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and Speaker Cannon on his left (in a severe sulk at being downgraded). Elsewhere in the room, he could see members of what Owen Wister called his “Concert of Familiars”: Gifford Pinchot, hawk-nosed at the extreme south end of the shoe next to Frank McCoy, who had hauled down Old Glory in Havana, six years before; John Mitchell of United Mine Workers, dulled by drink; Justice Holmes, long since returned to presidential favor; handsome James Garfield; Commander William Sims, the Navy reformer, even handsomer; and Justice Moody, clean-shaven now, with a strange aloofness settled upon him, the most interesting-looking man in the room. Faces less intimately familiar looked back at him from among the many anonymous governors: Andrew Carnegie and James J. Hill, millionaires; Captain Archibald Willingham de Graffenreid Butt, his new Georgian military aide; Senator Newlands of Nevada; and William Jennings Bryan, probably the last person any social secretary would expect to see on the President’s dinner list, with the exception of Booker T. Washington.

Bryan’s presence (and controversial placement next to Moody) signaled the democratic nature of tomorrow’s conference “on the conservation of natural resources.” When wood and water were endangered, the political differences between men of power dissolved. To Roosevelt’s regret, his only living predecessor, Grover Cleveland, was unable to attend because of illness.

Many of the governors had never been in the White House before, and they were noticeably awed by the splendor of their reception. Roosevelt, wanting to stress the conference’s momentousness, had ordered that they be presented to him “as for a state dinner.” He had welcomed them one by one in the East Room, then led them down the great vestibule with Fuller walking alongside him, in a mimetic show of Power and Justice guiding Procedure.

The dinner seating had been planned with further formality by the State Department, but Roosevelt, looking it over, had decided that enough was enough and rearranged it so that men with things to say to each other, such as James J. Hill and Theodore E. Burton of the Inland Waterways Commission, could sit together—conferring, after all, being the whole point of conferences. To further aid the flow of talk (and sherry, sauterne, and claret), he elected to have no toasts or speeches. Gentlemen from the West, who tended to eat more than they spoke, were awarded full command of a menu including littleneck clams on the half shell, coquilles of fresh caviar, strained gumbo, cold salmon Bayardère, squabs à l’Estouffade, filet piqué Richelieu, ice cream pralinée, “fancy cakes,” and coffee.

“THEY WERE NOTICABLY AWED BY THE

SPLENDOR OF THEIR RECEPTION.”

Theodore Roosevelt hosts the first conservation conference, May 1908 (photo credit 30.2)

Since the night was warm, cigars and liqueurs were served on the West Terrace. Roosevelt accepted neither, concentrating all his attention on Bryan. The two men talked at a small table for more than an hour. Captain Butt overheard the President saying, “I confess to you confidentially that I like my job.” The rest of the company strolled and admired the fragrant garden.

In spite of himself, Roosevelt was impressed by the Commoner. “A wonderful man,” he remarked afterward.

AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK the following morning, Roosevelt called to order a vastly larger assembly in the East Room. Present, along with the governors and their aides, were his entire Cabinet (minus only Taft, who was in Panama, and Metcalf, who was with the fleet in San Francisco); all nine Justices of the Supreme Court; an uncounted number of members of Congress; representatives of sixty-eight professional societies, including those of chemistry, law, medicine, publishing, social and political science, civil engineering, forestry, architecture, mining, scenic and historic preservation, statistics, drainage, farming, lumber, slack cooperage, and hay; twenty-one editors and reporters from technical, news, and popular publications; forty-eight special guests, including academics, geographers,