T heodore R oosevelt A ssociation
JOURNAL
VOLUME XXXIV, NUMBER 4
•
Fall 2013
2
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Officers of the Theodore Roosevelt Association
Executive Committee
Tweed Roosevelt
President
RADM P. W. Parcells, USN (Ret.)
Vice President
Dr. William N. Tilchin
Vice President
Shawn R. Thomas
Treasurer
Elizabeth E. Roosevelt
Assistant Treasurer
Genna Rollins
Secretary
Lowell E. Baier
Michele Bryant
Dr. Gary P. Kearney
James E. Pehta
Simon C. Roosevelt
LtCol Gregory A. Wynn, USMC
Gary A. Clinton
Barbara J. Comstock
Fritz R. Gordner
Randy C. Hatzenbuhler
Jonathan J. Hoffman
The Hon. Melissa C. Jackson
Stephen B. Jeffries
CDR Theodore Roosevelt Kramer, USN (Ret.)
Joseph W. Mikalic
RADM Richard J. O’Hanlon, USN (Ret.)
RADM P. W. Parcells, USN (Ret.)
Genna Rollins
Elizabeth E. Roosevelt
Tweed Roosevelt
Keith Simon
Owen Smith
James M. Strock
Dr. John E. Willson
Anne R. Yeakel
Barbara Berryman Brandt
Honorary Trustee
The Hon. George H. W. Bush
Trustees, Class of 2014
VADM David Architzel, USN (Ret.)
Paula Pierce Beazley
CAPT David Ross Bryant, USN (Ret.)
Thomas A. Campbell
Dr. Gary P. Kearney
CAPT Theodore Roosevelt Kramer, Jr., USN (Ret.)
Amy Krueger
Cordelia D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt III
Simon C. Roosevelt
Winthrop Roosevelt
Dr. William N. Tilchin
LtCol Gregory A. Wynn, USMC
The Hon. Lee Yeakel
Trustees, Class of 2015
J. Randall Baird
Rudolph J. Carmenaty
Robert B. Charles
Donald Arp, Jr.
Prof. David H. Burton
Prof. Timothy P. Chinaris
Heather G. Cole
Dr. Michael Patrick Cullinane
Wallace Finley Dailey
Carl F. Flemer, Jr.
Theodore L. Hake
Prof. Richard P. Harmond
Duane G. Jundt
Prof. Michael Kort
Rick Marschall
Edmund Morris
Sylvia Jukes Morris
Dr. David Rosenberg
Dr. John G. Staudt
Advisory Board, Class of 2016
Trustees, Class of 2016
Trustee for Life
Advisory Board, Class of 2015
Mark A. Ames
Lowell E. Baier
CAPT Frank L. Boushee, USN (Ret.)
Michele Bryant
David A. Folz
Robert L. Friedman
Anna Carlson Gannett
Timothy P. Glas
Nicole E. Goldstein
Steven M. Greeley
Dr. Michael S. Harris
James E. Pehta
Kermit Roosevelt III
Shawn R. Thomas
Dominick F. Antonelli
John P. Avlon
Terrence C. Brown
The Hon. Kent Conrad
Prof. John Milton Cooper, Jr.
Prof. Stacy A. Cordery
Prof. Douglas Eden
The Hon. Peter T. King
Janice Kuzan
The Hon. Rick A. Lazio
Dr. James G. Lewis
Michael F. Moran
Molly L. Quackenbush
Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.
Prof. Cornelis A. van Minnen
Prof. Robert Wexelblatt
Advisory Board, Class of 2014
Dr. Douglas G. Brinkley
Bernadette Castro
Dr. Kathleen M. Dalton
Perry Dean Floyd
Lorraine G. Grace
Prof. Joshua D. Hawley
David McCullough
Prof. Char Miller
Prof. Charles E. Neu
Prof. Serge Ricard
Sheila Schafer
Lawrence D. Seymour
Prof. Mark R. Shulman
Prof. Samuel J. Thomas
The Hon. William J. vanden Heuvel
Front and back cover illustrations:
obverse and reverse of the uncirculated
Edith Roosevelt gold coin
(images courtesy of Michael F. Moran)
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
Jim Stroud,
1959-2013
3
The Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
is published quarterly by the
THEODORE ROOSEVELT ASSOCIATION
www.theodoreroosevelt.org
This issue of the Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
is dedicated to the memory of James H. Stroud, our longtime
designer. The editor’s personal tribute to Mr. Stroud can be
found on page 4.
P.O. Box 719
Oyster Bay, NY 11771
Tweed Roosevelt
President
Laurence Pels
Executive Director
Hermann Hagedorn (1919-1957)
Director Emeritus
Dr. John A. Gable (1974-2005)
Director Emeritus
TR Course Offered
by TRA President
Tweed Roosevelt
Under the auspices of the Beacon Hill Seminars in Boston,
TRA President Tweed Roosevelt is teaching a nine-week course
titled “Tales of Theodore Roosevelt.” This class meets from
4:00 to 6:00 every Thursday beginning on March 6, 2014, and
concluding on May 1. Doris Kearns Goodwin and Professor
Douglas Brinkley headline the list of distinguished visiting
speakers. To sign up or for more information, call 617-5230970 or go to the website beaconhillseminars.org.
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Dr. William N. Tilchin
Editor of the Journal
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Guidelines for unsolicited submissions: Send three double-spaced
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may be edited for style and length.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, established in 1975 by Dr.
John Allen Gable and edited by him through 2004, is a peer-reviewed
periodical.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association is a national historical society and
public service organization founded in 1919 and chartered by a special
act of Congress in 1920. We are a not-for-profit corporation of the
District of Columbia, with offices in New York State. A copy of the last
audited financial report of the Theodore Roosevelt Association, filed with
the Department of State of the State of New York, may be obtained by
writing either the New York State Department of State, Office of Charities
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The fiscal year of the Association is July 1 – June 30.
The Ninety-fifth Annual Meeting of the Theodore Roosevelt
Association will take place on Saturday, October 25, 2014, in the
city where Theodore Roosevelt was born and grew up. The venue
will be the University Club of New York City, and the featured
speaker will be world-renowned documentary filmmaker Ken
Burns. Details will be provided soon to all TRA members.
The Theodore Roosevelt Association has members in all fifty states and
many foreign countries, and membership is open to all.
The Annual Meeting of the Board of Trustees is usually held on or near
Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday, October 27. The day-to-day affairs of
the Association are administered by the Executive Committee, elected
annually by the Board of Trustees. The members of the Board of Trustees
are elected in three classes, each class with a term of three years.
4
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Notes from the Editor
photo by Marcia Tilchin
of my [always many] adjustments to the page proofs he had sent
to me by express delivery).
William Tilchin.
When I unexpectedly assumed the editorship of the
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal in December 2006, I
believed that I could succeed in this role, but at the same time
I realized that I had a lot to learn about periodical production
and design. As I commenced working on my first issue
(Winter 2007), I was informed by Marie Kutch that the TRA
had recently engaged the services of Mr. James H. Stroud, a
free-lance designer in Pennsylvania. Marie encouraged me to
contact him, and I did so right away.
As it turned out, my first telephone conversation with Jim
Stroud marked the beginning of an enjoyable and very fruitful
six-year collaboration. During this period Jim and I produced
together nineteen issues (including several expanded issues) of
the TRA Journal. Jim’s principal function was to carry out my
detailed instructions with a very high degree of precision and
in a timely manner. In addition, Jim’s thoughtful and creative
design suggestions were invariably an important asset to me.
Our collaboration on every edition of the TRA Journal entailed
multiple electronic communications, several mailings including
“the big package” from me to him, and approximately 4-5 hours
on the telephone (over half of these hours taken up by a single
marathon session during which I conveyed to Jim carefully all
As our professional collaboration proceeded, Jim and
I also became friends. Each of us appreciated the other’s
conscientiousness, patience, congenial demeanor, considerate
nature, and good humor, and our compatibility quickly became
apparent to us both. Seeing that I accepted full responsibility
for every detail and the overall quality of each TRA Journal,
Jim embraced my exacting standards (I strive in every instance
to provide readers with an edition entirely free of factual,
structural, spelling, typing, formatting, and design errors) and
worked closely and diligently with me to meet those standards.
Jim excelled as well in the area of customer service. He was
employed full-time (holding down a 3:00-11:00 P.M. shift) at
Nittany Valley Offset, which handled (and continues to handle)
the printing and binding and shipping of the TRA Journal.
Working with his colleagues at NVO, Jim oversaw the production
process and the production and shipping schedule for every
issue, ensuring as he did so against mistakes and delays.
As I forwarded to Jim some electronic images for what
was expected to be the Winter-Spring 2013 edition, the very
uncharacteristic lack of a response led me to worry that
something might be amiss. Soon I discovered to my great
dismay that Jim was suffering with a terminal case of cancer.
In July I wrote him a personal letter expressing my fondness
for him and my appreciation for his consistently first-rate work
as the designer of the TRA Journal, and informing him that the
Fall 2013 issue would be dedicated to him. On August 30, 2013,
with members of his family by his side, at the young age of fiftyfour, Jim passed away. Those lamenting Jim’s death include
his wife Wendy, their five children and nine grandchildren, and
multitudes of friends, colleagues, and other family members.
Here I add my voice publicly to this chorus of sorrow.
This issue of the Theodore Roosevelt Association
Journal is dedicated with profound gratitude to the memory
of Jim Stroud. For the second consecutive edition (last
time in reference to my dear friend Art Koch), I conclude
my editor’s page with these words: May he rest in peace.
William Tilchin
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
5
THEODORE ROOSEVELT ASSOCIATION JOURNAL
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
CONTENTS
Theodore Roosevelt, a Civil War General, and the Battle for Labor Peace
by Louis B. Livingston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 6-17
Presidential Snapshot #21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 18
Review of Rolf Sletten, Medora: Boom, Bust, and Resurrection
by Jim Fuglie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 19-22
Edith’s Gold Coin
by Michael F. Moran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 23-29
Revealing Post-Presidential Snapshots: Theodore Roosevelt in the Outlook, March-July 1909
by William N. Tilchin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 31-36
Some Brief Centennial Observations on Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
Forgotten Fragments #16 by Tweed Roosevelt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 37-39
The Theodore Roosevelt Association Gratefully Acknowledges
Its Leading Financial Supporters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pages 40-43
6
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Theodore Roosevelt, a Civil War
General, and the Battle for
Labor Peace
by Louis B. Livingston
One of the mysteries of President Theodore Roosevelt’s
intervention in the massive 1902 anthracite coal strike is why
he selected a retired Civil War general, John M. Schofield, to
implement the presidential plan for the army to seize and operate
the coal mines. The decision to summon the army and the way
Roosevelt structured it—but only after the strike was five months
old—arguably constitute a watershed in chief executives’ responses
to labor strife and demonstrate Roosevelt’s ability to shift means in
order to obtain goals. As for the Schofield selection, it has escaped
close examination, probably because the strike was settled before
any mine seizure occurred. There also is virtually no paper trail to
explain why Roosevelt decided to bring Schofield out of retirement,
except for a perplexing reference in TR’s Autobiography over a
decade later.1 The dearth of scholarly investigation is unfortunate,
because the choice of General Schofield to command the army
intervention suggests a great deal about Roosevelt’s handling of
an apparently intractable labor dispute, how he envisioned the
military’s role in a civilian conflict, and how his unconventional
selection may have contributed to reaching the strike’s settlement.
It also shows how adroitly Roosevelt pivoted to make use of the
Schofield choice even after its original purpose became moot.
* * * * *
The anthracite coal strike of 1902 was the first of the
numerous great challenges to confront the Roosevelt presidency.
To set the scene, a brief review of this strike will place the issues
of army intervention and the Schofield component in perspective.
The strike began in May, less than a year after Roosevelt
had succeeded the assassinated William McKinley as President.
Nearly one hundred fifty thousand miners led by the United
Mine Workers (UMW) union ceased work to protest the lack of
progress regarding their demands for union recognition, higher
wages, shorter hours of work, and improved working conditions.
During the strike’s five months, Roosevelt’s strategies for resolving
it repeatedly changed, and he did not adopt a contingent military
solution until close to the very end.
Initially, he “avoided interfering” in the strike by leaving it
to the mine owners and the UMW to reach a peaceful settlement
without government involvement. The mine owners were
confident that “if order were kept, and nothing further done by
the Government, they would win.” TR observed that the owners,
in refusing “to take any steps looking toward an accommodation,”
were “merely taking the extreme individualistic view of the rights
of property and the freedom of individual action upheld in the
laissez faire political economies.” He also believed that the owners’
approach ignored the public’s “rights in the matter” and conflicted
with the interests of the miners, whose “suffering . . . was great.”
Writing about the strike a decade later, Roosevelt emphasized his
progressive sympathies by asserting that the owners “did not see”
(a phrase he rhetorically repeated six times and coupled with the
accusation that the coal operators had acted “blindly”) that their
property rights were no greater than the workers’ “fundamental
human rights,” and that the contestants’ rights in a major strike
were subordinate to “the fundamental permanent interests [e.g.,
availability of coal supplies] of the whole community.”2
During the summer of the strike, the presidential waiting game
seems to have been politically manageable because of the reduced
need for anthracite coal to heat homes and other buildings. As the
coal strike dragged into the chill of autumn, however, government
officials from East Coast states warned Roosevelt that the strike
was causing a heating “calamity” on account of diminishing coal
supplies. Roosevelt analogized their concerns to being “threatened
by the invasion of a hostile army of overwhelming force.” Fears
grew within his Republican Party that it faced a “political disaster”
in which Roosevelt’s administration would be blamed for economic
and social catastrophe due to coal shortages. Emblematic of the
political precipice that leading Republicans thought they faced
were three nearly hysterical letters from Massachusetts Senator
Henry Cabot Lodge, influential figure and close Roosevelt friend,
who wrote the President plaintively asking, “Can nothing be done”
to press the mine operators into settling with the UMW?3
Roosevelt contemplated but was dissuaded by his attorney
general’s legal advice from bringing an antitrust suit under the
Sherman Act against either the owners or the union. He then
took the unprecedented, and highly publicized, step of personal
presidential mediation. In early October, TR called mine owners
and UMW representatives to meet with him in Washington,
D.C. There, sitting dramatically in a wheelchair to which he
was confined after being injured when his carriage was hit by a
7
from John Mitchell, Organized Labor, p. 90
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
Roosevelt assign resolution of the
dispute to any higher court he chose,
TR refused even to convey the offer
to the union unless other mine
owners agreed to it and he received
a personal apology from the owners
for their conduct at the meeting.
The mine owners’ public standing
suffered from these presidential
tactics, as illustrated in letters from
former President Grover Cleveland
supporting Roosevelt’s actions and
from Senator Lodge declaring that the
union had gained public sympathy
for its “fair proposition.”7
When criticism of the mine
owners did not modify their
bargaining
position,
Roosevelt
shifted his persuasive attentions to
the union. He offered the UMW’s
Mitchell a presidential commission
Presidents of coal roads during the anthracite coal strike of 1902. George F. Baer of the
to investigate all strike matters at
Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company is top center.
issue and, if the miners went back
to work, a presidential promise to
train, the President “disclaim[ed] any right or duty to intervene
“do whatever lies in my power to secure action according to their
. . . upon legal grounds or upon any official relation that I bear to
report.” On October 9, Mitchell declined the offer because it did
the situation,” but he pleaded with the disputants to find a way
not obligate the owners to accept the commission’s report.8
to resume mining operations “to meet the crying needs of the
people.” In response, the union proposed third-party arbitration
Thus, the sequential approaches of presidential wait-and-see,
of the outstanding labor issues, while the owners countered by
mediation, and public criticism of the mine owners, followed by
proposing to let local courts resolve those disputes. When neither
a promise to support the conclusions of an official investigation,
side would agree to the other’s suggested forum, the meeting
had all failed to end the strike. Roosevelt’s fallback idea was
broke up in acrimony.4
army intervention. He devised a supposedly secret plan for the
army to seize and operate the struck mines. Under Roosevelt’s
Roosevelt’s ensuing actions were attempts to arouse public
mine seizure plan, he would signal the governor of Pennsylvania
opinion against the mine owners.5 First, immediately after the
that the time had arrived to request the President to send federal
meeting, the President’s office publicized its breakdown by issuing
troops “to keep order” in the inoperative coal fields. The President
a printed report of what had happened there. It was of such
would then send the army under the command of Major General
public interest that the New York Times devoted much of its first
Schofield to seize the mines and run them for the government as
page to a reprint of the full report and accompanied it with the
a “receiver.” Roosevelt intended to accompany army intervention
newspaper’s appraisal, including characterizing the President’s
with appointment of an investigating commission, to include
post-meeting comments as “in severe criticism of the unyielding
former President Cleveland, to “decide on the rights of the case”
position of the operators.” The report quoted the owners’ harsh
and report its findings to Roosevelt for further action. These
anti-union statements and juxtaposed them against the dignified
findings would address the strike’s causes, prevailing conditions,
conciliatory comments of the UMW president, John Mitchell.6
and the problem of violence that each side had accused the other
of perpetrating.9
Roosevelt’s second tactic to paint the owners into a public
relations corner was his refusal to acknowledge the mine owners’
We can date the plan’s conception as occurring sometime after
offers to submit the labor issues to local courts for third-party
October 3, when Roosevelt hosted the presidential conference with
resolution, even though their proposals for such a resolution
management and union representatives, but no later than October
appear in the report. There is evidence that his refusal was
9, when Secretary of War Elihu Root, who had been informed
a gesture toward the UMW, which opposed the use of local
of the plan, communicated with the financier J. P. Morgan to
judges because they were “not particularly known for their labor
propose a different approach. On the former date, Roosevelt had
sympathies.” Moreover, when some owners later offered to let
told the mayor of New York City that it was an “absurd” idea for
8
the government to seize the mines and run them as a “receiver.”10
Within a week, however, he felt compelled to pursue that absurdity.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Morgan invited Root to discuss this proposal on his yacht,
Corsair, in New York City on October 11. We do not know all
the particulars of their discussion. Root later denied that he had
threatened government action, a contention that would preclude
his having raised Roosevelt’s military plan, but Roosevelt wrote
a few days later that Root
“impressed upon him
[Morgan] the imminence
of the danger.” Whatever
Root’s
message
was,
Morgan and Root reached
agreement on the latter’s
approach and then drafted
on the yacht’s stationery
“a little memorandum” in
which the mine owners,
rather than the union or
the President, proposed a
presidential
commission
to arbitrate the labor
dispute. That same day, the
mine owners approved in
substance the Morgan-Root
memorandum. The owners’
proposal for a presidential
arbitration commission was
announced two days later,
on October 13, after Morgan
and one of his associates
met with TR and Root in
Washington. Still on the
same day, Roosevelt met
with General Schofield to
discuss the mine seizure
plan and instructed the
general to take “any
steps whatever that were
necessary
to
prevent
interference by the strikers
or their sympathizers with
men who wanted to work.”12
from Stefan Lorant, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 375
In a letter Roosevelt wrote a few days after a strike settlement
was eventually reached, he said that he had “outlined” to Secretary
of War Root and Attorney
General Philander C. Knox
“certain definite action” to
which he would “proceed”
if he “had to take charge of
the matter.” This outline
appears to have included
some or all of the plan’s
military features, because
Root advised him that
“there were 10,000 regulars
which I could put in at
once.” Root was “disturbed
by the possibilities” and
“immediately” wrote to
J. P. Morgan on October
9 with a proposal for an
alternative,
non-military
solution.
Although not
directly involved in the
labor dispute, Morgan
had influence as the main
banker for the coal-carrying
railroad companies that
owned the struck coal mines.
What Root proposed to
Morgan was simultaneously
to address the “double line
of complaints,” namely,
the miners’ objections to
existing work conditions
and the owners’ objection
to any kind of recognition of
the union’s right to speak for
the miners. His goal was to
get the mine owners to offer
submission of the disputed
The
union
did
labor issues to third-party
not accept the owners’
resolution, without insisting
arbitration proposal until
upon a court as the third
A revealing, oft-cited letter.
October 15, two days after it
party, so that the owners
had been announced. The
could claim such a proposal
delay stemmed from the
as their own, would avoid
union’s objection to how the mine owners proposed to appoint
the appearance of agreeing to the union’s arbitration proposal,
the arbitration commissioners. The owners had insisted upon a
and would thereby not have to concede recognition of the UMW
five-member commission and specified the types of persons to
as the representative of the workers. In substance, Root wanted
be appointed, namely, an expert mining engineer, a man with
the owners to agree to the arbitration forum they had previously
experience in mining and selling coal, a military officer from
scorned, but to do it in such a way that it would seem to be their
the engineering corps, a federal judge from Pennsylvania, and a
idea. As Root put it, “it was a damned lie, but it looked fair on
person “eminent as a sociologist.” The union objected that this
paper.”11
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
was an attempt to pack the commission in the owners’ favor. As a
result, Roosevelt had to perform major damage control.
When UMW President Mitchell met with Roosevelt on October
15, the union leader initially protested “in the strongest terms
against any limitation” on the President’s choice of arbitration
commissioners. By the end of their meeting, however, Mitchell
had agreed to the five-person arbitration panel as demanded by
the mine owners, if modified at Roosevelt’s suggestion to add two
other members, the president of the Order of Railway Conductors
union and a labor-friendly Catholic prelate.13 There is no record of
what convinced Mitchell to drop his insistence that the President
have total discretion to appoint arbitration commissioners and to
accept the owners’ proposal with only a pro-labor minority added
to the panel. As described more fully below, General Schofield’s
role in the mine seizure plan may well have been what convinced
Mitchell.
composition, now at six members because Roosevelt also demoted
his primary adviser on labor matters from the position of “eminent
sociologist” to the job of commission “recorder.” For the second
time, Mitchell agreed to the owners’ commission proposal as
modified by the President.15
* * * * *
As the foregoing suggests, coal strike historiography treats
General Schofield as a bit player, if it mentions him at all. What
it overlooks is the significance of Schofield’s unusual range of
army experiences in labor conflicts and how that background
complemented Roosevelt’s mine seizure plan. To appreciate this
point, we must go beyond the traditional coal strike narrative and
consider two issues that have been consistently ignored: first, why
Roosevelt chose Schofield to command the army’s mine seizures;
and second, the likely impact of the Schofield selection on the
parties.
Why did Roosevelt want Schofield to command the army’s
coal strike intervention? Roosevelt’s only explanation appears in
his Autobiography, written a decade after the coal strike. He there
described Schofield as a “first-rate general” and “all right” in “both
nerve and judgment.” Those attributes might justify the selection
if one overlooks two complicating facts. First, Schofield’s army
career and hence his performance as a general had ended seven
years earlier when he had retired. Second, TR seemed to weaken
from Stefan Lorant, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, p. 383
It was the mine owners’ turn to object. Later on October 15,
the date of the Roosevelt-Mitchell meeting, two Morgan partners
respected by TR arrived to persuade the President to reject any
change in the composition of the commission.14 It was Roosevelt,
however, who persuaded them and the mine owners to accept
his commission appointments of the railway union’s president as
the commission’s “eminent sociologist,” even though he doubted
that his designee knew what the title meant, and of the Catholic
prelate. This required a further modification of the commission’s
9
Theodore Roosevelt meeting with J. P. Morgan on October 13, 1902. The President’s
message to the financier was stern and effective.
10
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
The mystery is compounded by the fact that the President
intended to give the Civil War general enormous power in the
coal fields. The Autobiography states that Roosevelt instructed
Schofield to take “any steps whatever that were necessary to
prevent interference by the strikers or their sympathizers with
men who wanted to work.” Later, Roosevelt recollected his
instructions to Schofield as forbidding “the smallest outrage or
interference on the part of the striking workingmen.” In other
words, the federal force that the President intended to dispatch
under General Schofield’s command would be expected to protect
strikebreakers. As Roosevelt recounted it, Schofield responded
to his instructions by “quietly” answering “that if I gave the order
he would take possession of the mines, and would guarantee to
open them and to run them without permitting any interference
either by the owners or the strikers or anybody else, so long as
I told him to stay.”17 Such a guarantee reinforces the conclusion
that both Roosevelt and Schofield understood one purpose of the
mine seizure plan to be to enable the hiring of strikebreakers (if
the army’s appearance did not cause the strike to end), because
ten thousand soldiers, while maintaining order, could hardly be
expected to mine enough coal to substitute for the lost production
of one hundred fifty thousand striking miners.
There are, happily, important and independent clues to
explain Roosevelt’s choice of this particular general. Schofield,
who was born in 1831 and died in 1906, had by 1902 earned an
excellent military reputation. He graduated seventh in his 1853
West Point class of fifty-five cadets, and his subsequent career
fulfilled his academic promise. As noted by his recent biographer,
he became “an important figure in the late nineteenth-century
army. In addition to serving as a departmental, corps, and army
commander in the Civil War, he occupied every senior position
in the postwar army, including secretary of war [under Presidents
Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant]. From the Civil War to the
‘Root Reforms,’ General Schofield played an influential role in the
formulation of American military policy and especially in shaping
the American military profession.”18
from John Mitchell, Organized Labor, p. 89
his “first-rate general” rationale by adding that Schofield was “a
fine fellow – a most respectable-looking old boy, with side whiskers
and a black skull-cap, without any of the outward aspect of the
conventional military dictator.” However we interpret Roosevelt’s
explanations, it is clear that he regarded the general’s selection as
important. In the course of the Autobiography’s description of
the coal strike, Roosevelt mentioned the general by name three
times and pointed out that Schofield was “the only man who knew
exactly what my plan was.”16 But these rationales for choosing him
appear so disjointed that they beg the question of why Roosevelt
wanted Schofield to be the man of the hour. Indeed, Roosevelt’s
physical description of Schofield seems incongruous enough to
provoke questions about how serious the mine seizure plan really
was. Moreover, since the army’s seizure of the coal mines was by
itself a potentially game-changing event, why did TR emphasize
Schofield’s role? Was there no other general with the desired good
sense, judgment, and nerve to act?
John Mitchell, president of the United Mine
Workers of America.
Even after federal law forced Schofield into mandatory
retirement from army service in 1895, at the age of sixty-four,
the general remained a respected figure on military matters.
This was illustrated early in the Roosevelt administration when
Secretary of War Root called upon Schofield as a resource and
as a witness before Congress in favor of the army reorganization
known to history as the “Root Reforms.” These involved Root’s
efforts to obtain legislation that would increase the size of the
regular army, improve the functioning of the National Guard in
support of the army, and reorganize the War Department and the
army command structure, including replacement of the existing
and often powerless “commanding general” position by a “chief
of staff” with authority over all army departments. The army’s
departmental staff (as distinguished from line or field officers)
functioned at the time in autonomous bureaus (e.g., the Inspector
General’s Department and the Corps of Engineers) with their
own congressionally approved budgets. Studies of administrative
inefficiencies during the Spanish-American War had convinced
Root that drastic organizational changes were needed, but his
proposed reforms regarding elimination of the commanding
general’s position and subordination of the departmental staff
officers to the new chief of staff were opposed by both then-
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
Commanding General Nelson A. Miles and the departmental staff
officers in Washington, D.C.19
Schofield not only supported Root’s view, but also helped
to shape Root’s bill establishing an army chief of staff, to be
appointed by the President and serve at his pleasure, who would
have substantial supervisory authority over all departmental staff
and line officers. At Root’s request, Schofield appeared before
the Senate Military Affairs Committee in April 1902, the month
before the anthracite coal strike began. He persuasively argued
for Root’s bill based on his personal experience as a former
commanding general, pointing out the necessity for formalizing
strong relationships among the President, the army’s uniformed
leader, and civilian officials in the War Department.20 The timing
of the testimony is important, because it demonstrates that
Schofield still had political skills and a reservoir of respect within
the government that might be helpful to President Roosevelt in
connection with the army mine seizure plan a few months later.
Commanding General Miles was never seriously considered
for command of the troops sent to the coal fields. He had become
persona non grata. In addition to his disloyal opposition to the Root
Reforms, Miles the year before had sought to discredit Roosevelt’s
proudest moment by intimating in a speech that TR had never
been at San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War. The
commanding general was also suspected of leaking documents
regarding atrocities in U.S. conduct of the war in the Philippines,
had publicly expressed disagreement with an internal navy
investigation, and had been reprimanded by both the secretary
of war and the President for this criticism of a governmental
entity outside his army jurisdiction. By March 1902, Roosevelt
was building a case to his cabinet that Miles should be removed
from his position as commanding general. He circulated a story
about Miles’s effort to thwart President McKinley’s renomination
in 1900 by means of a Miles-Roosevelt ticket; or if that failed,
Roosevelt contended, Miles had plotted to supplant Roosevelt as
the Republican Party’s vice presidential nominee. In response to
Miles’s allegations of army brutality in the Philippines, Roosevelt
wrote Root that Miles could hardly escape his own responsibility
for the deaths of women and children in the 1890 Wounded
Knee Indian massacre. Perhaps most reprehensible to TR, Miles
seemed to be signaling the possibility of running for President
against Roosevelt in 1904 on an anti-imperialist platform.21
Yet, despite the administration’s hostility toward Miles, and
although Schofield had had a distinguished military career and
had been legislatively useful to Roosevelt and Root, those facts
do not by themselves explain TR’s desire to return Schofield to
active military duty in a critical and volatile strike situation after
seven years of retirement. The best explanation for Schofield’s
selection, which becomes apparent from the orders Roosevelt
gave Schofield, was that the general had unique experience
commanding the army during civil disorders. Schofield had been
involved in five significant confrontations between the army and
disgruntled laborers: the Great Strike of 1877; riots by white coal
11
miners against Chinese mining workers in Wyoming in 1885; the
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, mining confrontation in 1892; hijacking
of trains in 1894 by “industrial armies” in the Pacific Northwest;
and enforcement of federal court injunctions during the railroad
boycotts that accompanied the Pullman strike later that same
year. Not only was his participation in those events a matter of
record, but his published memoirs had candidly discussed some
of his experiences in labor disputes.22 As a result, Roosevelt would
have had access to relevant information regarding Schofield’s
command of army troops in labor confrontations.
Schofield was a relatively minor player in the 1877 Great
Strike that began in West Virginia and quickly escalated to
encompass two-thirds of the nation’s rail lines, other industries,
and unemployed mobs. It was marked by riots, killings, and
substantial fire damage to private property. In response to a
series of requests by state governors in West Virginia, Maryland,
and Pennsylvania, President Rutherford B. Hayes immediately
instructed the regular army to establish order. He also sent federal
troops to Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri to protect government
property and aid federal marshals who were trying to enforce
court orders. Because Hayes did not clarify the relationship
of federal troops to local authorities, in some states the regular
army reported to state officials, while in Pennsylvania the army
commanded state forces. Schofield at the time was the military
academy’s superintendent at West Point, but Hayes called him
to Washington to consult, assigned him to reopen the rail line
between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and designated him the
commander of military forces protecting federal sites in the
District of Columbia. In the process, Schofield participated in
internal army consideration of the proper relationship between
state and federal forces during civil disturbances.23
When white coal miners in Wyoming engaged in rioting and the
killing of Chinese miners in 1885, Schofield was the commanding
officer of the district where the disturbances occurred. In reaction
to the sheriff’s inability to protect the Chinese laborers because of
local support for the rioters, the Union Pacific Railroad Company,
owner of the mines, persuaded the territorial governor to request
federal government help. Schofield was ordered to command
army troops to protect life and liberty, aid local authorities,
and make arrests. Schofield personally went to Rock Springs,
Wyoming, the scene of the riots, where he found that the army had
already established order while complying with his instructions
not to punish offenders. His approach thereafter was to keep the
army as far as he could from involvement in the underlying labor
dispute and local political environment, and he rejected the use of
military commissions to try alleged murderers.24
With respect to the 1892 Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, mining
conflict, when Schofield was the army’s commanding general,
Philip S. Foner has alleged that “Schofield commanded 1500
federal soldiers sent to the Coeur d’Alene mining district, where
they assisted in protecting strikebreakers and arresting strike
leaders and sympathizers.” Foner overstates Schofield’s actual
12
role in the conflict. Although the army did provide such assistance,
and Schofield did issue the order carrying out President Benjamin
Harrison’s prompt granting of the Idaho governor’s request for
army intervention, the general did not personally go to the scene
of the labor conflict, and his involvement seems to have ended with
the original order. Thereafter, the mining district was under statedeclared martial law, and the state’s inspector general was in “full
charge of all operations in the field,” which included those of the
regular army. In the most extensive study of the 1892 labor dispute,
by Robert Wayne Smith, Schofield receives mention solely for the
initial order and for instructing the army commander on the scene
to cooperate with Idaho’s inspector general. Schofield’s silence
about military operations in the Coeur d’Alene mining district and
his lack of direction to army commanders have been characterized
by Jerry M. Cooper, a historian of federal military intervention in
labor disputes, as “most puzzling,” especially in comparison to his
very different responses to labor disputes in 1894, only two years
later. What helps to explain Schofield’s passivity, however, is that
President Harrison preempted the general by ordering the army to
cooperate with the local authorities and to aid federal marshals in
guarding and transporting prisoners.25
Schofield began to frame a comprehensive approach for army
responses to civil disorders during the spring of 1894. He was
still the army’s commanding general when “industrial armies”
of the unemployed in the western United States hijacked trains
to take them to Washington, D.C., in support of the movement
familiarly referred to as Coxey’s Army. In response to the Montana
governor’s request for troops to aid the railroads, President Grover
Cleveland quickly ordered the army to retake the trains and guard
bridges, tunnels, and railroad property. In his memoirs published
a few years later, Schofield expressed sympathy for the disgruntled
workers and disdain for the railway companies’ failure to provide
“the requisite transportation of destitute laborers eastward [which]
would have cost the roads practically nothing, while their losses
resulting from not providing it were very great.” Notwithstanding
these pro-labor sentiments, Schofield insisted upon avoiding army
favoritism toward either side of the dispute. In General Order
No. 15 of May 25, 1894, he repeatedly cautioned that the army
was not to become subject to civilian political direction. Troops
were to act independently of “the orders of any civil officer,” their
commanding officers were “directly responsible to their military
superiors,” and none of them would be excused for unlawful or
unauthorized acts on the ground that they had acted on an order
“from a marshal or any other civil officer.”26 This deviated from
the federal government’s approaches in 1877 and 1892, and it
foreshadowed the direction that Roosevelt would take in his
instructions to Schofield in 1902.
Only two months later, the “industrial armies” episode took
on the appearance of a dress rehearsal for the army’s response to
the violent Pullman strike and ensuing boycott of railroads that
used Pullman-manufactured sleeping cars. Under the leadership
of Eugene Debs’s American Railway Union, the combined strike
and boycott eventually halted service by 150,000 railroad workers.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
At the direction of President Cleveland’s attorney general, the
federal government obtained a sweeping court injunction against
the strike and boycott, in part because they prevented mail from
being delivered to some railroad-served localities. Regarding the
injunction as fatal to their cause, Debs and his union disobeyed it
and were held in contempt of court. When federal marshals were
unable to arrest those violating court orders, the President called
on the army not only to guard federal and railroad facilities, but
also to protect United States marshals while they enforced the
court injunctions and escorted prisoners. Unlike Roosevelt in
1902, Cleveland did not first try to settle the strike.27
In his memoirs, Schofield explained that his issuance of
General Order No. 15 during the “industrial armies” affair in the
spring of 1894 was based on his interpretation of the Constitution
and laws that “when the civil power ceases to be effective and the
President is required to exercise his authority as commander-inchief of the army, his acts become purely military, untrammeled
by any civil authority whatever.” Thus, when local authorities
become unable to enforce the laws, the military power “steps in
and overcomes the lawless resistance to authority.” In defense of
this limited role, he explained: “Then the civil officers resume their
functions, to make arrests of individuals, hold them in custody,
and deliver them to the courts for trial. It is not the duty of the
troops in such cases to guard prisoners who are in the custody of
civil officers; but it is the duty of the troops, if necessary, to repel
by force of arms any unlawful attempt to rescue such prisoners.”
Or, as Schofield elaborated in General Order No. 23, issued during
the Pullman disturbances on July 9, 1894, “punishment belongs
not to the troops, but to the courts of justice.”28
Unlike his inaction during the Coeur d’Alene affair two
years earlier, Schofield took an active role in the army’s Pullman
intervention. All field commanders reported directly to him, and
he subjected them to tactical limitations. In General Order No.
23, Schofield noted that the early stages of insurrection were
marked by the intermingling of lawless mobs “with great crowds
of comparatively innocent people drawn there by curiosity and
excitement,” so that “the commanding officer should withhold
the fire of his troops, if possible, until timely warning has been
given to the innocent to separate themselves from the guilty.”
Schofield’s “general rule” was that, unless a commanding officer
ordered otherwise because of tactical considerations, “the bayonet
alone should be used against mixed crowds in the first stages of a
revolt.”29 In short, Schofield’s 1894 General Orders posited a more
restrained army intervention than that pursued by Presidents
Hayes and Harrison in 1877 and 1892, respectively.
General Schofield was, therefore, the common denominator
in the army interventions under Presidents Hayes, Harrison,
Cleveland, and, prospectively, Roosevelt. Having observed
firsthand the army’s practical problems in 1877 and 1892, Schofield
in 1894 took the army in a different direction by developing a
doctrine that more clearly partitioned federal and state roles,
defined a purely military chain of command, and insisted upon
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
13
limitations to the use of force. This was almost certainly the
reason why Roosevelt picked Schofield in 1902 to command the
army in the coal fields. Indeed, the President’s instructions to the
general paralleled the 1894 Schofield Doctrine. Roosevelt told
Schofield “that the action [to be] taken would be practically a war
measure, and that if I sent him he must act in a purely military
capacity under me as commander-in-chief, paying no heed to
during that era by any alternative congressional action. Indeed,
the government did not gain legislative tools for labor peacemaking
until much later when Congress passed the Railway Labor Act in
1926; the National Labor Relations Act, familiarly known as the
Wagner Act, in 1935; and the Labor Management Relations Act,
familiarly known as the Taft-Hartley Act, in 1947. Those laws
provided mechanisms for establishing union recognition rights,
for preventing “unfair labor practices,” for creating a cadre of
federal labor mediators, and for preventing strikes under specified
circumstances.
courtesy of Schofield Barracks
Nevertheless, four elements distinguished Roosevelt’s 1902
resort to the military from the army interventions ordered by
Hayes, Harrison, and Cleveland. First, he delayed summoning
the regular army until he had exhausted other presidential
options. Second, he added government operation of the mines,
what he called receivership, to the army’s traditional function of
maintaining civil order.31 Third, he combined army intervention
with civilian oversight of the labor dispute through his idea of
an investigative commission. Fourth, he made a presidential
commitment to the Schofield Doctrine regarding how the army
should act.
Relief sculpture of General John M. Schofield.
any authority, judicial or otherwise, except mine.” The italicized
words are either identical to or paraphrases of Schofield’s 1894
General Orders.30
Roosevelt’s embrace of the Schofield Doctrine, although an
important indicator of a new presidential policy for dealing with
labor conflict, was hardly a repudiation of army intervention in
labor disputes. Roosevelt’s eventual military response to the
strike reflected a belief shared with his predecessors that army
intervention was a proper and even necessary reaction to perceived
social disruption in labor conflicts. This belief was not challenged
Roosevelt credited his mine seizure plan with resolving the
strike, because “the capitalists and workingmen both became
impressed with the fact that drastic action impended.” His
assessment implies that they knew what he intended (even though
the plan was kept secret from the public), and there is supporting
evidence for his interpretation. A government official who acted as
an intermediary during the strike told others that the President’s
mine seizure intention was made known to the railway presidents
and mine owners, leading to “the final offer of arbitration on their
part.” Roosevelt labor historian Irving Greenberg also contends,
albeit without identifying sources, that TR let the UMW’s Mitchell
know, through “close friends,” about the mine seizure plan.32
Yet, if the union knew army intervention was imminent, that
alone did not overcome Mitchell’s initial reluctance to accept the
owner-proposed arbitration and also does not explain his October
15 change of mind regarding the composition of the arbitration
panel. Indeed, as late as October 11, the date the owners proposed
arbitration, Mitchell wrote Roosevelt that the striking miners
would not return to work even if all the troops in the United States
were sent to the coal fields.33
If army intervention was not enough to persuade the union to
accept the owners’ formula for choosing arbitration commissioners,
then what did? Did the Schofield selection influence the union’s
position? In a private letter written shortly after the strike
settlement, Roosevelt coupled the revelation of his announcement
to Root and Knox of the imminence of “certain definite action” with
the statement that “I had seen old General Schofield and told him
that if I put in the regulars I intended at the same time to seize the
mines and to have him take charge and run them as receiver for the
government.” The logical inference from the statement’s context
is that at some point he had shared Schofield’s role with Root and
14
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Knox. But the statement does not specify when Roosevelt “had
seen old General Schofield” or even whether Roosevelt actually
had mentioned Schofield to Root, Knox, Mitchell, or anyone else.
The sole record regarding a TR-Schofield meeting is that it was
arranged on October 11 and occurred on October 13.34 The timing
of this meeting is of consequence, because it occurred while the
UMW was resisting both army intervention and the owners’
arbitration proposal. The question therefore becomes whether
Roosevelt used the impending Schofield assignment to persuade
Mitchell to accept the owners’ restrictions on how Roosevelt would
select arbitration commissioners.35
In appraising Mitchell’s October 15 change of mind, we cannot
ignore the fact that the most significant development between
the presentation of the owners’ proposal and Mitchell’s delayed
acceptance of it was Roosevelt’s meeting with Schofield on October
13. The timing of Mitchell’s concession suggests that the prospect
of Schofield in command of an occupation army had something
to do with Mitchell’s change of mind. The logical basis for such
a conclusion, even though it cannot be proven, is that General
Schofield’s role in the mine seizure plan presented the union with
a public relations dilemma. In Schofield, TR had identified an
army commander uniquely qualified to reassure a wide audience
about the propriety of military intervention. Up to that point, the
UMW had been winning the public relations contest,36 but the
interposition of a general with a distinguished Civil War record, a
history of some pro-labor views, and a published doctrine of army
moderation in labor disputes might well trump union opposition
to military intervention in the citizenry’s perspective. We do not
know whether Roosevelt actually discussed such considerations
with Mitchell. If so, then that helps to explain Mitchell’s October
15 about-face regarding the composition of the arbitration panel.
If not, it would remain difficult to account for the union leader’s
change of position.
To the same effect, the Autobiography employed another
diversionary tactic that counterbalanced Roosevelt’s instructions
to Schofield to protect strikebreakers. Thus, TR capped his
narrative of the coal strike resolution with union-friendly
comments about “the enormous economic, political and moral
possibilities of the trade union,” and expressed optimism “that the
trade union is growing constantly in wisdom as well as in power,
and is becoming one of the most efficient agencies toward the
solution of our industrial problems.”38
In his Autobiography Roosevelt called the resolution of the
anthracite coal strike “very much the most important action I
took as regards labor.”39 Even before writing the Autobiography,
TR acknowledged General Schofield’s significance in that action
by his moving and respectful reaction to Schofield’s death in
1906. He not only attended the general’s funeral service, but also
exhibited what the New York Times contemporaneously described
as “deep mourning.”40 Beyond Schofield’s Civil War record,
Roosevelt had personal reasons for honoring him, including the
general’s support of the Root Reforms, his prompt acceptance of
Roosevelt’s mine seizure instructions, the President’s adoption of
the Schofield Doctrine for army interventions in labor and civil
disputes, perhaps the use of Schofield’s reputation to influence
Mitchell’s yielding to the owners’ arbitration proposal, and even
the camouflage of Schofield’s age and looks that later would enable
TR to downplay the mine seizure plan.
While TR’s Autobiography and this researcher’s investigation
provide insights and clues into why Roosevelt regarded Schofield
as a noteworthy contributor to the coal strike settlement, they
also invite a deeper search into who Schofield was and what he
represented to Roosevelt. The coal strike’s Schofield mystery may
never be fully resolved, but it deserves more consideration than
it has received. This article is a belated step in that direction.
* * * * *
Roosevelt never alluded in writing to Schofield’s experiences
in labor disputes. This is not surprising, because once the coal
strike settlement ended the need for army intervention, he did not
have to defend in detail either his mine seizure plan or Schofield’s
role in it. Instead, a decade after the fact, Roosevelt pivoted in his
Autobiography to focus instead on Schofield’s age and looks. TR’s
added explanation for choosing Schofield—that the general was a
“respectable-looking old boy”—served Roosevelt’s larger purposes
by minimizing the likelihood of reawakening strike controversies.
He used it as a diversion from accusations that the seizure of
the coal mines (which he emphasized had “never happened”)
would have exceeded presidential power and either would have
interfered with private property rights or would have constituted
union-busting.37 By depicting Schofield as lacking “any of the
outward aspect of the conventional military dictator,” Roosevelt
transformed the general from potential strikebreaker-in-chief
to an unthreatening figure of irony. In so doing, he softened the
edges of the army intervention plan.
Louis B. Livingston is a retired labor lawyer. A graduate of
Yale University and Harvard Law School, he recently received
a Master’s degree in History from Portland State University,
writing a thesis titled “Theodore Roosevelt on Labor Unions:
A New Perspective.” He previously contributed to the TRA
Journal “The Birth and Death of Theodore Roosevelt’s Industrial
Peace Foundation” (Vol. XXXIII, Nos. 1, 2, & 3, Winter-SpringSummer 2012, pp. 62-66).
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
Endnotes
Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
(1913; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1985), pp. 489-490.
1
2
Ibid., pp. 480-481, 487-488.
15
party resolution proposals. Theodore Rex, pp. 159-160. To
the contrary, Roosevelt categorically denied that the owners
made such proposals when he asserted that they “refused to
talk of arbitration or other accommodation of any kind.” TR,
Autobiography, p. 481 (emphasis added).
TR to Marcus Hanna, October 5, 1902, Letters of TR, Vol. III,
p. 342; Greenberg, TR and Labor, pp. 149-151.
8
Ibid., p. 480; Henry Cabot Lodge, ed., Selections from the
Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot
Lodge, 1884-1918 (2 vols., New York: Scribner, 1925), Vol. I, pp.
528-531.
3
Theodore Roosevelt to Murray Crane, October 22, 1902, in
Elting E. Morison et al., eds., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt
(8 vols., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951-1954), Vol.
III, p. 360; Philander C. Knox to TR, October 7, 1902, Knox
Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Box 31; Knox
to TR, October 10, 1902, Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of
Congress, Series 1; TR to Seth Low, October 3, 1902, Letters of
TR, Vol. III, p. 337; TR to Grover Cleveland, October 5, 1902,
Letters of TR, Vol. III, pp. 338-339; New York Times, October
4, 1902, pp. 1-2.
4
The mine owners’ public approval had already suffered selfinflicted damage due to the publication of a July letter (presented
on p. 8) from their chief spokesman. In it George F. Baer,
president of the mine-owning Philadelphia & Reading Railway
Company, responded to a stranger’s concern by writing that “the
rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and
cared for—not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian men
to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given the control of
the property interests of the country, and upon the successful
Management of which so much depends.” Press and pulpit
reaction ridiculed Baer’s invocation of a management-friendly
deity. Roosevelt later referred to Baer’s letter as expressing
a “Viceregent of God” position. Mark Sullivan, Our Times (6
vols., New York: Scribner, 1926-1935), Vol. II, pp. 425-427
(reproducing the Baer letter); Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex
(New York: Random House, 2001), pp. 133, 136-137; TR to
Michael A. Schaap, January 24, 1913, Letters of TR, Vol. VII,
p. 698.
TR to Seth Low, October 3, 1902, Letters of TR, Vol. III, p.
337; TR to Cleveland, October 10, 1902, Letters of TR, Vol. III,
pp. 346-347; TR, Autobiography, p. 490; Bishop, TR and His
Time, Vol. I, p. 211. There was no dispute that strike violence
had occurred, but the parties disagreed about how much and
who was responsible. As shown by the report of the October 3
meeting, the operators alleged at least twenty killings, while the
UMW admitted to seven. UMW President John Mitchell later
conceded a “number of clashes between the more reckless and
impetuous strikers and the more irresponsible of the coal and
iron police, hired by the operators for the purpose of protecting
their mines.” New York Times, October 4, 1902, pp. 1-2; John
Mitchell, Organized Labor (1903; reprint, Clifton, NJ: Kelley,
1973), p. 385.
9
5
6
New York Times, October 4, 1902, pp. 1-2.
Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Theodore Roosevelt and His Time
Shown in His Own Letters (2 vols., New York: Scribner, 1920),
Vol. I, pp. 204-207; Lodge to TR, October 5, 1902, Selections
from the Correspondence, Vol. I, pp. 536-537. For reasons
underlying Roosevelt’s refusals to consider the owners’ court
proposals, see Irving Greenberg, Theodore Roosevelt and
Labor, 1900-1918 (New York: Garland, 1988), pp. 152-153,
and Robert J. Cornell, The Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1957), pp. 191,
200. Edmund Morris has suggested that both Roosevelt and
the UMW failed to catch the “significance” of the owners’ third7
The decision to intervene militarily was probably not reached
before October 7, when Roosevelt was still maintaining that
government seizure of the mines as a receiver was “foolish”
and “wholly impossible.” TR to Robert Bacon, October 7, 1902,
Letters of TR, Vol. III, p. 344; TR to Lodge, October 7, 1902, in
Bishop, TR and His Time, Vol. I, p. 208.
10
TR to Crane, October 22, 1902, Letters of TR, Vol. III, p. 362;
Frederick S. Wood, Roosevelt as We Knew Him (Philadelphia:
John C. Winston, 1927), pp. 108-109; Cornell, Anthracite Coal
Strike, pp. 34-36; Philip C. Jessup, Elihu Root (2 vols., New
York: Dodd, Mead, 1938), Vol. I, pp. 274-276. An intimate of
both Roosevelt and Root described the latter as a man who
“would keep force to the very last, when everything else had
failed.” Owen Wister, Roosevelt: The Story of a Friendship
(New York: Macmillan, 1930), p. 160. The owners’ stated
reasons for refusing to recognize the UMW as the representative
of the miners were that the union lacked coercion-free majority
support among anthracite coal miners and could not represent
those miners fairly because its union membership was chiefly
composed of miners in the bituminous coal industry, “a rival
competitive interest.” New York Times, October 4, 1902, p. 2,
and October 14, 1902, p. 1.
11
TR to Crane, October 22, 1902, Letters of TR, Vol. III, pp.
361, 363 (also containing the text of the “little memorandum”);
Jessup, Root, Vol. I, pp. 275-276; TR to J. P. Morgan, October 15,
1902, Letters of TR, Vol. III, pp. 351-352; Chronology, Letters of
TR, Vol. IV, p. 1354; Roosevelt, Autobiography, p. 489.
12
13
TR to Morgan (not mailed), October 15, 1902, Letters of TR,
16
Vol. III, pp. 351-353; TR to Crane, October 22, 1902, Letters of
TR, Vol. III, p. 365.
TR to Morgan (not mailed), October 15, 1902, Letters of TR,
Vol. III, pp. 351-352. The two Morgan partners were Robert
Bacon and George W. Perkins. Late in his presidency, Roosevelt
appointed Bacon, his Harvard classmate, as secretary of state.
Perkins was a leading figure in Roosevelt’s Progressive Party
presidential campaign in 1912.
14
In contrast to the lack of information about how Roosevelt
persuaded Mitchell, Roosevelt has left us an entertaining
narrative of how he persuaded Morgan’s partners. TR,
Autobiography, pp. 482-484; TR to Morgan (not mailed),
October 15, 1902, Letters of TR, Vol. III, pp. 351-353; Lodge,
Selections from the Correspondence, pp. 539-540; TR to Finley
Peter Dunne, October 20, 1902, Letters of TR, Vol. III, p. 357;
TR to Mitchell, October 16, 1902, Letters of TR, Vol. III, pp. 353354; Mitchell, Organized Labor, pp. 393-396. Months after the
UMW finally agreed to arbitration and called off the strike, the
presidential commission issued a decision (after hearing over
five hundred witnesses and amassing over ten thousand pages of
testimony and exhibits) ordering significant wage increases and
workday hours reductions, as sought by the union. Jonathan
Grossman, “The Coal Strike of 1902—Turning Point in U.S.
Policy,” Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 98, October 1975, p. 26.
15
TR, Autobiography, pp. 489-490. Neither the mine seizure
plan nor the Schofield selection was widely known, as indicated
by their omission from contemporary newspaper accounts.
New York Times, October 13, 1902, p. 1. Once the parties agreed
to arbitration, however, Roosevelt was candid with others about
the military plan and Schofield’s role. Wood, Roosevelt as We
Knew Him, pp. 107-108.
16
TR, Autobiography, p. 490; TR to Edward Grey, November
24, 1915, Letters of TR, Vol. VIII, p. 897.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
congressionally prescribed duties. In practice, the President
“invariably selected the senior major general, the service’s
highest-ranking officer, for whom the position constituted an
honorary distinction at the end of a long career.” Hewes, From
Root to McNamara, p. 4; Graham A. Cosmas, An Army for
Empire (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1971), p. 15.
Connelly, Schofield & the Politics of Generalship, pp. 332335; Jessup, Root, Vol. I, p. 242; Philip L. Semsch, “Elihu Root
and the General Staff,” Military Affairs, Vol. 27, Spring 1963,
pp. 16-27; Army and Navy Register, April 12, 1902, pp. 4-5.
20
Chronology, March 21, 1902, Letters of TR, Vol. IV, p. 1349;
Morris, Theodore Rex, pp. 78-79, 97-99; Jessup, Root, Vol. I,
pp. 243-245, 247-248, 260; Wood, Roosevelt as We Knew Him,
p. 132. TR in 1901 told a friend that Harvard’s earlier grant
of an honorary degree to General Miles was “preposterous.”
Wister, Story of a Friendship, p. 82. Root also distrusted Miles,
who had responded to the secretary’s request for the names
of the most efficient and energetic officers to command new
volunteer regiments in the Philippines, by instead urging that
seniority be followed without regard to merit and then leaking
Root’s confidential instructions. Jessup, Root, Vol. I, p. 244.
When Miles reached mandatory retirement age in 1903, TR
demonstrated his continuing hostility by declining to send the
customary congratulatory message, and Root demonstrated his
by not attending the retirement ceremony. Edward Ranson,
“Nelson A. Miles as Commanding General, 1895-1903,” Military
Affairs, Vol. 29, Winter 1965-1966, pp. 179-200; Nelson A.
Miles, Personal Recollections and Observations of General
Nelson A. Miles, from the Introduction by Robert M. Utley (New
York: Da Capo Press, 1969), p. ix.
21
John M. Schofield, Forty-Six Years in the Army (New York:
Century, 1897).
22
17
Donald B. Connelly, John M. Schofield & the Politics of
Generalship (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2006), pp. 1, 19, 65, 82, 158-159, 210-211, 214, 336. Although
this biography provides valuable contributions to understanding
the general, including his perception of the army’s role in labor
disputes, it omits any discussion of his part in the Roosevelt plan
to end the anthracite coal strike. Despite his illustrious career,
Schofield’s name is primarily remembered today because the
Schofield Barracks in Honolulu were named in his honor. They
are the central location in From Here to Eternity, the Pearl
Harbor-era novel by James Jones, and the Academy Awardwinning film made from it.
18
James E. Hewes, Jr., From Root to McNamara: Army
Organization and Administration, 1900-1963 (Washington,
D.C.: Center of Military History, 1975), pp. 3, 6. At the time, the
army’s commanding general position was a titular office without
19
Robert V. Bruce, 1877: Year of Violence (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), pp. 84-85, 91, 110, 147, 158, 217-218, 220,
247, 251, 271; Jerry M. Cooper, The Army and Civil Disorder:
Federal Military Intervention in Labor Disputes, 1877-1900
(Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980), pp. 43-44, 46, 51, 59, 82-83;
Connelly, Schofield & the Politics of Generalship, pp. 280-281.
23
Connelly, Schofield & the Politics of Generalship, pp. 281283.
24
Compare Philip S. Foner, History of the Labor Movement
in the United States (10 vols., New York: International, 19471994), Vol. II, pp. 232-234, with Robert Wayne Smith, The Coeur
d’Alene Mining War of 1892 (Corvallis: Oregon State University
Press, 1961), pp. 75-77, 80, 83, 97. Cooper, Army and Civil
Disorder, pp. 167-170; Bennett Milton Rich, The Presidents and
Civil Disorder (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1941), pp. 111-112.
25
26
Rich, Presidents and Civil Disorder, pp. 87-90; Connelly,
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
17
Schofield & the Politics of Generalship, pp. 283-284; Schofield,
Forty-Six Years, pp. 491-492, 505-506.
action if the result can be achieved with equal efficiency in less
drastic fashion.” TR, Autobiography, p. 490.
Cooper, Army and Civil Disorder, p. 103; Connelly, Schofield
& the Politics of Generalship, pp. 284-288; Rich, Presidents and
Civil Disorder, pp. 107, 109.
33
27
28
Schofield, Forty-Six Years, pp. 504-505, 507-509.
Cornell, Anthracite Coal Strike, pp. 193-194. By the turn of
the century, unions had come to distrust army intervention in
labor disputes as designed to suppress strikes. Cooper, Army
and Civil Disorder, pp. 221-222.
TR to Crane, October 22, 1902, Letters of TR, Vol. III, pp.
362-363; Chronology, Letters of TR, Vol. IV, p. 1354; John M.
Schofield to George Cortelyou, October 12, 1902, TR Papers,
Series 1. Whether Roosevelt also met with Schofield on any
other date is somewhat clouded by the Root biography’s
contention that Roosevelt met with Schofield on October 11, the
same day that Root met with Morgan, but this dubious assertion
is based on a letter that the eighty-five-year-old Root wrote to
his biographer in 1930, nearly three decades after the events
under review. Jessup, Root, Vol. I, pp. 276, 294-295; Letters of
TR, Vol. III, p. 348, n.1. There is no other evidence of a meeting
between the President and Schofield prior to October 13.
34
Ibid., pp. 500, 504-505; Cooper, Army and Civil Disorder,
pp. 104-106.
29
TR, Autobiography, p. 489 (emphasis added). Application of
the Schofield Doctrine was not simple. Suppose, for example,
that a regular army soldier was present when a United States
marshal, in the act of arresting a rioter, was overpowered and
beaten. Should the soldier merely stop the beating and release
the rioter, or should he restrain the rioter until another civil
officer arrived to make an arrest?
30
The legality of Roosevelt’s mine seizure plan was never
tested, but President Harry S. Truman’s labor-related seizure
of steel mills fifty years later, on “stewardship” grounds similar
to Roosevelt’s concept of “receivership,” was rejected by the
Supreme Court, voting 6-3, in Youngstown Co. v. Sawyer, 343
U.S. 579 (1952). The complexity of the legal issues elicited seven
separate opinions. Five justices referred to Roosevelt’s plan
but differed on what weight to give it, two concurring with the
majority against Truman’s action and three dissenting on the
basis that the “aggregate of Presidential powers” allowed such
seizures. The dispositive factor in four separate concurring
opinions (by Justices Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson,
Harold Burton, and Tom Clark) was that the Taft-Hartley Act’s
labor-dispute remedies excluded government seizure of struck
facilities, a consideration that would not have been present in
Roosevelt’s day because that law did not then exist.
31
TR to Edward Grey, November 24, 1915, Letters of TR, Vol.
VIII, p. 987; Roosevelt, Autobiography, p. 489; New York
Times, October 13, 1902, p. 1; Charles G. Dawes, A Journal
of the McKinley Years (Chicago: Lakeside, 1950), p. 327;
Greenberg, TR and Labor, p. 156, n. 160. Some historians
have speculated that the military plan “must have been
outlined” to Morgan or that it “undoubtedly aided” his reaching
agreement with Root. Henry F. Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt:
A Biography (1931; revised, San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1956),
p. 193; Greenberg, TR and Labor, p. 161. My own career of
extensive labor negotiations leads me to believe that both sides
must have known something about the mine seizure plan. To
be most effective, an action of such magnitude would first be
communicated to the involved parties in order to determine if
its prospect would obtain the desired outcome without actual
implementation. Roosevelt expressed a similar principle in his
comment about not having to use “General Schofield and the
regulars” when he wrote that “it is never well to take drastic
The mine owners, who acted immediately to accept Root’s
compromise plan, probably would not have acted differently
regardless of whether they had been alerted to Schofield’s
future command of the troops. By that point, they knew that
military intervention might not be a panacea for them, since
the Pennsylvania governor’s recent stationing of ten thousand
National Guardsmen in the coal fields had, in Roosevelt’s words,
“failed to bring about more than a trifling increase in the number
of miners who returned to work.” Moreover, although at the
October 3 meeting with Roosevelt they had requested army
intervention to protect actual and potential strikebreakers,
the President’s additional tactic of government seizure of their
mines would have constituted drastic action that they had not
sought and might find difficult to unravel. Greenberg, TR and
Labor, pp. 155-156, n. 160; TR to Crane, October 22, 1902,
Letters of TR, Vol. III, pp. 361, 363.
35
32
Robert H. Wiebe, “The Anthracite Strike of 1902: A Record
of Confusion,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 48,
September 1961, p. 240.
36
Roosevelt recognized and sought to discredit all three
accusations. TR, Autobiography, pp. 479, 487-488, 491, 491n.
37
38
Ibid., pp. 493, 495.
39
Ibid., p. 479.
40
New York Times, March 8, 1906, p. 9.
18
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
PRESIDENTIAL SNAPSHOT (#21)
President Roosevelt Engages in Backstage Hands-on
Diplomacy Concerning the Alaska Boundary Dispute,
Marking out Parameters for the Limited Compromise
That Ultimately Will Resolve the Disagreement
the greater part of a letter of July 25, 1903, to Oliver Wendell Holmes (in Morison
et al., eds., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, Vol. III, pp. 529-531)
“If you happen to meet Chamberlain again you are entirely
at liberty to tell him what I say, although of course it must be
privately and unofficially. Nothing but my very earnest desire to
get on well with England and my reluctance to come to a break
made me consent to the appointment of a Joint Commission
in this case; for I regard the attitude of Canada, which England
has backed, as having the scantest possible warrant in justice.
However, there were but two alternatives. Either I could appoint
a commission and give a chance for agreement; or I could do as
I shall of course do in case this commission fails, and request
Congress to make an appropriation which will enable me to run
the boundary on my own hook. As regards most of Great Britain’s
claim, there is not, in my judgment, enough to warrant so much
as a consideration by the United States; and if it were not that
there are two or three lesser points on which there is doubt, I
could not, even for the object I have mentioned, have consented
to appoint a commission. The claim of the Canadians for access
to deep water along any part of the Canadian coast is just exactly
as indefensible as if they should now suddenly claim the island
of Nantucket. . . . In the same way the preposterous claim once
advanced, but I think now abandoned by the Canadians, that the
Portland Channel was not the Portland Channel but something
else unknown, is no more worth discussing than the claim that
the 49th Parallel meant the 50th Parallel or else the 48th.
“But there are points which the commission can genuinely
consider. There is room for argument about the islands in the
mouth of the Portland Channel. I think on this the American
case much the stronger of the two. Still, the British have a case.
Again, it may well be that there are places in which there is room
for doubt as to whether there actually is a chain of mountains
parallel to the coast within the ten-league limit. Here again there
is a chance for honest difference and honest final agreement. I
believe that no three men in the United States could be found
who would be more anxious than our own delegates to do justice
to the British claim on all points where there is even a color of
right on the British side. . . .
“Let me add that I earnestly hope the English understand
my purpose. I wish to make one last effort to bring about an
agreement through the commission, which will enable the
people of both countries to say that the result represents the
feeling of the representatives of both countries. But if there
is a disagreement I wish it distinctly understood, not only
that there will be no arbitration of the matter, but that in my
message to Congress I shall take a position which will prevent
any possibility of arbitration hereafter; a position, I am inclined
to believe, which will render it necessary for Congress to give
me the authority to run the line as we claim it, by our own
people, without any further regard to the attitude of England
and Canada. If I paid attention to mere abstract right, that is
the position I ought to take anyhow. I have not taken it because
I wish to exhaust every effort to have the affair settled peacefully
and with due regard to England’s dignity.”
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
19
Book Review
Rolf Sletten, Medora: Boom, Bust, and Resurrection. Medora, ND:
Theodore Roosevelt Medora Foundation, 2012, 197 pp.
Reviewed by Jim Fuglie
There have been a lot of books written about North Dakota’s
Badlands, but none has dealt specifically with the entire history of
the town of Medora and the characters who played major roles in
it—until now.
Rolf Sletten’s new book, Medora: Boom, Bust, and
Resurrection, does just that. Gracefully written and spectacularly
illustrated, the book tells three stories: the founding of Medora
and its early years, 1883-1887 (the period during which young
Theodore Roosevelt spent the most time there); the biographies
of the colorful men and women who were there at the start and
hung on through the hard years as the town dried up and nearly
blew away; and the incredible restoration of the town by Harold
Schafer and its growth into a modern-day national park gateway
community and treasure trove of western history.
Sletten knows the last of these stories particularly well. A sonin-law of Harold and Sheila Schafer, members of the Theodore
Roosevelt Association who restored the colorful Old West town, he
watched history unfold in the “resurrection” of Medora beginning in
1965. The early history, though, required a great deal of work. The
result is a well-researched historical volume on how Medora came
to be, beginning with the breaking of a champagne bottle on a tent
stake by the Marquis de Mores in 1883 and continuing through the
shoot-‘em-up days of Riley Luffsey and Redhead Mike Finnegan,
and on the important role the Medora area played in the life of its
most famous son, the twenty-sixth President of the United States,
Theodore Roosevelt.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
from Rolf Sletten, Medora: Boom, Bust, and Resurrection, pp. 56-57
20
Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to his wife Alice, written the day he first arrived in the Dakota Badlands.
21
from Rolf Sletten, Medora: Boom, Bust, and Resurrection, pp. 122, 164
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
Theodore Roosevelt’s Maltese Cross Cabin in its original location (top) and in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, where it stands today.
22
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
In a way, Sletten’s book is like the Badlands themselves, as
described by historian Lewis Crawford: “Unseen, the Badlands
cannot be imagined, but once seen, can neither be described nor
forgotten” (quoted on p. 12). The book is that good.
Sletten drew on a bevy of photographers for stunning
Badlands scenery and dug deep into the archives of the North
Dakota State Historical Society and the Theodore Roosevelt
Medora Foundation (the book’s publisher) for historical photos
and documents, including watercolor paintings and a scanned
copy of TR’s four-page letter home to his wife (reproduced on
page 20), written the day he first arrived in Medora in 1883.
Sletten also commissioned an inspired series of sketches of the
town and historical scenes by Florida artist Tyler Fegley.
The historical research is top-notch. For example, who knew
that three United States Presidents stopped in Medora in the
span of seven days in 1883: sitting President Chester A. Arthur
on September 2, former President Ulysses S. Grant on September
6, and future President Theodore Roosevelt on September 8?
On the pages following the first known photo of the Rough
Riders Hotel, snapped in 1885 (it was still called the Metropolitan
then, was later renamed in TR’s honor, and served as headquarters
for the TRA annual meeting in 2011), Sletten presents short
biographies of locals A. C. Packard, Joe Ferris, Hell Roaring
Bill Jones, Yellowstone Vic Smith, A. C. Huidekoper, and the
aforementioned Redhead Mike Finnegan, among others. And
then at the end he tells us, in a series of one- and two-liners, what
became of them and other personalities and landmarks around the
Badlands.
But it is his personal knowledge of the Schafer years, the
rebuilding of the town by the Schafers’ Gold Seal Company, and
the growth of the town on the watch of the Theodore Roosevelt
Medora Foundation, that recent Medora visitors will really enjoy.
Here is his description of the beginning of the Schafer family
involvement:
Harold drove out to Medora and surveyed his new
acquisition. . . . He decided to renovate the hotel. No matter
how much Harold loved the Badlands and Medora’s rich
history, it could not have been an easy decision. In 1963
there was no functioning city government in Medora. The
streets were dirt. Hitching posts still stood in front of some
of the buildings. There was no municipal water system
and no sewer system. There were no hotels, just one small
from Rolf Sletten, Medora: Boom, Bust, and Resurrection, p. 145
Dramatically designed by the author’s son Cody, a Bismarck
graphic artist, and published in coffee-table-size format (it fits
neatly into a medium pizza box from Medora’s Badlands Pizza
Parlor, without shifting around to damage the binding or corners,
for shipping from the tiny Medora post office), previous reviewers
have called the book “monumental” and “fascinating.”
Historic Medora buildings rebuilt in the 1960s
primarily through the efforts of Harold Schafer,
whose family established the Theodore Roosevelt
Medora Foundation in 1986.
restaurant, and no public bathrooms. The Rough Riders
Hotel and the Ferris Store needed to be torn down before they
fell down. Interstate 94 did not exist. The entrance to the
park was located several miles away near the Painted Canyon
Overlook, and some of the locals were less than enthusiastic
about Harold’s meddling in their community (p. 144).
Many North Dakotans know the rest of the story. For people
who do not, this book provides a well-crafted narrative by a firsttime author with a remarkable sense of what anyone who loves
Medora and the Badlands should know about the town’s past. It is
for sale for $29.99 at TRMF stores, at the Western Edge Bookstore
in Medora, and at the Medora Foundation’s online store at www.
medora.com. They will ship it. It might even come in a pizza box.
Jim Fuglie is a former North Dakota tourism director and a
former development director for the Theodore Roosevelt Medora
Foundation in Medora. He is retired and lives in Bismarck.
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
23
Edith’s Gold Coin
by Michael F. Moran
A little-known provision of the Presidential $1 Coin Act of
2005 mandates that the United States Mint issue ten-dollar gold
coins with designs emblematic of the spouse of each President.
The obverse is to bear the image of the first spouse, and the
reverse is to present a design representative of her life and work.
Bronze medals bearing these same designs are also to be struck.
Given the price of a coin containing one-half ounce of .9999 fine
gold, mintages, after an initial flush of demand, were assured to
be low. Like most numismatists, initially I paid little attention
as these First Spouse coins were issued concurrent with the
presidential one-dollar coins. That relative indifference would
not last.
for each of the five first spouses ending with Grover Cleveland’s
second administration. The art was not inspiring. The obverse
images of the first spouses tended to be based upon existing
portraiture. In fairness to the United States Mint designers,
prior to “Frankie” Cleveland, the photographic record was
both sparse and dominated by stiff, formal portrait poses. The
reverses were simple storyboard scenes of mostly domestic
The United States Mint has a design review board, the
Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC), consisting
of eleven individuals pulled from the general public and the
numismatic, the historical, and the medallic art fields. All
proposed designs come through this committee, as well as the
Commission of Fine Arts (CFA). After this review process,
the United States Mint makes final recommendations to the
secretary of the treasury for approval. Appointment to the CCAC
is a plum for any numismatist. Seven appointments result from
U.S. Mint recommendations. Four appointments are made
based on recommendations from the leadership of the House of
Representatives and the Senate. In 2008, when a numismatic
position opened up, I screwed up my courage and applied. My
application went nowhere, and I moved on.
My initial exposure to the First Spouse coins came at a
meeting on November 29, 2011. We were given multiple designs
photo by Dee Dee Moran
In April 2011, an e-mail message from the United States
Mint liaison officer responsible for this committee popped up
on my computer screen. Would I be interested in reapplying?
My resume was strong, but I would still have to participate in
the interview process. Of course, I was off to Washington. As
I was departing from what turned out to be a very rigorous
and thorough interview, I chatted with the U.S. Mint engraver
involved in the vetting process. If I was appointed, the design
for Edith Roosevelt’s gold coin would come up for review during
my term. I talked enthusiastically about the potential for this
coin. As luck would have it, I made the cut with the aid of a
political recommendation and joined the committee in August
2011.
Michael F. Moran at the Augustus Saint-Gaudens National
Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire.
24
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
redecorating the interior and redoing the landscaping.
• Created the China Room at the White House showcasing past Presidential china service. Ordered a Wedgwood service for 120 people for a dinner party.
• Established the First Ladies Portrait Gallery on the ground floor of the White House.
• Hired for the first time in the history of the White House a paid social secretary.
Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library
• Became best known for two social occasions, the reception for Prince Henry of Prussia and the wedding of her stepdaughter, Alice, to Nicholas Longworth.1
Edith Roosevelt in 1900, TR’s favorite photograph of her.
activities. In my comments on these designs, I cautioned the
U.S. Mint’s staff that these quaint representations would not do
for many of the first spouses of the twentieth century.
As with other design processes at the United States Mint,
by law the CCAC gets a first look at the design criteria to be
used in developing the First Spouse gold coins. We would have
early input instead of solely critiquing finished sketches. This
is important in that these First Spouse coins, regardless of low
mintages, have the half-life of uranium; they will influence the
thinking of future generations and must be done right.
On schedule, the criteria to be used for Edith Roosevelt
came up for review at the meeting on February 28, 2012. Here
in black and white were bullet points that would drive the
United States Mint artists in preparing the reverse of Edith’s
First Spouse gold coin:
• Began renovation of the West Wing of the White House that included separating the living quarters from the offices, enlarging and modernizing the public rooms, The first point was inaccurate. Yes, there were renovations,
but the primary aim of the work was to return the White House
to its look when first reoccupied by President and Mrs. James
Monroe after having been put to the torch by a British raiding
party during the War of 1812. The remaining points promised
an inane storyboard reverse. The research had been conducted
entirely in Internet sources.
I came to the meeting prepared. I brought Sylvia Morris’s
fine biography of Edith as well as my own work.2 I marked
chapters that I thought would yield good material for the
illustration of Edith Roosevelt’s accomplishments in the White
House. When the First Spouse agenda item came up, each
committee member had a chance to critique the body of work.
I was to the point in expressing my displeasure and made my
information available to the staff. I was not alone, nor was
the work on Edith Roosevelt the only flawed material. The
committee rejected the United States Mint’s work product. This
action taken at the back end of a project, where time constraints
and production schedules can drive decisions, does not always
result in a redo of the work product. However, we had a chance.
That opportunity came more quickly than I expected. In
an effort to keep the project on schedule, United States Mint
staff asked by e-mail on March 12 if any of us wished to submit
additional information. One of the committee members asked
to see the body of text incorporating my material. That resulted
in a revised “backgrounder” two days later. The only revision
was in the footnoting. I called for the committee simply to reject
the narrative on Edith Roosevelt again. Foolishly, I said that if
the United States Mint could not prepare a summary, I would be
happy to do it myself. That got me more than I wanted.
Volunteering to do a “backgrounder” was one thing;
writing it was another. When I finished the process, I was much
more sympathetic to the difficulty of trying to condense Edith
Roosevelt’s almost eight years in the White House into a few
generalized sentences. My work product was a page and a half,
way too long. However, one point jumped out as I sifted through
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
25
Then the door of opportunity slammed shut. Discussion
was cut off because we are a public body, and deliberations need
to occur in a public forum. These e-mail exchanges did not fulfill
that requirement. At the follow-up meeting of April 26, the First
Spouse narratives were at the bottom of the agenda. Time was
becoming tight. The committee’s views were unchanged. The
historian of the committee submitted his critical comments
on the other first spouse backgrounders, and I attached mine;
these then went into the official record. However, I also took
the opportunity to remind the committee of Edith’s behindthe-scenes role in her husband’s quest to have Augustus SaintGaudens redesign America’s circulating coinage. For this reason
alone, we numismatists owed it to Edith’s legacy that she should
receive a good design.
Proposed obverse designs for the Edith Roosevelt
ten-dollar gold coin. The CCAC seriously
considered only the first two.
images from the public records of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee
Throughout this give-and-take regarding the reverse, I had
not lost sight of the central issue: The obverse image of Edith
Roosevelt would make or break this coin. With the gate open to
provide my comments, I introduced the subject. The best image
of Edith was the photograph taken in 1900 that Sylvia Morris
termed the “Goddess Picture.” To me it showed a woman both
elegant and self-confident in the prime of her life. It was all
the more outstanding in that Edith Roosevelt was genuinely
camera-shy. Her preferred pose seems nearly always to have
included wearing a large hat with the netting pulled down, a veil,
if you will, between the camera and her.
images from the public records of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee
my thoughts. Edith certainly had provided a national stage for
the arts. She had turned to Charles Follen McKim to restore
the White House. Augustus Saint-Gaudens seemed constantly
at her side rendering advice. Cecilia Beaux executed the loving
portrait of Edith and her daughter Ethel. She engaged a young
Pablo Casals to perform at a White House musicale. To me,
the busts of the four men in a crescent around the inscription
“Providing a National Stage for the Arts” formed an appropriate
design. But my enthusiasm had taken me too far. I had no
business suggesting a design. Besides, it would have been much
too much on a coin the size of a ten-dollar gold piece, slightly
larger than a quarter.
Over the summer and fall nothing happened at the
committee level. The United States Mint encountered difficulties
striking up the preceding First Spouse designs approved in
November 2011, delaying the process. I could only hope that I
had made enough noise to get the job done for Edith.
In fact, the United States Mint had taken pause. The design
staff at U.S. Mint operations in Philadelphia had been told that
they did not have to adhere to the background information
provided from Washington. Philadelphia now had a free hand.
These sculptor-engravers no longer use pen and ink to
prepare sketches. The work is done on digital drawing tablets.
The artist uses a special stylus or pen on an interactive screen.
Each “brush stroke” is recorded, offering the potential for infinite
Proposed reverse designs for the Edith Roosevelt
ten-dollar gold coin. Three (excepting only
the image of Edith with Archie and Quentin)
received the CCAC’s serious consideration.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
iimages courtesy of Michael F. Moran
26
Obverse and reverse of the proof version of the Edith Roosevelt gold coin. (The uncirculated
version can be seen on the front and back covers of this issue of the TRA Journal.)
variations as the artist develops his or her theme. The end
product is then polished on a computer using graphics software.3
“backgrounder.”
The United States Mint also employs outside designers
through its Artistic Infusion Program (AIP). Any artist may
apply to this program, but selection involves a rigorous vetting.
Applicants must have a portfolio that includes published or
publicly displayed art. While they are expected to be familiar
with graphics editing programs, this software is not a necessity.
By far the best obverse images of Edith were the first
two. The first version presented a confident, self-assured
Edith Roosevelt turned slightly away from the viewer. It was
highly flattering. The second represented a composite from
the “Goddess Picture” and a similar photograph taken in 1901.
It was clearly my favorite, but if the committee chose the first
version, I would not be disappointed.
Among the United States Mint artists who took on the Edith
Roosevelt assignment were two from the AIP. Joel Iskowitz is
a master designer in the program with over three decades of
experience, including with coins and stamps worldwide. His
list of successes within the AIP is impressive. Chris Costello is
an associate designer, relatively new to the program. He is a
graphics designer with extensive private sector experience. A
coin collector from his earliest years, he considers this position
the fulfillment of a childhood dream. Both men use pencil
sketches, turning to graphics editing software for the final
touches.
Of the four reverses, I again had two favorites. The
first could easily have been entitled “pet crime,” Theodore
Roosevelt’s moniker for his project to redesign the nation’s
coins. As storyboards go, this rendition was outstanding. Using
artistic license, it captured the President’s engagement of SaintGaudens that would result in America’s most beautiful coin,
the twenty-dollar gold piece initially issued in 1907. It would
give Saint-Gaudens his first appearance upon an American
coin. Sentimentally I wanted this design. However, it was a
storyboard, and no matter how exceptionally done, it was going
to encounter rough sledding.
With each passing meeting, I increasingly expected to
see the proposed First Spouse designs. Yet for a long time
nothing came. Finally I received my packet for the meeting
of March 11, 2013. I knew that production deadlines required
First Spouse design review at this meeting. I ripped open the
overnight package and turned immediately to the tab containing
the sketches proposed for Edith’s gold coin. I quickly flipped
through for a first impression. Relief, nothing but relief, flowed
through my mind. The designs for the reverse were promising,
and some of the obverse likenesses had captured the essence of
Edith Roosevelt.4 Gone was the inane material from the original
The competition was formidable. One elegant reverse
captured Edith’s White House project. Bisecting the field was
an Ionic column overlaid with a compass. On the right side
was a truncated half-view of the White House from the south
lawn. The left side contained the inscription “THE WHITE
HOUSE RESTORED.” Below was a rosebud representing the
colonial garden that Edith Roosevelt had insisted replace the
conservatory. It would over time become known simply as
the White House Rose Garden. Incused to give a chiseled look
at the bottom of the column was the date 1902, mimicking a
cornerstone and marking the first full year of an enlightened
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
27
Roosevelt presidency. The font was new to that period,
progressive and avant-garde. It was no storyboard and perhaps
the cleanest, best-executed design yet for a First Spouse reverse.
the two images of Edith. It promised a split vote that would not
bode well when the United States Mint came to making the final
choice. My critique was going to have to make a difference.
When I arrived in Washington the night before the meeting,
I was concerned that my favorite obverse was going to have
difficulties in the review process. The pose was a departure from
the norm for this series, and some from the committee feared
her downcast eyes would not show well. The next morning I
was up early with a cup of coffee, sequestered in my room
formulating how I was going to defend my choice in the giveand-take of committee discussion. The CCAC is not a group that
can be swayed by an emotional statement devoid of facts and
logic. In fact, that ploy would have had the opposite effect.
I opened by explaining to the committee that its difficulty
in choosing between the two images was understandable. Edith
Roosevelt was a very complex personality, and the two images
captured two very different sides of her. She was the northern
version of what we in the south term a “Steel Magnolia.”
Edith’s designs came up immediately after lunch. First the
committee went through a culling process. All settled on the two
obverse images that I favored. Only one of the reverses was culled,
the image of Edith with Archie and Quentin. Now the discussion
started. Leading off was the sculptress on the committee. She is
a highly accomplished commercial artist, much respected by the
other members. If she went against my choices, I would have a
hard time convincing the others to support my position. Worse,
I would be sixth out of the eight present in order of critique,
meaning the decision could be essentially made before I ever
reached center stage. But she did not oppose my choice. She
liked the downturned head; she recognized it as different and
saw no problem in its execution. The “White House Restored”
reverse easily won her endorsement as well.
For me the deciding factor was the bond between husband
and wife. I explained their childhood friendship and their
breakup between Theodore’s freshman and sophomore years
at Harvard. Edith was then forced to sit on the sidelines while
Theodore married Alice Hathaway Lee. Yet she waited, and
when sudden tragedy brought a second chance, two strong
personalities came together. The love that Theodore and
Edith developed would last a lifetime. This is the Edith who is
captured in the second image. Plus, that image was the perfect
iimages courtesy of Michael F. Moran
My mental sigh of relief quickly dissipated. Committee
member after committee member expressed indecision between
Edith was indeed the accomplished woman of the first
image. When her husband was appointed a civil service
commissioner shortly after their marriage, she moved to
Washington and easily settled into the social scene. Foremost
was her inclusion in the salon of Henry Adams, the noted
historian. Anybody could attend one of these salons, but few
could pass Adams’s muster; he simply ignored people if they
did not interest him. Not Edith—she would become one of his
intimate friends. Yet Edith also had to move in the circles of the
glamorous and socially accomplished Nannie Lodge and Lizzie
Cameron, requiring a more feminine touch. Confidence and
accomplishment needed to be softened in these relationships.
Obverse and reverse of the Edith Roosevelt bronze medal, which is somewhat larger than the uncirculated and proof gold coins.
28
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
complement to the reverse designs under consideration. I closed
by citing a quotation from Theodore concerning the “Goddess
Picture” in Sylvia Morris’s biography. He said it was “the only
photograph of Edith that I have ever cared for.”5 I also noted
that this image was the choice of certain prominent present-day
members of the family.
obverse. He brought eighteen years of professional experience
and classical training to the job. In addition, he has aided
the U.S. Mint in digital design and production. Don Everhart
handled the reverse. He attends all of the CCAC meetings and,
with over forty years of experience, has the committee’s full
respect.
When the committee’s vote came in, the near-unanimous
decision was for the unconventional downturned pose. The vote
on the reverse was unanimous for “White House Restored.”6
(We would learn later that AIP artists Joel Iskowitz and Chris
Costello had submitted the obverse and the reverse, respectively.
For Joel, having learned of Theodore Roosevelt’s preference, the
choice of the obverse profile was easy. Chris had turned to the
National Park Service personnel at Sagamore Hill for source
information to guide his design.) I had carried the day within
the CCAC.
On September 18, the CCAC had a teleconference to discuss
themes for upcoming designs. The United States Mint has now
moved to involve the CCAC more in the early design phases. U.S.
Mint personnel participating included the superintendent of the
West Point facility where the Edith Roosevelt gold coin would
be struck. It had been a desire of mine to be at the first striking.
This had not been done recently, and I did not really hold out
any hope. However, here was my opportunity at least to learn
where the gold coin was in the production process. I piped up
and discovered that it was being struck that very week; so much
for my going to West Point. But within days I discovered that
there were extenuating circumstances.
Now the same designs would be presented to the CFA
on March 21. The CFA’s review is very different from that of
the CCAC. The CFA has other, far-ranging responsibilities,
necessitating only brief review of coin designs. One committee
member makes recommendations to the committee, followed by
short discussion and an up-or-down vote. Despite this brevity,
CFA recommendations always merit serious consideration.
CFA members favored the frontal image of Edith Roosevelt
in their initial discussion. As they moved to endorse this
recommendation, the United States Mint’s representative, the
CCAC liaison officer, pointed out that the right-facing profile
with the downturned head was a favorite of the President and
was the family’s choice. With that knowledge, the CFA swung to
the second portrait, end of discussion. The reverse was another
matter, as the committee gave the “White House Restored”
design only a qualified approval. Principally the architects
on the committee objected to the use of “Restored” instead of
“Renovated.” They also did not like the presence of a column
bisecting this design. One member simply stated that the
reverse design needed more work.7 The design, for all intents
and purposes, was set, but there were going to be changes to the
reverse.
On August 6, 2013, the approved designs were released by
the United States Mint. The reverse design had been tweaked
to address CFA concerns. The Ionic column had been shifted to
the left to give an off-center look, but not so much as to overly
crowd the inscription. The rosebud was eliminated. On the
right the White House had been extended ever so slightly to fill
the resulting gap. For the inscription the United States Mint
had stood with Chris. It was a restoration. They also changed
the font for the date incused within the column to an older, more
historically appropriate style.8
The sculptor-engravers at the United States Mint would
do the engraving of the designs. Joseph Menna worked on the
The United States Mint, responding to collector inquiries,
had acknowledged that First Spouse gold coins were again being
delayed. The problem was what the U.S. Mint termed “finning.”
Because .9999 fine gold is essentially pure, it is very soft and
difficult to work. When the first coins were struck, excess metal
was building up on the coins’ edges. More specifically, gold
metal was being forced up between the collar and the edge of
each coin. When finning is high enough, as it was in this case,
the coin looks like a bottle cap.9 There could be no public
relations moment with this issue plaguing the striking process.
It would be slow going completing the First Spouse gold coins.
As during the preceding year, problems were worked out.
The order date was set for November 21, and this saga came to an
end. In spite of “art by committee,” Edith Roosevelt’s gold coin
is a departure from the standard style for this series, exceptional
in both obverse and reverse design. In this case, the fact that
coins have a long life is a good thing. The two designers, when
congratulated by me for their work, said it best. Chris Costello
loved Joel Iskowitz’s profile of Edith Roosevelt. He thought it
“the most delicate and beautiful of all the First Spouse designs.”
In turn, Joel said it was great to share this gold piece with Chris.
“They [Theodore and Edith] are one of the most truly compelling
First Couples in history.”10
Author’s Note: The CCAC liaison officer at the United States
Mint mentioned in this article is Greg Weinman. This civil
servant measures up well to Theodore Roosevelt’s yardstick for
public service.
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
29
These images are in the public record for the CCAC’s meeting
of March 11, 2013.
4
Michael F. Moran, a member of the Advisory Board of the
Theodore Roosevelt Association and a previous contributor
to the TRA Journal, is the author of the award-winning
book Striking Change: The Great Artistic Collaboration of
Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus Saint-Gaudens (2008).
He and his wife Dee Dee reside in Lexington, Kentucky.
5
Quoted in Sylvia Morris, Edith Roosevelt, p. 201.
Gary B. Marks to Secretary of the Treasury Jack B. Lew,
March 15, 2013, Official Correspondence of the Citizens Coinage
Advisory Committee.
6
“CFA Largely Follows CCAC Recommendations,” Coin World,
April 15, 2013, p. 1. The comment regarding the reverse design
needing work was attributed to Harvard design professor Alex
Kreiger in this article.
7
Endnotes
Bullet points are from the public record of the Citizens Coinage
Advisory Committee’s meeting of February 28, 2012.
1
Sylvia Jukes Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of
a First Lady (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan,
1980); Michael F. Moran, Striking Change: The Great Artistic
Collaboration of Theodore Roosevelt and Augustus SaintGaudens (Atlanta: Whitman Publishing, 2008).
2
“N.H. Quarter’s Designer Describes Artistic Path,” Coin World,
March 25, 2013, p. 1.
3
“First Spouses Receive Their 2013 Unveiling,” Coin World,
August 26, 2013, p. 1.
8
“Striking Problems Plague First Spouse Coins,” Coin World,
October 14, 2013, p. 1.
9
E-mail correspondence among Chris Costello, Joel Iskowitz,
and Michael F. Moran. Joel Iskowitz was the designer of the
“pet crime” reverse. He knows of the CCAC’s prejudice against
storyboard designs, but feels they have their place on coins if
done right. However, he believes in this instance that Chris
Costello’s White House was the best reverse design.
10
HOW TO ORDER THE EDITH ROOSEVELT GOLD COIN
Call 800-872-6468, or go to usmint.gov, click on “shop,” and then
click on “First Spouse.” The Edith Roosevelt gold coin containing
one-half troy ounce of gold can be ordered in either of two grades:
uncirculated or specially struck proof. The cost per coin, currently
in the $750-$800 range, fluctuates with changes in the price of gold.
The U.S. Mint also is offering for $9.95 a two-piece set pairing the
Theodore Roosevelt Presidential $1 coin with a bronze and slightly
enlarged version of the Edith Roosevelt gold coin.
30
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
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Theodore Roosevelt
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Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
31
Revealing Post-Presidential Snapshots:
Theodore Roosevelt in the Outlook,
March-July 1909
by William N. Tilchin
Recently I received from a good friend a gift of a small TR
book of which I previously had been unaware: Theodore
Roosevelt, Outlook Editorials (New York: The Outlook
Company, 1909). It consists of the first eleven editorials written
for the Outlook by its new contributing editor, former President
Roosevelt, over the period March 6 - July 17, 1909. These are
titled, respectively, “Why I Believe in the Kind of American
Journalism for Which The Outlook Stands,” “A Judicial
Experience,” “A Scientific Expedition,” “Where We Cannot
Work With Socialists,” “Where We Can Work With Socialists,”
“Quack Cure-Alls for the Body Politic,” “The Japanese Question,”
“Tolstoy,” “A Southerner’s View of the South,” “The Thraldom of
Names,” and “Give Me Neither Poverty Nor Riches.”
Guided by his conscience, Roosevelt had bypassed more
lucrative opportunities in order to accept the offer of the
Outlook’s father-son team of Lyman and Lawrence Abbott to
write for their magazine. TR was grateful for the Outlook’s
support “during the crises and controversies of his presidency.”1
Roosevelt would retain his position with the Outlook until June
1914, and even after he submitted his letter of resignation he
continued to publish articles (albeit far fewer) in the Outlook as
a “special contributor.”2
Outlook Editorials is not a time-bound volume, for its
author put forward points of view that he had long held and
would continue to hold for the remainder of his life. Aside
from “A Scientific Expedition,” a very short piece designed to
justify TR’s African safari and to persuade journalists not to try
to cover it, and “A Southerner’s View of the South”—in which
TR lamented that an insightful American writer, Warrington
Dawson, had gained a substantial audience in Great Britain
and Europe but not in the United States—one can identify in
the collection of editorials contained in this little volume an
overarching theme: Theodore Roosevelt and those he most
admired adhered to very progressive ideas regarding the
issues of their era, and also were clear-headed, practical people
seeking just, attainable, workable solutions to the problems
they perceived, while always understanding that perfection is
an impossibility. In other words, these editorials advocated for
what TR considered “practical idealism,” or “realizable ideals.”3
Roosevelt’s editorial of March 6, two days after his
relinquishing of the presidency, explained why he had chosen
the Outlook as the platform for communicating his points of
view. Even when the Outlook had disagreed with his policies as
President, Roosevelt remarked, “Dr. Abbott and his associates
always conscientiously strove to be fair and . . . not only
desired to tell the truth,” but invariably sought “to find out the
facts.”4 Moreover, “the first question asked when any matter
of policy arises . . . is whether . . . a given course is right, and
should be followed because it is in the real and lasting interest
of the Nation.”5 TR contrasted the Outlook with “certain daily
newspapers” and “certain periodicals . . . owned or controlled by
men of vast wealth who have gained their wealth in evil fashion,”
and who have, in effect, “purchased mendacity.”6 Anticipating
his iconic “Man in the Arena” speech in Paris a year later,
Roosevelt then observed:
A cultivated man of good intelligence who has acquired the
knack of saying bitter things, but who lacks the robustness
which will enable him to feel at ease among strong men of
action, is apt, if his nature has in it anything of meanness
or untruthfulness, to strive for a reputation in what is to
him the easiest way. He can find no work which is easier—
and less worth doing—than to sit in cloistered aloofness
from the men who wage the real and important struggles
of life and to endeavor, by an unceasing output of slander
in regard to them, to bolster up his own uneasy desire to be
considered superior to them.7
The Outlook, Roosevelt declared, zeroing in on the central
theme of this book, “has stood for righteousness, but it has
never been self-righteous.” And it “knows that common sense is
essential above all other qualities to the idealist; for an idealist
without common sense, without the capacity to work in hard,
practical fashion for actual results, is merely a boat that is all
sails, and with neither ballast nor rudder.”8
32
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
“A Judicial Experience” recounts the long-ago evolution of
TR’s thinking on the sometimes cruel exploitation of vulnerable
laborers, specifically with regard to his support as a New York
state legislator for a bill banning cigar-making in tenement
houses, a bill that had been enacted into law but then overturned
by the courts. “My reason for relating this anecdote,” TR
explained,
is because from that day to this I have felt an ever-growing
conviction of the need of having on the bench men who,
in addition to being learned in the law and upright, shall
possess a broad understanding of and sympathy with their
countrymen as a whole, so that the questions of humanity
and of social justice shall not be considered by them
as wholly inferior to the defense of vested rights or the
upholding of liberty of contract.
Too many contemporary judges, Roosevelt went on,
often signally fail to protect the laboring man and the
laboring man’s widow and children in their just rights,
and . . . heartbreaking and pitiful injustice too often results
therefrom; and this primarily because our judges lack either
the opportunity or the power thoroughly to understand the
working man’s and working woman’s position and vital
needs.9
“Where We Cannot Work With Socialists” (the longest
editorial in this book), “Where We Can Work With Socialists,”
and “Quack Cure-Alls for the Body Politic” as a group reveal a
great deal about TR as a strongly progressive, always thoughtful,
always practical reformer. They expound at length on the
principal theme of the volume.
The core thesis of “Where We Cannot Work With Socialists”
is encapsulated in the following excerpt:
There are dreadful woes in modern life, dreadful suffering
among some of those who toil, brutal wrong-doing among
some of those who make colossal fortunes by exploiting
the toilers. It is the duty of every honest and upright man,
of every man who holds within his breast the capacity for
righteous indignation, to recognize these wrongs, and to
strive with all his might to bring about a better condition of
things. But he will never bring about this better condition
by misstating facts and advocating remedies which are not
merely false, but fatal.10
Much of this essay consists of a multi-pronged attack on those
TR termed “doctrinaire” or “advanced” or “extreme” or “ultra-”
socialists. He found such people to be “not only convinced
opponents of private property, but also bitterly hostile to
religion and morality,” and he ridiculed the theory that the
masses of citizens of any country ever would willingly work
hard, without regard for their compensation, “for the benefit of
the community.” (A common Marxian rendition of this theory
is: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his
needs.”)11 Notwithstanding his earlier assessment “that every
step toward civilization is marked by a check on individualism,”
Roosevelt went on to assert the necessity of “great accumulations
of capital” and of highly skilled management of industrial
enterprises.12
Roosevelt demonstratively set up “Where We Can Work
With Socialists” as a sequel by restating in its opening sentence
a declaration found in the closing sentence of “Where We
Cannot Work With Socialists”: The implementation of extreme
socialist ideas ultimately would bring about the “annihilation
of civilization.”13 Yet he proceeded to point out in the sequel’s
second paragraph that
the self-styled Socialists are of many and utterly different
types. . . . There are many peculiarly high-minded men and
women who like to speak of themselves as Socialists, whose
attitude, conscious or unconscious, is really merely an
indignant recognition of the evil of present conditions and
an ardent wish to remedy it, and whose Socialism is really
only an advanced form of liberalism. . . . The Socialists
of this moral type may in practice be very good citizens
indeed, with whom we can at many points cooperate.
They are often joined temporarily with what are called
the “opportunist Socialists”—those who may advocate an
impossible and highly undesirable Utopia as a matter of
abstract faith, but who in practice try to secure the adoption
only of some given principle which will do away with some
phase of existing wrong. With these two groups of Socialists
it is often possible for all far-sighted men to join heartily in
the effort to secure a given reform or do away with a given
abuse.14
TR then illustrated this general argument through a more
concrete discussion:
An employers’ liability law is no more Socialistic than a fire
department; the regulation of railway rates is by no means
as Socialistic as the digging and enlarging of the Erie Canal
at the expense of the State. A proper compensation law
would merely distribute over the entire industry the shock of
accident or disease, instead of limiting it to the unfortunate
individual on whom, through no fault of his, it happened to
fall. As communities become more thickly settled and their
lives more complex, it grows ever more and more necessary
for some of the work formerly performed by individuals,
each for himself, to be performed by the community for the
community as a whole. Isolated farms need no complicated
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
33
34
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
from Theodore Roosevelt, Outlook Editorials
more can be done by the resolute effort for a many-sided
higher life. This life must largely come to each individual
from within, by his own effort, but toward the attainment
of it each of us can help many others. Such a life must
represent the struggle for a higher and broader humanity,
to be shown not merely in the dealings of each of us within
the realm of the State, but even more by the dealings of each
of us in the more intimate realm of the family; for the life of
the State rests and must ever rest upon the life of the family
and the neighborhood.18
Theodore Roosevelt at his desk in the Outlook office.
system of sewerage; but this does not mean that public
control of sewerage in a great city should be resisted on the
ground that it tends toward Socialism. Let each proposition
be treated on its own merits, soberly and cautiously, but
without any of that rigidity of mind which fears all reform.15
Roosevelt concluded “Where We Can Work With Socialists”
with a call for “equality of opportunity, but not for equality of
reward unless there is also equality of service,” and for a “strong,
just, wise, and democratic” government doing “its full share” to
help remedy “the evils of today.”16
“Quack Cure-Alls for the Body Politic” begins by dismissing
both “doctrinaire socialism” and “unrestricted individualism.”17
The second half of this short editorial displays TR as a particularly
penetrating analyst of societal development:
The influences that tell upon [society] are countless; they
are closely interwoven, interdependent, and each is acted
upon by many others. It is pathetically absurd, when such
are the conditions, to believe that some one simple panacea
for all evils can be found. Slowly, with infinite difficulty,
with bitter disappointments, with stumblings and haltings,
we are working our way upward and onward. In this
progress something can be done by continually striving to
improve the social system, now here, now there. Something
In “The Japanese Question,” Roosevelt in essence was
seeking to have the United States sustain and build upon his
remarkable presidential accomplishments pertaining to U.S.Japan relations.19 He called the attention of readers to his success
through a “Gentlemen’s Agreement” with Japan’s government
in limiting the immigration of Japanese laborers to the United
States. “The Japanese,” TR wrote, “are a highly civilized people
of extraordinary military, artistic, and industrial development;
they are proud, warlike, and sensitive.” In interacting with
Japan (as with other nations), the United States should always
be careful to employ “all possible courtesy”; the delicate issue of
immigration should continue to be handled with “the minimum
of offensiveness” and should produce “the least possible friction”
and “the least possible hard feeling.”20 Roosevelt also reminded
his audience indirectly that the world cruise of the Great White
Fleet during 1907-1909 had contributed significantly to the
establishment of amicable relations between the United States
and Japan. Looking forward, “all really patriotic and far-sighted
Americans” should “insist that hand in hand with a policy of
good will toward foreign nations should go the policy of the
upbuilding of our navy.”21 TR closed this editorial with a broader
argument about the importance of U.S. naval power that he had
been making since the 1880s and would revisit repeatedly for
the remainder of his life:
The professional peace advocate who wishes us to stop
building up our navy is, in reality, seeking to put us in a
position where we would be absolutely at the mercy of any
other nation that happened to wish to disregard our desires
to control the immigration that comes to our shores, to
protect our own interests in the Panama Canal, to protect
our own citizens abroad, or to take any stand whatever
either for our own international honor or in the interest of
international righteousness. . . . A strong navy is the surest
guaranty of peace that America can have, and the cheapest
insurance against war that Uncle Sam can possibly pay.22
“Tolstoy” is devoted primarily to the presentation of a
complex, predominantly negative view of an extraordinary writer
TR acknowledged to be “a man of genius, a great novelist.”23 But
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
even here the overarching theme of Outlook Editorials appears
in a reference to the
men . . . who made our Constitution; men accustomed to
work with their fellows, accustomed to compromise; men
who clung to high ideals, but who were imbued with the
philosophy which Abraham Lincoln afterwards so strikingly
exemplified, and were content to take the best possible
where the best absolute could not be secured. This was the
spirit of Washington and his associates in one great crisis of
our national life, of Lincoln and his associates in the other
great crisis. It is the only spirit from which it will ever be
possible to secure good results in a free country.24
“The Thraldom of Names,” an especially fascinating
editorial and the volume’s second longest, begins with the
premise that the use of labels such as “liberty” and “order”
can obscure “the simple fact that despotism is despotism, . . .
oppression oppression, whether committed by one individual or
by many individuals, by a State or by a private corporation. . . .
All forms of tyranny and cruelty must alike be condemned by
honest men.” The American people “have achieved democracy
in politics just because we have been able to steer a middle
course between the rule of the mob and the rule of the dictator,”
and “we shall achieve industrial democracy because we shall
steer a similar middle course between the extreme individualist
and the Socialist.”25 Roosevelt then elaborated:
to modern business, but which, under the decisions of the
courts, and because of the short-sightedness of the public,
have become the chief factors in political and business
debasement. But it would be just as bad to put the control
of the Government into the hands of demagogues and
visionaries who seek to pander to ignorance and prejudice
by penalizing thrift and business enterprise, and ruining
all men of means, with, as an attendant result, the ruin of
the entire community. . . . It is absolutely indispensable
to foster the spirit of individual initiative, of self-reliance,
[while recognizing] that the growth of our complex
civilization necessitates an increase in the exercise of the
functions of the State.26
Addressing his corporate critics, TR insisted that
the movement for Government control of the great business
corporations is no more a movement against liberty than a
movement to put a stop to violence is a movement against
liberty. . . . The huge irresponsible corporation which
demands liberty from the supervision of Government agents
stands on the same ground as the less dangerous criminal
of the streets who wishes liberty from police interference.27
Roosevelt wrapped up “The Thraldom of Names” by
summarizing its essential message in one powerful sentence:
We must stand for the good citizen because he is a good
citizen, whether he be rich or whether he be poor, and
we must mercilessly attack the man who does evil,
wholly without regard to whether the evil is done in high
or low places, whether it takes the form of homicidal
violence among members of a federation of miners, or of
unscrupulous craft and greed in the head of some great
Wall Street corporation.28
Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Harvard College Library
It is essential that we should wrest the control of the
Government out of the hands of rich men who use it for
unhealthy purposes, and should keep it out of their hands;
and to this end the first requisite is to provide means
adequately to deal with corporations, which are essential
35
The triumphant return to the United States of the Great White Fleet in February 1909,
completing a fourteen-month world cruise that featured a very friendly
reception in Japan in October 1908.
The last of the eleven Outlook Editorials,
a short one titled “Give Me Neither Poverty
Nor Riches,” is a fitting finale for this
collection. Here TR rejected the idea that
“the heaping up of wealth” is “the be-all and
end-all of life” and called, in the interest of the
entire community, for the “effective taxation
of vast fortunes,” particularly through “a
heavily graded progressive inheritance tax, a
singularly wise and unobjectionable kind of
tax.”29
At the time Outlook Editorials was
published, Theodore Roosevelt was well
into his long safari in East Africa and was
largely disengaged from political combat.
In the summer of 1909, of course, nobody
36
could foresee either the establishment in 1912 of the TR-led
Bull Moose Party or the enormously destructive Great War of
1914-1918 about which Roosevelt would have so much to say,
and whose effects on him politically and personally would be
so profound. But these editorials offered a strong indication
that Roosevelt’s disengagement would be only temporary, that
his progressive prescriptions for the nation’s internal problems
would likely become increasingly far-reaching, and that he
would be a political force to reckon with throughout his postpresidential years.
Endnotes
Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Random House,
2001), pp. 540-541.
1
Theodore Roosevelt to Lyman Abbott, June 29, 1914, in Elting
E. Morison et al., eds., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (8
vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951-1954),
Vol. VII, p. 768. See, for example, Roosevelt’s Outlook review
of the first two volumes of Albert Beveridge’s The Life of John
Marshall, July 18, 1917, pp. 448-449.
2
3
See William N. Tilchin, “Morality and the Presidency of
Theodore Roosevelt,” Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal,
Vol. XXVIII, No. 1, Winter 2007, pp. 4-5.
Theodore Roosevelt, Outlook Editorials (New York: The
Outlook Company, 1909), p. 3.
4
5
Ibid., p. 10.
6
Ibid., p. 4.
7
Ibid., pp. 6-7.
8
Ibid., pp. 7-8.
9
Ibid., pp. 20-21.
10
Ibid., p. 44.
11
Ibid., pp. 34, 37-39.
12
Ibid., pp. 31-32, 45-47, 49.
13
Ibid., pp. 50, 53.
14
Ibid., pp. 54-56.
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
15
Ibid., pp. 57-58.
16
Ibid., pp. 63-64.
17
Ibid., p. 67.
18
Ibid., pp. 68-69.
For a detailed analysis of would-be historian James Bradley’s
abominable misrepresentation of the subject of TR and Japan,
see William N. Tilchin, “An Outrage Pure and Simple,” Theodore
Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. XXXI, No. 4, Fall 2010,
pp. 39-45.
19
20
TR, Outlook Editorials, pp. 73, 75, 77.
21
Ibid., p. 77.
22
Ibid., pp. 78-79.
Ibid., pp. 85, 92. “Strong men may gain something from
Tolstoy’s moral teachings,” Roosevelt observed at one point, “but
only on condition that they are strong enough and sane enough
to be repelled by those parts of his teachings which are foolish
or immoral.” Outlook Editorials, p. 86. A later letter from TR
to his close English friend Arthur Lee (written on the day of the
presidential election in 1912) included this paragraph: “I sent the
part of your letter referring to Jane Addams direct to her, and,
when I get an answer from her, I will send it to you. I have deeply
prized her support. There were points where I had to drag her
forward, notably as regards our battleship program, for she is a
disciple of Tolstoy; but she is a really good woman who has done
really practical work for the betterment of social conditions.” TR
to Lee, November 5, 1912, Letters of TR, Vol. VII, p. 633. (For a
discussion of the TR-Addams relationship, see Louise W. Knight,
“Jane Addams and Theodore Roosevelt: A Political Friendship,”
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. XXXIV, Nos. 1, 2,
& 3, Winter-Spring-Summer 2013, pp. 69-75.)
23
24
TR, Outlook Editorials, p. 92.
25
Ibid., pp. 104, 106.
26
Ibid., pp. 108-109.
27
Ibid., p. 116.
28
Ibid., p. 120.
Ibid., pp. 123-125. Would TR be appalled by the present-day
opponents of the progressive estate tax, who obviously do not
find it “unobjectionable,” and who prefer to label it the “death
tax”?
29
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
37
FORGOTTEN FRAGMENTS (#16)
a column by Tweed Roosevelt
SOME BRIEF CENTENNIAL OBSERVATIONS ON
THEODORE ROOSEVELT: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Theodore Roosevelt was nothing if not interesting, and
his autobiography, published 100 years ago, is an interesting
book. Incidentally his was the first autobiography published
by an ex-President covering his presidential years.
Admittedly it is sometimes rambling and preachy, but it
also is filled with good stories, humor, and keen insights and
observations. The insights and observations are as relevant
today as they were a century earlier. While reading this
book, you often feel as if you are sitting with Roosevelt in a
cozy living room in front of a large roaring fire listening to
him tell stories. When you finish the book you really feel you
have had a good time getting to know the man.
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography reminds us
that TR was famous for coining memorable phrases. One
of my favorites, “the right stuff ” (p. 27), is one of several to
appear in this book.
photo by Will Kincaid
(Author’s Note: This column has been adapted from
a speech presented by me at the Boston Public Library on
November 6, 2013. The year 2013 marks the centennial of
the publication of Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography.
All page number indications in this column refer to the Da
Capo Press 1985 edition.)
Tweed Roosevelt.
For “a Dinner Given by His Excellency the Governor,”
December 1783
For me the best part of this book is the stories. They
really give you a sense of this extraordinary man. I will
provide a few examples.
“120 dinners at 48 pounds sterling
TR starts out writing a little about his ancestors, one of
whom was Isaac Roosevelt. During the Revolutionary War
Isaac Roosevelt was a sharp-pencil guy on the New York
Auditing Committee, reviewing bills submitted by various
government officials. TR discovered in family papers one
of the bills Isaac had reviewed, a bill that subsequently has
become legendary. Apparently New York’s governor hosted
a dinner for the French ambassador and his staff, along with
George Washington and his entourage. The bill reads in
part as follows:
36 Bottles Port, 10 pounds, 16 shillings
135 Bottles Madira [sic], 54 pounds
60 Bottles English Beer [I suspect they were big bottles], 9
pounds
30 Bouls [sic] punch, 9 pounds.”
Added to the bill were:
“60 Wine Glasses Broken, 4 pounds, 10 shillings
38
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
Original edition.
8 Cutt decanters Broken, 3 pounds,”
and, finally,
“Coffee for 8 Gentlemen, 1 pound, 12 shillings” (p. 3).
TR’s comment about this dinner is: “Falstaff’s views of the
proper proportion between sack and bread are borne out by
the proportion between the number of bowls of punch and
bottles of port, Madeira, and beer consumed, and the ‘coffee
for eight gentlemen’—apparently the only ones who lasted
through to that stage of the dinner.” By the way, Isaac’s
committee approved the bill.
We all know about TR’s views on living “the strenuous
life,” but how far he was willing to go in order to continue
doing so during times when he was forced to live a mostly
sedentary life is startling. TR writes: “When I became
Governor [of New York], the champion middleweight
wrestler of America happened to be in Albany, and I got
him to come round [to the Governor’s mansion] three or
four afternoons a week. [The champ was] so much better
than I was that he could not only take care of himself but of
me too and see that I was not hurt.” TR goes on to lament
that “after a couple of months” the champ “had to go away,”
and his replacement was not nearly so skilled or careful. As
a result both he and TR were injured, and the experiment
was discontinued. Having decided to “abandon wrestling,”
Volume XXXIV, Number 4, Fall 2013
TR “took up boxing again.” Later, having suffered severe
damage to his left eye during a boxing match, he “took up
jiu-jitsu for a year or two” (pp. 42-43).
TR tells the story of the Rough Riders in 1898, of
course, but I prefer his stories about Rough Riders after the
Spanish-American War, not all of whom led exemplary lives;
some even appealed to Roosevelt when he was President
for help. My favorite is about a trooper to whom TR refers
as Gritto: “He wrote me a letter beginning: ‘Dear Colonel.
I write you because I am in trouble. I have shot a lady in
the eye. But, Colonel, I was not shooting at the lady. I was
shooting at my wife.’” TR’s comment was that presumably
Gritto regarded this “as a sufficient excuse as between men
of the world.” There is a postscript to this story. Gritto, who
was sent to the penitentiary, was deserted by his wife, who
ran off to Mexico with another Rough Rider. Evidently there
was significant local opinion that Gritto should be released,
because, as TR notes, many people felt that as the absconding
couple “had had a fair start,” Gritto “should be let out” so
they could all “see what would happen” (pp. 126-127).
The book is peppered with fascinating insights still
relevant today. Two examples will suffice: (1) “Americans
learn only from catastrophes and not from experience” (p.
209). (2) “There is every reason why we should try to limit the
cost of armaments, as these tend to grow excessive, but there
is also every reason to remember that in the present stage
of civilization a proper armament is the surest guarantee of
peace” (pp. 209-210).
While there is much about politics in this autobiography,
TR writes about many other subjects as well. One such
subject is books. Roosevelt remarks that “books are almost
as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying
down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of
one person, and some of another; and each person should
beware of the booklover’s besetting sin: . . . arrogant pity for
the man who does not like the same kind of books.” He goes
on: “Personally the books by which I have profited infinitely
more than by any others have been those in which profit was
a by-product of the pleasure; that is, I read them because I
enjoyed them, because I liked reading them, and the profit
came in as part of the enjoyment” (pp. 344-345).
In closing, perhaps I should tell you about how Theodore
Roosevelt: An Autobiography was written, which may help
explain its breezy style. Apparently the book’s editor had
trouble getting TR to focus on writing the book, so one day
he went to Sagamore Hill with a stenographer in tow. The
editor sat with TR in the North Room, with the stenographer
39
unobtrusively in the background, and got Roosevelt to tell
stories. That is how much of the book was written. No
wonder the reader feels as if he is in the room with TR.
.
Tweed loves to hear from his readers. He can be reached at
tweedr@sprynet.com.
Vision Statement
The purpose of the Theodore Roosevelt Association
of Oyster Bay, New York, is to perpetuate the memory
and ideals of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President
of the United States, for the benefit of the people of
the United States of America and the world; to instill
in all who may be interested an appreciation for and
understanding of the values, policies, cares, concerns,
interests, and ideals of Theodore Roosevelt; to preserve,
protect, and defend the places, monuments, sites,
artifacts, papers, and other physical objects associated
with Theodore Roosevelt’s life; to ensure the historical
accuracy of any account in which Theodore Roosevelt
is portrayed or described; to encourage scholarly work
and research concerning any and all aspects of Theodore
Roosevelt’s life, work, presidency, and historical legacy
and current interpretations of his varied beliefs and
actions; to highlight his selfless public service and
accomplishments through educational and community
outreach initiatives; and, in general, to do all things
appropriate and necessary to ensure that detailed and
accurate knowledge of Theodore Roosevelt’s great and
historic contributions is made available to any and all
persons.
40
Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal
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