Mr. Clemens calls upon Mr. Carnegie, who has just been celebrating his seventiethⒶtextual note birthday—Some characteristics of Mr. Carnegie; his desire to talk about himself, and the attentions shown him.
Yesterday I had a message for Andrew Carnegie, who has just been celebrating his seventieth birthdayⒶtextual note with the help of friends, and I went up townⒶtextual note to deliver it, first notifying him by telephone that I should arrive at mid-afternoonⒶtextual note, or thereabouts. I arrived at his palace a little after three o’clock and delivered my message; then we adjourned to a room which he called his “cosy corner”Ⓐtextual note to have a general chat while I should wait for Mr. Bryce, the British AmbassadorⒶtextual note, who had gone to fill an appointment, but had left word that I must wait, as he would soon return. I was glad to comply, for I have known Mr. Bryce a good many years, mainly at his own hospitable table in London, and have always not only respected and esteemed him, but have also revered himⒺexplanatory note. I waited an hour, and then had to give it up; but the hour was not ill spent, for Andrew Carnegie,Ⓐtextual note long as I have known him,Ⓐtextual note has never yet been an uninteresting study, and he was up to standard yesterday.
If I were going to describe him in a phrase I think I should call him the Human Being Unconcealed. He is just like the rest of the human race, but with this difference, that the rest of the race try to conceal what they are, and succeed, whereas Andrew tries to conceal what he is, but doesn’t succeed. Yesterday he was at his best; he went on exposing himself all the time, yet he seemed to be unaware of it. I cannot go so far as to say he was unaware of it—seemed is the safer word to use, perhaps. He never has any but one theme—himself. Not that he deals in autobiography; not that he tells you about his brave struggles for a livelihood as a friendless poor boy in a strange land; not that he tells you how he advanced his fortunes steadily and successfully against obstructions that would have defeated almost any other human being similarly placed; not that he tells you how he finally reached the summit of his ambition and became lord over twenty-twoⒶtextual note thousand men and possessor of one of the three giant fortunes of his day; no, as regards these achievements he is as modest a man as you could meet anywhere, and seldom makes even a fleeting reference to them; yet it is as I say, he is himself his [begin page 182] one darling subject, the only subject he for the moment—the social moment—seems stupendously interested in. I think heⒶtextual note would surely talk himself to death upon itⒶtextual note if you would stay and listen.
ThenⒶtextual note in what way does he make himself his subject? In this way. He talks forever and ever and ever and untiringly, of the attentions which have been shown him. Sometimes they have been large attentions, most frequently they are very small ones; but no matter, no attention comes amiss to him, and he likes to revel in them. His friends are coming to observe, with consternation, that while he adds new attentions to his list every now and then, he never drops an old and shop-worn oneⒶtextual note out of the catalogue to make room for one of these fresh ones. He keeps the whole list; keeps it complete, and you must take it all, along with the new additions, if there is time, and you survive. It is the deadliest affliction I know of. He is the Ancient Mariner over again; it is not possible to divert him from his subject; in your weariness and despair you try to do it whenever you think you see a chance, but it always fails; he will use your remark for his occasion and make of it a pretext to get straight back upon his subject again.
A year or two ago Gilder, of The Century, and I called at Mr. Carnegie’s upon some matter connected with GeneralⒶtextual note Carl SchurzⒺexplanatory note, who was very ill at the time. We arranged for a visit to the Schurz family with Mr. Carnegie, who was Schurz’s nearest neighbor; then our business was over, and we wanted to get away, but we couldn’t manage it. In the study Mr. Carnegie flew from photograph to photograph, from autograph to autograph, from presentation book to presentation book, and so on, buzzing over each like a happy humming-bird, for each represented a compliment to Mr. Carnegie. Some of these compliments were worth having and worth remembering, but some of them were not; some of them were tokens of honest admiration of the man for the liberal way in which he had devoted millions of dollars to “Carnegie libraries,”Ⓐtextual note while others were merelyⒶtextual note sorrowfully transparentⒶtextual note tokens of reverence for his money-bags;Ⓐtextual note but they were all a delight to him, and he loved to talk about them and explain them and enlarge upon them. One was a poem written by a working-man in Scotland. It was a good piece of literary work, and sang Andrew’s glories quite musically. It was in the Scotch dialect, and Andrew read it to us, and read it well—so well that no one born out of Scotland could understand it. Then he told us about King Edward’s visit to him at Skibo Castle in ScotlandⒺexplanatory note. We had heard him read the poem before and tell about the King’sⒶtextual note visit; we were doomed to hear him read that poem many times and alsoⒶtextual note tell about that visit many times,Ⓐtextual note afterward. When his study seemed to be exhausted we were hoping to get away, but it was not to be. He headed us off at this and that and the other room, and made us enter each and every room under the pretext that there was something important in there for us to consider—but it was always the same old thing: a gold box containing the freedom of the city of London, or Edinburgh, or Jerusalem, or JerichoⒶtextual note; or a great photograph with the pictures of all the iron masters whom he had reared and trained and made millionaires of—a picture which they had presented him, along with a banquet; or it was shelves which we must inspect loaded to the guardsⒺexplanatory note with applications from everywhere in the world for a Carnegie library; or it was this or that or the other God-knows-what,Ⓐtextual note in the [begin page 183] form of some damned attention that had been conferred upon him; and one exasperating feature of it was that it never seemed to occur to him for a moment that these attentions were mainly tributes to his money, and not to himself.Ⓐtextual note
Andrew Carnegie—his characteristics, etc. continued.
Am I dwelling too long on Carnegie? I think not. He has bought fame and paid cash for it; he has deliberately projected and planned out this fame for himself; he has arranged that his name shall be famous in the mouths of men for centuries to come. He has planned shrewdly, safely, securely, and will have his desire. Any town, or village, or hamlet on the globe can have a public library upon these following unvarying terms: when the applicant shall have raised one-half of the necessary money, Carnegie will furnish the other half, and the library building must permanently bear his name. During the past six or eight years he has been spending six or seven million dollars a year on this scheme. He is still continuing it; there is already a multitude of Carnegie libraries scattered abroad over the planet, and he is always making additions to the list. When he dies, I think it will be found that he has set apart a gigantic fund whose annual interest is to be devoted forever to the begetting of Carnegie libraries. I think that three or four centuries from now, Carnegie libraries will be considerably thicker in the world than churches. It is a long-headed idea, and will deceive many people into thinking Carnegie a long-headed man in other and larger ways. I am sure he is a long-headed man in many and many a wise small way—the way of the trimmer, the way of the smart calculator, the way that enables a man to correctly calculate the tides and come in with the flow and go out with the ebb, keeping a permanent place on the top of the wave of advantage while other men as intelligent as he, but more addictedⒶtextual note to principle and less to policy, get stranded on the reefs and bars.
It is possible, but not likely, that Carnegie thinks the world regards his library scheme as a large and unselfish benevolence; whereas the world thinks nothing of the kind. The world thanks Mr. Carnegie for his libraries, and is glad to see him spend his millions in that useful way, but it is not deceived as to the motive. It isn’t because the world is intelligent, for the world isn’t; it is only the world’s prejudice against Mr. Carnegie that protects it from being deceived as to the Carnegie motive. The world was deceived as to President Roosevelt’s motive when he issued that lawless Order 78Ⓔexplanatory note, but that was because the world was saturated with adoration of our small idol. Even half-intelligentⒶtextual note persons, outside of the holy Republican communion, knew that Order 78 was merely a vote-bribing raid on the Treasury. It would be by no means fair to say that Mr. Carnegie never gives away money with any other object in view than the purchase of fame. He does not give money to any large extent with a non-advertising purpose in view, still there are instances on record—instances where the notice acquired is but momentary, and quickly forgetable and forgotten.
To return to the visit of yesterday to Mr. Carnegie in his palace. One of his first remarks was characteristic—characteristic in this way: that it brought forward a new [begin page 184] attention which he had been receiving; characteristic, also, in this way: that he dragged it in by the ears, without beating around the bush for a pretext to introduce it. He said,
“I have been down to Washington to see the President.”
Then he added, with that sort of studied and practisedⒶtextual note casualness which some people assume when they are proposing to state a fact which they are proud of but do not wish to seem proud of,
“He sent for me.”
I knew he was going to say that. If you let Carnegie tell it, he never seeks the great—the great always seek him. He went on, and told me about the interview. The President had desired his advice regarding the calamitous conditions existing to-day, commercially, in America, and Mr. Carnegie furnished that advice. It was characteristic of Mr. Carnegie that he did not enter into the details of the advice which he furnished, and didn’t try to glorify himself as an adviser. It is curious. He knew, and I knew, and he knew that I knew, that he was thoroughly competent to advise the President, and that the advice furnished would be of the highest value and importance; yet he had no glorifications to waste upon that; he has never a word of brag about his real achievements, his great achievements; they do not seem to interest him in the least degree; he is only interested—and intensely interested—in the flatteries lavished upon him in the disguise of compliments, and in other little vanities which other men would value, but conceal. I must repeat he is an astonishing man in his genuine modesty as regards the large things he has done, and in his juvenile delight in trivialities that feed his vanity.
Mr. Carnegie is not any better acquainted with himself than if he had met himself for the first time day before yesterday. He thinks he is a rude, bluff, independent spirit, who writes his mind and thinks his mind with an almost extravagant Fourth of July independence; whereas he is really the counterpart of the rest of the human race in that he does notⒶtextual note boldly speakⒶtextual note his mind exceptⒶtextual note when there isn’t any danger in it. He thinks he is a scorner of kings and emperors and dukes, whereas he is like the rest of the human race:Ⓐtextual note a slight attention from one of these can make him drunk for a week, and keep his happy tongue wagging for seven years.
I was there an hour or thereabouts, and was about to go, when Mr. Carnegie just happened to remember by pure accident—apparently—something which had escaped his mind—this something which had escaped his mind being, in fact, a something which had not been out of his mind for a moment in the hour, and which he was perishing to tell me about. He jumped up and said,
“Oh, wait a moment. I knew there was something I wanted to say. I want to tell you about my meeting with the EmperorⒺexplanatory note.”
The German Kaiser, he meant. His remark brought a picture to my mind at once—a picture of Carnegie and the Kaiser; a picture of a battleship and a Brooklyn ferry-boat, so to speak; a picture of a stately big man and a wee little forkèdⒶtextual note child of God that Goliath’s wife would have pinned a shirt-waist ontoⒶtextual note a clothes-line with—could have done it if she wanted to, anyway. I could see the Kaiser’s frank big face, bold big face, independent big face, as I remember it, and I could see that other face turned up toward it—that [begin page 185] foxy,Ⓐtextual note white-whiskered, cunning little face, happy, blessed, lit up with a sacred fire, and squeaking,Ⓐtextual note without words: “Am I in heavenⒶtextual note, or is it only a dream?”
I must dwell for a moment upon Carnegie’s stature—if one may call it by that large name—for the sake of the future centuries. The future centuries will be glad to hear about this feature from one who has actually looked upon it, for the matter of stature will always be a matter of interest to the future ages when they are reading about Caesar and Alexander and Napoleon and Carnegie. In truth Mr. Carnegie is no smaller than was Napoleon; he is no smaller than were several other men supremely renowned in history, but for some reason or other he looks smaller than he really is. He looks incredibly small—almost unthinkably small. I do not know how to account for this; I do not know what the reason of it is, and so I have to leave it unexplained; but always when I see Carnegie I am reminded of a Hartford incident of the long, long ago—a thing which had occurred in a law court about a dozen years before I went there, in 1871, to take up my residence. There was a little wee bit of a lawyer there, by the name of ClarkeⒺexplanatory note, who was famous for two things: his diminutiveness and his persecuting sharpness in cross-questioning witnesses. It was said that alwaysⒶtextual note when he got through with a witness there was nothing left of that witness—nothing but a limp and defeated and withered rag. Except once. Just that one time the witness did not wither. The witness was a vast Irishwoman, and she was testifying in her own case. The charge was rape. She said she awoke in the morning and found the accused lying beside her, and she discovered that she had been outraged. The lawyer said, after elaborately measuring her great figure impressively with his eye,
“Now Madam what an impossible miracleⒶtextual note you are hoping to persuade this jury to believe! If one may take so preposterous a thing as that seriously, you might evenⒶtextual note charge it upon me. Come now, suppose you should wake up and find me lying beside you? What would you think?”
She measured him critically and at her leisure, with a calm judicious eye, and said,
“I’d think I’d had a miscarriage!Ⓐtextual note”
Andrew Carnegie, continued.
As I was saying, Carnegie jumped up and said he wanted to tell me about his meeting with the EmperorⒶtextual note; then he went on, something like this:
“We went aboard the Hohenzollern Ⓐtextual note, Tower and I, in a perfectly informal way, as far as I was concerned, for emperors and commoners are all one to me, and so I didn’t care to have any announcement made that I was coming. Well, there on the deck stood the EmperorⒶtextual note, talking, with the usual imperial crowd of gilded and resplendent naval and civil dignitaries standing a little apart and reverently listening. I stood to one side quietly observing, and thinking my own thoughts, the EmperorⒶtextual note not conscious that I was there. Presently the AmbassadorⒶtextual note said,
“ ‘ThereⒶtextual note is an American here, your MajestyⒶtextual note, whom you have more than once expressed a desire to see.’
[begin page 186] “ ‘WhoⒶtextual note is that, your ExcellencyⒶtextual note?’
“ ‘AndrewⒶtextual note Carnegie.’
“WithⒶtextual note a start which might be translated into a ‘God bless my soul,’ the EmperorⒶtextual note said,
“ ‘HaⒶtextual note! a man I have so wanted to see. Bring him to me. Bring him to meⒺexplanatory note,’ and he advanced half wayⒶtextual note himself and shook me cordially by the hand and said, laughing, ‘Ah, Mr. Carnegie, I know you for a confirmed and incurable independentⒶtextual note, who thinks no more of kings and emperors than of other people, but I like it in you; I like a man that does his own thinking and speaks out what he thinks, whether the world approve or not; it’s the right spirit, the brave spirit, and there’s little enough of it on this planet.’
“IⒶtextual note said,
“ ‘IⒶtextual note am glad your MajestyⒶtextual note is willing to take me for what I am. It would not become me to disclaim or disown, or even modify, what your MajestyⒶtextual note has said of me, since it is only the truth. I could not be otherwise than independent if I wanted to, for the spirit of independence is a part of my nature, and a person’s nature is born, not made. But I have reverences, your MajestyⒶtextual note, just the same. What I revere, respect, esteem, and do homage to is a man Ⓐtextual note!—a man, a whole man, a fearless man,Ⓐtextual note a manly and masculine and right-feeling and right-acting man; let him be born in garret or palace, it is the same to me—if he is a man he has my homage; your MajestyⒶtextual note is a man, a whole man, a manly man, and it is for this that I revere you, not Ⓐtextual note for your mighty place in the worldⒺexplanatory note.’ ”Ⓐtextual note
And so on, and so on. It was a battle of compliments, appreciations, and almost indecentlyⒶtextual note enthusiastic delight on both sides. One or two of the speeches which Mr. Carnegie made to the EmperorⒶtextual note were of the soaring, high-voiced, ornate, and thunderously oratorical sort, and in re-delivering them now he acted them out with fire, energy, and effective gesticulation. It was a fine and stirring thing to see.
Andrew Carnegie continued—Some of the advice which he gives to Roosevelt when he visits him—by request—in Washington.
We are all alike—on the inside. Also we are exteriorly all alike, if you leave out Carnegie. Scoffing democratsⒶtextual note as we are, we do dearly love to be noticed by a duke, and when we are noticed by a monarch we have softening of the brain for the rest of our lives. We try our best to keep from referring to these precious collisions, and in time some of us succeed in keeping our dukes and monarchs to ourselves; it costs us something to do this, but in time we accomplish it. In my own case, I have so carefully and persistently trained myself in this kind of self-denial that to-day I can look on calm and unmoved when a returned American is casually and gratefully playing the earls he has met; I can look on, silent and unexcited, and never offer to call his hand, although I have three kings and a pair of emperors up my sleeve. It takes a long time to reach this summit of self-sacrifice, and Carnegie has not reached it and never will. He loves to talk about his encounters with sovereigns and aristocracies; loves to talk of these splendid artificialities in a lightly scoffing and compassionate vein and try [begin page 187] notⒶtextual note to let on that those encounters are the most precious bric-à-bracⒶtextual note in the treasury of his memory; but he is just a human being, and he can’t even wholly deceive himself, let alone the housecatⒶtextual note. With all his gentle scoffings, Carnegie’s delight in his contacts with the great amounts to a mania; it must be as much as four years since King Edward visited him at Skibo Castle, yet it is an even bet that not a day has passed since then that he has not told somebody all about it, and enlarged with pride upon the fact that the visit was so small a matter to him that he was able to forget that it was impending, and so the King had to wait a moment until Mr. Carnegie was sent for. Mr. Carnegie cannot leave the King’s visit alone; he has told me about it at least four times, in detail. When he applied that torture the second, third, and fourth times, he certainly knew that it was the second, third, and fourth time, for he has an excellent memory. I am not able to believe that he ever allows an opportunity to tell it to go by without getting out of that opportunity all it is worth. He has likable qualities and I like him, but I don’t believe I can stand the King Edward visit again.
In his talk about his recent visit—by request—to the PresidentⒺexplanatory note, Mr. Carnegie very, very gently criticisedⒶtextual note a couple of Mr. Roosevelt’s latest insanities: one of these is his departure from his last year’s requirement of a new battleshipⒶtextual note per year and his substituted policy of last week, requiring four new battleshipsⒶtextual note right away, at a cost of sixty-nine million dollarsⒺexplanatory note. Carnegie suggested to him, in aⒶtextual note guarded and diplomatic way, that this amazing warlike outburst was not altogether in harmony with Mr. Roosevelt’s laboriously acquired position in the world as the Dove of Peace, and as the recipient of the Nobel PrizeⒺexplanatory note of forty thousand dollars as the chiefest Dove of PeaceⒶtextual note on the planet. Mr. Carnegie also suggested, in cautious, diplomatic language, that the war-ships be postponed, and the sixty-nine millions be employed in improving the waterways of the country.
I said that the suggestion to drop the battleshipsⒶtextual note was good advice, but that the President would not be influenced by it, because dropping the battleshipsⒶtextual note would interfere with his policy—policy, not policies, since the President has only one policy,Ⓐtextual note and that is to do insanely spectacular things and get himself talked about.
Mr. Carnegie toyed cautiously with that suggestion of insanity; he did not commit himself, and I didn’t expect him to do it. He had no call to trade dangerous political confessions with me—and besides, he didn’t need to tell me what I already knew; to wit, that there isn’t an intelligent human being in America that doesn’t privately believe that the President is substantially and to all effects and purposes insane, and ought to be in an asylum. I added, without fishing for a response, and not expecting one,
“Mr. Roosevelt is the Tom Sawyer of the political world of the twentieth century; always showing off; always hunting for a chance to show off; in his frenzied imagination the Great Republic is a vast Barnum circus with him for a clown and the whole world for audience; he would go to Halifax for half a chance to show off, and he would go to hellⒶtextual note for a whole one.”
Mr. Carnegie chuckled half approvingly, but didn’t say anything, and I wasn’t expecting him to say anything.
[begin page 188] As I have said, Mr. Carnegie mentioned two incidents of his Washington visit: one of them was the one I have been talking about—the four battleshipsⒶtextual note; the other was the “In God We Trust.” Away back yonder in the days of the Civil War, a strong effort was made to introduce the name of God into the Constitution; it failed, but a compromise was arrived at which partially satisfied the friends of the Deity. God was left out of the Constitution, but was furnished a front seat on the coins of the country. After that, on one side of the coin we had an Injun, or a Goddess of Liberty,Ⓐtextual note or something of that kind, and on the other side we engraved the legend, “In God We Trust.”Ⓔexplanatory note Now then, after that legend had remained there forty years or so, unchallenged and doing no harm to anybody, the President suddenly “threw a fit” the other day, as the popular expression goes, and ordered that remark to be removed from our coinage. Mr. Carnegie granted that the matter was not of consequence; that a coin had just exactly the same value without the legend as with it, and he said he had no fault to find with Mr. Roosevelt’s action, but only with his expressed reasons for the act. The President had ordered the suppression of that motto because a coin carried the name of God into improper places, and that this was a profanation of the Holy NameⒺexplanatory note. Carnegie said the name of God is used to being carried into improper places everywhere and all the time, and that he thought the President’s reasoning rather weak and poor.
I thought the same, and said,
“But that is just like the President. If you will notice, he is very much in the habit of furnishing a poor reason for his acts while there is an excellent reason staring him in the face, which he overlooks. There was a good reason for removing that motto; there was, indeed, an unassailably good reason—in the fact that the motto stated a lie. If this nation has ever trusted in God, that time has gone by; for nearly half a century almost its entire trust has been in the Republican party and the dollar—mainly the dollar. I recognize that I am only making an assertion, and furnishing no proof; I am sorry, but this is a habit of mine; sorry also that I am not alone in it; everybody seems to have this disease. Take an instance: the removal of the motto fetched out a clamor from the pulpit; little groups and small conventions of clergymen gathered themselves together all over the country, and one of these little groups, consisting of twenty-two ministers, put up a prodigious assertion unbacked by any quoted statistics, and passed it unanimously in the form of a resolution: the assertion, to wit, that this is a Christian countryⒺexplanatory note. Why, Carnegie, so is hellⒶtextual note. Those clergymen know that inasmuch as ‘StraitⒶtextual note is the way and narrow is the gate, and few— few Ⓐtextual note—are they that enter in thereat’ has had the natural effect of making hellⒶtextual note the only really prominent Christian community in any of the worlds; but we don’t brag of this, and certainly it is not proper to brag and boast that America is a Christian country when we all know that certainly five-sixths of our population could not enter in at the narrow gate.”
Mr. Carnegie did not argue the point, and I did not expect him to do it, for he couldn’t know what useⒶtextual note I might make of unwise disclosures in case he should indulge himself in that kind of revelations.
title Dictated December 2, 1907] Under this date Clemens groups four dictations about Andrew Carnegie, clearly the work of several days.
Mr. Bryce, the British Ambassador . . . have also revered him] James Bryce (1838–1922), ambassador to the United States from 1907 to 1913, had been a leading Liberal member of parliament from 1880 to 1907. He first met Clemens sometime before 1899, for in June of that year he invited Clemens to lunch to “renew” their acquaintance (Bryce to SLC, 14 June 1899, CU-MARK; Notebook 40, TS p. 58, CU-MARK).
Gilder, of The Century . . . General Carl Schurz] Richard Watson Gilder, editor of the Century Magazine since 1881, had been a friend of Clemens’s for over twenty years ( AutoMT1 , 486 n. 77 footnote). Clemens visited Carl Schurz shortly before his death, in May 1906 (see AD, 19 Aug 1907, note at 104.22).
King Edward’s visit to him at Skibo Castle in Scotland] Carnegie bought Skibo Castle, overlooking Dornoch Firth in the Scottish Highlands, in 1897, and renovated it extensively. King Edward VII’s visit was in September 1902 (“King Edward Visits Carnegie at Skibo,” New York Times, 7 Sept 1902, 4).
loaded to the guards] Steamboat language for heavily loaded—loaded even on the extensions, called guards, of the main deck past the hull ( ET&S1 , 443).
President Roosevelt’s motive when he issued that lawless Order 78] See the Autobiographical Dictation of 29 May 1907, note at 62.25.
I want to tell you about my meeting with the Emperor] See the notes at 185.32–186.4 and 186.6–19.
wee bit of a lawyer there, by the name of Clarke] Unidentified.
We went aboard the Hohenzollern, Tower and I . . . Bring him to me] Carnegie wrote in his autobiography that he was invited to meet Wilhelm II, emperor of Germany and king of Prussia, after the monarch read Carnegie’s 1902 rectorial address to the students of the University of St. Andrews, which appealed to the emperor to “use his influence toward the eventual creation of the United States of Europe, under the form of a political and industrial union” (“Andrew Carnegie on Industrial Supremacy,” New York Times, 23 Oct 1902, 9). The meeting was delayed, however, until June 1907, when Carnegie and his wife traveled to Kiel, where Charlemagne Tower, the U.S. minister to Germany, took him aboard the emperor’s yacht, the Hohenzollern (Carnegie 1920, 366–69).
I know you for a confirmed and incurable independent . . . your mighty place in the world] Carnegie gave a similar account of this conversation in his autobiography: when Wilhelm said, “I have read your books. You do not like kings,” Carnegie replied that he did not, “but I do like a man behind a king when I find him.” Writing on the eve of World War I, he praised the emperor as “fine company . . . an earnest man, anxious for the peace and progress of the world,” and stated that “the peace of the world has little to fear from Germany,” despite the agitations of the “military caste,” on whom he would later blame the outbreak of war (Carnegie 1920, 369–72; Nasaw 2006, 785).
his recent visit—by request—to the President] Carnegie met with Roosevelt several times in October–December 1907, lobbying for peace initiatives and consulting on the financial crisis (Nasaw 2006, 692–95).
his departure from his last year’s requirement of a new battleship per year . . . sixty-nine million dollars] For several years Roosevelt’s administration deemed the building of one U.S. battleship a year sufficient. But after the representatives at the 1907 International Peace Conference at The Hague failed to reach an agreement to limit the number or size of warships, he decided on an increase in production. In the fall of 1907 the secretary of the navy, Victor H. Metcalf, urged Congress to authorize the construction of four battleships, in addition to twenty-six other vessels of various types, at a projected total cost of $96 million. His proposal was reported in newspapers on the day of this dictation (“Our Navy Second as to Efficiency,” New York Times, 2 Dec 1907, 8). Congress authorized only two of the requested battleships, but in January 1909, after a second appeal, it approved two more. During Roosevelt’s presidency, a total of fourteen battleships were launched, more than doubling the size of the navy (“Roosevelt Urges Need of Battleships,” New York Times, 15 Apr 1908, 5; Hodge 2011, 264–71; Washington Post: “Congress and the Navy,” 16 Feb 1908, E4; “For 2 Battleships,” 23 Jan 1909, 1; see also AutoMT2 , 525 n. 134.38–135.1, and AD, 8 Apr 1907, note at 22.6–16).
Mr. Roosevelt’s . . . the recipient of the Nobel Prize] Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1906 for his role in negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War. Clemens called the treaty, signed in September 1905, “the most conspicuous disaster in political history,” claiming that the restoration of peace enabled the Russian tsar to “resume his medieval barbarisms” against his own people (Trani and Davis 2011, 374–75; see AutoMT1 , 462–63 and notes on 647–48).
to introduce the name of God into the Constitution . . . the legend, “In God We Trust.”] In 1861, a small Protestant sect called the Covenanters renewed earlier efforts to introduce an affirmation of the Christian God into the Constitution. Other Christian denominations joined the cause, and early in 1864 the National Reform Association was founded, with the goal of securing “such an amendment to the Constitution of the United States as will declare the nation’s allegiance to Jesus Christ and its acceptance of the moral laws of the Christian religion.” The association also sought to incorporate religion into other aspects of government, such as family law, education, and observance of the Sabbath. It found little support in Washington (Allison 2013). In 1863 Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase, having received more than one letter requesting (in the words of one such letter) “the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins,” mandated the addition of the motto “In God We Trust” to U.S. coinage. The change was ratified by Congress in the Coinage Act of 1864. The motto was added to the two-cent coin that year, and two years later it appeared on several others, including the ten-dollar gold eagle and twenty-dollar double eagle (U.S. Department of the Treasury 2013).
ordered that remark to be removed . . . this was a profanation of the Holy Name] In late 1905 Roosevelt commissioned Augustus Saint-Gaudens to redesign the U.S. coinage. The first of the new coins, the ten-dollar gold eagle, was released in early November 1907, a few months after the sculptor’s death. The obverse shows the head of Liberty in profile wearing an Indian headdress, and the reverse an eagle perched on a branch. According to Saint-Gaudens’s son, his father omitted the motto “In God We Trust” because he considered it an “inartistic intrusion,” and Roosevelt concurred. Its absence caused an immediate outcry. Roosevelt claimed responsibility for the decision, but did not defend it on aesthetic grounds, arguing instead that it was “eminently unwise to cheapen such a motto by use on coins, just as it would be to cheapen it by use on postage stamps or in advertisements.” Public pressure eventually led to the passage of the McKinley bill in May 1908, which reinstated the motto on all subsequent mintings of coins on which it had formerly appeared (Levine 2011, 145–47; Saint-Gaudens 1913, 2:329–32; “New Eagles Lack Motto,” New York Times, 7 Nov 1907, 8).
removal of the motto fetched out a clamor . . . that this is a Christian country] Numerous religious bodies protested against the removal of “In God We Trust” from the new coinage. Clemens may refer to a resolution introduced at an 11 November 1907 meeting of the Presbyterian Ministers’ Association, where the Reverend William J. Peck was reported as saying the nation “was lapsing into barbarism” (“To Condemn Omission of ‘In God We Trust,’ ” Boston Herald, 12 Nov 1907, 1). A week later the association, which included Presbyterian, Reformed, and Reformed Episcopal ministers, adopted the resolution that “the motto ‘In God We Trust’ is in harmony with historical and religious sentiment of our land,” and should be retained “in the interest of religion and morality.” The debate over the coins coincided with a controversy over the legality of Christmas activities in the New York public schools, prompting debate as to whether the United States is “a Christian country” (“Want ‘In God We Trust,’ ” Baltimore Sun, 19 Nov 1907, 1; “Want the Motto Back,” Washington Post, 19 Nov 1907, 5; “Board of Education Put on Defensive,” New York Times, 26 Nov 1907, 5).
Source document.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 2382–2405, made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS1, as revised by Clemens, is the only authoritative source for this dictation. It was evidently made over several days: the first, second, and fourth sections were dictated in one and a half or two hours, each of which was probably one morning’s session; the third section was briefer. Nevertheless, Clemens clearly intended them to be presented under a single date.