# VFW Volume 10: "The Panic Of 1907"



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

The thread title refers to the latest excerpt from Volume 10 which is found at the end of the thread.

*REVIEWERS WANTED!* If you would like to review any of the books in this 
series, PM me with your Amazon email address and I will gift copies to you.

This post is to introduce a Kindle version of Volume 10 of a series entitled 
"AMERICA Great Crises In Our History Told by Its Makers" which was published as 
a print version by the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1925. The tenth volume 
covers the period 1890-1914. This Kindle version is published in partnership 
with the VFW who receive 50% of sales revenue.

*A New World Power*



Product Description

By 1890, the world saw a new global power. The United States, barely 100 years
old, had recovered from devastating Civil War and its territory now covered half
a continent. This volume of eye-witness historical accounts takes us up to
Woodrow Wilson's Presidency and 1914. American power and confidence grew - and
sometimes over-reached itself, as Alexander Noyes describes in his account of
the Panics of 1893 and 1907. There's a fascinating account of Henry Ford and the
automobile, and the Wright brothers' description of their first flight. There
are contemporary accounts of the Chicago Exposition; the coming of Income Tax
and the Gold Standard; and the Spanish-American War, including Colonel Theodore
Roosevelt on the Battle of San Juan Hill. The Alaska Gold Rush is described by
one of its pioneers, and this volume also contains speeches by William Jennings
Bryan, the text of the Hawaii Annexation Treaty, and contemporary press accounts
of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Introduction To The Series

"After you've heard two eyewitness accounts of an auto accident, you begin to
worry about history." This observation, attributed to the comedian Henny
Youngman, summarizes the dilemma you face when you want to find out what really
happened in the past. When you read a history book, the "facts" are actually the
author's own interpretation, often colored by a conscious or unconscious wish to
have you share a particular point of view. You're one step (or many steps)
removed from the original source material.

That's why the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States compiled this 12-
volume collection of writings of people who actually witnessed the key events in
American history - the actual actors in the events or contemporary observers of
them. Past historians have spent decades locating, studying and consulting vast
amounts of material such as this. This meticulously chosen selection brings you
the essence of history as originally recorded by those who participated in it.

You'll be reading mostly eye-witness accounts, by people contemporary with the
events they describe, including many significant historical figures themselves.
So you can make your own assessments, draw your own conclusions and gain an
understanding of past events undistorted by the prejudices, assumptions and
selectivity of professional historians. In some instances where there aren't
reliable or easily accessible eye-witness accounts, the compilers have chosen
extracts from objective, authoritative historians of past generations such as
Francis Parkman whose judgements have stood the test of time. Through these
accounts, your knowledge of American history will be immeasurably greater, your
understanding of the key events in the building of the nation immensely
increased.

Founded in 1899, the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (VFW) is a
nonprofit organization dedicated to foster camaderie among United States
veterans of overseas conflicts, from the Spanish-American War to Iraq and
Afghanistan, and to ensure that they receive due respect and entitlements for
the sacrifices they and their loved ones have made on behalf of the nation. With
this mission, the VFW has a natural desire to encourage a broad understanding
and appreciation of American history, and this essential collection of
historical documents makes a huge contribution to that aim.

This reissue was scanned, formatted and converted to e-book format by
Library4Science.com with the permission and encouragement of the VFW, to make
the series more accessible to a wider public. The VFW will receive 50% of all
sales revenue from these e-books. This book is about 300 print pages.


----------



## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Welcome to KindleBoards and congratulations on your book! 

Please note that KindleBoards is a Readers and Kindle Fan forum. Authors are always welcome to post anywhere but, as you browse the 'boards, please keep in mind that self-promotion, of any sort, is ONLY allowed here in the Book Bazaar.

A brief recap of our rules follows: (Note that this doesn't mean you've done anything wrong; we just want you to have a ready reference.  )

--*Please bookmark this thread (using your browser's bookmark/favorite function) so you can update it as we ask that authors have only one thread per book and add to it when there is more information.* You may start a separate thread for each book (or you may have one thread per series of books, or one thread for all of your books, it's your choice).

--We invite you to use your book cover as your avatar and have links to your book and website in your signature. Instructions are posted here

--While you may respond to member posts to your thread at any time, you may only bump your thread (back-to-back posts by you) once every seven days. Once you've responded to a member, that resets the clock to zero and you must wait seven days to post, unless another member posts before then.

--We ask that Amazon reviews not be repeated here as they are easy to find at your book link. Also, full reviews from other sites should not be posted here, but you may post a short blurb and a link to the full review instead.

--Although self-promotion is limited to the Book Bazaar, our most successful authors have found the best way to promote their books is to be as active throughout KindleBoards as time allows. This is your target audience--book lovers with Kindles! Please note that putting link information in the body of your posts constitutes self promotion; please leave your links for your profile signature that will automatically appear on each post. For information on more ways to promote here on KindleBoards, be sure to check out this thread:
Authors: KindleBoards Tips & FAQ.

All this, and more, is included in our  Forum Decorum. Be sure to check it from time to time for the current guidelines and rules.

Oh, and one more thing: be sure to check out the index threads at the top of the Book Bazaar. . . follow the directions there to be listed. 

Thanks for being part of KindleBoards! Feel free to send us a PM if you have any questions.

Betsy & Ann
Book Bazaar Moderators


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power" Volume 10 of the VFW series Great Crises in our History.

*Henry Ford And The Automobile*

By James Rood Doolittle.
_
A MOST interesting and informative chapter in Doolittle's "Romance of the Automobile Industry" is the accompanying account of Henry Ford and the great part he has played in what has come to be the foremost American industry, in point of financial magnitude. The article is given here by permission of the publishers, The Klebold Press, New York._

Ford, the premier automobile manufacturer of the world, is credited with making, in 1893, the second gasoline car to be operated successfully in the United States a car which "has been the strongest educational force the industry has produced."

In the Ford employ to-day--thirty-two years afterward are 100,000 persons turning out 8,500 automobiles every twenty-four hours. Their employer has instituted a profit-sharing plan whereby $10,000,000 has been distributed annually to employees, and has built for their free use a $2,000,000 hospital.

THE name of Henry Ford is known and his personality is respected wherever civilized man dwells. As head of the company that has produced or has scheduled for current production something like $700,000,000 of automobiles in eleven years, there can be no question about his rank in the industry. As the chief of 100,000 workmen, most of whom he developed from mere laborers to the grade of skilled mechanics, each deemed worthy of mechanics' wages but schooled to perform only a single operation, he has gained fame.

The world is interested in Henry Ford as a pacifist, educator and philanthropist, but the automobile industry recognizes in Ford a scientist, a bulldog fighter and a manufacturer par excellence.

Ford invented and built with his own hands a two-cylinder, four-cycle gasoline car that ran at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour in the spring of 1893. That places him so close to the top of the list of American automobile inventors that there is a doubt as to exactly how he ranks. From the best data available as to his status in the list, he should be credited with making the second gasoline car that ran in the United States. Duryea certainly built and ran a car in 1893 and tried out his Buggyaut, commenced in 1891, quite extensively before the date of Ford's first car, but the weight of the testimony is that Ford was second.

He fought the Selden patent to a standstill, without proving anticipation of its claims.

His car has been the strongest educational force the industry has produced, because the ranks of motorists are increased from the bottom and Ford cars are the first cars purchased by entries into the motor field in a large percentage of cases. The array of 1,500,000 Ford cars and the service they have done needs no emphasis here.

Henry Ford and the Ford car are the best advertisements the automobile industry has enjoyed. Speaking broadly, their value to the rest of the industry is incalculable.

Of full medium height, Mr. Ford is slenderly built but sinewy as hickory. Equipped with meager primary schooling, he has taken all the degrees conferred by the University of the World.

There has been an immense amount of flub-dub written about Ford's hardships; his luck and his genius, but the only real hardship he ever had was that he chose to work hard. He was successful because he worked out an important problem at the right time and his genius may be described as the logical sequence of the hard work and success.

Ford's genius rests upon his ability and willingness to do an astounding amount of work. He made a monumental success because he did the work and expended the intelligent effort at the right time, and then kept right on expending intelligent effort until the whole world recognized it.

Ford was the eldest of three sons and three daughters, born to William Ford, native of Ireland but of English blood, who emigrated to this country and settled eight miles west of Detroit, Michigan, in 1847. The young Irish-English immigrant was a man of strong personality and was a steady and moderately successful farmer. He married Mary Litogot some years after reaching Michigan, and Henry Ford Was born July 30, 1863.

A great storm of criticism and protest has been raised concerning the attitude of Ford toward war. Opinions may differ according to the partisanship of those who hold them, but the stern position assumed by Ford is perfectly clear and logical from his point of view. Hatred of war comes naturally to Henry Ford, for he was born to the sound of fife and drum. His mother listened to the tramp of armed hosts and heard the dismal music of the funeral bands; the wailing bugle call of "Taps" over the graves of fallen warriors. She saw an endless line of maimed men come back from the battle front and she gave to Henry Ford an inherited aversion to war that is as deeply ingrained in his being as it is possible for anything to be.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power" Volume 10 of the VFW series Great Crises in our History.

*The Battle Of Manila Bay*

By Commodore George Dewey.

_THESE are the dispatches from Commodore Dewey to the Navy Department which electrified the country with news of his overwhelming victory at Manila Bay within a fortnight of the declaration of war. The action, which lasted from 5:41 a. m. (with an interruption of three hours) till 12:30 p. m., May 1, 1898, ended in the destruction of 11 Spanish vessels and the silencing of the fortifications. The American casualties were 7 wounded; Spain admitted a loss of 634 killed and wounded. Incidentally, a shot was fired across the bow of one of the German warships in the harbor to impress the German admiral with the fact that the American navy had established a blockade. It was respected.

Dewey received the thanks of Congress and the title of admiral for life. Thus the hero of Manila Bay was an active officer in the navy at the age of eighty, when he died, in 1917._

SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, Washington : The squadron arrived at Manila at daybreak this morning. Immediately engaged enemy and destroyed the following Spanish vessels : "Reins Christina," "Castillia," "Don Antonio de Biloa," "Don Juan de Austria," "Isla de Luzon,""Isla de Cuba," "General Lezo," "Marquis del Duaro," "El Curren," "Velasco," one transport, "Isla de Mandano," water battery at Cavite. I shall destroy Cavite arsenal dispensatory. The squadron is uninjured. Few men were slightly wounded. I request the Department will send immediately from San Francisco fast steamer with ammunition. The only means of telegraphing is to the American consul at Hongkong.

DEWEY.... HONGKONG, MAY 7. 1898. (MANILA, MAY 1.)

SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of the operations of the squadron under my command:

The squadron left Mirs Bay on April 27, immediately on the arrival of Mr. O. F. Williams, United States consul at Manila, who brought important information and who accompanies the squadron.

Arrived off Bolinao on the morning of April 30 and, finding no vessels there, proceeded down the coast and arrived off the entrance to Manila Bay on the same afternoon.

The "Boston" and "Concord" were sent to reconnoiter Port Subic, I having been informed that the enemy intended to take position there. A thorough search of the port was made by the "Boston" and "Concord," but the Spanish fleet was not found, although, from a letter afterwards found in the arsenal . . . it appears that it had been their intention to go there.

Entered the Boca Grande, or south channel, at 11 :30 p. m., steaming in column at distance at 8 knots. After half the squadron had passed, a battery on the south side of the channel opened fire, none of the shots taking effect. The "Boston" and "McCulloch" returned the fire.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power" Volume 10 of the VFW series Great Crises in our History.

*The Discovery Of Gold In Alaska*

By Dr. L. H. French.

_DR. FRENCH, from whose "Nome Nuggets" this account of the discovery of gold, in 1899, and pioneer mining operations in Alaska is taken, by permission of Montross, Clarke & Emmons, headed an expedition which installed the first hydraulic mining outfit on the site of Nome, at the mouth of the Snake River, in 1900.

The gold output of the Nome district in that year was more than $5,000,000, and in the following year it was estimated at $7,000,000. During that period a "mushroom" settlement of tents, first called Anvil City, sprung up. Gradually it gave place to a permanent city of frame structures, and there now exists a fully organized municipality, compactly built along the beach, electrically lighted and equipped with a good water system. The last census recorded a population of about 5,000._

GOLD was first discovered at Nome in July, 1898. The discovery was made by men who had been up the coast, who were returning, and whose schooner was capsized in a storm off the mouth of Snake River. After doing a little prospecting they hastened to Golovin Bay where they induced others to return with them to Cape Nome. A considerable number of men did so and made valuable discoveries on the creeks, the presence of gold in the beach not being then known. By this time, as winter was setting in, they went back to Golovin Bay. Of course, after they arrived there, the news being too good to keep, every one heard of their luck. In a few hours there was a general stampede from Golovin Bay to the new diggings. Word was sent to Council City, and on the 18th of November the exodus from that place began. Shortly afterwards the news reached St. Michael, where men from Nome had gold dust to back up their statements, and spent it freely, in stores and with trading companies, for mining tools and provisions to take back with them.

This caused a great deal of excitement among the employees of the stores at St. Michael. In five days many had secured dog teams and provisions, and were on their way over the ice to the new land of gold.

In three weeks the place was nearly deserted, the same being the case with other small camps nearby. The news spread to the villages along the Yukon. Soon scores of dog teams, laden with provisions, passed through St. Michael, en route for this icy Eldorado.

Most of the men had powers of attorney to stake claims for their friends some even had powers of attorney for their wives and children in the States. In this way claims in the Nome district were taken up. In a short time, when navigation opened, newcomers could find little ground that was not staked. During the summer of 1899 about five thousand people gathered near Cape Nome, and whatever ground remained unclaimed was then taken up. Gold was found in abundance. The transportation companies were largely instrumental in advertising the supposed richness of the beach. During the summer of 1900 gold remained in the beach at Cape Nome in small quantities, but the best of it had been taken out in 1899.

The great richness of the country, which can hardly be overestimated, lies not in the beach, but in the interior. So far only placer claims have been worked, although many valuable quartz claims have been located, and next season will see many of them in operation.

The climate of Nome is, for the most part, anything but agreeable. The weather during last July was ideal, the mean temperature being 52 F., though the nights were very cold. In August continuous rain set in, accompanied by high winds. Only those who are physically strong should venture into this country, as the hardships to be endured are of the severest kind. Those going there should, under no circumstances, take their wives and children.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power" Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Destruction Of The "Maine" In Havana Harbor*

A Contemporary Press Account.

_IN these dispatches from Havana to the New York "Sun," dated February 15-16, 1898, is recounted the tragic bombing of the United States battle-ship "Maine" in Havana Harbor, resulting in the death of 226 American officers and men and the complete destruction of the ship.

A court of inquiry, Captain (afterwards Admiral) W. T. Sampson presiding, promptly reported that the vessel was destroyed by the explosion of a submarine mine. This finding was confirmed by a joint army and navy board, headed by Admiral Charles E. Vreeland, fourteen years later, When the wreck of the "Maine" was floated, towed to sea and sunk. Responsibility for the explosion was never definitely fixed, although there has never been any doubt of its Spanish agency.

Cuba, under Governor-General Blanco, was in a state of insurrection at the time, and the "Maine," Which was moored to a government buoy, was in the harbor for the purpose of protecting American lives and property._

HAVANA, February 15. The noise of a terrible explosion startled Havana at ten o'clock to-night. It was soon learned by the people who flocked to the water-front, whence the sound proceeded, that the explosion had occurred on the United States battle-ship "Maine" in the harbor. Definite particulars are not as yet ascertainable, but it seems certain that many persons on board the "Maine" were killed and wounded, and possibly the ship is so badly injured that she can not be saved. From the Spanish cruiser "Alfonso XII" boats were at once dispatched to the site of the "Maine" to render assistance. No explanation of the explosion is obtainable at this time. Whether one of the ship's magazines blew up, or bombs were placed beside her and set off by Spaniards is not known. Because of the excitement in the city the military authorities ordered troops to quarters, and the streets were filled with jostling crowds of excited citizens and soldiers.

Havana, February 16.-2 A. M. By a miracle Captain Sigsbee and most of the officers of the "Maine" were taken off in safety, but one hundred of the crew, it is believed, were killed. Many of the survivors were taken off by the boats of the Spanish cruiser "Alfonso XII.- At this moment the hull of the ship is burning, the flames illuminating the harbor and making a striking scene for thousands gathered on the water-front. It is apparent to observers on shore that the vessel is sinking rapidly to the bottom of the bay. The entire city is panic stricken.

Washington, February 16.-4 A. M. Secretary Long has received this telegram from Captain Sigsbee:

"'Maine' blown up in Havana Harbor 9:40 P. M. and destroyed. Many wounded and doubtless more killed and drowned. Wounded and others on board Spanish man-of-war and Ward Line steamer. Send lighthouse-tenders from Key West for crew and few pieces of equipment still above water. No one had other clothes than then upon him. Public opinion should be suspended till further report. All officers believed to be saved. Jenkins and Merritt not yet accounted for. Many Spanish officers, including representatives of General Blanco, now with me, and express sympathy.

"Sigsbee."

Havana, February 16.-4 P. M. Witnesses of the explosion that destroyed the "Maine" say that at the moment of concussion a vast mass was seen to rise to a great height. In the sudden and blinding light no one seems to have been able to discern the nature of this mass or whether it rose from beside the battle-ship or inside it. Up to this time there are reported 251 killed and 99 wounded. Immediately after the report small boats hurrying to the spot from all sides picked up twenty-eight wounded men struggling in the water. Of them six were on the point of succumbing when pulled in. They were taken on board the "City of Washington" and cared for. Not one of the wounded in the military hospital has died up to this hour, but the condition of several is precarious. The "Mascotte" will take to Key West some of the injured who are in condition to be moved. American vessels are expected at any moment to arrive for the purpose of rendering any assistance possible.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Panic Of 1893*

By Alexander D. Noyes.

_NOYES, from whose "Forty Years of American Finance" this account is taken, by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons, is a foremost historian of the industrial and financial life of America. As financial editor of the New York "Evening Post" from 1891 to 1920, he was in an admirable position to observe and report the panic of 1893. He wrote a Free Coinage Catechism, of which 2,000,000 copies were circulated in 1896, and various other monographs on the financial question.

Unlike preceding and succeeding panics in this country, that of 1893 was the sequel to an orgy of reckless investments of American capital in foreign countries. The panic was hastened by the collapse of an important railroad company, and an industrial corporation that had been paying dividends illegally. Wrecked in the panic were 172 State banks, 177 private banks, 47 savings banks, 13 loan and trust companies and 16 mortgage companies._

THE Treasury was confronted for the first time in its history with a heavy drain on its gold reserve to redeem outstanding notes. During nine months Secretary Foster was engaged in a continuous struggle to save the redemption fund. The strain relaxed temporarily in the autumn of 1892, when interior trade was again very large. Practically no gold was imported, but, on the other hand, exports ceased almost entirely. Moreover, upward of $25,000,000 legal tenders were drawn from the New York banks to the West and South, and the Treasury obtained some gold from these institutions in exchange for notes delivered at interior points. But when the eastward flow of currency began again, at the end of the harvest season, gold exports were resumed and with them the presentation of legal tenders for redemption. In December, 1892, and January, 1893, upward of $25,000,000 gold was withdrawn by note-holders from the Treasury to provide for export needs.

By the close of January the Treasury's gold reserve had fallen to a figure barely eight millions over the legal minimum. With February's early withdrawals even larger, Secretary Foster so far lost hope of warding off the crisis that he gave orders to prepare the engraved plates for a bond-issue under the Resumption Act. As a last resort, however, he bethought himself of Secretary Manning's gold-borrowing operations of 1885. In February Mr. Foster came in person to New York to urge the banks to give up gold voluntarily in exchange for the Treasury's legal-tender surplus.

Such a situation could not continue long. The very sight of this desperate struggle going on to maintain the public credit was sufficient to alarm both home and foreign interests, and this alarm was now reflected everywhere. The feverish money market, the disordered and uneasy market for securities, and the renewed advance in foreign exchange, combined to bring matters to a head. On April 15, Secretary Carlisle gave notice that issue of Treasury gold certificates should be suspended. This action was taken merely in conformity with the Law of 1882, already cited. It was, however, public announcement that, for the first time since resumption of specie payments, the reserve against the legal tenders had fallen below the statutory minimum.

The news provoked immediate and uneasy inquiry as to what the Treasury's next move would be. No definite advices came from Washington, but in the following week a very unexpected and financially alarming rumor ran through the markets. Out of the $25,000,000 legal tenders redeemed in gold during March and April, 1893, nearly $11,000,000 had been Treasury notes of 1890. Under one clause of the Law of 1890 the Secretary was empowered to "redeem such notes in gold or silver coin at his discretion." The burden of the rumor of April 17th was that the Treasury, now that its gold reserve had actually fallen below the legal limit, would refuse further redemption of these notes in gold, and would tender only silver coin. During the two or three days in which this rumor circulated, general misgiving and uneasiness prevailed, the security markets fell into great disorder, foreign exchange again rose rapidly, and the money market ran up to the panicky rate of fifteen percent.

The public mind was on the verge of panic. During a year or more, it had been continuously disturbed by the undermining of the Treasury, a process visible to all observers. The financial situation in itself was vulnerable. In all probability, the crash of 1893 would have come twelve months before, had it not been for the accident of 1891's great harvest, in the face of European famine.

The panic of 1893, in its outbreak and in its culmination, followed the several successive steps familiar to all such episodes. One or two powerful corporations, which had been leading in the general plunge into debt, gave the first signals of distress. On February 20th, the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company, with a capital of forty millions and a debt of more than $125,000,000, went into bankruptcy; on the 5th of May, the National Cordage Company, with twenty millions capital and ten millions liabilities, followed suit. The management of both these enterprises had been marked by the rashest sort of speculation ; both had been favorites on the speculative markets. The Cordage Company in particular had kept in the race for debt up to the moment of its ruin. In the very month of the company's insolvency its directors declared a heavy cash dividend; paid, as may be supposed, out of capital. As it turned out, the failure of this notorious undertaking was the blow that undermined the structure of speculative credit. In January, National Cordage stock had advanced twelve per cent. on the New York market, selling at 147. Sixteen weeks later, it fell below ten dollars per share, and with it, during the opening week of May, the whole stock market collapsed. The bubble of inflated credit having been thus punctured, a general movement of liquidation started. This movement immediately developed very serious symptoms. Of these symptoms the most alarming was the rapid withdrawal of cash reserves from the city banks.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The First Airplane To Fly Successfully*

By Orville and Wilbur Wright.

_THE Wright brothers, from whose "Early History of the Airplane" this account is taken, accomplished their first successful flight with a heavier-than-air biplane, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903. It lasted twelve seconds and was the first time in the history of the world that a machine carrying a man raised itself by its own power into the air in free flight, sailed forward on a level course, and landed safely.

Of the brothers, Wilbur, who died in 1912, made a spectacular flight, in 1909, from Governor's Island up the Hudson to Grant's Tomb, during the Hudson-Fulton celebration in New York. He and his brother, Orville, were awarded gold medals by the French Academy of Sciences in that year. Their machine was afterward adopted by the United States army, and the French patents were sold for $100,000._

THOUGH the subject of aerial navigation is generally considered new, it has occupied the minds of men more or less from the earliest ages. Our personal interest in it dates from our childhood days. Late in the autumn of 1878 our father came into the house one evening with some object partly concealed in his hands, and before we could see what it was, he tossed it into the air. Instead of falling to the floor, as we expected, it flew across the room, till it struck the ceiling, where it fluttered awhile, and finally sank to the floor. It was a little toy, known to scientists as a "helicopter," but which we, with sublime disregard for science, at once dubbed a "bat." It was a light frame of cork and bamboo, covered with paper, which formed two screws, driven in opposite directions by rubber bands under torsion. A toy so delicate lasted only a short time in the hands of small boys, but its memory was abiding.

Several years later we began building these helicopters for ourselves, making each one larger than that preceding. But, to our astonishment, we found that the larger the "bat" the less it flew. We did not know that a machine having only twice the linear dimensions of another would require eight times the power. We finally became discouraged, and returned to kite-flying, a sport to which we had devoted so much attention that we were regarded as experts. But as we became older we had to give up this fascinating sport as unbecoming to boys of our ages.

It was not till the news of the sad death of Lilienthal reached America in the summer of 1896 that we again gave more than passing attention to the subject of flying. We then studied with great interest Chanute's "Progress in Flying Machines," Langley's "Experiments in Aerodynamics," the "Aeronautical Annuals" of 1905, 1906, and 1907, and several pamphlets published by the Smithsonian Institution, especially articles by Lilienthal and extracts from Mouillard's "Empire of the Air." The larger works gave us a good understanding of the nature of the flying problem, and the difficulties in past attempts to solve it, while Mouillard and Lilienthal, the great missionaries of the flying cause, infected us with their own unquenchable enthusiasm, and transformed idle curiosity into the active zeal of workers.

In the field of aviation there were two schools. The first, represented by such men as Professor Langley and Sir Hiram Maxim, gave chief attention to power flight; the second, represented by Lilienthal, Moullard and Chanute, to soaring flight. Our sympathies were with the latter school, partly from impatience at the wasteful extravagance of mounting delicate and costly machinery on wings which no one knew how to manage, and partly, no doubt, from the extraordinary charm and enthusiasm with which the apostles of soaring flight set forth the beauties of sailing through the air on fixed wings, deriving the motive power from the wind itself.

The balancing of a flyer may seem, at first thought, to be a very simple matter, yet almost every experimenter had found in this one point which he could not satisfactorily master. Many different methods were tried. Some experimenters placed the center of gravity far below the wings, in the belief that the weight would naturally seek to remain at the lowest point. It is true, that, like the pendulum, it tended to seek the lowest point; but also, like the pendulum, it tended to oscillate in a manner destructive of all stability. A more satisfactory system, especially for lateral balance, was that of arranging the wings in the shape of a broad V, to form a dihedral angle, with the center low and the wing-tips elevated. In theory this was an automatic system, but in practice it had two serious defects: first, it tended to keep the machine oscillating ; and second, its usefulness was restricted to calm air.

In a slightly modified form the same system was applied to the fore-and-aft balance. The main aeroplane was set at a positive angle, and a horizontal tail at a negative angle, while the center of gravity was placed far forward. As in the case of lateral control, there was a tendency to constant undulation, and the very forces which caused a restoration of balance in calms caused a disturbance of the balance in winds. Notwithstanding the known limitations of this principle, it had been embodied in almost every prominent flying machine which had been built.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Boxer Rebellion In China*

Account of an Eye-Witness.

_IN "Indiscreet Letters from Pekin," edited by B. L. Putnam Weale and published by Dodd, Mead & Company, an eye-witness thus describes the Boxer insurrection of 1900 in China. The organization known as Boxers (meaning "The Fist of Righteous Harmony") was a sort of Chinese Ku Klux Klan organized to defend China against foreign aggression. The movement was secretly encouraged by the Chinese Dowager Empress, who gloated over the wholesale torture and killing of foreigners.

Havoc reigned in Pekin, Tien-tsin and elsewhere until a relief force of 12,000 combined British, American, German, Russian and Japanese troops captured Pekin on August 15, 1900. The Dowager Empress and Court had fled. Eventually an indemnity of $735,000,000 was demanded of China. Through the good offices of the American government, this was reduced one-half, and of its portion of the award the United States refunded $13,000,000 to a grateful China._

I AM convinced that not only does everything come to him who knows how to wait, but that sooner or later everybody meets with their deserts.

The British Legation, allowed to sink into a somewhat somnolent condition owing to its immunity from direct attack, has been now rudely awakened. Fires commencing in earnest yesterday, after a few half-hearted attempts made previously, have been raging in half a dozen different places in this huge compound ; and one incendiary, creeping in with the stealthiness of a cat, threw his torches so skilfully that for at least an hour the fate of the Ministerial residences hung in the balance, and Ministerial fears assumed alarming proportions. Again I was satisfied; everybody should sooner or later meet with their deserts.

I have already said how the British Legation is situated. Protected on the east and south entirely by the other Legations and linked defenses, it can run no risk from these quarters until the defenders of these lines are beaten back by superior weight of numbers. Partially protected on the west, owing to the fact that an immense grass-grown park renders approach from this quarter without carefully entrenching and barricading simple suicide, there remain but two points of meager dimensions at which the Chinese attack can be successfully developed without much preliminary preparation ; the narrow northern end and a southwestern point formed by a regular rabbit-warren of Chinese houses that push right up to the Legation walls. It is precisely at these two points that the Chinese, with their peculiar methods of attack, directed their best efforts.

Beginning in earnest at the northern end, after some inconsiderable efforts on the southwestern corner, they set fire to the sacro-sanct Hanlin Yuan, which is at once the Oxford and Cambridge, the Heidelberg and the Sorbonne of the eighteen provinces of China rolled into one, and is revered above all other earthly things by the Chinese scholar. In the spacious halls of the Hanlin Academy, which back against the flanking wall of the British Legation, are gathered in mighty piles the literature and labors of the premier scholars of the Celestial Empire. Here complete editions of Gargantuan compass; vast cyclopedia copied by hand and running into thousands of volumes; essays dating from the time of dynasties now almost forgotten ; woodblocks black with age crowded the endless unvarnished shelves. In an empire where scholarship has attained an untrammeled pedantry never dreamed of in the remote West, in a country where a perfect knowledge of the classics is respected by beggar and prince to such an extent that to attempt to convey an idea would cause laughter in Europe, all of us thought even the pessimists that it could never happen that this holy of holies would be desecrated by fire. Listen to what happened.

To the sound of a heavy rifle-fire, designed to frustrate all efforts at extinguishing the dread fire-demon, the flaming torch was applied by Chinese soldiery to half a dozen different places, and almost before anybody knew it, the holy of holies was lustily ablaze. As the flames shot skywards, advertising the danger to the most purblind, everybody at last became energetic and sank their feuds. British marines and volunteers were formed up and independent commands rushed over from the other lines ; a hole was smashed through a wall, and the mixed force poured raggedly into the enclosures beyond. They had to clamber over obstacles, through tightly jammed doors, under falling beams, occasionally halting to volley heavily until they had cleared all the ground around the Hanlin, and found perhaps half a ton of empty brass cartridge cases left by the enemy, who had discreetly flown. From a safe distance snipers, hidden from view and untraceable, kept on firing steadily; but they were careful not to advance.

Meanwhile the flames were spreading rapidly, the century-old beams and rafters crackling with a most alarming fierceness which threatened to engulf the adjacent buildings of the Legation. What huge flames they were! The priceless literature was also catching fire, so the dragon-adorned pools and wells in the peaceful Hanlin courtyards were soon choked with the tens of thousands of books that were heaved in by many willing hands. At all costs this fire must be checked. Dozens of men from the British Legation, hastily whipped into action by sharp words, were now pushed into the burning Hanlin College, abandoning their tranquil occupation of committee meetings and commissariat work, which had been engaging their attention since the first shots had been fired on the 20th, and thus reenforced the marines and the volunteers soon made short work of twenty centuries of literature. Beautiful silk-covered volumes, illumined by hand and written by masters of the Chinese brush, were pitched unceremoniously here and there by the thousand with utter disregard. Sometimes a sinologue, of whom there are plenty in the Legations, unable to restrain himself at the sight of these literary riches which in any other times would be utterly beyond his reach, would select an armful of volumes and attempt to fight his way back through the flames to where he might deposit his burden in safety; but soon the way was barred by marines with stern orders to stop such literary looting. Some of these books were worth their weight in gold. A few managed to get through with their spoils, and it is possible that missing copies of China's literature may be some day resurrected in strange lands.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*Civil Government In Cuba*

By Governor-General Leonard Wood.

_HAVING, with Roosevelt, recruited and commanded the famous regiment of Rough Riders during the Santiago campaign, subsequently becoming a major-general of volunteers, Wood was made military governor of Santiago on the capture of that city by the American forces. He displayed such administrative ability that, in 1899, he was chosen to succeed General Brooke as Governor-General of the entire island of Cuba, and filled the position with marked distinction until the United States formally withdrew from the island, in 1902.

During his administration extensive public improvements were effected. In 1901 the Cuban people adopted a Constitution, superseding the Bill of Rights which was first given them, as General Wood relates, and elected Estrada Palma their first President. This account is contained in "Cuba: Civil Report of General Wood," made to Congress in 1901._

WHEN the American authorities took charge of the province of Santiago de Cuba they found the civil affairs of the province in a condition of complete chaos. The treasuries of all the different municipalities were empty; the offices were vacant; public records, such as had not been burnt or destroyed, were bundled up in abandoned buildings. The courts had ceased to exist. In fact, there was only a semblance of any form of civil government. In many of the towns a few members of the old "Guardia Civil" still continued to maintain an appearance of order, but, practically speaking, there had been a complete destruction of civil government, and it rested with the newcomers to do what they would toward reestablishing a proper form of government which would give the people necessary protection, and guarantee such a condition of order as would once more tend to reestablish business and invite the confidence of outside capital.

The idea with which this work has been done is first to reestablish the municipalities upon the simplest and most economical basis consistent with a fair degree of efficiency. Of course it was impossible to change altogether the old system. We have had to begin, even in the little towns, by appointing a mayor, a secretary and one or two municipal police officers, simply because this was the system to which the people for many generations had been accustomed; but in making these appointments every effort has been made to select the best men and an adequate service for the salary paid has been insisted upon. Under the old system men went to their offices at 9 a. m., left at 11 a. m. and came back for an hour in the afternoon. There were a great many clerks, many of whom were totally unnecessary. In each little town one found a great many officials doing very little, no school houses, no sanitary regulations in fact nothing indicative of a high degree of civilization. It was a pedantic humbug from top to bottom. In place of this condition, we, so far as possible with the limited time and means at our command, have reestablished these little towns, giving them the officers absolutely necessary to maintain an efficient administration of the public business.

We insisted upon a thorough sanitary supervision of the towns, a thorough cleaning up of the streets, private houses, yards, courts, etc., the reestablishing of the schools in the best buildings obtainable ; a prompt monthly payment of the teachers' salaries ; the forbidding of public school teachers having private pupils in the public schools a condition which existed formerly and led to great abuses. Every effort has been made toward the reestablishment of the courts upon the most economical basis consistent with prompt transaction of the public business. The entire judicial machinery of the province has been put in operation upon an economical basis. At the head of this judicial system stands the Supreme Court of the province, which is supreme only for the time being, as upon the establishment of the Supreme Court for the island it will continue simply as the Audiencia or Superior Court of the province, from which an appeal can be taken to Havana. The greatest evil of the present system is in the method of criminal procedure. Persons accused are often months in prison before trial. . . . I have done what I could to remedy this condition by making offenses not capital bailable, and by establishing the writ of habeas corpus. The police is also to apply a large portion of the public revenue to the reconstruction of roads, bridges, etc., and to encourage, throughout the province, in all the larger towns, such sanitary reformation as the means at hand would permit.

To the people was given a "Bill of Rights," which guaranteed to them the freedom of the press, the right to assemble peaceably, the right to seek redress for grievances, the right of habeas corpus, and the right to present bail for all offenses not capital. Every effort was made to impress upon them the fact that the civil law must in all free countries be absolutely supreme, and that all classes of people must recognize the authority of the officers of the law, whether represented by the ordinary policeman or by the judges of the Supreme Court. . . . In fact every effort was made to impress upon them the fact that people can do as they wish so long as they do not violate the law. On the other hand they were told, in unmistakable terms, that any and all infractions of the civil law would be punished severely, and that individuals resisting arrest would be taken even at the cost of their lives. Of course all this was under military government. Every effort was made, however, to remove the military as far as practicable from the situation. The intention was to reestablish rather than to replace the civil government. Men were appointed to office solely for their fitness for the position, and their selection was never made arbitrarily, but always upon the recommendation of the best citizens. I do not mean the best men in the social sense, or in any other sense than those best qualified by experience and ability to judge of the fitness of the various applicants for office.

I do not believe that just at present the people are in a condition to be taken further into the administration of civil affairs than indicated above. Before proceeding further it will be necessary to complete the organization of the schools ; get the courts into thorough running order and, what is very important, to get all the municipalities established upon an efficient basis, making them thoroughly self-supporting; to do all that can be done to get the people back to their plantations and at work; to reopen the roads and make them passable, thus enabling people to get their produce to the seacoast and to the markets ; to establish enough rural police to keep things quiet and orderly in the interior. After these conditions have been well established and found to be in good working order then we can begin to consider seriously the remaining details of civil government. Just at present it is well to stop, for a short time at least, where we are.

It must be remembered that a large portion of the population is illiterate and they have never had any extensive participation in the affairs of government, not even in municipal affairs, and, until they thoroughly understand the handling of small affairs, they certainly are not fitted to undertake larger ones. In other words, let us begin from the bottom and build on a secure foundation rather than start at the top to remodel the whole fabric of civil government.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Capture Of Aguinaldo*

By Brigadier-General Frederick Funston.

_Funston, whose account of the capture of the Filipino insurrection leader is given here by permission on of "Scribner's Magazine," in which it originally appeared, went to the Philippines in 1898 as colonel of the Twentieth Kansas Volunteers, and in the following year was made a brigadier-general for bravery at Calumpit. In March, 1901, he commanded the expedition which surprised and captured Aguinaldo in the manner described, at Palanan, Island of Luzon.

On April 2, 1901, Aguinaldo formally took the oath of allegiance to the United States. For two years he had braved the military power of this country, leading an unsuccessful attack on Manila on February 4-5, 1899, and thereafter conducting a guerilla warfare in behalf of Filipino independence.

After performing this exploit, Funston was in command of the department of California, and during the San Francisco earthquake of April, 1906, placed the city under martial Ian, and brought order out of chaos._

IT was the 8th day of February, 1901, and in the room that served as an office in the headquarters building at San Isidro, I was going over the morning's work with the adjutant-general of the district, Captain E. V. Smith, when there arrived a telegram that for the moment disturbed our equanimity a brief message that was to have no small part in the making of the history of the Philippine insurrection. It was signed by Lieutenant J. D. Taylor, Twenty-fourth Infantry, commanding the company of that regiment that constituted the garrison of the town of Pantabangan, about sixty miles to the north-east, at the foot of the western slope of the massive mountain range that separates the great central plain of Luzon from the Pacific coast of the island, and was to the effect that a small band of insurgent soldiers had voluntarily presented themselves to him, and that the man in command had stated that he was the bearer of dispatches from Emilio Aguinaldo to certain subordinates in central and southern Luzon. The letters addressed to Baldomero, Aguinaldo, Alejandrino, Urbano Lacuna, Pablo Tecson, Simon Tecson, Teodoro Sandico, and other insurgent leaders, were in cipher and so could not be read, and evidently signed fictitiously, though in a handwriting that seemed to resemble that of Aguinaldo.

For more than a year the exact whereabouts of the elusive chieftain of the insurgent Filipinos had been a mystery. Rumor located him in all sorts of impossible places, but those best qualified to judge thought that he was somewhere in the great valley of the Cagayan, in the northern part of the island, or in one of the extensive mountain ranges on either side of it. Probably few if any of those in high command among the insurgent forces knew where he was, as he was taking every precaution against treachery, or the disclosure of his hiding-place by the capture of correspondence, having gone so far as to forbid that the name of his temporary capital should be put on paper in any of the letters sent out by himself or staff. A few trusted men saw that letters to him reached their destination.

The period of guerilla warfare that had succeeded the heavier fighting of the earlier days of the insurrection-had now lasted more than a year and a half, and it must be confessed that from our stand-point the results had not been satisfactory. Scattered all over the Philippines we had more than seventy thousand troops, counting native auxiliaries, and these in detachments varying in size from a regiment to less than a company garrisoned every town of importance and many places that were mere villages. Through the country everywhere were the enemy's guerilla bands, made up not only of the survivors of the forces that had fought us earlier in the war, but of men who had been recruited or conscripted since. We had almost worn ourselves out chasing these marauders, and it was only occasionally by effecting a surprise or through some streak of good fortune that we were able to inflict any punishment on them, and such successes were only local and had little effect on general conditions. These guerillas persistently violated all the rules that are supposed to govern the conduct of civilized people engaged in war, while the fact that they passed rapidly from the status of peaceful non-combatants living in our garrisoned towns to that of men in arms against us made it especially difficult for us to deal with them. It was realized that Aguinaldo from his hiding-place, wherever it might be, exercised through their local chiefs a sort of general control over these guerilla bands, and as he was insistent that the Filipinos should not accept American rule, and as he was still recognized as the head and front of the insurrection, many of us had long felt that the thing could not end until he was either out of the way, or a prisoner in our hands.

Therefore it was but natural that the telegram from Lieutenant Taylor should have created no little excitement, though as I now recollect the circumstances I do not believe that it occurred to any one of us that we would be able to do more than transmit the information for what it might be worth to higher authority, the plan which afterward worked so successfully being evolved later. It was directed that the leader of the surrendered band, with the correspondence that he had given up, be sent to San Isidro with all possible speed. With an escort of soldiers he arrived in less than two days, and proved to be a very intelligent Ilocano, giving his name as Cecilio Segismundo. After being well fed he told me the story of his recent adventures.

According to his story, he was one of the men attached to Aguinaldo's head-quarters and had been with him many months, his principal duty being such errands as the one that he had now been sent out on, that is, carrying official mail between the insurgent chief and his subordinates. On the 14th of January, accompanied by a detachment of twelve armed men of Aguinaldo's escort, he had left with a package of letters to be delivered to Urbano Lacuna, the insurgent chief in Nueva Ecija province, who was to forward to their final destinations those that were not meant for him. After a terrible journey down the coast and through mountains he had, in the vicinity of Baler, encountered a small detachment of our troops out on a scouting expedition and had lost two of his men. After this encounter Segismundo and his little band had made their way across the pass through the mountain range to the westward, and finally, twenty-six days after leaving Palanan, had reached the outskirts of the town of Pantabangan. Here, foot-weary and hungry, he communicated with the local "presidents," or mayor, who had formerly acted in the same capacity for the insurgent government that he was now filling under American rule.

Segismundo then went on to tell of conditions at Palanan. Aguinaldo with several officers of his staff and an escort of about fifty uniformed and well-armed men had been there for several months, and had been in constant communication with his various subordinates by means of messengers. The residents of the town and most of the soldiers of his escort were not aware of his identity. He passed as "Captain Emilio," and by those who did not know him to be Aguinaldo was supposed to be merely a subordinate officer of the insurrection.

Our attention was now given to the surrendered correspondence, but those not in cipher contained little of importance.

The most important letter and the one that was the final undoing of its writer, was to his cousin, Baldomero Aguinaldo, then in command of the insurgent bands operating in Cavite province just south of Manila.

This directed the person to whom it was addressed to proceed at once to the "Centre of Luzon,' I and, using the communication as authority, to supersede in command Jose Alejandrino, who evidently was not giving satisfaction to his chieftain. As soon as he had established himself in command, Baldomero was to direct his subordinates, that is Lacuna, Mascardo, Simon and Pablo Tecson, and possibly one or two others to send him detachments of men until the aggregate should reach about four hundred.

By morning I had thought out the general features of the plan which was eventually to succeed.

It was settled beyond the possibility of a doubt that no force the nature of which was known could even get within several days' march of him. So the only recourse was to work a stratagem, that is to get to him under false colors. It would be so impossible to disguise our own troops, that they were not even considered, and dependence would have to be placed on the Macabebes, those fine little fighters, taking their name from their home town, who had always been loyal to Spain and who had now transferred their loyalty to the United States. As it would be absolutely essential to have along some American officers to direct matters and deal with such emergencies as might arise, they were to accompany the expedition as supposed prisoners who had been captured on the march, and were not to throw off that disguise until there was no longer necessity for concealment.

In order to pave the way for the bogus reinforcements, which were supposed to be those from Lacuna's command, it was considered essential to have them preceded by letters from that individual. . . . Aguinaldo himself afterward told me that it was the supposed letters from Lacuna that threw him entirely off his guard and caused him to welcome the supposed reinforcements.

On the night of March 6th the "Vicksburg" slipped out of Manila Bay, and steered south in order to pass through the straits of San Bernardino.

Fortunately for us, the weather was thick and squally, and at one o'clock on the morning of the 14th, the "Vicksburg" having very carefully approached the coast, with all her lights screened, we were landed in the ship's boats.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Debs Railway Strike*

By Harry Thurston Peck.

_THE industrial unrest that grotesquely advertised itself early in 1894 by the march of Coxey's "Army" on Washington, was more sternly manifested later in the same year by the great railway strike directed by Eugene V. Debs. As Peck states in his "Thirty Years of the Republic," from which this account is taken, by permission of Dodd, Mead & Company, the strike had its inception in a wage disagreement between the arbitrary Pullman Company and its employees. The Pullman workers were backed up by the American Railway Union, of which Debs was the head, and in the clash that followed between the strikers and Federal troops many lives were lost.

Debs was indicted and jailed for contempt, because of his management of the strike, which failed. Subsequently the indictments for conspiracy found by a Federal Grand Jury were dismissed. Five times he became the Socialist candidate for President. In 1918 Debs was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for violation of the Espionage Act._

IN 1886, the capitalists who controlled or owned the twenty-four railways which then entered the city of Chicago, had formed a voluntary association known as the General Managers' Association. This body had for its main purpose the effective and arbitrary control of all persons employed by the railways it represented in the association. Wages were cut down according to a general agreement, Discharged workmen were "blacklisted," so that they could not easily get new employment. With no standing whatever in law, the Managers' Association was establishing a complete control of the independence and even of the livelihood of thousands of railway employees.

To offset this combination of the owners, the men had organized, in 1893, the American Railway Union. The two bodies, antagonistic as they were in their special interests, came into conflict early in 1894, over a question which did not in its origin directly concern either of them.

The Pullman Palace Car Company was not a railway corporation, but was engaged in manufacturing cars which it operated through written contracts with the railways. It was a highly prosperous concern, and George M. Pullman, its president, had won much commendation from philanthropic sociologists for having built the pretty little village of Pullman, near Chicago, where employees of the company could at moderate rentals find houses that were clean, well lighted, and supplied with admirable sanitary arrangements. Lakes, parks, and well-kept streets made the place appear to be a poor man's paradise. On the other hand, those who lived in Pullman saw another side. Not many residents stayed there long. While they stayed, they seemed to be under a singular constraint. If they spoke of the company, they did so in a half-whisper, and with a furtive glance behind them very much "as a Russian might mention the Czar." Every one felt that he was spied upon, and that an incautious word might lead to his discharge and get his name upon the "black list."

In May, 1894, the Pullman Company dismissed a large number of its workmen. The wages of such as were retained were lowered by some twenty percent. Many were now employed for less than what was usually regarded as full time. A committee of employees waited upon Pullman to ask that the old wages be restored. Pullman refused this request, but promised that he would not punish any member of the committee for having presented the petition. This promise he apparently violated ; for on the very next day three of the committee were discharged. Pullman, in fact, evidently regarded himself as a personage so sacrosanct as to make even a respectful petition to him a serious offense. Indignant at his action, five-sixths of his men went out on strike. Pullman promptly discharged the other sixth, who had remained faithful to his interests.

To justify the Pullman management, a general statement was given out on its behalf, that the close of the Columbian Exposition and the existing business depression had checked the demand for its cars ; that it had been employing men at an actual loss; that it could not afford to continue them at work and at the old scale of wages. In reply to this, the fact was pointed out that while the wages of the men had been cut, the salaries of the officers remained as large as ever; and that rents in the town of Pullman had not been lowered. Moreover, the stock of the company was selling above par ; its dividends for the preceding year on a capital of $36,000,000 had been $2,520,000, while it had a surplus of undivided profits amounting to $25,000,000.

About 4,000 Pullman employees were members of the American Railway Union. In June, a convention of the union was held in Chicago, and this body took up the question of the Pullman strike, although the men on strike were not railway employees at all. A committee of the union wished to confer with the Pullman management, but were not allowed to do so. The Civic Federation of Chicago, with the approval and support of the mayors of fifty cities, urged the company to submit the matter to arbitration. The company answered: "We have nothing to arbitrate." Then, on June 2d, the Railway Union, finding no settlement possible, passed a resolution to the effect that unless the Pullman Company should come to an agreement with its men before June 26th, the members of the Railway Union would refuse to "handle" Pullman cars. The company remained obdurate; and therefore, on the 26th, the Union fulfilled its promise. From that day on, all the roads running out of Chicago, no train to which Pullman cars were attached could move.

The president of the Railway Union was Eugene V. Debs. He had formerly been a locomotive engineer and afterward a grocer. Going into politics, he had served a term in the Indiana Legislature. He was a very shrewd, long-headed strategist. He understood the strength of his organization. He was equally well aware of the one weak point in all the great labor demonstrations of the past. The 150,000 men whom he controlled could, by acting together, completely paralyze the railway system centering at Chicago. Local public sentiment was, on the whole, favorable to the Pullman employees. That sentiment would, however, be alienated if violence and general disorder were to follow on the strike. It was vital that the Railway Union should employ no lawless means.

The peaceable strike which was begun upon the 26th proved at once to be remarkably effective. Switchmen refused to attach Pullman cars to any train. When they were discharged for this, the rest of the train's crew left it in a body. By the end of the fifth day after the strike began, all the roads running out of Chicago were practically at a standstill. The Railway Managers' Association was facing absolute defeat. Its resources in the way of men were exhausted, and its trains could not be operated. Yet all this had been accomplished by peaceable means. There was no sign of violence or disorder. But the men who made up the Managers' Association were very able. They had at their command unlimited money, and legal advisers who could conceive daring plans.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The San Francisco Earthquake And Fire*

Contemporary Account from the New York "Sun".

_THIS is part of a remarkable two-page report in the New York "Sun" of April 19, 1906, of the great earthquake which overwhelmed San Francisco the day before, followed by a gigantic conflagration which lasted four days and destroyed 497 city blocks covering an area of five square miles. Some 28,188 buildings were demolished, causing approximately $1,000,000,000 damage and the loss of about 500 lives.

That the catastrophe was not even more appalling was largely due to the prompt and efficient action of Brigadier-General Funston, cooperating with the police, and acting on his own initiative, in placing the city under martial law and posting United States troops throughout the danger zones.

The reconstruction of San Francisco was accomplished with astonishing rapidity. Within three years 20,000 new fireproof buildings had been erected, and from the ashes of 1906 there has arisen another and more impressive metropolis._

THE greatest earthquake disaster in the history of the United States visited San Francisco early yesterday morning. A great part of the business and tenement district was shaken down, and this was followed by a fire which is still burning and which has covered most of the affected area.
Happening at 5 o'clock in the morning, the earthquake caused practically no loss of life among the business houses, but the tenement houses, especially the cheap lodging houses, suffered severely in this respect. Directly afterward a fire started in seven or eight places, helped out by broken gas mains. The water system failed, and all through the morning the fire was fought with dynamite.

Almost all the greater buildings of San Francisco are lost. These include the City Hall, the new Post Office, the "Call" Building, twenty stories high ; the Parrott Building, housing the largest department store in the West; the "Chronicle" and "Examiner" buildings, Stanford University at Palo Alto, the Grand Opera House and St. Ignatius's Church.

Oakland, Cal., April 18. The great shock which did the damage happened at 5:15 o'clock this morning, just about daybreak. Beginning with a slight tremor, it increased in violence every moment. Before it was over, the smaller and older buildings in the business districts had fallen like houses of cards, the great steel buildings were mainly skinned of walls, and the tenement district, south of Market, was in ruins.

Hardly were the people of the hill district out of their houses when the dawn of the east was lit up in a dozen places by fires which had started in the business district below. The first of these came with a sheet of flame which burst out somewhere in the warehouse district near the waterfront. Men from all over the upper part of town streamed down the hills to help. No cars could run, for the cable car slots and the very tracks were bent and tossed with the upheavals of the ground.

The fire department responded. . . . The firemen, making for the nearest points, got their hose out.

There was one rush of water; then the flow stopped. The great water main, which carries the chief water supply of San Francisco, ran through the ruined district. It had been broken and the useless water was spurting up through the ruins in scores of places.

The firemen stood helpless, while fire after fire started in the ruined houses. Most of these seem to have been caused by the ignition of gas from the gas mains, which were also broken. The fires would rush up with astonishing suddenness, and then smoulder in the slowly burning redwood, of which three-quarters of San Francisco is built. When day came the smoke hung over all the business part of the city. Farther out fires were going in the Hayes Valley, a middle class residence district, and in the old Mission part of the city. Dynamite was the only thing.

Chief of Police Dinan got out the whole police force, and General Funston, acting on his own initiative, ordered out all the available troops in the Presidio military reservation. After a short conference the town was placed under martial law, a guard was thrown about the fire, and all the dynamite in the city was commandeered.

The day broke beautifully clear. The wind, which usually blows steadily from the west at this time of year, took a sudden veer and came steadily from the east, sending the fire, which lay in the wholesale district along the waterfront, toward the heart of the city, where stood the modern steel structure buildings, mainly stripped of their cement shells.

Meantime there had been a second and lighter shock at 8 o'clock which had shaken down some walls already tottering and taken the heart out of many of the people who had hoped that the one shock would end it.

There was an overpowering smell of gas everywhere from the broken mains. Now and again these would catch fire, making a great spurt of fire, which would catch in the debris. The first concern of the firemen was to stop these leakages. They piled on them bags of sand, dirt clods, even bales of cloth torn from the wreckage of burning stores. In the middle of the morning, however, there came a report from the south louder and duller than the reports of the dynamite explosions. There followed a burst of flame against the dull smoke. The gas works had blown up and the tanks were burning. After that the gas leaks stopped.

It seemed to be two or three minutes after the great shock was over before people found their voices. There followed the screaming of women, beside themselves with terror, and the cries of men. With one impulse people made for the parks, as far as possible from the falling walls. These speedily became packed with people in their nightclothes, who screamed and moaned at the little shocks which followed every few minutes. The dawn was just breaking. The gas and electric mains were gone and the street lamps were all out. But before the dawn was white there came a light from the east the burning warehouse district.

On Portsmouth Square the panic was beyond description. This, the old Plaza about which the early city was built, is bordered now by Chinatown, by the Italian district, and by the "Barbary Coast," a lower tenderloin. A spur of the quake ran up the hill upon which Chinatown is situated and shook down part of the crazy little buildings on the southern edge. . . . The rush to Portsmouth Square went on almost unchecked by the police, who were more in demand elsewhere.

The denizens came out of their underground burrows like rats and tumbled into the square, beating such gongs and playing such noise instruments as they had snatched up. . . . They were met on the other side by the refugees of the Italian quarter. The panic became a madness. At least two Chinamen were taken to the morgue dead of knife wounds, given for no other reason, it seems, than the madness of panic. There are 10,000 Chinese in the quarter and there are thousands of Italians, Spaniards and Mexicans on the other side. It seemed as though every one of these, with the riffraff of "Barbary Coast," made for that one block of open land. The two uncontrolled streams met in the center of the square and piled up on the edges. There they fought all the morning, until the Regulars restored order with their bayonets.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*Roosevelt Succeeds McKinley*

Roosevelt's Own Account.

_LOOKING backward, the apprehension of Vice-President Roosevelt's friends that, on succeeding to the Presidency, he would be "a pale copy of McKinley" were quite idle. Never was there a more strenuous and individual Chief Executive in the White House.

In his "Autobiography," from which this account is taken, by permission of The Macmillan Company, Roosevelt tells of being in the Adirondacks, fifty miles from a railroad, when informed by a guide that McKinley had succumbed to the assassin's bullet. Proceeding to Buffalo, Roosevelt took the oath of office September 14, 1901.

In addition to adhering to the policies of his predecessor, the twenty-sixth President asserted his strong individuality in 1902 by practically forcing the anthracite coal operators and striking miners to arbitrate their differences an act without precedent in the history of his office. Throughout his administration Roosevelt was the most active and conspicuous figure in American public life._

ON September 6, 1901, President McKinley was shot by an anarchist in the city of Buffalo. I went to Buffalo at once. The President's condition seemed to be improving, and after a day or two we were told that he was practically out of danger. I then joined my family, who were in the Adirondacks, near the foot of Mount Tahawus. A day or two afterwards we took a long tramp through the forest, and in the afternoon I climbed Mount Tahawus. After reaching the top I had descended a few hundred feet to a shelf of land where there was a little lake, when I saw a guide coming out of the woods on our trail from below. I felt at once that he had bad news, and, sure enough, he handed me a telegram saying that the President's condition was much worse and that I must come to Buffalo immediately. It was late in the afternoon, and darkness had fallen by the time I reached the clubhouse where we were staying. It was some time afterwards before I could get a wagon to drive me out to the nearest railway station, North Creek, some forty or fifty miles distant. The roads were the ordinary wilderness roads and the night was dark. But we changed horses two or three times when I say "we" I mean the driver and I, as there was no one else with us and reached the station just at dawn, to learn from Mr. Loeb, who had a special train waiting, that the President was dead. That evening I took the oath of office, in the house of Ansley Wilcox, at Buffalo.

On three previous occasions the Vice-President had succeeded to the Presidency on the death of the President. In each case there had been a reversal of party policy, and a nearly immediate and nearly complete change in the personnel of the higher offices, especially the Cabinet. I had never felt that this was wise from any standpoint. If a man is fit to be President, he will speedily so impress himself in the office that the policies pursued will be his anyhow, and he will not have to bother as to whether he is changing them or not; while as regards the offices under him, the important thing for him is that his subordinates shall make a success in handling their several departments. The subordinate is sure to desire to make a success of his department for his own sake, and if he is a fit man, whose views on public policy are sound, and whose abilities entitle him to his position, he will do excellently under almost any chief with the same purposes.

I at once announced that I would continue unchanged McKinley's policies for the honor and prosperity of the country, and I asked all the members of the Cabinet to stay. There were no changes made among them save as changes were made among their successors whom I myself appointed. I continued Mr. McKinley's policies, changing and developing them and adding new policies only as the questions before the public changed and as the needs of the public developed. Some of my friends shook their heads over this, telling me that the men I retained would not be "loyal to me," and that I would seem as if I were "a pale copy of McKinley." I told them that I was not nervous on this score, and that if the men I retained were loyal to their work they would be giving me the loyalty for which I most cared; and that if they were not, I would change them anyhow; and that as for being "a pale copy of McKinley," I was not primarily concerned with either following or not following in his footsteps, but in facing the new problems that arose ; and that if I were competent I would find ample opportunity to show my competence by my deeds without worrying myself as to how to convince people of the fact.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Assassination Of McKinley*

By Richard Barry, an Eye-Witness.

_THIS is the best-written account by an eye-witness of the assassination of President McKinley in the Music Hall of the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, New York, September 6, 1901. Barry was a writer for the Buffalo "Enquirer," in which this article appeared.

Czolgosz, the assassin, was an anarchist of Polish-German ancestry, who saw in McKinley an arch-representative of capital as opposed to labor in this country. He fired twice at close range, both bullets taking effect. For eight days hope for the President's recovery was entertained, but he succumbed September 14. Nine days later the assassin was tried, and was electrocuted.

McKinley had served seven months of his second term as President. In defeating, Bryan, he received the largest popular majority given a candidate for the Presidency up to that time. Unprecedented honors were paid his memory in foreign capitals, notably London, where memorial services were held in Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's Cathedral._

McKINLEY was never in a more buoyant mood than on his Buffalo trip. This was marked by all who saw him.

The entire occurrences of the two days the beauty of the exposition, his wife's continued health, the presence of his friends, the favorable reception of his momentous speech, received, as he had hoped it would be, without a full realization of its import, the propitious weather and the strenuous applause had by that time impregnated him with negative content and positive buoyance. He entered the Temple by a rear door, saw the arrangements were complete (he did not inspect them minutely, for he surrendered such details to others, and had always been lax in guarding his person), bowed to the guards and reporters present, walked up the aisle to the appointed station and said, pleasantly, that the place was cool.

The Temple was cool, for it had been locked up all day. This offered relief from the swelter without and seemed worthy of its august name. From a point just north of the center, extending southeast and northwest at a forty-five degree angle, slightly broken, were two aisles reaching from the apex like the bend in a finger. These aisles were formed by tightly packed folding seats, pushed back smartly, so that they formed a great inextricable jumble, spread over the floor in reckless confusion, whose edges at the aisle were nicely mended by long strips of purple cloth, pieced at the end in a continuous weave of undulating invitation invitation to the President's stand at the center. There great palms lifted their somnolent, green shade and a yellow dome, like polished amber, reflected the soft lambent light that streamed in richly from the western windows. For guards there were the regulation exposition police, United States artillery men, city detectives and government secret service men.

A short lull came, the President took his place, Mr. Milburn at the left, Mr. Cortelyou at the right, Detectives Ireland and Foster three feet away in front, several reporters behind, diplomats and officials surrounding, with the guards lining the aisle.

"Let them come," said the President. The doors were opened and the surge outside pushed in the tide of humanity. There was the usual push, the usual hot day sweat, the usual trodden feet, the usual quiet patience of the waiting thousands, and soon a steady stream of people was being pushed by the guards through the aisle and past the President, as logs are propelled down a sluice by men with cant hooks at a spring drive. This continued for about eight minutes, when there appeared at the door unnoticed at the time a well-knit young man, whose right hand, with seeming innocence, was in his back pocket. That hand held a pistol, and both were concealed from even the treacherous depths of the pocket by a dirty rag. The rag was a handkerchief, but it had been carried for several days and in the perspiring heat no face mop was presentable after such long usage. It was a cheap handkerchief, plain, unmarked, ordinarily small and sorely soiled, yet it held the deadliest venom on earth.

The hand was slightly nervous, so was the man. Only a close observer would have seen it. The precision of the next few moments would prove that he had nerves of steel; the villain at the climax of a tragedy usually has stage fright, and the young man has since admitted that he came within an ace of backing out there, but was already in the Temple, while the crowd behind made retreat impossible, and forced him slowly to the precipice. He closed his teeth good, white ones, though he has the fondness of a tobacco slave for a cigar and screwed his resolution up to the point of doing. He was well built, had a good wiry form of medium height, an intelligent face with a brow high but narrow, the aquiline nose of determination, a firm chin, a coarse sensual mouth and blue German eyes. It was the head of an egotist, the mouth of an impressionable youth, the nose and chin of a resolute man. The eyes were responsive but not sympathetic, and at that moment were stolid, with little of the fierce light that burns in the basilisk iris of a fanatic. His hair was brushed in wavy brown disorder back from his forehead. At first glance he was not a striking figure. He wore a cheap, dark suit of woolen cloth, a flannel shirt and a string tie all ordinary, all unnoticeable. He appeared as a mechanic, a printer, a shipping-clerk, a worker at some high-class trade. He moved on down the line, drawing near the President. As soon as he was well past the door he withdrew the handkerchief-enclosed pistol from his pocket, holding both in front of him, as though the hand were wounded and in a sling.

This young man's history is of interest. It is worth tracing. His name was Leon F. Czolgosz (pronounced Tchollgosch). He was 28 years old, born in Detroit, Michigan. He came of poor, Polish-German parents. The mother does not yet speak English, though she has been in this country many years. The father was so indigent that at the time of this writing [ 1901 ], he was about Cleveland, his present home, looking for bread or for work, whichever should be obtainable. Czolgosz has been slightly known to the anarchists of Chicago and the West as Fred Nieman, a surname that in German means "nobody." He has not been a prominent anarchist and it is only as a hanger-on that he is recalled.

The scene [of the shooting] is but partially to be described, or rather to be described from varying angles, no one of which is obtuse enough to comprehend the gaps left by the others, for though hundreds were there, the few minutes of the shots and their denouncement have left an inextricable tangle, about which everyone is sure of the exact happening and about which no two stories agree.

A detective saw the swathed fist and said in passing comment :
"This man has a sore hand."

Another had an inkling of suspicion. "I don't know about that," he said, and reached for Czolgosz's arm. It was too late ! The first shot came, low hardly louder than a cap pistol then the second, as quick as the self-cocking trigger could work. A vague, startled thrill spread through the crowd ; it had been hit a stunning blow and for the moment was numb. About the President action was decisive, sharp, bewildering. A dozen men leaped for the assassin. A big *****, James Parker, burst through the crowd and elbowed his herculean way to an assistance which was too late. George Foster, a government secret service man, in momentary hot revenge, had smashed the assassin's nose, the blood spurting to the floor, where the two were grappling, Czolgosz struggling for a desperate last shot, his face smeared with red ooze and his eyes bleary with tigerish emotion. But his shots, so close that the peppery powder mottled the President's white vest for many inches with specks of frightful black, had been fatal, and the artilleryman who kicked the pistol from his hand got merely cold satisfaction for his rescue. The marines of the President's guard had meanwhile charged the crowd with fixed bayonets, crying, "Clear out, you sons of , " and were pricking some in driving them from the Temple.

The President was singularly calm. A huge, deep-rooted mountain oak, lightning stricken, stands as he stood then alone, transfigured, mystified and silent before toppling to its fall. Those who saw that face and noted its sweet grandeur and its indefinable surprised pathos will carry the memory to the grave. The President had been greeting little children and had just courteously bowed to an old man. He was cheery, light hearted, kindly, patient such was his nature and at that moment he was in the heydey of good spirits. Suddenly there was injected into his life this foul, dank crime, blacker than night, more hideous than a dungeon's horrors. It was the envious Casca stabbing in the neck while truckling with a sycophant's leer; but Caesar exclaiming, "Et tu, Brute!" could have shown no greater pity and no greater wounded confidence than did President McKinley at that supreme juncture. His shoulders straightened to their fullest, broadest height and he quietly surveyed the fiend still holding the smoking, hidden pistol before him. The smile, with its dimpled placid sunniness, left his face, his white lips pressed each other in a rigid line, their convex curving ends lost in the sunken contour of his mouth, and then for the briefest instant his eye assumed the penetration of a man who reads men as other men read books. For that space of time, measured by hardly more than the wink of an eye-lash, the two assassin and victim--confronted each other. A multiplicity of emotions showed in the President's face, but two were lacking. There was neither fear nor anger. First there was surprise, then reproach, then pity, benevolence, compassion, a sympathy for the wretch, and then an inkling of astounded horror as he realized the enormity of the attack, and finally as the assassin was felled to the floor his great eyes welled with gentle passion and a tear on each cheek told of calm and chastened appeal for him who brought death that wonderful, black day. He did not once lose consciousness nor self-possession. Never was dignity better exemplified, yet it was pathetic. Though hope came afterward, no one then doubted that the President had been fatally wounded. His faithful secretary, George B. Cortelyou, a man of thin and resolute physique, of wiry courage and canny calmness, was more self-possessed than any other save the President. He caught his chief as he fell and with the help of John G. Milburn, president of the exposition, carried him to a nearby bench. Mr. Cortelyou leaned over the President and asked him if he suffered much pain. The President slowly drew his hand to his bosom, fumbled at his shirt and reached within, groped there with his fingers for a moment, then drew them forth, dabbled with blood.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Human Side Of Panama Canal Building*

By George W. Goethals, U. S. A.

_GENERAL GOETHALS, who became chairman of the Panama Canal Commission in 1907, and was Governor of the Canal Zone when the great waterway was completed in 1914 (a year ahead of scheduled time), published this account in "Scribner's Magazine," 1915, from which it is taken by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. To the great work Goethals brought an adequate knowledge of engineering with a complete knowledge of army organization and cooperation.

Elsewhere he pays tribute to the remarkable work of sanitation done by Colonel William C. Gorgas, without which pioneer work it is doubtful if the Canal could ever have been completed.

His own work at the Canal finished, Goethals was successively general manager of the Emergency Fleet Corporation, acting quartermaster-general and chief of the division of purchase, storage and tragic U. S. Army; and in 1915 received the thanks of Congress for "distinguished service in constructing the Panama Canal."_

THE general impression prevailed from the beginning that the building of the Panama Canal comprised one of the world's greatest engineering feats, and the tremendous scope of the work as it developed during the construction period served to mold this impression into a fixed belief; yet Mr. Stevens, who, for nearly two years had control on the Isthmus, not only of all construction, but of those various coordinate branches which were essential adjuncts to the building of the Canal, expressed the opinion that the engineering features were the least difficult, describing them as "of magnitude and not of intricacy." On the other hand, his experience convinced him that the administrative problems were the greater, presenting as they did many unusual features, involving an immense amount of detail and extending into every branch of business, with ramifications touching many phases of social and domestic economy.

In every undertaking of an engineering character there must necessarily be a greater or less amount of administrative detail resulting from problems of supply, labor, policy, and considerations arising out of them. In the case of the Panama Canal, not only were these problems present, but, as compared with those of engineering, they made the latter appear relatively small.

The very magnitude of the work imposed difficulties which would have existed even had it been undertaken in any portion of the United States, but these difficulties were increased materially by reason of having to carry on the work in a tropical country, sparsely populated, non-productive, affording no skilled and very little efficient common labor, with customs and modes of living as different as the civilizations of North and Central America have been since the settlement of these portions of the western hemisphere, with a heavy rainfall during the greater portion of the year, and with a reputation for unhealthfulness which placed Panama in the category of one of the worst pest-holes of the earth.

The forces of the United States were fortunate . . . for before the transfer of the work to them preventive medicine had made such advances as to make possible the conversion of the pest-hole into a habitat where most white men could live and work. The diseases which sapped the energy and vitality of the men and struck terror to their souls were malaria and yellow fever. The cause of the former had been discovered by Sir Ronald Ross, of the British army, who formulated rules by which an infected locality could be rid of its influences. Not only were his theory and practices known, but we had the benefit of his advice and experience, for he visited the, Isthmus on invitation of the commission at the instigation of the health authorities in order that we might have his assistance. After Sir Ronald Ross's discovery, Doctors Reed, Lazear, and Carroll, in Cuba, with Aristides Agramonte, a Cuban immune, proved the correctness of the theory advanced by Doctor Carlos Finlay, of Havana, that yellow fever was transmitted only by the mosquito, and prescribed the methods that resulted in ridding Cuba of that dread disease; it naturally followed that the Isthmus could be freed in the same way. Finally, great advances had been made in construction machinery of all kinds, making the equipment used by the French obsolete, though this was continued in use by the Americans until it could be replaced by the more modern and up-to-date appliances that experience had shown would accomplish the results.

Because of the reputation of Panama, difficulty was experienced in securing the necessary skilled and unskilled labor, but systems of recruiting had been worked out and were in satisfactory operation in 1907, when the force aggregated about 5,500 "gold" employees and 24,000 "silver," or common, laborers. Notwithstanding the fact that at this time the Isthmus had been freed from yellow fever, the dread of the tropics was still extant, making it difficult to secure American workmen.

The assembled force had to be housed and fed. Many houses were acquired from the French, but not sufficient for the needs, nor were they always accessible to the work in progress. Extensive building operations were undertaken, including the erection of offices, storehouses of various kinds, quarters, hotels, messes, kitchens, hospitals, and schools. (The arbitrary nomenclature that became current on the Isthmus is of interest. The terms "gold" and "silver," the former designating the high-grade employee, usually American, and the latter the lower grades, usually West Indian or European, are well known.

New settlements were located and constructed with a view of accessibility to the work. The terminal cities of Panama and Colon were without pavements, sewers, or running water, and under the treaty these were to be provided by the United States, reimbursement to be accomplished at the end of the fifty-year period. This work was in progress as well as similar improvements in the various settlements that were building or completed. Machine-shops were rehabilitated or added to, and new ones constructed for assembling the machinery purchased in the United States, for manufacturing parts in order to avoid the delay incident to securing them from the manufacturers, and for making repairs.

The commissary of the Panama Railroad was enlarged and an adequate cold-storage plant for the proper care of meats and the manufacture of ice was in course of construction; local commissaries were established at the various settlements; and a system of supply was in operation between the main commissary and those at the different localities, as well as with the hotels, messes, and kitchens.

Probably the most difficult problem was the feeding of the force. Boarding-houses and restaurants thrived, but not so the men, and the stories told, exaggerated no doubt with the passage of time, are of conditions which, to say the least, were decidedly unpleasant. A local contract was made for running a hotel at Culebra, and the subsistence privilege for the entire force was advertised and bids were received.

Thought and attention were given to the storage and distribution of construction supplies. A system was instituted for shipping material and equipment direct from the dock to the places where needed, preventing congestion and saving double handling. A large storehouse was erected for reserve supplies of all kinds that might be needed and without which delays to the work would result. The great distance from the source of production and supply, and the necessity for keeping the work going, made the supply of material a very important feature.

The Panama Railroad, constructed in 1850-5 by Americans with American capital, constituted a part of one of the through routes between the east and west ; its commercial interests had to be continued, and, in addition, it must assist in the construction of the Canal. The roadbed, equipment, and facilities were scarcely adequate for the former alone, and, with the immense quantities of supplies required for the Canal, they became totally inadequate. The road was double-tracked and rebuilt to suit the heavier equipment that had been ordered, round-houses were constructed, docks erected, and yards built at the terminals and at various places along the line for the handling of freight of all kinds and spoil from the Canal.

All of these various branches of the work came directly under the control of the chief engineer ; and it was necessary to coordinate them with the construction of the Canal. Under these circumstances, it can readily be seen that Mr. Stevens's conclusions, that the administrative problems were greater than those of engineering, were correct.

One of the departments on the Isthmus not yet touched upon, and a very important one, was that of government. Under the treaty, the United States obtained from Panama the control and jurisdiction of a strip of land across the Isthmus ten miles wide, five miles on either side of the center line of the Canal to be constructed, so that there were required, as soon as the transfer of the strip was effected, a code of laws, a fiscal system, and the other machinery necessary for the establishment of a form of government. While the Spooner Act gave the President authority to make such regulations and establish such tribunals as might be required to exercise the control under the treaty, Congress, by specific enactment, delegated to the President the exercise of civic, judicial, and military functions in the Zone, to be exercised through such person or persons as he might determine, but such delegation of authority was to cease with the expiration of the Fifty-eighth Congress (March 4, 1905). The President exercised this authority through the Isthmian Canal Commission, which became the legislative body, announced that the laws of the land would continue in force until changed by competent authority, and appointed a member of the commission as governor of the Canal Zone Major-General George W. Davis, U. S. A., who brought to the task valuable experience gained in Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. At that time the Zone was divided into municipalities, each with its mayor, secretary, treasurer, and municipal council, so that a political organization was established for the government of the strip, but without the elective franchise. Laws were prescribed, courts established, police, fire force, postal system, customs service, and schools were organized as the needs of the situation demanded. This department also had charge of all questions that arose between the Republic of Panama and the Canal Zone. The governor was given the power of reprieve, pardon, and deportation. The Fifty-eighth Congress adjourned without legislating for the Canal or continuing the authority it had vested in the President, so that the commission lost its legislative functions. A de facto government had been established, however; the work had to proceed ; new conditions as they arose had to be met; so that President Roosevelt continued the government but legislated through the medium of Executive Orders.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*Peary Discovers The North Pole*

His Own Account.

_COMMANDER ROBERT E. PEARY, the first human being of authentic record to reach the North Pole, attained that goal of his life-long ambition April 6, 1909, as told in his "The North Pole: Its Discovery," from which this account is taken, by permission of Frederick A. Stokes Company. Temporarily the glory of his achievement was threatened by the claim of Dr. Frederick A. Cook to have reached the Pole on April 21, 1908. The civilized world was still huzzaing Cook on September 6, 1909, when the first news came from Peary that he had succeeded in reaching the Pole. Cook has been discredited.

This was Peary's eighth "dash" into the arctic wilderness. It was made in the steamer "Roosevelt," which sailed from a Maine port in August, 1908, with a company of 66 men and 140 dogs. Thirty hours were spent at the Pole. In 1911, by special act, Peary received the thanks of Congress and was made a rear-admiral._

WE were now one hundred and thirty-three nautical miles from the Pole. Pacing back and forth in the lee of the pressure ridge near which our igloos were built, I made out my program. Every nerve must be strained to make five marches of at least twenty-five miles each, crowding these marches in such a way as to bring us to the end of the fifth march by noon, to permit an immediate latitude observation.

As to the dogs, most of them were powerful males, as hard as iron, in good condition ; but without an ounce of superfluous fat; and, by reason of the care which I had taken of them up to this point, they were all in good spirits, like the men. The sledges, which were being repaired that day, were also in good condition. My food and fuel supplies were ample for forty days, and by the gradual utilization of the dogs themselves for reserve food, might be made to last for fifty days if it came to a pinch.

A little after midnight, on the morning of April 2 1909], after a few hours of sound, warm and refreshing sleep, and a hearty breakfast, I started to lift the trail to the north, leaving the others to pack, hitch up, and follow. As I climbed the pressure ridge back of our igloo, I took up another hole in my belt, the third since I left the land thirty-two days before.

As we had traveled on, the moon had circled round and round the heavens opposite the sun, a disk of silver opposite a disk of gold. Looking at its pallid and spectral face, from which the brighter light of the sun had stolen the color, it seemed hard to realize that its presence there had power to stir the great ice-fields around us with restlessness power even now, when we were so near our goal, to interrupt our pathway with an impassable lead.

When we awoke early in the morning of April 3, after a few hours' sleep, we found the weather still clear and calm.

Some gigantic rafters were seen during this march, but they were not in our path. All day long we had heard the ice grinding and groaning on all sides of us, but no motion was visible to our eyes. Either the ice was slacking back into equilibrium, sagging northward after its release from the wind pressure, or else it was feeling the influence of the spring tides of the full moon. On, on we pushed, and I am not ashamed to confess that my pulse beat high, for the breath of success seemed already in my nostrils.

I had not dared to hope for such progress as we were making. Still the biting cold would have been impossible to face by any one not fortified by an inflexible purpose. The bitter wind burned our faces so that they cracked, and long after we got into camp each day they pained us so that we could hardly go to sleep. The Eskimos complained much, and at every camp fixed their fur clothing about their faces, waists, knees, and wrists. They also complained of their noses, which I had never known them to do before. The air was as keen and bitter as frozen steel.

At the next camp I had another of the dogs killed. It was now exactly six weeks since we left the "Roosevelt," and I felt as if the goal were in sight.

At our camp on the fifth of April I gave the party a little more sleep than at the previous ones, as we were all pretty well played out and in need of rest. I took a latitude sight, and this indicated our position to be 89 25', or thirty-five miles from the Pole; but I determined to make the next camp for a noon observation, if the sun should be visible.

The last march northward ended at ten o'clock on the forenoon of April 6. I had now made the five marches planned from the point at which Bartlett turned back, and my reckoning showed that we were in the immediate neighborhood of the goal of all our striving. After the usual arrangements for going into camp, at approximate local noon, of the Columbia meridian, I made the first observation at our polar camp. It indicated our position as 89 57'.

We were now at the end of the last long march of the upward journey. Yet with the Pole actually in sight I was too weary to take the last few steps. The accumulated weariness of all those days and nights of forced marches and insufficient sleep, constant peril and anxiety, seemed to roll across me all at once. I was actually too exhausted to realize at the moment that my life's purpose had been achieved. As soon as our igloos had been completed and we had eaten our dinner and double-rationed the dogs, I turned in for a few hours of absolutely necessary sleep. But, weary though I was, I could not sleep long. It was, therefore, only a few hours later when I woke. The first thing I did after awaking was to write these words in my diary :

"The Pole at last. The prize of three centuries. My dream and goal for twenty years. Mine at last! I can not bring myself to realize it. It seems all so simple and commonplace."

Everything was in readiness for an observation at 6 p. m., Columbia meridian time, in case the sky should be clear, but at that hour it was, unfortunately, still overcast. But as there were indications that it would clear before long, two of the Eskimos and myself made ready a light sledge carrying only the instruments, a tin of pemmican, and one or two skins; and drawn by a double team of dogs, we pushed on for an estimated distance of ten miles. While we traveled, the sky cleared, and at the end of the journey I was able to get a satisfactory series of observations at Columbia meridian midnight. These observations indicated that our position was then beyond the Pole.

Nearly everything in the circumstances which then surrounded us seemed too strange to be thoroughly realized ; but one of the strangest of those circumstances seemed to me to be the fact that, in a march of only a few hours, I had passed from the western to the eastern hemisphere and had verified my position at the summit of the world. It was hard to realize that, in the first miles of this brief march, we had been traveling due north, while, on the last few miles of the same march, we had been traveling south, although we had all the time been traveling precisely in the same direction. It would be difficult to imagine a better illustration of the fact that most things are relative. Again, please consider the uncommon circumstance that, in order to return to our camp, it now became necessary to turn and go north again for a few miles and then to go directly south, all the time traveling in the same direction.

As we passed back along that trail which none had ever seen before or would ever see again, certain reflections intruded themselves which, I think, may fairly be called unique. East, west, and north had disappeared for us. Only one direction remained, and that was south. Every breeze which could possibly blow upon us, no matter from what point of the horizon, must be a south wind. Where we were, one day and one night constituted a year, a hundred such days and nights constituted a century. Had we stood in that spot during the six months of the Arctic winter night, we should have seen every star of the northern hemisphere circling the sky at the same distance from the horizon, with Polaris (the North Star) practically in the zenith.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Oklahoma Rush*

Contemporary Accounts.

_THESE two accounts of the opening of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and the memorable "rush" of white settlers to stake out claims appeared in the New York "Tribune" September 17, 1893, in the form of letters from correspondents. The first if from Kildare, Oklahoma, the second from Arkansas City, Kansas. The "rush" here described was a repetition of one that had occurred in April, 1889, when vacant lands of the Creeks and Seminoles were opened to settlement under the United States homestead laws.

Despite the fact that the Cherokee Strip comprised an area of 6,000,000 acres, there was not nearly enough land to satisfy the hopes of the 100,000 or more men and women who engaged in the spectacular race. Other Indian lands, for which the Government had paid from fifteen to thirty cents an acre, were opened to settlement in 1901 and 1906. In the latter year Oklahoma and Indian Territory were combined and admitted into the Union as the forty-sixth State._

WITH the sharp crack of a carbine in the hands of a sergeant of the Third Cavalry, followed by almost simultaneous reports from the weapons of the other soldiers stationed all along the line between Kansas and the Indian country, the greatest race ever seen in the world began to-day. It was on a racetrack 100 miles wide, with a free field, and with a principality for the stake. From the rear of a special train filled with Santa Fe officials, the start from the south end of the Chilocco reservation was seen to better advantage than from anywhere else along the whole line. From this point the racers had three miles the start of all others. Directly south of this line were the towns along the Santa Fe, which were the objective points for so many of the boomers. For a mile in the rear of the line, there was presented what appeared like a fine hedge fence, extending as far as the eye could reach along the prairie in both directions. But as the observer approached the fence it changed into a living wall.

Men and horses seemed in almost inextricable confusion until the line itself was reached, and then it was seen that every man, woman and horse had an allotted place and was kept in it by a law stronger than any act on the statute books the compulsion exercised by a great body of free Americans, who were determined to have things just and right. The line was probably straighter than any that was ever formed by the starters on a race-course. The horsemen and bicycle-riders were to the front, while the buggies and the lighter wagons were in the second row, with heavy teams close in the rear. The shot sounded, and away they went, with horses rearing and pitching, and one unfortunate boomer striking the ground before the line had fairly been broken. Within three hundred yards the first horse was down, and died after that short effort. But the rider was equal to the occasion, and immediately stuck his stake into the ground, and made his claim to a quarter section of the finest farming land in the Strip.

It was perhaps the maddest rush ever made. No historic charge in battle could equal this charge of free American people for homes. While courtesy had marked the treatment of women in the lines for many days, when it came to this race they were left to take care of themselves. Only one was fortunate enough and plucky enough to reach the desired goal ahead of nearly all her competitors. This was Miss Mabel Gentry, of Thayer, Neosho County, Kan., who rode a fiery little black pony at the full jump for the seven miles from the line to the town site of Kildare, reaching that point in seventeen minutes. It was a terrible drive from start to finish, but the girl and her horse reached the town. In the race the bicycle-riders were left far behind. The crispy grass of the prairie worked to their disadvantage. The men and women with buggies were also outdistanced and reached the town site after the best lots had been taken.

Thousands were disappointed after all the lots had been taken, and thousands went right on through the district without stopping. That the land was totally inadequate to the demand was made evident this evening, when the northbound train went through. Every train was almost as heavily loaded as when it came in this morning, and thousands of persons who returned brought tales of as many more persons wandering around aimlessly all over the Strip, looking for what was not there. The station platforms all along the line were crowded with people who had rushed in and who were now hoping for a chance to rush out. The opening is over, the Indian land is given away, and still there are thousands of men and women in this part of the country without homes.

WHEN at noon to-day the bars that have so long enclosed 6,000,000 acres of public land were let down, more than 100,000 men and women joined in the mad rush for land. Men who had the fastest horses rode like the wind from the border, only to find other men, with sorry-looking animals, ahead of them. Fast teams carrying anxious home-seekers were driven at breakneck speed, only to find on the land men who had gone in afoot. Every precaution had been taken to keep out the "Sooner" element, yet that same element, profiting by former experiences, had captured the land. All night the rumble of teams could be heard as they moved out to the strip. At the stations the men stood in line at the ticket office, awaiting the slow movements of ticket-sellers, who could not sell more than 2,000 tickets an hour. The great jam was at Orlando, where were gathered 20,000 citizens of Perry, all anxious for the time to come when they could start on their ten-mile race. From the elevation at Orlando the line could be seen for a distance of eight miles east and ten miles west. A half-dozen times some one would shout the hour of noon, and fifty to a hundred horsemen would draw out of the line, only to be driven back by the cavalrymen, who were patrolling the Strip in front of the impatient throng.

At last a puff of smoke was seen out on the plains to the north, and soon the dull boom of a cannon was heard. A dozen carbines along the line were fired in response to the signal, and the line was broken. Darting out at breakneck speed, the racers soon dotted the plains in every direction. The trains were loaded rapidly. At first there was an attempt to examine the registration certificates ; but this soon was given up, as the rushing thousands pushed those ahead of them, the trainmen giving all their time to collecting tickets. The first train of twelve cars pulled across the line at noon, crowded as trains never were before; even the platforms and roofs were black with human beings. Following this train at intervals of only two or three minutes went another and another until the last, composed of flat and coal cars, all crowded, had pulled across the line, followed by at least 3,000 disappointed, panting men who were determined not to be deprived of their rights. The run to Perry was made in three-quarters of an hour. Before the train stopped men began climbing out of the windows and tumbling from the platforms.

In their haste to secure claims ahead of the trains were at least 1,000 horsemen, who had come the ten miles from the line in unprecedentedly short time and who claimed all the lots immediately about the land office and the public well. They were rubbing down their weary horses when the trains were unloading. When the last of the trains pulled in the scramble for land about the town continued with increased vigor. The quarter-sections about the town had all been taken, but in every direction lines were being run and additional towns laid out, to be called North Perry, South Perry, East Perry, and West Perry. By two o'clock fully 20,000 men and women, of all nationalities and colors, were on the site of what all hope will be a great city. They were without food and without water. The scenes at Enid were a repetition of those at Perry.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*Henry Ford And The Automobile*

By James Rood Doolittle.

_A MOST interesting and informative chapter in Doolittle's "Romance of the Automobile Industry" is the accompanying account of Henry Ford and the great part he has played in what has come to be the foremost American industry, in point of financial magnitude. The article is given here by permission of the publishers, The Klebold Press, New York.

Ford, the premier automobile manufacturer of the world, is credited with making, in 1893, the second gasoline car to be operated successfully in the United States a car which "has been the strongest educational force the industry has produced."

In the Ford employ to-day--thirty-two years afterward are 100,000 persons turning out 8,500 automobiles every twenty-four hours. Their employer has instituted a profit-sharing plan whereby $10,000,000 has been distributed annually to employees, and has built for their free use a $2,000,000 hospital._

THE name of Henry Ford is known and his personality is respected wherever civilized man dwells. As head of the company that has produced or has scheduled for current production something like $700,000,000 of automobiles in eleven years, there can be no question about his rank in the industry. As the chief of 100,000 workmen, most of whom he developed from mere laborers to the grade of skilled mechanics, each deemed worthy of mechanics' wages but schooled to perform only a single operation, he has gained fame.

The world is interested in Henry Ford as a pacifist, educator and philanthropist, but the automobile industry recognizes in Ford a scientist, a bulldog fighter and a manufacturer par excellence.

Ford invented and built with his own hands a two-cylinder, four-cycle gasoline car that ran at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour in the spring of 1893. That places him so close to the top of the list of American automobile inventors that there is a doubt as to exactly how he ranks. From the best data available as to his status in the list, he should be credited with making the second gasoline car that ran in the United States. Duryea certainly built and ran a car in 1893 and tried out his Buggyaut, commenced in 1891, quite extensively before the date of Ford's first car, but the weight of the testimony is that Ford was second.

He fought the Selden patent to a standstill, without proving anticipation of its claims.

His car has been the strongest educational force the industry has produced, because the ranks of motorists are increased from the bottom and Ford cars are the first cars purchased by entries into the motor field in a large percentage of cases. The array of 1,500,000 Ford cars and the service they have done needs no emphasis here.

Henry Ford and the Ford car are the best advertisements the automobile industry has enjoyed. Speaking broadly, their value to the rest of the industry is incalculable.

Of full medium height, Mr. Ford is slenderly built but sinewy as hickory. Equipped with meager primary schooling, he has taken all the degrees conferred by the University of the World.

There has been an immense amount of flub-dub written about Ford's hardships; his luck and his genius, but the only real hardship he ever had was that he chose to work hard. He was successful because he worked out an important problem at the right time and his genius may be described as the logical sequence of the hard work and success.

Ford's genius rests upon his ability and willingness to do an astounding amount of work. He made a monumental success because he did the work and expended the intelligent effort at the right time, and then kept right on expending intelligent effort until the whole world recognized it.

Ford was the eldest of three sons and three daughters, born to William Ford, native of Ireland but of English blood, who emigrated to this country and settled eight miles west of Detroit, Michigan, in 1847. The young Irish-English immigrant was a man of strong personality and was a steady and moderately successful farmer. He married Mary Litogot some years after reaching Michigan, and Henry Ford Was born July 30, 1863.

A great storm of criticism and protest has been raised concerning the attitude of Ford toward war. Opinions may differ according to the partisanship of those who hold them, but the stern position assumed by Ford is perfectly clear and logical from his point of view. Hatred of war comes naturally to Henry Ford, for he was born to the sound of fife and drum. His mother listened to the tramp of armed hosts and heard the dismal music of the funeral bands; the wailing bugle call of "Taps" over the graves of fallen warriors. She saw an endless line of maimed men come back from the battle front and she gave to Henry Ford an inherited aversion to war that is as deeply ingrained in his being as it is possible for anything to be.

There is nothing in his attitude to show that he fears war he simply hates it.

The boy Henry was a baby until the end of the struggle between the States, and his childhood was little different from that of the average farmer boy, where there is a measure of prosperity. For the father was not poor. The boy had enough to eat and wear and a comfortable home in which to live. He had to work hard and long as soon as he was able. But that is the lot of all farmer boys. He was no laggard and between the farm work and the rudimentary schooling he received, he found time to rig up a little shop on the farm where he had a vise, a lathe and a rude forge, as well as tool equipment of miscellaneous kinds. He fairly reveled in mechanics and sought out repair work, mostly for the love of the work itself rather than for any money returns that might result.

He had become interested in steam engines while still on the farm, and the part of farm work that he really liked was during the seasons when the farm required the service of steam engines. Ford was in his glory while serving as helper about the harvesting machines. When he was working in the Detroit machine shops he continued his interest in steam engines and did quite a lot of experimenting before he was nineteen years old.

Before his twentieth birthday, Ford left the Dry Dock Company and was employed as "road expert" by the Michigan state agent of George Westinghouse & Company, of Schenectady, New York, and put in several years in the service of that company, constantly in touch with the engine and constantly learning more about men and affairs.

His father never had become reconciled to Henry's defection from the farm, and considered it more or less of a disgrace that his eldest son should work with his hands at anything besides agriculture, and in a final effort to "redeem" the young man from a life of that sort, he presented his son with a heavily "timbered forty" near the old farm.

Ford dutifully abandoned his job with the Westinghouse people and made a careful inspection of his landed estate. He found that the timber was of good quality and thereupon he rigged up a sawmill, cleared the land and marketed the lumber, spending some time in denuding the forty-acre lot.

Ford was a farmer with mechanical leanings in 1887, but his timbering operations had been moderately profitable, and he had fitted up a shop on his farm in which the first Ford car was built. He married Clara J. Bryant in 1887.

The first Ford was a steamer, designed to be run with a single-cylinder engine 2 by 2 inches from a boiler that developed from 250 to 400 pounds pressure per square inch. The car was never completed and was abandoned in 1889.

Ford gave up farming about the same time he abandoned work on his first car and removed to Detroit, where he got a job at $45 a month for 12 hours' work a day with the Detroit Edison Illuminating Company. He was raised to $75 a month in 90 days and was made chief engineer at $100 and then $125 per month, remaining with the company for seven years.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*A Banking Act To End Panics*

By Senator Robert L. Owen.

_SENATOR OWEN, of Oklahoma, who wrote this able interpretation of the Federal Reserve Act of 1903 for the Rand-McNally "Bankers' Monthly," was chairman of the Committee on Banking and Currency, and managed the passage of the Federal Reserve Act and Farm Loan Act in the United States Senate. Before going to the Senate in 1907, he was an Oklahoma banker and United States Indian agent.

In this important reform of the national currency, which was enacted in the first year of the Wilson administration, the control of the money of the country was taken from private hands and placed in the Treasury Department. The country was divided into 12 banking districts and the reserves of those districts were placed in certain cities so as to better serve the needs of the whole country and, by relieving the nervous strain imposed primarily upon the New York banks the reserve center under the old system avert panics._

MANY men n have claimed to be the author of the Federal Reserve Act. The fact is, the Federal Reserve Act was born out of the experience of men. The principles of that Act were first put into effect, probably by Great Britain, in a panic immediately after the Civil War in 1866, when, by ministerial promise, the Bank of England, which, though owned by private stockholders, to all intents and purposes, is a governmental institution, was permitted to issue legal tender notes, against other securities than gold, in violation of the English Act of 1849 ; but, because of the exigency and need of immediate currency, the ministerial powers gave a permit to use the printing press, and manufacture legal tender notes against commercial bills. It abated the panic within twenty-four hours. Three times that has occurred in England.

The Great German Empire followed that experience, and gave authority by statute law to the Reischbank, to issue legal tender notes against commercial bills, of a certain qualified class, under a penalty of a 5 percent interest charge, payable to the Government, and which would serve as a means for automatic retirement of those notes ; and in that way they got protection against inflation.

The principle of the Federal Reserve Act, which is of great importance to this country, is the fact that commercial bills of a qualified class, can be used by the Federal Reserve Banks as a basis of issuing money to the business men of the United States. In the old days, under our laws, we concentrated the reserves of the banks of the country, first in forty odd reserve cities, then, in three central reserve cities ; then, at last they were pyramided in New York, where the New York banks were compelled to rely upon each other, where those who wanted currency in the country relied upon New York to furnish that currency, and therefore, there was built up in New York the reliance on stocks and bonds, used as collateral for call loans, and these call loans went into the millions; and when any sudden demand came that alarmed the banks of the country, they had no remedy whatever, except to call upon the borrower to make good his call loan. The borrower under such circumstances had no recourse, except to sell his securities upon a falling market.

Under conditions of that kind, we have been visited with a number of severe panics, the recent one being in 1907, and also in 1894 and 1893. These panics have swept this country. They have made the business men in this country tremble for fear, and have prevented tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands of men from engaging in legitimate manufacturing business, in legitimate commerce, in other avenues, which would be well warranted, if there had been any stability in our financial system, any stability in the credit market.

Under the American system, men are compelled of necessity to extend credit, and do extend credit, and under such conditions where there is no stability in the credit market, it was easy to destroy confidence ; and we have talked learnedly in the past about our troubles being due to loss of confidence, and have sometimes forgotten that the loss of confidence was unavoidable, because the banks of the country owed ten times as much money as the banks had in their vaults, and if 10 percent of their depositors at any one time were to call for the payment of the deposits in cash, the banks would have nothing with which to transact current business, and to pay a check on a deposit.

It was no wonder that the banks of this country were in a state of continual trepidation, whenever there was a threat of a panic, or a disturbance of confidence. I believe for us that period is gone, and gone forever.

Under our present system, commercial bills can be used to issue money, Federal Reserve notes, they are not bank notes either. The banks of this country tried hard to make them bank notes. They are notes of the United States, with the taxing power behind them, and as good money as the world has ever seen, secured in cash by a credit of a man who takes his note to his local bank, and is worthy of a loan ; secured, second, by the member bank that endorses that note; secured, third, by the Federal Reserve Bank that takes that note; secured, in fact, by all of the banks of this country who are members of that system, and secured by the stockholders of those banks, under the double liability clause ; and finally, secured by the taxing power of the people of the United States. There never was in the history of the world a security of more stability and dignity.

But what has that to do with the investment banking business? It gives for the first time in this country, an assured stability in business. It brings into activity every human agency available in our country. It brings to employment every man willing to labor. It brings a condition, not of temporary prosperity, but of continued stable business prosperity in this country, which cannot be broken.

Any individual who indulges in unsound business methods, will of necessity go into a personal liquidation, as he merits ; but, in the future, no man will have the ground cut from under his feet, by a sudden panic, such as swept over this country in October, 1907, when nearly every bank from the Atlantic to the Pacific, closed its doors from Saturday to Monday night. The American people had the wit, even in that exigency to manufacture an artificial currency in the form of clearing house certificates ; in the form of cashiered checks, pay checks; certificates of deposit, and numerous other forms which availed at the time, as a medium of currency; and the people of the country had the good sense to stand by the banks and not to demand the payment of their deposits in cash.

But the exigency will never arise again in this country, and you will find that those who deal in municipal securities will have a widening field, a more stable field I call your attention to the stability of the interest rate, since the Federal Reserve Act went into effect, practically no fluctuation. In a few days the interest rate in New York went to 6 percent. ; but the rate is comparatively stable now, without the fluctuation of a single point, and the reason of that is perfectly plain because those who have a right to ask credit ; those who have a right to demand currency, can offer these proper securities and obtained the currency that they need, and when a man can get currency, and knows he can get currency then he does not want it.

The United States is entering into a new era, and in my judgment the world is entering into a new era. Since the Federal Reserve Act went into effect, the bankers of this country have gained over six thousand millions of dollars in deposits, and that is a sum so gigantic that the human imagination can hardly conceive it. It is a little difficult to ascertain where that line of deposits comes from. A part of it is undoubtedly due to money which was hoarded in this country, and which was gradually put back into employment under conditions that the holders of it believed they were safe in marching forth on. A part of it is due to drawing out of stockings of the cowardly depositor who was unwilling to trust the bank, some ninety odd millions of dollars through the postal savings system by which the Government puts itself behind the depositors and redeposits that fund with the bank. A part of it is due to the bringing into this country of European gold ; but a very large part of it, in my opinion, is due to the extension of credit by the bankers of this country, which re-appear as deposits. So that in my judgment the Federal Reserve Act has a very far-reaching effect upon all business.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*Ultimatum In The Negotiation Of Peace*

By Envoy William Rufus Day.

_This note, preserved among the Senate documents in the archives of the Fifty-fifth Congress, was addressed by judge Day, as chairman of the American Peace Commission, to the head of the Spanish Commission, in session at Paris to negotiate the treaty of peace between the United States and Spain which was signed December 10, 1898. Early in that year Day had succeeded John Sherman as Secretary of State in the McKinley Cabinet, and had subsequently relinquished the portfolio in order to direct the work of the United States Peace Commission. His associates on the Commission were Senators Cushman K. Davis, William P. Frye and George Gray, and Whitelaw Reid. The terms of the treaty Were bitterly protested by the Spanish Commissioners.

Following its ratification by the United States Senate on February 6, 1899, the treaty was signed by the Queen Regent of Spain on March 17, and final ratifications were exchanged on April 11, 1899. Diplomatic negotiations were soon resumed._

HAVING received and read your letter of today, touching the final proposition presented by the American Commissioners at yesterday's conference, I hasten to answer your inquiries "seriatim," first stating your question, and then giving my reply.

First. "Is the proposition .you make based on the Spanish colonies being transferred free of all burdens, all, absolutely all outstanding obligations and debts, of whatsoever kind and whatever may have been their origin and purpose, remaining thereby chargeable exclusively to Spain?

In reply to this question, it is proper to call attention to the fact that the American Commissioners, in their paper of yesterday, expressed the hope that they might receive within a certain time "a definite and final acceptance" of their proposal as to the Philippines, and also "of the demands as to Cuba, Porto Rico and other Spanish Islands in the West Indies, and Guam, in the form in which those demands have been provisionally agreed to.

The form in which they have thus been agreed to is found in the proposal presented by the American Commissioners on the 17th of October and annexed to the protocol of the 6th conference, and is as follows:

"Article 1. Spain hereby relinquishes all claim of sovereignty over and title to Cuba.

"Article 2. Spain hereby cedes to the United States the Island of Porto Rico and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies, and also the Island of Guam in the Ladrones."

These articles contain no provision for the assumption of debt by the United States.

In this relation, I desire to recall the statements in which the American Commissioners have in our conferences repeatedly declared that they would not accept any articles that required the United States to assume the so-called colonial debts of Spain.

To these statements I have nothing to add.

But, in respect of the Philippines, the American Commissioners, while including the cession of the archipelago in the article in which Spain. "cedes to the United States the Island of Porto Rico and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies, and also the Island of Guam in the Ladrones," or in an article expressed in similar words, will agree that their Government shall pay to Spain the sum of twenty million dollars ($20,000,000).

Second. "Is the offer made by the United States to Spain to establish for a certain number of years similar conditions in the ports of the archipelago for vessels and merchandise of both nations, an offer which is preceded by the assertion that the policy of the United States is to maintain an open door to the world's commerce, to be taken in the sense that the vessels and goods of other nations are to enjoy or can enjoy the same privilege (situation) which for a certain time is granted those of Spain, while the United States do not change such policy?"

The declaration that the policy of the United States in the Philippines will be that of an open door to the world's commerce necessarily implies that the offer to place Spanish vessels and merchandise on the same footing as American is not intended to be exclusive. But, the offer to give Spain that privilege for a term of years is intended to secure it to her for a certain period by special treaty stipulation, whatever might be at any time the general policy of the United States.

Third. "The Secretary of State having stated in his note of July 30 last that the cession by Spain of the Island of Porto Rico and the other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies, as well as one of the Ladrones, was to be as compensation for the losses and expenses of the United States during the war, and of the damages suffered by their citizens during the last insurrection in Cuba, what claims does the proposition refer to on requiring that there shall be inserted in the treaty a provision for the mutual relinquishment of all claims, individual and national, that have arisen from the beginning of the last insurrection in Cuba to the conclusion of the treaty of peace?"

While the idea doubtless was conveyed in the note of the Secretary of State of the United States of the 30th of July last that the cession of "Porto Rico and other islands now under the sovereignty of Spain in the West Indies, and also the cession of an island in the Ladrones, to be selected by the United States," was required on grounds of indemnity, and that "on similar grounds the United States is entitled to occupy and will hold the city, bay, and harbor of Manila, pending the conclusion of a treaty of peace which shall determine the control, disposition and government of the Philippines," no definition has as yet been given of the extent or precise effect of the cessions in that regard. The American Commissioners therefore propose, in connection with the cessions of territory, "the mutual relinquishment of all claims for indemnity, national and individual, of every kind, of the United States against Spain and of Spain against the United States, that may have arisen since the beginning of the late insurrection in Cuba and prior to the conclusion of a treaty of peace."


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*In Defense Of Silver*

By William Jennings Bryan.

_THIS is the main part of the famous "cross of gold" speech which "made" Bryan politically. It was delivered before the Democratic National Convention at Chicago, in 1896, and so electrified the delegates that Bryan, who hitherto had been a Congressman from Nebraska, 1891-5, and an unsuccessful candidate for United States Senator, was nominated for President by acclamation. It is generally considered a model of modern political oratory, even though its author was repeatedly disappointed in his Presidential aspirations.

At the time the speech was delivered, Bryan was a Nebraska delegate to the Convention and was concluding his second year as editor of the Omaha "World-Herald." He was a native of Salem, Illinois, where he was born in 1860, and had removed to Nebraska in 1887. In Congress he made several effective speeches on free trade, but his name is inseparably connected with the free-silver policy._

WHEN you (turning to the gold delegates) come before us and tell us that we are about to disturb your business interests, we reply that you have disturbed our business interests by your course.

We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer ; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis ; the merchant at the crossroads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day who begins in the spring and toils all summer--and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the board of trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak for this broader class of business men.

We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned ; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them.

Let me call your attention to two or three important things. The gentleman from New York says that he will propose an amendment to the platform providing that the proposed change in our monetary system shall not affect contracts already made. Let me remind you that there is no intention of affecting those contracts which, according to present laws, are made payable in gold ; but if he means to say that we cannot change our monetary system without protecting those who have loaned money before the change was made, I desire to ask him where, in law or in morals, he can find justification for not protecting the debtors when the act of 1873 was passed, if he now insists that we must protect the creditors.

And now, my friends, let me come to the paramount issue. If they ask us why it is that we say more on the money question than we say upon the tariff question, I reply that, if protection has slain its thousands, the gold standard has slain its tens of thousands. If they ask us why we do not embody in our platform all the things that we believe in, we reply that when we have restored the money of the Constitution all other necessary reforms will be possible; but that until this is done there is no other reform that can be accomplished.

Mr. Carlisle said in 1878 that this was a struggle between "the idle holders of idle capital" and "the struggling masses, who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the country"; and, my friends, the question we are to decide is: Upon which side will the Democratic party fight; upon the side of "the idle holders of idle capital" or upon the side of "the struggling masses?" That is the question which the party must answer first, and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic party, as shown by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic party. There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.

You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.

My friends, we declare that this nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth ; and upon that issue we expect to carry every State in the Union. I shall not slander the inhabitants of the fair State of Massachusetts nor the inhabitants of the State of New York by saying that, when they are confronted with the proposition, they will declare that this nation is not able to attend to its own business. It is the issue of 1776 over again. Our ancestors, when but three millions in number, had the courage to declare their political independence of every other nation; shall we, their descendants, when we have grown to seventy millions, declare that we are less independent than our forefathers? No, my friends, that will never be the verdict of our people. Therefore, we care not upon what lines the battle is fought. If they say bimetallism is good, but that we cannot have it until other nations help us, we reply that, instead of having a gold standard because England has, we will restore bimetallism, and then let England have bimetallism because the United States has it. If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them : You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The "Open Door" In China*

By Secretary of State John Hay.

_HAY, whose entrance into Public life was as a private secretary to President Lincoln, became Secretary of State in McKinley's Cabinet, succeeding William R. Day, in 1898. In the interim he had been First Assistant Secretary of State in the Hayes administration, and had been Ambassador to England in 1897.

As Secretary of State his greatest diplomatic achievement was the maintenance of the "open door" policy in China, and the consequent postponement of the threatened dismemberment of the Chinese Empire. Not content with verbal assurances from the European Powers, Secretary Hay, in September, 1899, sent the accompanying letter to Charlemagne Tower, United States Ambassador to Russia, and similar notes to the legations at London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Tokyo. Favorable replies were received from all the foreign governments thus addressed. The original letter is in the State Department "Correspondence Concerning American Commercial Rights in China."_

IN 1898, when His Imperial Majesty had, through his diplomatic representative at this capital [Washington ] , notified this Government that Russia had leased from His Imperial Chinese Majesty the ports of Port Arthur, Ta-lien-wan, and the adjacent territory in the Liao-tung Peninsula in north-eastern China for a period of twenty-five years, your predecessor received categorical assurances from the Imperial Minister for Foreign Affairs that American interests in that part of the Chinese Empire would in no way be affected thereby, neither was it the desire of Russia to interfere with the trade of other nations, and that our citizens would continue to enjoy within said leased territory all the rights and privileges guaranteed them under existing treaties with China. Assurances of a similar purport were conveyed to me by the Emperor's ambassador at this capital; while fresh proof of this is afforded by the Imperial Ukase of July30 / August 11 last, creating the free port of Dalny, near Ta-lien-wan, and establishing free trade for the adjacent territory.

However gratifying and reassuring such assurances may be in regard to the territory actually occupied and administered, it can not but be admitted that a further, clearer and more formal definition of the conditions which are henceforth to hold within the so-called Russian "sphere of interest" in China as regards the commercial rights therein of our citizens is much desired by the business world of the United States, inasmuch as such a declaration would relieve it from the apprehensions which have exercised a disturbing influence during the last four years on its operations in China.

The present moment seems particularly opportune for ascertaining whether His Imperial Russian Majesty would not be disposed to give permanent form to the assurances heretofore given to this Government on this subject.

The Ukase of the Emperor of August 11 of this year, declaring the port of Ta-lien-wan open to the merchant ships of all nations during the remainder of the lease under which it is held by Russia, removes the slightest uncertainty as to the liberal and conciliatory commercial policy His Majesty proposes carrying out in northeastern China, and would seem to insure us the sympathetic and, it is hoped, favorable consideration of the propositions hereinafter specified.

The principles which this Government is particularly desirous of seeing formally declared by His Imperial Majesty and by all the great Powers interested in China, and which will be eminently beneficial to the commercial interests of the whole world, are:

First. The recognition that no Power will in any way interfere with any treaty port or any vested interest within any leased territory or within any so-called sphere of interest" it may have in China.

Second. That the Chinese treaty tariff of the time being shall apply to all merchandise landed or shipped to all such ports as are within said "sphere of interest" (unless they be "free ports"), no matter to what nationality it may belong, and that duties so leviable shall be collected by the Chinese Government.

Third. That it will levy no higher harbor dues on vessels of another nationality frequenting any port in such "sphere" than shall be levied on vessels of its own nationality, and no higher railroad charges over lines built, controlled, or operated within its "sphere" on merchandise belonging to citizens or subjects of other nationalities transported through such "sphere" than shall be levied on similar merchandise belonging to its own nationals transported over equal distances.

The declaration of such principles by His Imperial Majesty would not only be of great benefit to foreign commerce in China, but would powerfully tend to remove dangerous sources of irritation and possible conflict between the various Powers; it would reestablish confidence and security; and would give great additional weight to the concerted representations which the treaty Powers may hereafter make to His Imperial Chinese Majesty in the interest of reform in Chinese administration so essential to the consolidation and integrity of that empire, and which, it is believed, is a fundamental principle of the policy of His Majesty in Asia.

Germany has declared the port of Kiao-chao, which she holds in Shangtung under a lease from China, a free port and has aided in the establishment there of a branch of the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs. The Imperial German Minister for Foreign Affairs has also given assurances that American trade would not in any way be discriminated against or interfered with, as there is no intention to close the leased territory to foreign commerce within the area which Germany claims. These facts lead this Government to believe that the Imperial German Government will lend its cooperation and give its acceptance to the proposition above outlined, and which our ambassador at Berlin is now instructed to submit to it.

That such a declaration will be favorably considered by Great Britain and Japan, the two other Powers most interested in the subject, there can be no doubt; the formal and oft-repeated declarations of the British and Japanese Governments in favor of the maintenance throughout China of freedom of trade for the whole world insure us, it is believed, the ready assent of these Powers to the declaration desired.

The acceptance by His Imperial Majesty of these principles must therefore inevitably lead to their recognition by all the other Powers interested, and you are instructed to submit them to the Emperor's Minister for Foreign Affairs and urge their immediate consideration.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Hay-Pauncefote Treaty Of 1901*

Text of the Treaty.

_AT THE time this important Treaty was consummated, November 18, 1901, its signers, John Hay and Lord Julian Pauncefote, were respectively American Secretary of State and British Ambassador to the United States. Incidentally, Pauncefote was the first British Ambassador to Washington, preceding British envoys having been designated Ministers. He was well-qualified to negotiate such a Treaty, having served as British Commissioner to Paris in the Suez Canal negotiations of 1885.

The signing of this Treaty, of course, opened the may to the building of the Panama Canal. One of several notable diplomatic achievements of Secretary Hay, it was transmitted to the Senate by President Roosevelt on December 5, 1901, and was ratified, with but slight opposition, eleven days later. A former Treaty had been drafted, but was not acceptable to the British government, who did not care to guarantee the canal's neutrality._

THE United States of America and His Majesty Edward the Seventh, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King and Emperor of India, being desirous to facilitate the construction of a ship canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, by whatever route may be considered expedient, and to that end to remove any objection which may arise out of the Convention of the 19th April, 1850, commonly called the Clayton - Bulwer Treaty, to the construction of such canal under the auspices of the Government of the United States.

ARTICLE I.

The High Contracting Parties agree that the present Treaty shall supersede the afore-mentioned Convention of the 19th April, 1850.

ARTICLE II.

It is agreed that the canal may be constructed under the auspices of the Government of the United States, either directly at its own cost, or by gift or loan of money to individuals or corporations, or through subscription to or purchase of stock or shares, and that, subject to the provision of the present Treaty, the said Government shall have and enjoy all the rights incident to such construction, as well as the exclusive right incident to such construction, as well as the exclusive right of providing for the regulation and management of the canal.

ARTICLE III.

The United States adopts, as the basis of the neutralization of such ship canal, the following Rules, substantially as embodied in the Convention of Constantinople, signed the 28th October, 1888, for the free navigation of the Suez Canal, that is to say:

1. The canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations observing these Rules, on terms of entire equality, so that there shall be no discrimination against any such nation, or its citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions or charges of traffic or otherwise. Such conditions and charges of traffic shall be just and equitable.

2. The canal shall never be blockaded, nor shall any right of war be exercised nor any act of hostility be committed within it. The United States, however, shall be at liberty to maintain such military police along the canal as may be necessary to protect it against lawlessness and disorder.

3. Vessels of war of a belligerent shall not revictual nor take any stores in the canal except so far as may be strictly necessary; and the transit of such vessels through the canal shall be effected with the least possible delay in accordance with the regulations in force, and with only such intermission as may result from the necessities of the service.

Prizes shall be in all respects subject to the same rules as vessels of war of the belligerents.

4. No belligerent shall embark or disembark troops, munitions of war, or warlike materials in the canal, except in case of accidental hindrance of the transit, and in such case the transit shall be resumed with all possible dispatch.

5. The provisions of the Article shall apply to waters adjacent to the canal, within 3 marine miles of either end. Vessels of war of a belligerent shall not remain in such waters longer than twenty-four hours at any one time, except in case of distress, and in such case, shall depart as soon as possible; but a vessel of war of one belligerent shall not depart within twenty-four hours from a vessel of war of the other belligerent.

6. The plant, establishments, buildings, and all work necessary to the construction, maintenance, and operation of the canal shall be deemed to be part thereof, for the purposes of this Treaty, and in time of war, as in time of peace, shall enjoy complete immunity from attack or injury by belligerents, and from acts calculated to impair their usefulness as part of the canal.

ARTICLE IV.

It is agreed that no change of territorial sovereignty or of the international relations of the country or countries traversed by the before-mentioned canal shall affect the general principle of neutralization or the obligation of the High Contracting Parties under the present Treaty.

ARTICLE V.

The present Treaty shall be ratified by the President of the United States, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate thereof, and by His Britannic Majesty; and the ratifications shall be exchanged at Washington or at London at the earliest possible time within six months from the date thereof.

In faith whereof the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed this Treaty and thereunto affixed their seals.

Done in duplicate at Washington, the 18th day of November, in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine hundred and one.

JOHN HAY PAUNCEFOTE.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The First Bryan Campaign*

William Jennings Bryan's Own Account.

_NOMINATED for the Presidency on a Democratic-Populist platform demanding the free and unlimited coinage of silver at the ratio of 16 to 1, Bryan canvassed the United States in person, as related in his "First Battle: A Story of the Campaign of 1896," (W. B. Conley Company) traveling more than 18,000 miles and addressing 5,000,000 people. Nevertheless, he was defeated by the Republican candidate, William McKinley, by an electoral vote of 271 to 176.

During the next four years, except for a short time in 1898, when he served as a colonel of volunteers in the Spanish-American War, he devoted himself assiduously to preaching the gospel of free silver and opposing trusts and imperialism. His eloquence made him nationally celebrated as the "boy orator of the Platte," his home town of Lincoln, Nebraska, being situated on the Platte River. The youthful implication was hardly supported by his age, 36, at the time._

THE reminiscences of the campaign of 1896 form such a delightful chapter in memory's book that I am constrained to paraphrase a familiar line and say that it is better to have run and lost than never to have run at all.

I shall always carry with me grateful, as well as pleasant, recollections of the newspaper men with whom I was thrown. The first premonitory symptom of greatness about to be thrust upon me was noticed at the Clifton House shortly after my Convention speech. Immediately after my return from the hall, a representative of a local paper asked me if I would have any objection to his sitting in my room.

I replied, "No," and then innocently inquired why he wanted to sit there. He informed me that his paper had sent him over to report anything of interest. In a few minutes another representative of the press dropped in upon the same mission, and then another until my room was full.

I found that they were prepared to minutely report circumstances which to me seemed trivial. The angle of inclination was noted as I lay upon the bed. I was given credit for using a paper to protect the bedclothes from my feet; the rabbit's foot given me as I left the convention hall was reproduced in the papers ; the bulletins announced that Mrs. Bryan preserved her composure during the nominating scene, and when I remarked that I was glad she had done so, the world was at once permitted to share my joy. When, on Saturday night, we tried to steal away and have a Sunday's rest without our whereabouts being known, I found that five carriages followed ours, and the omnipresent news-gatherers interviewed us as we alighted. But they were a gentlemanly and genial crowd, and I soon learned to save myself much trouble by telling them the exact moment of rising and retiring, and by reporting in advance the things to be done and, in review, the things which had been done.

The total number of miles traveled [during the campaign], as shown by the schedules, was about 18,000. I have no way of ascertaining the exact number of speeches made, but an estimate of 600 is not far from correct. It is difficult to make an estimate of the number of persons addressed. Mr. Rose, of the Associated Press, thought about 5,000,000 the total number in attendance at my meetings, while Mr. Oulahan, of the United Associated Presses, places the number at 4,800,000. This, of course, includes men, women and children.

After leaving home, on September 9th, when I started on my long trip, up to November 3d, I had spent every day, excepting Sunday, in campaigning. So far as my physical comfort was concerned the greatest anxiety was expressed as to the condition of my throat. I tried a cold compress, and a hot compress, and a cold gargle and a hot gargle, and cough drops and cough cures and cough killers in endless variety and profusion, and, finally abandoning all remedies, found my voice in better condition during the latter days, without treatment, than it was earlier in the campaign. In all this travel there was but little delay and no accident of any consequence to any member of the party.

As we learn by experience, my experience may be of value to those who may hereafter be engaged in a similar campaign. I soon found that it was necessary to stand upon the rear platform of the last car in order to avoid danger to those who crowded about the train. I also found that it was much easier to speak from the platform of the car than to go to a stand, no matter how close. Much valuable time was wasted by going even a short distance, because in passing through a crowd it was always necessary to do more or less of handshaking, and this occupied time. Moreover, to push one's way through a dense crowd is more fatiguing than talking. Speaking from the car also avoided the falling of platforms, a form of danger which, all through the campaign, I feared more than I feared breaking down from overwork. A platform, strong enough ordinarily, was in danger of being overtaxed when the crowd centered at one place in an endeavor to shake hands with the candidate.

The ratio of 16 to 1 was scrupulously adhered to during the campaign, and illustrated with infinite variety. At one place our carriage was drawn by sixteen white horses and one yellow horse; at any number of places we were greeted by sixteen young ladies dressed in white and one dressed in yellow, or by sixteen young men dressed in white and one dressed in yellow. But the ratio was most frequently represented in flowers, sixteen white chrysanthemums and one yellow one being the favorite combination. I was the recipient of lucky coins, lucky stones and pocket-pieces and badges and buttons. During the campaign I received gold-headed canes, plain canes, leather canes, thorn canes, and even a glass cane. Some were voted at church fairs, of a variety of denominations, some were taken from famous battlefields, and one was made from the house in which Patrick Henry made his first speech. I received a silver Waterbury watch, presented by a Connecticut bimetallist (he thought it embarrassing for me to time myself with a gold watch while making a silver speech), two rings, one with a sixteen to one set and one made of a coin in circulation at the time of the first Christian emperor. I received four handsome live eagles, two from Telluride, Colorado, and two from Burke, Idaho, and one stuffed eagle which had been killed in Nebraska. One of the prettiest souvenirs of the campaign was a watch-charm, emblematic of bimetallism beautiful specimens of wire gold and wire silver being enclosed in crystal.

It is impossible to chronicle all the evidences of kindly feeling given during the campaign; in fact the good will manifested and the intense feeling shown impressed me more than any other feature of the campaign. When the result was announced my composure was more endangered by the sorrow exhibited by friends than it was during all the excitement of the struggle. Men broke down and cried as they expressed their regret, and there rises before me now the face of a laboring man, of Lincoln [Nebraska], who, after he dried his tears, held out his hand from which three fingers were missing, and said: "I did not shed a tear when those were taken off." People have often lightly said that they would die for a cause, but it may be asserted in all truthfulness that during the campaign just closed there were thousands of bimetallists who would have given their lives, had their lives been demanded, in order to secure success to the principles which they advocated. Surely, greater love hath no man than this.

The following morning we returned to Lincoln on an early train. The Bryan Home Guards met us at the depot and escorted me to the city clerk's office, where I made the affidavit required of those who fail to register, and then they accompanied me to the polling places, where I deposited my ballot. Just as I was about to vote, one of the strongest Republicans of the precinct, then acting as a challenger for his party, suggested that as a mark of respect to their townsman they take off their hats. The suggestion was adopted by all excepting one. I relate this incident because, although the compliment was somewhat embarrassing at the time, I appreciated it, as it showed the personal good will which, as a rule, was manifested toward me in my home city by those who did not agree with me on political questions. The Home Guards took me to the door of my house, where I thanked them for the consideration which they had shown, and the sacrifices which they made during the campaign.

When necessity no longer spurred me to exertion, I began to feel the effects of long continued labor and sought rest in bed. As soon as the polls were closed the representatives of the press, drawn by friendliness and enterprise, assembled in the library below to analyze the returns, while Mrs. Bryan brought the more important bulletins to my room her face betraying their purport before I received them from her hand. As the evening progressed the indications pointed more and more strongly to defeat, and by eleven o'clock I realized that, while the returns from the country might change the result, the success of my opponent was more than probable. Confidence resolved itself into doubt, and doubt, in turn, gave place to resignation. While the compassionless current sped hither and thither, carrying its message of gladness to foe and its message of sadness to friend, there vanished from my mind the vision of a President in the White House, perplexed by the cares of state, and, in the contemplation of the picture of a citizen by his fireside, free from official responsibility, I fell asleep.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Gold-Standard Act*

By Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage.

_GAGE was a prominent Chicago banker who, in 1897, became Secretary of the Treasury in McKinley's Cabinet, after having declined the same portfolio tendered him by President Cleveland. He was opposed to Bryanism and the 16 to 1 free-silver doctrine in the Presidential contest of 1896, supporting McKinley on the Republican platform advocating a single gold standard, such as he here defines.

It appeared in "Sound Currency," July, 1900, in reply to an article by Professor James L. Laughlin, political economist, of the University of Chicago, in the "Journal of Political Economy" for June of that year. Laughlin was active in the work of the Monetary Commission and wrote the important report of that body. Gage remained Secretary of the Treasury after McKinley died, and served in the Roosevelt Cabinet until 1902, when he resigned._

I AM satisfied that the new law establishes the gold standard beyond assault, unless it is deliberately violated.

It is quite true that the legal tender quality has not been taken away from the silver and paper money of the United States. It would have been a remarkable and disquieting thing to do and it would have been quite as likely to weaken as to strengthen our monetary system. It makes no difference to anybody to-day whether he is paid in gold or silver, so long as the two metals circulate at par with each other and are received on deposit by the banks without discrimination. What difference would it make to me if I held some bonds and Mr. Bryan should direct his Secretary of the Treasury to sort out some of his limited stock of silver dollars for the purpose of redeeming the bonds? Would I not immediately deposit the silver in my bank and draw checks against it, just as I would if the Secretary had exercised the more rational policy of paying me with a Sub-Treasury check?

I believe that silver will never drop below par in gold? The crux of the proposition is that adequate measures have been taken by the new law to prevent such a contingency.

The question is largely an academic one whether any provision is made for maintaining the parity of gold and silver beyond the provisions of previous laws, for the simple reason that methods were already in operation which maintained this parity under severe strain from the first coinage of the Bland dollars in 1878 down to the repeal of the silver purchase law in 1893 and have maintained such parity ever since. Professor Laughlin understands the practical operation of these methods of redemption through the receipt of silver for public dues. This method will unquestionably prove adequate, upon the single condition that our mints are opened to the free coinage of silver and no further considerable purchase or coinage of silver takes place. The facts of the situation and the experience of other countries with a considerable amount of silver coins plainly show that the suspension of free coinage and the receipt of the silver coins without discrimination for public dues are in themselves sufficient to maintain parity.

But I think Professor Laughlin is mistaken in his criticism that no means whatever have been provided for maintaining the parity between gold and silver. He admits that the first section of the Act declares that "All forms of money issued or coined by the United States shall be maintained at a parity of value with this standard, and it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to maintain such parity." He criticizes this provision upon the ground that it gives absolutely nothing with which to maintain parity.

It is to be regretted that the provision on this subject is not put in plainer language. I understand that it was urged upon the Conference Committee that this clause should read, "it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Treasury to use all appropriate means to maintain such parity." This would have conveyed sweeping and complete authority to buy gold, sell bonds, or take any other steps in execution of a solemn duty imposed by Congress. But there is another provision of the bill which Professor Laughlin seems to have disregarded. This is in section 2, providing for the gold reserve, where it is prescribed that when bonds are sold for the maintenance of the reserve the Secretary of the Treasury, after exchanging the gold for notes and depositing the latter in the general fund of the Treasury, "may, in his discretion, use said notes in exchange for gold, or to purchase or redeem any bonds of the United States, or for any other lawful purpose the public interest may require, except that they shall not be used to meet deficiencies in the current revenues." The declaration that notes may be used "for any lawful purpose," certainly includes the maintenance of parity between gold and silver, since it is distinctly made a legal obligation of the Secretary by the first section. If the Secretary of the Treasury, therefore, finds a considerable fund of redeemed notes in the general fund of the Treasury, and fears that silver will fall below parity with gold, he is able under this provision to pay for silver in United States notes which are redeemable in gold on demand. It seems to me this affords an important and almost perfect means of maintaining the parity of gold and silver. It amounts in substance to the ability of the holder of silver dollars to obtain gold notes for them, if the Secretary of the Treasury, under the mandate laid upon him by law, finds it necessary to offer such notes in order to maintain the parity of silver.

But suppose that there were no notes in the general fund of the Treasury which could be used for this purpose? if, in other words, there was no demand for gold by the presentation of United States notes, which had resulted in an accumulation of the latter it is pretty plain that there would be no demand for the exchange of silver for gold. The entire body of the law on this subject is calculated fora period of distrust and demand for gold. If such a demand occurs it must fall upon the gold resources of the Government by the presentation of notes. The notes then become available for exchange for silver. If the criticism is made that this puts the notes afloat again in excessive quantities, it may be answered that the quantity of silver in circulation has been diminished, that a gold note has taken its place, and that if this note comes back for redemption in gold the Treasury is fully equipped by law for obtaining additional gold by the sale of bonds and holding the note until financial conditions have changed.

Objection is made to the new law that it does not make the bonds of the United States redeemable in gold. That is true in a narrow sense. The new law, as finally enacted, does not change the contract between the Government and the holder of the bond, which was an agreement to pay coin. . . . I think that upon many grounds the conference committee acted wisely in refusing to make this change. It establishes a dangerous precedent to enact a retroactive law. . . . For those who prefer a gold bond Congress provided the means of obtaining it by offering the new two per cent bonds upon terms of conversion approaching the market value of the old bonds. . . . Nobody doubts that these bonds will be as good as gold, and it is wholly immaterial whether some Secretary of the Treasury pursues the infantile policy of paying silver dollars upon these bonds instead of checks, when as I have shown all money of the United States is convertible into gold. These are the distinct provisions of the new law and they cannot fail to maintain the gold standard except by the deliberate violation of the duty imposed by the law upon the Secretary of the Treasury.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Wilson Tariff Enacted*

By Harry Thurston Peck.

_REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAM L. WILSON, of West Virginia, author of the historic tariff measure which bears his name, was so displeased by the manner in which the Bill, as originally framed, was emasculated by the Senate, that he besought his House confreres not to pass it. It passed, however, and became a law in 1894 without the signature of President Cleveland, who charged a group of Democratic Senators, who were active in its emasculation, with being guilty of "party perfidy and dishonor."

This was the first piece of national legislation that provided for the assessment of an income tax. Largely because the Supreme Court declared the income tax feature unconstitutional, and partly because the general business depression of 1893-4 was attended by a marked falling off in imports, the Act was a failure as a revenue law. This account is from Peck's "Twenty Years of the Republic," by permission of Dodd, Mead & Company._

ON December 19th, Mr. Wilson, the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, reported to the House the bill popularly known as "the Wilson Bill." The Republicans at once denounced it as free trade legislation; yet an analysis of its provisions as originally reported showed plainly enough that while it was distinctly a step in the direction of freer trade it was on the whole a very conservative measure. In the first place, it removed entirely the duties on wool, on coal, on iron ore, on lumber, and on sugar, both raw and refined. It made rather moderate reductions in the duties on woolen goods, cottons, linens, silks, pigiron, steel billets, steel rails, tin plate, china, glassware, and earthenware. A number of minor and miscellaneous articles received new schedules.

The most noticeable feature of the bill was its treatment of raw materials as just described. Here lay the point of departure from Republican tariff legislation, which in taxing raw materials had made American protectionism a thing unlike the protectionism of other leading nations. The Wilson Bill, in providing for the free entry of wool, coal, iron ore, lumber and sugar, adopted a principle recognized by scientific economists, while it adhered closely to the recommendations of President Cleveland's various messages and to the promise made in the Democratic platform of 1892.

The remission of the duty on wool was the boldest assertion of the new policy; for the duty on wool was the one provision of the McKinley tariff that had been of practical advantage to many American farmers. Its repeal was bitterly opposed by the wool-growers of Ohio and other States, whom Senator Sherman estimated at a million souls, and the value of their annual product at $125,000,000. Free iron ore was opposed by the interest that had secured control of the Western ore beds, but it was of distinct advantage to the Eastern manufacturers. Free coal affected very few sections of the country. In New England and on the Pacific Coast, consumers might get their supply of coal from the adjacent mines in Canada rather than from the more distant coal-fields of Pennsylvania and West Virginia; but the country at large must still use American and not imported coal. The same thing was true with regard to lumber.

The question of the tariff on sugar, however, was somewhat more complex. During the years preceding 1894, the refining of sugar in the United States had gradually become monopolized by the American Sugar Refining Company, oftener spoken of as the Sugar Trust, of which Mr. H. O. Havemeyer was the head. This corporation was one of the most powerful of all those to which public attention had been directed, and it was one of the most unpopular. The interests of this corporation would be served by admitting raw sugar free, thus giving the Trust the benefit of cheap materials, and by a tax upon refined sugar which came from other countries. This was precisely what the McKinley Act had done, enormously increasing the profits of the Trust. The Wilson Bill, as reported to the House, provided for the admission of raw sugar free, in accordance with the general theory as to raw materials, but it also admitted refined sugar free, thereby depriving the Sugar Trust of any special advantage, and leaving it to stand upon its own legs.

So much for the distinctive features of the new tariff measure in its original form. The rest of its schedules were lower than those of the McKinley Act, but in the main quite as high if not higher than those of the Tariff Act of 1883, passed by a Republican Congress. In fact, taken as a whole, the Wilson Bill, so far from being in essence a free-trade measure, was one that would have been regarded in the years before the Civil War as a piece of rigorous protective legislation. It embodied, however, as has been explained, the general principle of free raw materials; while still it dealt considerately with the many interests which had grown up under the shelter of the thirty-two tariff acts which the Republicans had passed between 1860 and 1890.

The Wilson Bill was very well received by the Democrats in the House and by the party as a whole. Little change was made in the original draft during the five weeks when it was under consideration by the Representatives. But many Democrats and some Republicans from the South and West eagerly advocated the insertion in the bill of a clause providing for a tax on incomes. This would yield, it was said, a substantial revenue and wipe out the anticipated deficit; and most of all, it would make the possessors of large fortunes contribute to the Government a sum proportionate to their wealth. There was a strong and very wide-spread feeling that many of the richest persons in the country had so successfully "dodged" their taxes as to have secured a practical exemption from any taxation whatsoever. Secretary Carlisle had suggested laying a tax upon certain classes of corporations; but the House adopted instead a tax of 2 percent. upon all incomes of more than $4,000, the tax to remain in force until January 1, 1900. This clause was adopted on January 24th by a vote of 204 to 140, and the bill as a whole received the approval of the House on February 1st, by a vote of 182 to 106-61 members not voting. When the result was announced by the Speaker, it was received with a burst of Democratic cheering, and Mr. Wilson was showered with congratulations by his followers and friends.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*Outbreak Of The War With Spain*

A Contemporary Account.

_THIS review of the immediate causes and first hostile movements of the Spanish-American War is taken from the International Year Book of 1898 (Dodd, Mead & Company). The war came of Spanish misrule in Cuba. The police power of Spain being unable to maintain order in the island, the U. S. battleship "Maine" was sent to Havana to safeguard American interests, and was blown up February 15, 1898.

National feeling grew in intensity until President McKinley sent a message to Congress, April 11, reviewing and arraigning Spanish mismanagement in Cuba. Nine days later he sent an ultimatum to the Spanish government, and diplomatic relations with Spain were severed.

The first gun was fired April 23, 1898, by the U. S. S. "Nashville" across the bows of the Spanish merchantman "Buena Ventura," and the first action occurred four days later when a small fleet under Captain Sampson shelled Matanzas._

BOTH Congress and the people had sunk the question of the "Maine" in the larger one of Cuban independence. Destitution among the reconcentrados" was constantly growing worse, thousands dying slowly from starvation. American supplies were distributed to the sufferers through Miss Clara Barton, President of the Red Cross Society, and General Fitzhugh Lee, our Consul at Havana. On March 31 Captain-General Blanco issued a decree putting an end to reconcentration in the provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana, Matanzas, and Santa Clara, and on April 9 the Spanish Cabinet decided to grant an armistice to the insurgents, while both the Pope and the great Powers of Europe were using their influence to avert a Spanish-American war. Nevertheless the replies at this time of the Madrid government to President McKinley's demands concerning the pacification of Cuba, notwithstanding the Spanish offer to arbitrate the "Maine" trouble, led the authorities at Washington to believe that pacification could not be attained without the armed intervention of the United States. The President's message to Congress, which was daily expected, was withheld . . . until April 11, 1898. Both Congress and the people had grown impatient waiting for the message, and when it finally came excitement was at such a height that many condemned it for its conservatism. It was, however, a wise and ably conceived document. The President stated the entire issue, rightly considering the "Maine" disaster a subordinate matter, and passed in review Spanish mismanagement and outrage in Cuba, and the repeated promises and the repeated failures of the Spanish government to effect suitable reforms.

The conclusion of the long message and the really important part was as follows:

"The only hope of relief and repose from a condition which can no longer be endured is the enforced pacification of Cuba. In the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, in behalf of endangered American interests, which give us the right and the duty to speak and act, the war in Cuba must stop.

"In view of these facts and of these considerations, I ask the Congress to authorize and empower the President to take measures to secure a full and final termination of hostilities between the government of Spain and the people of Cuba, and to secure in the island the establishment of a stable government capable of maintaining order and observing its international obligations, insuring peace and tranquility and the security of its citizens, as well as our own, and to use the military and naval forces of the United States as may be necessary for these purposes.

"And in the interest of humanity and to aid in preserving the lives of the starving people of the island, I recommend that the distribution of food and supplies be continued, and that an appropriation be made out of the public treasury to supplement the charity of our citizens.

"The issue is now with the Congress. It is a solemn responsibility. I have exhausted every effort to relieve the intolerable condition of affairs which is at our doors. Prepared to execute every obligation imposed upon me by the Constitution and the law, I await your action."

. . . The resolutions . . . were accepted by both Houses in the small hours of the morning of April 19, by the Senate, by a vote of 42 to 35, and by the House by a vote of 310 to 6, and were signed by the President on the following day. The following is the text of the act.

be it resolved:

"First That the people of the island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent.

"Second That it is the duty of the United States to demand, and the government of the United States does hereby demand, that the government of Spain at once relinquish its authority and government in the island of Cuba and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters.

"Third That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into active service the militia of the several States to such an extent as may be necessary to carry these resolutions into effect.

"Fourth That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said island, except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination when that is accomplished to leave the government and control of the island to its people."

On the 20th of April the President signed his ultimatum to the Spanish government, a copy of which was handed to Minister Polo, who immediately demanded his passports and started for Canada, leaving the interests of the Spanish legation in charge of M. Cambon, the French Minister. Before receiving the ultimatum the Spanish Cabinet delivered to Minister Woodford his passports and informed him that diplomatic relations with the United States were at an end. On the 25th a bill was passed by Congress declaring that a state of war existed between the United States and Spain, and had 30 existed since and including April 21.

In the meantime war preparations were being pushed forward by both governments. The Queen-Regent signed a decree asking for a national subscription to the navy, our own navy was increased by the purchase of many more ships of various kinds, and by the middle of the month the troops throughout the country were preparing to move towards the Gulf. On the 17th two companies of the Twenty-fifth Infantry reached Key West and two days later a general movement of regular troops began. The principal rendezvous was Chickamauga, but New Orleans, Mobile, and Tampa were also places of mobilization. The President issued a call for 125,000 volunteers on April 23, which though meeting with immediate response received not a little adverse criticism, the dissatisfaction arising from the fact that in some States the infantry and artillery requisitions were not consistently apportioned, and from the fact that the Department of War proposed to use its privilege, if it chose, of destroying the integrity of State organizations when the troops were beyond State boundaries. A few days later orders were issued for recruiting the regular army up to its war strength, 61,000. On the 21st the fleet under acting Rear-Admiral Sampson at Key West was ordered to proceed to Havana and then institute a general blockade of the western end of Cuba. Commodore Schley with the "flying squadron" was detained at Hampton Roads in order to meet any attack which might be made on the coast cities by the Spanish Cape Verde fleet, reports from which for a number of weeks subsequent were contradictory and alarming.

During the rest of the month many prizes were taken in western Cuban waters. It was not the purpose of Admiral Sampson to bombard Havana or expose his fleet to the enemy's fire from coast fortifications before he was assured of the destination of the Spanish Cape Verde and Cadiz fleets; but at the same time he determined to prevent the erection of any new fortifications. This brought about the first action of the war, the bombardment of the works . . . at Matanzas, April 27.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Capture Of Santiago And Defeat Of Cervera*

By Andrew S. Draper.

_DRAPER, from whose "Rescue of Cuba" this account of the land and sea Battle of Santiago is taken, by permission of Silver, Burdett & Company, was for ten years president of the University of Illinois, was New York State Commissioner of Education and an eminent historian. His record of events in Cuba during 1898 is signalized by historic accuracy and enthusiastic presentation.

Since Dewey's victory at Manila Bay, the mobilization of 200,000 volunteers swiftly progressed, and on July 3, 1898, a force of 16,000 Americans under Shafter was cooperating with 5,000 Cubans under Garcia in the assault on Santiago. It was defended by 12,000 Spanish troops, with Cervera's fleet of 6 warships in the harbor. That morning Cervera sought to escape and lost his fleet, along with about 2,050 men killed and captured. The American loss under Sampson and Schley was one man killed and ten wounded._

ABOUT May 11th the Spanish flotilla was definitely reported at the French island of Martinique, and shortly afterward at the island of Curacao, just north of Venezuela. While Sampson was returning from his hunt for Cervera at Porto Rico, the Spaniard was sailing due northwest for Santiago de Cuba, which he reached on May 19th. His arrival at Santiago was not known by the Americans with certainty for several days. While Sampson kept guard near Key West, Commodore Schley with the "flying squadron," was watching the harbor of Cienfuegos on the southern coast of Cuba, where Cervera was reported to be hidden.

At last his hiding-place at Santiago was discovered, and on May 28th, Schley, with his flag-ship, the "Brooklyn," accompanied by the "Massachusetts," the "Texas," the "Iowa," the "Marblehead,"the "Minneapolis," the "Castine," the torpedo-boat "Dupont," and the auxiliary cruiser "St. Paul," the coaling-ship "Merrimac," and others, arrived off Santiago; and the next day they were able to look through the narrow neck of the bottle-shaped harbor and to see the enemy's ships lying safely at anchor behind the frowning fortifications and the network of submarine torpedoes.

To verify fully the assurance that all the Spanish vessels were there, Lieutenant Victor Blue, of the navy, made a daring and famous reconnaissance. He landed and, at the greatest risk, climbed the hills, counted the enemy's ships, and returned with the report that the five cruisers and two torpedo-boats were actually imprisoned in the bay.

In a few days Rear-Admiral Sampson, with the flag-ship "New York," and the battleship "Oregon, the cruiser "New Orleans," and several auxiliary vessels and torpedo-boats, reenforced Commodore Schley and took command of the fleet that was keeping Cervera "bottled" in Santiago.

Lieutenant Hobson took the coaling-ship "Merrimac" by night beneath the guns of the forts, and while under terrific fire from both shores, endeavored to anchor his ship in the narrow channel, to sink her by his own hand, in order to leave her a wreck to block the Spanish ships if they should attempt to escape. That the "Merrimac" was not sunk at the precise spot intended was due to the rudder being shot away. When morning came he and his six companions who had volunteered for the enterprise were, as by a miracle, alive and unhurt, clinging to a raft. The fact that the attempt to close the harbor was not fully successful does not detract from the sublime heroism of the men.

The situation now was this: The Spanish fleet was indeed besieged; it might dash for liberty, but, in the face of such a superior and vigilant force, it would have but little chance. On the other hand, the besiegers were unable to reach it so long as it chose to remain in its haven ; the narrow channel was a network of submarine mines which would sink the first vessel that entered; and the lofty forts on the cliffs above could at such close range pour down an annihilating torrent of shells upon the thin decks of the attacking ships, which, at that nearness, could not lift their guns sufficiently to silence the batteries. Their elevation was so great that successive bombardments, though they damaged, did not destroy, the batteries.

Nevertheless, until they were destroyed or captured it was evident that the ships could not advance into the channel to clear it of its sunken torpedoes. The aid of the army was therefore necessary. A force by land was required to capture the harbor forts, so that the battleships might steam in and engage the Spanish fleet. Accordingly, General Shafter was ordered to take his troops, land near Santiago, and capture the forts.

Before he started, however, the navy, on June 10th, made a landing. It was the first permanent foothold gained by Americans on Cuba. Under the protection of the guns of the "Oregon" the "Marblehead," and the "Yosemite," six hundred marines landed at Guantanamo Bay, in command of Lieutenant-Colonel R. W. Huntington. Their landing was stoutly resisted by the Spaniards. All day and all night the fighting continued, as the little band desperately defended their camp from the continuous and encircling volleys. Here were the first American lives lost on Cuban soil. But, in spite of their severe losses, the marines held the flag where they had planted it.

General Shafter's expedition started on June 14th. Thirty-five transports carried sixteen thousand men. They went under the protection of fourteen armed vessels of the navy. The battle-ship "Indiana" led the way. Six days later they came in sight of Morro Castle at the entrance to the bay of Santiago, and soon they heard the cheers from the battle-ships on duty there.

On the second morning thereafter, the battle-ships shelled the shore at four different points along the forty miles of coast in order to mislead the Spaniards; and then at nine o'clock the signal was given for all the troops to go ashore as quickly as possible at Daiquiri, sixteen miles east of the entrance to Santiago Harbor and twenty-four miles west of Guantanamo, where the marines were still maintaining the flag they had planted.

In a moment the water was covered with small boats. Men jumped overboard and swam to shore in their eagerness to be first upon the land. Soon the beach was black with American soldiers. The Spaniards had fled in haste, leaving their camp equipment, and in some cases their breakfasts, behind them. Then the unloading of the transports began. Men with little or no clothing upon them went to and fro, between the ships and the shore, carrying arms and supplies. The artillery was landed at the one little wharf of an iron company. The horses and mules were pushed overboard and left to swim ashore ; though some of them swam out to the open ocean and could not get back.

In a short time four men were seen climbing the mountain-side hundreds of feet above the level of the sea. Soon the tiny figures were attracting the attention of the crowd. They were making for the blockhouse at the highest peak. They could be seen to stop and look into the fort for a moment; then to reach the house. Directly "Old Glory" appeared waving against the sky. In an instant every steam whistle in the great fleet, for miles around, was shrieking, and every man on the decks and in the rigging of the ships, in the water and on the shore, was shouting for the flag of freedom and for what it represented and proclaimed. The little army was stretched out upon the shore, and that night its camp-fires sparkled for miles against the black background of the hills.

The advance upon Santiago was begun immediately. General Shafter understood clearly that he had more to fear from climatic sickness than from the enemy's bullets, and determined to finish the fight with the greatest rapidity possible. Consequently he did not wait for the unloading of all his supplies, but pushed his men forward over the mountain paths with only such outfit as they could carry on their backs, intending to follow them closely with the heavy artillery and baggage.

But he was not aware of the true condition of the roads. There were no roads. What were called such on the maps were at best only bridle-paths, and more often mere mountain trails. These trails passed over rocks, fallen timber, through swamps, and over bridgeless streams. The soldiers, as soon as they began to march, found themselves an army of mountain-climbers. The sun burned in the breathless glades like a furnace. It was the rainy season, and each day showers of icy coldness would pour down for hours; and when the rain ceased the sun would beat down more fiercely than before, while the humidity was almost insupportable. Sun-baked paths suddenly became mountain torrents; at one hour the men were suffocated with the fine dust, the next hour they were wading in mud above their gaiters. Strange insects buzzed about them, and they were followed by an army of disagreeable attendants with which they soon became familiar clattering land-crabs, the scavengers of the country. The progress of the troops was a crawling rather than a march.

The Spaniards withdrew as our soldiers advanced. Most of our men never had heard a gun fired in battle, but now they expected the conflict to begin at any time. There was no trepidation; they made little noise lest they might not get near the enemy. But if the army moved slowly, events moved rapidly. On the second day, even before the whole army was ashore, the first battle with loss of life occurred. The troops were advancing by different paths to take position on the line of battle that was to surround the city. Near the center was the First Regiment of United States Volunteer Cavalry, called the "Rough Riders."

This regiment of cowboys and ranchmen, with a sprinkling of college youths and young men of wealth and social distinction, was commanded by Colonel Leonard Wood and Lieutenant-Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. The former had been a surgeon in the regular army with military training in Western campaigns on the plains. The latter was one of the best-known young men in the Republic; famous for his courageous honesty in politics and for his patriotic energy in civil administration. He had resigned the office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy to organize this unique and picturesque regiment under the command of his friend, Colonel Wood.

The Rough Riders had left their horses in Florida because of the difficulty of transportation and the lack of open ground in Cuba. As they were threading their way on foot over the hills, their trail joined that of the regulars at the place called Guasimas. There they received a sudden volley from the enemy concealed in the thick glades, but they held their ground and returned the fire. They were unable to see their foes, whose smokeless powder gave no trace of their location; but through the tall grass and brush they steadily pushed on in the face of the dropping death, firing with calm precision. One after another of the Riders dropped dead or grievously wounded, but these young men, who never had been under fire, no more thought of turning back than a college team at a football game. Their colonels handled carbines like the men, and were at every point in the line they had deployed through the brush.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Purchase Of The Panama Canal*

By President Theodore Roosevelt.

_PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT wrote this special message to Congress on December 15, 1908, as a reply to persistent newspaper insinuations that the purchase of the Panama Canal property from the French Company, in 1902, was a corrupt deal. With characteristic vigor he denounces the "stories" as scurrilous and libelous in character and false in every essential particular."

The purchase and construction of the Canal was a signal achievement of the Roosevelt administration. It was made possible by the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty and by the fact that the Canal project was a "white elephant" on the hands of the New Panama Canal Company of France, as successor to the De Lessees Company. As Roosevelt points out, the purchase price of $40,000,000 was reasonable and was only accepted by the French for fear the United States would build a canal across Nicaragua instead. Begun in 1902, the Canal was completed and began operating August 15, 1914. It cost $375,000,000._

IN view of the constant reiteration of the assertion that there was some corrupt action by or on behalf of the United States Government in connection with the acquisition of the title of the French Company to the Panama Canal and of the repetition of the story that a syndicate of American citizens owned either one or both of the Panama companies, I deem it wise to submit to the Congress all the information I have on the subject. These stories were first brought to my attention as published in a paper in Indianapolis, called the "News, edited by Mr. Delavan Smith. The stories were scurrilous and libelous in character and false in every essential particular. Mr. Smith shelters himself behind the excuse that he merely accepted the statements which had appeared in a paper published in New York, the "World," owned by Mr. Joseph Pulitzer. It is idle to say that the known character of Mr. Pulitzer and his newspaper are such that the statements in that paper will be believed by nobody; unfortunately, thousands of persons are ill informed in this respect and believe the statements they see in print, even though they appear in a newspaper published by Mr. Pulitzer. A Member of the Congress has actually introduced a resolution in reference to these charges. I therefore lay all the facts before you.

The story repeated at various times by the "World" and by its followers in the newspaper press is substantially as follows: That there was corruption by or on behalf of the Government of the United States in the transaction by which the Panama Canal property was acquired from its French owners; that there were improper dealings of some kind between agents of the Government and outside persons, representing or acting for an American syndicate, who had gotten possession of the French Company; that among these persons, who it was alleged made "huge profits," were Mr. Charles P. Taft, a brother of Mr. William H. Taft, then candidate for the Presidency, and Mr. Douglas Robinson, my brother-in-law; that Mr. Cromwell, the counsel for the Panama Canal Company in the negotiations, was in some way implicated with the United States governmental authorities in these improper transactions ; that the Government has concealed the true facts, and has destroyed, or procured or agreed to the destruction of, certain documents; that Mr. W. H. Taft was Secretary of War at the time that by an agreement between the United States Government and the beneficiaries of the deal all traces thereof were "wiped out" by transferring all the archives and "secrets" to the American Government, just before the holding of the Convention last June at which Mr. Taft was nominated.

These statements sometimes appeared in the editorials, sometimes in the news columns, sometimes in the shape of contributions from individuals either unknown or known to be of bad character. They are false in every particular from beginning to end. The wickedness of the slanders is only surpassed by their fatuity. So utterly baseless are the stories that apparently they represent in part merely material collected for campaign purposes and in part stories originally concocted with a view of possible blackmail. The inventor of the story about Mr. Charles P. Taft, for instance, evidently supposed that at some period of the Panama purchase Mr. W. H. Taft was Secretary of War, whereas in reality Mr. W. H. Taft never became Secretary of War until long after the whole transaction in question had been closed. The inventor of the story about Mr. Douglas Robinson had not taken the trouble to find out the fact that Mr. Robinson had not the slightest connection, directly or indirectly, of any kind or sort with any phase of the Panama transaction from beginning to end. The men who attacked Mr. Root in the matter had not taken the trouble to read the public documents which would have informed them that Mr. Root had nothing to do with the purchase, which was entirely arranged through the Department of Justice under the then Attorney-General, Mr. Knox.

Meanwhile I submit to you all the accompanying papers, so that you may have before you complete information on the subject.

In the Act approved June 28, 1902, "To provide for the construction of a canal connecting the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans," the Congress provided as follows:

"That the President of the United States is hereby authorized to acquire, for and on behalf of the United States, at a cost not exceeding forty millions of dollars, the rights, privileges, franchises, concessions, grants of land, right of way, unfinished work, plants, and other property, real, personal, and mixed, of every name and nature, owned by the New Panama Canal Company, of France, on the Isthmus of Panama, and all its maps, plans, drawings, records on the Isthmus of Panama, and in Paris, including all the capital stock, not less, however, than sixty-eight thousand eight hundred and sixty-three shares of the Panama Railroad Company, owned by or held for the use of said Canal Company, provided a satisfactory title to all of said property can be obtained."

It thereupon became the duty of the President, in execution of this statute, to purchase the property specified from the New Panama Canal Company, of France, provided he could obtain a satisfactory title. The Department of Justice was instructed to examine the title, and after such an examination Attorney-General Knox reported that a satisfactory title could be obtained. Payment of the purchase price was thereupon made to the New Panama Canal Company, in accordance with the act of the Congress, and the property was conveyed by that company to the United States. It was no concern of the President, or of any officer of the Executive Department, to inquire as to what the New Panama Canal Company did with the money which it received. As a matter of fact, the New Panama Canal Company did distribute the money between its shareholders and the shareholders of the preceding Panama Canal Company in accordance with the decree of a French court, and the records of the French court show who were the shareholders who received the money ; but that is no concern of ours.

I call your attention to the accompanying statement as to the attempt to form an American company in 1899 for the purpose of taking over the property of the French Company. This attempt proved abortive. There was no concealment in its effort to put through this plan ; its complete failure and abandonment being known to every one.

The important points set forth in the accompanying papers, and in the papers to which I have referred you, are as follows:

The investigation of the history, physical condition, and existing value of the enterprise by the Congress, resulting in the enactment of the law of 1902 authorizing the President to acquire the property for the sum of $40,000,000 upon securing a satisfactory title and thereupon to undertake the work of construction ; the failure of the Americanization of the enterprise in 1899; the transmission by me to the Congress from time to time of full information and advice as to the relations of this Government to transit across the Isthmus and under the treaties, as to the negotiations and final acquisition of the title, and later as to the progress and condition of the work of construction; the previous authorization of the sale to the United States by the stockholders of the new company and their subsequent ratification; the examination and approval of the title by Mr. Knox; the arrangements for payment through J. P. Morgan & Company as the fiscal agents of this Government, and the payment accordingly at the Bank of France upon proper official receipts to the liquidators acting under the decree of the French court, the French governmental body having jurisdiction in the matter; and, finally, the subsequent apportionment and distribution of the fund to the creditors and stockholders of the two companies under that decree.

The Panama Canal transaction was actually carried through not by either the then Secretary of State, Mr. John Hay, or the then Secretary of War, Mr. Elihu Root, both of whom, however, were cognizant of all the essential features; but by the then Attorney-General, Mr. P. C. Knox, at present Senator from Pennsylvania. I directed or approved every action, and am responsible for all that was done in carrying out the will of the Congress; and the provisions of the law, enacted by Congress after exhaustive examination and discussion, were scrupulously complied with by the Executive. While the transaction was pending I saw Mr. Cromwell but two or three times, and my communications with him were limited to the exchange of purely formal courtesies. Secretary Hay occasionally saw him, in the same manner; I doubt whether Mr. Root held any conversation with him. The Attorney-General saw him frequently, as he was counsel for the Panama Company; their communications were official, as representing the two sides.

The title to the Panama Canal properties was vested in the New Panama Canal Company of France, which was the legal owner thereof, and the old or so-called De Lessees Company had a large equity therein. The title was not in a New Jersey company nor in any other American company, nor did this Government have any dealings with any American company throughout the affair.

The exact legal status, to the most minute detail, appears in the exhaustive opinion of Attorney-General Knox approving the title to be given to the United States, which clearly establishes that the only party dealt with was the New Panama Canal Company of France (with the concurrence of the liquidator of the old company) and not any American corporation or syndicate.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Venezuela Affair*

By Secretary of State Richard Olney.

_OLNEY, as Secretary of State in the Cleveland Cabinet, in 1895, displayed the same force and cogency in stating to Great Britain what is popularly called the Olney Doctrine regarding the Venezuela boundary question, as he displayed the year before, While Attorney-General, in enjoining Debs and the striking railway operatives from interfering with the United States mails or With interstate commerce.

Having become Secretary of State, Olney, prompted by President Cleveland, took an active interest in the Venezuela-British Guiana boundary dispute, and sent his famous letter, given here in substance, to Bayard, Minister to England, for the information of the British Government as to our position in the matter. Its interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine Was generally considered to enlarge the scope of that policy. In 1896, acting in behalf of Venezuela, Olney negotiated a treaty With Britain Which submitted the boundary question to arbitration._

IT is not proposed, and for present purposes is not necessary, to enter into any detailed account of the controversy between Great Britain and Venezuela respecting the western frontier of the colony of British Guiana. The dispute is of ancient date and began at least as early as. . . 1814. The claims of both parties, it must be conceded, are of a somewhat indefinite nature.

Great Britain .. . apparently remained indifferent as to the exact area of the colony until 1840, when she commissioned an engineer, Sir Robert Schomburgk, to examine and lay down its boundaries.

The exploitation of the Schomburgk line in 1840 was at once followed by the protest of Venezuela and by proceedings on the part of Great Britain which could fairly be interpreted only as a disavowal of that line. . . . Notwithstanding this, however, every change in the British claim since that time has moved the frontier of British Guiana farther and farther to the westward of the line thus proposed.

The important features of the existing situation . . . may be briefly stated.

1. The title to territory of indefinite but confessedly very large extent is in dispute between Great Britain on the one hand and the South American Republic of Venezuela on the other.

2. The disparity in the strength of the claimants is such that Venezuela can hope to establish her claim only through peaceful methods through an agreement with her adversary either upon the subject itself or upon an arbitration.

5. Great Britain, however, has always and continuously refused to arbitrate, except upon the condition of a renunciation of a large part of the Venezuelan claim and of a concession to herself of a large share of the territory in controversy.

6. By the frequent interposition of its good offices at the instance of Venezuela, by constantly urging and promoting the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries, by pressing for arbitration of the disputed boundary, by offering to act as arbitrator, by expressing its grave concern whenever new alleged instances of British aggression upon Venezuelan territory have been brought to its notice, the Government of the United States has made it clear to Great Britain and to the world that the controversy is one in which both its honor and its interests are involved and the continuance of which it can not regard with indifference.

Those charged with the interests of the United States are now forced to determine exactly what those interests are and what course of action they require. It compels them to decide to what extent, if any, the United States may and should intervene in a controversy between and primarily concerning only Great Britain and Venezuela and to decide how far it is bound to see that the integrity of Venezuelan territory is not impaired by the pretensions of its powerful antagonist. Are any such right and duty devolved upon the United States? If . . . any such right and duty exist, their due exercise and discharge will not permit of any action that shall not be efficient and that, if the power of the United States is adequate, shall not result in the accomplishment of the end in view.

That there are circumstances under which a nation may justly interpose in a controversy to which two or more other nations are the direct and immediate parties is an admitted canon of international law.

We are concerned at this time, however, not so much with the general rule as with a form of it which is peculiarly and distinctly American. Washington, in the solemn admonitions of the Farewell Address, explicitly warned his countrymen against entanglements with the politics or the controversies of European powers.

The Monroe administration . . . did not hesitate to accept and apply the logic of the Farewell Address by declaring in effect that American nonintervention in European affairs necessarily implied and meant European non-intervention in American affairs.

It was realized that it was futile to lay down such a rule unless its observance could be enforced. It was manifest that the United States was the only power in this hemisphere capable of enforcing it. It was therefore courageously declared not merely that Europe ought not to interfere in American affairs, but that any European power doing so would be regarded as antagonizing the interests and inviting the opposition of the United States.

The precise scope and limitations of this rule can not be too clearly apprehended. It does not establish any general protectorate by the United States over other American states. It does not relieve any American state from its obligations as fixed by international law nor prevent any European power directly interested from enforcing such obligations or from inflicting merited punishment for the breach of them. It does not contemplate any interference in the internal affairs of any American state or in the relations between it and other American states. It does not justify any attempt on our part to change the established form of government of any American state.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*Mckinley In The White House*

By Charles S. Olcott.

_HAVING served through the Civil War, from which he emerged a major, and seven consecutive terms in Congress, besides two terms as Governor of Ohio, McKinley became the twenty-fifth President of the United States on March 4, 1897. His campaign was unusual in that he remained at Canton, Ohio, throughout it, making some 300 speeches from the porch of his home and there addressing an aggregate of a million persons.

The Republican party platform on which he was elected committed his administration to the gold standard and to a Protective Tariff, as opposed to the free silver and freer-trade campaign of Bryan. In his "Life of William McKinley," from which this account is taken, by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company, Olcott credits McKinley with receiving a majority of 286,257 votes the first President since Grant to receive a majority of the popular vote. Under his administration a decided boom in business followed the passage of the Dingley tariff measure._

THE administration of William McKinley began on the 4th of March, 1897, in an atmosphere of friendliness and hearty good-will. Not since the days of Grant had a President entered upon his duties with a majority of the popular vote. Hayes and Harrison each received fewer votes than his unsuccessful opponent, while Garfield and Cleveland, though receiving small pluralities, failed to command the support of a majority of the electorate. Lincoln went into office the first time with over sixty percent of the voters opposed to him, and though he received a nominal majority for his second term, there were eleven States not yet readmitted to the Union, and which did not vote.

McKinley went into the Presidency with 7,111,607 votes at his back, constituting a clear majority over all opposing candidates of 286,257 votes. In addition he had the personal good-will of a large proportion of those who voted against him. Not an important newspaper in any of the large cities manifested a spirit of hostility. Everywhere a prevailing atmosphere of hopefulness and cordial good-will seemed to have taken possession of the people. Those who believed in Protection rejoiced that the greatest champion of their cause was now in a position of power. Of those who opposed Protection, many allowed their joy in the overthrow of the Free-Silver specter to drown for the moment any fears they might have entertained. Moreover, the genial nature of the successful candidate had made a strong appeal to the masses, and generally speaking the people of the United States wished William McKinley success and prosperity.

The outgoing administration bore a conspicuous part in this general manifestation of good-will. To those who were in the White House on the night of the election it is known that the Democratic President was sincerely gratified by the result, while his Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Carlisle, made no secret of his elation at the overthrow of the Silver fallacy. Early in February, President Cleveland sent a cordial and gracious letter to his successor, with an invitation to dine at the White House on the eve of the inauguration, to which the President-elect responded in the heartiest mariner. There was the ring of sincerity in the exchange of greetings between the two men, each of whom entertained a genuine feeling of respect and admiration for the other, notwithstanding their diverse political opinions. Cleveland's entire Cabinet seconded the efforts of their chief to extend a hospitable welcome to the new administration, each retiring secretary manifesting a spirit of practical helpfulness to his successor. Never before in the history of the country had there been a more courteous transfer of authority. It is worthy of note, also, by way of contrast with previous transitions of the government from one party to another, that the only immediate change in the personnel of the public service was in the offices of the President, Vice-President, and members of the Cabinet. Change in the civil service, under a law which McKinley had helped to put upon the statute books, and which Cleveland had greatly extended in its application, had completely overthrown the spoils system, and though Republicans were eventually appointed in many instances to succeed Democrats, the substitutions were made gradually and with reference to fitness for the office, rather than to mere sectionalism or partisanship. The old-fashioned scramble for patronage had to a large extent disappeared.

Inauguration day on the 4th of March, 1897, found President McKinley face to face with many serious problems. The country was suffering from a widespread industrial depression. The Tariff of 1894 had not only greatly unsettled the manufacturing and commercial interests, but had failed to provide sufficient revenue for the expenses of the government. A steadily increasing fear had spread over the country, lest the gold standard should not be maintained. The party in power in the preceding administration was divided against itself, President Cleveland standing firmly for a sound currency, while the Democratic members of Congress were largely in favor of the free coinage of silver. The loss of confidence led to the presentation of an immense volume of legal tender notes for redemption, and the reserve fund of $100,000,000 in gold, which for a long time had been considered by the Treasury and the public as a necessary safeguard, was rapidly depleted. Again and again President Cleveland had been forced to borrow money to replenish the reserve. The purchasers of bonds would, to a large extent, obtain the gold with which to pay for them by presenting greenbacks for redemption, thus depleting the reserve still further for the purpose of replenishing it! The bond issues, therefore, failed to accomplish their purpose, until at length the administration was compelled to bargain with a Wall Street syndicate, representing foreign bankers, to supply the necessary gold at exorbitant rates. Issues of bonds were made aggregating $262,315,400, adding nearly $11,111,000 to the annual interest charge.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*Wilson Nominated For The Presidency*

By Joseph P. Tumulty, His Secretary.

_TUMULTY, from whose Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him" this account is taken, by permission of Doubleday, Page & Company, was Wilson's secretary throughout both terms of his administration as twenty-eighth President. His long and intimate association with the "World War President" enabled him to write a most authoritative biography.

Woodrow Wilson was a native of Virginia, and a graduate of Princeton University, of which he became president in 1902. His display of executive ability there gained him the Governorship of New Jersey. At the Baltimore (National Democratic) Convention of 1912 his leading opponent for the Presidential nomination was Champ Clark, of Missouri, Speaker of the House of Representatives. Wilson was nominated at the end of a prolonged deadlock, largely because Clark was supported by Tammany Hall of New York and mainly because Bryan transferred his support to Wilson on the forty-sixth ballot._

AT SEA GIRT [New Jersey] we kept in close touch with our friends at Baltimore, so that after each ballot the New Jersey candidate was apprised of the result. During the trying days and nights of the Convention the only eager and anxious ones in the family group, besides myself, were Mrs. Wilson and the Wilson girls. The candidate himself indeed seemed to take only perfunctory interest in what was happening at Baltimore. He never allowed a single ballot or the changes those ballots reflected to ruffle or disturb him. Never before was the equable disposition of the man better manifested than during these trying days. Only once did he show evidences of irritation. It was upon the receipt of word from Baltimore, carried through the daily press, that his manager Mr. McCombs was indulging in patronage deals to secure blocks of delegates. Upon considering this news he immediately issued a public statement saying that no one was authorized to make any offer of a Cabinet post for him and that those who had done so were acting without authority from him. This caused a flurry in the ranks of our friends in Baltimore and the statement was the subject of heated discussion between the Governor and Mr. McCombs over the telephone. Of course, I did not hear what was said at the other end of the wire, but I remember that the Governor said: "I am sorry, McCombs, but my statement must stand as I have issued it. There must be no conditions whatever attached to the nomination." And there the conversation ended. While this colloquy took place I was seated just outside of the telephone booth. When the Governor came out he told me of the talk he had had with McCombs, and that their principal discussion was the attempt by McCombs and his friends at Baltimore to exact from him a promise that in case of his nomination William Jennings Bryan should not be named for the post of Secretary of State; that a great deal in the way of delegates' votes from the Eastern States depended upon his giving this promise. The Governor then said to me: "I will not bargain for this office. It would be foolish for me at this time to decide upon a Cabinet officer, and it would be outrageous to eliminate anybody from consideration now, particularly Mr. Bryan, who has rendered such fine service to the party in all seasons."

The candidacy of the New Jersey Governor gained with each ballot only slightly, however but he was the only candidate who showed an increased vote at each stage of the Convention proceedings. The critical period was reached on Thursday night. In the early afternoon we had received intimations from Baltimore that on that night the New York delegation would throw its support to Champ Clark, and our friends at Baltimore were afraid that if this purpose was carried out it would result in a stampede to Clark. We discussed the possibilities of the situation that night after dinner, but up to ten o'clock, when the Governor retired for the night, New York was still voting for Harmon. I left the Sea Girt cottage and went out to the newspaper men's tent to await word from Baltimore. The telegrapher in charge of the Associated Press wire was a devoted friend and admirer of the New Jersey candidate. There was no one in the tent but the telegrapher and myself. Everything was quiet. Suddenly the telegraph instrument began to register. The operator looked up from the instrument, and I could tell from his expression that something big was coming. He took his pad and quickly began to record the message. In a tone of voice that indicated its seriousness, he read to me the following message: "New York casts its seventy-six votes for Champ Clark. Great demonstration on." And then the instrument stopped recording. It looked as if the "jig was up." Frankly, I almost collapsed at the news. I had been up for many nights and had had only a few hours' sleep. I left the tent, almost in despair, about eleven o'clock, and returned to the Sea Girt cottage, preparatory to going to my home at Avon, New Jersey. As I was leaving the cottage the Governor appeared at one of the upper windows, clad in his pajamas, and looking at me in the most serious way, said: "Tumulty, is there any news from Baltimore?" I replied: "Nothing new, Governor." When we were breakfasting together the next morning, he laughingly said to me : "You thought you could fool me last night when I asked if there was any word from Baltimore; but I could tell from the serious expression on your face that something had gone wrong." This was about the first evidence of real interest he had shown in the Baltimore proceedings.

As will be recalled, the thing that prevented Champ Clark from gathering the full benefit which would have come to him from the casting of the New York vote in his favor was a question by "Alfalfa Bill" Murray, a delegate from Oklahoma. He said: "Is this Convention going to surrender its leadership to the Tammany Tiger?" This stemmed the tide toward Mr. Clark, and changed the whole face of the Convention.

It was evident that on Friday night the deadlock stage of the Convention had been finally reached. The Wilson vote had risen to 354, and there remained without perceptible change. It began to look as if the candidacy of the New Jersey Governor had reached its full strength. The frantic efforts of the Wilson men to win additional votes were unavailing. Indeed, Wilson's case appeared to be hopeless. On Saturday morning, McCombs telephoned Sea Girt and asked for the Governor. The Governor took up the 'phone and for a long time listened intently to what was being said at the other end. I afterward learned that McCombs had conveyed word to the Governor that the case was hopeless and that it was useless to continue the fight, and asked for instructions. Whereupon, the following conversation took place in my presence: "So, McCombs, you feel it is hopeless to make further endeavors?" When McCombs asked the Governor if he would instruct his friends to support Mr. Underwood, Mr. Wilson said: "No, that would not be fair. I ought not to try to influence my friends in behalf of another candidate. They have been mighty loyal and kind to me. Please say to them how greatly I appreciate their generous support and that they are now free to support any candidate they choose."

In the room at the time of this conversation between McCombs and the New Jersey Governor sat Mrs. Wilson and myself. When the Governor said to McCombs, "So you think it is hopeless?" great tears stood in the eyes of Mrs. Wilson, and as the Governor put down the telephone, she walked over to him and in the most tender way put her arms around his neck, saying: "My dear Woodrow, I am sorry, indeed, that you have failed." Looking at her, with a smile that carried no evidence of the disappointment or chagrin he felt at the news he had just received, he said: "My dear, of course I am disappointed, but we must not complain. We must be sportsmen. After all, it is God's will, and I feel that a great load has been lifted from my shoulders." With a smile he remarked that this failure would make it possible for them, when his term as Governor of New Jersey was completed, to go for a vacation to the English Lake country a region loved by them both, where they had previously spent happy summers. Turning to me, he asked for a pencil and pad and informed me that he would prepare a message of congratulation to Champ Clark, saying as he left the room: "Champ Clark will be nominated and I will give you the message in a few minutes."


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*Wilson Anticipates A Clash With Mexico*

By President Woodrow Wilson.

_IN thus reviewing, on August 27, 1913, the deplorable state of affairs in Mexico, President Wilson personally addressed a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives a custom which differed from that of other Presidents, whose messages to Congress were read for them, not by them. General Huerta had been proclaimed Provisional President of Mexico by the rebel troops under his control, and was elected by a hastily assembled Congress. Coincidentally, the deposed President Madero and Vice-President Suarez were killed while "attempting to escape."

Wilson refused to recognize Huerta, although Huerta was favorably disposed toward American investors in Mexico. This attitude bewildered European diplomats and angered important American interests. Huerta was forced to resign in favor of Carranza, whom Wilson supported, but Mexico remained distracted until American interference was necessary._

IT is clearly my duty to lay before you, very fully and without reservation, the facts concerning our present relations with the Republic of Mexico. The deplorable posture of affairs in Mexico I need not describe, but I deem it my duty to speak very frankly of what this Government has done and should seek to do in fulfillment of its obligation to Mexico herself, as a friend and neighbor, and to American citizens whose lives and vital interests are daily affected by the distressing conditions which now obtain beyond our southern border.

Those conditions touch us very nearly. Not merely because they lie at our very doors. That of course makes us more vividly and more constantly conscious of them, and every instinct of neighborly interest and sympathy is aroused and quickened by them; but that is only one element in the determination of our duty. We are glad to call ourselves the friends of Mexico, and we shall, I hope, have many an occasion, in happier times as well as in these days of trouble and confusion, to show that our friendship is genuine and disinterested, capable of sacrifice and every generous manifestation. The peace, prosperity, and contentment of Mexico mean more, much more, to us than merely an enlarged field of our commerce and enterprise. They mean an enlargement of the field of self-government and the realization of the hopes and rights of a nation with whose best aspirations, so long suppressed and disappointed, we deeply sympathize. We shall yet prove to the Mexican people that we know how to serve them without first thinking how we shall serve ourselves.

But we are not the only friends of Mexico. The whole world desires her peace and progress; and the whole world is interested as never before. Mexico lies at last where all the world looks on. Central America is about to be touched by the great routes of the world's trade and intercourse running free from ocean to ocean at the Isthmus. The future has much in store for Mexico, as for all the States of Central America; but the best gifts can come to her only if she be ready and free to receive them and to enjoy them honorably. America in particular America north and south and upon both continents waits upon the development of Mexico; and that development can be sound and lasting only if it be the product of a genuine freedom, a just and ordered government founded upon law. Only so can it be peaceful or fruitful of the benefits of peace. Mexico has a great and enviable future before her, if only she choose and attain the paths of honest constitutional government.

The present circumstances of the Republic, I deeply regret to say, do not seem to promise even the foundations of such a peace. We have waited many months, months full of peril and anxiety, for the conditions there to improve, and they have not improved. They have grown worse, rather. The territory in some sort controlled by the provisional authorities at Mexico City has grown smaller, not larger. The prospect of the pacification of the country, even by arms, has seemed to grow more and more remote; and its pacification by the authorities at the capital is evidently impossible by any other means than force. Difficulties more and more entangle those who claim to constitute the legitimate government of the Republic. They have not made good their claim in fact.

Their successes in the field have proved only temporary. War and disorder, devastation and confusion, seem to threaten to become the settled fortune of the distracted country. As friends we could wait no longer for a solution which every week seemed further away. It was our duty at least to volunteer our good offices to offer to assist, if we might, in effecting some arrangement which would bring relief and peace and set up a universally acknowledged political authority there.

Accordingly, I took the liberty of sending the Hon. John Lind, former Governor of Minnesota, as my personal spokesman and representative, to the City of Mexico, with the following instructions:

"Press very earnestly upon the attention of those who are now exercising authority or wielding influence in Mexico the following considerations and advice:

"The Government of the United States does not feel at liberty any longer to stand inactively by while it becomes daily more and more evident that no real progress is being made towards the establishment of a government at the City of Mexico which the country will obey and respect.

"The Government of the United States does not stand in the same case with the other great Governments of the world in respect of what is happening or what is likely to happen in Mexico. We offer our good offices, not only because of our genuine desire to play the part of a friend, but also because we are expected by the powers of the world to act as Mexico's nearest friend.

"We wish to act in these circumstances in the spirit of the most earnest and disinterested friendship. It is our purpose in whatever we do or propose in this perplexing and distressing situation not only to pay the most scrupulous regard to the sovereignty and independence of Mexico that we take as a matter of course to which we are bound by every obligation of right and honor but also to give every possible evidence that we act in the interest of Mexico alone, and not in the interest of any person or body of persons who may have personal or property claims in Mexico which they may feel that they have the right to press. We are seeking to counsel Mexico for her own good and in the interest of her own peace, and not for any other purpose whatever. The Government of the United States would deem itself discredited if it had any selfish or ulterior purpose in transactions where the peace, happiness, and prosperity of a whole people are involved. It is acting as its friendship for Mexico, not as any selfish interest, dictates.

"The present situation in Mexico is incompatible with the fulfillment of international obligations on the part of Mexico, with the civilized development of Mexico herself, and with the maintenance of tolerable political and economic conditions in Central America. It is upon no common occasion, therefore, that the United States offers her counsel and assistance. All America cries out for a settlement.

"A satisfactory settlement seems to us to be conditioned on--

(a) An immediate cessation of fighting throughout Mexico, a definite armistice solemnly entered into and scrupulously observed;

"(b) Security given for an early and free election in which all will agree to take part:

"(c) The consent of Gen. Huerta to bind himself not to be a candidate for election as President of the Republic at this election; and;

"(d) The agreement of all parties to abide by the results of the election and co-operate in the most loyal way in organizing and supporting the new administration.

"The Government of the United States will be glad to play any part in this settlement or in its carrying out which it can play honorably and consistently with international right. It pledges itself to recognize and in every way possible and proper to assist the administration chosen and set up in Mexico in the way and on the conditions suggested.


----------



## Library4Science (Apr 13, 2011)

This is an excerpt from "A New World Power," Volume 10 of the VFW series: America, Great Crises in our History.

*The Panic Of 1907*

By Alexander D. Noyes.

_IN HIS authoritative "Forty Years of American Finance," the Wall Street historian, Alexander D. Noyes, thus reviews the financial crisis of 1907, known as the "rich man's panic" and the "panic of undigested securities." It is given here by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Under the protection of high tariffs, enacted as adjuncts to the McKinley Bill, had come the wholesale organization of "trusts," 225 of which were conjured into existence between 1899 and 1903. Following an era of prosperity, the life insurance scandals and other damaging investigations tended to discredit business methods in vogue. 1906 marked the peak of prosperity. Then. the Roosevelt administration began prosecuting corporations spectacularly, and this combined with over-speculation and other causes to create general uneasiness and a money stringency which resulted in the panic here described. Thanks to the prompt aid the Federal Treasury gave the banks, the number of failures was surprisingly small._

IT had for many years been a cardinal doctrine, in American banking circles, that a panic like those of 1873 and 1893 would never again be witnessed in this country. The ground for this belief lay in the phenomenal increase of our economic strength, the "coordination of American industry" since 1899, the establishment of the gold standard of currency, and, more particularly, the great and concentrated resources of our banks. We have discovered the weak point of this argument; the strain imposed on credit had as greatly exceeded precedent as did the strength of the organism subjected to it. But there were other reasons why the idea of an American commercial crisis in 1907 had not been entertained. One was the fact that predictions of the sort, in 1901 and 1903, had failed so signally of fulfillment. Another was prevalent belief in the "twenty-year cycle" between two great panics.

Even if not prepared, however, for another panic of the sort, the community found itself, as 1907 drew on, in a thickening atmosphere of apprehension. In June, an $8,000,000 iron-manufacturing house went down at New York City; in midsummer, two New York City loans, offered for public subscription, failed to find a market; in the early autumn, the $52,000,000 New York street railway combination went into receivers' hands, followed, a few weeks later, by the $34,000,000 Westinghouse Electric Company; early in October, the storm broke with the utmost suddenness and violence on the New York banks.

One of the characteristic incidents of the era of speculation, watched by conservative financiers with much uneasiness, had been what was called "chain banking." In New York City half a dozen banking institutions of the second rank had been bought up by a speculating financier. He had used his stock in one institution as collateral on which to borrow money; the proceeds he had used to buy stock in another bank, repeating the process with each new acquisition. Controlling his "chain of banks" on such a tenure, he had utilized the whole of them to promote his personal speculations. This had been going on during half a dozen years. On Wednesday, October 16, 1907, one of these institutions, the Mercantile National, of New York City, a bank with $11,500,000 deposits, applied to the other banks of the Clearing-House for help.

While the Clearing-House committee was investigating the Mercantile condition, financial uneasiness began to spread to the community at large. On Thursday, the committee announced that the crippled bank would be helped through, and an interval of relief occurred. Other events, however, which occurred at the same time, and the demand of the Clearing-House banks that, as a condition for their assistance, all the directors of the Mercantile should resign, disclosed the fact that the bank's predicament had occurred through misuse of its capital, by its president, in copper share speculation. During the two or three ensuing days, bankers were very generally employed in overhauling accounts of other institutions with which they had engagements. Late Monday afternoon, October 21st, the National Bank of Commerce suddenly announced that it would no longer accept for collection checks of the Knickerbocker Trust Company. With the next day's opening, a run began on that institution, a concern with 17,000 depositors and total deposit liabilities of $35,000,000. By noon the Knickerbocker had closed its doors; next day, nearly every trust company in the city was besieged by a line of panic-stricken depositors. Nothing like this had been seen in New York City since 1873; even in 1884 and 1893, the New York bank runs were confined to one or two crippled institutions. The extraordinary phenomena which followed the Knickerbocker failure can not be understood except by a glance at the nature and history of the institutions on which the panic of 1907 now converged.

The Knickerbocker closed its doors on October 22d; that night, certain other trust companies sought aid from the banks to safeguard them against a run. Knowledge of this conference, reported next morning in the daily papers, brought the run at once; and long before business opened on October 23d, lines of depositors had formed outside the doors of other companies. The Knickerbocker had catered especially to the so-called "up-town clientage" of the shopping and residence district; its main competitor in this line of business had been the Lincoln Trust Company, with something like 8,000 depositors and demand deposits of $16,000,000. On Broadway and Wall Street, the Trust Company of America had accumulated $42,000,000 demand deposits from 12,000 separate depositors. Against these demand liabilities the Lincoln had been keeping $1,100,000 in its cash reserve and the America $3,200,000.

On these two institutions there now converged such a run as was probably never witnessed in the history of banking. It must be remembered that banks and other trust companies, to whom the beleaguered institutions were indebted, or with whom checks on the Lincoln or America were deposited, had no other way of collecting than by stationing messengers in the line of frightened depositors; this was the punishment for the events of 1903.


----------

