Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [300]
WALL STREET’S currency drought lasted through November. Cortelyou, whose commitment of Treasury funds into the New York banks had increased to $69 million, got presidential permission to raise $150 million more in government and Panama bonds, just to keep the market buoyant. Not for at least a year, in expert opinion, would stocks rise back to pre-1907 levels. But a short recession after seven fat years seemed preferable to seven lean years, such as had followed the depression of 1893.
Roosevelt wrote Kermit to say that blame for the economic downturn would inevitably center on himself and his regulatory policies. He might have to spend the rest of his presidency answering to the two classes of people always most vociferous in hard times: the bewildered and the guilty. However, “I am absolutely certain that what I have done is right and ultimately will be of benefit to the country.”
His Seventh Annual Message to Congress, delivered on 4 December, rang throughout with the same unapologetic note. “There may be honest differences of opinion as to many government policies; but surely there can be no such differences as to the need of unflinching perseverance in the war against successful dishonesty.”
BY NO HINT OF a frown, or a yawn, did he ever suggest that such routine work had become boring for him. But his animation whenever he mentioned Admiral Robley Evans’s battle fleet, now assembling at Hampton Roads, Virginia, for its pre-Christmas departure, was palpable. With 348,000 tons of white-painted armor and gunmetal ready to sail at his command, and most of the civilized world waiting to see if such an armada could possibly hold together for more than a few days at sea, executive paperwork offered few compensatory charms.
Except, perhaps, the pleasure of striking four names off his annual Christmas-card list: Mr. E. H. Harriman, Mrs. Harriman, and the Misses Harriman.
THE SIXTIETH CONGRESS, dominated even more than the Fifty-ninth by Speaker Cannon and Senator Aldrich, made immediately plain that it intended to stand as a conservative battlement against whatever progressive onslaughts—or Constitution-defying executive orders—Roosevelt might throw against it. Congressmen who prided themselves on their personal rectitude disliked the now habitual preachiness (more bully than pulpit) with which the President told them what laws to pass. They recalled Tom Reed’s famous jibe, “If there is one thing for which I admire you more than anything else, Theodore, it is your original discovery of the Ten Commandments.”
Cannon and Aldrich, respectively self-appointed as the protectors of laissez-faire on Capitol Hill, had had their worst fears of Roosevelt’s financial irresponsibility confirmed by the stock-market slump. Eugene Hale, chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs, issued a statement saying that Congress would not appropriate funds to send the Great White Fleet on its way. Roosevelt countered by informing him that the Navy already had enough money in hand, and enough coal in store, to transfer its ships at least from one ocean to another—indeed, possibly as far as the Philippines. Congress was welcome to leave the fleet there—halfway around the world—if it wanted. As for his standing order to sail, “I am Commander-in-Chief, and my decision is absolute in the matter.”
This early skirmish established what would likely be the style of the two remaining legislative seasons of Roosevelt’s presidency: increasing obstructionism on Capitol Hill, more resort to surprise tactics at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Power attrition on both sides was the key factor. Only Senator Allison remained of Aldrich’s aging leadership. Orville Platt was dead, and John Spooner retired, a casualty of the LaFollette insurgency in Wisconsin. Cannon’s almost complete control of the House could not be denied,