Part 24 (2/2)
This view was accepted by the people and by the national Legislature.
By President McKinley, Senator Cullom was appointed chairman of the Hawaiian Commission, composed of Senator Morgan of Alabama, and Congressman Hitt of Illinois, and Senator Cullom, to visit the islands and frame a new law providing for their civil government and defining their future relations with the United States. Since the days of Clyde in India, few men have been clothed with a more important duty than this commission, whose mission it was to prepare a Government for the Hawaiian Islands. The bill recommended by the commission was enacted by Congress, and stands as the organic law of the islands to-day.”
We had an exceedingly interesting time in the Hawaiian Islands.
They were not known so well then as they are to-day. We visited several of the islands composing the group, and publicly explained our mission. The people seemed to have the impression that American occupancy of the islands was only temporary, and that as soon as the Spanish-American War was over they would return to old conditions.
We told them that annexation was permanent, and they would remain a part of the United States for all time to come. I did not favor giving them statehood. There was not a sufficient number of whites and educated natives to justify giving them the franchise as an independent State in the American Union. Senator Morgan and I differed on this a great deal, and on several occasions in the hearings of the commission, he stated that they were to become a State. I always interposed to the effect that, so far as my influence was concerned, they would remain a Territory.
There was one island of the group called Molokai devoted entirely to the care of lepers, leprosy being quite common in the Hawaiian Islands. We deemed it our duty to visit this island as well as the others. It was one of the most interesting and pathetic places of which the human mind can conceive--a place of grim tragedies.
There were about twelve hundred lepers on the island, divided into two colonies, one at each end of the island. The island itself forms a natural fortress from which escape is almost impossible, the sea on one side and mountains on the other. We spent the day there and ate luncheon on the island. We saw the disease in all its stages. We entered a schoolhouse in which there were a crowd of young girls ranging from ten to sixteen years of age. They were all lepers. They sang for us. It was very pathetic. We visited the cemetery and saw the monument erected to the memory of a Catholic priest, Father Damien, who went there from Chicago, to devote his life to the spiritual care of the unfortunates, but who, like all others residing on the island, finally succ.u.mbed to the disease.
We met an old lady at the cemetery and I asked her if there was any danger of contracting the disease. She said there was not unless we had some abrasions on the skin, and advised us as a matter of caution to wear gloves. I promptly put mine on and kept them on until I left the island.
I was told that they expected me to speak to them, and I did make them a speech. A large number of them a.s.sembled. I have addressed many audiences in my life, but this was the queerest I was ever obliged to face. There were men and women in all stages of the disease. Leprosy attacks the fingers and they fall off, and some natural instinct prompts the victim to hide his hands; but as my speech was translated to them, in the excitement they would forget and throw out their hands and applaud. It was a hideous sight and I most fervently wish never to see the like of it again.
For our expenses one hundred thousand dollars had been appropriated.
I am not one of those who believe in lavish expenditures of public money by commissions. While I was willing as chairman of the commission to permit travelling expenses and the reasonable necessaries and probably the luxuries of life while abroad, yet I differed with my colleague, Senator Morgan, and insisted that no money should be spent for entertaining. Out of the hundred thousand dollars we spent something like fifteen thousand; and Senator Morgan, Mr. Hitt, and I agreed that it would not be lawful or right for us to accept any compensation for our services as members of the commission. Something like eight-five thousand dollars reverted to the Treasury.
We returned and made our report to Congress, and the bill which we recommended was enacted. I do not think the present form of government of Hawaii will be changed for many years to come. I have regretted exceedingly that, despite the repeated recommendations of Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, Congress has not seen fit to make an appropriation to improve the harbor and fortify the islands.
It is true they afford us a coaling station in the middle of the Pacific, but that is all. Should hostilities break out in the Far East, our country being a party, it would be almost impossible for us to defend them, and they would become easy prey to foreign aggression. I hope that this policy will change in the near future, and that Pearl Harbor will be improved and the islands fortified.
The important events of the first McKinley Administration were the enactment of the Dingley Tariff, the successful conclusion of the war with Spain, the ratification of the Treaty of Peace, the independence of Cuba, and the acquisition of Porto Rico, the Philippines, and the Island of Guam; the establishment of the gold standard by law, and the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands.
At the close of the Administration no one questioned that the country was in a more prosperous condition than it ever had been before, and that McKinley was probably the most popular President that ever occupied the White House. He was unanimously nominated at the Republican Convention, at Philadelphia, for a second term.
The campaign of 1900 was fought out on the issue of Imperialism; the tariff was almost forgotten, and the silver question was only discussed incidentally.
Mr. McKinley's popular vote was not much greater than it was in 1896. He received 7,207,000 as against 6,358,000 votes cast for Mr. Bryan.
During the short session which convened after his election, the Platt amendment concerning our future relations with Cuba was pa.s.sed. The War Revenue Act was reduced. It was an uneventful session, and Mr. McKinley was again inaugurated March 4, 1901.
On September 6, 1901, the President attended the Buffalo Exposition, accompanied by Mrs. McKinley and the members of his cabinet, and during the reception which he held at the Temple of Music on that day, he was shot and wounded by an a.s.sa.s.sin, one Leon F. Czolgosz.
After lingering along until Sat.u.r.day, September 14, he pa.s.sed away, and Theodore Roosevelt, Vice-President, was sworn in as President of the United States. On taking the oath of office, he uttered but one sentence:
”I wish to say that it shall be my aim to continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, prosperity, and the honor of our beloved country.”
CHAPTER XX ROOSEVELT'S PRESIDENCY 1901 to 1909
Colonel Roosevelt served as President of the United States from September 13, 1901, to March 4, 1909. What he accomplished during those years is still too fresh in the minds of the people of the United States to justify its recital by me here; suffice it to say that he gave one of the best Administrations ever known in the history of the United States. He accomplished more in that term than any of his predecessors; more laws were enacted, laws of more general benefit to the people; but above all, his Administration enforced all laws on the statute books as they had never been enforced before.
The Sherman Anti-Trust Law was a dead letter until Mr. Roosevelt instructed the Attorney-General to prosecute its violators, both great and small. No fear or favor was shown in the enforcement of the laws against the rich and poor alike. There were many other notable features of his administration, but that, to my mind, stands out conspicuously before all the others. By his speeches, by his public messages, he awakened the slumbering conscience of the Nation, and he made the violators of the law in high places come to realize that they would receive the same punishment as the lowest offenders. He did more than any of his predecessors to prevent this country from drifting into socialism.
I have known Colonel Roosevelt for many years. I knew him as Civil Service Commissioner under President Harrison. In that position, as in every other public office he held, he saw to it that the law was strictly enforced. I once wrote him a note, when he was Civil Service Commissioner, requesting him to act favorably on some matter, which he considered was contrary to his duty. He promptly returned this characteristic reply: ”You have no right to ask me to do this, and I have no right to do it.”
As a.s.sistant Secretary of the Navy under President McKinley, he was able, aggressive, and pus.h.i.+ng in preparing the Navy for the Spanish-American War. He seemed so interested in what he was doing that he would appear to an outsider to be nervous and excitable.
My old friend, the Hon. W. I. Guffin, than whom there was no better man, was visiting the Department with me one day, and I took occasion to introduce him to Colonel Roosevelt, who was then a.s.sistant Secretary. Guffin was astonished at Roosevelt's manners and his way of speaking, and I recall Guffin's remark when we left the office. I was very much amused at it. He said: ”Well, that is Roosevelt, is it! He is one h.e.l.l of a Secretary.” Doubtless that was the impression that Colonel Roosevelt left on many people whom he met in the Navy Department, who did not know him and who had not yet come to know the degree of promptness and ability with which he despatched public business.
I was at the Philadelphia Convention which nominated Colonel Roosevelt for Vice-President. I know that he did not desire the nomination, but it was thrust on him through the manipulation of Senator T. C. Platt, of New York, then the acknowledged ”easy boss”
of that State. Platt himself said afterwards that he did it to get rid of him as Governor of New York, and that he regretted it every day of his life after Roosevelt became President. The politicians of New York did not want Roosevelt in control at Albany, and they thought it would be an admirable plan to remove him from the State, and eventually relegate him to private life--to nominate him for Vice-President. But the fates willed differently, and the nomination for Vice-President opened the way for him to become Mr.
<script>