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