Roosevelt brought an activist style to the presidency. Rather than seeing himself as merely administering the nation’s business, he considered his office a bully pulpit—a platform from which to promote his programs and from which he could rally public opinion. To this end, he used his energetic and extroverted personality to establish an unprecedented rapport with the American people, providing newspaper reporters with a limitless supply of colorful stories about his life and exploits.

For all his exuberance and energy, President Roosevelt pursued a moderate domestic course. Like his progressive colleagues, he opposed ideological extremism in any form. Rather than promoting any particular cause, Roosevelt believed that as head of state he could serve as an impartial arbiter among competing factions and determine what was best for the public. Reform was, in his view, the best defense against revolution.

As president, Roosevelt sought to provide economic and political stability, what he referred to as a “Square Deal.” He insisted that “a republic such as ours can exist only by virtue of the orderly liberty which comes through the equal domination of the law over all men alike.” The coal strike that began in Pennsylvania in 1902 gave Roosevelt an opportunity to play the role of impartial mediator and defender of the public good. Miners had gone on strike for an eight-hour workday, a pay increase of 20 percent, and recognition of their union. Roosevelt sympathized with the plight of the workers, but he was more concerned that a prolonged strike would choke the supply of heating fuel to consumers as winter approached. Union representatives agreed to have the president create a panel to settle the dispute, but George F. Baer, president of the Reading Railroad, which also owned the mines, pledged that he would never agree to the workers’ demands. Disturbed by what he considered the owners’ “arrogant stupidity,” Roosevelt threatened to dispatch federal troops to take over and run the mines. When the owners backed down, the president established a commission that hammered out a compromise giving the strikers a 10 percent wage hike and a reduction of the workday to nine hours, but not union recognition.

At the same time, Roosevelt used his executive authority to tackle the problems caused by giant business trusts. In February 1902, the president instructed the Justice Department to sue the Northern Securities Company under the Sherman Antitrust Act (see chapter 16), a law that had rarely been used against big business since its passage in 1890. Northern Securities held monopoly control of the northernmost transcontinental railway lines. The powerful financier behind Northern Securities, J. P. Morgan, believed that he could do business with Roosevelt as he had with previous presidents. “Send your man to my man and they can fix it up,” Morgan informed Roosevelt. However, the president’s man at the Justice Department responded: “We don’t want to fix it up, we want to stop it.” In 1904 the Supreme Court ordered that the Northern Securities Company be dissolved, ruling that the firm had restricted competition. With this victory, Roosevelt affirmed the federal government’s power to regulate business trusts that violated the public interest. Overall, Roosevelt initiated twenty-five suits under the Sherman Antitrust Act, including litigation against the tobacco and beef trusts and the Standard Oil Company, actions that earned him the title of “trustbuster.”

Roosevelt distinguished between “good” trusts, which acted responsibly, and “bad” trusts, which abused their power and hurt consumers. Railroads had earned an especially bad reputation with the public for charging higher rates to small shippers and those in remote regions while granting rebates to favored customers, such as Standard Oil. In 1903 Roosevelt helped persuade Congress to pass the Elkins Act, which outlawed railroad rebates. Three years later, the president increased the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission to set maximum railroad freight rates. In 1903 Roosevelt also secured passage of legislation that established the Department of Commerce and Labor. Within this cabinet agency, the Bureau of Corporations gathered information about large companies in an effort to promote fair business practices.

Soaring in popularity, Roosevelt ran for president in 1904 and easily defeated the Democratic nominee, Judge Alton B. Parker. During the next four years, the president applied antitrust laws even more vigorously than before. He steered through Congress various reforms concerning the railroads, such as the Hepburn Act (1906), which standardized shipping rates, and took a strong stand for conservation of public lands. Roosevelt charted a middle course between preservationists and conservationists. He reserved 150 million acres of timberland as part of the national forests, an action that delighted the preservationists. At the same time, he authorized the expenditure of more than $80 million in federal funds to construct dams, reservoirs, canals, and other conservation projects, largely in the West.

Not all reform came from Roosevelt’s initiative. Congress passed two notable consumer laws in 1906 that reflected the multiple and sometimes contradictory forces that shaped progressivism. That year, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a muckraking novel that portrayed the impoverished lives of immigrant workers in Packingtown (Chicago) and the deplorable working conditions they endured. Outraged readers responded to the vivid description of the shoddy and filthy ways the meatpacking industry slaughtered animals and prepared beef for sale. The book revealed in grisly detail how the meat cut up for sausage “would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into hoppers, and made over again for home consumption.” The largest and most efficient meatpacking firms had financial reasons to support reform as well. They were losing money because European importers refused to purchase tainted meat. Congress responded by passing the Meat Inspection Act, which benefited consumers and provided a way for large corporations to eliminate competition from smaller, marginal firms that could not afford to raise standards to meet the new federal meat-processing requirements.

In 1906 Congress also passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, which prohibited the sale of adulterated and fraudulently labeled food and drugs. The impetus for this law came from consumer groups, medical professionals, and government scientists. Dr. Harvey Wiley, a chemist in the Department of Agriculture, drove efforts for reform from within the government. He considered it part of his professional duty to eliminate harmful products (Table 19.1).

Roosevelt initially gave African Americans reason to believe that they, too, would get a square deal. In October 1901, at the outset of his first term, Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to a dinner at the White House. White supremacists in the South denounced the social gathering as a “damnable outrage.” Though Roosevelt dismissed this criticism, he never invited another black guest. Also in his first term, Roosevelt supported the appointment of a few black Republicans to federal posts in the South. When segregationist whites chased Minnie Cox from her job as postmistress of Indianola, Mississippi, Roosevelt refused to accept her resignation and closed the post office.

Nevertheless, Roosevelt lacked a commitment to black equality and espoused the racist ideas of eugenics then in fashion (see chapter 18). He deplored the declining birthrate of native-born white Americans compared with that of eastern and southern European newcomers and African Americans, whom he considered inferior stock. He argued that unless Anglo-Saxon women produced more children, whites would end up committing “race suicide.” “If the women flinch from breeding,” Roosevelt worried, “the . . . death of the race takes place even quicker.” Roosevelt never wavered in his belief in the superiority of the white race over people of color.

Once he won reelection in 1904, Roosevelt had less political incentive to defy the white South. He stopped cooperating with southern black officeholders and maneuvered to build the Republican Party in the region with all-white support. However, his most reprehensible action involved an incident that occurred in Brownsville, Texas, in 1906. White residents of the town charged that black soldiers stationed at Fort Brown shot up the main street, killing one man and wounding another. Roosevelt ordered that unless the perpetrators stepped forward, the entire regiment would receive dishonorable discharges without a court-martial. Roosevelt never doubted the guilt of the black soldiers, and when no one admitted responsibility, he summarily dismissed 167 men from the military. Although the president spoke out against the brutality of lynching blacks in the South, he participated in this mass “legal lynching” of African American soldiers.