Part 8
On the Democratic side all of the forces have united to destroy Wilson, who is the strongest man in the West. The bosses are all against him. They recently produced an application which he had made for a pension, under the Carnegie Endowment Fund for Teachers, which had been allowed to lie idle, unnoticed for a year or so after its rejection, but owing to campaign emergencies was produced, at this happy moment, to show that Wilson wanted a pension. As a Philadelphia poet whom you never heard of says:--
"Ah, what a weary travel is our act, Here, there, and back again, to win some prize, Those who are wise their voyage do contract To the safe space between each others' eyes."
This line is in keeping with my reputation as an early Victorian. ... Do write me some good long letters. You have a better literary style than any man who ever wrote a letter to me, and I love you for the prejudices that are yours. Give my love to your wife. As always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANES
TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Washington, December 10, 1911
MY DEAR COLONEL,--I have been thinking over what I said yesterday, and I am going to presume upon my friendship and, I may say, my affection for you to make a suggestion:
Even though the call comes from a united party and under circumstances the most flattering, do not accept it unless you are convinced of two things: (1) that you are needed from a national standpoint and not merely from a party standpoint; (2) that you are certain of election.
Sacrifice for one's country is splendid, but sacrifice for one's party is foolish. You must feel assured before acceding to the call, which I believe will certainly come, that it is more than party-wide, and that it is sufficiently strong to overcome the trend toward Democratic success. If I were asked I would say that I think both of these conditions are present--that the desire to have you again is much broader than any party, and so large that it would insure your victory;--but no man is as wise a judge of these things as the man himself whose fortunes are at stake.
Thanking you again for the pleasure of a luncheon, believe me, as always, faithfully yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
Roosevelt in a letter marked PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL replied:-- ... "That is a really kind and friendly letter from you, and I appreciate it. Now I agree absolutely with you that I have no business under any circumstances to accept any such call, even in the greatly improbable event of its coming, unless I am convinced that the need is National, a need of the people and not merely a need of the Party. But as for considering my own chances in any such event, my dear fellow, I simply would not know how to go about it. I am always credited with far more political sagacity than I really possess. I act purely on public grounds and then this proves often to be good policy too. I assure you with all possible sincerity that I have not thought and am not thinking of the nomination, and that under no circumstances would I in the remotest degree plan to bring about my nomination. I do not want to be President again, I am not a candidate, I have not the slightest idea of becoming a candidate, and I do not for one moment believe that any such condition of affairs will arise that would make it necessary to consider me accepting the nomination. But as for the effect upon my own personal fortunes, I would not know how to consider it, because I would not have the vaguest idea what the effect would be, except that according to my own view it could not but be bad and unpleasant for me personally. From the personal standpoint I should view the nomination to the Presidency as a real and serious misfortune. Nothing would persuade me to take it, unless it appeared that the people really wished me to do a given job, which I could not honorably shirk. ..."
TO SAMUEL G. BLYTHE
Washington, January 6, 1912
MY DEAR SAM,--... I, too, have been reading William James. His VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE is the only philosophic work that I was ever able to get all the way through. This thing gave me real delight for a week.
Have just read Mr. John Bigelow's REMINISCENCES, or bits thereof, and find that the aforesaid John is much like another John that we know in this city, the fine friend of the Pan-American Bureau. He seems to have been a dignified and solemn gentleman who carried on correspondence with a great many men for a number of years, without ... having indulged in a flash of humor in all his respectable days. ...
Will you support me for Supreme Court Justice? I see that I am mentioned. Between us, I am entirely ineligible, having a sense of humor. As always yours,
LANE
TO SIDNEY E. MEZES PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
Washington, February 15,1912
MY DEAR SID,--Your weather has been no worse than ours, I want you to understand; in fact, not so bad. I think the glacial period is returning and the ice cap is moving down from the North Pole.
The Supreme Bench I could not get because I am a Democrat, and the President could not afford to appoint another Democrat on the Bench. I do not know when McKenna goes out, and I am not going to be disturbed about it anyway. If I had not been unlucky enough to be born in Canada I could be nominated for President this year. Things are in a devil of a condition. We could have elected Wilson, hands down, if it had not been for Hearst's malevolent influence. He is at the bottom of all this deviltry. His aim is to kill Wilson off and nominate Clark, and Clark is in the lead now, I think. God knows whether he can beat Taft or not. It looks to me as if Taft will be nominated. I have a feeling somehow that the Roosevelt boom won't materialize.
My love to the Missis and to Mr. House. As always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO JOHN H. WIGMORE
Washington, February 19, 1912
MY DEAR JOHN,--For two weeks there has been standing on my desk a most elegantly bound set of your CASES ON TORTS sent to me by Little, Brown & Co. at your request. You do not need to be told, I know, how much I appreciate a thing that comes from you and how poverty stricken I am when it comes to making adequate return. I can prove that I have been working hard, but my work does not crystallize into anything which is worth sending to a friend.
The fact is that I have never worked as hard in my life as I have lately. I get to my office about nine, and without going out of my room (for I take my lunch at my desk), stay until six, and work at home every night until half past eleven, and then take a volume of essays or poems to bed with me for half or three-quarters of an hour, and so to sleep.
If the man in the White House had as much sense as I have, he would name you for the Supreme Bench without asking, and "draft" you, as Roosevelt says. By the way, I gave the suggestion of "draft" in a talk I had with him a month or so ago.
The political situation is interesting, but altogether un-lovely. ... It looks as if Clark might be the nominee on the Democratic side. Taft is gaining in strength, and somehow I cannot feel that Roosevelt will ever be in it, although you know how I like him. The situation seems a bit artificial.
Give my love to Mrs. John. As always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO GEORGE W. LANE
Washington, February 23, 1912
MY DEAR GEORGE,-- ... Yesterday I delivered an address before the University of Virginia on A Western View of Tradition--which when it is printed I will send out to you--and in the afternoon was taken up to Jefferson's home, Monticello. It is on a mountain, the top of which he scraped off. It overlooks the whole surrounding country, most of which at that time he owned. He planned the whole house himself, even to the remotest details, the cornices and the carvings on the mantels, the kind of lumber of which the floors were to be made, the character of the timbers used, the carving of the capitals on the columns, the folding ladder that was used to wind up the clock over the doorway, the registers on the porch that recorded the direction in which the wind was coming, as moved by the weather-vane on the roof, the little elevator beside the fireplace ... and a thousand other details.
... I would like nothing better if I had any kind of skill in using my hands than to take a year off and build a house. It is a real religion to create something, and you do not need a great deal of money to make a very beautiful little place. You must have one large room, and the house must be on some elevation, and you must get water, water, and water. ... It is water that makes land valuable in California or anywhere else. Affectionately yours,
F. K. L.
TO CARL SNYDER
Washington, March 6, 1912
MY DEAR CARL,--I have this minute for the first time seen the copy of COLLIER'S, for February 24, 1912, and therefore for the first time my eyes lighted upon your most delicious roast of the Commerce Court. ...
I do not know what the outcome of this movement will be. The only settled policy of government is inertia. The House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations, I believe, proposes to abolish the appropriation for the Court, which looks like a cowardly way to get at the thing, but perhaps it is most effective. However, I really doubt if they will have the nerve to do this. It is a mighty critical year, I think, in our history. It looks to me as if the reactionaries were going to get possession of both parties, and that a third party will be needed and nobody will have the nerve to start it. Roosevelt has got everything west of the Mississippi excepting Utah and Wyoming, in my judgment. That he will be able to get the nomination I am not so sure; but he does not care a tinker's damn whether he gets it himself or not. That is the worst of it because the people won't give anything to a man that he does not want. ... Well, we are living in mighty interesting times anyway.
As always yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
On February 22, 1912, Lane delivered the annual address at the University of Virginia. He spoke on American Tradition, saying that as Americans are physically, industrially, and socially the "heirs of all the ages" our supreme tradition is a "hatred of injustice." That one of the great experiments that a Democracy should make is to find a more equitable distribution of wealth "without destroying individual initiative or blasting individual capacity and imagination." This address brought a letter from Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice of the Supreme Court.
TO FRANKLIN K. LANE
March 17, 1912
MY DEAR SIR,--Let me thank you at once for your Virginia address, which I have just received and just read--read with the greatest pleasure. I admire its eloquence, its imagination, its style. I sympathize with its attitude and with most of its implications. I gain heart from its tone of hope. I am old--by the calendar at least--and at times am more melancholy, so that it does me good to hear the note of courage. One implication may carry conclusions to which I think I ought to note my disagreement,--the reference to unequal distribution. I think the prevailing fallacy is to confound ownership with consumption of products. Ownership is a gate, not a stopping place. You tell me little when you tell me that Rockefeller or the United States is the owner. What I want to know is who consumes the annual product, and for many years I have been saying and believing that to think straight one should look at the stream of annual products and ask what change one would make in that under any REGIME. The luxuries of the few are a drop in the bucket--the crowd now has all there is. The difference between private and public ownership, it seems to me, is mainly in the natural selection of those most competent to foresee the future and to direct labor into the most productive channels, and the greater poignancy of the illusion of self-seeking under which the private owner works. The real problem, under socialism as well as under individualism, is to ascertain, under the external economic and inevitable conditions, the equilibrium of social desires. The real struggle is between the different groups of producers of the several objects of social desire. The bogey capital is simply the force of all the other groups against the one that is selling its product, trying to get that product for the least it can. Capital is society purchasing and consuming-- Labor is society producing. The laborers unfortunately are often encouraged to think capital something up in the sky which they are waiting for a Franklin to bring down into their jars. I think that is a humbug and lament that I so rarely hear what seem to me the commonplaces that I have uttered, expressed. Your fine address has set me on my hobby and you have fallen a victim to the charm of your own words. Very truly, yours,
O. W. HOLMES
P. S. Of course I am speaking only of economics not of political or sentimental considerations--both very real, but as to which all that one can say is, if you are sure that you want to go to the show and have money enough to buy a ticket, go ahead, but don't delude yourself with the notion that you are doing an economic act. I make the only return I can in the form of the single speech I have made for the last nine years.
TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT
Washington, March 20, 1912
MY DEAR MR. JUSTICE,--I sincerely thank you for the warmth and generosity of your comment on my Virginia speech. Your economic philosophy is fundamentally, I think, the same as mine--that the wealth produced is a social product. And men may honestly differ as to how best that stream of foods and other satisfactions may be increased in volume, or more widely distributed. May I carry your figure of the stream further by suggesting that the riparian owner in England has the superior right, but in an arid country the common law rule is abandoned because under new conditions it does not make for the greatest public good? The land adjoining feels the need of the water, and society takes from one to give to the other.
The last century was devoted to steaming up in production. This century, it appears to me, will devote itself more definitely to distribution. It is nonsense, of course, to say that because the rich grow richer the poor grow poorer; but the poor are not the same poor, they, too, have found new desires. Civilization has given them new wants. Those desires will not be satisfied with largesse, and with the machinery of government in their hands the people are bound to experiment along economic lines. They will certainly find that they get most when they preserve the captain of industry, but may it not be that his imagination and forethought may be commanded by society at a lower share of the gross than he has heretofore received, or in exchange for something of a different, perhaps of a sentimental nature? ... Please pardon this typewritten note, but my own hand, unlike your copper-plate, is absolutely illegible. I have been raised in a typewriter age.
Again thanking you for your letter, believe me, with the highest regard, faithfully yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO JOHN H. WIGMORE
Washington, April 3, 1912
MY DEAR JOHN,--You overwhelm me. ... You have no right to say such nice things to an innocent and trusting young thing like myself. The flat, unabashed truth is that I appreciate your letter more than any other that I have received concerning that speech. By way of indicating the interest which it has excited I send you copies of some correspondence between Mr. Justice Holmes and myself.
Our plans for the summer are very unsettled. The probability is that we will go up to Bras D'Or Lakes, in Cape Breton, where we can have salt-water bathing and sailing and be most primitive. I should like greatly to run over with you to Europe, and, by way of making the temptation harder to resist, let me know how you expect to go, and where.
Give my love to the Lady Wigmore. As ever yours,
F, K. L.
TO DANIEL WITTARD PRESIDENT, BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD COMPANY
Washington, June 19, 1912
MY DEAR MR. WILLARD,--That was a warm cordial note that you sent me regarding my University of Virginia address, and what you say of my sentiments confirms my own view that property must look to men like yourself for protection in the future--men who are not blind to public sentiment and whose methods are frank. The worst enemy that capital has in the country is the man who thinks that he can "put one over" on the people. An institution cannot remain sacred long which is the creator of injustice, and that is what some of our blind friends at Chicago do not see. Very truly yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO JOHN MCNAUGHT NEW YORK WORLD
Washington, March 23, 1912
MY DEAR JOHN,--I am very glad indeed to hear from you and to know that you are in sympathy with my "eloquent" address at the University of Virginia. You give me hope that I am on the right track. As for Harmon and representative government, you won't get either. ... Please see Mr. R. W. Emerson's Sphinx, in which occurs this line:
"The Lethe of Nature can't trance him again Whose soul sees the perfect, which his eye seeks in vain."
Fancy me surrounded by maps of the express systems of the United States, digging through the rates on uncleaned rice from Texas to the Southeast, dribbling off poetry to a man who sits in a tall tower overlooking New York, who once had poetry which has per necessity been smothered! Dear John, read your Bible, and in Second Kings you will find the story of one Rehoboam, that son of Solomon, who was also for Harmon and representative government.
I am looking out of the window at the funeral procession for the Maine dead, and it strikes me that our dear friend Cobb has overlooked one trick in his campaign against T. R. Of course he has other arrows in his quiver, and no doubt this one will come later, but why not charge T. R. with having blown up the Maine? No one can prove that he did not do it. He then undoubtedly was planning to become President and knew that he never could be unless he was given a chance to show his ability as a soldier- patriot. He stole Panama of course, and is there any reason to believe that a man who would steal Panama would hesitate at blowing up a battleship?
I hope you ... are giving over the life of a hermit--not that I would advise you to take to the Great White Way, but the side streets are sometimes pleasant. As always, devotedly yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
V
EXPRESS CASE--CABINET APPOINTMENTS
1912-1913
Politics--Democratic Convention--Nomination of Wilson --Report on Express Case--Democratic Victory--Problems for New Administration --On Cabinet Appointments
TO ALBERT SHAW REVIEW OF REVIEWS
Washington, April 30, 1912
MY DEAR DOCTOR,-- ... You certainly are very much in the right. Everything begins to look as if the Republican party would prove itself the Democratic party after all. Our Southern friends are so obstinate and so traditional, and so insensible to the problems of the day, that while they are honest they are too often found in alliance with the Hearsts and Calhouns. The Republican party, on the other hand, seems to have courage enough to take a purgative every now and then.
We must find ways of satisfying the plain man's notion of what the fair thing is, or else worse things than the recall of judges will come to pass. Every lawyer knows that the law has been turned into a game of bridge whist. People are perfectly well satisfied that they can submit a question to a body of fair-minded and honest men, take their conclusion, and get rid of all our absurd rules of evidence and our unending appeals.
And as to economic problems, people are going to solve a lot of these along very simple lines. I think I see a great body of opinion rising in favor of the appropriation by the Government of all natural resources.
We saw a lot of the Severances while they were here. Cordy made a great argument in the Merger Case, but if he wins, we won't get anything more than a paper victory--another Northern Securities victory.
Please remember me very kindly to Mrs. Shaw, and believe me, as always sincerely yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO CURT G. PFEIFFER
Washington, May 21, 1912
MY DEAR PFEIFFER,--I am acknowledging your note on the day when Ohio votes. This is the critical day, for if T. R. wins more than half the delegation in Ohio, he is nominated and, I might almost say, elected. But I find that the Democrats feel more sure of his strength than the Republicans do. Have you noticed how extremely small the Democratic vote is at all of the primaries, not amounting to more than one-fourth of the Republican vote?
... The Democrats are in an awkward position. If Roosevelt is nominated, one wing will be fighting for Underwood, to get the disaffected conservative strength, while the other wing will be fighting for Bryan, so as to hold as large a portion of the radical support as possible. Oh, well, we have all got to come to a real division of parties along lines of tendency and temperament and have those of us who feel democratic-wise get into the same wagon, and those who fear democracy, and whose first interest is property, flock together on the tory side. As always, yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO GEORGE W. LANE
Washington, July 2, 1912
MY DEAR GEORGE,--I am off tomorrow for Baddeck, Cape Breton, where I shall probably be until the 1st of September or thereabouts--if I can endure that long period of country life and absence from the political excitement of the United States.