Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
surprised, and therefore I felt no other emotion than a rather sardonic
amusement when thirty-six hours later I read in the morning paper
an open letter from the officials of the very company who had been
communicating with me in which they enthusiastically advocated the
renomination of the Superintendent. Shortly afterwards my visitor,
the young lawyer, called me up on the telephone and explained that the
officials did not mean what they had said in this letter, that they had
been obliged to write it for fear of the Superintendent, but that if
they got the chance they intended to help me get rid of him. I thanked
him and said I thought I could manage the fight by myself. I did not
hear from him again, though his father continued to write public demands
that I should practice pure virtue, undefiled and offensive.
Meanwhile Senator Platt declined to yield. I had picked out a man,
a friend of his, who I believed would make an honest and competent
official, and whose position in the organization was such that I did not
believe the Senate would venture to reject him. However, up to the
day before the appointment was to go to the Senate, Mr. Platt remained
unyielding. I saw him that afternoon and tried to get him to yield, but
he said No, that if I insisted, it would be war to the knife, and my
destruction, and perhaps the destruction of the party. I said I was
very sorry, that I could not yield, and if the war came it would have
to come, and that next morning I should send in the name of the
Superintendent's successor. We parted, and soon afterwards I received
from the man who was at the moment Mr. Platt's right-hand lieutenant
a request to know where he could see me that evening. I appointed the
Union League Club. My visitor went over the old ground, explained that
the Senator would under no circumstances yield, that he was certain to
win in the fight, that my reputation would be destroyed, and that he
wished to save me from such a lamentable smash-up as an ending to my
career. I could only repeat what I had already said, and after half an
hour of futile argument I rose and said that nothing was to be gained by
further talk and that I might as well go. My visitor repeated that I
had this last chance, and that ruin was ahead of me if I refused it;
whereas, if I accepted, everything would be made easy. I shook my head
and answered, "There is nothing to add to what I have already said." He
responded, "You have made up your mind?" and I said, "I have." He then
said, "You know it means your ruin?" and I answered, "Well, we will see
about that," and walked toward the door. He said, "You understand, the
fight will begin to-morrow and will be carried on to the bitter end."
I said, "Yes," and added, as I reached the door, "Good night." Then, as
the door opened, my opponent, or visitor, whichever one chooses to call
him, whose face was as impassive and as inscrutable as that of Mr. John
Hamlin in a poker game, said: "Hold on! We accept. Send in So-and-so
[the man I had named]. The Senator is very sorry, but he will make no
further opposition!" I never saw a bluff carried more resolutely
through to the final limit. My success in the affair, coupled with the
appointment of Messrs. Partridge and Hooker, secured me against further
effort to interfere with my handling of the executive departments.
It was in connection with the insurance business that I first met Mr.
George W. Perkins. He came to me with a letter of introduction from the
then Speaker of the National House of Representatives, Tom Reed,
which ran: "Mr. Perkins is a personal friend of mine, whose
straightforwardness and intelligence will commend to you whatever he has
to say. If you will give him proper opportunity to explain his business,
I have no doubt that what he will say will be worthy of your attention."
Mr. Perkins wished to see me with reference to a bill that had just been
introduced in the Legislature, which aimed to limit the aggregate volume
of insurance that any New York State company could assume. There
were then three big insurance companies in New York--the Mutual Life,
Equitable, and New York Life. Mr. Perkins was a Vice-President of
the New York Life Insurance Company and Mr. John A. McCall was its
President. I had just finished my fight against the Superintendent of
Insurance, whom I refused to continue in office. Mr. McCall had written
me a very strong letter urging that he be retained, and had done
everything he could to aid Senator Platt in securing his retention. The
Mutual Life and Equitable people had openly followed the same course,
but in private had hedged. They were both backing the proposed bill. Mr.
McCall was opposed to it; he was in California, and just before starting
thither he had been told by the Mutual Life and Equitable that the
Limitation Bill was favored by me and would be put through if such a
thing were possible. Mr. McCall did not know me, and on leaving for
California told Mr. Perkins that from all he could learn he was sure I
was bent on putting this bill through, and that nothing he could say
to me would change my view; in fact, because he had fought so hard
to retain the old Insurance Superintendent, he felt that I would be
particularly opposed to anything he might wish done.
As a matter of fact, I had no such feeling. I had been carefully
studying the question. I had talked with the Mutual Life and Equitable
people about it, but was not committed to any particular course, and had
grave doubts as to whether it was well to draw the line on size instead
of on conduct. I was therefore very glad to see Perkins and get a new
point of view. I went over the matter with a great deal of care and at
considerable length, and after we had thrashed the matter out pretty
fully and Perkins had laid before me in detail the methods employed by
Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and other European countries to handle
their large insurance companies, I took the position that there
undoubtedly were evils in the insurance business, but that they did not
consist in insuring people's lives, for that certainly was not an evil;
and I did not see how the real evils could be eradicated by limiting or
suppressing a company's ability to protect an additional number of lives
with insurance. I therefore announced that I would not favor a bill that
limited volume of business, and would not sign it if it were passed;
but that I favored legislation that would make it impossible to place,
through agents, policies that were ambiguous and misleading, or to pay
exorbitant prices to agents for business, or to invest policy-holders'
money in improper securities, or to give power to officers to use
the company's funds for their own personal profit. In reaching this
determination I was helped by Mr. Loeb, then merely a stenographer in
my office, but who had already attracted my attention both by his
efficiency and by his loyalty to his former employers, who were for
the most part my political opponents. Mr. Loeb gave me much information
about various improper practices in the insurance business. I began
to gather data on the subject, with the intention of bringing about
corrective legislation, for at that time I expected to continue
in office as Governor. But in a few weeks I was nominated as
Vice-President, and my successor did nothing about the matter.
So far as I remember, this was the first time the question of correcting
evils in a business by limiting the volume of business to be done was
ever presented to me, and my decision in the matter was on all fours
with the position I have always since taken when any similar principle
was involved. At the time when I made my decision about the Limitation
Bill, I was on friendly terms with the Mutual and Equitable people
who were back of it, whereas I did not know Mr. McCall at all, and Mr.
Perkins only from hearing him discuss the bill.
An interesting feature of the matter developed subsequently. Five years
later, after the insurance investigations took place, the Mutual Life
strongly urged the passage of a Limitation Bill, and, because of the
popular feeling developed by the exposure of the improper practices of
the companies, this bill was generally approved. Governor Hughes adopted
the suggestion, such a bill was passed by the Legislature, and Governor
Hughes signed it. This bill caused the three great New York companies to
reduce markedly the volume of business they were doing; it threw a great
many agents out of employment, and materially curtailed the foreign
business of the companies--which business was bringing annually a
considerable sum of money to this country for investment. In short,
the experiment worked so badly that before Governor Hughes went out of
office one of the very last bills he signed was one that permitted the
life insurance companies to increase their business each year by an
amount representing a certain percentage of the business they had
previously done. This in practice, within a few years, practically
annulled the Limitation Bill that had been previously passed. The
experiment of limiting the size of business, of legislating against it
merely because it was big, had been tried, and had failed so completely
that the authors of the bill had themselves in effect repealed it. My
action in refusing to try the experiment had been completely justified.
As a sequel to this incident I got Mr. Perkins to serve on the Palisade
Park Commission. At the time I was taking active part in the effort to
save the Palisades from vandalism and destruction by getting the States
of New York and New Jersey jointly to include them in a public park.
It is not easy to get a responsible and capable man of business to
undertake such a task, which is unpaid, which calls on his part for an
immense expenditure of time, money, and energy, which offers no
reward of any kind, and which entails the certainty of abuse and
misrepresentation. Mr. Perkins accepted the position, and has filled
it for the last thirteen years, doing as disinterested, efficient,
and useful a bit of public service as any man in the State has done
throughout these thirteen years.
The case of most importance in which I clashed with Senator Platt
related to a matter of fundamental governmental policy, and was the
first step I ever took toward bringing big corporations under effective
governmental control. In this case I had to fight the Democratic machine
as well as the Republican machine, for Senator Hill and Senator Platt
were equally opposed to my action, and the big corporation men, the big
business men back of both of them, took precisely the same view of these
matters without regard to their party feelings on other points. What
I did convulsed people at that time, and marked the beginning of the
effort, at least in the Eastern states, to make the great corporations
really responsible to popular wish and governmental command. But we
have gone so far past the stage in which we then were that now it seems
well-nigh incredible that there should have been any opposition at all
to what I at that time proposed.
The substitution of electric power for horse power in the street car
lines of New York offered a fruitful chance for the most noxious type of
dealing between business men and politicians. The franchises granted by
New York were granted without any attempt to secure from the grantees
returns, in the way of taxation or otherwise, for the value received.
The fact that they were thus granted by improper favoritism, a
favoritism which in many cases was unquestionably secured by downright
bribery, led to all kinds of trouble. In return for the continuance
of these improper favors to the corporations the politicians expected
improper favors in the way of excessive campaign contributions, often