Clipping from morning paper criticising President Roosevelt’s connection with the recent panic—Mr. Clemens discusses the panic—Copy of letter which Mr. Clemens wrote to the Knickerbocker Trust CompanyⒶtextual note—Incident which occurred in the home of Mr. L. (Mr. Clemens’s lawyer) in the Knobs of East Tennessee, showing how primitive the natives are to this day.
It is like a breath of fresh air in the Black Hole of Calcutta to at last come across a sane remark about our insane President. I find it in the morning papersⒺexplanatory note:
NEW HAVEN, Conn., Oct. 31.—President Roosevelt was in one breath pilloried and the next defended before the Economic Club of this city to-night. John W. AllingⒺexplanatory note, a Connecticut lawyer, accused him of causing the panic last week, and F. R. Agar of this cityⒺexplanatory note also scored him.
Henry ClewsⒺexplanatory note, the New York banker, took up the cudgels in his defense, and asserted that unless America ceased to be controlled by the money power the country would go the way of the Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and of the Roman Empire.
Mr. Alling said:
“Roosevelt is immensely popular with the masses. Mr. Roosevelt is essentially like the old Crusade leaders, powerful, arrogant, conceited, with a halo of heavenly inspiration, a born leader, bound by no party ties, himself the ‘whole thing,’ in search of valiant deeds, claiming a supernatural power to detect and uncover and punish ‘the wealthy malefactor.’
“Followed, as he thinks, by the whole people, he is the most dangerous foe to constitutional liberty that has ever existed in this country. The financial panic calls for an opinion as to howⒶtextual note far ‘my policies’ are responsible for itⒺexplanatory note. He has been conscious that he was making a prodigious stir, and warned that it would bring on a panic. He has noticed how general market values, the true index of credit, would rise in the hope that he would listen to the suggestions made to him and would slump on hearing the same old warlike trumpet blasts.
“President Roosevelt is alone responsible for raising this railroad rate question. It was not a plank in the Republican platform. In the Senate it did not command a majority of the Republicans. In the Senate Committee a minority of the Republicans Ⓐtextual note and the Democrats combined and this Rooseveltian measure was intrusted to the Democrat Senator TillmanⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐtextual note
“The overwhelming popularity of President Roosevelt jammed it through. Now what has been the result? It was patent to everybody from the instant it appeared likely that the power to fix rates was to be taken from the railroads and put into the hands of Commissioners in the interest of the shippers, Commissioners, every [begin page 178] one of whom could be removed at once by Mr. Roosevelt for what he might deem inefficiency or neglect.
“The value of railroad properties began to decline and their credit to disappear. In the meantime, the business of the country enormously increasing, and just at the time when the railroads needed capital by the hundreds of millions to equip themselves for the work to be done, their power to raise the necessary capital vanished.”
This has been a strange panic. It has not strongly resembled any other panic in the history of the country. The panic to which we have long been accustomed, is a tempest, a cyclone, a hurricane, which sweeps away values and lays industries waste much as the cyclone fells forests and leaves towns a tumultuous confusion of wreckage; but this new panic is of a new sort; it is a still panic, a noiseless panic, a smothered panic; it makes no noise, there are no hysterics, no frenzies; it is not like a storm; it is like a blight, a paralysis; it is as if the business activities of our eighty millions of people had suddenly come to a standstill, leaving everybody idle, frightened, wondering. The conditions make one think of a mighty machine which has slipped its belt and is still running by previous and perishing impulse, but accomplishing nothing. There has not been a single important failure in the financial world. There are no crashes, no thunder-bursts, no earthquakes; there is nothing but a creepy and awful stillness, and an atmosphere charged with apprehension.
The phrase “laying off” has become common, almost wearisomely so. We hear of this and that and the other vast concern laying off a thousand men, two thousand men, three thousand men—and this makes us familiar with the conditions obtaining among the multitude of millionaire industries of the country; but there is a far wider and more disastrous laying off that does not find its way into the newspapers; this is the laying off that is going on under the surface, all over the land—the discharging of one employee out of every three in all the humble little shops and industries from one end of America to the other—a laying off which is not to be counted by thousands, as in the case of the giant industries, but by hundreds of thousands, with an aggregate reaching into millions, and making the laying off by the great companiesⒶtextual note a trifle, and insignificant by comparison. The four-servant families are getting along with three now; the three-servant families are getting along with two; the two-servant families are getting along with one; the one-servant families are getting along without any. The day governess with six pupils has lost three of them; the day governess with three pupils has lost all of them; counter-clerks, male and female, have been discharged in shoals; there is not a single trade in the country that has not reduced its force and imperiled the bread and butter of one family or a thousand. A blight has fallen everywhere, and Mr. Roosevelt is the author of it.
Last week a prodigious and universal crash was impending, and but for one thing would have happened: the millionaire “bandits” whom the President is so fond of abusingⒶtextual note in order to get the applause of the galleryⒶtextual note, stepped in and stayed the desolationⒺexplanatory note. Mr. Roosevelt promptly claimed the credit of it, and there is much evidence that this inebriated nation thinks he is entitled to it. The great financiers saved every important [begin page 179] bank and trust company in New York but one—the Knickerbocker Trust CompanyⒺexplanatory note. That one had no friends, and was obliged to suspend, with obligations amounting to forty-two millions—mainly deposits. No one will lose by the temporary suspension, but twenty-two thousand depositors are more or less inconvenienced by it. Its Board of Blunderers have been shilly-shallying for a week, and trying to invent ways to save its stockholders from an assessment. Of course I had to be a depositor in the only concern that got into trouble—it was just my luck. I had fifty-one thousand dollars thereⒺexplanatory note. I feel hurt, I feel abused; I feel a deep sympathy for that man who— I think I have spoken of that YoungⒶtextual note Christian long ago, in an earlier chapter of this AutobiographyⒺexplanatory note—I don’t remember; however, this was the incident: I was to talk to a lot of Young Men’s Christian Associations in the Majestic TheatreⒶtextual note on a Sunday afternoon. Miss Lyon and I entered the place by the stage door and sat down in a box and looked out over a desert expanse of empty benches—wondering. Miss Lyon presently went to the main entrance in the other street, to see what the matter was; just as she started the YoungⒶtextual note Christians came pouring in like a tidal wave; she plowed through the wave, and by the time she reached the main door the place was full and the police, mounted and on foot, were struggling with a multitude of remaining YoungⒶtextual note Christians and keeping them back. The doors were being closed against the people. There was one last man, of course—there always is. He almost got his body into the closing door, but was pushed back by a big officer. He realized that his chance was gone. He was mute for a moment, while his feelings were rising in him, then he said: “I have been a member of the Young Men’s Christian Association in good standing for seven years and never got any reward for it, and here it is again—just my God damned luck!”Ⓐtextual note I do not feel as profane as that—still I sense the situation, and I sympathize with that man.
The directorsⒶtextual note of the Lincoln Trust Company were hard pressed by their depositorsⒺexplanatory note, but they promptly put their
one page and all but two lines of the following page
(about 420 words) are missing
Ⓔexplanatory note
Mr. L. was here last nightⒺexplanatory note. He is a well-known young New York lawyer, and is prosperous, and rising rapidly to distinction. He told me about his early life, and I found it peculiarly interesting because he was born in the Knobs of East Tennessee, that remote and primitive region where my father and mother lived eighty years ago, along with Colonel Mulberry Sellers, and whose life and surroundings I have described in the first chapter of the book called “The Gilded Age.”Ⓔexplanatory note I perceived by Mr. L.’sⒶtextual note account of his own young life there that the conditions have not changed in a single detail from what they were eighty years ago. The people are shrewd and smart, but untaught, unlettered, and ignorant almost beyond imagination. They know nothing about the outside world; they are not interested in it, they are entirely indifferent regarding its concerns; they have no books and they cannot read; they are religious, but after their own fashion; they have no churches; they have no denominations. Mr. L.’s father is eighty years old and can neither read nor write; his first wife could neither read nor write; his second wife [begin page 180] was an educated woman, a school-teacher, and came there from afar; butⒶtextual note after twenty years’ association with the people around her her grammar was as atrocious as theirs, and her phrasing and her pronunciation as barbarous. In the family there were fifteen boys and four girls. The father wanted his boys to remain on the farm, according to custom—a custom which had hardly known a break in a century previously—but they disappointed him; all his boys went away to seek their fortune elsewhere, as fast as they reached young-manhoodⒶtextual note. Mr. L., who is now about thirty-five years old, went to Texas when he was twenty. He earned a dollar or two a week there in humble capacities for a while, and meantime educated himself; then he came to New York City and hung out his shingle as a lawyer, and very soon dropped into a remunerative practiceⒶtextual note. When he was presently satisfactorily established in New York he paid his boyhood home a visit. This was about seven years ago. He had just met and had had long conversations with one of the victorious Boer generals, and as his father had been a Confederate captain in our Civil War, he counted upon thrilling him with the Boer general’s stirring adventures in the South African war. Now then, I arrive at a curious illustration of the profound interest which those primitives down there take in their local affairs, and the pallid interest which they take in anybody else’s. Mr. L., with the family grouped about him, began his tale, and as he dashed offⒶtextual note picture after picture of battle and retreat, of narrow escape, of blood and carnage in the South African veldtⒶtextual note—he grew excited, and poured out his great story with a fire and eloquence which compelled his own admiration and which he supposed was compelling the admiration of everybody present; but just in the midst of one of his stirring and spectacular pictures his old Uncle William reached out and gave his aged father’s leg a vigorous pinch and said, in a tone of strong excitement and gratification,
“Jimmy, Nip’s come back! He come over the mountains all by hisself yiste’day and Jake’s got him again!”
The amazement, the astonishment, the delight that flashed over the faces of the family was like a sunburst. Mr. L. was smitten dumb with humiliation to see his great war tale snubbed, extinguished, abolished, in this heartless way. He saw one of his brothers clap his hands to his chest as if to restrain a spasm of some kind, and then rise and retreat from the place. Mr. L. followed him, and found him outside, supporting himself against a woodpile and laughing the soul out of his body and the teeth out of his head. Mr. L. said,
“What is it? What is there to laugh about? I think it’s shameful! What is Nip? Who is Nip? and why has the return of this prodigal thrown the whole family into such indecent hysterics of joy and gratitude?”
The brother said,
“I had to laugh—I’ve got to laugh. The change from the tribe’s mild interest in your war to the dynamite explosion of interest in a local matter of real Ⓐtextual note interest, of unfeigned interest, of sublime and colossal interest—that’s what I’m laughing about.Ⓐtextual note Nip is a frowzy old no-account gray horse, fifteen years old, that belongs to Jake UtterbackⒶtextual note. Two years ago he wandered off and was never seen again, nor heard of, until yesterday evening, when he came loafing back over the mountains. Uncle William was dying to be the first to [begin page 181] tell the family the great news, and he was afraid all the time that somebody would come in with it and get ahead of him. He waited as long as he could for you to get through with your war, and he couldn’t have waited another minute or he would have died in his tracks. The news about Nip is flying all over this region for miles, and there isn’t a man or a woman that hears it that doesn’t put down work and play, and duty and pleasure, and everything else, and rush off to try to be the first to tell it to somebody else.”
No, the Knobs have not changed.Ⓐtextual note
I find it in the morning papers] The article that follows was published in the New York Times on 1 November.
John W. Alling] Alling (b. 1842?), the son of a woolen manufacturer, had practiced law in New Haven since at least 1864 ( New Haven Census 1870, 109:22A; Rockey 1892, 2:28).
F. R. Agar of this city] Unidentified.
Henry Clews] Clews (1834–1923) was head of a prominent Wall Street brokerage firm (“Henry Clews Dies in His 89th Year,” New York Times, 1 Feb 1923, 1).
The financial panic calls for an opinion as to how far ‘my policies’ are responsible for it] The panic of 1907 began in October when the Knickerbocker Trust Company, one of the largest banks in the country, suspended operations. The series of events leading up to the closure began with the involvement of its president, Charles T. Barney (see AD, 27 Apr 1908, note at 223.5–7), with F. Augustus Heinze (1869–1914), head of the Mercantile National Bank, in a failed attempt to corner the market in United Copper Company stock. On 16 October worried depositors began to withdraw their funds from the Mercantile and other banks associated with Heinze; crisis was averted when the New York Clearing House agreed to clear Mercantile checks, provided Heinze retired from banking. But on 21 October Barney was forced to resign from the Knickerbocker when his involvement with the copper maneuver was revealed, and the next day the National Bank of Commerce announced that it would not honor the Knickerbocker’s checks. The result was a run on the Knickerbocker; after paying out about $8 million the bank had no cash to meet further demand. This in turn precipitated two weeks of bank runs and panic selling; many banks collapsed, and a sharp depression followed. Financial conservatives blamed Roosevelt’s antitrust and rate-regulation legislation, which threatened business profits and undermined public confidence in railroad securities; see, for example, The Roosevelt Panic of 1907 (Edwards 1907). Roosevelt, however, blamed irresponsible speculation and stock manipulation by “certain malefactors of great wealth” (Moen 2001; Campbell 2008b; Pringle 1956, 304–8). Clemens blames Roosevelt for the 1907 economic slump in the Autobiographical Dictation of 13 September 1907 (see the note at 135.41–136.3).
President Roosevelt is alone responsible for raising this railroad rate question . . . Democrat Senator Tillman] One of Roosevelt’s most controversial policies during his second term, which began in 1905, was his push for greater government oversight of the railroads, to curb alleged abuses such as favoritism in setting shipping rates. (One of the companies that Roosevelt accused of profiting greatly from special rates was Standard Oil, of which Clemens’s friend Henry Rogers was a vice-president: see AD, 13 Sept 1907, notes at 135.21–22 and 135.23–24.) Roosevelt enlisted Representative William P. Hepburn of Iowa to introduce a bill that would give the Interstate Commerce Commission the power to oversee railroad operations; he also resorted to a temporary alliance with his constant detractor, Democratic Senator Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina, who successfully ushered the bill through the Senate. The Hepburn Act, enacted on 29 June 1906, was the most significant domestic legislation of Roosevelt’s presidency. It enlarged the Commission’s jurisdiction over the railroad industry, granting it the power to determine reasonable shipping rates; its rulings, however, were subject to judicial review (Pringle 1956, 292–99; Murphy 2011, 160–65).
the millionaire “bandits” whom the President is so fond of abusing . . . stayed the desolation] J. Pierpont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and several other wealthy bankers made available a pool of $25 million to brokerage houses under pressure during the October 1907 panic. In addition, the secretary of the treasury, George B. Cortelyou, agreed to make available $25 million in treasury funds to help national banks ease the cash shortage. Roosevelt was not personally involved; on 24 October he wrote to Cortelyou, commending him and the financiers who collaborated with him; the president’s letter was widely reprinted (“Deluge of Money Drowns Out Fear,” Chicago Tribune, 25 Oct 1907, 1; “Roosevelt Indorses Cortelyou’s Work,” New York Times, 27 Oct 1907, 1; Pringle 1956, 306–11; Campbell 2008b).
The great financiers saved every important bank and trust company in New York but one—the Knickerbocker Trust Company] Although at first Morgan and his associates claimed they would help the Knickerbocker, late in the evening of 22 October they decided that the company’s capital and surplus were insufficient to justify a rescue. Morgan “did not care to assume the responsibilities of previous poor management”; privately, he reportedly said, “I can’t go on being everybody’s goat” (Pringle 1956, 308; New York Times: “Knickerbocker Will Be Aided,” 22 Oct 1907, 1; “Knickerbocker Will Not Open,” 23 Oct 1907, 1). The Morgan associates’ decision deterred other institutions from offering substantial aid as well (Moen 2001).
No one will lose by the temporary suspension . . . I had fifty-one thousand dollars there] Lyon recorded in her journal on 22 October:
Oh its too dreadful. Every penny the King has—fifty one thousand dollars—is in the Knickerbocker Trust Co—& it has suspended payment— It has gone crashing into a terrible state. I was in town and reading of the panic in the Times & Ashcroft & I went to the bank at 34th St and Fifth Ave to find crowds of people there, with bank books in their quivering hands. And then I came back to Tuxedo to find the King in bed—& so cheerful & beautiful & brave—& trying not to show his anxiety. He had telephoned in to me to withdraw the money, but by the time I could do anything it was too late. (Lyon 1907)
The next day she noted Clemens’s plan to sell bonds to finance the house he was building in Redding and to rely on royalty payments for living expenses:
This morning the financial outlook was a bad one. Yesterday’s paper said aid would be given to the Knickerbocker, but it wasn’t forthcoming. This morning when I went to the King’s room his face looked grey, but he was brave & cheerful & talked over what we must do: Sell the Steel bonds a few at a time to build the Redding house with—for the Autobiography money is in the Knickerbocker—& live on what comes from the Harpers. (Lyon 1907, entry for 23 Oct)
On the morning of this dictation, the Knickerbocker’s directors announced that the suspension was only temporary, because its assets were sufficient to pay all depositors. It was not able to resume business, however, until March 1908, because of the difficulty of formulating a workable plan that was acceptable to all parties—the directors, the depositors, the stockholders, and the court (New York Times: “Knickerbocker Can Pay All,” 1 Nov 1907, 2; “Knickerbocker Will Open on March 26,” 8 Mar 1908, 12). Clemens himself registered his approval of the plan in a letter of 17 January 1908 to the “Other Depositors” (CtHMTH):
The time is very short. It expires to-morrow. Mr. Grover Cleveland, a depositor, has approved the Satterlee plan for resumption, & it seems to me that that ought to satisfy every depositor that that plan is safe & wise. If we accept it & support it we shall lose no part of our money; if we do not accept it the Knickerbocker will be delivered over to a permanent receivership. I have already tried a permanent receivership once, & did not like the results. It costs more to keep a permanent receiver than it does to keep a harem. Anybody who has had experience in these matters will endorse this statement. In the long run—in the very long run—we got some of our money, but not enough of it to keep a harem with. All the depositors said so, & were disappointed, & there was much regret. If we accept the Satterlee plan, & do it immediately, it will be well for us; if we refuse, we invite & insure a shrinkage which the patients will not find enjoyable. I have not been invited to say those things, still it has seemed worth while to say them.
Very respectfully
Mark Twain
Clemens’s letter was circulated by the planners and found its way into the newspapers. Most of Clemens’s money was restored in cash (70 percent), the rest in stock (30 percent) (see “The Ashcroft-Lyon Manuscript,” p. 394; “Mark Twain Hit by Failure,” Portland Oregonian, 11 Jan 1908, 3; “Mark Twain on Receivers,” San Luis Obispo [Calif.] Telegram, 12 Feb 1908, 5).
I think I have spoken of that Young Christian . . . earlier chapter of this Autobiography] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 15 March 1906 ( AutoMT1 , 409–12).
The directors of the Lincoln Trust Company were hard pressed by their depositors] By 24 October the Lincoln Trust Company had paid out “nearly $7,000,000 since the quiet run began on the institution right after the failure of the Knickerbocker.” The company’s president said that it had “been a little rough,” but by calling in its loans, it had raised the money to meet all demands (“Has Paid Out $7,000,000,” Washington Post, 25 Oct 1907, 2). See the note at 179.27 for an explanation of the truncated text.
[one page and all but two lines of the following page (about 420 words) are missing] When Bernard DeVoto prepared this dictation for publication in Mark Twain in Eruption, he discarded one page and all but two lines of a second page of the original typescript. The missing pages contained a section of text he decided to omit, which is now lost. The summary paragraph at the head of the dictation indicates that the lost section concluded the discussion of the Lincoln Trust Company, and contained a letter to the Knickerbocker Trust Company. No text of that letter has been found; there exists, however, a draft of a letter written by Clemens to the Knickerbocker directors a little later (ca. 22–26 November), which may convey a similar sentiment. It reads in part (NN-BGC):
You discriminated against me by accepting two deposits from me after some had been warned to take their money out. Instead of putting your hands in your pockets, & paying your debts, like the Lincoln Trust & other respectable concerns, you have been shillyshallying for a month trying to escape your obligations & find some more economical & less reputable way to resume. Why do you wish to resume? Do you suppose any one will risk money with you again? Next time you will bring up in jail, where you probably ought to have been many & many a year ago. At large, you are a common danger, whereas in jail you would be useful—useful, as an example. Also happy, for you would be at home; at home, & among sympathetics; sympathetics, & all harmonious, all wearing the same handsome stripes. Oh, you must not think of resuming, it would make the people to laugh, as the French say. And they would say the most sarcastic things about you, just as they are doing now. They would remember that the government & the capitalists hastened to rescue the Lincoln & the other reputable trusts, but hadn’t a kind word for you, nor a dollar. I am your friend, & I assure you it will be a mistake for you to resume.
Affectionately,
M. T.
Mr. L. was here last night] Martin W. Littleton (1872–1934) was one of nineteen children born to a poor family in Roane County, Tennessee. Almost entirely self-educated, he became a lawyer, a Brooklyn district attorney, and a Democratic party politician. In 1908 he defended Harry K. Thaw in his second trial for murder (see AutoMT2 , 647 n. 454.28–29). Littleton was Clemens’s friend and neighbor in New York—though never “Mr. Clemens’s lawyer,” as the summary paragraph asserts—and visited to play billiards occasionally, even after Clemens moved to Stormfield on 18 June 1908. Clemens recorded a witticism of Littleton’s which concerns the autobiography: “When I break into hellfireworks of speech, Miss Lyon sets down the words in a book. Mr. Littleton says it takes three historians to record me: a biographer, an autobiographer, and a naughty biographer—Paine, myself, & Miss Lyon” (21 Dec 1907 to JC, typescript in CU-MARK). Littleton later represented New York’s First District in Congress (“M. W. Littleton Sr., Lawyer, Dies at 62,” New York Times, 20 Dec 1934, 1; Crowell 1922; MTB , 3:1406).
where my father and mother lived eighty years ago, along with Colonel Mulberry Sellers . . . “The Gilded Age.”] Clemens’s parents lived in and near Jamestown, in Fentress County, Tennessee, from 1827 to 1835. In the first chapter of The Gilded Age (coauthored with Charles Dudley Warner) Clemens describes life in Obedstown, a fictional version of Jamestown. That book’s character Colonel Sellers had the first name “Eschol” in early printings; when a real Eschol Sellers threatened a lawsuit, Clemens and Warner changed the name to “Beriah Sellers.” In the Gilded Age play, and in The American Claimant (1892), he became “Mulberry Sellers” (see AutoMT1 , 206–8 and notes on 528–29).
Source documents.
Times Facsimile of the New York Times (the original clipping that Hobby transcribed is now lost), “Discuss Roosevelt at Economic Club,” 1 November 1907, 4: ‘NEW HAVEN . . . capital vanished.” ’ (177.11–178.7).TS1 (incomplete) Typescript carbon (the ribbon copy is lost), leaves numbered 2369–74 (2375 and most of 2376 are missing), 2377–81, made from Hobby’s notes and Times and revised.
TS1, as revised by Clemens, is the only authoritative source for the dictated portion of this text.
When Bernard DeVoto prepared a partial text of this Autobiographical Dictation for publication in Mark Twain in Eruption (pages 4–7), he mutilated TS1 and evidently destroyed nearly two pages of the typescript, discarding material that he did not use. Page 2374 of TS1 ends with the beginning of a sentence about the Lincoln Trust Company; the text resumes with the last two lines of page 2376, which begin a new topic, about Clemens’s lawyer, ‘Mr. L.’ The summary paragraph at the top of the dictation indicates that the missing portion included a letter to the Knickerbocker Trust Company. An undated letter to the company survives, but its contents indicate that it was probably written between 20 and 26 November. It mentions that the Knickerbocker Trust Company had been “shilly-shallying for a month” to escape its obligations; the company had suspended business on 22 October (handwritten draft in NN-BGC, TS [a file copy, or the letter was not sent], CU-MARK). For the article from the New York Times we follow the original newspaper text, incorporating Clemens’s revisions on TS1. In addition to underscoring the words at 177.34, he omitted the headlines of the article, a subhead at 177.36, and two paragraphs at the end containing a speech by Henry Clews. The minor variants that Hobby inadvertently introduced when transcribing the clipping have not been reported.