Roosevelt's career up to 1901 XLIV THE ROOSEVELT ADMINISTRATION The man who succeeded McKinley was one of the most active, robust, and picturesque characters that had appeared in American public life. Roosevelt was President for seven and one half years, and throughout both his administrations he managed affairs with such vigor and aggressiveness that he won the admiration of the people. ROOSEVELT AND THE TRUSTS Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York City ir. 1858. His ancestors on the paternal side were of an old Dutch family, and on the maternal side, of Scotch-Irish descent. He was graduated from Harvard College in 1880. From 1882 to 1884 he was a member of the Assembly of the State of New York. In 1886 he was an unsuccessful candidate as an independent Republican for the office of mayor of New York (p. 488). He was made a member of the Civil Service Commission by President Harrison in 1889, and served as president of the board until May, 1895, when he resigned to become president of the board of police commissioners of New York City. In 1897 he was made assistant secretary of the navy by President McKinley, but on the breaking out of the Spanish-American War, in 1898, he resigned and organized the "Rough Riders." He was attached (p. 523) to the army of General Shafter, for the invasion of Cuba, and participated in every engagement preceding the fall of Santiago. He won distinction at the battle of San Juan Hill, on July 1, 1898, and was promoted to the rank of colonel on July 11, for conspicuous bravery in action. He received the nomination for governor of New York on the Republican ticket, September 27, 1898, and was elected. In March, 1901, as Vice-President he took his seat as President of the United States Senate. When President Roosevelt took his place at the head of affairs he found the country in a highly prosperous condition. Growth Trusts Agriculture was yielding increasing returns; manufactures were The multiplying; American products were finding a market in of the every quarter of the globe. In the ointment of this prosperity, however, there was an ugly fly: business was trust-ridden. By 1902 nearly one third of the total production of all industries, excluding that of agriculture, had been brought under the control of trusts. One trust controlled seventyfive per cent of the steel industry; another sold ninety per cent of the sugar output; another refined seventy-five per cent of the oil; another manufactured seventy-five per cent of the paper. Combinations were being formed on a scale that made the trusts of the eighties (p. 482) look like dwarfs by comparison. For example, the United States Steel Corporation, which was organized in 1901, had a capitalization of over $1,400,000,000; it Copyright Pirie MacDonald controlled more than 200 different plants; it owned 50,000 acres of high-grade Theodore Roosevelt. His favorite photograph. coal lands; 1000 miles of railway, and 100 ore-carrying vessels; its iron-ore deposits were estimated to contain more than half a billion tons of ore; it could produce in a year more than 9,000,000 tons of steel. By 1902 concentration had gone so far that thousands of business men were being ruined by ruthless competition, and millions of consumers were feeling the pinch of high prices; for as monopoly gained ground, prices rose and the cost of living started on an upward trend. The Sherman Law Dormant The War Against the Trusts While the forces of commerce and industry were thus galloping toward monopoly, little or nothing was being done to check them. The Sherman Law (p. 503) was lying dormant in the statute-books. While Harrison was President there were only three indictments under this law; under Cleveland there were two; under McKinley there were none. Neither the Sherman Law nor the anti-trust laws passed by the several States had succeeded in keeping open the channels of competition or in putting a curb upon monopoly. "If there is any serious student of our economic life," said Professor Ely in 1899, "who believes that anything substantial has been gained by all the laws passed against trusts, by all the newspaper editorials which have thus far been penned, by all the sermons which have been preached against them, this authority has yet to be heard from. Forms and names have been changed in many instances, but the dreaded work of vast aggregation of capital has gone on practically as before." President Roosevelt believed that something ought to be done to bring the trusts under control. In a speech made in 1902 he said: "The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them but is in duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown. It is idle to say there is no need for such supervision. There is." In order to do his part in curbing the trusts the President determined that the Sherman Law should be aroused from its slumbers. He ordered his law officers to move against illegal combinations and move against them in earnest. "No suit," he said, "will be undertaken for the sake of seeming to undertake it, and when a suit is undertaken it will not be compromised except upon the basis that the Government wins." In this spirit his attorney-general brought suit against the Northern Securities Company, which was organized for the purpose of merging the interests of the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railways in such a way as to destroy competition between the two roads. The suit was successful; in 1904 the Northern Securities Company was forced by the Supreme Court of the United States to dissolve, on the ground that the merger constituted a violation of the Sherman Law. Suit was also brought against a combination of meat-packers known as the Beef Trust, and an injunction was secured forbidding this trust from fixing prices arbitrarily, curtailing the supply of meat, or otherwise restraining the freedom of trade. This movement against the trusts awakened the resentment of the "captains of industry," but it was warmly approved by the people. In his crusade against the trusts the President urged Congress to pass laws that would make the Sherman Law "more efficient and more in harmony with actual conditions.' But Congress was content to let the anti-trust legislation stand as it was already written. In respect to one matter, however, Congress responded to the President's wishes. It was his idea that in dealing with the trusts the first step should be getting knowledge about them-full and complete knowledge that might be made public to all people. Accordingly, he called the attention of Congress to the necessity for laws that would enable the executive branch to give publicity to the doings of the trusts. In response, Congress in 1903 created the Department of Commerce and established therein a Bureau of Corporations, arming it with authority to inquire into the history and practices of trusts and to make reports of its findings. The new bureau under the direction of Herbert Knox Smith went about its task of furnishing the desired publicity with great enthusiasm. The anti-trust campaign was applauded by the people, yet its results, regarded from an economic standpoint, were unimportant. The movement failed to open the channels of competition, and it had little or no effect in the way of putting a curb upon the trusts. During the very years in which the canpaign was being conducted the total capitalization of the trusts increased by several billions of dollars. Upon the conduct of corporation officials it may perhaps have had an influence that was in some degree salutary, but, by and large, its principal effect upon the trust magnates was simply to make them more Publicity The Effect of the Anti-trust Campaign The Labor Movement Bargain ing cautious in their methods of working out their monopolistic schemes. But measured by its political results the campaign had considerable significance. It heightened the popularity of Roosevelt and thus strengthened the Republican party and helped to keep it in power. ROOSEVELT AND THE COAL STRIKE The popularity that the President gained by his crusade against the trusts was enhanced by a fresh access of favor that came to him from the ranks of organized labor. It now meant much for a public man to have the good will of the workingmen, for the labor movement, which began to show strength in the eighties (p. 485), had by the opening of the twentieth century acquired tremendous momentum. By 1903 more than 2,000,000 wage-earners were organized into labor-unions. One of the most important things done by the later and Collective larger trade-union was to develop a system of collective bargaining. Under this system the individual workman, finding that in the great industrial struggle he was a mere atom, ceased to bargain directly with his employers in regard to conditions of employment. Instead of individual bargaining there was collective bargaining: representatives of the labor organizations met in conference with the employers, and there was higgling as to wages and hours of labor; and when a bargain was struck it was made binding upon every member of the organization represented in the conference. Sometimes this collective bargaining was conducted on a vast scale, the agreement affecting hundreds of establishments and large sections of the country. The But the collective bargain could not always be peacefully made. In 1902 the miners in the anthracite coal region went on a strike because they could not reach an agreement with their employers in respect to wages and hours of labor. The miners were members of the United Mine Workers of America, at whose head was John Mitchell, a man who himself had worked in the mines. Opposed to the miners was the Coal Trust, whose chief spokesman was George F. Baer, president of the Reading Coal Company. The miners at first offered to submit their |