Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [478]
The Commission recommended in Feb. 1909 that rural areas be redeveloped using European-style communal/cooperative models. Country life should ideally offer “the four great requirements of man—health, education, occupation, society.” The new doctrine of conservation should be applied so that the ravages visited on the environment by unregulated monopolies could be repaired, and the American countryside regain its beauty. TR submitted these recommendations to Congress before leaving office, but nothing was done about them. TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1169–70; 60 Cong., sess. 2, 1909, S. doc. 703, Special Message from the President of the United States Transmitting the Report of the Country Life Commission. See also George S. Ellsworth, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Country Life Commission,” Agricultural History 34 (Oct. 1960), and Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 393–400.
60 testimony to his TR’s Messages to Congress advocating inheritance and income taxes and stringent corporation control had deprived Bryan of much traditionally Democratic ammunition.
61 “For reasons which” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1207.
62 “You should put” Ibid., 1209–10.
63 “I never” Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 504.
64 “Let the audience” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1230.
65 William Randolph Hearst Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2, 223; Weaver, Senator, 140.
66 Foraker, devastated Weaver, Senator, 141.
67 These qualifications Ibid.; TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1244.
68 “That a man” British Documents on Foreign Affairs, vol. 13, 147.
69 ROOSEVELT RETURNED Gould, Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, 288–89.
70 Taft came to TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1304; Butt, Letters, 137. For a discussion of Taft’s Unitarian problem, see Harbaugh, Life and Times, 340–41. See also TR’s impassioned plea for religious tolerance in American public life in Letters, vol. 6, 1333–34. Of this letter, the Jewish leader Simon Wolf wrote to TR, “I know of no state paper in the archive of our Government, that surpasses it.” Qu. in Wolf, Presidents I Have Known, 284–85.
71 The nearest thing Harbaugh, Life and Times, 337–39.
72 THE FOLLOWING DAY TR to Jules Jusserand, 27 Oct. 1908 (JJ).
73 “I told him” Butt, Letters, 143–44.
74 Changing the subject Ibid., 144. The De Camp portrait of TR went to Harvard University.
75 “Was there ever?” Butt seems to have been unable to answer. He had recently been treated to another Roosevelt effusion, on the subject of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in the middle of a tennis game. Ibid.
CHAPTER 32: ONE LONG LOVELY CRACKLING ROW
1 “Well, I see” Dunne, Observations by Mr. Dooley, 49.
2 The fake telegram Butt, Letters, 153–54. When TR’s use of the word frazzle leaked out, to the mystification of White House correspondents, he explained, not very helpfully, “The meaning is contained in the election returns of last night.” Brooklyn Eagle, 4 Nov. 1908. Nunc Dimittis—“Lord, now let us thy servants depart in peace.”
3 Taft’s Electoral College This election analysis closely follows that in Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 506.
4 “the Bearded Lady” Wagenknecht, Seven Worlds of Theodore Roosevelt, 126.
5 the legendary Texan Anecdote in memo, Nov. 1908 (JBM).
6 “I really did” Judith Icke Anderson, William Howard Taft: An Intimate History (New York, 1981), 114.
7 “Of course, if” TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1329.
8 He was not short Charles G. Washburn, Address, 9 Feb. 1919, reprint in Pratt Collection (TRB); Davis, Released for Publication, 135ff.; Heaton, Story of a Page, 329–30; TR, qu. in Norman Hapgood, The Changing Years (New York, 1930), 42; TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1105–6.
9 He had long Abbott, Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt, 12–14; TR, Letters, vol. 6, 1105–6, 1115, 1123.
Note: Most of these negotiations were carried on during the summer of 1908. The amount of TR’s annual retainer from Outlook has not been confirmed, but neither he nor the Abbotts denied that it was thirty thousand dollars. Indianapolis Star, 22 Oct. 1908.