II

N THE fall of 1905 Franklin Lane came back from a trip to Mexico and found his own picture confronting him on the first page of the first newspaper he saw. The caption under the picture said that he had been mentioned as member of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

On November 13th, Lane wrote Mr. Edward B. Whitney:

"MY DEAR WHITNEY

"I have just returned from a two months trip through Mexico, from the Rio Grande to Guatemala, and from the Gulf to the Pacific, and know nothing whatever concerning the Interstate Commerce Commissionership, save what I have seen in the papers since my return.

I have not put myself in the position of soliciting, either directly or indirectly, this appointment; I have never even stimulated to a slight degree the activity of some of my friends on my behalf. There is some misgiving in my own mind as to whether acceptance of the position would be of benefit to me either politically or otherwise. I have no doubt the nomination for Governor can be mine next year without effort, and what the 'outcome of an election would be in 1906, even

in a Republican state, is not now to be prophesied, in view of the somersaults in Ohio and Pennsylvania of a week ago. Of course

it is a great opportunity to prove or disprove the capacity of this government to control effectively the corporations which seem determined to be its master.

"It does look to me as if the problem of our generation is to be the discovery of some effective method by which the artificial persons whom we have created by law can be taught that they are not the creators, the owners, and the rightful managers of the Government. The real greatness of the President's policy, to my notion, is that he has determined to prove to the railroads that they have not the whole works, and the policy which they have followed is as short-sighted as it can be. It will lead, if pursued as it has been begun, to the wildest kind of a craze for government ownership of everything. Just as you people in New York City were forced, by the delinquency and corruption of the gas combine to undertake the organization of a municipal ownership movement, so it may be that the same qualities in the railroads will create precisely the same spirit throughout the country.

"I appreciate thoroughly your position in New York [Hearst] knows public sentiment and how to develop it very well, and will be a danger in the United States, I am afraid, for many years to come. He has great capacity for disorganization of any movement that is not his own, and an equal capacity for organization of any movement that is his personal property. He feels with the people, but he has no conscience. He is willing to do whatever for the minute the people may want done and give them what they cry for, unrestrained by sense of justice, or of ultimate effect. He is the great American Pander.

"Reverting again to the Interstate Commerce Commissionership.

Do not in any way put yourself out regarding this matter. I am satisfied that the President will do just what he wants to do and just what he thinks right, without much respect to what anybody says to him, and I don't want to bring pressure to bear upon him; but, of course, I want him to know that I have friends who think well of me. I am very appreciative of your offer and efforts, and hope that, whether I am given this position or not, I shall before very long have the opportunity of seeing you in New York.

"Very Sincerely,

"FRANKLIN K. LANE."

Some time before this Benjamin Ide Wheeler and other men on the Pacific Coast who thought it important for their section that the Interstate Commerce Commission have at least one member conversant with Pacific Coast conditions, had recommended Lane to President Roosevelt. Roosevelt had promised Mr. Wheeler to appoint Lane when a vacancy occurred. In the meanwhile the election of 1904 had taken place. The Republican party won an overwhelming victory. But, in Missouri, Francis M. Cockrell, who had served nearly thirty years in the Senate, was defeated. Not long after the election he called at the White House. Roosevelt went up to him and said: "Senator, if there is anything that I can give you that you want, name it and you shall have it." Senator Cockrell answered: "I would like to be put on the Interstate Commerce Commission." Roosevelt promised him the position on the spot and immediately appointed him. When this news reached California Dr. Wheeler telegraphed the President

reminding him of his previous promise. He received the following reply by wire:

"Am exceedingly sorry. Had totally forgotten my promise about Lane and have nothing to say excepting that I had totally forgotten it when Senator Cockrell was offered the position. I can only say now that I shall put him in some good position suitable to his great talents and experience when the chance occurs. Of course when I made the promise about Lane the idea of getting Cockrell for the position could not be in anyone's head. This does not excuse me for breaking the promise which I should never have done, and of course if I had remembered it I would not have offered the position to Cockrell. I am very sorry. But as fortunately I have another term, I shall make ample amends to Lane later.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT."

Roosevelt was as good as his word. In 1905 the President sent Lane's name to the Senate for confirmation as a member of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Immediately opposition developed. At that time the Commission was composed of five members. There were two Republicans, two Democrats and a vacancy. If Lane, a Democrat, filled the vacancy the majority would have been Demo

cratic. The Senate was Republican and did not share Roosevelt's lack of partisanship in this particular. Moreover Lane was supposed to be radical, anyway as radical as Roosevelt. He had been known as a Roosevelt Democrat during his campaign for the Governorship in 1902, when in addition to being the Democratic candidate he was the candidate of the Non-Partisan League. The Senate felt that Roosevelt and Lane both were far too radical. Moreover the conflict between the President and Congress which always develops in the latter part of any president's term was showing signs of developing in 1905 and the Senate was rather inclined not to do anything which Roosevelt recommended. So Lane's confirmation hung before the seats of the mighty. In these circumstances it was suggested that he go to Washington to lobby for his confirmation. On December 9, 1905 he wrote to President Roosevelt:

"MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT,

"I have not written you before because of my expectation that I would see you soon, but as there now seems some doubt as to immediate confirmation I will not longer delay expressing the deep gratification which the nomination gave me. You gave the one answer I could have wished to the whispered charge that I was bound by obligation of some sort to the railroads a charge never made in any form here, not even in the hottest of my five campaigns. My honor stood pledge to you, by the very fact of my willingness to accept the post, that I was free, independent, self-owned, capable of unbiased action. And that pledge remains.

"As to my confirmation it has been suggested that it was the customary and expected thing for me to go to Washington and help in the fight. This I feel I should not do and have so written to Senator Perkins and others. I do not wish to appear indifferent in the slightest degree to the honor you have done me or to the office itself, but I feel that you will appreciate without my setting them forth on paper the many reasons which hold me here. This is no time for an Interstate Commerce Commissioner to be on his knees before a United States Senator or to be thought to be in that position. "Very respectfully yours, "FRANKLIN K. LANE."

In Roosevelt's answer of Dec. 16, 1905, he said:

It is just the kind of a letter I should have expected from you. You are absolutely right in refraining from coming here. I shall make and am making as stiff a fight as I know how for you. I think I shall carry you through; but of course nothing of this kind is ever certain."

About this time Lane further outlined his position to President Wheeler of the University of California and to William E. Smythe, [ex-Congressman from California] with his usual good humor and clarity of vision concerning the morals and proprieties of political life.

TO PRESIDENT WHEELER:

"I wanted to tell you last night [December 14, 1905] that I had written to the President thanking him for the confidence he had shown in me, and telling him that I did not think it was the right thing for me to go to Washington under present conditions. He may have a different notion in this respect, and of course 1 should be guided by his judgment. My view of the matter is that an Interstate Commerce Commissioner can not ask or appear to solicit in any way the support of Senators who are or may be unfriendly to the President and his policy with respect to Interstate Commerce matters. I have no doubt that many of the Senators would be quite willing to let the President have the law if they could have the Commission. While there is no danger of this, I certainly should not take any step which would give color to any such suggestion or surmise.

Personally I should be most pleased to meet these critical gentlemen of the Senate and give them a very full account of my eventful career. But the fact that I am a Democrat could not be disproved by my presence in Washington, and I am not likely to apologize for what one of my kindly Republican critics calls "this error of his boyhood." I am concerned in this matter because I do not wish to cause the President any embarrassment. He is fighting for far larger things than this appointment represents. He knows his own game, and I am quite willing to stand on a side line and see him play it to a finish, or get in and buck the centre if I am needed."

TO MR. SMYTHE:

tween Dennis Kearney and Eugene Debs with a little of Herr Most thrown in. No doubt, as you suggest, I could by personally appearing before some of these gentlemen satisfy them that I do not eat a railroad president for breakfast every morning. But I do not believe that it is the becoming thing for a man who has been nominated for so high and dignified a position to even give the appearance of soliciting Senatorial support, and I have written the President to this same effect."

The fight between Roosevelt and the Senate continued through the winter and spring of 1906. It was finally compromised by the Senate's accepting Lane after the Commission had been increased from the original five to seven members. Lane was in New York raising money to rebuild San Francisco after the fire when a telegram announced his

confirmation on June

30th.

From this time on Lane saw a good deal of Roosevelt in a rather intimate way for Lane rapidly became one of the strongest personalities on the Commission and at that time the regulation of the railroads was one of the most vital questions before the public.

On March 31, 1907, Lane wrote to President Wheeler: "During these days of panic in Wall Street, the President has called me in often and shown in many ways that he in no way regrets the appointment you urged. I have been much interested in studying him in time of stress. He is one of the most resolute of men and at the same time entirely and altogether reasonable. No man I know is more willing to take suggestion. No one leads him, not even Root, but no one need fear to give suggestion. He lives up to his legend, so far as I can discover, and that's a big order.

"The railroad men who are wise will rush to the sup

port of the policies he will urge before the next Congress, or they will have National ownership to face as an immediate issue, or a character of regulation that they will regard as intolerable.

"You will be here again soon and I hope that you will come directly to our house and give us the pleasure of a genuine visit.

"Remember me, if you please, to Mrs. Wheeler and to Miller [Adolph Miller, now a member of the Federal Reserve Board] when you see him."

Although Lane was perhaps the most vigorous exponent of the public's rights, he was not destructive-minded, as some of the Senators and railroad men had assumed. Lane's work on the Commission was of vital importance to the country, for the decisions he made were of the most far-reaching effect.

These problems appeared in the decisions of the Commission and not much in his correspondence. His attitude toward the work of the Commission was well expressed in a magazine article entitled "What I am Trying to Do," which he wrote in 1913, and in which he said: "What are we of the Interstate Commerce Commission trying to do?

"We are seven, but we work as one. It would be hard to find seven men who differ more in temperament, in training, or in type of mind than Mr. Clements, of Georgia, Mr. Prouty, of Vermont, Mr. Clark, of Iowa, Mr. Harlan, of Illinois, Mr. McChord, of Kentucky, Mr. Meyer, of Wisconsin, and the writer. We differ as one leaf from another in our political sympathies. Often we do not arrive at our conclusions from the same strategic angle. Yet I believe that no other group of men labors for the Government with more singleness of purpose than does this Commission, and, whatever divergences of opinion may arise as to the right construction of the law or the true bearing of a body of facts, every member of the Commission works with the conscious pride that the judgment of his colleagues is an honest judgment, one born of conviction and undirected

Courtesy of Gilbert Grosvenor

by any sinister influence. Furthermore, this confidence and this spirit work down through examiner, accountant, agent, and clerk, so that our force is one that gives itself with fine enthusiasm to the public service, in an earnest effort to solve one of the most intricate and intimate problems of our time.

"In this experiment we are trying above all to be practical; to work with facts; to make progress that will be real; to avoid the pitfalls that befall the doctrinaire; to deal with the problem of the day as an isolated case and yet endeavor that it shall be so dealt with as to bring it into harmony with a far-sighted plan that will make for continuity of railroad policy and for the authority of sound sense and public spirit in the conduct of railroad affairs. If wise. we are not to be terrorized by our own precedents or those of the railroads themselves; less than a century of experience is too short a time within which to say the final word upon any problem of railway economics. And constantly there is this all-important factor to be safeguarded; the self-respecting, self-asserting. risk-taking, personal initiative of the railroad man whose imagination and experience must be sympathetically brought into public service if