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Service Commissioner. "In my opinion," wrote in 1919 William D. Foulke, a veteran in the cause, "Roosevelt was more consistent and energetic than any other President in advancing the reform." 1

An employers' liability act for corporations engaged in interstate commerce was passed. Declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, a law which met the objections of the Court was enacted at a subsequent session of Congress.2

"Do come on and let to Dooley on June 18. "I am by no means as much alone as in Cuba, because I have an ample surrounding of Senators and Congressmen, not to speak of railroad men, Standard Oil men, beef packers and venders of patent medicines, the depth of whose feelings for me cannot be expressed in words."

me see you soon," Roosevelt wrote

Roosevelt's muckrake speech attracted much attention from the people and from the press. The verb to muckrake was speedily coined, obtained wide currency and finds a place in Webster's New International Dictionary published in 1909 with a direct reference to this very address. The speech was delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of the office building of the House of Representatives on April 14, 1906. "In Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress, "" he said, "you may recall the description

1 Fighting the Spoilsmen, 257.

2 Bishop, ii. 80, 131. The original act was passed June 11, 1906; it was declared unconstitutional on Jan. 6, 1908. The amended act was passed April 22, 1908, and upheld by the Court on Jan. 15, 1912. The objection to the original act was that it was not limited to injuries incurred in interstate commerce.

Bishop, ii. 34.

"Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress' is to my mind one of the greatest books that was ever written." Roosevelt to Dr. Milner, Bishop, ii. 115.

of the Man with the Muckrake, the man who could look no way but downward with the muckrake in his hand; who was offered a celestial crown for his muckrake but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor." Muckraking leads to slander that may untruthfully "attack an honest man or even assail a bad man with untruth. An epidemic of indiscriminate assault upon character does not good but very great harm,” declared the President. He had found an important deterrent to the entrance to the public service of able men of normal sensitiveness, in the gross and reckless assaults on their character and capacity both without and within Congress. "Hysterical sensationalism is the very poorest weapon wherewith to fight for lasting righteousness," he said. "There is mighty little good in a mere spasm of reform." Sanity as well as honesty is needed. Mud slinging is as bad as whitewashing.1

That Roosevelt should know his Shakespeare and his Burke is not surprising; that this preachment should be on a text from Bunyan is more surprising; but it is really amazing that one of his illustrations should be from the "Ecclesiastical Policy" of "that fine old Elizabethan divine," Bishop Hooker, who, one might suppose, was read only by students of terse and expressive English.

The Constitution makes the President Commander-inChief of the Army of the United States and Roosevelt manifested that this was to him an earnest provision. Near midnight on August 13, 1906, the city of Brownsville, Texas, near Fort Brown, was shot up; one person

1 For the muckrake speech, see Review of Reviews, ed., 712.

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was killed, a number were assaulted with the intent to kill, women and children were fired at and nearly every one in the city was frightened. As Roosevelt said in his second Message to the Senate, "These crimes were certainly committed by somebody." After making a thorough investigation of the subject through officers in whom he had confidence, he and the Secretary of War, William H. Taft, came to the conclusion that "from nine to fifteen or twenty of the colored soldiers" belonging to B. C. and D. colored of the 25th regular infantry took part in the attack. The "original crime," declared the President, was "supplemented by another in the shape of a successful conspiracy of silence for the purpose of shielding those who took part in the original conspiracy of murder." Therefore "I ordered the discharge of nearly all the members of Companies B. C. and D. of the 25th infantry by name in the exercise of my constitutional power as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Army." 3

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"It appears that in Brownsville," the President said, "the city immediately beside which Fort Brown is situated, there had been considerable feeling between the citizens and the colored troops of the garrison companies. Difficulties had occurred, there being a conflict of evidence as to whether the citizens or colored troops were to blame." But "any assertion that these men were dealt with harshly because they were colored men is utterly without foundation." "I condemned in unstinted terms the crime of lynching perpetrated by white men,

1 Jan. 14, 1907, Review of Reviews, ed., 1097.

2 Dec. 19, 1906, Review of Reviews, ed., 1065, 1070.
'Ibid., 1063.

and I should take the instant advantage of any opportunity whereby I could bring to justice a mob of lynchers. In precisely the same spirit I have now acted with reference to these colored men who have been guilty of a black and dastardly crime." "The evidence shows beyond any possibility of honest question that some individuals among the colored troops whom I have dismissed committed the outrages mentioned."

Roosevelt's private letters support his public view. "I have been amazed and indignant," he wrote, “at the attitude of the negroes and of shortsighted white sentimentalists as to my action. . . . There has been great pressure, not only by the sentimentalists but by the Northern politicians who wish to keep the negro vote. . . . I believe in practical politics. . . but in a case like this where the issue is not merely one of naked right and wrong but one of vital concern to the whole country, I will not for one moment consider the political effect.” 2

Awarding equal sincerity to Senator Foraker, I have read carefully the three chapters in his book which he has devoted to the "Brownsville Affray"; but I am not convinced that he has made out his case. The contest between him and the President had become embittered from some other cause, and his sarcasm directed against the President and the Secretary of War does not add to the cogency of his case. Military matters in any case require prompt decision and the despotic quality naturally inheres in any executive action. But a calm review of the whole matter cannot fail to convince the im

1 Review of Reviews, 1065, 1073, 1079, 1097.

' Bishop, ii. 28.

'See Foraker's Notes of a Busy Life, ii.; also Fifty Years, Cullom, 356.

partial observer that the President was right and acted on the best evidence, both legal and human, that was obtainable.

The President's tribute to Japan in his Message to Congress of December 3, 1906, represented fully the sentiment of the American people as it was during the war between Japan and Russia, when public opinion was largely on the side of Japan. Since that time, however, an "attitude of hostility" has developed which though "limited to a very few places, is most discreditable to us as a people and may be fraught with the gravest consequences to the Nation. ... Since Commodore Perry, by his expedition to Japan over half a century ago, first opened the islands to western civilization, the growth of Japan has been literally astounding." Then, "Japan's development was still that of the Middle Ages; now she stands as one of the greatest of civilized nations; great in the arts of war and in the arts of peace; great in military, in industrial, in artistic development and achievement. We have as much to learn from Japan as Japan has to learn from us. Throughout Japan Americans are well treated and any failure on the part of Americans at home to treat the Japanese with a like courtesy and consideration is just so much a confession of inferiority in our civilization. I ask for fair treatment for the Japanese as I would ask fair treatment for Germans or Englishmen, Frenchmen, Russians or Italians.

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I ask it as due to humanity and civilization. I ask it as due to ourselves because we must act uprightly toward all men." 1

No lover of peace can feel otherwise than thrilled when

1 Review of Reviews, ed., 957, 958, 960, 961.

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