan and Company. Evidently, Roosevelt expected the future relations of government and business to be amicable rather than antagonistic.

As a final cadence to these resolving harmonies, news came before night-fall
that Herbert Bowen and his fellow negotiants at the Venezuela conference had agreed on a protocol to be submitted to The Hague. The last foreign battleships were steaming out of the Western Hemisphere.