The August Revolution 63increased the Rural Guard by two thousand men, but, failing
to find recruits, he then offered volunteers $2.50 a day to form
a government militia. In addition, he created a Foreign Legion
of Artillery of alien volunteers, commanded by an exotic group
of Englishmen, Americans, and Germans, to handle the gov
ernment's Colt machine guns. As the mobilization went on,
the Cuban Secretary of State, Dr. Juan O'Farrill, assured the
American charge, Jacob Sleeper, that the government would
soon raise twenty thousand men and crush the revolt in two
months' time.^17 Despite the government's optimism, economic
conditions in Cuba deteriorated rapidly as credit dried up,
planters despaired of protection, and the rebels harassed
communications.^18
Roosevelt Considers Intervention
In the United States, the outbreak of the August Revolution
found the Roosevelt administration and the American people
with their minds far from Cuba. The summer of 1906 had
already been exciting. On June 25, Harry K. Thaw had
murdered architect Stanford White over his attentions to
Harry's wife, Evelyn. Then in August, the President had
dismissed two companies of Negro infantrymen for shooting
up Rrownsville, Texas. On August 29, William Jennings Bryan
returned from an eight month tour of "decadent" Europe and
at a rally at Madison Square Garden stunned Tammany with
a proposal to nationalize the railroads. The New York news
papers were locked in mortal combat over William Randolph
Hearst's candidacy for the state's governorship; Hearstism was
synonomous with demagoguery—in Republican circles. The
popular songs were "Waltz Me around Again, Willy" and
"Why Did I Pick a Lemon in the Garden of Love." Serious
readers were engrossed in H. G. Wells' The Future of America,
Jack London's White Fang, and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
The government had scattered from Washington to escape
the discomforts of August along the Potomac. The Congress
was home campaigning, and the leaders of the executive