Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [215]
When Harriman called for an appointment, he was politely asked what he wanted to see the President about. In the event, he did not get down to Washington until the twentieth, by which time the “October scare” was moderating. Twelve thousand New Yorkers rah-rahing for Roosevelt at Madison Square Garden indicated that the President was still strong in the Empire State, even if Higgins was not.
Roosevelt received Harriman—small, curt, dark, quick—late in the afternoon, alone except for William Loeb, who was soon excused. That evening, the financier returned to the White House for dinner. There were no other guests. Roosevelt spent most of the time talking about New York politics. Whatever else was said, Harriman went back north committed to raising $260,000 on behalf of New York GOP candidates. He had a pleased sense of usefulness and high importance. “They are all in a hole,” he boasted to an aide, “and the President wants me to help them out.”
HARRIMAN PROVED AS good as his word, personally contributing fifty thousand dollars and leaning on several of his Wall Street colleagues. J. P. Morgan, who had once said that Roosevelt would be lucky to raise more than a four-figure sum in the whole financial district, gave one hundred thousand dollars, following up with fifty thousand more. Millionaires virtually stood in line as realization spread that the President was likely to be elected by a historic majority. Chauncey Depew doffed his Senatorial hat, put on that of chairman of the New York Central Railroad, and gave $100,000. Henry Clay Frick gave $50,000, saying that he would be amenable to further requests. George Perkins wrote three separate checks totaling $450,000, with the good wishes of himself, the House of Morgan, and the New York Life Insurance Company. George J. Gould, of Western Union and the Great Northern Railway, gave fully half a million dollars. Other donations came in from executives of Standard Oil, National City Life, General Electric, American Can, and International Harvester.
The flood became an embarrassment for Roosevelt. Did all these men imagine they were buying him? “Corporate cunning has developed faster than the laws of nation and state,” he remarked to the reporter Lindsay Denison. “Sooner or later, unless there is a readjustment, there will come a riotous, wicked, murderous day of atonement.” Born to wealth, with an inherited sense that it must be repaid with public service, he found himself increasingly repelled by those who went after money for money’s sake, or used it to buy power. Unless wealth was chastened by culture or regulated by government, it was at worst predatory, at best boring. He did not care how little time he spent in future with E. H. Harriman. “It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worth hearing; but as a rule they don’t know anything outside their own businesses.”
DEMOCRATIC CAMPAIGN OFFICIALS could not hide their disappointment in Alton B. Parker. Although James J. Hill and George F. Baer had been generous supporters of his candidacy, their primary desire was obviously to stop Roosevelt rather than support Parker. His refusal to do or say anything partisan was irritating reporters and alienating voters. As one workingman complained, “The Jedge hain’t quite riz to the occasion.”
On 22 October, in New York, the veteran strategist Daniel S. Lamont tried to shock Parker’s complacency. “Well, you are going to be licked, old fellow, but brace up and make the best fight you can, and when it is over, come down here and practice law.”
Like most presidential candidates, Parker could not believe bad news. “How do you know I am going to be defeated?”
“Why, they have underwritten it, just as they would