Crimson Banners Fly: The Rise of the American Left Revisited

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"Tacoma Times" Cartoon Demonstrating the Futility of the Conservatives, December 21st, 1903 - Source: Wiki Commons

Chapter X: The Election of 1904: The True Fourth Party System, or How We Trekked Along the Boulevard Of Broken Promises

The Republican Party had a critical choice to make. Who shall guide the Party of Lincoln forward in meeting the novel and complex challenges of the twentieth century? This topic weighed heavily on GOP leaders' minds in the aftermath of Depew's apparent bowing out of the race. Theoretically, the nomination was a free-for-all and the extraordinarily coveted presidential nod was anyone's game. Conservatives scattered in search of a prized fighter capable of eliminating any opposition, but the reformist faction silently understood the name of their standard bearer well in advance.

Secretary of War Theodore Roosevelt, popularly recognized as a war hero, a progressively-minded governor, and the only voice promoting economic reform in the Depew Administration, embodied the mood of the United States citizenry leading into the election season. Greatly perturbed by the vast economic inequalities of unregulated capitalism and the limitless power of the trusts and wealthy few, many Americans demanded intervention by the federal government. Depew's unwillingness to take a leading role in arbitrating the Anthracite Strike and total refusal to prosecute the Northern Securities Trust drove scores of otherwise loyal Republicans further to the Left. Roosevelt sought to return them to the fold with a reinvigorated presidential candidacy espousing a mightier federal government working on behalf of the people.

Sometime in late February, Secretary Roosevelt started hiring the core staff of his presidential campaign. He enlisted the assistance of several figures from his failed 1900 bid, including former State Secretary John Hay and Jacob Riis, in addition to Ohio State Senator James R. Garfield, Representative Charles Hamlin, and former Sixth Circuit Judge William Howard Taft. In order for the campaign to find triumph, it first and foremost required direct appeal to the voters. Roosevelt privately blamed the party establishment for the failure of his past candidacy and deeply resented the RNC for "underhanded thievery" at the Philadelphia Convention. Having worked tremendously hard in 1900 to appeal to the Republican leadership and state parties only to be snubbed at zero hour, the war secretary no longer counted on the benevolence of the Old Guard.

Despite his horrific foreign policy and assortment of character faults, President Beveridge managed to popularize the concept of sensible progressive reform during his presidency. His calls for child labor abolition and an end to poverty resonated with voters who otherwise associated such programs with Bryan Democracy, even if Beveridge never actually got around to enacting these domestic initiatives. The reformist faction of the Republican Party gradually developed during Depew's presidency into a force to be reckoned with, and, by 1904, with the Roosevelt Campaign offering an uncompromising vision of worthwhile innovation, it attracted new allies. Small businessmen, artisans, mechanics and some Western farmers found a home in the Roosevelt wing of the party.

As the blustering war secretary vyed for support straight from the electorate, conservative forces in the Republican Party conceived their own path forward. The Old Guard considered coalescing around various prominent party stalwarts in the aftermath of McKinley's settlement with the left-leaning sect. Speaker Joseph Cannon reportedly entered talks to plot a path to the nomination, but, fearing a loss may result in his removal from the speakership, he ultimately declined to contest the election. Some reached out to the Senator Thomas Platt as a viable figurehead of the conservatives, but he too stated his clear disinterest. To the relief of the RNC majority, several candidacies began sprouting up shortly after it became evident that Roosevelt would run once more.

Senator Joseph Foraker of Ohio indicated the start of a presidential candidacy in March, writing, "We Republicans stand grateful for the dutiful service of President Depew. His retirement necessitates a successor to that office, the highest honor in the land [...] to the nomination I will not actively fight, though neither will I decline." Charles W. Fairbanks, the staunch conservative senator from Indiana, issued a similar proclamation to Foraker's and subsequently organized an effort to appeal to Midwestern party bosses. Two additional candidates, former governors William O'Connell Bradley (R-KY) and William A. Stone (R-PA), joined the field that spring.

The only member of the Old Guard considered capable of bringing down Theodore Roosevelt, however, was Senator Marcus Hanna. An advisor to President Depew and a colossal force in the Ohio Republican Party, Hanna had been viewed as the rightful presidential successor in the event that the incumbent opted against a second term. The Ohioan most recently assisted in the legislative efforts to repeal Sulzer-Hepburn, and for this was extensively lauded by J.P. Morgan. In January, however, Hanna fell profoundly ill with typhoid fever and on February 15th, a mere five days after McKinley orchestrated his arrangement with the disparate GOP factions, succumbed to the illness.

Hanna's death threw a wrench into the plans of the Republican establishment. His illness was well-known throughout the party apparatus, but few anticipated that it truly meant finality to the larger-than-life senator. McKinley's deal counted solely on the theory that his preferred faction, the conservatives, could earnestly manage their own opposition to Roosevelt. The committee chair held little faith in Foraker or Fairbanks to carry out this mission due to their low name recognition by the rank-and-file and relative inexperience campaigning against a strong Democratic foe like Bryan. In the midst of this gloom, McKinley authored a message to Foraker that skewed the fate of the convention. "Ensure the resolution is passed. Damn the consequences. We cannot let it fall into anarchy."

         Jay R. Morgan, The American Elephant: A Study of the Republican Party, 1980

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Former President Bryan Speaking in Seattle, March 18th, 1903- Source: Wiki Commons

In the fallout of political defeat at the hands of Albert Beveridge, William J. Bryan departed the Executive Mansion intent on influencing public policy through printed and spoken word. Bryan continued to generate a fair income via the lecture circuit and, free from the shackles of the presidency, was free to speak his mind without repercussions. He reached out on a moral level to his base and warned his followers not to despair in the face of defeat. Rather, he asked of them to fight for their policy goals. Shortly after Beveridge pledged ground troops to the Philippines, Bryan remarked, "The simple truth of the matter is that this Administration intends on conquest by any means necessary. It is high time the American public got over its delusions about this war. It has deceived itself too long with the notion that it was fighting by a sense of patriotism. The only true patriot is one that defends our principles of liberty and self-government, whether it pertains to Americans or Filipinos."

Bryan rallied incessantly against the strength of the Beveridge Administration once the war effort escalated. As the most recent living president, the political celebrity's words were frequently cited as the chief opposition to Beveridge. In the span of 1901 through 1904, Bryan's electrifying speeches were just as celebrated as before he won the presidency, with onlookers often observing the Nebraskan's revitalized spirit and upbeat outlook on the future. To no one's astonishment, the orator gave no consideration to political retirement despite the harsh repudiation he received in the 1900 election. His following persisted and Bryan Democrats endured as a hearty faction of the national party.

Regardless of Bryan's defiant rigor and untouchable fortitude, his stinging loss in the presidential election still cost him dearly. The Democratic National Committee and a coalition of Eastern and Southern Democratic conservative figures wholly blamed the former president for exposing the nation to the imperialist mania of Beveridge. They regarded that Bryan tore apart the party at its seams whilst leaving few lasting achievements in his wake (especially following the repeal of Sulzer-Hepburn). In encapsulating the backlash to the former president's left-leaning promises of reform and populist rhetoric, the conservatives unapologetically charged the former president with betrayal of the Jeffersonian foundations of the Democratic Party. A return to form, they found, was long overdue.

This sect, the "reorganizers", managed to reassert control over the DNC in the months following the 1900 elections and plotted to boot out any and all Bryan Democrats in positions of leadership. These reorganizers believed that the only method to ridding the country of Republican rule was to reshape their party into a promoter of noncontroversial, moderate and business-friendly policies. Other than the lowering of the tariff, this last gasp of Bourbonism pushed to eliminate 'divisive' populist messaging and any discussion on reforming the national economic system. Therefore, in a move purely emblematic of this shift, former Treasury Secretary Horace Boies (a Silverite) was removed from a prominent leadership position in the Democratic committee in order to award that post to former Senator David B. Hill of New York.

By the end of 1902, the chief reorganizers of Democratic policy were David B. Hill, the Wilson-Gorman Act's co-architect Senator Arthur Gorman (D-MD), U.S. Shipbuilding Company Owner and former Senator James Smith Jr. (D-NJ), white supremacist Senator John W. Daniel (D-VA, and increasingly conservative journalists Henry Watterson and Joseph Pulitzer. Besides purging affiliates of Bryan from the party leadership (with the rare exception of Speaker Lentz), the new class (or, more accurately, the returned old class) of Bourbons searched for the right breed of standard bearer to, as Gorman stated, launch a "noble campaign of reason," and, thereby, re-capture the presidency. To this effect, they called upon a figure then-considered the single most formidable Democrat: Grover Cleveland.

Former President Cleveland, who in 1904 was 67 and in declining health, was often depicted by the Bourbons as a symbol of nostalgic, post-Reconstruction greatness and prosperity. His presidency hearkened back to an era of classical liberalism and strict fiscal conservatism, when Democrats applauded the gold standard and attracted the cyclopean forces of big business instead of alienating them. Of course, the aged former president also oversaw the calamitous Pullman Strike response as well as a bitter economic depression, but the rose-tinted glasses of the Bourbons tucked away those unfortunate remembrances. Those facets of Cleveland's tenure notwithstanding, the DNC reached out incessantly to petition the retired president to consider a third term. Although Cleveland's response indeed implied a sense of dread over the prospect of Bryan's renomination and a distaste for the power-mad, empire-building Republicans, he eventually refused their offer.
 
As the conservatives frenzied, Bryan pondered his own political destiny. "The Great Commoner," Ackerman wrote, "still had trouble processing his Popular Vote loss in the preceding election. His entire theory of governing banked on support by the public. Without it, all he fought for was for naught. [...] Comprehending the counter-revolution from the party leadership and the extent to which it infiltrated the Democratic Party overall, [Bryan] soberly accepted the embarrassingly low likelihood for his presidential re-nomination. Knowing, even counting on, the squandering of the election by the Bourbons, Bryan announced that he would not be seeking the nomination in 1904. Boosting the credibility of his movement depended on building it from below, not above."

Men who have repudiated the party creed and the party candidates, yet pride themselves upon their superior Democracy, urge a return to what they call the first principles of Democracy. Pressed for some definite statement of their views they either evade the question or resort to language too ponderous for the understanding.

These so-called Democrats who voted the Republican ticket showed by doing so that they were nearer to the Republican position than they were the Democratic position. In order to regain their confidence, they must undergo a change or the Democratic Party must move over toward the Republican position. As the re-organizers have manifested no change of heart the effort to re-organize might more property be called an effort to Republicanize the Democratic Party. To make the effort a success the Democrats must either be converted to Republican ideas, or be deceived into the support of men who wear the livery of Democracy, but lean toward Republican doctrines.

         William J. Bryan, "The Organization," March 3rd, 1904

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Delegates to the First Socialist Party Convention, July 29th, 1901 - Source: MarxistsDotOrg

Leaders of the early movement for American Socialism vigorously studied their failures from the 1900 presidential campaign and arrived at two key conclusions. First, as elucidated by Eugene Debs, was the need to soften opposition to Socialist thought in American culture. It was of utmost importance for the Left, its candidates for office as well as its union organizers, to thoroughly explain the inherent contradictions between the mythical promise of prosperity under a capitalist mode of production versus the reality of life in the United States for an average working class individual. More so, until the disjointed, neophyte movement coalesced under a single crimson banner it had virtually no hope of supplanting the dominant parties in power.

Various factions of localized socialist organizations eventually agreed, partly at the behest of Debs, to attend a Socialist Unity Convention on July 29th, 1901, in Indianapolis, Indiana. The two largest factions present at this conference, the 'Kangaroo' wing of the DeLeonist Socialist Labor Party and the Chicago Social Democratic Party, looked to sort out their variations and peacefully join together. Delegates of the Chicago SDP, led by Victor Berger, called on the newfound consortium to inscribe into its principles immediate demands aside from general socialism. "We are no longer a sect," one delegate declared, "we are a political party. The inclusion of a political programme, ownership of the railroads and suffrage expansion particularly, will demonstrate empathy to the workers on which our party is based." This debate, over whether to concentrate efforts on sweeping reforms as opposed to a strict interpretation of socialist revolution, would not be solved at the founding convention, but, for the time being, the majority concurred with Berger.

Victor Berger himself referred to opponents of the measure as "impossiblists," harmful and childlike "disappointed Populists who have been led by their nose by the free silver, free paper money and other free things." Berger, an Austrian-American educator, moved to a German neighborhood within Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the 1880s. He fostered extensive roots with the German immigrant population of the city and found solace as an editor for two left-wing newspapers: the Wisconsin Vorwärts (Forward) and Die Wahrheit (The Truth). Politically conservative, as relative to the socialists, Berger favored participation with Gompers' AFL and disapproved of orthodox Marxism. According to his personal acquaintances, the Wisconsinite possessed no shortage of self-admiration, with political rival Morris Hillquit once remarking, "He was sublimely egotistical, but somehow his egotism did not smack of conceit and was not offensive."

Hillquit, a young Russian-American union organizer and a garment worker by trade, led the dissident Kangaroo faction of the SLP in 1901. He complied with the demand by the Berger faction to include capitalist reforms into the platform, arguing the only remaining option meant, "waiting with folded arms for the arrival of the revolution." It was pivotal, Hillquit stated, to run agreeable candidates on a broad program. Otherwise, regardless as to the ferocity of their support of a massive socialist revolution, the capitalist alternatives would stand for "progress, and we for dreams." Hillquit and Berger forces stayed temporary allies in the 1901 conference, voting approvingly for a policy of autonomous state branches instead of a overpowered centralized committee, the appointment of the inoffensive Leon Greenbaum as national secretary, and the selection of St. Louis for a base of operations. Finally, perhaps the least significant policy-wise but crucial as a symbolic measure, the delegates settled on a name - the Socialist Party of America.

Jubilant and full of promise, the Socialist Party of the United States, a cohesive collection of diverse theory and perspectives, unleashed itself upon the nation in the summer of 1901. It was no stunted reformist project, not Democratic, Republican nor Populist, but an independent socialist collective uncompromisingly and explicitly seeking the toppling of Capitalism. Localized and restrictive efforts along this guideline had been attempted before, state parties donning the 'socialist' label, the ill-fated Socialist Labor Party, etc, but never before had a unified front succeeded to such a profound scale.

         Benjamin McIntyre, The Workers' Struggle: The Birth of a Columbian International, 2018​

The Socialist Party gathered serious momentum in the period between 1901 and 1904. William Mailly, the successor to Greenbaum, oversaw a packed and lively national office as well as a flood of new memberships in his tenure. In November of 1904, Mailly's documentation reported a stunning 45,000 active memberships in the Socialist Party. To put that figure to scale, the Social Democratic Party held 10,000 total members in 1900. New York City and Milwaukee, two strongholds for SP membership, elected socialists to local offices as Republican incumbents struggled to retain the support of poor immigrant populations. Socialist speakers toured across America spreading the organization's message and countering the prevailing narrative that all was well.

Eugene Debs was unanimously selected as the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America. His fame and adoration by the party proper could not be matched, and few believed any other man or woman had the capability to run a successful national campaign. In hopes that the broad appeal and solid organization of the SP could serve to benefit the candidate, Debs, joined by New York printer Benjamin Hanford, made his case to the electorate. His ideology stressed the innate relation of socialism to American culture, likewise comparing unfettered capitalism to cataclysm.

He interpreted Marxian determinism and class structure through a uniquely American lens, proclaiming, "In this system absolutely no man is secure, and you instinctively know it. We live in the most favored land beneath the bending skies. We have raw materials in overwhelming abundance [...] and millions of eager and anxious workers stand ready to apply their labor. Yet, the surplus is forced back upon us. Men are pitted against men in every department of activity, and the struggle has become so sharp [...] that it develops and appeals to all that is cold and cruel and dehumanizing in men. Should Benjamin Franklin have witnessed this libel upon the human race, if Abraham Lincoln observed the wage-slavery of competitive capitalism, I do not doubt they would join in our call to transfer the operation of the machinery of production and distribution into the hands of the working class."

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Internal View of the Republican National Convention, June 21st, 1904 - Source: Wiki Commons

On the sunny morning of Tuesday, June 21st, one of the tensest conventions in Republican Party history was brought to order. The ongoing, uneasy power struggle between conservative and reformist sects cast a discernible shadow over the festivities, metamorphosing a standard, regularly lighthearted nominating ceremony into an event with far-reaching implications. It appeared as though the divisiveness of the 1900 convention merely set the stage for this, the true opening night. Within the Chicago Coliseum, an enormous crowd, split about evenly betwixt the factions, filled the vast arena.

Alongside confidants Foraker and Fairbanks, McKinley and the RNC had engineered a dramatic alteration in the conservatives' plot to retain power in the party. Starting with the state government of Ohio, these figures forced the implementation of smoke-and-mirrors Draft Depew movement. Ohio delegates, largely pressured by Foraker and the national organization, passed a resolution endorsing President Depew for re-election regardless of the incumbent's aforementioned disinterest. Foraker then released an impromptu statement recognizing Depew's supposed rise and committing to the president's effort to achieve a second term. When time came for the Indiana GOP to endorse their preferred candidate, Fairbanks ensured Depew won out. Likewise, in states all across the Northeast and Midwest, the RNC semi-stealthily strong-armed state parties.

Now, a heated Theodore Roosevelt, in lock-step with his contingent of delegates, prepared for the worst after the convention's opening prayer and moment of remembrance for the late President Beveridge, in addition to Senators Hanna and Quay. The New York insurgent was undoubtedly informed of the RNC operation to curtail his presidential bid, yet, despite his enormous disadvantage, pressed on in a gentlemanly fashion. Passage of the pro-Depew resolutions by various state governments, after all, went against the wishes of the Republicans' increasingly pro-Roosevelt electorate. These supporters of the Rough Rider anxiously awaited the results of the Republican National Convention, praying that the majority of delegates come to their senses and break from the corrupt national committee.

Chairman McKinley presided over the convention at its start, then passed the gavel to the designated temporary chairman, Secretary William B. Allison. The latter delivered a short address to the convention summarizing the successes of the prior four years and the promising economic conditions for American commerce. He inferred that the legislative efforts of President Depew allowed for expansive entrepreneurial profitability, leading into to the introduction of the avidly pro-business national party platform. Roosevelt delegates, in eight separate instances, were overruled by the traditional majority when they pursued challenges to planks concerning, "the integral role of consolidation to which there should be no persecution," and "morally and legally justified [...] defensive maneuvers to protect private property from destructive radicals."

The 1904 Republican platform proved to be exceptionally conservative and reinforced by the anti-union Depew doctrine. Even relatively moderate stipulations related to limiting child labor, securing fair wages, and denouncing monopolies - milquetoast motions unanimously approved in previous platform debates - were wiped out. No longer would the GOP present the facade of even-mindedness and adherence to the Sherman Antitrust Act. Anything and everything that offended the American corporate interests disappeared. Still, the Roosevelt sect believed it possible to, at the very least, convince the opposing side to settle on a middle ground candidate.

This day's processions in the Republican National Convention demonstrated the reality of an unambiguous rift. Managers for President Depew are assured in their chances at renomination while the Roosevelt shouters stand equally convinced. President Depew must have 498 votes to obtain the nomination. Upon an analysis of the votes cast in shaping the platform, we cannot yet predict an outcome. We are told there are talks of a compromise candidate. [...] The Colonel (Roosevelt) called his delegates and urged them to keep their fire lit. The Colonel was fighting mad after today's defeats and that looked to add to his sharpness and determination. His speech, which awarded thunderous applause, failed to indicate any fondness toward the committee.

         Edward K. Morris, "Depew Wins Initial Spar," The New York Times, June 22nd, 1904

By the moment Depew's nominating speech, a rather simplistic address presented by Senator James Sherman of New York, ended in a deafening rapture of cheers, the Roosevelt forces universally understood defeat was on the horizon. This convention, as became apparent on its third and final day, was frankly uninterested in mediating (eerily reflective of the response to the Anthracite Strike). Left with few options aside from a complete surrender, the Roosevelt faction enacted a last-ditch strategy.

Just prior to the state-by-state roll call, Governor Robert M. La Follette (R-WI) threw a bombastic Hail Mary pass in his formal nomination of Roosevelt. "Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen of the Convention. Four years ago, we Republicans convened in Philadelphia and, in this assemblage, selected for president the embodiment of Republican ideals. Mr. Albert Beveridge recognized that the pure and righteous spirit of the nation had the potential to provide enlightenment to the world - over the waves of the Pacific and beyond. The United States of America, in the vision of Mr. Beveridge, was standing at the precipice of a glorious golden age. We merely needed to reach out and grasp it. Preferring peace but not afraid to war, a leader in civil life and yet so quick to comprehend the arts of war, Mr. Beveridge met the moment and rose to accept his place in history. The time is now for us to do the same. [...] And so it is with these events which have led you to a single name which I am chosen only to pronounce: Gentlemen, I nominate for President of the United States the prodigy and chosen strategist of Mr. Beveridge, the vigor and promise of a great country and a great age, Theodore Roosevelt of New York."

La Follette's speech was reprinted in dozens of prominent newspapers and listed often as the legendary address which, as Morgan wrote, "flung the unknown Wisconsinite into national stardom," but upon its end at the Republican convention, its reception was not kind. Conservatives hissed at the governor for insinuating that Roosevelt, not Depew, was the rightful successor to Beveridge. La Follette's claims of Roosevelt as a biblical "prodigal son" of the late president ruffled the feathers of the easily incensed conservative majority. His mission to sway moderate delegates to the insurgent candidate without bringing up the blatant corruption of the national committee ultimately failed.

As the roll call neared its end, however, and it became clear that Depew would be the final victor, scores of Roosevelt delegates rose to their feet and began exiting the arena. This act of intra-party warfare stunned the committee and flabbergasted Allison. Hoarsely, the temporary chairman worked to call the convention to order and halt the roll call, but he was drowned out by a loud mix of chanting and jeers emanating from the attendees. "Bastards!" one delegate was heard screaming. "Anarchists! We'll see to your expulsion!" About four hundred delegates stormed out of the Chicago Auditorium, literally shaking the entire convention hall. Unwilling to allow for the party to operate as a vehicle of the trusts and forever distrustful of the national committee, the reformists pledged to see Roosevelt nominated on a separate ticket. Undeterred, the RNC selected Depew and Fairbanks as their nominees.

THIRTEENTH REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT: PRES		1st Call		994 DELEGATES
Chauncey M. Depew ☑		582
Theodore Roosevelt		209
OTHERS/BLANK		203

THIRTEENTH REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT: VICE PRES		1st Call		994 DELEGATES
Charles W. Fairbanks ☑		505
James S. Sherman		34
Samuel W. Pennybacker		19
Philander C. Knox		18
Joseph B. Foraker		5
Joseph G. Cannon		1
OTHERS/BLANK		412

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Internal View of the Democratic National Convention, July 6th, 1904 - Source: Wiki Commons

Taking place some weeks after the heavily-publicized and tumultuous Republican convention in Chicago, the Democratic Party set in motion their own national nominating conference. Disquieted Democratic officials paid close attention to the happenings of the GOP gathering, frightful over the notion that a united opposing party could whisk away any competing candidacies. When they learned that Roosevelt forces induced a fissure within Republican ranks, however, Democrats' nervousness changed to joyousness. Basking in the news of the split opposition, confident delegates to the Democratic National Convention congregated at the St. Louis Exposition and Music Hall to designate their presidential choice.

As far as the race to the nomination was concerned, conservative Democrats all but guaranteed their victory. The Bourbon resurgence through the ranks of the DNC essentially guaranteed a pro-business bent cache of delegates. A minor assortment of anti-Bryan candidates looked to win over the hearts and minds of the new party leadership, proving their worth by gaining noteworthy state endorsements. Among this group was Alton B. Parker (D-NY), an appeals judge and close friend of David Hill, who made his name by upholding laissez-faire economics and ruling in favor of the constitutionality of unilateral legal contracts. He also fostered a reputation as a proponent of mild social reform due to an opinion concerning the legality of a maximum-hours law. Parker, as with fellow Bourbon candidates Senator Arthur P. Gorman and Representative Charles H. Weisse (D-WI), sought to disassociate the "fluke" Bryan period from grander Democratic Party history, often refusing to name the former president when recollecting the achievements of Democracy past.

Nonetheless, Democrats in the Bryan vein stayed a distinguishable presence at the festivities and the party at large. Taking into account President Bryan's dynamic term as elected leader of the United States and the populistic legislative measures he vehemently fought to pass, it would be foolish to believe his influence disappeared completely. The voters Bryan introduced to his political faction now composed a sizable delegation despite recent committee operations to expunge them. They, in all likelihood, had a far stronger chance at influencing the national platform than reformist Republicans could have ever hoped to attain at their convention. That aspect notwithstanding, the presumed inevitable nomination of a conservative figure was an open secret.

Bryan, suffering through a bout of chest pains and fever, begrudgingly opted against personally attending the convention. Instead, members of his former administration traveled to St. Louis and respectfully acted on the Nebraskan's behalf and spoke in his defense. When Temporary Chairman John Sharp Williams (D-MS), in an introductory speech, shifted from decrying "On one hand, the timidity and worthlessness of Depew-ism," and "Roosevelt-ism - its volcanic, eruptive, and reckless character," to the "shameful rise of the Popocrats and [their proposed] tyrannical encroachment of the federal government," the Bryan Democrats, including former State Secretary Stone, shouted against the speaker. Williams paused for a brief moment as the argumentative atmosphere calmed, but this overt antagonism of Bryan's presidential actions and proposed reforms would continue to plague the convention.

The progressively-minded wing of the party, with accompanying cheers of support by the overtly pro-Bryan galleries, boldly struggled to maintain the existence of a reform-based party platform as conservatives threatened its deterioration. Representative Hearst, present as a delegate from New York, repeatedly captained the charge to defend the more radical planks, including those criticizing Depew's refusal to prosecute the Northern Securities Trust. The New Yorker, who, at the insistence of Bryan, scuttled a planned run at the nomination, competently commanded the Bryan delegation and successfully won the platform bout against Hill and the Bourbons. "Speaking as a faithful servant of Democracy and a citizen of the United States," Hearst affirmed, "it is our duty to instill [...] democratic values, those commending an economic doctrine of fairness and condemning criminal combinations as elemental positions!"

By the point that the platform debates settled down and the Bryan Democrats were placated, the conservatives (constituting a majority of delegates) decided to go all-in on the presidential nomination. Previously, Parker, possessing a moderate record and bare appeal to reformers, had been perceived as the party's frontrunner. Bryan found Parker professionally abhorrent and doubted his credibility on economic issues, but, noting the frontrunner's anti-imperialist foreign policy position, the former president was expected to (tepidly) endorse the judge. "Not one modicum of compromise," telegraphed Hill in a private correspondence to Williams on July 7th. "Condoning [Bryan's] thievery is a step I will not take. I do not intend on assuaging the Popocrats - I intend on humiliating them."

Dad told me the story. Mind you, this was long before we packed up and moved our family to the state house. He was in his late 20s, and had just been nominated for the Texas House (of Representatives). Being a newcomer to the world of politics, and an impressionable young Populist, he was asked by (former Interior Secretary) Jim Hogg if he had any interest in attending the national convention that year in St. Louis. Well, my father practically begged my poor mother to leave for the trip, and, bless her heart, she said yes. Now, he hadn't ever been to St. Louis, and never before had he witnessed such a large assortment of Democrats from all corners of the country. He was amazed by the ceremonies, taken in by the music and splendor reminiscent of a state fair.

Hogg, a Texas delegate, was part of a group who intended on casting a protest vote, of sorts, for former President Bryan. My father sat there as the the roll call took off, and closely watched as Hogg's face changed. "It was like ice cream melting in the sun," he'd told me. Something had happened, something that soured the whole convention. Hogg shot up and with a hefty gruff turned tail and stomped right out. His young companion, of course, followed him and asked for what reason he was departing. He'd never forgot the words Hogg said next. "They've seen fit to cast Democracy out and sell it to the bankers and the trusts. God almighty, this can't happen here. This is our party, this is Bryan's party. We'll teach 'em a lesson, even if we gotta let that cowboy Roosevelt sit in for a spell."

         Lyndon B. Johnson, Poverty Abolition Administration E.D., Quoted in The Seven Flags of Texas, 1968

NINETEENTH DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT:PRES		1st Call Before Shifts		1st Call After Shifts		1000 DELEGATES
Richard Olney ☑		600		711
Alton B. Parker		107		51
William J. Bryan		110		4
Arthur P. Gorman		35		4
Charles H. Weisse		6		3
John S. Williams		2		1
William R. Hearst		2		0
Francis Cockrell		1		0
Grover Cleveland		1		0
OTHERS/BLANK		136		226

NINETEENTH DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT: VICE PRES		1st Call Before Shifts		1st Call After Shifts		1000 DELEGATES
Julian S. Carr ☑		463.5		680
Allen B. Morse		300.5		93
William B. Cockran		7		1
Henry G. Davis		3		0
OTHERS/BLANK		226		226

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Theodore Roosevelt Speaking Outside of the Chicago Convention Hall, August 3rd, 1904- Source: Wiki Commons

Effectively routed out of the Republican Party, devotees of social and industrial justice met that August to form a brand-new political force. Tens of thousands of individuals, men and women alike, joined together at the Chicago Coliseum with a newfound hope that the presidency could inspire a new generation to enact profound and fundamental change. Many of them shared the perspective of Governor La Follette in determining Theodore Roosevelt, not Chauncey Depew, the true successor to the Beveridge legacy. More so than mere inspiration by the war secretary, however, these convention go-ers sought to forge a permanent and independent third pillar of national politics apart from those restrained by the crooked bosses.

The mass delegation soon came to order under provisional Chairman Craig W. Wadsworth. A diplomat serving in Roosevelt's War Department and an enlistee of the Rough Riders, Wadsworth initiated the ceremonies with a brief recollection of the activities of the St. Louis convention. "The supreme, controlling influence of notorious bosses in both the Republican and Democratic parties have seen fit to cast aside the will of the people for their own self-interests. Both nominees serve the invisible government and abide by the rule of trusts." The diplomat drove into the ills of Depew and Olney, unhesitatingly lambasting their incorrigible resistance to prosecuting Northern Securities and their disregard of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Consolidation preyed on the laborer, Wadsworth proclaimed, and "in all industries their rise had led to our desolation." He put forward the idea that the growth of tobacco trusts, for instance, was directly leading to exponential rise in tobacco prices.  

Following a protracted standing ovation, Wadsworth motioned for James R. Garfield, son of the former President Garfield and political advisor to Roosevelt, to begin calling for votes on the various platform planks submitted for approval. To be certain, this diverse audience of delegates were believers in active government and stern regulation, but they were far from radicals. The delegation approved of stipulations calling for a nationalized eight-hour working day law, the abolition of child labor, and a constitutional amendment protecting the rights of workers of organize. However, they disapproved two measures regarding wage laws and compensation for work-related injuries. By a hair, the delegation accepted a plank calling for women's suffrage, yet overwhelmingly rejected one that more broadly referred to "universal suffrage". As a whole, the platform could clearly be touted as a remarkable and progressive step, but it candidly failed to go as far as it could have.

"We trust in the foundational principles of the Union," declared Pennsylvania delegate Thomas Leonard, "of representative government and our sacred beliefs in life and liberty. Managers of the Republican and Democratic parties look to these principles with disdain. We look at them as the very spirit the makes America breathe. [...] Colonel Roosevelt will carry it forward." The standard bearer for this peculiar arrangement was already clear as day, yet an air of anticipation nonetheless circulated throughout the arena as it was brought to order. On the second day of the affair, Wadsworth announced the arrival of the gathering's presumed nominee. "Gentlemen of the Convention: The next President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt."

Roosevelt stepped up to the platform, escorted by the provisional committee, and began speaking. He addressed the delegation warmly, commending them for dedicating themselves to the "first National Convention of the Progressive Party," and declaring that the hour arrived for a realignment of American politics.

This new movement is a movement of truth, sincerity, and wisdom, a movement which proposes to put at the service of all our people the collective power of the people, through their Governmental agencies, alike in the nation and in the several states. Our fight is a fundamental fight against both of the old corrupt party machines, for both are under the dominion of the plunder league of the professional politicians who are controlled and sustained by the great beneficiaries of privilege and reaction.  No better proof can be given than this of the fact that the fundamental concern of the privileged interests is to beat the new party.

Some of them would rather beat it with Mr. Depew; others would rather beat it with Mr. Olney; but the difference between Mr. Depew and Mr. Olney they consider as trivial, as a mere matter of personal preference. Their real fight is for either, as against the Progressives. They represent the allied Reactionaries of the country, and they are against the new party because to their unerring vision it is evident that the real danger to privilege comes from the new party, and from the new party alone. Having served from my post as Secretary of War, until my recent resignation, I know firsthand the inadequacies and miseries epitomized in this administration. Our aim, to secure government by and for the people, not government by and for the monopoly, is unanswerable in the present administration. Our aim is to control business, not to strangle it--and, above all, not to continue a policy of make-believe strangle toward big concerns that do evil, and constant menace toward both big and little concerns that do well. Our aim is to promote prosperity, and then see to its proper division.

The Progressive proposal is definite. It is practicable. We promise nothing that we cannot carry out. We promise nothing which will jeopardize honest business. We promise adequate control of all big business and the stern suppression of the evils connected with big business, and this promise we can absolutely keep. Our Government system should be so shaped that the public servant, when he cannot conscientiously carry out the wishes of the people, shall at their desire leave his office and not misrepresent them in office; and I hold that the public servant can by so doing, better than in any other way, serve both them and his conscience.

         Theodore Roosevelt, Progressive Convention Speech, August 2nd, 1904

This speech, as delivered by the Rough Rider candidate, forever thrust the Progressive Party onto the national stage in a way that would have proven otherwise impossible. Roosevelt's careful maneuverability around the issues, addressing the deep-seated popular concerns of economic injustice while not leaning into socialist philosophy, seemed to go just far enough to satisfy everyone. He dedicated the bulk of his introductory message to the plight of trust-busting, but did momentarily focus on the need to modernize the state department, enact Beveridge's plan for a bipartisan tariff commission, and create new avenues for direct decision making by voters through state-wide primary elections.

FIRST PROGRESSIVE NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT: PRES		1st Call		1898 DELEGATES
Theodore Roosevelt ☑		Unanimous
OTHERS/BLANK		0

FIRST PROGRESSIVE NATIONAL CONVENTION

THE BALLOT: VICE PRES		1st Call		1898 DELEGATES
William H. Taft ☑		1547
Robert La Follette		331
OTHERS/BLANK		20

On the third and final day of the convention, as the religious fervor of the delegation rose to its highest peak, the convention unanimously selected Theodore Roosevelt as their nominee. At the insistence of Roosevelt, and perhaps in contrast to the wishes of the committee to award La Follette for his efforts at the Republican Convention, the delegates approved William Howard Taft for vice president. Taft, a federal judge known for upholding the validity of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the rights of workers to take part in labor strikes, mildly supported his friend's break from the Republican Party yet wholeheartedly endorsed his fight for the presidency. Roosevelt hoped, especially with the congenial Taft on the ticket, to entice vacillating moderate Republican voters and, furthermore, exemplify the party's image as the true successor to the antiquated GOP.

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"Latest Arrival at the Political Zoo," Published in Harper's Weekly, August 20th, 1904 - Source: Wiki Commons

Upon the closing of the Progressive National Convention, a sort of catharsis rushed over certain activists and political officials. Just when it appeared as though the presidential election was restrained to two humdrum, ardently pro-corporate septuagenarians, the young and boisterous Roosevelt burst through. Former Secretary Hay wrote of his experience in the early part of Roosevelt's presidential campaign, describing, "supporters from all legions and races united by the Progressive movement and willing it forward." He went on, remarking that Progressive base comprehended no outcome apart from landslide victory. "They are sickened by the conscienceless greed of one party and the unscrupulous demagoguery of the other." On first glance, the future looked bright for the insurgent. Still, the mainstream candidates would hardly go gentle into that good night.

President Depew, absolutely certain in his promising chances, earnestly ignited his re-election in the late summer of 1904. His campaign based itself in nostalgic Republican principles and primarily ran on the maintenance of prosperity. Depew ads commonly made use of historical GOP symbolism, often comparing the achievements of Abraham Lincoln with the "dishonor and calamity" of Cleveland and Bryan. The incumbent, per tradition, operated a front-porch style method of campaigning as opposed to the exhausting whistle-stop undertaking by Bryan and Beveridge. Depew also collected support from a wide array of financiers eager to invest in the continued dominance of fiscal conservative leadership. The bulwark of the Republican elite, with unquestionable backing by the RNC, steered these financial interests to Depew's national campaign for re-election.

One of the chief organizers for the Depew Campaign, Whitelaw Reid, later cataloged some of the campaign's advantages and disadvantages in his memoirs. "Our difficulties in the campaign were largely lessened by the natural support of proponents for sound money and distinguished governing. And yet there is a point on which I frankly cannot contend. The number of men devoted to the glorious record of the President did not appear to match that of General Harrison. I wondered if occasionally our national standing may not have been rightly interpreted, or if the press shut their eyes to the finest prosperity of our time." Apart from lesser sized crowds, Depew also lost precious momentum early on with news that several members of the national committee had resigned in a show of camaraderie with Roosevelt. McKinley, who shadowed over the campaign, paid little attention to these resignations and urged business as usual.

Democratic-affiliated corporate interests, those which immeasurably fueled Cleveland's three presidential runs and promptly abandoned ship when Bryan took command, returned to the fold upon news of Richard Olney's nomination. Unfathomably influential figures like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie endorsed Olney above the fray, assured in the former state secretary's resistance to economic populism and Beveridge-esque rabid imperialism. The Olney Campaign, a loose coalition of elderly Gold Bug Democrats, veterans of the second Cleveland Administration, and retired Democratic officeholders was regularly mocked in the Republican press as a "Brigade of Old Men." His funding, as secured by conservative cohorts in the business community, was adequately sufficient to run the national operation, but the campaign generally could not win adoration outside of the solidly Democratic South.

At the Democratic National Convention, when Judge Parker deliberately bowed out prior to the roll call in order to sneakily coalesce his delegates behind the Olney dark horse candidacy, Bryan Democrats were outraged. The Bryan base - agrarian workers, industrial laborers, and former Populist Party affiliates - had already realized the inevitable success of a conservative to the ticket, but they concluded that the nomination of this particular Bourbon was a step too far. Recall, if you will, former Secretary Olney's falsified statements to the press regarding Bryan's languishing commitment to Free Silver and the subsequent spiraling of the latter's re-election campaign. For this, Hill and the Bourbons adored Olney, but Bryan detested him. Only a sparse few went as far as to bolt from the ceremony altogether upon the shocking coronation of Richard Olney, but it swiftly became apparent that the party elite sought to do all they could to remove even the bare semblance of Bryanism from their midst.

The DNC remained confident that, when faced with the prospects of a second Depew term, the Bryan forces would eventually come around and tepidly support the ticket. As written by Ackerman, "The conservative victory at the convention was squarely meant to deflate and humiliate William J. Bryan and his alleged 'Wild People', as Senator Gorman so colorfully put it. Hill trusted that the grey malaise encompassing President Depew's time in office practically guaranteed a win for their side. The Bryanites were merely an accessory - an expendable feature not needed to return the White House to Democratic hands. Grover Cleveland's active assistance boosted Olney's favor ability in New York while the DNC's choice of vice president, North Carolinian robber baron and KKK-defender Julian S. Carr, did the same for North Carolina and surrounding states." As for Theodore Roosevelt, "he was the furthest thing from [Olney's] mind until the September 9th issue of 'The Commoner' released."

My selection as standard-bearer of the Democratic Party in 1896 and again in 1900 made me the nominal leader of that party, and as such I contented myself with the defense of those principles and policies which were embodied in the platform. Now, that the leadership devolves upon another and I bear only the responsibility that each citizen must bear, namely, responsibility for my opinions. [...] Consolidation after consolidation has taken place until a few men now control the railroad traffic of the country and inaction on the part of both the legislative and executive powers has led us here. The trusts have long corrupted the politics of the nation. How can this corruption be stopped so long as enormous wealth has breached the core of both Republican and Democratic leaderships?

If Mr. Olney is elected will his administration rid us of imperialism and address the influence of trusts? The Republican Party is growing more and more plutocratic and it can furnish a home for all who believe in the rule of wealth. The Democratic Party cannot be a plutocratic party; it cannot disappoint the hopes of its members. Mr. Olney leads Democracy down this path and for these reasons I shall not vote for Olney and Carr, the nominees of the Democratic National Convention. [...] I do not and cannot abide by a candidate that stands for the spirit of war in place of peace, force in place of arbitration, subjugation in place of coordination. On the imperialism question, no candidate has supplied a sufficient response. With regards to the trust question, we have but one party presently opposed to the control of Wall Street and the consolidation of American industry. It is for this reason that I feel justified in supporting the Progressive platform.

         William J. Bryan, "The State of Democracy," The Commoner, September 9th, 1904

The former president's anticipated statement, presumed by most major publications a delayed, unenthusiastic endorsement of the Democratic nominee, stunned the central committees of both major parties. In a dramatic turnabout, the electrifying orator chose to side with the Progressive Party against the Democrats and, through subtext, Theodore Roosevelt against Richard Olney. War Secretary Roosevelt, the man who worked his damndest to crush Bryan's candidacy in 1900, was, for all intents and purposes, backed by the formidable Bryan contingent. The platform, apparently, made all the difference. It was no accident that the Progressives painted their foreign policy proposals in incredibly broad strokes despite their nominee's position on the matter. It was a clear olive branch to Bryan - and the orator noticed.

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"Procurement of Campaign Funds," William A. Rogers Cartoon, October 21st, 1904 - Source: Harp Week

As the forthcoming date of the people's choice draws near, it is unclear who stands the best chance of being the next President of the United States. Our correspondents reported growing favor among thousands of Republicans for Theodore Roosevelt, the nominee for the Progressive Party. They have confirmed equal enthusiasm from Democrats for their candidate, Richard Olney. [...] The Tribune secured forecasts of leading newspapers in the various States and based its figures on their estimates. The results tabulated were secured by scores of the leading newspapers of the nation, supplemented in a few cases by the estimates of the Republican State chairmen in States unquestionably Democratic or Republican. In the so-called doubtful States, however, the figures of the press have been depended upon without exception. The results obtained and included in the forecast show a number of significant indications, not the least important of which is the apparent three-way tie between Depew, Olney, and Roosevelt.

         The New York Tribune, October 26th, 1904

With major business interests split betwixt the two major parties, Roosevelt and the Progressive Party sought to secure funding through novel methods. Instead of bowing to major corporate interests and promising no fundamental change, the former war secretary appealed to small businesses for investment and to the people directly for support. Thousands of smaller commercial ventures, chiefly those based along the West coast, endorsed Roosevelt and his proposal to end the merger wave. He also acquired the assistance of Frank A. Munsey, owner of The Boston Journal and the Washington Times, who pledged about $100,000 to the campaign and ran Progressive-friendly articles throughout his printed works. In avenues apart from direct funding, the Roosevelt Campaign benefited greatly from a handful of official endorsements in the autumn of 1904. These included Leonard Wood, a Republican associate and fellow veteran of the Spanish-American War, and Seth Low (R-NY), the former Mayor of New York City.

The endorsements of Wood and Low further rose the legitimacy of Roosevelt's presidential run and, as such, his infant third party. In fact, nearly every member of the imperialist and reformist contingents of the Republican Party, in addition to hardline Beveridge devotees, celebrated Roosevelt as a worthy successor to the late president. "It is only suitable," wrote a contributor to the New York Times in late-October, "to honor the legacy of our fallen president by voting in the candidate most representative of his positions and most inclined to build upon his legacy." It took a bit of time for the tree to bear fruit, but La Follette's plan prevailed. Progressives, concentrating solely on electing Roosevelt to the presidency (they opted against fielding statewide candidates), appealed to the wide array of Republicans dissatisfied with Depew and the Old Guard. "Theodore Roosevelt, and he alone, best exemplifies the spirit and values of the twentieth century."

As weighted pressure markedly increased for the major party candidates, the onus fell to Depew and Olney to propel ahead. For the most part, the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees disregarded the third party insurgency as a humorous non-entity in the election, thereby exclusively delivering fire onto each other. When not expressing reverence to Bourbon Democracy, former Secretary Olney forcefully critiqued President Depew for his negligence in office and the "needless, pernicious raising of the tariff as if enacting vengeance on American laborers." In turn, Depew gleefully responded with accusations of his own, correlating Olney's experience in the Cleveland Administration with the Panic of 1893 and the rise of Bryan. Democratic buffoonery," the president snarled in passing, "has no place guiding policy in the United States. [...] If they refrain from telling any lies about the Republican Party, I'll promise not to tell the truth about the Democrats."

Depew had managed to pass one final, significant initiative as his campaign sunk knee-deep in the election frenzy. This measure, a trade pact with Germany, was orchestrated by State Secretary John Bassett Moore as U.S. business interests pondered trans-Pacific trade opportunities. The German Empire controlled an assortment of notable sea ports in the Pacific and, over the last several decades, had steadily grown into an exceptional regional superpower. Sometime after the Chicago convention, Depew and his State Department connected with Ambassador of the German Empire to the U.S., Hermann Speck von Sternburg. Secretary Moore had already fostered a fond relationship with the ambassador after the U.S. condoned the 1902 European naval blockade of Venezuela, so Sternburg took little convincing. In the end, the Depew Administration was successful in drawing the trade agreement: Mainly composing of new, cooperative shipping lanes around German New Guinea and U.S. possessions in the Pacific.

This diplomatic milestone for the United States delivered precisely what Pacific-oriented commercial interests desired, and it was completed peacefully to boot. The Republican press perceived the finalized pact as a solid first step on the road to obtaining an international trade presence, and, more so, lauded it as a foundation for future opportunities with German holdings (much to the distaste of Britain). Republican operatives of the Depew Campaign started to exploit the deal for their own electoral purposes once the possibility arose of a tight election. They hoped to depict the diplomatic achievement as a pinnacle of Depew's dexterity on foreign matters, opposing it to Olney's indifference to overseas policy and Roosevelt's purebred jingoism. Alas, the news seemed ultimately unable to counter prevailing negative connotations of Depew as a figurehead for plutocracy.

At the height of election fervor, as Depew, Olney, Roosevelt and Debs all worked to villainize their presidential adversaries and win over the rather unpredictable will of the voters, a New York newsmagazine explored methodologies to better elucidate that electorate. In the 1902 midterms, as senatorial candidates were being judged directly by voters, political analysts realized that examining older data or the makeup of state legislatures now seemed pointless in predicting future results. The difficulty in perceiving public opinion prior to the 1902 senate elections was said to have inspired publisher Isaac Kaufmann Funk, founder and owner of The Literary Digest, to research modern approaches for gauging this opinion. The New York-based publication itself was a simple general interest magazine, as opposed to any sort of strictly political or partisan paper, so Funk believed his readership to be a nonpartisan sample of the general electorate.

Following consultation with patron Robert Joseph Cuddihy, Funk concluded it necessary to conduct a straw poll of his audience to discover their presidential preferences. Assured in the idea that his audience was composed equally of Republicans and Democrats, he hoped this this polling measure would accurately evaluate pre-election sentiment leading into the 1904 presidential race. After sending out more than two million ballots, the publication released its findings on the eve of the election.
    

Literary Digest Poll
November 1904

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.		37% Pop., 212 Electoral Votes, 21 States
Richard Olney		34% Pop., 208 Electoral Votes, 17 States
Chauncey M. Depew		25% Pop., 056 Electoral Votes, 07 States
Other		04% Pop., 000 Electoral Votes, 00 States

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(Left to Right) Richard Olney, Chauncey Depew, and Theodore Roosevelt - Sources: (1)(2)(3) Wiki Commons and LoC

At long last, Election Day arrived and it was time to test Isaac Funk's theory. Judging by the similar conclusions reached by The Literary Digest and The New York Tribune, this election would prove to be one unlike any other in American history. Not since James B. Weaver's candidacy in 1892 had a prominent third party bid so overshadowed the two-party duopoly in the United States. Theodore Roosevelt ably organized campaign events across the nation, delivering hundreds upon hundreds of speeches in a relatively short span. In terms of mileage, he surpassed his previous record during the 1900 campaign, and easily eclipsed Bryan's 1896 figures. With Richard Olney and Chauncey Depew both running sedentary, front-porch campaigns, this electoral venture looked to conclusively address the hypothesis regarding the acute effectiveness of whistle-stop campaigning. Was 1896 sincerely a fluke as suspected by some party officials, or did Bryan pioneer the future of modern campaigning?

Knowing the embedded drawbacks of a third party bid for office, Roosevelt allies in two crucial states tweaked voting mechanisms to better suit their favored candidate (certainly risking their reputations in the process). Governor Richard Yates (R-IL), a reformer not seeking re-election, backed Roosevelt and ensured he would have a distinct advantage in the Prairie State. With enough arm twisting in the state GOP, Yates managed to shift the ballot around to place Roosevelt's name on the Republican line as opposed to Depew. Likewise, California Governor George Pardee (R-CA), an opponent of consolidation and a staunch ally of Roosevelt, placed the Progressive nominee on the state ballot as "Republican-Progressive." "Roosevelt ought to be the incumbent," Lieutenant Governor Alden Anderson (R-CA) reportedly claimed, "Beveridge chose him, not the Eastern Establishment. Depew [was given] the vice presidency to satisfy Platt." In both of these states, as well as in Wisconsin where La Follette aggressively championed the Progressive nominee, an increasingly inflamed RNC vehemently encouraged Republicans to vote Depew whether or not his name appeared on the ballot.

Although he did not go as far as to resort to ballot tinkering, Governor Samuel Pennypacker (R-PA) enthusiastically endorsed President Depew at a notable public event, calling upon "all patriotic Americans, from sea to shining sea, cast your ballot in favor of continuing prosperity and a full dinner pail." In some ways, considering Pennypacker's role in terminating the Anthracite Strike by preserving Governor Stone's order to station the National Guard and private police forces at the coal mines, this pushed Republican-affiliated miners further away from supporting the president. Reliving Depew's noncompliance to engage in arbitration, coal mine workers were the least likely demographic to support Depew's re-election despite pleas from their elected officials to do so.

Once all ballots were cast and the counting commenced, state-appointed tellers immediately identified the validity of Funk's discovery. Roosevelt and Olney, as far as the Popular Vote was concerned, were neck-and-neck, while President Depew often sank to a distant third. The only exceptions to this rule were in select states in New England (namely: New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut) and Utah. Depew held his own in the Beehive State, where an alliance forged with local boss Senator Reed Smoot (R-UT) produced an extreme advantage for the incumbent president. Combined with an affinity for high tariffs, the people of Utah narrowly voted their preference for Depew above the other contenders, thereby awarding him their three Electoral Votes. These five states, and their 22 total Electoral Votes, would be all that Depew would win in his re-election campaign. Constant mud-slinging from the Democrats, the Roosevelt-ists, the Socialists, the union organizers, and the anti-corruption advocates were insurmountable. Depew's performance would go down as the worst in history for an incumbent president seeking re-election.

Where Depew suffered, Olney and Roosevelt thrived. A coalition of Bryan Democrats and progressive Republicans fueled the former New York governor's rocket to the top, providing the Progressive nominee a sufficient base to combat the strength of his opponents. Olney, on the other hand, mostly retained the allegiance of solidly Democratic voters whilst benefiting extensively from a split Republican electorate. The latter phenomenon led to Olney nearly succeeding in taking New England for himself, contesting in a region typically locked-out for Democratic candidates. He managed a strong second place finish in Massachusetts, defeating the Republican presidential candidate for the first time in history. Apparently due to a public refusal of Senator Lodge to declare himself for Depew (neither did he endorse Roosevelt, perhaps not wishing to break with the Republican Party), Roosevelt captured a commanding lead in Greater Boston which could not be stunted by rural conservatives in the western part of the state. With about 36% of the vote, Roosevelt narrowly won Massachusetts (Olney's home state).

Despite the perceived advantage of a split Republican vote, a considerable contingent of the Bryan Democrats split the Democratic vote by supporting Roosevelt. Therefore, the circumstances that had played out in Massachusetts were repeated in dozens of other states, including in New Jersey. Roosevelt shrunk Olney's expected lead in traditional Garden State Democratic strongholds like Jersey City while seizing expansive plurality wins in Essex and Ocean counties. The Progressive nominee defeated his Democratic contendor: 39% to 36%. Delaware and Maryland proved to have the opposite effect, however. An abundance of conservative voters in both parties, as well as an outnumbered ratio of Democrats to Republicans, pummeled Roosevelt down to a third place finish and conclusively granted Olney a relatively confident victory.

New York was a bit more complex. Considering Roosevelt and Depew each possessed strong ties to the state, New Yorkers could have advanced in any one direction. Traditionally, the Republican machine, headed by Senator Platt and former Governor Morton, dominated national and state elections in the Empire State. Platt personally supported Depew at the Republican Convention and incessantly spoke in favor of his re-election leading up to the opening of the polls. With voters divided between the two Republican candidates, Olney successfully captured a plurality vote despite being the only one of the three main contenders not a current or former representative of that state. A majority of counties sided with Depew, but Olney ended up on top with 39% of the vote.

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A Pro-Olney Illustration from "Puck" Magazine, October 15th, 1904
Caption: "Here is An Able Democrat, a Rational Expansionist, and a Sound-Money Man! Why Not Elect Him?" Wiki Commons

In Pennsylvania, as a consequence of both registered Democrats composing an extreme minority of the electorate as well as unionized workers overwhelmingly backing Roosevelt and Debs over the competition, the nominee for the Progressive Party won a 40% plurality of the raw vote and all 34 of its Electoral Votes. The failure of the Depew Campaign to close the gap with Roosevelt in the Keystone State would directly lead to the loss of support for Governor Pennypacker's renomination by the Pennsylvania Republican Party in 1906 (Not a response to the Anthracite Strike as popularly understood by some political historians).

Richard Olney comfortably swept the Southern United States, expanding margins to figures unseen in decades. This bastion of the Democratic vote provided their nominee with totals ranging from Kentucky's commendable 51% to South Carolina's extraordinary 94%. West Virginia, a state very narrowly won by Albert Beveridge four years prior, decisively returned to the Democratic fold in 1904. Any remote question concerning the reliably of the Solid South after it flinched in the 1900 presidential election now vanished. Be that as it may, not every region renewed its doctrinal party loyalties.

Across the American West, in states previously viciously devoted to William J. Bryan and his brand of Democracy, the Progressives triumped. This haven for agrarian politics, populist economics and anti-boss sentiment awarded a slew of victories to the Progressive Party. It seems Hill was incorrect in assuming the allegiance of Westerners to the Democratic Party. Bryan transformed their politics on a fundamental level. Rebutting the prevailing tendency of American voters to cast their ballots strictly along party lines regardless of the candidates' policies, a sufficient plurality of Bryan voters switched to Roosevelt. The Rough Rider, boosted by these mugwump-esque Bryan supporters, achieved wins in every Western state apart from Utah. Wyoming and Oregon were the closest margins, 2% and 2.5% respectively, but they too supported the Roosevelt candidacy.

As the night went on, those analyzing the incoming figures began worrying that none of the active candidates could plausibly reach the threshold of 238 Electoral Votes. Some newspapers predicted, on the eve of the election, that an evenly divided Industrial Midwest may manifest. In such a scenario, with every candidate denied the threshold, the incoming Congress would convene to decide the outcome of the election. Others believed a late surge in Depew votes in Ohio and Wisconsin would more easily hand the election to Olney. These predictions, albeit possibilities in an alternate timeline, fundamentally failed to take in account the sheer unpopularity of the Democratic and Republican candidacies.

By vast pluralities, voters in Michigan and Minnesota preferred Roosevelt. He nearly rose above 50% in the former, but eventually capped at 48%. Likewise, because of the aforementioned actions of Governor Yates, Roosevelt easily conquered Illinois, capturing 48% of the vote compared with Olney's 40% and Depew's 9% (write-ins). Perhaps as a result of Bryan's aforementioned semi-endorsement, or industrial workers favoring more left-leaning proposals in the aftermath of the Anthracite Strike, or even a larger than expected sect of voters distrusting their unsympathetic president, Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin all allocated, via razor-thin margins, more votes to Roosevelt than either Depew or Olney. To exemplify how "razor-thin" these margins were: Ohioans sent 303,625 (or 29.93%) of the vote to Depew, 320,754 (31.62%) to Olney, and 324,390 (31.98%) to Roosevelt.

There it was. The Progressive Party overcame the odds and delivered Theodore Roosevelt the presidency. With 246 Electoral Votes in tow, the former war secretary managed to exceed the necessary Electoral College threshold. As the popular legend goes, when Roosevelt was later approached by a herd of journalists and asked to provide a comment on the election, the New Yorker joyfully responded, "Gentlemen, if I may be so bold. It is Columbia who leads us forward, and her radiance shall illuminate this land." From thence on, newspapers popularly referred to the Progressive Party as the "Party of Columbia".

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The Election of 1904: Final Results

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1904 Congressional Elections      

Senate
Republican: 48 (+2)
Democratic: 42 (-2)

House
Republican: 219 (+19)
Democratic: 159 (-21)
Progressive: 5 (+5)
Socialist: 1 (+1)
Independent: 0 (-4)

  House of Representatives Leadership

Speaker Joseph G. Cannon (R-IL)
Minority Leader Champ Clark (D-MO)
Minority Leader Wesley L. Jones (P-CA)
Minority Leader John C. Chase (S-NY)

As the Progressive Party officially opted against fielding congressional or statewide challengers in 1904, the vote-splitting which categorized the presidential race was notably absent in all other races this cycle. That is not to say, however, that the Progressives did not have a role in these lesser elections. Roosevelt was the sole endorsee of the novel national organization, but a select few incumbents swapped party affiliation in advance of the election. This included Governors Robert M. La Follette and George Pardee, as well as Representatives James McLachlan (P-CA), Wesley L. Jones (P-WA), Howard M. Snapp (P-IL), Charles T. Dunwell (P-NY), and Charles L. Knapp (P-NY).

Governor La Follette, having been unanimously nominated by the Wisconsin Republican Party to run for the United States Senate, challenged incumbent Democratic Senator Timoth E. Ryan for his seat. Ryan, a Bourbon Democrat and Milwaukee attorney, lost the confidence of Wisconsinite Bryan Democrats after joining conservative Republicans in affirmatively voting to repeal Sulzer-Hepburn. This minority faction of the state Democratic party failed in preventing Ryan's renomination, but shortly thereafter professed a willingness to back the reformist La Follette. Unlike his opponent, the governor promoted Progressive objectives like a nationwide primary system, merger regulation, and the passage of Bryan's income tax amendment. Listed on the state ballot as a Republican and a Progressive, the insurgent candidate defeated Senator Ryan, 51% to 48%.

Senate seats once belonging to Mark Hanna and Robert Pattison were vacated upon the deaths of these two senators. Governors Myron Herrick (R-OH) and Samuel Pennypacker appointed interim replacements for Hanna and Pattison, respectively, over the course of the 58th Congress. In Ohio, Representative Charles W. F. Dick (R-OH) filled the senatorial vacancy, but later lost the nomination of the Ohio Republican Party to McKinley's former Lieutenant Governor Andrew L. Harris (R-OH). Harris possessed some middling support by the progressive Republicans for speaking out against corporate donations, yet only narrowly defeated Democrat financier John H. Clarke, 53% to 46%. In the face of a dangerous nominating fight, corporate attorney John M. Bell, Pennypacker's appointee to the Senate, chose to endorse his opponent instead of running for a full, 6-year term. Therefore, Attorney General Philander C. Knox won that nomination unopposed, and sailed to an easy win against Representative James K.P. Hall (D-PA).

William V. Allen, the once-Populist senator from Nebraska, sorrowfully decided against running for re-election. Knowing the intense uphill and presumably fruitless endeavor of contesting the Democratic nomination, Allen instead sought a return to his private law practice. He did offer an enthusiastic endorsement of Bryan Democrat Richard L. Metcalfe (D-NE) for his seat, hoping to reignite the fire in the Nebraskan population that once carried William J. Bryan to the presidency. Former President Bryan himself also submitted a written endorsement of the Democratic candidate in The Commoner just prior to November. Representative Elmer Burkett (R-NE) resoundingly won the Republican nomination and received well-publicized endorsements by Governor John H. Mickey (R-NE) and former Senator John M. Thurston (R-NE). Although the local press predicted a landslide win for Congressman Burkett, Mr. Metcalfe won the election by a margin of 1,181 votes (out of about 230,000). It appeared Bryan, and his agrarian army, remained a formidable presence in the American West.

The Class 1 U.S. Senate seat in New York was held by Chauncey Depew until his ascension to the vice presidency in 1901. Republicans fell in line behind his successor, James S. Sherman, who won that seat handily against David Hill that same year. Sherman governed as a stubborn, staunch conservative whilst in office and allied himself closely with the Republican Old Guard against the Roosevelt faction. He campaigned extensively for Depew's re-election in 1904, applauding the incumbent president's legislative effort and "proving invulnerable to the anarchists, socialists, and hoodlum radicals" demanding reform. Backed by the RNC, and possibly in the process of being groomed for committee leadership, Sherman towered over the New York delegation not unlike Depew before him.

New York Democrats, left somewhat in the wilderness following the back-to-back defeats of Dave Hill, turned to the one figure believed to stand a snowball's chance at victory: New York City Mayor George B. McClellan, Jr. Hardly in line with the liberal Bryan sect of the national party (despite serving as Bryan's Assistant Secretary of the Navy), McClellan was a trusted social conservative, a dyed-in-the-wool Tammany Hall favorite, and an advocate for education reform. Upon an agreement to accept the party nomination if offered, McClellan energetically campaigned for Sherman's seat in the Senate. He concentrated heavily on driving up voter participation in his city, often reaching out to Irish and Italian immigrant neighborhoods to request their favor. He also won the endorsements of former Mayor Van Wyck (D-NY) and Democratic Boss Richard Crocker while, by contrast, Sherman failed to garner support by McClellan's mayoral predecessor, Seth Low. The vote was close, but McClellan did manage to topple Sherman and succeed to the Senate. Aside from his defeat on the presidential level, Depew later listed Sherman's loss in this race as one of his greatest political regrets.

On the whole, and especially in regards to the House of Representatives elections, scores of Republican candidates for election and re-election indicated malleability to work with Roosevelt in the off-chance he was indeed elected. Progressively-leaning Republican voters, chiefly made up of middle-class workers and small businessmen, cast their ballots for the war secretary for president, but voted straight ticket Republican otherwise. On the opposing end, Bryan Democrats, who otherwise abandoned Olney to vote for Roosevelt, elsewhere voted Democratic. As such, the House only tilted slightly toward the Republican Party. Speaker Cannon would linger as an overarching force in the House and commanded his Republican delegation as he so pleased, but Minority Leader John Lentz, exhausted from dealings with an antithetical DNC, retired in 1905. Following a rather grueling sparing match for Lentz' position, frontrunner John S. Williams (detested by the Bryanites for his conduct at the St. Louis convention) lost his bid to lesser-known Missouri Representative Champ Clark (D-MO).

  

Senators Elected in 1904 (Class 1)

Frank Putnam Flint (R-CA): Republican Gain, 61%
Morgan Bulkeley (R-CT): Republican Hold, 67%
George Gray (D-DE): Democratic Hold, 53%
James Taliaferro (D-FL): Democratic Hold, 89%
James A. Hemenway (R-IN): Republican Hold, 59%
Eugene Hale (R-ME): Republican Hold, 72%
Isidor Rayner (D-MD): Democratic Hold, 69%
Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA): Republican Hold, 68%
Julius C. Burrows (R-MI): Republican Hold, 58%
Moses E. Clapp (R-MN): Republican Gain, 58%
Hernando Money (D-MS): Democratic Hold, Unopposed
Francis Cockrell (D-MO): Democratic Hold, 61%
William A. Clark (D-MT): Democratic Hold, 52%
Richard L. Metcalfe (D-NE): Democratic Hold, 50%
George S. Nixon (R-NV): Republican Hold, 51%
John Kean (R-NJ): Republican Hold, 54%
George B. McClellan, Jr. (D-NY): Democratic Gain, 51%
Porter J. McCumber (R-ND): Republican Hold, 64%
Andrew L. Harris (R-OH): Republican Hold, 53%
Philander C. Knox (R-PA): Republican Hold, 63%
Nelson W. Aldrich (R-RI): Republican Hold, 59%
William B. Bate (D-TN): Democratic Hold, 60%
Charles Allen Culberson (D-TX): Democratic Hold, Unopposed
George Sutherland (R-UT): Republican Hold, 68%
Redfield Proctor (R-VT): Republican Hold, 80%
John W. Daniel (D-VA): Democratic Hold, Unopposed
Samuel H. Piles (R-WA): Republican Hold, 56%
J.F. McGraw (D-WV): Democratic Hold, 51%
Robert M. La Follette (R/P-WI): Republican Hold, 51%
Clarence D. Clark (R-WY): Republican Gain, 56%

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Theodore Roosevelt, 28th President of the United States - Source: Wiki Commons

Part 4: Lion's Roar

Chapter XI: Birth of the Progressive Era: Rooseveltian America and the Third Party Problem

Once the immediate aftershocks of the presidential election wore off, the disparate political forces in the United States attempted to regain their balance. A joint effort by DNC Chair Thomas Taggart (D-IN) and RNC Chair William McKinley to challenge the results in the three closest states stalled as no evidence emerged of foul play. The cross-over of Bryan Democrats to the Roosevelt Camp appeared to have been the catalyst that allowed the Progressive nominee to squeak by the other two candidates in these states, and although the Depew and Olney campaigns worked tirelessly to discover evidence of voter fraud or illegal collusion with local tellers, there was simply no reasonable case to suspect the vote as illegitimate. An intensive, last ditch effort by the campaigns to influence electors in Ohio also ended in embarrassing and disgraceful failure. It dragged on for weeks, but the Republican-Democratic investigation of the count and their resistance to recognize Roosevelt as the winner eventually faded into grumbled displeasure.

A smattering of relatively neutral figures within the Republican National Committee approached McKinley sometime in December regarding how to treat the president-elect. Led by Representative James Eli Watson (R-IN), this contingent suggested that the party ought to work with Roosevelt as if he were an elected Republican, and perhaps make amends for the ill-fated decision to renominate Depew. McKinley, operating in somewhat of a hive-mind with the Old Guard faction of conservative Republicans, declined Watson's proposal. Along with Senators Foraker, Fairbanks, and Frye, House Majority Whip James A. Tawney (R-MN), and Speaker Joseph Cannon, McKinley reaffirmed the Republican commitment to their traditionalist values and defense of American commerce above all else. He acknowledged the results of the election, and released a public statement accepting the loss, but in private exhibited gratitude for the Progressives' defection and the "purification" of the GOP. McKinley stepped down as chairman in 1905, retiring from public life and allowing for the rise of his successor: Whitelaw Reid.

The headline appearing in the post-election issue of The Commoner, the newspaper published and edited by William J. Bryan, was titled, "The Plutocratic Threat and Roosevelt's Opportunity". The article presented a side-by-side contrast between the activities of the Democratic Party and the Olney Campaign versus Roosevelt and the Progressives. According to this piece (likely written by the former president's brother, Charles W. Bryan), the conservative takeover of his party, exemplified by the adoption of a 'sound money' plank at the convention and the forced nomination of a Cleveland-era Bourbon, practically guaranteed the loss of the American West. "While the campaign was applauded by the eastern press," the article read, "it surely alienated a large number of Democrats of the West and South. The reorganizers, in complete control of the party and the planners of the campaign, led this party to its worse defeat in its lifetime. The Democratic Party, if it hopes to win success, must take the side of the plain, common people." In the ensuing months, Bryan Democrats would begin demanding the resignations of national committee members.

Progressives (and, to an extent, the Socialist Party with its astounding 4.42% of the Popular Vote) were the true winners of the 1904 election. New York notwithstanding, Roosevelt captured every major American city outside of the South, and did so on an unprecedented new party line. This shattering of the old, two party system demonstrated its shaky foundations as well as the urgency many Americans felt regarding breaking the federal government free from its associations with big business. With Roosevelt's victory the country braced itself for a strange new period in political history that neither Bryan, nor Beveridge, had enacted. The Progressive Era had begun.

On March 4th, 1905, Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president by Chief Justice Melville Fuller at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. Raring to move ahead with his agenda and plot a path forward, the new president delivered a short inaugural address encapsulating some key parts of his platform and lexicon.

Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled.

Now there has sprung up a feeling deep in the hearts of the people-not of the bosses and professional politicians, not of the beneficiaries of special privilege-a pervading belief of thinking men that when the majority of the people do in fact, as well as theory, rule, then the servants of the people will come more quickly to answer and obey, not the commands of the special interests, but those of the whole people. Our relations with the other powers of the world are important; but still more important are our relations among ourselves. Such growth in wealth, in population, and in power as this nation has seen during the century and a quarter of its national life is inevitably accompanied by a like growth in the problems which are ever before every nation that rises to greatness. Power invariably means both responsibility and danger. Our forefathers faced certain perils which we have outgrown. We now face other perils, the very existence of which it was impossible that they should foresee.

It is my personal belief that the same kind and degree of control and supervision which should be exercised over public-service corporations should be extended also to combinations which control necessaries of life, such as meat, oil, and coal, or which deal in them on an important scale. I have not doubt that the ordinary man who has control of them is much like ourselves. I have no doubt he would like to do well, but I want to have enough supervision to help him realize that desire to do well. I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.

We are the heirs of the ages, and yet we have had to pay few of the penalties which in old countries are exacted by the dead hand of a bygone civilization. We have not been obliged to fight for our existence against any alien race; and yet our life has called for the vigor and effort without which the manlier and hardier virtues wither away. Under such conditions it would be our own fault if we failed; and the success which we have had in the past, the success which we confidently believe the future will bring, should cause in us no feeling of vainglory, but rather a deep and abiding realization of all which life has offered us; a full acknowledgment of the responsibility which is ours; and a fixed determination to show that under a free government a mighty people can thrive best, alike as regards the things of the body and the things of the soul.

         Theodore Roosvelt, Inaugural Address Excerpt, March 4th, 1904

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Huzzah for Roosevelt! It will be interesting to see how 1905-1909 plays out versus IOTL.

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Huzzah for Roosevelt! It will be interesting to see how 1905-1909 plays out versus IOTL.

Indeed! Roosevelt serving as a Progressive in 1905 is a whole new ballgame from OTL.

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John Hay Walking with Adelbert Hay, March 15th, 1905 - Source: Wiki Commons

During the Grover Cleveland Administration, and those which preceded it, the function of the United States presidency had merely been one of stable stewardship and sensible supervision. Nothing epitomized this clearer than Cleveland's frank aversion to assisting working Americans when the banking establishment collapsed under his watch. Once President Bryan claimed center stage, the role of chief executive finally evolved from a silent and rather submissive doorkeeper into one that spoke to and reacted alongside the general population. He, and Beveridge to a lesser extent, morphed public perception of how a president ought to act and conduct the business of governing. Depew seemed to turn back the clock on this oddity, stepping back from the Bryan period. Should, for instance, either he or Olney have won the 1904 election, history may have looked back on the Bryan-Beveridge stage of as a strange interim. However, Roosevelt won that race, and he was certainly not willing to return to the days of presidential caretakers. As he himself recalled, backing down from the task of utilizing an active presence  was not an option. "I did not care a rap for the mere form and show of power; I cared immensely for the use that could be made of the substance."

President Roosevelt conceived a unique method of commanding an executive position, one thoroughly displayed during his time serving as governor of New York. He saw the potential of governing as a limitless vehicle for positive and reactive government working on behalf of the American citizenry. Caring not for party bosses or polite dealings with corporate leaders, Roosevelt wished to offer genuine, concrete solutions for the unaddressed issues facing the country. However, that is not to say he concurred with Bryan's, or for that matter Debs', methodology to bring forth beneficial reform for the suffering masses. He may have viewed himself as a defender of the moral right, but he sharply disapproved of Bryan's 'change from below' ideal and the socialistic call to uproot society altogether. Regardless of the conservative press describing Roosevelt's frantic rhetoric as inciting socialist tendencies, he and the Progressives were far from labor-centric.

The Progressives generally found issue with radical calls to foster a political party for laborers, believing that the duty of manifesting true reform squarely fell with the moralistic, sophisticated, and well-bred (protestant) middle-class. Such a demographic - journalists, lawyers, social workers, mechanics, and craftsmen - composed the central core of the new Progressive Party. They did not appeal to workers, nor did they have any interest in affiliating with labor union organizations. When Roosevelt proclaimed, as he often did in the lead-up to his presidential win, that the country was in crisis, he cited "the depths of an evil plutocracy" as well as a class war instigated "by the mob" as significant threats. The president's proposed reforms, in his own determination, were necessary in order to save the country from unfathomable corporate power on one hand and unbridled socialism on the other.

Upon his move to the Executive Mansion, or as he so affectionately coined it, the White House, Roosevelt was almost instantaneously approached by varied men of finance who pleaded he back down from the Progressive platform. A partner of J.P. Morgan, George W. Perkins, professed to Roosevelt his empathy with "co-operation rather than competition", but quietly instructed him to "do nothing at all, and say nothing except platitudes," regarding trusts and the power of corporations. The novel president listened with amusement, as he did to scores of other businessmen requesting an absence of serious legislation. As anyone who knew Roosevelt could attest, he was not easily swayed on such core principles. The president later wrote, "Perkins might just as well make up his mind that I will not make my message one hair's breadth milder. Perkins simply represented the effort to sit back in the harness. Such effort was worse than useless."

Anticipating a discordant Congress, Roosevelt sought to acquire his preferred selection of political allies in his presidential Cabinet. There were virtually no outright Progressives in the legislature in 1905, so the president desperately needed to appoint men who were capable of securing legislative coadjutors. Vice President Taft, in the aforementioned regard, was an invaluable asset to the Roosevelt Administration. He had ties to dozens of prominent Republican figures and, potentially, could lead an effort to sway certain congressional fence-sitters should resistance arise. George von Lengerke Meyer, a Massachusetts politician and the U.S. Ambassador to Italy under Beveridge, was granted the position of Navy Secretary with a similar belief that he could garner Republican loyalties.

Roosevelt selected, without a second thought, Leonard Wood for War Secretary. He admired Wood's conduct in the Spanish-American War and his advisory service during the Philippines War, and for this was offered the Cabinet position determined most suitable for the major general. Other Progressive figures were appointed as a combined show of gratitude and recognition of their abilities - including PNC official James R. Garfield for Interior Secretary, anti-trust Ninth Circuit Judge Joseph McKenna for Attorney General, and former Iowa Governor L.M. Shaw as Treasury Secretary. He also offered former Mayor Seth Low a position within the Department of the Interior, but he declined.

Insofar as the remaining position was concerned, Roosevelt knew precisely who to award the post to. John Hay, who previously served in this role and guided promising overseas development right up until his resignation, respectfully agreed to once more take up the role as State Secretary. Hay began losing interest in public service after his spat with President Beveridge and, as debated by historians, his health worsened due to work stress. Along with his son, Adelbert, a low-ranking official within the State Department, John Hay enjoyed retired life yet eagerly joined Roosevelt during the presidential campaign. He may not have anticipated the offer, but Hay gladly returned to his post. As he wrote, "Barring a surprise execution, I intend on fulfilling my obligation to serve to the end of my usefulness."

The Roosevelt Cabinet

Office		Name
President		Theodore Roosevelt, Jr.
Vice President		William H. Taft
Sec. of State		John M. Hay
Sec. of Treasury		L.M. Shaw
Sec. of War		Leonard Wood
Attorney General		Joseph McKenna
Postmaster General		Frank Harris Hitchcock
Sec. of the Navy		George von Lengerke Meyer
Sec. of Interior		James R. Garfield
Sec. of Agriculture		James Wilson

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U.S. House of Representatives in Session, March 17th, 1905 - Source: LoC

In a letter submitted before Congress, the young and ambitious President Roosevelt presented a collection of ideas he deemed imperative for the maintenance of the country. The protracted and sententious message entailed a wide assortment of policy proposals, citing recent studies to further embody their soundness. An overarching theme of these legislative suggestions was a reaction to the material conditions of the late Gilded Age and its many inequalities. The president, wishing to start his reign with a wallop, referred to his demanding domestic program as a "Square Deal for every man."

In the opening of the twentieth century, working men, women and children did not possess the slightest modicum of protection against expansive working hours or sickeningly low wages. Workers also did not have access to safe working conditions, as exemplified through staggering statistics estimating half a million workplace injuries and 30,000 workplace deaths in the United States each year. No other nation came close to such sobering figures. These individuals were not able to collect compensation for workplace casualties, nor could they attain anything resembling unemployment restitution if laid off as a result of an on-site injury. Some workers, on a private basis, negotiated slightly improved contracts with their employers, yet, in the absence of a labor union, an individual worker had no actual power if the owner chose to whisk away conciliated benefits as a cost-saving measure.

These conditions, largely unchanged over the previous decades, drove millions of workers to organize in their respective industries as well as lean away from the prevailing laissez-faire conservatism of the era. Regardless of public support for reform, however, seemingly unbreakable ties between huge businesses and powerful legislators ensured that domestic policy resisted revision. President of the AFL, Samuel Gompers, perhaps the only reputable union chief capable of influencing federal policy on the side of the workers, rejected any notion to involve either himself or the AFL in political action. He continuously and strictly upheld "pure and simple unionism," and forbade AFL-affiliated unions from championing political interference. Regardless of their leader's stance, much of the rank and file AFL membership expressed support for Roosevelt's candidacy in the 1904 presidential election.

President Roosevelt's Square Deal, in part, was meant to address many of the base issues associated with unfettered capitalism. The old, Gilded Age approach to governing was no longer suitable to present day circumstances, and, as the president summarized, time was far overdue for reform. His proposals included pieces of the Progressive platform, in addition to unaddressed segments of previous Republican platforms and Roosevelt's own spur-of-the-moment whims. He favored instituting safer working conditions and limiting daily hours, as well as granting monetary compensation for industrial accidents. Roosevelt also concurred with Bryan over the need to bolster the powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission and grant new supervisory powers to federal "watch dog" boards. The president held nothing back when openly censuring, "the huge monnied men to whom money is the be-all and end-all of existence; to whom the acquisition of untold millions is the supreme goal of life, and who are too often utterly indifferent as to how these millions are obtained." Unless these villainous businesses were vigorously and consistently regulated by the federal government, they would operate contrary to the interests of the American citizenry.

Roosevelt directed his letter primarily to his former colleagues in the Republican Party. He directly challenged them, exclaiming that federal regulation was all that stood to reduce class warfare and stop the accelerating interest in socialism. In setting up an arbitration commission, for example, the pure creation of bureaucratic machinery to solve smaller labor disputes could actively prevent the growth of radicalism (which was the consequence of inaction during the Anthracite Strike). Roosevelt firmly believed that Depew failed in justly responding to the Pennsylvania labor dispute. By not intervening, Depew and reactionary open-shop owners like George Baer had proved the validity of the socialists' claims that the federal government would side against the people in all cases, even when the owners were blatantly in the wrong.

Roosevelt made it clear that he was willing to proceed with arbitration and the recognition of sensible unions led by "reasonable men" like John Mitchell. Unions, he believed, could be responsible partners of business if intervention took place. It was either stable trade unionism, through what he theorized as a fair, multi-member conciliation board, or radical and revolutionary unionism that threatened the entire system. As Civic Federation Attorney Louis D. Brandeis elucidated, the stability of trade unionism would allow leaders like Mitchell the opportunity to gain a stronger understanding of business, which "almost invariably makes the leaders responsible and conservative."

Congressional Republicans did not view President Roosevelt as one of their own, nor had they ever. He was elected on a strange and alien third party ticket, one that robbed the Republican Party of their financial security and national prestige. Roosevelt was a traitor, and they cared nothing for his presidency nor his legacy. "If (Roosevelt) should starve the public of a promising future," one party official wrote, "so be it. He will perish in the inferno he so recklessly lit." Judging by the insinuations of the national committee, they planned to rally support behind a conservative contender in 1908. [...] Reality proved a significant hurdle. As was demonstrated in the election; Roosevelt, as well as his policies, were immensely popular. Otherwise, the candidate would have miserably failed and fallen to obscurity as third party cavaliers tend to do.

         Jay R. Morgan, The American Elephant: A Study of the Republican Party, 1980

Once revived from a laughing fit upon receipt of the president's demands, the congressional Republicans responded, in no uncertain terms, that they would not consider enacting Roosevelt's legislation. GOP leadership, conducting themselves in the manner as described above by Morgan, rejected the mere prospect of submitting the proposals for legislative debate. In some ways, the opposition was even fiercer than it was when dealing with Bryan. "Democracy is a known menace and purveyor of financial disruption," Senator John Spooner blasted in a letter to Whitelaw Reid, "but an opportunist and turncoat is a most malicious demon." Spooner, as well as Senators Aldrich and Fairbanks, composed the chief conservative obstruction to Roosevelt in the upper house. In the lower house, Speaker Cannon acted in a similar role.

Although both were earnest ideologues of Republicanism, Theodore Roosevelt and Speaker Joseph Cannon never could come to terms with the role of Congress in the American system. While the President professed a belief in curtailing the excesses of corporate hegemony and plutocratic rule, Cannon dismissed it all, top to bottom. The speaker viciously opposed every last point in Roosevelt's Square Deal. Regarding the Progressives' proposal to explore federal land conservation, Cannon famously surcharged with disgust, "Not one cent for scenery." His unambiguous autocratic control over the House of Representatives meant the likelihood for debate or designating legislative committees on such reformist subjects was microscopic.

The president may have expected a bit more courtesy from his once-allies, but there is little historical evidence to indicate that he believed Congress would budge on these foundational problems. He did not despise the conservatives on a personal level, and especially not so with regards to the more amiable Senator Lodge, but, professionally, he had trouble tolerating their positions. Roosevelt disassociated with this branch of Republicanism at every turn, doing so long before he formally joined the Progressives. Now, as the president himself noted, his deep-rooted suspicion of the "wing of the party governed by the spirit of Hanna," was confirmed. As long as the Republican leadership correlated the present state of affairs with prosperity, compromise was a dead end.

Embedded in this saddening reality was the nature of the third party problem. Should Roosevelt have succeeded in attaining the Republican nomination, congressional Republicans would have little choice but to accommodate their party leader. Progress may have proven possible under these circumstances. In this case, as it was, Roosevelt required an alternative path forward, even if meant burning some bridges to cinders and constructing new ones from scratch.

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"The Lesson It Teaches," Spencer Political Cartoon, November 18th, 1904 - Source: LoC

The Democratic Party found itself in a rather curious dilemma upon the election of Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency. By the time Chief Justice Fuller administered the oath of office to the Progressive exemplar, it had become overwhelmingly certain which Democratic denomination legitimately held the reigns. Senator Richard Olney's startling defeat to the hero of San Juan Hill in that three-way race exemplified the might and influence wielded by the Bryan Democrats and their titular leader. In complying with the former president's endorsement of the Progressive platform, the Bryanites expertly disproved the myth of Bourbon competence. Now, the mantle fell to the excluded Bryan Democrats to assert their dominance.

Having been nationally discredited in the wake of the election, Democratic reorganizers began to resign en masse from the central committee. Key figures in the reactionary movement survived the exodus, like staunch conservatives Senators Joseph Bailey (D-TX) and John Daniel (D-VA), but, once more, they were confined to the minority. DNC Chair Thomas Taggart voluntary resigned in December of 1904, thereby allowing for Cleveland Mayor Tom L. Johnson (D-OH) to fulfill the duties of party chairman. The Kentucky-born mayor, an unalterable reformist and anti-monopolist, symbolized the grand return of the left-leaning faction of Democrats to party leadership. Upon the confirmation of the vote, Johnson promptly stripped David Hill and John Williams of their prominent committee assignments and released a biting statement condemning their "irrefutably undemocratic and suspect engagements during the 1904 DNC in forcing Olney's nomination. Hill and Williams each retired in disgrace, with the latter defeated in 1906 for his House seat.

William J. Bryan, indisputably the leader of the Democratic Party in the post-1904 period, corresponded with Johnson during these leadership spars, crafting new techniques for the party in the process. Among these was a request to unite the non-Bourbon elements of the party in a joint-effort alongside the burgeoning Progressives. "If there is a lesson to be drawn from this last election," Bryan publicly purported, "it is that our struggle is one in the same. The people's voice rejects the plutocrats, it rejects the monopolists, and it rejects the corrupt policies represented by the reactionaries. In 1900, the Democratic platform read that, 'a private monopoly is indefensible and intolerable.' That ticket won over 6.5 million votes. In 1904, that proclamation, and others like it, were striped bare. The total votes under that conservative mantra were fewer than 5 million. There is no chance for a conservative Democratic Party. [...] Roosevelt has the ire of plutocracy, as do I. In order to cull the dictatorial rule of trusts in the government, and enshrine the right of the people to rule, we must find areas of commonality and respond to the country's evident demand for reforms."

Southern Democrats, an integral part to the national party, were more receptive to Bryan's plea than one may expect. They were no revolutionists, overtly disapproving of Bryan's latest proposals for public ownership of railroads and disregarding the Socialists' anti-capitalist plea, but they were not all conservatives. Despite maliciously tearing away the rights of Southern black voters, these politicians applauded an assortment of socio-economic reforms not unlike the new president. Dixie reformers like Governor Jeff Davis (D-AR), a populist leader and avid white supremacist, indeed advocated for Roosevelt's crusade to dismantle the powers of trusts and corporations and vastly supported the Progressive position on federal infrastructure projects, the protection of union organizers, education reform, and the implementation of the progressive income tax.

Especially once Bryan Democracy returned to the forefront of the party, but too throughout the preceding decade, Democrats in the Southern states sounded far more like President Bryan than President Cleveland. Representatives of the wealthy planter class were gradually overshadowed by a new class of politicians resembling the heyday of Populism. The aforementioned Arkansas governor belonged to this league, as had the recently elected firebrand Mississippian Governor James K. Vardaman (D-MS), textile worker advocate Representative Coleman Blease (D-SC), former Populist Representative Thomas E. Watson (D-GA), co-owner of the Raleigh News & Observer Josephus Daniels (D-NC), and 'Godfather of Demagoguery' Senator Benjamin Tillman. These anchors for anti-plutocracy fought out of a sense of extreme resentment for the economic elite and industrial titans of the North, sometimes allying themselves with militant unionists when many early Progressives would have turned away.

Chairman Tom Johnson corralled this field to lead his mission for progressive reform, paying little mind to their explicitly racist views. Johnson and Bryan deliberately ignored their deplorable racism in order to concentrate solely on the more agreeable portions of Southern populism. As long as the theoretical legislation did not threaten to reduce the powers of local and state control of racial affairs and deliver that authority to D.C., the new Democratic leadership understood that most non-Bourbon Southerners were onboard. Therein lied the golden opportunity, for both Bryan and Roosevelt, to achieve their respective goals.

The Revolt in the Congress. President Roosevelt's Square Deal was met with antipathy by Republican lawmakers as the Speaker of the House, Joseph Cannon, denied the will of the people to be heard in the legislature. Cannon, the ultimate determiner of House agenda, maintained party discipline as increasingly impassioned demands from the chief executive piled up. Mass derision by the Democrats in Congress ensued, with Minority Leader Champ Clark proving an unlikely ally of the once-Republican Roosevelt. New York Congressman William Sulzer, cheered on by Mr. Clark and President Roosevelt, guided the bipartisan 225-man coalition in outright rebellion against the dictatorial House Speaker.

Mr. Sulzer forcibly introduced a resolution to withdraw the Speaker from the all-important House Rules Committee and strip him of his committee assignment powers - a move which served to effectively eliminate Cannon's iron rule. Outnumbered and caught off-guard, Cannon's League of Stalwarts could not withstand the appeal, and it was adopted by the day's end. Realizing his abasement, Cannon slyly requested a vote to remove him from the Speakership, confident he would win. Congress complied. To Cannon's utter shock, they voted in favor of removal. "Sometimes in politics one must duel with skunks," Cannon later remarked, "but no one should be fool enough to allow skunks to choose the weapons."

Once the smoke cleared, 37 of the 60 young Republican insurgents who partook in Sulzer's coalition formally disaffiliated from the Republicans and joined with the Columbian Party. Seven Democrats did the same. Moderate Republican Thomas S. Butler, the father of Major General Smedley Butler, rose as the new Speaker. Although not an admirer of Roosevelt, Butler gracefully adhered to the swelling tide of reform and allowed each and every Square Deal proposal to come before the floor.

         Robert Porter, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressives, Released 1996

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"The Treason of the Senate," Cover from Cosmopolitan Magazine, April 30th, 1905 - Source: Starkman/Cosmo

Speaker Cannon's spectacular fall from grace appeared to embody yet another political earthquake courtesy of President Roosevelt. The House Revolt and its subsequent passage of the Sulzer Resolution proved an intense blow to the Old Guard and its notion of congressional invincibility. Congress had pulled the brakes on Bryan's radical proposals - Why was Roosevelt immune? The keen New Yorker, as became apparent early on in his tenure, possessed a knack for putting together informal coalitions regardless of political party. Bryan, for all his base popularity, did not carry an equivalent degree of professional statesmanship and blanket progressive appeal. He would not have been able to accomplish such a bipartisan feat, but Roosevelt represented its possibility.

The president won a substantial battle over effective command of the House of Representatives, illustrated through the election of the unprincipled, conciliatory Speaker Butler, but succeeding in a duplicate manner for senatorial control would require nothing short of a miracle. Even in the period following the enactment of the 16th Amendment, the United States Senate did not contain the same democratic expectations of accountability that the House had. Many long-serving senators, like Senators Thomas Platt, Nelson Aldrich, and John Spooner, skillfully established that they could win direct elections to the legislature. Unlike in the lower chamber, the Senate did not designate official leadership positions (aside from the vice president), but the Republican Party ceremoniously recognized an appointed conference chairperson as their de facto floor manager. In the 59th Congress, this post was awarded to fierce anti-progressive Senator Charles Fairbanks.

Fairbanks, commander of the Indiana Republican Party since the death of President Beveridge, validated his worth to the Old Guard from the moment of his 1896 senatorial ascension. He played a key part the organization of the 1904 Depew Campaign (famously bowing out of the race to support Depew's renomination alongside Foraker) and was nominated vice president by the Republican Party that same year. Fairbanks was granted a seat at the table with fellow influential conservatives, and at only 52 years of age was designated Chairman of the U.S. Senate Republican Conference. With the future of his career at stake, Fairbanks paid close attention to the House Revolt and took steps to ensure an identical scenario would not play out in the Senate.

At about the same time Cannon was facing removal from power, Senate Republicans were placing the finishing touches on a vital new piece of legislation. Looking to spurn Roosevelt and cast revenge for the electoral degradation of President Depew, Fairbanks authorized the creation of a bill, co-authored by Senator Nelson Aldrich, intended to repeal in its totality the American Safeguards Act. This, the law which forbade the issuing of injunctions by courts to breakup labor strikes, was widely viewed as the final vestige of anarchic pro-labor reform passed by President Bryan. Depew reportedly planned to go forward with such a repeal if he were to be elected, but Roosevelt had no such inclination. Fairbanks needed support from two-thirds of the Senate in the likely outcome of a presidential veto, and, by all historical accounts of this moment in history, he may have been on the verge of attaining it. Conservatism, as well as the fortitude of the Republican Old Guard, evidently thrived in the upper chamber far more so than the lower.

However, fewer than 48-hours prior to the initial vote on the repeal at the tail end of April 1905, a Cosmopolitan magazine article ominously entitled, "The Treason of the Senate," reached store shelves. Written by "muckracker" (a slang term for a reform-minded anti-corruption journalist) David Graham Phillips, this editorial was a toxic exposé on the corrupt tendencies of Senator Aldrich. "Treason is a strong word," the article began, "but not too strong to characterize the situation in which the Senate is the eager, resourceful, and indefatigable agent of interests as hostile to the American people as any invading army could be." Phillips accused Aldrich of possessing close ties with the vast Rockefeller interests, and that "the millions for watchers, spellbinders, halls, processions, posters, pamphlets, that are spent in national, state and local campaigns" were paid in full by that wealthy dynasty. The article went on, claiming that the Rhode Island senator controlled his state legislature, bribed his electoral opponents, forged an unholy alliance with Arthur Gorman, and guided public policy to systematically benefit the Rockefeller trusts via tariff legislation.

Yet again, the nation was captivated with the outrageous dealings in Washington. With the powerful Aldrich name ran through the theoretical muck, the American public questioned why his likeness was attached to the Safeguards repeal. The simple answer was, of course, that Rockefeller interests would benefit tremendously by the (re)legalization of strike injunctions. A deafening outcry for the bill's defeat followed suit, threatening to relegate its fate to the historical dustbin. Fairbanks and the Republican leadership, albeit shaken by the ordeal, retained the party line that such yellow journalism was untrustworthy and "ridiculous falsehoods masterminded by Bill Hearst." Ironically, Hearst did assist Phillips with the sensationalist story, but historical evidence, not conjecture, backs up many of the aforementioned claims.

Flagrantly ignoring the demand of the people and the command of the president, Fairbanks reiterated his intent to see the vote take place. In spite of his wish to see it through, the senator's staff discovered, upon further examination, that the odds of overriding Roosevelt's anticipated veto were very poor. About a dozen Republicans announced their intent to vote against the measure, and nearly the entire Democratic delegation readied itself to sink the bill. Forgoing the embarrassment of a failed vote, Fairbanks scuttled the effort and declared the Aldrich bill dead. As Senator Tillman relayed to the press that day, "Poor Johnny (Rockefeller) will have a good long cry into his wallet."

Nevertheless, the base issue of blocking the majority of Roosevelt's Square Deal endured. Phillips pressed on, printing monthly iterations of "The Treason of the Senate" as its revealings continuously pummeled self-righteous senators. As it went on, the series highlighted the blatant corruptibility of Senator Gorman taking bribes from the sugar industry, Senator Spooner's sketchy connections with the Great Lake railway barons, Senator Knox silently working against the prosecution of banking trusts, and Former President Depew's dealings with the Vanderbilt family. 20 senators (and one president) in all were criticized by the Phillips articles. Although some notable incumbents treated the accusations as frivolous yellow journalism, others feared electoral consequences and gradually softened their anti-Roosevelt stances. "The 'Treason'," explained historian Gus J. Thompson in The Political Press, "had a profound effect on the actual ability of the Senate leadership to maintain order and discipline among the ranks. Moderates who sought to distance themselves from any remote association with the increasingly unpopular Old Guard broke ranks and called for a debate on the Square Deal."

Fortunately for the president, he did manage to enact part of his ambitious legislative agenda as planned. The 59th Congress passed several Rooseveltian proposals in 1905 and 1906. First, the Patterson Agricultural Reclamation Act was signed in mid-July, appropriating federal funds for the construction of irrigation projects in the American West and placing 230 million acres of land under federal protection. Congress also agreed to vote affirmatively on the American Antiquities Act in 1905, a measure granting the president newfound executive authority to create national monuments to protect natural or cultural environments. Roosevelt secured passage, narrowly in the Senate but rather easily in the House, of the Federal Employers Liability Act in 1906, compensating railroad workers injured on the job due to "legally negligent" conditions. Last, and perhaps the initiative which required the most arm-twisting, was the reinstatement of the Sulzer-Hepburn Act (reintroduced as the Hepburn Rebate Act of 1906) with finer guidelines that more broadly affected consolidation. The HRA passed 287-99 in the House, 46-45 in the Senate (Taft broke the tie).

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"Next On the Waiting List of the Roosevelt Club," Chicago Tribune Cartoon, April 10th, 1906 - Source: Wiki Commons

Chapter XII: A Few Bad Men: Market Resistance and the Invisible Government

President Roosevelt was ecstatic to witness genuine progress win out in Congress, but his impatience led to a discovery that executive privilege allowed for a quicker and more forceful route of reform. More so than any predecessor, the Progressive president was fascinated by the prospect of an executive order. He enjoyed the idea of issuing presidential directives to better suit his policy objectives, and was undeterred by conservative criticism on the matter. Cannon commented on the president's inclination to supplant congressional policy-making, remarking "That fellow at the other end of the avenue wants everything from the birth of Christ to the death of the devil." Roosevelt later wrote in response, "There was a great clamor that I was usurping legislative power. I did not usurp power, but I did greatly broaden the use of executive power."

The first area in which the president utilized the executive order was in conservation. He was a champion of preserving the majesty of untouched nature and taking precious care of the American countryside and its fauna. Passage of the American Antiquities and Patterson Reclamation Acts were a fine start, but far more had yet to be accomplished. Roosevelt passed executive initiatives to quadruple the amount of protected land (to 172 million) and designate hundreds of new national forests under jurisdiction of the National Forest Service. He also crafted dozens of federal monuments under the Antiquities Act, most significant of which was the Arizona-based Grand Canyon.

Beyond conservation, the president explicitly wished to tackle economic issues on the Executive level and without congressional input. By 1905, the 200 or so monopolistic trusts that ransacked the entrepreneurial landscape of the United States mastered the nation as firmly, if not more so, than Cannon once did the House. Trusts implanted themselves into every avenue of trade and controlled prices on common goods - from coal and steel to tobacco and animal products. They set the railroad rates (until the late-1906 implementation of the HRA), managed worker wages, and decimated small businesses who had the nerve to compete. As previously inferred, over 30% of American companies disappeared during the merger wave of the early twentieth century. Roosevelt, having been elected on a platform of regulating the vast consolidation of American industries, now had these trusts in his sights.

Outraged by villainous consolidation, Roosevelt charted a course for active intervention in opposition to "the restraint of trade." In the belief that the government needed to act as a counterweight to corporate power, the president hastened the creation of an informal Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, spearheaded by Attorney General McKenna, to enforce U.S. antitrust laws. Despite intense pressure by the Rockefeller and Morgan interests, McKenna's Justice Department brought forth a spree of antitrust lawsuits targeting these omnipresent powers. "The great corporations," President Roosevelt proclaimed, "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 it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown."

The Antitrust Division considered its options and soon arrived at the conclusion that the first step ought to be its most monumental. Instructed by Roosevelt and McKenna, the Justice Department opened a heavily-publicized suit regarding the monopolistic nature of the Northern Securities Company. This specific trust, bolstered by President Depew's tolerant, laissez-faire administration, now effectively controlled the railway system of the American West. Rates and shipping fees had skyrocketed in the span of 1902 to 1905 in areas managed by Northern Securities. Just as they feared at the onset of the merger, Midwestern and Western state governors were forced to placate the owners of the company and submit to its demands, lest their cities be ransacked by deliberately worsened schedules and fees. Roosevelt watched this unfold during his time in the Depew Administration, and recounted in his personal memoirs that his predecessor's toleration of Northern Securities played a significant part in the decision to formally break from the Republican Party.

This was one of the first major SCOTUS cases decided in the post-Gilded Age period. Theodore Roosevelt's Justice Department argued for the prosecution of the merged interstate railroad corporation stating that its establishment was the textbook definition of a monopoly, and under the guidelines of the Sherman Antitrust Act, its formation and existence was an illegality. Attorneys working in the service of the company's chief executive, James J. Hill, argued for the defense, pleading their case that the merger did not fit the parameters of a monopoly and, furthermore, that the prosecution gravely threatened a precedent of federal overreach. On February 19th, 1906, the Supreme Court decided against the trust and ordered its breakup.

Northern Securities Company v. United States: Decision 5-4
Chief Justice Melville Fuller - Dissent
Justice John M Harlan - Plurality
Justice David J Brewer - Concurrence
Justice Henry B. Brown - Plurality
Justice Edward D. White - Dissent
Justice Rufus W. Peckham - Dissent
Justice Joseph M. Carey - Plurality
Justice William R. Day - Plurality
Justice John W. Warrington - Dissent

          Ronald L. Chapman, A Concise History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 2011

Experiencing an unexpected morale boost from the decision, the Antitrust Division conducted itself in double time, pressing forward with an unprecedented chain of new lawsuits. Roosevelt brought twenty more cases before the federal court system within a period of two years, surpassing the combined 14 antitrust violations prosecuted by the previous five presidents. Northern Securities' defeat, and the court precedence of recognizing prominent trusts as illegal monopolies, frankly spelled misery for the fate of the merger wave. In a lettered response to a plea from J.P. Morgan for an arbitrated agreement on the remainder of his industrial holdings, Roosevelt wrote, "If your enterprises are proven unlawful, there is no alternative solution than that which befell Northern Securities."

To make matters worse for the commercial giants, the Supreme Court ruled thrice more in 1906 on the side of the oft-described 'trust-buster.' In Swift & Co. v. United States, the court ruled unanimously in favor of the prosecution, concurring that the federal government's regulation of the meat industry (the infamous Beef Trust which commanded half of the national market) was lawful as it protected commerce from a monopolistic force. Mirroring the case opinions cited above, the Supreme Court ruled again against massive corporate combinations in Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States and U.S. Steel Co. v. United States. In both instances, as was the case in the Northern Securities decision, the plurality sided with the Justice Department's allegations pertaining to monopolistic illegality. Standard Oil, in its gobbling up of virtually all petroleum refining companies in the country, and U.S. Steel, in controlling a 3/4ths market share, were each found violating the Sherman Act. To the immense displeasure of John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, SCOTUS ordered the breakup of their trusts in mid-to-late 1906.

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"The Busy Showman," Harper's Weekly Cartoon, May 6th, 1906 - Source: Wiki Commons

Drawing on the power of the Executive Branch, President Roosevelt sought an active presence on the world stage not unlike President Beveridge before him. From his time in the War Department, and in numerous consultations with Secretaries Hay and Moore, Roosevelt developed his knowledge on world affairs and became an astute inquisitor of American overseas influence. Blusterous jingoism oft characterized the Roosevelt wing of the Republican Party and the Beveridge presidency as a whole, but the New Yorker was not blind to the fact that the U.S. needed to utilize diplomatic means and work alongside other global governments whenever possible.

During the 1904 campaign, in a speech delivered to a crowd of enthusiasts at the St. Louis World's Fair, Roosevelt perfectly encapsulated his perspective on international matters. He exclaimed that the United States could assert its national power and expand itself economically without resorting to the horrors of the Philippines. "Right here," he said, "let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb, 'Speak softly and carry a big stick – you will go far.' If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power." Proclaiming that the nation ought not to take part in self-glorification and outright condemnation of other peoples and governments, Roosevelt indicated a centralized approach far removed from the Beveridge years.

Roosevelt understood that the disaster of the Philippines War could never be allowed to repeat itself. The stunning death toll of that war was unconscionable, and the imperial ends did not brush away those deplorable means. He was contented with the result of that war, but from thence on the president looked to less glaring intervention that would not invoke a harsh reaction by the American press. For all intents and purposes, Roosevelt's stance served as a response to Democratic criticism of the war in the Philippines and helped to assuage Bryan's worst fears of an magisterial regime. The president pledged to only utilize a ground invasion when all other tactics were exhausted in the name of preserving democratic governance/ Nevertheless, Roosevelt refused to evolve past the opinion that expansion was inevitable and it was the divine destiny of the United States to step onto the international stage.

Under the guidance of Navy Secretary Mahan, and with halfhearted approval by then-President Depew, the U.S. Navy modernized with a major face-lift. Mahan's Navy Department and Roosevelt's War Department enacted a proliferation initiative that dramatically expanded the capabilities of both sections of the Armed Forces. Naval fortifications were renovated and the number of cruisers, battleships, and submarines doubled on Mahan's watch. The Navy Secretary had argued that an improved fleet was necessary for securing efficient and safe trade throughout the Pacific and the Americas. "Whether they will or no," Mahan once declared, "Americans must now continue to look outward. The growing production of the country demands it." His successor, George von Lengerke Meyer, held similar views regarding naval expansion. Leonard Wood, Roosevelt's pick for War Secretary, too dreamed for the perpetuation of the modernization effort.

Alongside their president, Root and Meyer concurred that the preceding administrations were focused so intensely on the Pacific markets that they passed on their own backyard. It was long past due, according to the Roosevelt Administration, for the United States to act with a tougher line in Latin America: the natural locale for economic and strategic benefits. Since the end of the Spanish-American War and the explosion of U.S. investment into the region to its South, exports tripled and commercial investments escalated three-fold. John Hay's Open Door Policy accelerated entrepreneurial interest in profitable commercial havens like Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, but Roosevelt looked to expand the U.S. sphere of influence into Central and South America as well. He plotted ahead toward several consequential goalposts, including more stridently intervening in Honduras and Nicaragua as well as exploring the pursuit of an isthmian canal in Central America, but one in particular caught his attention.

More than anything, Roosevelt desired and championed for an international policy which served to garner prestige and notoriety for the republic. In time, the president stated, the United States would become a sufficient world power. At the time, however, the recent activities of the young nation tarnished its legitimate place as a haven for peaceful democracy. Roosevelt was profoundly discouraged by the tumultuous foreign policy choices enacted by his friend and mentor, Albert Beveridge, during the Philippines War. That conflict, from the shameful execution of Aguinaldo to the genocidal practices of the Generals Otis and Smith, considerably eroded the perception of the United States as a global force for benevolence. Though he did not condone these facets of the war and, with Hay at his side, worked to convince Beveridge to pursue a less blood-soaked path, Roosevelt's public insistence that there was no systematic cruelty did a severe number to his reputation in the Pacific. The consequences of this development did not become clear until the autumn of 1905 when the Japanese government flatly declined an offer by President Roosevelt to mediate a treaty with Russia to formally end hostilities in the Russo-Japanese War. This instance exemplified the urgent need to restore national prestige.

A second chance arose with the dawn of 1906. In the North African country of Morocco, a crisis had broken out pertaining to European oversight. The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, proclaimed during a tour of Tangier that the Sultan of Morocco rightly deserved sovereignty from French influence. He demanded a neutral conference be held to discuss the rights of the African power to self-govern, or, more specifically, be released from its de facto status as a French protectorate. Wilhelm reached out to President Roosevelt to assist in mediating the affair, trusting that their Pacific trading partner would come to their side as needed and thereby avoid total isolation. Roosevelt was hesitant, considering the reluctance of the Senate to condone international dealings with European matters, but, recounting the missed opportunity in settling the Russo-Japanese War and wishing to retain friendly relations with the German government, he agreed.

The Algeciras Conference, taking place in Southern Spain, began in January of 1906 and lasted through April. Thirteen nations were present, including Germany, Austria-Hungary, France, Russia, Britain, Spain, Italy, the United States, and, of course, Morocco. From the get-go, lines were drawn separating the Entente Cordial (Britain and France) from Germany. Representatives from the Italian and Spanish governments hedged their bets on the Entente side of the room, supporting their proposals and shaking their heads at the German ministers. The main issues meant to be discussed, ownership and control of the banking and police systems in Morocco, essentially surrounded the idea of French oversight. French diplomat Paul Révoil transparently fought in favor of subjecting the Bank of Morocco to French laws and a French-style judicial system, a division of capital in which France would hold a majority share (27%), and the preferential right to make loans held by France. They also hoped to ensure police instructors were French and that their own officers would determine the distribution of precincts.

Knowing their chance of victory was extraordinarily slim, German representative Joseph Maria von Radowitz proposed a compromise. Objecting to France's terms, the Germans offered an equal division of capital among the powers of Europe and neutral supervision of the institution. They also upheld the original concept that the Sultan would retain organizational powers over the police, and any foreign officers would be freely selected by him. This arrangement fell far short of the expectation of Kaiser Wilhelm to totally eradicate Entente influence in Morocco, but it too prevented an outright French protectorate. Initially, the opposing powers deemed the German plan unacceptable with Britain firm in the belief that France should have a greater share of influence. Dissuading the German ministers from displaying bluster or otherwise bullying the smaller powers present, the U.S. Ambassador Henry White urged the Entente to concede their ground avoid any further crisis. Gaining support of Austria and Italy, the United States pressed the compromise to the Entenete, arguing that the German plan offered the greatest possible compromise. Losing face, Révoil reluctantly backed down.

Tension immediately relaxed at the tail-end of the Algeciras Conference. The Moroccan government, albeit strengthened by the compromise, was not thrilled with Radowitz' concessions, nor was he disappointed by France's trouncing. Undoubtedly, France lost this bout and the Entente, weakened, was reeling from that gut-punch. Succeeding in their mission to reduce French influence, the outcome of the Moroccan Crisis was a solid victory for the German Empire. Roosevelt, on a personal level, was unsure whether White navigated the arena properly, but a closer relationship with their trading partner was not a terrible after-effect. White and Roosevelt were certainly under tremendous pressure from Pacific interests to not jeopardize ongoing arrangements with the German government, so the end result was not a complete shock. All in all, the conference concluded with the United States gaining the valuable prestige it desired, but too worsened ties with the British and the French.

[LabourJersey]

The level of detail in this TL is amazing.

Excellent stuff there. I sense we'll see the rise of the Columbians as the successor to the Republicans?

Also I'm not too well versed on the Morocco affairs in real-life, but could this be setting up a very different World War?

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The level of detail in this TL is amazing.

Excellent stuff there. I sense we'll see the rise of the Columbians as the successor to the Republicans?

Also I'm not too well versed on the Morocco affairs in real-life, but could this be setting up a very different World War?

Thank you very much!

The old Republican Party remains a powerful organization during TR's presidency - will it stay that way? Well we will see! As for the Morocco segment, I think it's fair to say the reverberations from that conference will be felt in the coming decade

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First Charter of the Industrial Workers of the World, 1906 - Source: Wiki Commons

Since the 1904 elections, the Socialist Party bounded forward and grew steadily each passing year. Fierce and strenuous rank-and-file organization, the wide circulation of radical publications like Wayland's Appeal to Reason, and the extensive touring by orators in the mold of Eugene Debs had led to the left-wing party's massive increase in notoriety. Socialists were elated when former shoe factory worker John C. Chase (S-NY) won a seat in the national legislature on the SP line - the first in U.S. history. Chase now formally represented New York's 13th District in Congress, and although he collaborated with Progressive leaders in the lower house, he officially served as the minority leader for the Socialist Party.

Debs recognized that, despite the natural growth of Socialism manifesting with a slow-drip of political representation, the educational procedure of whistle-stop campaigning and assistance in unionizing efforts more directly influenced the changing current in America. As cemented at its 1901 founding, the official labor policy of the Socialist Party did not take an absolutist stance on unionism. Instead, it recommended socialists of all creeds join, develop, or create trade unions within their own workplaces in conjunction with the American Federation of Labor framework.

The main complication with this plank was that the AFL actively worked against the mission of the Socialist Party. In addition to their well-documented ineptitude during the Anthracite Strike, the AFL was managed by, as described by Hillquit, "conservative and incapable leaders.". Samuel Gompers, the AFL President, was especially emblematic of such criticism. In 1903, during a Boston convention of the union, Gompers self-righteously announced, "I want to say to you [Socialists] that I am entirely at variance with your philosophy. I declare it to you, I am not only at variance with your doctrines, but with your philosophy. Economically, you are unsound; socially, you are wrong; industrially, you are an impossibility."

Berger, Hillquit, and others in the central organizing committees of the SP began to reckon with an veritable truth that the AFL, in its viciously anti-socialist policies and unmovable insistence on limited craft unionism (which rejected unskilled workers - the majority of the working class), was counterproductive to their progressive ideals. Gompers' and Mitchell's conservatism, Debs recalled, undermined the strength of the working class. The socialist leader evolved past the position of AFL-affiliation at about the time of Roosevelt's presidency, but the prospect of abandonment with the entire labor movement never entered the organizer's mind. Something new was necessary to replace the old, and a suitable stand-in for the AFL finally came about in the summer of 1905.

Mine worker and prospector William Dudley "Big Bill" Haywood was a part of a contingent of Idaho silver miners that joined the militant Western Federation of Miners in the 1890s. The active and eager Haywood quickly rose up the ranks of the union, operating the WFM local and shifting leftward in the process. In his time involved with that union, he led its turn to industrial unionism, Marxist-inspired class analysis, and its 1901 promotion of "a complete revolution of social and economic conditions." These notions directly and deliberately countered the more conservative craft union theories espoused by the AFL. The WFM headed a handful of violent miner's strikes typically grouped together as the 'Colorado Labor Wars' in 1903 and 1904, and those experiences forced the workers to consider a broader industrial collective: a radical iteration of the AFL, if you will.

Haywood, in addition to Western labor leaders and members of the WFM, agreed to meet in June of 1905 to found a novel revolutionary union with a staunch commitment to class struggle. That union became the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Over three hundred delegates traveled to Brand's Hall in Chicago, including an assortment of well-known political activists and labor movement icons. Among them were Eugene Debs, Daniel DeLeon, socialist theorist Algie M. Simons, WFM Local 63 President Vincent Saint John, Catholic priest and Colorado organizer Thomas J. Hagerty, prominent community activist Mary "Mother" Jones, radical orator Lucy Parsons, and Irish republican activist James Connolly. The tall and booming Haywood opened the first meeting of the IWW.

Fellow Workers. In calling this convention to order I do so with a sense of the responsibility that rests upon me and rests upon every delegate that is here assembled. This is the Continental Congress of the working class. We are here to confederate the workers of this country into a working class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism. [...] The American Federation of Labor, which presumes to be the labor movement of this country, is not a working class movement. There are organizations that are affiliated with the A.F. of L. in which their constitution and by-laws prohibit the initiation of a colored man; that prohibit the same of foreigners. What we want to establish at this time is a labor organization that will open wide its doors to every man that earns his living by brain or his muscle.

         Bill Haywood, "IWW Opening Plenary Address", June 26th, 1905

The radical approach of the IWW rejected craft divisions and binding trade agreements, turning away from the labor policies of the nineteenth century and asserting the "foundational right to strike". These delegates agreed in the proposition that the union should never depend on government benevolence as the AFL had, seeing as the calamitous Anthracite Strike proved that policy's flagrant irresponsibility. The IWW also outright refused business unionism and the notion of mediation with the employing class, proposing instead an explicitly revolutionary strategy of worker-owned industries.

These ferocious attacks on "morally bankrupt" conservative unionism resonated with a significant faction of workers associated with the United Mine Workers of America. Still recovering from the abysmal failure of their Pennsylvania strike, as well as an additional wretched defeat in the Cripple Creek District of Colorado, a wide swathe of the AFL-affiliated union was immeasurably disillusioned with Mitchell's leadership, or lack thereof. Observing the discontent of their fellow miners, IWW advocates began reaching out to UMWA members in order to elucidate the idea of broad industrial unionism and the IWW framework through which the WFM and UMWA might, theoretically, coalesce. Such a scenario, that of a united miners' union, stood to categorically weaken the AFL and seriously bolster the IWW (as well as confute pro-AFL SP members).

With opposition to Mitchell and Gompers at its apex, an outline for a joint-meeting of the two unions came to a vote at the 1907 UMWA convention. Debs and Haywood ( who were extremely active in rallying support behind the scenes) opted to address the convention delegates personally. "Mere craft unionism," Debs put forth, "no matter how well it may be organized, is in the present highly developed capitalist system utterly unable to successfully cope with the capitalist class. [...] It is no part of the mission of this revolutionary working class union to conciliate the capitalist class. We are organized to fight that class, and we want that class to distinctly understand it." Then, in a moment that forever stood to alter the landscape of the United States labor movement, the dissident socialist faction broke through.

Signifying an evolution, and perhaps a revolution, the vote to break with the AFL passed with a slim majority. The United Mine Workers, from thence on, would be associated with the Industrial Workers of the World. This not only meant a far stronger mining coalition, but it gave the legitimized IWW a significant union base that it hadn't yet achieved. Debs was astonished, gladdened yet shocked, and cheerfully expressed a pledge to Haywood that the Socialist Party would do all it could to foster deep ties with the IWW: the logical organizing arm of the revolutionists. This result brought Haywood and Debs closer, effectively ended John Mitchell's career, and practically guaranteed the Socialist Party's final abandonment of the AFL. On the less optimistic side of the coin, however, the now-infuriated Gompers would introduce an element that otherwise might never have come to pass. Starting in 1907, the AFL president explored the drafting of paid informants to spy on the new national union organization. Conservative resistance, after all, is a common feature of revolutionary progressive change.

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Crowd at the Federal Hall National Memorial in New York City, September 10th, 1906 - Source: Wiki Commons

On July 19th, 1906, John D. Rockefeller recorded his thoughts on the state of the economy in a letter to banker Charles W. Morse. He wrote, "[Roosevelt] has declared war on prosperity. That madman will disrupt every acquisition administered from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I fear for the future of United Copper. Our economy may sink to a depression if nothing is done." Morse, a crooked shipping, banking, and ice magnate (in some circles he was known as the "Ice King"), concurred with Rockefeller that the economy was teetering on the brink. Shining a light on his timely insight, the banker returned a short message to Rockefeller. "I will say this - if prosperity is snuffed out, nevermore will a man like Roosevelt win a position of authority above dogcatcher."

There is no historical evidence indicting Roosevelt's policies for the market conditions of the latter half of 1906, despite what some contemporary conservative economists may assert, but it was certainly the case that the stock market began sliding from the moment the Supreme Court justices read aloud their decision in the Northern Securities case. Rumors had begun to circulate among stockholders that the National Bank of Commerce, a relatively powerful financial institution based out of Kansas City, would be considered a future target of the courts for its position as the prime correspondence bank in Missouri and Illinois. Its stock value sharply fell on September 2nd, and all but collapsed by the 3rd. In a ripple effect, spurred on by reports of mismanagement and overextended credit by high-profile institutions like the Knickerbocker Trust Company and the First National Band of Brooklyn, patrons of other banking conglomerates began fearing for their savings. A series of textbook bank runs ensued as tens of thousands demanded their holdings withdrawn.  

Coinciding with the rising trend of bank closures, the New York Stock Exchange very nearly shut down as stock prices plummeted by the hour. Stockholders rushed to the exchange at the same speed account holders darted to the banks, causing an uproar in the financial district. Only by the private insistence by J.P. Morgan that closing the exchange could reinforce economic uncertainty was the decision made to keep the doors open. By this point, around September 10th, the ongoing banking panic rose to a fever pitch with confidence at its lowest in a decade. Wall Street, it appeared, faced the prospect of ruination. The situation seemed bleak, and those in charge of the financial sector had immense difficulty in manufacturing a viable solution.

Speculators, financiers, and political analysts squarely blamed Roosevelt for the crisis, deeming him responsible for inciting the panic by prosecuting the trusts. Many Standpatter Republican senators concurred, with Fairbanks leading that charge in Congress. "The actions by this administration," proclaimed the Indianan, "to tarnish the good name of American commerce have led us here. The unfounded charges of widespread misdeeds and malfeasance have taken a mighty toll. [...] To quote scripture, 'For whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.'" The upper class, in one unified voice, damned Roosevelt for the sudden financial hardship, but did little to actually remedy the crisis.

President Roosevelt, having embraced the hatred of corporate economists and wealthy capitalists, ignored their verbal assaults and explored the necessary steps to calm the air. He recognized that a tumble on Wall Street and an escalation of bank closures could adversely affect the larger United States economy and spread hardship unforeseen since the early 1890s. Still, he was not delighted with the idea of assisting the very businessmen who resoundingly despised his presence in Washington, nor was he thrilled to help the trusts that operated in a mannerism counter to the people's interest. It was a textbook quagmire, but Roosevelt, being a man of action, did not see fit to let it all crumble away.

Roosevelt, not desirous of new enemies, struggled to find the correct tone in addressing the ears of the citizenry. All he could do was to soothe the public with unspecific promises of forthcoming recovery. At the White House, the president held a Cabinet meeting to discuss the administration's plan, and eventually did settle on a verdict. Roosevelt directed Treasury Secretary L.M. Shaw, a former commercial banker, to conduct a cordial gathering of bank owners and elites in New York. Mr. Shaw followed the directive, and by the end of the week met with red-nosed J.P. Morgan, First National Bank President George Baker, and National City Bank Chairman James Stillman. None of these aristocrats were particularly conciliatory, but Shaw hoped for a mediated settlement as they conferred for an entire evening.

The inevitable impasse arrived soon enough, it being on the central topic of recovery investment. In the simplest terms, Shaw insinuated that it was the patriotic obligation of Morgan and his clan to invest their vast fortunes in the banks to retain solvency. It ought not to be the duty of the government, he professed, to bail out the financial sector responsible for the crisis. Morgan thought otherwise. To him, and his financier partners, the burden lied with Roosevelt to accumulate the funds. Morgan pointed to the president's incessant demonization of big business as the cause of the panic, and, already acutely enraged by the administration's prosecution of Northern Securities and U.S. Steel, would not consider investing his own monies. [...] Shaw wired Roosevelt with the details. Roosevelt asked whether the ordeal was rectifiable, to which Shaw responded negatively.

         Thomas O'Conner, A Radical History of American Politics: Vol. 5, 2016

On the morning of September 18th, when Secretary Shaw was in the process of boarding a D.C.-bound train, President Roosevelt delivered an address on the subject of Progressivism to a gaggle of reporters in Buffalo, New York. He motioned to several landmark initiatives that had the potential to curb an outright collapse, such as launching inquiries into the closed banks and coordinating a deal with the New York Cleaning House. Roosevelt also (begrudgingly) authorized the U.S. Treasury to dedicate tens of millions in accumulated funds, and an equal amount in loans, toward the recovery. However, he made it a point to emphasize that the best-known names on Wall Street had seen fit to lean back and witness the chaos unfold (in truth, Rockefeller and Morgan deposited some millions into a number of New York banks, yet, when scaled with their total amassed fortune, the donations were minuscule).

Roosevelt stated, "The investigation of malignant trusts conducted by the Justice Department have unearthed the rotted core of plutocratic indulgence. In the interest of the public welfare, we must be sure of the proper conduct of the interstate railways and the proper management of interstate business as we are now sure of the conduct and management of the national banks, and we should have as effective supervision in one case as in the other. Ridding the notorious rascality of industry combinations is what shall save the economy. Succumbing to plutocracy is what leads to calamity." This segment of the speech, thus far in his presidency the harshest Roosevelt had been to corporate America, boosted middle and working class adoration to new heights and succeeding in restoring a degree of public confidence within the Empire State.

Morgan, innately disturbed by the virulently anti-business demeanor of Secretary Shaw at their meeting, was further appalled by the presidential address. Roosevelt demolished his most valuable holdings, disregarded his advice at every turn, and now publicly deflected blame onto the trusts for the panic. Driven to spitefulness, Morgan refused to allow the president to escape the crisis unscathed. In a move typically cited by historians as a slice of requital against the administration, he retracted a last-ditch fundraising appeal by New York City Mayor Edward M. Shepard (D-NY). The mayor had worked throughout the crisis to raise sufficient funds to avert a double-drip panic, but, in defiance of ample bond purchases by the some of the city's wealthiest residents, he remained $20 million short. With October on the horizon, Mayor Shepard prepared to announce that the City of New York had fallen into bankruptcy. "He made his bed," Morgan said of Roosevelt, "and now he shall lie in it."