Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [23]
The United States, with seventy-seven million citizens, was still uncrowded and healthily competitive. But its social balance would be threatened if poverty spread in proportion to immigration. (Hundreds of Japanese coolies and thousands of dirt-poor Chinese peasants were arriving every month, boxed in barrels, buried under potatoes, sandwiched between bales of hay.) The worst thing he could do now was “let well enough alone.” Somehow he must grant a little leisure, and a little extra money, to the multitudes currently working only to survive. This would enable them to develop those noneconomic virtues—intelligence, unselfishness, courage, decency—which he loosely defined as “character.” Character determined the worth of the individual, and “what is true of the individual is also true of the nation.”
At the same time, he must persuade Union League Republicans that perpetual, mild reform was true conservatism, in that it protected existing institutions from atrophy, and relieved the buildup of radical pressure. All his life he had preached this doctrine. He would preach it louder now that he had universal attention. He might not have power—yet—to convert his Cabinet, much less the Senate. But youth and time were on his side, and the presidency promised to be “a bully pulpit.”
AS IF TO REASSURE Roosevelt that the America of his dreams could be a reality, the exquisite town of Lock Haven rocked into view. Tall houses glowed white and apricot in the mid-afternoon light. Willows trailed their fronds in the glassy river, quiet lanes divided schools and steeples and shops. Here was Social Order, in the harmonious interdependence of rich and poor. Here was Fecundity, symbolized by the women on every stoop, lifting their babies to bless the new President. Here was Industry, in the form of an immaculate paper mill. And here—palpably, all about—was Morality. The fine white paper from that mill went under contract to Roosevelt’s good friend Edward W. Bok, publisher of Ladies’ Home Journal. Both men believed that the bourgeois domestic environment—efficient, loving, aesthetic, mother-controlled—was the nucleus of a perfect society (although Roosevelt wished the Journal would emphasize women’s suffrage less, and regular childbearing more).
Girls softly pelted the train with flowers as it steamed through Lock Haven Depot. More girls with more flowers were waiting down the line, at Williamsport. The locomotive stopped there briefly to take on water, and an invitation scrawled in childish capitals was delivered to Roosevelt’s car. Unable to resist it, he stepped outside and bowed. A little boy yelled “Hooray!” then burst into tears as an older girl smacked him for irreverence. The train jerked forward again, crossed the Susquehanna, and entered a broad landscape of harvest crops, orchards, and stone farmhouses.
Thickening crowds at every level crossing announced the approach to Harrisburg. Urchins perched like starlings on telephone poles. Soon even haystacks bore teetering human loads. At twenty minutes to five, city buildings closed in. A crescendo of ten thousand voices singing “Nearer My God to Thee” floated out of Union Station. Church bells, steam whistles, and several discordant bands joined in the din.
Governor William Stone of Pennsylvania was waiting on the platform with an honor guard, but Roosevelt stayed aloof behind drawn blinds. Harrisburg was notoriously the most corrupt seat of state government in the nation. It was also a bedrock of orthodox Republicanism. This posed delicate problems of executive strategy. If he wished to preserve his honest reputation, he could not identify too closely with machine politicians here—yet to govern effectively he had to cooperate with the machine’s Washington representatives. Only three weeks ago he had mused, “Were I President, I should certainly endeavor to do what the two Pennsylvania Senators wished in matters of patronage—so as I honorably could.”
A messenger