Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [41]
It was a big scoop, if not much of a story. Popular and Congressional sentiment had been in favor of a Nicaragua Canal for so long that the Commission’s decision was expected. Panama might possibly have been chosen, but that fetid little Colombian province was already a monument to the folly of French canal engineers. After twenty-two years of mismanagement, scandal, disease, and death, all that was left of Ferdinand de Lesseps’s grand canal du Panama was a gang of lethargic workers, some crumbling buildings and rusty machinery, and an immense, muddy scar reverting to jungle.
Nicaragua, in contrast, offered a virgin landscape, a healthy climate, one hundred miles of navigable freshwater, and the lowest pass in the Cordilleras. Its leaders were unanimously eager to reach an agreement with the United States, whereas those of Colombia were divided by civil war, unable to treat with their own rebels, let alone representatives of a foreign power.
And yet—this was Hearst’s real news—one sentence in the report implied that the Commission was not wholehearted about its recommendation:
There are certain physical advantages, such as a shorter canal line, a more complete knowledge of the country through which it passes, and lower cost of maintenance and operation in favor of the Panama route, but the price fixed by the Panama Canal Company for the sale of its property and franchises is so unreasonable that its acceptance cannot be recommended by this Commission.
Minus that extra compensation—$109 million—a Panama Canal would cost $156 million, as opposed to $200 million for a Nicaragua Canal. And it would be finished sooner, thanks to the French excavations. So mere economics had kept the commissioners from endorsing the private preference of the President of the United States.
ROOSEVELT FINISHED READING his revised Message aloud to the Cabinet on 22 November. All twenty-five thousand words were his own work. Previous Presidents had done little more than to collate and introduce the reports of executive departments. But he was still a writer, with a writer’s reluctance to sign prose he had not composed, or at least edited. Feeling a sudden revulsion for the ink-stained typescript, he sent it off to be printed.
Twelve days still intervened before the reassembly of Congress. He decided that he wanted to be alone with his family for a while, somewhere away from Washington. The executive yacht Sylph was rigged, and Navy Yard cannons primed for a twenty-one-gun salute. By 3:30 that afternoon, the Roosevelts were on their way up Pennsylvania Avenue. Passersby were touched to see the President kissing four-year-old Quentin, first on one chubby cheek, then the other.
BACK IN MINNESOTA, James J. Hill saluted his own child, Mary, in his own fashion, with twenty dollars in gold. He had earned them during his first few days as president of the Northern Securities Company. “It is the hardest job I have ever undertaken,” he said, in the voice of a man whose ambitions were complete.
WHILE THE SYLPH cruised the lower Potomac, through chill salt mists, Americans browsed a syndicated newspaper article entitled TEDDY’S HOROSCOPE. The astrologist-author noted that Theodore Roosevelt had become President under a remarkable coincidence of Capricorn and Aquarius. This meant that, beginning in 1902, his Administration would bring about many changes, particularly with respect to “laws” and “treaties.” He would increase the nation’s military power, and go on to handle “vast political problems, the like of which we do not dream of today.”
Although Roosevelt was a man much influenced by Mars, he was likely to be peaceable in foreign affairs. His aggression would spill out on the domestic front. (But he would be asking for trouble if he tried to bully Congress.) There was likely to be “a remarkable recrudescence” of social violence soon. While some years of prosperity lay ahead, “a crash is surely coming, and securities will drop to rock bottom.”
The President