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Chronology of the daily life of Theodore Roosevelt from January 1892 to December 1898. Notable events include the death of Elliott Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt is appointed New York City Police Commissioner, his tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the Spanish-American War, and Roosevelt’s gubernatorial campaign.
Theodore Roosevelt Association
1985
Colorized photograph of the United States Post Office Department administrative building in Washington, D.C. Text on the reverse of the postcard provides information about and the location of the building.
Unknown
Postmaster General Payne has received a letter of introduction for the Samuel W. Shepard of Syracuse, New York, who has just been made temporary secretary of the National Association of Letter Carriers and editor of the Postal Record. The postmaster general of Syracuse has asked for a six month leave of absence for Shepard so he can devote himself to these new duties.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-09-15
Civil Service Commissioner Henry F. Greene rebuts Postmaster General Henry C. Payne’s assertion that civil service laws do not apply to fourth-class postmasters, because they are not in the “classified” service. Greene cites the civil service rules to show that although they are not hired by “competitive examination,” fourth-class postmasters are classified employees and thus subject to civil service laws.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-09-14
Postmaster General Payne will speak with Charles J. Bonaparte and Conrad Holmes when they are here this afternoon. He also informs President Roosevelt that although George. A. C. Christiancy has tendered his resignation as assistant attorney in the Assistant Attorney General for the Post Office Department, Payne has yet to accept it, and will not do so until the investigation is closed. Payne questions whether Christiancy’s resignation should be accepted.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-09-09
Postmaster General Payne follows up on a previous letter he had sent to President Roosevelt to further explain the post office issues in Delaware. The department’s practice had been that fourth-class postmasters’ appointments were subject to change any time after having served four years. Payne explains that he allowed a newly-elected Senator to make a new appointment to postmaster in Delaware because the current postmaster represented a minority faction of the Republican party.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-09-09
Postmaster General Payne updates President Roosevelt on the state of the post office investigation. Charles J. Bonaparte and Holmes Conrad have been away for the summer, and have not been consulted yet, although the investigation has proceeded in the meantime. Fourth Assistant Postmaster General Joseph L. Bristow has a large number of cases pending in the District Attorney’s office, waiting to go before a grand jury. Indictments are expected, and Payne does not believe that it would be wise for the government to publicly release information on the investigation before the grand jury has finished.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-09-08
Postmaster General Payne explains to President Roosevelt the reasons for his removing Huldah B. Todd from her position as postmaster general at Greenwood, Delaware, and appointing Jacob L. Houseman to replace her. Delaware Senator J. Frank Allee spoke with Payne about making the change, on the grounds that under the agreement he and Senator L. Heisler Ball came to regarding referring appointees to office. Allee alleged that Todd had engaged in partisan activity in her office.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-09-08
Postmaster General Payne informs President Roosevelt that action regarding the consolidation of the Nelliston and Fort Plain post offices in New York state has been suspended pending further investigation. Payne has also ordered that no changes be made regrading fourth-class offices in the New York 25th Congressional district.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-08-21
President Roosevelt and Assistant Postmaster General Joseph L. Bristow pull back a curtain to reveal black paint that reads, “Bristow’s report regarding the Post Office Department scandal: corruption, fraud, bribery, and theft.” Roosevelt holds a paper in his hand: “The guilty shall be punished to the limit of the law.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-12
A Republican elephant clings onto the top of the “Post Office Department” building as a flood of “graft” threatens to sweep it away.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-11
President Roosevelt holds a daily paper with the headline: “More graft in the Postoffice Department!” Caption: The President: “The Postoffice Department must be cleaned out!” Elsewhere, three men, labeled as “Grafters” hold a “bogus contract” and shovel money out of the Post Office Department. Caption: And they took him at his word.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-09-12
President Roosevelt holds the “daily paper” behind his back as he watches Assistant Postmaster Joseph L. Bristow clean the “scandal” water off the floor of the “P. O. Department.” Caption: Roosevelt—”Will you soon be through with the room? Bristow—”Have just this corner yet, sire. My, but it is the dirtiest job I ever tackled, sir.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1903-09-05
President Roosevelt stands in front of the Republican elephant and looks at Ohio Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna. To the right of the Republican elephant is a white elephant—”Post Office scandal.” Caption: Ring Master Roosevelt: “I think we would have a better show if we didn’t have that white elephant.”
Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna was by no means the only, or major, political figure tainted by the burgeoning Post Office scandal in 1903. Yet the cartoon depicts him for two reasons: he was implicated in revelations about his seeking favors (postal distribution deals and rebates of charges) dating back to 1900; and at the time of this cartoon’s publican he was chairman of the Republican National Committee. Any scandals, of course, could redound on the party (Roosevelt himself was never implicated, although many Republican office-holders and bureaucrats were).
The cartoon is notable as a very early example of Gorge McManus’s work. He drew his first awkward cartoons — note the insertion of a photograph instead of a caricature for Roosevelt’s face — for the St. Louis Republic, a Democrat paper, and evidently was noticed by the paper’s major Democrat rival, the Post-Dispatch. McManus was hired… to draw, however, for its publisher’s New York City outlet, Joseph Pulitzer’s World.
New York Senator Thomas Collier Platt and Surveyor of Customs James Sullivan Clarkson fly in the air as they try to stop Uncle Sam who is driving a “Post Office investigation” car toward the “P. O. Dept.” The car crashes through “politics” barriers and throws a “politician” off to the side.
In this awkward cartoon about the beginnings of the Roosevelt Administration’s efforts to discover corruption in the Post Office department and reform the service, Uncle Sam is featured instead of President Theodore Roosevelt. It is a reminder that one of the unique aspects of cartoonists’ treatment of Roosevelt is that he largely supplanted the iconic symbol of the United States, so vivid was in personality. In this cartoon, although seem only from behind, Uncle Sam drives the car — an indiscriminate, road-busting flivver, then often viewed as a menace.
Another interesting figure is James S. Clarkson, still identified with the Post Office. When Roosevelt was appointed Civil Service Commissioner under President Benjamin Harrison in 1889, Clarkson of Iowa was appointed First Assistant Postmaster General, charged with responsibility for fulfilling local Republican patronage jobs. He replaced Democrat postmasters and officials at an annualized rate of 30,000.
President Roosevelt points his finger at a bird with the face of Postmaster General Henry C. Payne that utters various words and phrases: “Hot air,” “Wind bag,” “Stump speech,” “Liar,” and “I just laughed.”
The excellent caricaturist Charles Green Bush apparently had a lapse in perception, or extra ink to expend, in this bizarre depiction of a rotund President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903.
The concept of the cartoon, however, was typically and unerringly prescient. The parrot is Postmaster General Henry Clay Payne, and the issue at hand was the burgeoning Post Office scandal… or scandals, of complicated and often long-lived venality. Neither Payne nor Roosevelt was every implicated in the scandals, and the president admired his associate’s honest; but he sorely regretted Payne’s naivete.
President Roosevelt attempts to wrench open a fire hydrant connected to the “P. O. investigation” hose. A group of men—”Extravagance,” “Unlawful contracts,” “Grafter,” and “Political hanger on”—examine the end of the hose, where water has already begun to drip.
This cartoon from the reliably Democrat Cleveland Plain Dealer indicates how the public viewed the burgeoning Post Office scandal and revelations at the time. Although the Republican Party had been in control of the national government since 1897, and for all but the Cleveland presidency’s years since the Civil War, the public perception of Post Office corruption was endemic to national “politics as usual.”
A large portion of patronage jobs were dispensed through post offices; parties relied on the postal service to accomplish their ends; and the assignment of postal routes — including the hoped-for Rural Free Delivery routes — invited corruption.
Uncle Sam mails a letter that reads, “To the President, Washington, D. C. Say, Mr. President, isn’t it about time to bounce the man who just laughed? Respt. Uncle Sam.” Caption: “Say that you asked the Postmaster-General about it, and that he just laughed.” Postmaster-Genl to the Press. May 1st, 1903.
The statement by Postmaster General Henry Clay Payne about his management of the burgeoning Post Office scandal, and the words on Uncle Sam’s postcard, are reasonable representations of details anent the scandal. Charles Green Bush’s cartoon in the partisan (Democrat) New York World actually shows restraint despite the frustration.
Payne’s quotation, in the cartoon’s title, illustrates one of the many factors President Theodore Roosevelt juggled during this crisis. Payne was thoroughly honest in Roosevelt’s estimation — indeed, neither he nor Roosevelt were ever hinted to be involved in the long-running trails of corruption in the department — but Payne frequently was naïve in his dealings, especially with the press.
A Republican elephant holds an “postal irregularities” apple to its mouth as a Democratic donkey looks on and salivates.
Clifford K. Berryman betrayed a partisan tilt, or least agreement with a Republican of view in this political cartoon that addressed the burgeoning Post Office scandal.
There was a passage in Mark Twain’s book Tom Sawyer Abroad — “There’s plenty of boys that will come hankering and groveling around you when you’ve got an apple and beg the core off of you; but when they’ve got one, and you beg for the core and remind them how you give them a core one time, they say thank you ‘most to death, but there ain’t a-going to be no core” — that, if not original with Twain, was popularized by him and was used in countless ways over succeeding generations. It was a clever to indicate that a party had no willingness to share.