Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [36]
I have not been able to think out any solution of the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on this continent, but of one thing I am sure, and that is that in as much as he is here and can neither be killed nor driven away, the only wise and honorable and Christian thing to do is to treat each black man and each white man strictly on his merits as a man.… Of course I know that we see through a glass dimly, and, after all, it may be that I am wrong; but if I am, then all my thoughts and beliefs are wrong, and my whole way of looking at life is wrong. At any rate, while I am in public life, however short a time it may be, I am in honor bound to act up to my beliefs and convictions.
As the famous dinner receded into memory and mythology, Roosevelt grew more conciliatory toward his critics, admitting that he might, just possibly, have made a mistake. But only in the political sense: morally speaking, “my action was absolutely proper.”
He kept his vow to consult Booker T. Washington on matters of race and patronage, but never again asked him to dinner. And when Washington next visited the White House, George Cortelyou was careful to schedule the appointment at ten o’clock on a regular business morning.
CHAPTER 3
One Vast, Smoothly Running Machine
MR. DOOLEY A hard time th’ rich have injyin’ life.
MR. HENNESSY I’d thrade with them.
MR. DOOLEY I wud not. ’Tis too much like hard work.
THE NIGHT OF MONDAY, 11 November 1901, was moonless, and shadows drowned the canyons of downtown New York City. Wall Street, darkest canyon of all, was deserted except for a group of carriages waiting outside the House of Morgan. Midnight struck, then one o’clock.
Inside the gloomy building, behind successive ramparts of granite, mahogany, and ground glass, three financiers conferred. James J. Hill and E. H. Harriman habitually shunned the light of day, the flash and glare of publicity. As for J. Pierpont Morgan, the third party to the business at hand, his aloofness was so Olympian that he was not even present. An aide, George W. Perkins, negotiated in his stead.
This common need for seclusion had little to do with shyness, although Morgan’s carbuncled nose, Hill’s bald pate, and Harriman’s wire-spectacled features twitching around a huge damp mustache brought out the worst in small boys and cartoonists. Had the financiers been as gorgeous as gods, their desire would likely still be to operate in private. Combinations, they felt, were best put together quietly.
Decent, driven men, they had enriched themselves beyond imagination by anonymous deals in railroad stocks. They had built up great transportation systems, stimulated interstate commerce, and improved life for uncounted millions of people. Their philanthropies were legion, their senses of social responsibility sincere.
Yet they had learned with chagrin that the wages of large achievement were public scrutiny and malice. This only made them retreat deeper into themselves. At the heights of their careers, they were a bruised, petulant trio, bent on further organization of the economy—its “Morganization,” in popular parlance.
Their meeting tonight demanded especial discretion. It marked the climax of a secret seven-month war between Hill’s Great Northern and Harriman’s Union Pacific railroads for control of Morgan’s Northern Pacific. Also at stake was the Burlington & Quincy road, connecting the three systems with Chicago. Mere rumors of this “battle of titans,” earlier in the year, had precipitated the worst panic in Wall Street history; Morgan had been obliged to pump sixteen million dollars into the market to save the stock exchange from collapse.
Right now, Hill seemed to be winning. Harriman had managed to amass a majority of Northern Pacific preferred shares, but they were due to be retired by forced exchange for common shares on New Year’s Day 1902, and Hill (with Morgan’s connivance) owned