TEDDY HAS AN ACCIDENT

 

I understand why Theodore Roosevelt (above) acted like a jackass on 3 September, 1902. He was in shock. He had received a head injury, and a bad leg wound and come within a hair's breath of being killed. So it was understandable if Roosevelt wanted to punch the man he assumed was responsible. 

Except time and distance should have allowed the President to see his mistake, and still he refused to reconsider. So events that afternoon seemed to confirm Republican boss Mark Hanna's assessment of “Teddy” as a “damn cowboy”. Hanna had never intended that Roosevelt should be President, and he would not have been except William McKinley, who was President, had refused to listen to a voice of caution.

See, McKinley (above), who just starting his second term, thought the people loved him, when in fact most of them were just being polite. 

His secretary, George Cortelyou (above, right, behind McKinley),knew how many people the Republican's policies had driven to desperation, and had twice removed from the President's schedule  the hand shaking receiving line at the Pan-American Exposition.  But McKinley kept putting it back. 

Thus, maybe only William McKinley was surprised when A poor, mad, unemployed Leon Czolgosz put two bullets point blank into McKinley’s self-satisfied and deluded brisket. 

And then, rather than wait for a real surgeon to arrive, the President insisted on being operated on by local doctor, Matthew Mann, who was a gynecologist. When the real surgeon showed up he was at least smart enough to wash his hands of McKinley, who died of infection a week later, 14 September,  1901.

That left the new President (at 42, the youngest President in American history, and richest - worth $200 million-) facing a huge problem. Over May and June of 1902 more than 100,000 coal miners walked off the job, demanding management recognized their union, gave them an eight hour work day, and safer working conditions. The mine owners (the coal trust) would rather pay to have the strikers shot than pay them more to work. 

While the "Anthracite Strike" caused some immediate economic “dislocation” (above), it would not create real hardship until winter, when the average American home, heated by coal fires,  would be frozen solid. Teddy knew he was going to need the American people to believe he would deal with the strikers and the mine owners fairly and firmly. So in late August of 1902 he took a tour of New England, where the cold would hit the most people first, to lay the foundation for his bargaining position.

First stop was Hartford, Connecticut on 22 August, where Theodore became the first President to publicly ride in an automobile (it was electric!). Then he headed north through Rhode Island to Boston, and up to Maine, speaking several times a day before crowds of 100, 1,000, 5,000, even 10,000 people at a time. Then he swung south again, through central Massachusetts. 

For a full week Teddy zig-zagged north and south across New England, weaving the pattern of his case for compromise. “The great corporations,” he said in his stump speech, “...are the creatures of the state, and the state not only has the right to control them, but it is in duty bound to control them....The immediate necessity in dealing with trusts is to place them under the real, not the nominal, control of some sovereign....in whose courts the sovereign’s orders may be enforced.”

And that was why, on the sunny pleasant Sunday morning, the third of September, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt (he hated being called Teddy) riding in a magnificent black four seat horse drawn landau carriage, arrived in the small industrial town of Pittsfield, in the center of Berkshire County, in far western Massachusetts. 

Most of the town's 23,000 residents were on hand at nine that morning in the Commons Park to cheer short speeches by Roosevelt (above, left) and Massachusetts Governor Winthrop Crane (above), and Mayor Hezekiah Russel, a local industrialist. But sitting on the platform beside the mayor were the men who really ran Pittsfield, whose fiefdom actually spread across a huge chunk of New England, the owner and directors of Stanley Electrical Manufacturing Company.

Inside the brick walls of their plant 1,700 men and women toiled twelve hours a day, six days a week, building industrial transformers, which were used as far away as California, and as near as the Berkshire Street Railway Company - owned by most of the same men and the New York New Haven And Hartford Railroad. The corporation had been formed just the year before, with the merger of eight separate urban electric trolley lines, 150 miles of track, power lines, generators and transformers reaching across five states to form a single urban commuter network. 

Stanley's workers paid a toll to the factory owners just to reach the factory where they labored without representation. Roosevelt could have ridden that on those rail the sixty miles all the way to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he was to make his final speech that night to a crowded coliseum.   Instead he went by carriage. That choice, while more familiar and a statement of independence, would threaten his life.

Just about ten that morning, after a short speech, the President, his secretary George Cortelyou (still on the job), and Governor Crane, pulled away from the Commons on South Street followed by three or four other carriages. There were even carriages in front of Roosevelt's landau, carrying reporters and staff. They were all heading for Lenox, six miles away, and a scheduled noon speech. 

Controlling the four white horse team pulling the landau was the Governor's driver, David Pratt. Riding next to him on the left hand seat was a 6'4” 260 pound Scotsman, Secret Service Agent William “Big Bill” Craig (above). Two days earlier the blond haired, blue eyed Agent Craig had told a reporter for The Worcester Telegram, “Too much caution cannot be taken to keep the crowds back from the (horse) teams and the President.” 

It had been the intention of the directors of the Berkshire Railway and Stanley Electrical to travel along with the President on his journey to Lenox , but there was a delay while Conductor James Kelly did his best to herd his bosses to their seats on the trolley. 

So the Presidential Carriage raced past the Country Club trolley (above) and it was not until fifteen minutes later that 32 year old motorman Euclid Madden pushed the control lever to drive the trolley down the rails running in the center of South Street. Almost immediately, the bosses began urging Madden to go faster, to catch up with the President's carriage. 

A mile out of town, on South Street, (Above, now called the Pittsfield Road), the Presidential carriage climbed the gentle slope of Howards Hill....

...then down the other side.  Crowds were thinner now, but there were still knots of people cheering and applauding as the Presidential party rode by. Then the road curved down and to the right, along the eastern slope of 1,200 foot high South Mountain, to the west of the highway. And the trolley rails slowly shifted from the center of the road toward the right, the better to handle the approaching turn. 

It must have been a relief to be out of the foul smelling industrial town, surrounded by farm land, and fresh air. The only sound would have the rhythmic plop-plop of the horses and the occasional greeting from the thinning throng. As Roosevelt's carriage neared the bottom of the grade (above), the turn tightened, to cross a dry bed of Wampenum Brook. And it was here the dusty Pittsfield Road crossed the trolley track (above, left to center).

 The descent added momentum, increasing the weight of the trolley. A carriage could slow to one or two miles an hour, but to widen the curve for the heavier trolley, which slowed to 8 miles an hour to negotiate the turn, the tracks as they angled first toward  the left edge side of the road before cutting to the right side at the apex.  

Approaching the procession of horse drawn wagons and carriages from the rear, the trolley driver, Euclid Madden did not see the President's carriage until he was just about 100 feet behind, when it suddenly turned to cross the tracks. As the first wheels of the Landau  crossed the tracks Agent Craig stood up, shouting, "Look out! Hold fast!", as he tried  to wave the trolley off, as if it could change course. Secretary Cortelyou also stood. Massachusetts Governor Crane also tried to urged the electric trolley to stop or swerve, neither of which it could do.  It was just about 10:15 a.m.

As the carriage passed over the tracks the trolley car smashed into the left front at a 45 degree angle, shattering the wheel, and hurling the carriage into the air. Closest to the impact, Agent Craig (above)  was thrown off his elevated seat, and fell directly under the wheels of the oncoming trolley. Sliding across the the Agent's shoulders and chest, the machine ground him up against the rail. He was killed instantly. 

Driver Pratt tumbled into the air, struck the rear of the a horse before landing on the roadway, dislocating his shoulder and bruising his face. The right wheel horse was crushed by the impact and began screaming agony,  while the other three, freed from the restraint after Pratt was thrown off, panicked and dragged the wrecked carriage another 30 or 40 feet away from the point of impact

Governor Crane landed some 20 feet from the crash and was relatively uninjured . Secretary Cortelyou struck his head on a rock, opening a bleeding wound which left him barely conscious. President Roosevelt was tossed from the left side of the carriage, landing on his cheek, cutting his lip open, and cutting and bruising his left leg.  The President assisted Cortelyou for a few moments. And then he lost his temper 

According to eyewitness Frederick Clark, Roosevelt stormed toward Motorman Madden, who was by now standing in front of his trolley. They exchanged what was described as “heated words”. No punches were thrown, and a witness later testified that Madden remained respectful in the face of the infuriated amateur boxer President. Eventually, passengers and bystanders stepped between the two.

They put the injured horse out of its misery. They took the injured humans to a nearby home to tend to their wounds. And then, half an hour late, Roosevelt made it to tiny Lenox (above). 

The Washington, D.C. Citizen newspaper  reported, “In front of the Curtis Hotel a vast crowd had congregated, and when (Roosevelt) drove up there was the silence of death...Pale, covered with dust, his eye blackened from the bruise, his cheek swelling visibly (above)...“My friends,” he said, “there has been an accident. One of our party has been killed. He was William Craig of the United States Secret Service. I had come to have for this man a genuine admiration, not alone for his rugged honesty and for his loyalty to me, but for the devotion and the love which he showed for my children. I beg of you that there be no cheering and no demonstration of any kind. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the greeting which you have given me.”

Roosevelt would say later, “If you’re set on risking your life, go to Pittsfield, Mass., and take a trolley ride.”

The national newspapers were calling for Madden and Kelly's heads. On 15 October they were both charged with “unlawful acts” leading to Agent Craig's death. However they were released on bail just two weeks later. It seemed the directors of Berkshire had come to realize the defendant's testimony about hectoring executives and demands for more speed could be damaging to their image, and the company had finally posted the $7,500 bond 

Then, according to the National Railway Historical Society newsletter, when, in January of 1903,  both defendant's pleaded guilty to manslaughter.  Berkshire paid their fines, and continued Madden's salary during his six month sentence (Kelly's sentence was suspended). Immediately upon his release, the father of five was reinstated to his old position. The Rochester Democrat commented, “This seems to be a light punishment for so grave an offense, assuming that Madden was guilty at all.”

William “Big Bill” Craig was the first Secret Service Agent to die while protecting the President, and was buried (above) in Chicago's Oak Woods Cemetery.  

Theodore Roosevelt's negotiations to end the coal strike had to done from a wheel chair as bacteria had invaded his inured bone, causing the leg to swell and abscess to form. Still, on 23 October, the strike ended, saving the winter for most families. 

A new six man arbitration board allowed the owners to pretend they were not talking with the union, but the ten hour work day became nine, and it seemed progress was possible, maybe even inevitable. The mine owners prediction of doom should the miners win did not come to pass. But for the rest of his life, Theodore Roosevelt suffered from flareups of osteomyelitis, the infection in his leg.

A year after the accident, Stanley Electrical (above) was bought by Westinghouse, which actively discouraged any other companies from settling in Pittsfield. This meant that when the multinational moved most production over seas in the late 20^th century, and closed the Pittsfield plant, the community was staggered. Unemployment drove most of the population away. Poverty and drug addition destroyed much of what was left. And the only industry thriving in Pittsfield, today is the environmental cleanup of dioxins used in building the transformers. However, building on the yearly Tanglewood Music Festival, the community has transitioned to a tourist based economy.

Look, I understand why Theodore Roosevelt acted like a jackass that Sunday Afternoon. He needed the emotional release. But there was no real justice in Pittsfield, before or after the accident. There was only life – messy, unresolved and unsatisfying.  I think, this that best you can hope for in this world - just small steps of progress, like never mixing horses and mechanical transportation ever again. That is progress.

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1828 - ALLS WELL THAT ENDS

I have read that the election of 1828 was the first million dollar campaign for President in American history, and the first campaign in which the jackass was used as the symbol of the Democratic Party (above, “Jackass Andrew Jackson”). But thanks to the elimination of many limits on male suffrage, it was also the first time the public (or half of it) became an active participant in the selection of their chief executive. Voter turn out in 1824 had been about 357,000. In 1828 it would nearly triple,  to over one million (being still fewer than 60% of eligible voters).  

And this growth spurt was adroitly exploited by Jackson's campaign manager, Martin Van Buren. Eight years hence, in 1836, when Van Buren ran for President himself, it would be “The Red Fox of Kinderhook” who would popularized the use of “OK” in English (“Old Kinderhook”). So it should come as no surprise Van Buren also played a part in naming the mass of average voters he manipulated in 1828.

Many historians have noted the way Van Buren created the impression of inevitability of Jackson’s election, using newspapers, parades and rallies. He also insisted on the universal repetition of the word “reform”, in speeches, handbills and even campaign songs - without specifying what it meant. In this “morality play” Jackson (above) was of course the hero. He was just an average Joe, like the average voter, with a few holes in his education, and a little quick to get angry with the mendacity of petty government bureaucrats. And the villain of this performance was equally obvious - President John Quincy Adams.

John Quincy (above) defined himself to his long suffering wife, “I am certainly not intentionally repulsive in my manners and deportment.” But intentional or not he was a stuck up prig, more proficient in the stilted world of 18^th century diplomacy, than speaking in public in his own high shrill voice. The nicest thing you could say about John Q. was that he meant well. But even in a world without mass media, in the generation before even photography, the public recognized his reserve, even in his reprinted speeches, and in the language friends and enemies used to describe him. Ralph Waldo Emerson said Adams took his tea with “sulfuric acid”. Van Buren and "Andy" Jackson did not invent Adam's acidic image, but they did build upon it. In personal correspondence Jackson derisively called his opponent “Johnny Q”. And Van Buren ensured that Jackson's supporters copied him, through broad sheets, hand bills, newspapers and “stump speeches” for the three long years of the campaign.

So it was in the election of 1828 that the average voter received his moniker – John Q. Public. The snide inside joke about one snobbish politician became, by familiarity, by repetition and loss of context, the name for a mass of persons. By using the phrase the speaker or writer acknowledges with a smirk that there is really no such thing as an average person, even while referring to them as such.  John Q. Public came into existence with John Q. Adams, but out lived him by over two hundred years. Only when broadcasting (newspapers and books) morphed into narrow-casting (Internet), did the inside joke finally fade away.

I wish the campaign of 1828 had ended as melodramatically as the 2012 campaign, with Karl Rove's meltdown on FOX News - “I think this is premature.” Instead, the campaign described by Niles Weekly newspaper as the “the most rude and ruthless political contest that ever took place in the United States”, dripped to a close like a leaking facet, in a string of  24 separate drips. Of the 12 million Americans in 1828, there were 4 million John Q. Publics who were qualified to vote, meaning they were exclusively male, almost exclusively white, almost entirely Protestant and still largely property owners. It seemed that most Americans, the most powerful in particular, just didn't trust John Q. Public to govern.

The system left behind by the founding fathers in 1789 was designed to function in a narrow homogeneous environment. When Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison in 1787, that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing...” he was speaking of the 1,200 farmers in central Massachusetts who took part in Shay's Rebellion. But that stunted uprising was not about over turning the social order. It was male Protestant property owners protesting high taxes, just as their fathers had. That was the kind of rebellion Jefferson had in mind. And for all the talk about the revolutionizing effect of the frontier in America, in 1828 the population center was still south of the Mason/Dixon line, and well within 200 miles of the Atlantic ocean. The social structure of America was shifting, but slowly.

Ten states in 1828 allowed universal white male suffrage, eight states limited voting to tax payers, and five still imposed a property qualification. In several states Adams supporters tried to require voters to display an ability to read. But Jackson supporters were able to nullify that restriction by adding the stipulation that if your grandfather could read, then you would be accepted as qualified. This accepted the vote of uneducated whites while blocking otherwise literate qualified free born African Americans. And thus was born the idea of a current conditions being “grandfathered in” under new regulations. The outrider remained little Delaware, which still denied the vote to the poor, the middle class, Catholics and Jews. Even the concept of “the popular vote” was new in 1828 – the phrase had first been used by Representative George McDuffie from South Carolina just two years earlier. And the secret ballot was unheard of, as yet. Like minded voters often marched to the polls en mass, where they publicly declared their choice (above). And that led to some very unpleasant situations.

A visitor to a Tennessee village on the evening of November 14^th, 1828, the last day for voting, found it largely deserted. The male residents, it seemed, were out hunting two of their neighbors, who had spoiled the town's Jackson unanimity by casting two lone ballots for John Quincy Adams. “As the day wore on, the whiskey flowed...and the result was a universal chase after the two voters, with a view to tarring and feathering them. They fled to the woods, however, and were not taken.” In New England, the same intimidation was seen against those who dared to vote for Jackson.

The end of the campaign began on Friday October 31^st with voting in Pennsylvania and Ohio. Then on November 3^rd Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia cast their ballots. On November 4^th through November 14^{th, ,}voters in Alabama, Indiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Vermont had their say. New Jersey voters cast their ballots on November 4^th and 5^th . And on November 19^th it was the turn of Rhode Island, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Maryland. In Delaware, where John Q. Public had almost no voice at all, the campaign was so hushed, respectful and dignified that many failed to even noticed there was an election.

But none of these voters were casting ballots for President or Vice President. In 14 states the voters chose electors state wide, whose names and loyalties to either Jackson or Adams were listed on the ballot. In New York, each congressional district's  voters separately picked the electors, and then the electors elected two additional electors. But in Delaware and South Carolina, the legislators chose the electors, providing an additional layer of authority between John Q. Public and the vital choice of a new executive. Then on December 3^rd , 1828, the electors gathered in their various state capitals to directly cast their votes for President and Vice President. It was too convoluted to be called a democracy, but a sort of hybrid, democracy lite. In any case, the results were finally reported to Washington, D.C. on February 11^th, 1829. That night a cheerful mob sauntered into the unguarded White House to examine the furnishings, and had to be lulled back outside with free punch.

It was a good election for John Quincy Adams. He won two more states than he had in 1824. But the electorate had more than doubled, and Johnny Q's support had not. The result was that once again John Q. Adams lost the popular vote, as he had done in 1824. But this time he lost in a land slide, winning just 44% of the popular vote (500,000) to Andrew Jackson's 56% (642,000 votes) - a 12 point margin. In the electoral college it was even more decisive - 278 for Jackson, to 83 for Adams. And regionally the results were telling. Jackson won every state south of the Mason/Dixon Line, and the frontier bordering the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. Johnny Q won every northern state, except Pennsylvania, which gave Jackson over 100,000 votes, and Van Buren's New York. The nation had taken the first step on the road that led to Fort Sumter, in April of 1861.

Secretary of State Henry Clay, whose deal making in 1825 had fueled the political debacle, grew increasingly despondent as the disaster approached. He could not even work up an anger when Adams (above) refused an invitation to speak at the opening of the first section of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, saying he considered such politicking undignified. "Adams", wrote Clay, "would rather be right than be President." It was a choice ambitious American politicians would have to make every four years for the next two hundred years. And the cost of deciding to pay that price would be painfully apparent to winner Andrew Jackson,  just before Christmas of 1828, when his dear wife died.

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