568 Chapter 21 The Age of Reform
Roosevelt had been a sickly child, plagued by
asthma and poor eyesight, and he seems to have spent
much of his adult life compensating for the sense of
inadequacy that these troubles bred in him. He
repeatedly carried his displays of physical stamina and
personal courage and his love of athletics and big-
game hunting to preternatural lengths. Henry
Adams, who watched Roosevelt’s development over
the years with a mixture of fear and amusement, said
that he was “pure act.”
Once, while fox hunting, Roosevelt fell from his
horse, cutting his face severely and breaking his left
arm. Instead of waiting for help or struggling to some
nearby house to summon a doctor, he clambered
back on his horse and resumed the chase. “I was in at
the death,” he wrote next day. “I looked pretty gay,
with one arm dangling, and my face and clothes like
the walls of a slaughter house.” That evening, after
his arm had been set and put in splints, he attended a
dinner party.
Roosevelt worshiped aggressiveness and was
extremely sensitive to any threat to his honor as a
gentleman. When another young man showed some
slight interest in Roosevelt’s fiancée, he sent for a set
of French dueling pistols. His teachers found him an
interesting student, for he was intelligent and imagi-
native, if annoyingly argumentative. “Now look here,
Roosevelt,” one Harvard professor finally said to him,
“let me talk. I’m running this course.”
Few individuals have rationalized or sublimated
their feelings of inferiority as effectively as Roosevelt
and to such good purpose. And few have been more
genuinely warmhearted, more full of spontaneity,
more committed to the ideals of public service and
national greatness. As a political leader he was ener-
getic and hard-driving. Conservatives and timid souls,
sensing his aggressiveness even when he held it in
check, distrusted Roosevelt’s judgment, fearing he
might go off half-cocked in some crisis. In fact his
judgment was nearly always sound; responsibility usu-
ally tempered his aggressiveness.
When Roosevelt was first mentioned as a running
mate for McKinley in 1900, he wrote, “The Vice
Presidency is a most honorable office, but for a young
man there is not much to do.” As president it would
have been unthinkable for him to preside over a care-
taker administration devoted to maintaining the sta-
tus quo. However, the reigning Republican politicos,
basking in the sunshine of the prosperity that had
contributed so much to their victory in 1900, dis-
trusted anything suggestive of change.
Had Roosevelt been the impetuous hothead that
conservatives feared, he would have plunged ahead
without regard for their feelings and influence.
Instead he moved slowly and often got what he
wanted by using his executive power rather than by
persuading Congress to pass new laws. His domestic
program included some measure of control of big cor-
porations, more power for the Interstate Commerce
Commission (ICC), and the conservation of natural
resources. By consulting congressional leaders and fol-
lowing their advice not to bring up controversial mat-
ters like the tariff and currency reform, he obtained a
modest budget of new laws.
The Newlands Act (1902) funneled the proceeds
from land sales in the West into federal irrigation pro-
jects. The Department of Commerce and Labor,
which was to include a Bureau of Corporations with
authority to investigate industrial combines and issue
reports, was established. The Elkins Railroad Act of
1903 strengthened the ICC’s hand against the rail-
roads by making the receiving as well as the granting
of rebates illegal and by forbidding the roads to devi-
ate in any way from their published rates.Roosevelt and Big Business
Roosevelt soon became known as a trustbuster, and
in the sense that he considered the monopoly prob-
lem the most pressing issue of the times, this was
accurate to an extent. But he did not believe in break-
ing up big corporations indiscriminately. Regulation
seemed the best way to deal with large corporations
because, he said, industrial giantism “could not be
eliminated unless we were willing to turn back the
wheels of modern progress.”Theodore Roosevelt addressing a crowd in Evanston, Illinois, in the
early 1900s.