Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
explained that he mourned McKinley as probably no other man did; that he
had not been especially my friend, but that he wished me to understand
that thenceforward, on every question where he could conscientiously
support me, I could count upon his giving me as loyal aid as it was
in his power to render. He added that this must not be understood as
committing him to favor me for nomination and election, because that
matter must be left to take care of itself as events should decide; but
that, aside from this, what he said was to be taken literally; in other
words, he would do his best to make my Administration a success by
supporting me heartily on every point on which he conscientiously could,
and that this I could count upon. He kept his word absolutely. He never
became especially favorable to my nomination; and most of his close
friends became bitterly opposed to me and used every effort to persuade
him to try to bring about my downfall. Most men in his position would
have been tempted to try to make capital at my expense by antagonizing
me and discrediting me so as to make my policies fail, just for the
sake of making them fail. Senator Hanna, on the contrary, did everything
possible to make them succeed. He kept his word in the letter and the
spirit, and on every point on which he felt conscientiously able to
support me he gave me the heartiest and most effective support, and did
all in his power to make my Administration a success; and this with
no hope of any reward for himself, of any gratitude from me, or of any
appreciation by the public at large, but solely because he deemed such
action necessary for the well-being of the country as a whole.
My experience with Senator Quay was similar. I had no personal relations
with him before I was President, and knew nothing of him save by
hearsay. Soon after I became President, Senator Quay called upon me,
told me he had known me very slightly, that he thought most men who
claimed to be reformers were hypocrites, but that he deemed me sincere,
that he thought conditions had become such that aggressive courage
and honesty were necessary in order to remedy them, that he believed I
intended to be a good and efficient President, and that to the best
of his ability he would support me in it making my Administration a
success. He kept his word with absolute good faith. He had been in the
Civil War, and was a medal of honor man; and I think my having been in
the Spanish War gave him at the outset a kindly feeling toward me.
He was also a very well-read man--I owe to him, for instance, my
acquaintance with the writings of the Finnish novelist Topelius. Not
only did he support me on almost every public question in which I was
most interested--including, I am convinced, every one on which he felt
he conscientiously could do so--but he also at the time of his death
gave a striking proof of his disinterested desire to render a service to
certain poor people, and this under conditions in which not only would
he never know if the service were rendered but in which he had no reason
to expect that his part in it would ever be made known to any other man.
Quay was descended from a French voyageur who had some Indian blood in
him. He was proud of this Indian blood, took an especial interest in
Indians, and whenever Indians came to Washington they always called on
him. Once during my Administration a delegation of Iroquois came over
from Canada to call on me at the White House. Their visit had in it
something that was pathetic as well as amusing. They represented the
descendants of the Six Nations, who fled to Canada after Sullivan
harried their towns in the Revolutionary War. Now, a century and a
quarter later, their people thought that they would like to come back
into the United States; and these representatives had called upon me
with the dim hope that perhaps I could give their tribes land on which
they could settle. As soon as they reached Washington they asked Quay to
bring them to call on me, which he did, telling me that of course their
errand was hopeless and that he had explained as much to them, but that
they would like me to extend the courtesy of an interview. At the close
of the interview, which had been conducted with all the solemnities of
calumet and wampum, the Indians filed out. Quay, before following them,
turned to me with his usual emotionless face and said, "Good-by, Mr.
President; this reminds one of the Flight of a Tartar Tribe, doesn't
it?" I answered, "So you're fond of De Quincey, Senator?" to which Quay
responded, "Yes; always liked De Quincey; good-by." And away he went
with the tribesmen, who seemed to have walked out of a remote past.
Quay had become particularly concerned about the Delawares in the Indian
Territory. He felt that the Interior Department did not do them justice.
He also felt that his colleagues of the Senate took no interest in them.
When in the spring of 1904 he lay in his house mortally sick, he sent
me word that he had something important to say to me, and would have
himself carried round to see me. I sent back word not to think of doing
so, and that on my way back from church next Sunday I would stop in
and call on him. This I accordingly did. He was lying in his bed, death
written on his face. He thanked me for coming, and then explained
that, as he was on the point of death and knew he would never return to
Washington--it was late spring and he was about to leave--he wished to
see me to get my personal promise that, after he died, I would myself
look after the interests of the Delaware Indians. He added that he did
not trust the Interior Department--although he knew that I did not share
his views on this point--and that still less did he believe that any of
his colleagues in the Senate would exert themselves in the interests of
the Delawares, and that therefore he wished my personal assurance that I
would personally see that no injustice was done them. I told him I would
do so, and then added, in rather perfunctory fashion, that he must not
take such a gloomy view of himself, that when he got away for the summer
I hoped he would recover and be back all right when Congress opened. A
gleam came into the old fighter's eyes and he answered: "No, I am dying,
and you know it. I don't mind dying; but I do wish it were possible for
me to get off into the great north woods and crawl out on a rock in the
sun and die like a wolf!"
I never saw him again. When he died I sent a telegram of sympathy to his
wife. A paper which constantly preached reform, and which kept up its
circulation by the no less constant practice of slander, a paper which
in theory condemned all public men who violated the eighth commandment,
and in practice subsisted by incessant violation of the ninth, assailed
me for sending my message to the dead man's wife. I knew the editors of
this paper, and the editor who was their predecessor. They had led
lives of bodily ease and the avoidance of bodily risk; they earned their
livelihood by the practice of mendacity for profit; and they delivered
malignant judgment on a dead man who, whatever his faults, had in his
youth freely risked his life for a great ideal, and who when death was
already clutching his breast had spent almost his last breath on behalf
of humble and friendless people whom he had served with disinterested
loyalty.
There is no greater duty than to war on the corrupt and unprincipled
boss, and on the corrupt and unprincipled business man; and for the
matter of that, on the corrupt and unprincipled labor leader also,
and on the corrupt and unprincipled editor, and on any one else who is
corrupt and unprincipled. But where the conditions are such, whether in
politics or in business, that the great majority of men have behaved in
a way which is gradually seen to be improper, but which at one time did
not conflict with the generally accepted morality, then the warfare on
the system should not include warfare on the men themselves, unless
they decline to amend their ways and to dissociate themselves from the
system. There are many good, unimaginative citizens who in politics
or in business act in accordance with accepted standards, in a
matter-of-course way, without questioning these standards; until
something happens which sharply arouses them to the situation, whereupon
they try to work for better things. The proper course in such event is
to let bygones be bygones, and if the men prove by their actions the
sincerity of their conversion, heartily to work with them for the
betterment of business and political conditions.
By the time that I was ending my career as Civil Service Commissioner
I was already growing to understand that mere improvement in political
conditions by itself was not enough. I dimly realized that an even
greater fight must be waged to improve economic conditions, and to
secure social and industrial justice, justice as between individuals
and justice as between classes. I began to see that political effort was
largely valuable as it found expression and resulted in such social and
industrial betterment. I was gradually puzzling out, or trying to puzzle
out, the answers to various questions--some as yet unsolvable to any of
us, but for the solution of which it is the bounden duty of all of us to
work. I had grown to realize very keenly that the duty of the Government
to protect women and children must be extended to include the protection
of all the crushable elements of labor. I saw that it was the affair of
all our people to see that justice obtained between the big corporation
and its employees, and between the big corporation and its smaller
rivals, as well as its customers and the general public. I saw that it
was the affair of all of us, and not only of the employer, if dividends
went up and wages went down; that it was to the interest of all of us
that a full share of the benefit of improved machinery should go to the
workman who used the machinery; and also that it was to the interest of
all of us that each man, whether brain worker or hand worker, should
do the best work of which he was capable, and that there should be
some correspondence between the value of the work and the value of the
reward. It is these and many similar questions which in their sum
make up the great social and industrial problems of to-day, the most
interesting and important of the problems with which our public life
must deal.
In handling these problems I believe that much can be done by the
Government. Furthermore, I believe that, after all that the Government
can do has been done, there will remain as the most vital of all factors
the individual character of the average man and the average woman.
No governmental action can do more than supplement individual action.
Moreover, there must be collective action of kinds distinct from
governmental action. A body of public opinion must be formed, must
make itself felt, and in the end transform, and be transformed by, the
gradual raising of individual standards of conduct.
It is curious to see how difficult it is to make some men understand
that insistence upon one factor does not and must not mean failure fully
to recognize other factors. The selfish individual needs to be taught
that we must now shackle cunning by law exactly as a few centuries back
we shackled force by law. Unrestricted individualism spells ruin to
the individual himself. But so does the elimination of individualism,
whether by law or custom. It is a capital error to fail to recognize the
vital need of good laws. It is also a capital error to believe that good
laws will accomplish anything unless the average man has the right stuff
in him. The toiler, the manual laborer, has received less than justice,
and he must be protected, both by law, by custom, and by the exercise