Your TR Source
Frank Basil Tracy shares a page from the Boston Evening Transcript with Theodore Roosevelt that he thinks Roosevelt will interested in. Tracy tells Roosevelt of the Republican campaign in Massachusetts and feels they are making a mistake by pushing workingmen to vote out of fear for their jobs because of tariffs.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1911-10-24
President Roosevelt regrets missing Nicholas Murray Butler, as they have much to discuss. Roosevelt has feared an economic recession because of the recklessness of the financial sector and it is now coming to pass. He is certain that the newspapers entrenched on Wall Street will need to accept that his policies are here to stay, even once he leaves office. The President is concerned that so many of the richest Americans ally themselves with corrupt interests, and himself favors the common people over the dishonest elites. He believes that the Republicans should put off revising the tariff until after the next general election.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-09-20
President Roosevelt asks Albert Shaw to reproduce a cartoon from Puck. As Roosevelt has no plans to hold another position in public office, the upset on Wall Street will have no lasting effect on him, but he comments on the related press coverage. The New York Sun has tried to disparage the Great White Fleet, but Roosevelt is certain Shaw understands that the fleet’s journey is necessary. Roosevelt asks Shaw to lunch with Mark Twain and Frank Nelson Doubleday on Friday the 13th.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-09-03
President Roosevelt is entertained by the editorial James Speyer sent in which he is accused of lawlessness for his behavior towards the railroads. The Sun is a tool used by Wall Street, and Roosevelt feel that those who run it would rather have chaos than law, and would rather rig the system than get ahead on merit.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-08-30
President Roosevelt describes his recent trip to Provincetown to his son Kermit Roosevelt, including his speech, a banquet, and meeting “five hundred Gloucester fishermen.” Roosevelt feels Kermit’s trip with the cavalry “was such a fine thing.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-08-21
President Roosevelt gives Leslie M. Shaw, president of the Carnegie Trust Company, permission to publish the letters. However, he suggests omitting the last paragraph of one as many on Wall Street will not agree with it.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-08-19
In addition to Henry Lee Higginson’s letter, President Roosevelt received many communications from individuals and businesses concerned about the economic downfall and panic. Roosevelt mostly agrees with Higginson, but is confused by some of his points. Roosevelt thinks the global economic circumstances have little to do with any action by his administration.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-08-12
President Roosevelt tells Brooks Adams that he doubts the community agreed with his position regarding the 25th infantry, who are the African American soldiers involved in the recent episode at Fort Brown in Brownsville, Texas. Roosevelt also believes that Senator Joseph Benson Foraker has been representing Wall Street in attacking the president related to the Brownsville affair.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-12-22
Senator Bourne hopes William Loeb enjoys his upcoming camping trip. He submits if Loeb had followed his advice, it could have prevented the public furor and blaming of President Roosevelt “for every epidemic or visitation of providence.” Bourne requests Loeb deliver the enclosed letter to President Roosevelt.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-08-21
William Emlen Roosevelt tells President Roosevelt that he and Edith have been on his mind since hearing of Archibald B. Roosevelt’s sickness. He has enclosed a survey of Cove Neck as promised, and despite several errors, the layout is “very interesting” for them to have. He tells Roosevelt of the dire situation on Wall Street and the effect that the panic has had on himself and his colleagues. He discusses his visit from Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. and the dispatch he received from his son George Emlen Roosevelt, who was remorseful not speaking to Roosevelt when he was visiting Harvard.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-03-07
Brooks Adams writes to President Roosevelt to express his concern and offer advice in regards to Roosevelt’s attempt to “force through a new policy” that is opposed by titans of industry, finance, and the press. Adams also details how opponents support making Joseph Benson Foraker president by capitalizing on the Brownsville Affair. Adams’s primary advice for Roosevelt is to fight relentlessly at every opportunity to eventually force a popular vote on the issue.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-01-06
A large President Roosevelt has several small men jumping on his top hat: “Chancellor Day,” “Justice Brewer,” and “Ex-Senator Spooner.” “Wall Street’ collapsed on the brim of his hat and says, “I’m ‘most dead!”
This clever cartoon from the political-cartoon phase of A. D. Condo’s long career displays a seldom-recognized aspect of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, specifically concerning the possibility that he might have yielded to public pressure and accepted another nomination in 1908.
Uncle Sam eyes “Wall St.,” J. Pierpont Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller holding up a large “financial panic” rock. The man labeled Wall St. says, “It’s o.k. We have it safe.” President Roosevelt also looks on, holding a bear under his right arm and a rifle in his left hand.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1907-10-24
William Loeb holds “Speech No. 1 Canton” in his left hand and a barrel in his right hand labeled “six speeches for western delivery.” Several men look on, including “Wall Street,” J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Edward Henry Harriman. Morgan says, “Oh, for a look in.”
President Roosevelt’s private secretary William Loeb advanced from taking dictation and handling White House correspondence to managing logistics and sometimes, at the end of Roosevelt’s term, interacting with officials and politicians
President Roosevelt holds a rifle on his right shoulder and a bag labeled “off to Louisiana” and walks away from four bears hiding behind a “Wall Street” sign.
A fascinating, and historically valuable, aspect of political cartoons, beyond their insights into contemporaneous events they address, is how the better cartoonists could be prescient — presenting and forecasting important trends, movements, and forces.
President Roosevelt serves soup from the “U.S. Treasury” pot with a patch labeled “deficit” and says “D-e-e-lighted.” A man labeled “Wall St.” with wispy hair shaped like a dollar sign coming out of his head holds a bowl up to Roosevelt.
Usually when cartoonists and their papers were hostile toward President Roosevelt– as the otherwise-forgotten N. Eingen of the Woman’s National Daily were — they depicted him as the supplicant or vassal of Wall Street. Corporate moguls, trust masters, and robber barons routinely were portrayed as masters, and politicians the servants.
President Roosevelt rides with Uncle Sam in a car labeled “prosperity” that is leaving the “Hard Times Cop” on a bicycle in the dust. Beside the bicycle is a turtle labeled “Wall Street” that asks, “Do you think we’ll catch him?” The road is named “G.O.P. Pike.”
Cartoonist Kirk L. Russell and the Washington Post, perhaps caught flat-footed by the Wall Street Panic (or perhaps expressing belief that the stock-market downturn would be short-lived), presented an endorsement of the Roosevelt Administration and confidence in the economy.
Armed with a big stick, President Roosevelt plays poker with “Bear” and “Bull” on a table labeled “Wall Street,” saying “It’s a square deal, boys!”
Maurice Ketten, who had a long and modest but distinguished career as a cartoonist of social subjects, life’s dilemmas, and daily panel serials of suburban and domestic situations, did not draw political cartoons for long, and this attempt might explain the course set for him by his editors at the New York Evening World.
President Roosevelt throws a “message” that explodes underneath a “Standard Oil” company octopus that holds a “never touched me!” paper. The explosion sends several bears and two lambs flying. “Stocks” bulls look over “The Street” wall to see what is happening. Commissioner of Corporations at the Department of Commerce and Labor James Rudolph Garfield also watches around a corner of the wall.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-05-07
President Roosevelt drags a Republican elephant, to which Chair of the Republican National Committee George B. Cortelyou and Cornelius Newton Bliss and bags of money are chained, toward “Wall Street.” A “yellow dog fund” follows behind. Several lambs look out a window and point at the sight.
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1905-09-25