Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [117]
These requests, written in English, were passed to Philander Knox, who translated them into language convoluted enough for Congressmen to understand. Even as “Administration bills,” they were less ambitious than some other antitrust measures already pending in the House. One such, sponsored by Representative Charles E. Littlefield of Maine, sought to give the Interstate Commerce Commission draconian powers over all monopolistic corporations. Inasmuch as it contained some Rooseveltian ideas, the President let Littlefield know that he could count on him for support. “I am prepared to go the whole distance!” He did not add that he doubted the distance would be very long, legislatively speaking.
The “Bureau of Corporations” clause in his own Department of Commerce bill struck Roosevelt as a more realistic proposal. Corporations would not be forced to open their books if they felt disinclined. All that Knox called for was an information exchange between government and industry, for the common good. Wall Street raised no objections, but corporate representatives congregated in Washington to make sure that the bill did not get stronger in committee. The House of Morgan sent an adroit lobbyist, William C. Beer, to monitor Roosevelt’s dealings with Capitol Hill.
“He was jovial—away up,” Beer reported to George Perkins, after his first presidential encounter. “I am sure that he feels the Department of Commerce is his baby, and his alone.”
JUSSERAND AND VON STERNBURG, both still in Europe, were unable to attend the President’s annual Diplomatic Reception on 8 January. But the rest of their Washington colleagues were there, beribboned and bemedaled, clutching swords, checking the precedence list posted outside the Blue Room. (“Germany” was slashed off the top in pencil: so much for the former doyency of Theodor von Holleben.) Secretary Hay, a diminutive, elegant figure in black, stood behind the President as he shook hands. His snowy beard screened all expression. Only the slanting, hemiopic eyes flashed occasionally with what Henry Adams called his “cosmic cynicism.”
One by one the diplomats filed by, bowing at an international variety of angles. Two of the most junior loomed disproportionately large in Roosevelt’s spectacles: Don Gonzalo de Quesada, Minister of Cuba, and Dr. Tomás Herrán, the Colombian chargé d’affaires. They served as walking reminders that the two treaties he wanted most—respectively granting Cuban trade reciprocity and canal rights in Panama—were still nothing but draft protocols.
Roosevelt’s strategy regarding the first measure was simple. Hay assured Quesada that if Congress had not helped his struggling republic by 4 March, the President would call a special session and compel it to sit until “justice was done.” The canal treaty presented a more vexing problem, in that Herrán kept getting conflicting instructions from Bogotá. Depending on the vagaries of sea mail and Colombia’s chronically faulty telegraph system, he was at times ordered not to sign Hay’s protocol, and at others, apparently, authorized to haggle over its monetary terms as if he were negotiating a contract for the sale of coffee.
Downstairs, 1,800 nondiplomatic guests were discovering that the White House’s new spaciousness had been bought at the expense of old coziness. The night was blustery, and as group after group crowded through the swing doors into the East Wing lobby, frigid gusts blew through the basement. Footmen confiscated coats and wraps, in exchange for cold metal tabs that some women stored wincingly en décolletage. Until all the ambassadors and ministers were received above, there could be no movement of the thinly clad throng. Mothers and daughters huddled together for warmth while the gusts rearranged their coiffures and