Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [183]
He and Roosevelt stood side by side, with a mirror behind them, facing a semicircle of respectful faces. The committeemen could see the bald back of Hanna’s head in the glass, his arthritic stoop beside the President’s bursting virility. There was an awkward pause.
HANNA You had better pass around the room, Mr. President, and shake hands with each one.
ROOSEVELT All right, I was just wondering which was the best way to get at them.
HANNA You will have no trouble.… They are all anxious to see you.
ROOSEVELT (bowing) I have sat at the feet of Gamaliel.
Laughter warmed the room as he made his circuit.
Two days later, the committee came out of conference and expressed almost unanimous support for the President. As an endorsement, it was neither binding nor, indeed, expressed with any particular enthusiasm. But clearly Gamaliel had laid down his staff.
ON 14 DECEMBER, Knox put on a brilliant performance before the Supreme Court. Edith Roosevelt was there to watch and listen for her husband, along with Lodge, Spooner, and Moody. The little Attorney General spoke calmly, piling premise upon premise with plump smacks of fist into palm. He argued that any obstruction to interstate commerce, “whether it be a sandbar, a mob, or a monopoly,” could and should be removed by the government. The Northern Securities Company was obstructive in that it had the effect, if not the technical title, of a “trustee arrangement” uncontrollable by individual states. Although the Justices listened impassively (Oliver Wendell Holmes slouching, silky-mustached, on the extreme left of the Bench), most observers felt that Knox’s argument was unanswerable.
“MR. PRESIDENT, I HAVE THE HONOR TO PRESENT …”
Mark Hanna and members of the Republican National Committee, 11 December 1903 (photo credit 19.1)
Roosevelt was overjoyed. This boded well for a favorable decision in the spring. In other good news, Nicaragua became the first Latin American nation to recognize Panama. All the world’s major powers had already done so except Britain and Japan, and their announcements were due at any moment.
Further presents crammed his presidential stocking. The Senate voted for Cuban reciprocity, 57 to 8. G. P. Putnam’s Sons confirmed a thirty-thousand-dollar contract for the publication of a new edition of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt in fourteen volumes. Another thirty thousand dollars was deposited to his account in New York as the bequest of a deceased uncle. Although the most cash the President generally saw was what Edith put in his pocket, he understood that in his forty-sixth year, he was beginning to be rich.
Better than money, his greatest dream in life seemed more and more realizable. According to the New York Herald, twenty-three states had already pledged him 496 votes at next June’s Republican National Convention—eleven more than he needed to be nominated. And ten months remained for him to persuade the American people that he was no longer “His Accidency,” but a substantial statesman deserving their vote of confidence.
THE SEVENTEENTH OF December 1903 was a workday much like any other for Roosevelt. He faced, at carefully timed intervals through the morning, a newspaper owner from upstate New York, a counsel to the Hague tribunal, a consul from Shanghai, an aspirant postmaster from Missouri, an old hayseed from Oklahoma, the secretary of the Postal Progress League, the Attorney General of the United States, two doctors, three reverends, six senators, fifteen railway inspectors, and uncounted congressmen. At one o’clock, he was to conduct his usual barbershop levée. Root, Lodge, and Cortelyou were scheduled to join him for lunch, along with Winthrop Murray Crane. There would be precious little time for exercise in the afternoon, since he had bills to sign and letters to dictate, and appointments every hour until six o’clock. Then he must play bear with Archie and Quentin, spend some time with Edith, and dress for the Cabinet dinner. And the Odells and Mellens would be