Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [44]
Poised in his equilibrium, he was upset by any shock, and could lash out with the sudden bitchiness of old age. Friends forgave him these outbursts. They knew he was tormented by a swelling prostate. Allison’s weary shuffle, his dark-brown, nicotinous smell—the very breath of the antebellum—guaranteed deference in a chamber worshipful of seniority.
“All this is true, and yet it is also true that there are real and grave evils.”
In the front row of the chamber, beneath the reading clerk, sat a senator even hoarier than Allison. At seventy-four, Orville H. Platt (R., Connecticut) was the éminence grise of the Republican leadership. No relation to Thomas C. Platt of New York (Roosevelt’s ancient enemy, senescent now in a forgotten corner), he served as the Senate’s spiritual mentor, its legislative and ethical conscience.
There was something Lincolnesque about Platt’s grooved, bearded face, and the awkwardness of his six-foot-four-inch frame. Scholarly, mild, logical, and reclusive, Platt was almost a caricature of New England bookishness; his idea of an amusing evening was to read Greek to his wife. But the mildness was deceptive. Few senators worked more aggressively on behalf of big business.
“There is a widespread conviction,” the clerk declaimed, “ … that combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment this conviction is right.”
Spooner returned to his seat. The outburst that none of Roosevelt’s advisers had been able to suppress was coming. “It is no limitation upon property rights or freedom of contract to require that when men receive from government the privilege of doing business under corporate form … they shall do so upon absolutely truthful representations.… Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.”
If Nelson W. Aldrich (R., Rhode Island) deduced that Roosevelt was sounding the keynote of his presidency, he showed no sign. The sixty-year-old “Manager of the United States” looked as he always did: big, handsome, placid, nonchalantly powerful. His brow was calm, his silvery mustache stiff, his black eyes steady on the page before him.
“The first essential in determining how to deal with the great industrial corporations is knowledge of the facts—publicity.”
Aldrich’s was a classic poker face. Indeed, he was champion of a private poker game at which he, Spooner, Allison, and Platt formulated policy. So elite was this little circle, so doubly dedicated to cards and politics, that its interests tended to fuse; the house would deal tariff schedules, pension bills, and aces of clubs interchangeably. Most evenings, Aldrich collected.
His power derived in part from natural authority, in part from pure memory. Spooner was quicker, and the two senior members were perhaps wiser, but none could match Aldrich’s command of information. No matter how raw the data—ore piles of statistics, a rubble of currency regulations—he processed them with the silent efficiency of a kiln. Consequently, he was the Senate’s ranking expert on such subjects as paper-money circulation, railroad bonds, and free wool. His actions on these issues did not usually make headlines, but Aldrich never cared for publicity.
Roosevelt, in contrast, seemed to equate it with democracy. “In the interest of the public, the government should have the right to inspect and examine the workings of the great corporations.”
As far as Aldrich was concerned, news was noise, an intrusive bedlam that disturbed the quiet condominium of government and economy. The more attention public servants