Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography — Ch 10-The Presidency; Making an Old Party Progressive, pt 3

There was one ugly and very necessary task.

This was to discover and root out corruption wherever it was found in any of the departments.

The first essential was to make it clearly understood that no political or business or social influence of any kind would for one moment be even considered when the honesty of a public official was at issue.

It took a little time to get this fact thoroughly drilled into the heads both of the men within the service and of the political leaders without.

The feat was accomplished so thoroughly that every effort to interfere in any shape or way with the course of justice was abandoned definitely and for good.

Most, although not all, of the frauds occurred in connection with the Post-Office Department and the Land Office.

It was in the Post-Office Department that we first definitely established the rule of conduct which became universal throughout the whole service.

Rumors of corruption in the department became rife, and finally I spoke of them to the then First Assistant Postmaster-General, afterwards Postmaster-General, Robert J. Wynne.

He reported to me, after some investigation, that in his belief there was doubtless corruption, but that it was very difficult to get at it, and that the offenders were confident and defiant because of their great political and business backing and the ramifications of their crimes.

Talking the matter over with him, I came to the conclusion that the right man to carry on the investigation was the then Fourth Assistant Postmaster-General, now a Senator from Kansas, Joseph L. Bristow, who possessed the iron fearlessness needful to front such a situation.

Mr. Bristow had perforce seen a good deal of the seamy side of politics, and of the extent of the unscrupulousness with which powerful influence was brought to bear to shield offenders.

Before undertaking the investigation he came to see me, and said that he did not wish to go into it unless he could be assured that I would stand personally behind him, and, no matter where his inquiries led him, would support him and prevent interference with him.

I answered that I would certainly do so.

He went into the investigation with relentless energy, dogged courage, and keen intelligence.

His success was complete, and the extent of his services to the Nation are not easily to be exaggerated.

He unearthed a really appalling amount of corruption, and he did his work with such absolute thoroughness that the corruption was completely eradicated.

We had, of course, the experience usual in all such investigations.

At first there was popular incredulity and disbelief that there was much behind the charges, or that much could be unearthed.

Then when the corruption was shown there followed a yell of anger from all directions, and a period during which any man accused was forthwith held guilty by the public; and violent demands were made by the newspapers for the prosecution not only of the men who could be prosecuted with a fair chance of securing conviction and imprisonment, but of other men whose misconduct had been such as to warrant my removing them from office, but against whom it was not possible to get the kind of evidence which would render likely conviction in a criminal case.

Suits were brought against all the officials whom we thought we could convict; and the public complained bitterly that we did not bring further suits.

We secured several convictions, including convictions of the most notable offenders.

The trials consumed a good deal of time.

Public attention was attracted to something else.

Indifference succeeded to excitement, and in some subtle way the juries seemed to respond to the indifference.

One of the worst offenders was acquitted by a jury; whereupon not a few of the same men who had insisted that the Government was derelict in not criminally prosecuting every man whose misconduct was established so as to make it necessary to turn him out of office, now turned round and, inasmuch as the jury had not found this man guilty of crime, demanded that he should be reinstated in office!

It is needless to say that the demand was not granted.

There were two or three other acquittals, of prominent outsiders.

Nevertheless the net result was that the majority of the worst offenders were sent to prison, and the remainder dismissed from the Government service, if they were public officials, and if they were not public officials at least so advertised as to render it impossible that they should ever again have dealings with the Government.

The department was absolutely cleaned and became one of the very best in the Government.

Several Senators came to me--Mr. Garfield was present on the occasion--and said that they were glad I was putting a stop to corruption, but they hoped I would avoid all scandal; that if I would make an example of some one man and then let the others quietly resign, it would avoid a disturbance which might hurt the party.

They were advising me in good faith, and I was as courteous as possible in my answer, but explained that I would have to act with the utmost rigor against the offenders, no matter what the effect on the party, and, moreover, that I did not believe it would hurt the party.

It did not hurt the party.

It helped the party.

A favorite war-cry in American political life has always been, "Turn the rascals out."

We made it evident that, as far as we were concerned, this war-cry was pointless;

for we turned our own rascals out.

There were important and successful land fraud prosecutions in several Western States.

Probably the most important were the cases prosecuted in Oregon by Francis J. Heney, with the assistance of William J. Burns, a secret service agent who at that time began his career as a great detective.

It would be impossible to overstate the services rendered to the cause of decency and honesty by Messrs. Heney and Burns.

Mr. Heney was my close and intimate adviser professionally and non-professionally, not only as regards putting a stop to frauds in the public lands, but in many other matters of vital interest to the Republic.

No man in the country has waged the battle for National honesty with greater courage and success, with more whole-hearted devotion to the public good; and no man has been more traduced and maligned by the wrong-doing agents and representatives of the great sinister forces of evil.

He secured the conviction of various men of high political and financial standing in connection with the Oregon prosecutions; he and Burns behaved with scrupulous fairness and propriety; but their services to the public caused them to incur the bitter hatred of those who had wronged the public, and after I left office the National Administration turned against them.

One of the most conspicuous of the men whom they had succeeded in convicting was pardoned by President Taft--in spite of the fact that the presiding Judge, Judge Hunt, had held that the evidence amply warranted the conviction, and had sentenced the man to imprisonment.

As was natural, the one hundred and forty-six land-fraud defendants in Oregon, who included the foremost machine political leaders in the State, furnished the backbone of the opposition to me in the Presidential contest of 1912. The opposition rallied behind Messrs. Taft and LaFollette; and although I carried the primaries handsomely, half of the delegates elected from Oregon under instructions to vote for me, sided with my opponents in the National Convention--and as regards some of them I became convinced that the mainspring of their motive lay in the intrigue for securing the pardon of certain of the men whose conviction Heney had secured.

Land fraud and post-office cases were not the only ones.

We were especially zealous in prosecuting all of the "higher up" offenders in the realms of politics and finance who swindled on a large scale.

Special assistants of the Attorney-General, such as Mr. Frank Kellogg, of St. Paul, and various first-class Federal district attorneys in different parts of the country secured notable results: Mr. Stimson and his assistants, Messrs. Wise, Denison, and Frankfurter, in New York, for instance, in connection with the prosecution of the Sugar Trust and of the banker Morse, and of a great metropolitan newspaper for opening its columns to obscene and immoral advertisements; and in St. Louis Messrs. Dyer and Nortoni, who, among other services, secured the conviction and imprisonment of Senator Burton, of Kansas; and in Chicago Mr. Sims, who raised his office to the highest pitch of efficiency, secured the conviction of the banker Walsh and of the Beef Trust, and first broke through the armor of the Standard Oil Trust.

It is not too much to say that these men, and others like them, worked a complete revolution in the enforcement of the Federal laws, and made their offices organized legal machines fit and ready to conduct smashing fights for the people's rights and to enforce the laws in aggressive fashion.

When I took the Presidency, it was a common and bitter saying that a big man, a rich man, could not be put in jail.

We put many big and rich men in jail;

two United States Senators, for instance, and among others two great bankers, one in New York and one in Chicago.

One of the United States Senators died, the other served his term.

(One of the bankers was released from prison by executive order after I left office.

) These were merely individual cases among many others like them.

Moreover, we were just as relentless in dealing with crimes of violence among the disorderly and brutal classes as in dealing with the crimes of cunning and fraud of which certain wealthy men and big politicians were guilty.

Mr. Sims in Chicago was particularly efficient in sending to the penitentiary numbers of the infamous men who batten on the "white slave" traffic, after July, 1908, when by proclamation I announced the adherence of our Government to the international agreement for the suppression of the traffic.

The views I then held and now hold were expressed in a memorandum made in the case of a Negro convicted of the rape of a young Negro girl, practically a child.

A petition for his pardon had been sent me.

WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.

C.

, August 8, 1904. The application for the commutation of sentence of John W. Burley is denied.

This man committed the most hideous crime known to our laws, and twice before he has committed crimes of a similar, though less horrible, character.

In my judgment there is no justification whatever for paying heed to the allegations that he is not of sound mind, allegations made after the trial and conviction.

Nobody would pretend that there has ever been any such degree of mental unsoundness shown as would make people even consider sending him to an asylum if he had not committed this crime.

Under such circumstances he should certainly be esteemed sane enough to suffer the penalty for his monstrous deed.

I have scant sympathy with the plea of insanity advanced to save a man from the consequences of crime, when unless that crime had been committed it would have been impossible to persuade any responsible authority to commit him to an asylum as insane.

Among the most dangerous criminals, and especially among those prone to commit this particular kind of offense, there are plenty of a temper so fiendish or so brutal as to be incompatible with any other than a brutish order of intelligence; but these men are nevertheless responsible for their acts; and nothing more tends to encourage crime among such men than the belief that through the plea of insanity or any other method it is possible for them to escape paying the just penalty of their crimes.

The crime in question is one to the existence of which we largely owe the existence of that spirit of lawlessness which takes form in lynching.

It is a crime so revolting that the criminal is not entitled to one particle of sympathy from any human being.

It is essential that the punishment for it should be not only as certain but as swift as possible.

The jury in this case did their duty by recommending the infliction of the death penalty.

It is to be regretted that we do not have special provision for more summary dealing with this type of case.

The more we do what in us lies to secure certain and swift justice in dealing with these cases, the more effectively do we work against the growth of that lynching spirit which is so full of evil omen for this people, because it seeks to avenge one infamous crime by the commission of another of equal infamy.

The application is denied and the sentence will be carried into effect.

(Signed) THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

One of the most curious incidents of lawlessness with which I had to deal affected an entire State.

The State of Nevada in the year 1907 was gradually drifting into utter governmental impotence and downright anarchy.

The people were at heart all right; but the forces of evil had been permitted to get the upper hand, and for the time being the decent citizens had become helpless to assert themselves either by controlling the greedy corporations on the one hand or repressing the murderous violence of certain lawless labor organizations on the other hand.

The Governor of the State was a Democrat and a Southern man, and in the abstract a strong believer in the doctrine of State's Rights.

But his experience finally convinced him that he could obtain order only through the intervention of the National Government; and then he went over too far and wished to have the National Government do his police work for him.

In the Rocky Mountain States there had existed for years what was practically a condition of almost constant war between the wealthy mine-owners and the Western Federation of Miners, at whose head stood Messrs. Haywood, Pettibone, and Moyer, who were about that time indicted for the murder of the Governor of Idaho.

Much that was lawless, much that was indefensible, had been done by both sides.

The Legislature of Nevada was in sympathy with, or at least was afraid of not expressing sympathy for, Messrs. Moyer, Haywood, Pettibone, and their associates.

The State was practically without any police, and the Governor had recommended the establishment of a State Constabulary, along the lines of the Texas Rangers; but the Legislature rejected his request.

The Governor reported to me the conditions as follows.

During 1907 the Goldfield mining district became divided into two hostile camps.

Half of the Western Federation of Miners were constantly armed, and arms and ammunition were purchased and kept by the union as a body, while the mine-owners on their side retained large numbers of watchmen and guards who were also armed and always on duty.

In addition to these opposing forces there was, as the Governor reported, an unusually large number of the violent and criminal element, always attracted to a new and booming mining camp.

Under such conditions the civil authorities were practically powerless, and the Governor, being helpless to avert civil war, called on me to keep order.

I accordingly threw in a body of regular troops under General Funston.

These kept order completely, and the Governor became so well satisfied that he thought he would like to have them there permanently!

This seemed to me unhealthy, and on December 28, 1907, I notified him that while I would do my duty, the first need was that the State authorities should do theirs, and that the first step towards this was the assembling of the Legislature.

I concluded my telegram: "If within five days from receipt of this telegram you shall have issued the necessary notice to convene the Legislature of Nevada, I shall continue the troops during a period of three weeks.

If when the term of five days has elapsed the notice has not been issued, the troops will be immediately returned to their former stations."

I had already investigated the situation through a committee, composed of the Chief of the Bureau of Corporations, Mr. H.

K.

Smith, the Chief of the Bureau of Labor, Mr. C. P.

Neill, and the Comptroller of the Treasury, Mr. Lawrence Murray.

These men I could thoroughly trust, and their report, which was not over-favorable to either side, had convinced me that the only permanent way to get good results was to insist on the people of the State themselves grappling with and solving their own troubles.

The Governor summoned the Legislature, it met, and the constabulary bill was passed.

The troops remained in Nevada until time had been given for the State authorities to organize their force so that violence could at once be checked.

Then they were withdrawn.

Nor was it only as regards their own internal affairs that I sometimes had to get into active communication with the State authorities.

There has always been a strong feeling in California against the immigration of Asiatic laborers, whether these are wage-workers or men who occupy and till the soil.

I believe this to be fundamentally a sound and proper attitude, an attitude which must be insisted upon, and yet which can be insisted upon in such a manner and with such courtesy and such sense of mutual fairness and reciprocal obligation and respect as not to give any just cause of offense to Asiatic peoples.

In the present state of the world's progress it is highly inadvisable that peoples in wholly different stages of civilization, or of wholly different types of civilization even although both equally high, shall be thrown into intimate contact.

This is especially undesirable when there is a difference of both race and standard of living.

In California the question became acute in connection with the admission of the Japanese.

I then had and now have a hearty admiration for the Japanese people.

I believe in them; I respect their great qualities; I wish that our American people had many of these qualities.

Japanese and American students, travelers, scientific and literary men, merchants engaged in international trade, and the like can meet on terms of entire equality and should be given the freest access each to the country of the other.

But the Japanese themselves would not tolerate the intrusion into their country of a mass of Americans who would displace Japanese in the business of the land.

I think they are entirely right in this position.

I would be the first to admit that Japan has the absolute right to declare on what terms foreigners shall be admitted to work in her country, or to own land in her country, or to become citizens of her country.

America has and must insist upon the same right.

The people of California were right in insisting that the Japanese should not come thither in mass, that there should be no influx of laborers, of agricultural workers, or small tradesmen--in short, no mass settlement or immigration.

Unfortunately, during the latter part of my term as President certain unwise and demagogic agitators in California, to show their disapproval of the Japanese coming into the State, adopted the very foolish procedure of trying to provide by law that the Japanese children should not be allowed to attend the schools with the white children, and offensive and injurious language was used in connection with the proposal.

The Federal Administration promptly took up the matter with the California authorities, and I got into personal touch with them.

At my request the Mayor of San Francisco and other leaders in the movement came on to see me.

I explained that the duty of the National Government was twofold: in the first place, to meet every reasonable wish and every real need of the people of California or any other State in dealing with the people of a foreign power; and, in the next place, itself exclusively and fully to exercise the right of dealing with this foreign power.

Inasmuch as in the last resort, including that last of all resorts, war, the dealing of necessity had to be between the foreign power and the National Government, it was impossible to admit that the doctrine of State sovereignty could be invoked in such a matter.

As soon as legislative or other action in any State affects a foreign nation, then the affair becomes one for the Nation, and the State should deal with the foreign power purely through the Nation.

I explained that I was in entire sympathy with the people of California as to the subject of immigration of the Japanese in mass; but that of course I wished to accomplish the object they had in view in the way that would be most courteous and most agreeable to the feelings of the Japanese; that all relations between the two peoples must be those of reciprocal justice, and that it was an intolerable outrage on the part of newspapers and public men to use offensive and insulting language about a high-spirited, sensitive, and friendly people; and that such action as was proposed about the schools could only have bad effects, and would in no shape or way achieve the purpose that the Californians had in mind.

I also explained that I would use every resource of the National Government to protect the Japanese in their treaty rights, and would count upon the State authorities backing me up to the limit in such action.

In short, I insisted upon the two points (1) that the Nation and not the individual States must deal with matters of such international significance and must treat foreign nations with entire courtesy and respect; and (2) that the Nation would at once, and in efficient and satisfactory manner, take action that would meet the needs of California.

I both asserted the power of the Nation and offered a full remedy for the needs of the State.

This is the right, and the only right, course.

The worst possible course in such a case is to fail to insist on the right of the Nation, to offer no action of the Nation to remedy what is wrong, and yet to try to coax the State not to do what it is mistakenly encouraged to believe it has the power to do, when no other alternative is offered.

After a good deal of discussion, we came to an entirely satisfactory conclusion.

The obnoxious school legislation was abandoned, and I secured an arrangement with Japan under which the Japanese themselves prevented any immigration to our country of their laboring people, it being distinctly understood that if there was such emigration the United States would at once pass an exclusion law.

It was of course infinitely better that the Japanese should stop their own people from coming rather than that we should have to stop them; but it was necessary for us to hold this power in reserve.

Unfortunately, after I left office, a most mistaken and ill-advised policy was pursued towards Japan, combining irritation and inefficiency, which culminated in a treaty under which we surrendered this important and necessary right.

It was alleged in excuse that the treaty provided for its own abrogation; but of course it is infinitely better to have a treaty under which the power to exercise a necessary right is explicitly retained rather than a treaty so drawn that recourse must be had to the extreme step of abrogating if it ever becomes necessary to exercise the right in question.

The arrangement we made worked admirably, and entirely achieved its purpose.

No small part of our success was due to the fact that we succeeded in impressing on the Japanese that we sincerely admired and respected them, and desired to treat them with the utmost consideration.

I cannot too strongly express my indignation with, and abhorrence of, reckless public writers and speakers who, with coarse and vulgar insolence, insult the Japanese people and thereby do the greatest wrong not only to Japan but to their own country.

Such conduct represents that nadir of underbreeding and folly.

The Japanese are one of the great nations of the world, entitled to stand, and standing, on a footing of full equality with any nation of Europe or America.

I have the heartiest admiration for them.

They can teach us much.

Their civilization is in some respects higher than our own.

It is eminently undesirable that Japanese and Americans should attempt to live together in masses; any such attempt would be sure to result disastrously, and the far-seeing statesmen of both countries should join to prevent it.

But this is not because either nation is inferior to the other; it is because they are different.

The two peoples represent two civilizations which, although in many respects equally high, are so totally distinct in their past history that it is idle to expect in one or two generations to overcome this difference.

One civilization is as old as the other; and in neither case is the line of cultural descent coincident with that of ethnic descent.

Unquestionably the ancestors of the great majority both of the modern Americans and the modern Japanese were barbarians in that remote past which saw the origins of the cultured peoples to which the Americans and the Japanese of to-day severally trace their civilizations.

But the lines of development of these two civilizations, of the Orient and the Occident, have been separate and divergent since thousands of years before the Christian era; certainly since that hoary eld in which the Akkadian predecessors of the Chaldean Semites held sway in Mesopotamia.

An effort to mix together, out of hand, the peoples representing the culminating points of two such lines of divergent cultural development would be fraught with peril; and this, I repeat, because the two are different, not because either is inferior to the other.

Wise statesmen, looking to the future, will for the present endeavor to keep the two nations from mass contact and intermingling, precisely because they wish to keep each in relations of permanent good will and friendship with the other.