The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [372]
Senator Platt became sympathetic to these arguments when he saw the proofs of Roosevelt’s Annual Message for 1900.6 Here was provocative language about the need for “increasing a more rigorous control” of public utility companies that had acquired wealth “by means which are utterly inconsistent with the highest laws of morality.” The state should be given power to inspect and examine thoroughly “all the workings of great corporations”—where necessary publishing its findings in the newspapers.7
Here, too, were suggestions that New York’s “defective” lumbering laws should be changed so as to prohibit the dumping of wood-dyes, sawdust, and other industrial products “in any amount whatsoever” into Adirondack streams. There were pleas for the protection of birds, “especially song birds,” and eccentric remarks like “a live deer in the woods will attract to the neighborhood ten times the money that could be obtained for the deer’s dead carcass.” In addition Roosevelt recommended that the liability of management for labor accidents should be increased, and he had harsh things to say about Republican corruption in last year’s “canal steal.”8
The message was, in short, alarmingly radical to a man of Platt’s conservative temperament. Even so, he would be inclined to tolerate it (in the knowledge that his lieutenants in the Legislature would not) were Roosevelt not also contemplating the dismissal of Superintendent of Insurance Louis F. Payn. This official, an aging, rattoothed defender of corrupt businessmen, had once been described by Elihu Root as “a stench in the nostrils of the people of the State of New York.”9
The Governor was entitled to plenty of animosity toward him, since Payn, a Black supporter, had been responsible for the publication of his embarrassing tax affidavit during the campaign of 1898.10 There had been little opportunity for revenge during 1899, for Payn’s three-year-term appointment was not due to expire until January 1900. But Roosevelt had been marshaling evidence against him for months. He found that the Superintendent had “intimate and secret money-making relations” with New York’s biggest insurance companies. Moreover, in the matter of appointments, Payn “represented the straitest sect of the old-time spoils politician.” While the evidence was not enough to warrant criminal prosecution, it at least justified the Governor’s decision to displace him.11
The problem was that the big insurance companies wished Payn reappointed. So, in consequence, did Senator Platt, and so did a majority of the Senate. This practically guaranteed Payn tenure, because until the Senate confirmed Roosevelt’s choice of a successor, the superintendent would remain in office under the state constitution.12
Roosevelt tried to mollify the Easy Boss by suggesting Francis J. Hendricks as a replacement. Hendricks was the very man Platt had ordered him to appoint as Superintendent of Public Works, back in the fall of 1898. The Senator, as was his wont, listened impassively and said nothing, but when Roosevelt offered the job directly, Hendricks declined “for business reasons.”13 The inference was he had been told not to accept.
Payn, meanwhile, declared his determination to stay, at a press conference on 12 December. “No one has ever charged that I have not performed my duties successfully,” he exclaimed in aggrieved tones.14 During the next couple of weeks the relative positions of Governor and Boss hardened on the issue. “Platt does not want me to fight Payn and feels pretty bitterly about it,” Roosevelt told Lodge on 29 December. More ominously, Platt had stopped making promises to protect him from the Vice-Presidency. He now merely quoted other people’s opinions that “it would not be a wise move … personally.” Then, as Albany filled up for the New Year’s opening of the Legislature, Roosevelt heard that Platt was telling intimates “that I would undoubtedly have to accept the Vice-Presidency;