Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [251]
In political prose as in political speech, the President’s most characteristic weapon was the rhythmically beating fist. Every beat punched home an idea or part of an idea, and he never stopped punching.
He has only one limiting and devouring ambition, which is to move and convince. He has too much to say not to dispense altogether with artifices of style, too much faith and force to need anything else. He is a workman who puts the best of his energy into driving rivets. He hammers out understandings.
THE LEGISLATIVE CONSENSUS that Roosevelt wanted to forge during the winter of 1905–1906 was going to require more than huge amounts of energy. He would also have to exercise his gift for delicate negotiation—an attribute Bazalgette did not know about, since it was incommunicable in writing and by its nature discreet. The same landslide that had swept him back into power had elected a Congress with big Republican majorities, so whatever reforms he intended would have to be accomplished within the bounds of party orthodoxy. And prosperity was booming in both farms and factories. With a largely contented populace and a paralyzed political opposition (Parker had been the worst-beaten candidate in the history of the popular vote), he must whip up a moral fervor for his program, rather than the usual economic and social arguments that got difficult bills through.
Having found, during the last session of the Fifty-eighth Congress, that tariff revision was too divisive an issue to wreck his presidency on, he was happy to trade it for legislation addressing the fact that most American business was now conducted across state lines—a phenomenon the framers of the Constitution could not possibly have foreseen. That meant that “the government must in increasing degree supervise and regulate the workings of the railways engaged in interstate commerce.” The Sherman Act was no longer enough, nor the Anti-Rebate Law. The Bureau of Corporations could only monitor business malfeasance, not control it. What was needed was a larger, stronger Interstate Commerce Commission.
Here Roosevelt parted company with radicals demanding that the ICC be empowered to fix rates. As his letter to Baker showed, he believed that railroad executives justifiably took advantage of the free-enterprise system, and that a President’s job was to keep the system fair. The most he was prepared to ask Congress for was a maximum rate, to be imposed by the ICC only in cases of dispute.
Another law he was looking for was in the area of employer’s liability. This was not a new cause for him. As Governor of New York, he had signed a bill mandating it, and as President he had called for the protection of federal employees in the District of Columbia. Immediately after the last election, he had called for a comprehensive Congressional study of the subject, “with a view of extending the provisions of a great and constitutional law to all employments within the scope of Federal power.” That call had been mainly propaganda, since the lame-duck Fifty-eighth Congress had soon after quacked its last; but this time around, his intent was sincere. So was his desire for an investigation into child-labor abuses, legislation to maintain sanitary standards in the food industry, and governmental supervision of insurance corporations.
ONE OF THE FIRST things Roosevelt did after returning to Washington was to dedicate his forthcoming book to John Burroughs. He was greatly amused when Scribner’s mistakenly advertised the title as Outdoor Pastimes of an American Homer. “I am hurt and grieved at your evident jealousy of my poetic reputation,” he wrote Professor James Brander Matthews, who had sent him a note of mock inquiry from Columbia University. “If you saw my review of Mr. Robinson’s poems you may have noticed that I refrained