November 24, 2019 • 39 mins
Long before Batman and Commissioner Gordon fought corruption under cover of darkness in Gotham, Theodore Roosevelt, president of the police commission, was prowling around New York City in plainclothes at night to make sure his policemen were doing their jobs. It was just one battle in a long war against corruption, during which TR fought against the spoils system, trusts, and lax food safety standards. In short, Roosevelt certainly tried his best to change the nation for the better. Did it work?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Flaws. It's two am on a cool and rainy
night in June. Two men in dark coats are loitering
on Second Avenue in New York City, observing a police
officer across the street. The officer is sitting on an
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upturned butter tub, asleep and snoring so loudly that the
two men can hear him clearly above the rain. Finally,
one of the men steps off the curb, crosses the
street and rouses the officer, who tells a stranger to
get lost. Bad move. He just gave lip to Theodore Roosevelt,
the head of the city's four man police Commission, and
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his boss, who is in disguise wandering the streets on
what he calls a midnight ramble. He wants to make
sure that his officers are actually working. He finds, however,
that they are not. Versions of that same scene would occur,
in the words of photojournalists Gabrice Tira's friend and companion,
that night, for three hours along First and Second and
Third Avenues from Fort Street to Bellevue, police would be
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standing on street corners outside saloons, chatting or sleeping or
otherwise not doing their jobs, all of them with sas Roosevelt,
and all would later regret it. A local newspaper reports
that Roosevelt gives the delinquent officers a raking down which
they will not soon forget. Later, he crows to his sister, baby,
these midnight rambles are great fun. He begins going on
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the rambles nearly every Thursday night, sometimes with Reese, sometimes
with reporters. Once he busts an on duty officer as
he's slurping oysters in a restaurant, the officer tells Roosevelt
to kick Rocks Tier Dumots in the next day. It's
just one more chapter in his quest to reform the
police department. As his friend Jacob Brice would say, there's
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very little ease where Theodore Roosevelt leads from the bars
of the Bowery to the halls of power in Washington.
Tier made a career out of taking on eruption, and
we're about to find out how. From Mental Floss and
I Heart Radio, this is History Versus, a podcast about
how your favorite historical figures faced off against their greatest foes.
I'm your host Aeron McCarthy, and Today We're pitting tr
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against profiteering politicians, treacherous trusts, and fraudulent food. This episode
is tier versus corruption. Nineteen century American politics were defined
by the spoils system. Party bosses maintained power by handing
out favors like jobs or government contracts to supporters. In
New York City, Tammany Hall was the biggest distributor of spoils,
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but the system extended to Washington. To Theodore Roosevelt hated it.
He wrote, no republic can permanently endure when it's politics
are corrupt and base, and the spoils system the application
and political life of the degrading doctrine that to the
victor belonged the spoils produces corruption and degradation. And incident
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involving his father may have been the reason behind trs feeling.
In eighteen seventy seven, when tr was nineteen, President Rutherford B.
Hayes nominated Theodore Senior, or the as collector of customs
in New York. The assumed it was a reward for
his philanthropic work, but Hayes actually intended these nominations to
obstruct his rival, Senator Roscoe Conkling, boss of the corrupt
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New York State Republican machine who backed his own nominee.
The Senate confirmation process dragged on and on, with the
at the politician's mercy. After more than a month of
tortured waiting, his nomination was rejected. The political machine question
and the little humiliated it. That's Clay Jenkinson, founder of
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the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University in North Dakota.
There was a giant personal setback and a kind of
humiliation of all that she stood for, and young Rosoff
witnessed this and it made it very angry. It kind
of added fuel to his righteousness about reform. Shortly after
being rejected for the customs post, he died from stomach cancer.
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Tierra was then at Harvard studying natural history, but his
father's death helped alter the direction of his life. He
now felt that a career in public service would be
the best way to honor his father's memory, and one
was elected as the youngest member of the New York
State Assembly. He began as a New York snob, highly
educated dandy who wore really weird clothing and had a
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high pitched voice and was just a kind of an
eccentric and an outlier and kind of a blue stocking.
Roosevelt was determined to break the spoil system, but in
Albany he was shocked to see lobbyists openly bribing legislators
in the hallways of the Capitol. Meanwhile, lawmaker sponsored bills
that were unfavorable to corporations, then blackmailed companies so they
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wouldn't pass them. As you was, government is good, but
government has to be honorable. But you have to expect
that the people that you've elected are the people that
you've appointed their whole bureaucratic positions are trying to do
the right thing. And when they're not, when they're corruptionists
or cronies, or lazy or an apt then that just
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credits the very idea of government intervention in the life
of the American people. According to historian Edmund Morris and
Roosevelt's first forty eight hours on the Committee on Cities,
he introduced four reform bills, only one past, but he
had made an impression and a few enemies. When Roosevelt
decided to push a reform bill through the committee he
was chairing, several corrupt members teamed up to block it.
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T I realized he might need to use a stronger
weapon than persuasive rhetoric. He hit a broken chair leg
behind his desk, then announced he would unilaterally approve the
bill while accusing its opponents of blackmail, which nearly caused
a riot from his colleagues. Roosevelt wrote later the riot
did not come off partly, I think because the opportune
production of the chair league had a set native effect.
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Another time, Roosevelt's enemies tried to smear him by enticing
him into a compromising position with a woman who wasn't
his wife. Roosevelt balked, then had a detective follow her
and discovered that he'd avoided a trap. Everyone wanted him
to shrug his shoulders in the face of the real world,
and tr could never do that. So then his view was, well,
if you find a problem, you've got to fix it.
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And when he discovered that many of his political associates
and even allies, we're not actually interested in fixing it,
that they kind of liked the system of cronyism and
they benefited from it, then that really threw him for
a loop. And so he then has to decide, am
I going to go along or am I going to
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follow my integrity and maybe flame out early? And it
turns out he was able to master it, but his
nascent career in Albany was marred by the tragic deaths
of his wife and his mother. On February Tire also
felt pressure from the mug Umps, a faction of the
Republican Party, to support the Democratic presidential nominee Grover Cleveland
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over James G. Blaine, the controversial Republican presidential nominee. Roosevelt
reluctantly stuck with Blaine. After Cleveland's victory, tr sinced his
time in politics was up. He left his infant daughter,
Alice with his sister baby and took off for his
ranch in the Dakotas. In the West, Roosevelt felt he
could reinvent himself free from Eastern rules. He dove into
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frontier life on his ranch and lived as a local,
writing books, galloping across the plains on his horse, and
managing a herd of livestock. But he was still drawn
to New York and to politics. For years, he traveled
back and forth. He attended political events and began secretly
courting Edith Kermit Carroll, whom he would marry in eighteen
eighty six. That winter, severe weather killed his cattle, and
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he had gone through much of his inheritance. His ability
to make a living off of his ranches was seeming
less likely by the day, and so he turned to
politics again, although a career there also seemed uncertain. According
to Kathleen Dalton, author of Theodore Roosevelt, A strenuous life
the West failed to satisfy tr She writes, he recognized
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that he had not yet lived up to his father's
and now his own expectation that he would make something
of himself, but he did not know what to do next. Still,
tr threw himself into campaigning for Benjamin Harrison in the
presidential election. He wanted a job in the administration of Harrison,
and he wasn't going to get one because he wasn't
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far enough along yet and people were frightened of it.
And so he had to settle for US Soil Service Commissioner,
which could have been just a routine sort of thing.
I mean, I can't name a single other U. S
Civil Service commissioner ever, But he decided to make the
most of it, and he did. The Civil Service commission
managed the government civilian employees Immediately, Roosevelt complained that Harrison's
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handpicked Postmaster General Department store magnate John Wanamaker was replacing
all of the Democratic postmasters with Republicans and ex arding
money from them. Harrison largely ignored him, leading Roosevelt to fume,
Wannamaker has been as outrageously disagreeable as he could possibly be.
We have done our best to get on smoothly with him,
but he is an ill conditioned creature. Undeterred, Roosevelt launched
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a successful campaign to root out corrupt postal officials. As
historian Leonard White writes, t r struck terror into the
hearts of contumacious postmasters and collectors of customs. He wasn't
afraid to take on his own political party, because if
they challenged him and said, well, back away from this
corruption in this post office, or back away from Wanamaker,
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He'd said, well, wait a minute, I'm reading the law.
The law says we need to clean up these things,
and that's precisely what I'm doing. Are you're telling me
you want me to give up merely on the basis
of partisan politics, And they, of course they wanted to say, yet,
that's exactly what we're telling you. But they couldn't because
he was right. They were always about to fire him.
After five years as commissioner, Tier was itching for a
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new challenge. One revealed itself in his home city of
New York. A committee of Republican officials tried to draft
him as their candidate for mayor. Tier's wife, Edith, argued
against that plan. It would cost too much money, especially
if he ended up losing. Tire conceded, but immediately regretted it.
A reform minded Republican, William L. Strong, eventually one he
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offered Roosevelt, who had been campaigning for a job and
intriguing gig New York City Police Commissioner. One of four
men to hold the role, tr was elected the board's president.
At that time, corruption was as much a part of
the police department as badges and night sticks. It supported
a seedy underworld where prostitution, alcohol, gambling, and graft thrived.
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As one example, a captain named Joseph Eakins was accused
of allowing brothels in his precinct to operate while he
looked the other way. On Roosevelt's first day at police headquarters,
a chief told him that his efforts at reform would
be useless. It will break you, you will yield. You
are but human. Chief Thomas Byrne said, Tier never took
a threat lying down. So you've got to clean that
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up so that people have trust in government. And then
when government has to do the hard things which it
sometimes has to do, the people will swallow hard and
accept it. But if government is filled with just these
these thuggish people who are in it for themselves and
their cronies, then the people are not going to have
confidence in government's ability to improve our lives. And so
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that's sort of the groundwork for what he called the
Square Deal. Roosevelt enlisted Jacob Reese to show him the
real face of the city after dark, and the photojournalist
knew what to show him. Saloons were whiskey float on Sundays,
brothels operating under police protection, two immigrant families renting a
single room in a tenement, children sleeping in the filth
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slicked streets. The sites deeply affected Roosevelt. A year after
he became police commissioner, a deadly heat wave struck New
York City. Tire saw children sleeping on roofs and fire
escapes to beat the heat, so times they fell off
during the night. When the city failed to respond to
the crisis, Roosevelt had his police officers give out free
ice to poor residents. According to Edward Khne, author of
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Hot Time in the Old Town, Tire personally supervised the
distribution of ice and visited their homes to make sure
they were okay. I mean, he felt a deep sympathy
for the underdog, the underclass in America and realized that
these were not bumbs. They were recent immigrants, for the
most part, helpless with little or no English, and no
skills that really would command the market. And they were exploitable,
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and they were being exploited, and he felt this, this
isn't fair. Were too great a country to have this
sort of desperation being preyed upon by corporate capitalism. Roosevelt
and the three other police commissioners systematically removed the police brass,
including Eagans and Burns, who had allowed graft to flourish.
He appointed Peter Conlin as the new chief of police. Next,
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Roosevelt took on enforcement of the ban on saloons selling
liquor on Sundays, the Sunday Excise Law, as it was
formerly called had been around in some form since eighteen
fifty seven, but there were loopholes allowing hotel restaurants to
sell alcohol to their guests. It also didn't address private clubs,
which sold drinks to their dues paying members. That meant
the law largely affected working class bars frequented by immigrants,
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but to tr it seemed like a win win. Richard Zach's,
author of Island of Vice, Theodore Roosevelt's Quest to clean
up sin Loving New York, writes that tr had two
main reasons for enforcement. One, he wanted to demonstrate the
new found incorruptibility of his police force. Zax writes that
Roosevelt tried to frame it not as a crusade against liquor,
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but rather against blackmail and selective enforcement of the law.
To Roosevelt knew that saloons acted as unofficial clubhouses for
Tammany Hall, Zax continues, by closing them on Sunday, he
could strip the democratic machine of its favored meeting places.
Tr told the New York Evening Sun do not deal
with public sentiment. I deal with the law. But his
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actions caused enormous controversy. We now know that it was
really hard on immigrants who were working six days a week,
and these saloons were not like bars. You go slam
a few down, and there were social clubs of the time.
People were rightly offended by this and knowing that the
rich had access to all of their private clubs, but
that the regular citizens of New York, in particularly German
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American immigrants, were being singled out by the enforcement of
this law. On Sunday, June, Roosevelt deployed more than two
thousand officers to monitor about eight thousand saloons across New York.
Pub owners signaled their compliance by raising their window shades
to reveal empty bar rooms. The campaign deprived thousands of
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New Yorkers of a relaxing beer on their only day
off from work, but some found a way around the
excise law. Drinkers traveled all the way to Coney Island
in Brooklyn, which was a separate city until and outside
TRS jurisdiction. Others tried to enter saloons through the side door,
but many were turned away. The next Saturday, Mayor Strong
and Roosevelt gave a press conference on the steps of
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City Hall. A large crowd of German American residents who
traditionally drank beer at family gatherings on Sundays, denounced TR's
enforcement as too broad. It was unfair, they said, for
vice written saloons and wholesome family picnics to be caught
in the same net. Moreover, German immigrants as a whole
supported Mayor Strong and felt betrayed. According to zax Otto Kempner,
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a leader in the German American community, shouted, only biggots
could enforce such laws. It is an assinine exercise of authority.
Tr word back. You people want me to enforce the
law only a little bit, a little teeny bit. I
do not know how to do such a thing, and
I shall not begin to learn now. The disagreement looked
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like it would come to a head. In September, about
thirty thousand German Americans turned out for a huge parade
of Lexington Avenue to celebrate liberty and beer. One of
the organizers trolled Police Commissioner Roosevelt with a formal invitation
to the festivities, more as a taunt or a joke,
according to Zack's but they evidently didn't know t R
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very well. My favorite of all the stories is when
he's invited to the German American Parade um and he goes,
even though I mean they didn't really want him to come.
They just wanted to snub him. So he goes, and
he's up there and he's watching the whole parade, and
then some guy in the group and he calls out,
for those of you who don't speak German, that's where
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is Roosevelt. And instead of like ducking been here, which
translates to here I am, here I am, And he
kind of turned it around. They kind of lowed him,
Like the guy has so much courage and he's so game,
he's so willing to do this stuff. Roosevelt also fought
the city's rampant prostitution. Unlike his peers, he believed the
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male customers were as much a part of the problem
as the female workers. In his autobiography, he wrote, public
opinion and the law should combine to hunt down the
flagrant man swine who himself hunts down poor or silly
or unprotected girls. Our duty to achieve the same moral
level for the two sexes must be performed by raising
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the level for the man, not by lowering it for
the woman. As with the saloons, corruption in the police
department allowed illegal brothels to remain open for business. Roosevelt
fired at least one officer for negligence in enforcing laws
against prostitution, but some newspaper editorials accused Roosevelt of prudish
heavy handedness. The New York Mercury called the officers firing
as gross and active injustice as was ever seen at
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a Massachusetts witch burning, and said Roosevelt was a blue
blooded knickerbocker puritan gone to seed a minor scandal instud
when an officer arrested a young woman who was merely
lost in asking a man for directions on suspicion of
being a prostitute. Newspapers protested the besmirching of an innocent
girl's honor by an over zealous police force. She was
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acquitted of the charges, and Roosevelt suffered an embarrassing defeat.
An attempt to regain the moral high ground by reading
the city's most elegant brothel also backfired. Roosevelt would not
be dissuaded. If the law was on the books, he
would enforce it, but his black and white world view
was not universally popular or practical. Tr squabbled with the
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other commissioners. Despite their common motives, citizens evaded the saloon
closures and solicitation laws. Some officials felt that Tier's outsized
personality got in the way, and in eight the consolidation
of all five boroughs into the City of Greater New
York meant that the city's police commission would be replaced
with a new leadership structure. Seeing the end of his
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usefulness in New York, Roosevelt campaigned for a higher profile
position in the McKinley administration, and he got it. We'll
be right back in Roosevelt began to emerge as a
national polity goal figure. Newly elected President William McKinley appointed
him Assistant Secretary of the Navy against the wishes of
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his boss, Secretary of the Navy, John Davis Long. Roosevelt
pushed to build up the nation's fleet of battleships while
keeping a close eye on matters in Asia and the Caribbean.
After a suspicious explosion destroyed the U S. S. Maine
in Havannah Harbor, Cuba, the US declared war on Spain.
Tr quit his post and formed the first U. S.
Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. He and his troops. The rough Riders
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charged up Kettle Hill and helped win a decisive battle
on San Juan Hill that quickly led to a US
victory in the Spanish American War. Back in New York,
the Republican Party persuaded Tire to run for governor on
the strength of his war record. He won by a
narrow margin, but soon moved up in the world, partly
because the Republican machine wanted the reform minded rough Rider
out of their hair. He became McKinley's running mate, and
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on November six he was elected Vice President of the
United States. When McKinley won a second term. Less than
a year later, McKinley was assassin needd and tr was
sworn in as president. And if anyone thought he would
ease up on his campaign against corruption as president, well
that was wishful thinking. As Chief executive, Roosevelt continued his
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war on spoils. He took on the trust's mega corporations
that controlled multiple companies at once, which were increasingly prevalent
in the Gilded Age. Trusts could be used to create
monopolies which might unilaterally dictate prices for goods and services.
Monopolies were great for tycoons, who argued that they eliminated
inefficiencies among the companies they owned, but they were bad
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for consumers, who had to pay whatever prices the monopolies charged.
Congress had attempted to regulate trusts to prevent the creation
of monopolies with the Sherman Antitrust Act in eighteen ninety.
The legislation prohibited every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint
of trade, as well as any attempt to form a
monopoly to unreasonably impede fair trade. Unfortunately, the law failed
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to define terms like trust, monopoly, and conspiracy, and the
loose wording made the law hard to enforce. In the
Supreme Court decided in an antitrust case that the defendant,
a sugar company that controlled of all U S sugar refining,
had not violated the Sherman Act. That ruling basically ended
the government's attempts to reign in trusts. In nineteen o one,
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railroad magnates James J. Hill and E. H. Harryman, along
with banker JP Morgan, formed the Northern Securities Company, merging
three of the largest railroads in the Upper Midwest. Instantly,
Northern Securities became the second largest company in the world
behind US Steel, and had a capital stock of four
hundred million dollars. Critics fear that Northern Securities monopoly would
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allow it to dictate shipping prices from Chicago to Seattle,
in other words, impede fair trade. Enter President Roosevelt's we
realized government's going to have to play a role here
because there's no other counterway for these gigantic accumulations of
wealth and power in the hands of people like Rockefeller
or JP Morgan, or incorporations like US Steel or the
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railroad trusts. And so he realized that unions weren't ready
yet to be a sufficient counterweight, and that government was
going to have to find some way of protecting the
have nots to provide what pr called the square deal.
If you actually unpack the metaphor of the square deal,
it's profound. In his view, is that if life is
a game of poker and cards are shuffled, you might
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get a great hand, that I might get a weak one.
That's just how life works. But if the dealer is
putting cards from under the deck into his crony's hands,
or is miss shuffling, then that's not a square deal.
But as long as the dealing is square, people will
accept that life is not equal and fair for everybody
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and they but they won't question the system. He felt
that it was essential that the people have a great
deal of trust in their government. Roosevelt hinted to Congress
that he was planning to challenge the Northern Securities Company
when he said in his annual Message the government should
have the right to inspect and examine the workings of
the great corporations engaged in interstate business. The following February,
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ignoring advice from GOP leaders, Roosevelt instructed his Attorney General,
Philander Knox to sue the monopoly on the grounds that
it violated the Sherman Act. According to Larry Haig, author
of Harryman Versus Hill wall Street's Great Railroad War, it
was the only thing tr being tr could do. The
law was on the books, and he had to enforce it,
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Hey writes. Legally, of course, it was Roosevelt's duty, just
as he thought it his duty to enforce the Sunday
liquor laws when he was Police Commissioner. He had solemnly
sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. It was
the first time a president had confronted the biggest corporations
in America, Dalton, Rights, and Knox. His suit succeeded in
breaking up the company. That did not go over well
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with JP Morgan, who attempted to reason with tr and
Knox at a meeting at the White House. Morgan suggested, casually,
if we have done anything wrong, send your man to
my man and they can fix it up. Roosevelt snorted,
according to Edmund Morris's Theodore Rex, that that could not
be done. The Northern Securities Company sued to overturn the decision,
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and the appeal went all the way up to the U. S.
Supreme Court. Tensions rose in Washington, and reporters and politicians
tried to guess how the justices would view the government's
role in regulating private business. The Court announced its decision
on March fourteenth, nine four. In a five to four ruling,
the justices sided against the Northern Securities Company. Justice John
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Marshall Harlan wrote in the majority opinion that no scheme
or device could more certainly come within the words of
the Sherman Act, or could more effectively and certainly suppress
free competition. Roosevelt had one. He had shown that antitrust
legislation part of his broader attack on corruption, and government
withstood judicial scrutiny. From then on. Tier's reputation as a
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trustbuster was cemented, and his victory at the Supreme Court
helped roosevel selection campaign that year. In November, t R
was elected to his first full term as president. Having
broken up the second biggest company in the world, he
set his sights on rampant corruption in the food and
drug industry, the kind of corruption that threatened people's lives.
Ken he becomes president, he steps back and thinks, so,
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what are the things that need to be done here?
What can a president do? What can I do? He
looks at all these problems and he realizes, well, for example,
our food supply has changed because in Jefferson's era of
the American people were family farmers and they were essentially
feeding themselves. Well, now we're an increasingly urban nation. People
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are living in cities where they don't even have a
garden plot, and so they're buying food in tins. And
if the food is awful, if it's not clean, if
it's changed, then people don't really have any options because
they have to eat, and they're not producing their own.
According to Deborah Blum, author of The Poison Squad, one
chemist single minded crusade for food safety. At the turn
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of the twentie sentry food had to travel farther and
for longer periods of time to reach city dwellers. Manufacturers
increasingly used preservatives to ensure that food didn't rot in transit.
The problem was most preservatives were toxic and unregulated. For
malde hyde was added to milk to keep it fresh,
while borick acid was used to preserve meat. Eating these
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substances in three meals a day could make people extremely ill,
not to mention that what was listed on the label
might be completely different from what was in the can
Adulterated foods and drugs were a huge public health problem,
and there were few federal laws for protecting consumers. Journalists
had tried to expose the unsafe conditions in the slaughterhouses
and the need for federal inspections, but their efforts were
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foiled by the so called Beef Trust, five major meatpacking
companies had joined together to fight government oversight of their
Chicago based industry. He then gets a copy of Upton
Sinclair's The Jungle, that's the novel that exposed corruption and
unsanitary practices Chicago's meatpacking plants, reads of them as appalled,
and he then compacts Upton Sinclair's only Roosevelt Wood and says,
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I'm sure you're wrong. This looks like just the worst
kind of sensationalism. And by the way, I don't appreciate
the socialist tract in the last chapter. But I'm going
to look into this and if you're right, well, then
we'll do something about it. Roosevelt himself had had experience
with America's lacks food laws. As a rough rider during
the Spanish American War, he experienced putrid meat supplied by
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the army. News reports claimed that meatpacker's provision to the
military with tons of rotten canned beef preserved with boric
acid to mask the stench. Many soldiers who ate it
fell ill and some died. Roosevelt wrote to the army's
commanding general to complain, thus stirring the scandal. The so
called canned roast beef that was issued to us for
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travel rations, and which we occasionally got even at the front,
was practically worthless unless very hungry. The men would not
touch it. There was also a supply of beef supposed
to be fitted by some process to withstand tropical heat.
It at once became putrid and smelt so that we
had to dispose of it for fear of his creating disease.
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I think we threw it overboard. And he looks into
it and turns out its worse than up in Sinclair.
And then Roosevelt calls in the meat packers and said,
what are you gonna do about it? And they say nothing,
and he says, well, I'll give you some time. Meanwhile,
Roosevelt commissioned a secret, undercover investigation into meat packing industry practices,
which issued its findings in the damning Neil Reynolds Report.
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And they come back and they tell him if we
did what you're asking, you would bankrupt the industry, and
blah blah blah. And then Rosevelt says, all right, you
give me no choice. I'm going to publish the report.
And the public is appalled and they demand change, and
Congress is forced to attend to this, and he gets
the Meat Inspection Act of six. When Roosevelt delivered the
Neil Reynolds to Congress, he wrote in the accompanying letter.
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The report shows that the stockyards and packing houses are
not kept even reasonably clean, and that the method of
handling and preparing food products is uncleanly and dangerous to health.
The conditions shown by even this short inspection to exist
in the Chicago stockyards are revolting. It is imperatively necessary,
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in the interest of health and of decency, that they
should be radically changed. Congress did pass the Meat Inspection Act,
and Roosevelt signed it into law on June six. It
banned the sale of adulterated or mislabeled meat products as food,
and required that livestock be slaughtered in a sanitary environment.
It also mandated federal inspections of food animals before and
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after slaughter. On the same day, Roosevelt signed another bill
with a similar purpose. The Pure Food and Drug Act,
prohibited the sale of adulterated or misbranded food or drugs
in grocery stores and pharmacies. Consumers would no longer find
spoiled meat, freshened borax, children's candies tinted with lead, whiskey
consisting of prune juice and cheap alcohol, or fruit colored
(30:00):
with coal tar dyes. They could be sure that the
drugs they purchased for common colds were actually the medicines
they claimed to be. Two weeks after the Pure Food
and Drug Act came into force, the New York Times
reported already the effects of it are amazing. The masquerade
of alcohol, opium, cocaine, and other injurious drugs as nerve
tonics or cure for stomach and lung diseases is at
(30:21):
an end. The trade in no strooms and patent medicines
is utterly demoralized. One of the things that's so important
about Rose he could never back down. He does this
on a whole range of areas. Where he sees a problem,
he tries to handle it quietly. When that won't work,
he uses the bully pulpit and publicity to attend to
(30:41):
these issues and actually winds up getting stuff done. He's
absolutely masterful in his capacity to use publicity as a
tool to move the public to accomplish things that he
had in mind. Roosevelt's reputation as a trustbuster and enemy
of corruption was solid before the public he had gone
after more than forty trusts, but when a national crisis
(31:03):
demanded it, tr was willing to negotiate we'll be right back.
In seven, an economic panic was brewing. People who had
deposited their savings in America's banks and trust companies, a
type of financial institution that competed with banks, had no
insurance against loss when the companies made bad investments with
(31:26):
their money. As Dalton rights, Inadequate regulation left depositors unprotected,
and as long as trust companies could speculate in stocks
and make unreliable loans to customers who bought stocks on margin,
no one could guarantee that any worldwide downturn would not
provoke an American panic and depression. And that's what was
beginning to happen. Wild speculation had led to the failure
(31:47):
of several companies, and worried customers began to pull their
money out of the ones that remained. Some felt that
Roosevelt's antitrust activities also made companies in nervous and liable
to make fewer investments. And so we didn't have federal
reserve system yet, and so we had no backstop, and
the economy was subject to wild fluctuations, and people were
(32:08):
just kind of getting used to the stock market and
to the big banks and the deep investments and trusts
and so on, and so the economy comes apart and
there's a panic. JP Morgan called a meeting with New
York's other leading bankers and US Treasury officials. They devised
a plan to shore up the failing companies by pulling
the bankers funds in twenty five million dollars from the U. S. Treasury.
(32:31):
It wasn't enough. Then, Morgan suggested that U. S Steel
by the failing Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company to
avert the collapse of its investors. Morgan was concerned, however,
that Roosevelt's trust busting stance could get in the way
of the deal. Didn't really understand economics. He was deeply
versed in history and war and political theory and international
(32:53):
relations and American literature and a lot of other things,
but he was He was not an economist, and he
didn't really understand how it worked. That sounds more critical
than I mean it to be, but it wasn't his
best to He gets convinced that if he lets US
Steel purchase a Tennessee based steel corporation that's in trouble,
(33:18):
that this will stop the hemorrhaging, that this will help
to shore up and provide public confidence in some other ways.
And JP Morgan plays a critical role in this. He's
essentially a one man federal reserve system. For the time,
Roosevelt and Morgan made a gentleman's agreement. Morgan's deal would
stave off complete collapse the stock market and save American jobs,
(33:39):
and Roosevelt would not prosecute U. S. Steel under antitrust law.
US Steel had other motives, though, its executives wanted to
eliminate its competition and acquire the Tennessee company's assets facts
they kept from Roosevelt, and so he goes for it,
and years later it's made clear to him that he
was actually kind of tract or duped, that he wouldn't
(34:01):
have had to do that, that that was a much
more self serving acquisition than he was led to believe,
that it is not the best use of the federal
government to wink at restraint of trade, and that he
probably had other options. So was he duped? I don't know.
I think that's maybe a little strong. He was susceptible.
(34:21):
He knew we were in a very significant national economic emergency,
and like all people who are working suddenly and in
a reactive way, how to perceived or real emergency. He
did things that if he had had a year to
think about and read about, he might not have done.
(34:42):
The agreement became a wedge between tr and his Republican
successor in the White House, William Howard Taft. While tr
had a reputation as a major trustbuster, have to actually
went after more trusts in his single term, and his
Justice Department accused us Deal of violating the Sherman Antitrust
Act with its acquisition of a Tennessee coal, iron and
railroad company. Taft charge blew up Roosevelt's deal with Morrigan
(35:05):
and took a swing at his integrity. And if that
wasn't awkward enough, Tafton warned Roosevelt ahead of the news
breaking on October nineteen eleven, Tira's fifty third birthday. The
case and the rift between Taft and Roosevelt over control
of the party's ideology led Roosevelt to challenge Taft In
the nine presidential election. Roosevelt ran as the nominee of
(35:26):
his own pro labor, anti corruption, Progressive Party, seeking to
continue his trajectory of reform that began thirty years earlier
with his new nationalism platform. Roosevelt advocated a judiciary that
worked better for the people, women's suffrage, labor rights including
workers compensation, and national health service, and other demands. The
(35:46):
promises were so radical that the conservative Taft and his
followers broke from Roosevelt completely, along with some of Roosevelt's
former allies. When the votes were cast, Tier didn't win,
and neither did Taft. Roosevelt's third party, Anysey, split the
Republican vote and handed the presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
In his autobiography, Roosevelt reflected on his legacy of taking
(36:08):
on corruption. Where there is no chance of statistical or
mathematical measurement, it is very hard to tell just the
degree to which conditions change from one period to another.
This is peculiarly hard to do when we deal with
such a matter as corruption. Personally, I'm inclined to think
that in public life we are on the whole a
(36:29):
little better and not a little worse, than we were
thirty years ago when I was serving in the New
York Legislature. I think the conditions are a little better
in national, in state, and in municipal politics. Doubtless there
are points in which they are worse, and there is
an enormous amount that needs reformation. But it does seem
(36:50):
to me as if on the whole things had slightly improved.
Were things genuinely better after his reforms? Were people safer
or the healthy? Or were they more politically aware of
what was happening? You know, I think that for many
people the jury is still out. Did he make our
food supplies safer? I think that there's an honest debate
(37:11):
about that. Did he bring attention to the problem of
a nation that's no longer agricultural and self sufficient? Yes?
And and do we now largely agree with him? Indeed,
you every drug has to be vetted, all foods are monitored.
We go farther and farther to honesty and labeling, to
nutritional labeling and so on. That we are, from any
(37:32):
libertarian point of view, a nanny state, and the nanny
state was inaugurated in large part by the Roosevelt. Roosevelt
believed in an advanced, urban industrial country, there has to
be an entity that's looking out for people and for
small companies and for the have nots. And that entity,
whether we like it or not, is government. And we
(37:53):
shouldn't wring our hands about it. We should just make
sure that government is honest, that the people are ethical,
that the standards are being evenly applied, that we study
things before we just slapped solutions on them. I think
Roosevelt was right about that. So you can make the
libertarian case against Roosevelt, and people do. But I think
on the whole he inaugurated modernity in a world whereas
(38:17):
the stakes are so high. History Versus is hosted by
me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was written by Cat Long,
with research by me cat Long and Michael Salgarolo, fact
checking by Austin Thompson. Joe Wigan voiced her in this episode.
(38:41):
The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang.
The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited
by Dylan Fagan and litberal Anti. Special thanks to Clay Jenkinson.
To learn more about this episode and Theodore Roosevelt, visit
Mental flush dot com slash History Versus that Mental floss
dot com slash h I S t O R y
(39:03):
v S. History Versus is a production of I Heart
Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from My Heart radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
History Versus is a production of I Heart Radio and
Mental Flaws. It's two am on a cool and rainy
night in June. Two men in dark coats are loitering
on Second Avenue in New York City, observing a police
officer across the street. The officer is sitting on an
(00:22):
upturned butter tub, asleep and snoring so loudly that the
two men can hear him clearly above the rain. Finally,
one of the men steps off the curb, crosses the
street and rouses the officer, who tells a stranger to
get lost. Bad move. He just gave lip to Theodore Roosevelt,
the head of the city's four man police Commission, and
(00:44):
his boss, who is in disguise wandering the streets on
what he calls a midnight ramble. He wants to make
sure that his officers are actually working. He finds, however,
that they are not. Versions of that same scene would occur,
in the words of photojournalists Gabrice Tira's friend and companion,
that night, for three hours along First and Second and
Third Avenues from Fort Street to Bellevue, police would be
(01:08):
standing on street corners outside saloons, chatting or sleeping or
otherwise not doing their jobs, all of them with sas Roosevelt,
and all would later regret it. A local newspaper reports
that Roosevelt gives the delinquent officers a raking down which
they will not soon forget. Later, he crows to his sister, baby,
these midnight rambles are great fun. He begins going on
(01:30):
the rambles nearly every Thursday night, sometimes with Reese, sometimes
with reporters. Once he busts an on duty officer as
he's slurping oysters in a restaurant, the officer tells Roosevelt
to kick Rocks Tier Dumots in the next day. It's
just one more chapter in his quest to reform the
police department. As his friend Jacob Brice would say, there's
(01:51):
very little ease where Theodore Roosevelt leads from the bars
of the Bowery to the halls of power in Washington.
Tier made a career out of taking on eruption, and
we're about to find out how. From Mental Floss and
I Heart Radio, this is History Versus, a podcast about
how your favorite historical figures faced off against their greatest foes.
I'm your host Aeron McCarthy, and Today We're pitting tr
(02:14):
against profiteering politicians, treacherous trusts, and fraudulent food. This episode
is tier versus corruption. Nineteen century American politics were defined
by the spoils system. Party bosses maintained power by handing
out favors like jobs or government contracts to supporters. In
New York City, Tammany Hall was the biggest distributor of spoils,
(02:36):
but the system extended to Washington. To Theodore Roosevelt hated it.
He wrote, no republic can permanently endure when it's politics
are corrupt and base, and the spoils system the application
and political life of the degrading doctrine that to the
victor belonged the spoils produces corruption and degradation. And incident
(03:00):
involving his father may have been the reason behind trs feeling.
In eighteen seventy seven, when tr was nineteen, President Rutherford B.
Hayes nominated Theodore Senior, or the as collector of customs
in New York. The assumed it was a reward for
his philanthropic work, but Hayes actually intended these nominations to
obstruct his rival, Senator Roscoe Conkling, boss of the corrupt
(03:23):
New York State Republican machine who backed his own nominee.
The Senate confirmation process dragged on and on, with the
at the politician's mercy. After more than a month of
tortured waiting, his nomination was rejected. The political machine question
and the little humiliated it. That's Clay Jenkinson, founder of
(03:43):
the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University in North Dakota.
There was a giant personal setback and a kind of
humiliation of all that she stood for, and young Rosoff
witnessed this and it made it very angry. It kind
of added fuel to his righteousness about reform. Shortly after
being rejected for the customs post, he died from stomach cancer.
(04:05):
Tierra was then at Harvard studying natural history, but his
father's death helped alter the direction of his life. He
now felt that a career in public service would be
the best way to honor his father's memory, and one
was elected as the youngest member of the New York
State Assembly. He began as a New York snob, highly
educated dandy who wore really weird clothing and had a
(04:30):
high pitched voice and was just a kind of an
eccentric and an outlier and kind of a blue stocking.
Roosevelt was determined to break the spoil system, but in
Albany he was shocked to see lobbyists openly bribing legislators
in the hallways of the Capitol. Meanwhile, lawmaker sponsored bills
that were unfavorable to corporations, then blackmailed companies so they
(04:52):
wouldn't pass them. As you was, government is good, but
government has to be honorable. But you have to expect
that the people that you've elected are the people that
you've appointed their whole bureaucratic positions are trying to do
the right thing. And when they're not, when they're corruptionists
or cronies, or lazy or an apt then that just
(05:13):
credits the very idea of government intervention in the life
of the American people. According to historian Edmund Morris and
Roosevelt's first forty eight hours on the Committee on Cities,
he introduced four reform bills, only one past, but he
had made an impression and a few enemies. When Roosevelt
decided to push a reform bill through the committee he
was chairing, several corrupt members teamed up to block it.
(05:37):
T I realized he might need to use a stronger
weapon than persuasive rhetoric. He hit a broken chair leg
behind his desk, then announced he would unilaterally approve the
bill while accusing its opponents of blackmail, which nearly caused
a riot from his colleagues. Roosevelt wrote later the riot
did not come off partly, I think because the opportune
production of the chair league had a set native effect.
(06:01):
Another time, Roosevelt's enemies tried to smear him by enticing
him into a compromising position with a woman who wasn't
his wife. Roosevelt balked, then had a detective follow her
and discovered that he'd avoided a trap. Everyone wanted him
to shrug his shoulders in the face of the real world,
and tr could never do that. So then his view was, well,
if you find a problem, you've got to fix it.
(06:22):
And when he discovered that many of his political associates
and even allies, we're not actually interested in fixing it,
that they kind of liked the system of cronyism and
they benefited from it, then that really threw him for
a loop. And so he then has to decide, am
I going to go along or am I going to
(06:45):
follow my integrity and maybe flame out early? And it
turns out he was able to master it, but his
nascent career in Albany was marred by the tragic deaths
of his wife and his mother. On February Tire also
felt pressure from the mug Umps, a faction of the
Republican Party, to support the Democratic presidential nominee Grover Cleveland
(07:05):
over James G. Blaine, the controversial Republican presidential nominee. Roosevelt
reluctantly stuck with Blaine. After Cleveland's victory, tr sinced his
time in politics was up. He left his infant daughter,
Alice with his sister baby and took off for his
ranch in the Dakotas. In the West, Roosevelt felt he
could reinvent himself free from Eastern rules. He dove into
(07:28):
frontier life on his ranch and lived as a local,
writing books, galloping across the plains on his horse, and
managing a herd of livestock. But he was still drawn
to New York and to politics. For years, he traveled
back and forth. He attended political events and began secretly
courting Edith Kermit Carroll, whom he would marry in eighteen
eighty six. That winter, severe weather killed his cattle, and
(07:50):
he had gone through much of his inheritance. His ability
to make a living off of his ranches was seeming
less likely by the day, and so he turned to
politics again, although a career there also seemed uncertain. According
to Kathleen Dalton, author of Theodore Roosevelt, A strenuous life
the West failed to satisfy tr She writes, he recognized
(08:10):
that he had not yet lived up to his father's
and now his own expectation that he would make something
of himself, but he did not know what to do next. Still,
tr threw himself into campaigning for Benjamin Harrison in the
presidential election. He wanted a job in the administration of Harrison,
and he wasn't going to get one because he wasn't
(08:31):
far enough along yet and people were frightened of it.
And so he had to settle for US Soil Service Commissioner,
which could have been just a routine sort of thing.
I mean, I can't name a single other U. S
Civil Service commissioner ever, But he decided to make the
most of it, and he did. The Civil Service commission
managed the government civilian employees Immediately, Roosevelt complained that Harrison's
(08:52):
handpicked Postmaster General Department store magnate John Wanamaker was replacing
all of the Democratic postmasters with Republicans and ex arding
money from them. Harrison largely ignored him, leading Roosevelt to fume,
Wannamaker has been as outrageously disagreeable as he could possibly be.
We have done our best to get on smoothly with him,
but he is an ill conditioned creature. Undeterred, Roosevelt launched
(09:16):
a successful campaign to root out corrupt postal officials. As
historian Leonard White writes, t r struck terror into the
hearts of contumacious postmasters and collectors of customs. He wasn't
afraid to take on his own political party, because if
they challenged him and said, well, back away from this
corruption in this post office, or back away from Wanamaker,
(09:37):
He'd said, well, wait a minute, I'm reading the law.
The law says we need to clean up these things,
and that's precisely what I'm doing. Are you're telling me
you want me to give up merely on the basis
of partisan politics, And they, of course they wanted to say, yet,
that's exactly what we're telling you. But they couldn't because
he was right. They were always about to fire him.
After five years as commissioner, Tier was itching for a
(10:00):
new challenge. One revealed itself in his home city of
New York. A committee of Republican officials tried to draft
him as their candidate for mayor. Tier's wife, Edith, argued
against that plan. It would cost too much money, especially
if he ended up losing. Tire conceded, but immediately regretted it.
A reform minded Republican, William L. Strong, eventually one he
(10:21):
offered Roosevelt, who had been campaigning for a job and
intriguing gig New York City Police Commissioner. One of four
men to hold the role, tr was elected the board's president.
At that time, corruption was as much a part of
the police department as badges and night sticks. It supported
a seedy underworld where prostitution, alcohol, gambling, and graft thrived.
(10:43):
As one example, a captain named Joseph Eakins was accused
of allowing brothels in his precinct to operate while he
looked the other way. On Roosevelt's first day at police headquarters,
a chief told him that his efforts at reform would
be useless. It will break you, you will yield. You
are but human. Chief Thomas Byrne said, Tier never took
a threat lying down. So you've got to clean that
(11:06):
up so that people have trust in government. And then
when government has to do the hard things which it
sometimes has to do, the people will swallow hard and
accept it. But if government is filled with just these
these thuggish people who are in it for themselves and
their cronies, then the people are not going to have
confidence in government's ability to improve our lives. And so
(11:27):
that's sort of the groundwork for what he called the
Square Deal. Roosevelt enlisted Jacob Reese to show him the
real face of the city after dark, and the photojournalist
knew what to show him. Saloons were whiskey float on Sundays,
brothels operating under police protection, two immigrant families renting a
single room in a tenement, children sleeping in the filth
(11:47):
slicked streets. The sites deeply affected Roosevelt. A year after
he became police commissioner, a deadly heat wave struck New
York City. Tire saw children sleeping on roofs and fire
escapes to beat the heat, so times they fell off
during the night. When the city failed to respond to
the crisis, Roosevelt had his police officers give out free
ice to poor residents. According to Edward Khne, author of
(12:10):
Hot Time in the Old Town, Tire personally supervised the
distribution of ice and visited their homes to make sure
they were okay. I mean, he felt a deep sympathy
for the underdog, the underclass in America and realized that
these were not bumbs. They were recent immigrants, for the
most part, helpless with little or no English, and no
skills that really would command the market. And they were exploitable,
(12:32):
and they were being exploited, and he felt this, this
isn't fair. Were too great a country to have this
sort of desperation being preyed upon by corporate capitalism. Roosevelt
and the three other police commissioners systematically removed the police brass,
including Eagans and Burns, who had allowed graft to flourish.
He appointed Peter Conlin as the new chief of police. Next,
(12:55):
Roosevelt took on enforcement of the ban on saloons selling
liquor on Sundays, the Sunday Excise Law, as it was
formerly called had been around in some form since eighteen
fifty seven, but there were loopholes allowing hotel restaurants to
sell alcohol to their guests. It also didn't address private clubs,
which sold drinks to their dues paying members. That meant
the law largely affected working class bars frequented by immigrants,
(13:19):
but to tr it seemed like a win win. Richard Zach's,
author of Island of Vice, Theodore Roosevelt's Quest to clean
up sin Loving New York, writes that tr had two
main reasons for enforcement. One, he wanted to demonstrate the
new found incorruptibility of his police force. Zax writes that
Roosevelt tried to frame it not as a crusade against liquor,
(13:41):
but rather against blackmail and selective enforcement of the law.
To Roosevelt knew that saloons acted as unofficial clubhouses for
Tammany Hall, Zax continues, by closing them on Sunday, he
could strip the democratic machine of its favored meeting places.
Tr told the New York Evening Sun do not deal
with public sentiment. I deal with the law. But his
(14:04):
actions caused enormous controversy. We now know that it was
really hard on immigrants who were working six days a week,
and these saloons were not like bars. You go slam
a few down, and there were social clubs of the time.
People were rightly offended by this and knowing that the
rich had access to all of their private clubs, but
that the regular citizens of New York, in particularly German
(14:28):
American immigrants, were being singled out by the enforcement of
this law. On Sunday, June, Roosevelt deployed more than two
thousand officers to monitor about eight thousand saloons across New York.
Pub owners signaled their compliance by raising their window shades
to reveal empty bar rooms. The campaign deprived thousands of
(14:49):
New Yorkers of a relaxing beer on their only day
off from work, but some found a way around the
excise law. Drinkers traveled all the way to Coney Island
in Brooklyn, which was a separate city until and outside
TRS jurisdiction. Others tried to enter saloons through the side door,
but many were turned away. The next Saturday, Mayor Strong
and Roosevelt gave a press conference on the steps of
(15:10):
City Hall. A large crowd of German American residents who
traditionally drank beer at family gatherings on Sundays, denounced TR's
enforcement as too broad. It was unfair, they said, for
vice written saloons and wholesome family picnics to be caught
in the same net. Moreover, German immigrants as a whole
supported Mayor Strong and felt betrayed. According to zax Otto Kempner,
(15:32):
a leader in the German American community, shouted, only biggots
could enforce such laws. It is an assinine exercise of authority.
Tr word back. You people want me to enforce the
law only a little bit, a little teeny bit. I
do not know how to do such a thing, and
I shall not begin to learn now. The disagreement looked
(15:54):
like it would come to a head. In September, about
thirty thousand German Americans turned out for a huge parade
of Lexington Avenue to celebrate liberty and beer. One of
the organizers trolled Police Commissioner Roosevelt with a formal invitation
to the festivities, more as a taunt or a joke,
according to Zack's but they evidently didn't know t R
(16:14):
very well. My favorite of all the stories is when
he's invited to the German American Parade um and he goes,
even though I mean they didn't really want him to come.
They just wanted to snub him. So he goes, and
he's up there and he's watching the whole parade, and
then some guy in the group and he calls out,
for those of you who don't speak German, that's where
(16:35):
is Roosevelt. And instead of like ducking been here, which
translates to here I am, here I am, And he
kind of turned it around. They kind of lowed him,
Like the guy has so much courage and he's so game,
he's so willing to do this stuff. Roosevelt also fought
the city's rampant prostitution. Unlike his peers, he believed the
(16:56):
male customers were as much a part of the problem
as the female workers. In his autobiography, he wrote, public
opinion and the law should combine to hunt down the
flagrant man swine who himself hunts down poor or silly
or unprotected girls. Our duty to achieve the same moral
level for the two sexes must be performed by raising
(17:16):
the level for the man, not by lowering it for
the woman. As with the saloons, corruption in the police
department allowed illegal brothels to remain open for business. Roosevelt
fired at least one officer for negligence in enforcing laws
against prostitution, but some newspaper editorials accused Roosevelt of prudish
heavy handedness. The New York Mercury called the officers firing
as gross and active injustice as was ever seen at
(17:39):
a Massachusetts witch burning, and said Roosevelt was a blue
blooded knickerbocker puritan gone to seed a minor scandal instud
when an officer arrested a young woman who was merely
lost in asking a man for directions on suspicion of
being a prostitute. Newspapers protested the besmirching of an innocent
girl's honor by an over zealous police force. She was
(18:00):
acquitted of the charges, and Roosevelt suffered an embarrassing defeat.
An attempt to regain the moral high ground by reading
the city's most elegant brothel also backfired. Roosevelt would not
be dissuaded. If the law was on the books, he
would enforce it, but his black and white world view
was not universally popular or practical. Tr squabbled with the
(18:22):
other commissioners. Despite their common motives, citizens evaded the saloon
closures and solicitation laws. Some officials felt that Tier's outsized
personality got in the way, and in eight the consolidation
of all five boroughs into the City of Greater New
York meant that the city's police commission would be replaced
with a new leadership structure. Seeing the end of his
(18:44):
usefulness in New York, Roosevelt campaigned for a higher profile
position in the McKinley administration, and he got it. We'll
be right back in Roosevelt began to emerge as a
national polity goal figure. Newly elected President William McKinley appointed
him Assistant Secretary of the Navy against the wishes of
(19:06):
his boss, Secretary of the Navy, John Davis Long. Roosevelt
pushed to build up the nation's fleet of battleships while
keeping a close eye on matters in Asia and the Caribbean.
After a suspicious explosion destroyed the U S. S. Maine
in Havannah Harbor, Cuba, the US declared war on Spain.
Tr quit his post and formed the first U. S.
Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. He and his troops. The rough Riders
(19:28):
charged up Kettle Hill and helped win a decisive battle
on San Juan Hill that quickly led to a US
victory in the Spanish American War. Back in New York,
the Republican Party persuaded Tire to run for governor on
the strength of his war record. He won by a
narrow margin, but soon moved up in the world, partly
because the Republican machine wanted the reform minded rough Rider
out of their hair. He became McKinley's running mate, and
(19:51):
on November six he was elected Vice President of the
United States. When McKinley won a second term. Less than
a year later, McKinley was assassin needd and tr was
sworn in as president. And if anyone thought he would
ease up on his campaign against corruption as president, well
that was wishful thinking. As Chief executive, Roosevelt continued his
(20:11):
war on spoils. He took on the trust's mega corporations
that controlled multiple companies at once, which were increasingly prevalent
in the Gilded Age. Trusts could be used to create
monopolies which might unilaterally dictate prices for goods and services.
Monopolies were great for tycoons, who argued that they eliminated
inefficiencies among the companies they owned, but they were bad
(20:33):
for consumers, who had to pay whatever prices the monopolies charged.
Congress had attempted to regulate trusts to prevent the creation
of monopolies with the Sherman Antitrust Act in eighteen ninety.
The legislation prohibited every contract, combination, or conspiracy in restraint
of trade, as well as any attempt to form a
monopoly to unreasonably impede fair trade. Unfortunately, the law failed
(20:56):
to define terms like trust, monopoly, and conspiracy, and the
loose wording made the law hard to enforce. In the
Supreme Court decided in an antitrust case that the defendant,
a sugar company that controlled of all U S sugar refining,
had not violated the Sherman Act. That ruling basically ended
the government's attempts to reign in trusts. In nineteen o one,
(21:19):
railroad magnates James J. Hill and E. H. Harryman, along
with banker JP Morgan, formed the Northern Securities Company, merging
three of the largest railroads in the Upper Midwest. Instantly,
Northern Securities became the second largest company in the world
behind US Steel, and had a capital stock of four
hundred million dollars. Critics fear that Northern Securities monopoly would
(21:42):
allow it to dictate shipping prices from Chicago to Seattle,
in other words, impede fair trade. Enter President Roosevelt's we
realized government's going to have to play a role here
because there's no other counterway for these gigantic accumulations of
wealth and power in the hands of people like Rockefeller
or JP Morgan, or incorporations like US Steel or the
(22:04):
railroad trusts. And so he realized that unions weren't ready
yet to be a sufficient counterweight, and that government was
going to have to find some way of protecting the
have nots to provide what pr called the square deal.
If you actually unpack the metaphor of the square deal,
it's profound. In his view, is that if life is
a game of poker and cards are shuffled, you might
(22:25):
get a great hand, that I might get a weak one.
That's just how life works. But if the dealer is
putting cards from under the deck into his crony's hands,
or is miss shuffling, then that's not a square deal.
But as long as the dealing is square, people will
accept that life is not equal and fair for everybody
(22:46):
and they but they won't question the system. He felt
that it was essential that the people have a great
deal of trust in their government. Roosevelt hinted to Congress
that he was planning to challenge the Northern Securities Company
when he said in his annual Message the government should
have the right to inspect and examine the workings of
the great corporations engaged in interstate business. The following February,
(23:09):
ignoring advice from GOP leaders, Roosevelt instructed his Attorney General,
Philander Knox to sue the monopoly on the grounds that
it violated the Sherman Act. According to Larry Haig, author
of Harryman Versus Hill wall Street's Great Railroad War, it
was the only thing tr being tr could do. The
law was on the books, and he had to enforce it,
(23:29):
Hey writes. Legally, of course, it was Roosevelt's duty, just
as he thought it his duty to enforce the Sunday
liquor laws when he was Police Commissioner. He had solemnly
sworn to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. It was
the first time a president had confronted the biggest corporations
in America, Dalton, Rights, and Knox. His suit succeeded in
breaking up the company. That did not go over well
(23:52):
with JP Morgan, who attempted to reason with tr and
Knox at a meeting at the White House. Morgan suggested, casually,
if we have done anything wrong, send your man to
my man and they can fix it up. Roosevelt snorted,
according to Edmund Morris's Theodore Rex, that that could not
be done. The Northern Securities Company sued to overturn the decision,
(24:12):
and the appeal went all the way up to the U. S.
Supreme Court. Tensions rose in Washington, and reporters and politicians
tried to guess how the justices would view the government's
role in regulating private business. The Court announced its decision
on March fourteenth, nine four. In a five to four ruling,
the justices sided against the Northern Securities Company. Justice John
(24:33):
Marshall Harlan wrote in the majority opinion that no scheme
or device could more certainly come within the words of
the Sherman Act, or could more effectively and certainly suppress
free competition. Roosevelt had one. He had shown that antitrust
legislation part of his broader attack on corruption, and government
withstood judicial scrutiny. From then on. Tier's reputation as a
(24:56):
trustbuster was cemented, and his victory at the Supreme Court
helped roosevel selection campaign that year. In November, t R
was elected to his first full term as president. Having
broken up the second biggest company in the world, he
set his sights on rampant corruption in the food and
drug industry, the kind of corruption that threatened people's lives.
Ken he becomes president, he steps back and thinks, so,
(25:17):
what are the things that need to be done here?
What can a president do? What can I do? He
looks at all these problems and he realizes, well, for example,
our food supply has changed because in Jefferson's era of
the American people were family farmers and they were essentially
feeding themselves. Well, now we're an increasingly urban nation. People
(25:38):
are living in cities where they don't even have a
garden plot, and so they're buying food in tins. And
if the food is awful, if it's not clean, if
it's changed, then people don't really have any options because
they have to eat, and they're not producing their own.
According to Deborah Blum, author of The Poison Squad, one
chemist single minded crusade for food safety. At the turn
(25:59):
of the twentie sentry food had to travel farther and
for longer periods of time to reach city dwellers. Manufacturers
increasingly used preservatives to ensure that food didn't rot in transit.
The problem was most preservatives were toxic and unregulated. For
malde hyde was added to milk to keep it fresh,
while borick acid was used to preserve meat. Eating these
(26:21):
substances in three meals a day could make people extremely ill,
not to mention that what was listed on the label
might be completely different from what was in the can
Adulterated foods and drugs were a huge public health problem,
and there were few federal laws for protecting consumers. Journalists
had tried to expose the unsafe conditions in the slaughterhouses
and the need for federal inspections, but their efforts were
(26:44):
foiled by the so called Beef Trust, five major meatpacking
companies had joined together to fight government oversight of their
Chicago based industry. He then gets a copy of Upton
Sinclair's The Jungle, that's the novel that exposed corruption and
unsanitary practices Chicago's meatpacking plants, reads of them as appalled,
and he then compacts Upton Sinclair's only Roosevelt Wood and says,
(27:08):
I'm sure you're wrong. This looks like just the worst
kind of sensationalism. And by the way, I don't appreciate
the socialist tract in the last chapter. But I'm going
to look into this and if you're right, well, then
we'll do something about it. Roosevelt himself had had experience
with America's lacks food laws. As a rough rider during
the Spanish American War, he experienced putrid meat supplied by
(27:28):
the army. News reports claimed that meatpacker's provision to the
military with tons of rotten canned beef preserved with boric
acid to mask the stench. Many soldiers who ate it
fell ill and some died. Roosevelt wrote to the army's
commanding general to complain, thus stirring the scandal. The so
called canned roast beef that was issued to us for
(27:49):
travel rations, and which we occasionally got even at the front,
was practically worthless unless very hungry. The men would not
touch it. There was also a supply of beef supposed
to be fitted by some process to withstand tropical heat.
It at once became putrid and smelt so that we
had to dispose of it for fear of his creating disease.
(28:11):
I think we threw it overboard. And he looks into
it and turns out its worse than up in Sinclair.
And then Roosevelt calls in the meat packers and said,
what are you gonna do about it? And they say nothing,
and he says, well, I'll give you some time. Meanwhile,
Roosevelt commissioned a secret, undercover investigation into meat packing industry practices,
which issued its findings in the damning Neil Reynolds Report.
(28:34):
And they come back and they tell him if we
did what you're asking, you would bankrupt the industry, and
blah blah blah. And then Rosevelt says, all right, you
give me no choice. I'm going to publish the report.
And the public is appalled and they demand change, and
Congress is forced to attend to this, and he gets
the Meat Inspection Act of six. When Roosevelt delivered the
Neil Reynolds to Congress, he wrote in the accompanying letter.
(28:55):
The report shows that the stockyards and packing houses are
not kept even reasonably clean, and that the method of
handling and preparing food products is uncleanly and dangerous to health.
The conditions shown by even this short inspection to exist
in the Chicago stockyards are revolting. It is imperatively necessary,
(29:17):
in the interest of health and of decency, that they
should be radically changed. Congress did pass the Meat Inspection Act,
and Roosevelt signed it into law on June six. It
banned the sale of adulterated or mislabeled meat products as food,
and required that livestock be slaughtered in a sanitary environment.
It also mandated federal inspections of food animals before and
(29:39):
after slaughter. On the same day, Roosevelt signed another bill
with a similar purpose. The Pure Food and Drug Act,
prohibited the sale of adulterated or misbranded food or drugs
in grocery stores and pharmacies. Consumers would no longer find
spoiled meat, freshened borax, children's candies tinted with lead, whiskey
consisting of prune juice and cheap alcohol, or fruit colored
(30:00):
with coal tar dyes. They could be sure that the
drugs they purchased for common colds were actually the medicines
they claimed to be. Two weeks after the Pure Food
and Drug Act came into force, the New York Times
reported already the effects of it are amazing. The masquerade
of alcohol, opium, cocaine, and other injurious drugs as nerve
tonics or cure for stomach and lung diseases is at
(30:21):
an end. The trade in no strooms and patent medicines
is utterly demoralized. One of the things that's so important
about Rose he could never back down. He does this
on a whole range of areas. Where he sees a problem,
he tries to handle it quietly. When that won't work,
he uses the bully pulpit and publicity to attend to
(30:41):
these issues and actually winds up getting stuff done. He's
absolutely masterful in his capacity to use publicity as a
tool to move the public to accomplish things that he
had in mind. Roosevelt's reputation as a trustbuster and enemy
of corruption was solid before the public he had gone
after more than forty trusts, but when a national crisis
(31:03):
demanded it, tr was willing to negotiate we'll be right back.
In seven, an economic panic was brewing. People who had
deposited their savings in America's banks and trust companies, a
type of financial institution that competed with banks, had no
insurance against loss when the companies made bad investments with
(31:26):
their money. As Dalton rights, Inadequate regulation left depositors unprotected,
and as long as trust companies could speculate in stocks
and make unreliable loans to customers who bought stocks on margin,
no one could guarantee that any worldwide downturn would not
provoke an American panic and depression. And that's what was
beginning to happen. Wild speculation had led to the failure
(31:47):
of several companies, and worried customers began to pull their
money out of the ones that remained. Some felt that
Roosevelt's antitrust activities also made companies in nervous and liable
to make fewer investments. And so we didn't have federal
reserve system yet, and so we had no backstop, and
the economy was subject to wild fluctuations, and people were
(32:08):
just kind of getting used to the stock market and
to the big banks and the deep investments and trusts
and so on, and so the economy comes apart and
there's a panic. JP Morgan called a meeting with New
York's other leading bankers and US Treasury officials. They devised
a plan to shore up the failing companies by pulling
the bankers funds in twenty five million dollars from the U. S. Treasury.
(32:31):
It wasn't enough. Then, Morgan suggested that U. S Steel
by the failing Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company to
avert the collapse of its investors. Morgan was concerned, however,
that Roosevelt's trust busting stance could get in the way
of the deal. Didn't really understand economics. He was deeply
versed in history and war and political theory and international
(32:53):
relations and American literature and a lot of other things,
but he was He was not an economist, and he
didn't really understand how it worked. That sounds more critical
than I mean it to be, but it wasn't his
best to He gets convinced that if he lets US
Steel purchase a Tennessee based steel corporation that's in trouble,
(33:18):
that this will stop the hemorrhaging, that this will help
to shore up and provide public confidence in some other ways.
And JP Morgan plays a critical role in this. He's
essentially a one man federal reserve system. For the time,
Roosevelt and Morgan made a gentleman's agreement. Morgan's deal would
stave off complete collapse the stock market and save American jobs,
(33:39):
and Roosevelt would not prosecute U. S. Steel under antitrust law.
US Steel had other motives, though, its executives wanted to
eliminate its competition and acquire the Tennessee company's assets facts
they kept from Roosevelt, and so he goes for it,
and years later it's made clear to him that he
was actually kind of tract or duped, that he wouldn't
(34:01):
have had to do that, that that was a much
more self serving acquisition than he was led to believe,
that it is not the best use of the federal
government to wink at restraint of trade, and that he
probably had other options. So was he duped? I don't know.
I think that's maybe a little strong. He was susceptible.
(34:21):
He knew we were in a very significant national economic emergency,
and like all people who are working suddenly and in
a reactive way, how to perceived or real emergency. He
did things that if he had had a year to
think about and read about, he might not have done.
(34:42):
The agreement became a wedge between tr and his Republican
successor in the White House, William Howard Taft. While tr
had a reputation as a major trustbuster, have to actually
went after more trusts in his single term, and his
Justice Department accused us Deal of violating the Sherman Antitrust
Act with its acquisition of a Tennessee coal, iron and
railroad company. Taft charge blew up Roosevelt's deal with Morrigan
(35:05):
and took a swing at his integrity. And if that
wasn't awkward enough, Tafton warned Roosevelt ahead of the news
breaking on October nineteen eleven, Tira's fifty third birthday. The
case and the rift between Taft and Roosevelt over control
of the party's ideology led Roosevelt to challenge Taft In
the nine presidential election. Roosevelt ran as the nominee of
(35:26):
his own pro labor, anti corruption, Progressive Party, seeking to
continue his trajectory of reform that began thirty years earlier
with his new nationalism platform. Roosevelt advocated a judiciary that
worked better for the people, women's suffrage, labor rights including
workers compensation, and national health service, and other demands. The
(35:46):
promises were so radical that the conservative Taft and his
followers broke from Roosevelt completely, along with some of Roosevelt's
former allies. When the votes were cast, Tier didn't win,
and neither did Taft. Roosevelt's third party, Anysey, split the
Republican vote and handed the presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
In his autobiography, Roosevelt reflected on his legacy of taking
(36:08):
on corruption. Where there is no chance of statistical or
mathematical measurement, it is very hard to tell just the
degree to which conditions change from one period to another.
This is peculiarly hard to do when we deal with
such a matter as corruption. Personally, I'm inclined to think
that in public life we are on the whole a
(36:29):
little better and not a little worse, than we were
thirty years ago when I was serving in the New
York Legislature. I think the conditions are a little better
in national, in state, and in municipal politics. Doubtless there
are points in which they are worse, and there is
an enormous amount that needs reformation. But it does seem
(36:50):
to me as if on the whole things had slightly improved.
Were things genuinely better after his reforms? Were people safer
or the healthy? Or were they more politically aware of
what was happening? You know, I think that for many
people the jury is still out. Did he make our
food supplies safer? I think that there's an honest debate
(37:11):
about that. Did he bring attention to the problem of
a nation that's no longer agricultural and self sufficient? Yes?
And and do we now largely agree with him? Indeed,
you every drug has to be vetted, all foods are monitored.
We go farther and farther to honesty and labeling, to
nutritional labeling and so on. That we are, from any
(37:32):
libertarian point of view, a nanny state, and the nanny
state was inaugurated in large part by the Roosevelt. Roosevelt
believed in an advanced, urban industrial country, there has to
be an entity that's looking out for people and for
small companies and for the have nots. And that entity,
whether we like it or not, is government. And we
(37:53):
shouldn't wring our hands about it. We should just make
sure that government is honest, that the people are ethical,
that the standards are being evenly applied, that we study
things before we just slapped solutions on them. I think
Roosevelt was right about that. So you can make the
libertarian case against Roosevelt, and people do. But I think
on the whole he inaugurated modernity in a world whereas
(38:17):
the stakes are so high. History Versus is hosted by
me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was written by Cat Long,
with research by me cat Long and Michael Salgarolo, fact
checking by Austin Thompson. Joe Wigan voiced her in this episode.
(38:41):
The executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Clang.
The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan. The show is edited
by Dylan Fagan and litberal Anti. Special thanks to Clay Jenkinson.
To learn more about this episode and Theodore Roosevelt, visit
Mental flush dot com slash History Versus that Mental floss
dot com slash h I S t O R y
(39:03):
v S. History Versus is a production of I Heart
Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from My Heart radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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